Balmain Highlights

These are a few unrelated pictures from around Balmain. This first one I took as Tom and I under an umbrella, speed walked our way up to our favourite Vietnamese restaurant. Everyone was trying to stay dry, including this bird.

Last night I took up the challenge of making jalapeno salsa. Tom has quite the spicy loving taste buds, so I've been hard pressed to make meals that are actually firey enough.  I found this recipe online, it's pretty good however had a definitely green taste. So since we have so much, I'll be taking small amounts of it and experimenting with the flavour and try to tone down that green taste. So far on my list are vinegar, lemon and sataying it.

On the way back from the grocery store Tom suddenly stopped and pointed out this little monster. As I crouched down to take a picture he cautioned me that it may not be completely dead.  I was pretty excited and as we stood there talking about it, a lady in the balcony of the house we were in front of, popped her head over the side and explained she had just killed it. She was saying spiders of this size are pretty hard to kill, since they are incredibly fast. She resorted to spraying it. When she heard my accent she understood my fascination with it and added that even though she's seen lots of big spiders they still make her jump, this one when alive and stretched out was about the size of her hand. It also turned out that her son had just moved to Toronto.  Since uploading this picture I have looked at it many many times, the whole time trying to envision it alive in the same room as me. So far I have not successfully pictured me not having a minor freak out. I still can't stop looking at it.