{"id":408,"date":"2005-09-05T20:10:53","date_gmt":"2005-09-05T20:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wp_genova\/?p=408"},"modified":"2005-09-05T20:10:53","modified_gmt":"2005-09-05T20:10:53","slug":"picketsize_me_a_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.dongenova.com\/site\/picketsize_me_a_1\/","title":{"rendered":"Picket-Size Me &#8211; A Breakthrough!!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Monday, Sept. 5th:<\/strong>&nbsp; This morning I ferried\/drove back to our house in Cobble Hill on Vancouver Island.&nbsp; &quot;Every trip is an ocean cruise,&quot; as Rick Cluff likes to say. When I arrived I pulled out the digital scale I had weighed myself on in Vancouver last Monday when I began this feature on the Pacific Palate Blog.&nbsp; <strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Drum Roll, Please:&nbsp; <\/strong><em>I have dropped almost 5 pounds!&nbsp; 4.5 to be precise.&nbsp; <\/em>Some folks will tell you that loss could be accounted for by water, or a normal swing in your body weight, but I&#8217;m going to take it as a sign that the 30+ kilometres I walked last week on the line actually helped.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What Doesn&#8217;t Help:&nbsp; <\/strong>I&#8217;m a food journalist.&nbsp; That means I make my living by experiencing the world of food in as many ways as possible.&nbsp; Thursday night meant attending a new restaurant opening.<a rel=\"lightbox\" href=\"\/images\/various\/img_0817.JPG\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Img_0817\" height=\"149\" alt=\"Img_0817\" src=\"\/images\/various-small\/img_0817.JPG\" width=\"200\" border=\"0\" style=\"FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 5px 5px 0px\" \/><\/a>&nbsp; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whatisnu.com\/\">NU<\/a> is the latest creation of Harry Kambolis of C Restaurant and Rain City Grill fame. It&#8217;s right at the foot of Granville Street on the north side of False Creek and promises to be another winner.&nbsp; So, when you go to a restaurant opening you eat and drink.&nbsp; What else?&nbsp; I won&#8217;t bore you with all the details but I know you might be just a bit curious so here we go:<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"lightbox\" href=\"\/images\/various\/salmon_candy.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Salmon_candy\" height=\"369\" alt=\"Salmon_candy\" src=\"\/images\/various-small\/salmon_candy.jpg\" width=\"200\" border=\"0\" style=\"FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 5px 5px 0px\" \/><\/a> How about this salmon candy?&nbsp; Chewy and smoky and sweet all at the same time.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"lightbox\" href=\"\/images\/various\/steak_tartare.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Steak_tartare\" height=\"202\" alt=\"Steak_tartare\" src=\"\/images\/various-small\/steak_tartare.jpg\" width=\"200\" border=\"0\" style=\"FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 5px 5px 0px\" \/><\/a> Then there were these little servings of steak tartare on a crisp, house-made potato chip.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"lightbox\" href=\"\/images\/various\/oysters.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Oysters\" height=\"248\" alt=\"Oysters\" src=\"\/images\/various-small\/oysters.jpg\" width=\"200\" border=\"0\" style=\"FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 5px 5px 0px\" \/><\/a> Oh yeah, and then these battered and fried oysters that were served with a little plastic tube full of beer.&nbsp; As you shoved the oyster in your mouth, you&#8217;re supposed to squeeze the beer tube so you enjoy both beer and oyster at the same time.&nbsp; I think they need a little work on that one.&nbsp; There were other nibbles as well, but wouldn&#8217;t you know it, my gang was still peckish, so&#8230;we went out for dinner!&nbsp; This is why it is hard to lose weight when you&#8217;re a foodie.&nbsp; &nbsp;Fortunately, our choice of going to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hapaizakaya.com\/\"><em>hapa izakaya<\/em><\/a><em> <\/em>on Robson Street was wise as the food there is fairly light, including these melt in your mouth Kobe beef slices that are carefully seared with a blowtorch at your table. <a rel=\"lightbox\" href=\"\/images\/various\/hapa.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Hapa\" height=\"185\" alt=\"Hapa\" src=\"\/images\/various-small\/hapa.jpg\" width=\"200\" border=\"0\" style=\"FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 5px 5px 0px\" \/><\/a> I guess I&#8217;m getting a little off topic here&#8230;on Tuesday morning I will head down to the CBC office in Victoria and start picketing as we begin week four of the lockout&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>South Beach:<\/strong>&nbsp; Almost forgot.&nbsp; To up the ante on the weight loss, today I began Phase One of the South Beach diet.&nbsp; No bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, fruit, sugar or alcohol for two whole weeks.&nbsp; Do you know how hard that is for a food guy like me to attempt?&nbsp; I&#8217;ll keep you posted&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Monday, Sept. 5th:&nbsp; This morning I ferried\/drove back to our house in Cobble Hill on Vancouver Island.&nbsp; &quot;Every trip is an ocean cruise,&quot; as Rick Cluff likes to say. When I arrived I pulled out the digital scale I had &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.dongenova.com\/site\/picketsize_me_a_1\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.dongenova.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.dongenova.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.dongenova.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.dongenova.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.dongenova.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.dongenova.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.dongenova.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.dongenova.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.dongenova.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}