Monday, April 25, 2005

Bunch of savages in this town!

After work I visited the horribly dirty Food Basics near my place. (You know, the one with the blocked "FIRE EXIT - Do not block!" door.)

I've had a couple more of those yummy Al Safa Halal pizzas, and tonight I was to repeat the experience. Alas, all was not well. Upon opening the pizza box at home, I discovered that some horrible thief had beaten me to it! He or she opened my pizza before I did and stole the basketball card inside!

It just makes you want to cry. Or not shop at Food Basics.


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Monday, April 18, 2005

Riverdale Farm

On Saturday I found out that I live near Riverdale Farm. My neighbor Lisa and I hit up a greasy spoon for brunch then and headed over to check out some nature.

Lots of pictures inside...

From 1894 to 1974, the site existed as the Riverdale Zoo. On closing, the animals were moved to the new Toronto Zoo and in 1978 the Riverdale Farm opened.

The farm has cows, chickens, sheep, pigs, ducks, geese, donkey, horses, and turkeys.

Here are some pictures I took while we were there:




















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Monday, April 11, 2005

Did I eat a 10-year old pizza?

UPDATE: Al Safa responds! Read the full article to find out the truth!

Having moved into my new apartment, my first quest was to obtain groceries. "Luckily", there's a dirty Food Basics two doors down the street.

Browsing the frozen section, I came upon some Halal pizzas. They looked decent, and the one I picked even came with a free basketball card.




That's when I took a closer look at the basketball card...
It's a bit hard to make out, since I'm just using my phone for pictures these days, but if you squint a little you can see that the basketball card in question is from the Fleer 93-94 series:




The pizza itself looked fine, and when I ate it in the twin interests of science and hunger there were no ill effects that I could detect. How long does frozen food last before going bad? No one knows! It's a mystery for the ages.

I contacted Al Safa Halal to ask whether I bought a decade-old pie or if they found an unsold cache of Fleer basketball cards. No response yet, but I'll update this post if they get back to me.



UPDATE:

Greetings Derek.

The pizza was brand new. The cards are collector's items. Some of the
cards are over thirty years old!!

So rest assured.

By the way, how was the pizza?

---------------------------------------------------
Al Safa Halal
Consumer Response Team


So it looks like I ate a new pizza after all. That's less exciting, but it does improve my confidence in the grocery store near my house.


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