The 36-Hour Vacation... and a return to blogging.

36 hours, 5 poutines, 12 hours of driving, 15 cups of tea and 1 crappy hotel all in the name of poutine research.

I have been troubled for a long time thinking, "What do I have to blog about?" Movie Girl has movies/books, but I have... a screenplay? I can tell you that would have gotten old pretty quick... ("Day 231: Completed 5 pages today... onward and upward. Day 310: At page 110, nearly succumbed to diet coke cravings.") Mr. Liberty suggested writing an immigration blog but that wasn't much more interesting. ("Who knew you need a background check from France AND the United States... application pushed back another four weeks.") So I didn't write. But now, I have a new-found profession/reason for living: Poutine.

Yes, in just a few short weeks Lady Liberty will add another (volunteer) profession to the long string that has come before: Chip Girl. Mr. Liberty and his brother are opening Poutini's House of Poutine and I will be their first (unpaid) employee. Naturally, opening up a restaurant requires research so we decided to travel to the mecca of poutine. Montreal, of course. We left Toronto at 1 in the afternoon on Monday and got back at 1 in the morning last night. In that time we managed to eat poutine from five of Montreal's staple poutineries. Honestly? Not terribly impressed. While tasty, (until you've already had three) the poutine was made with questionable fries, packaged gravy and often-unsatisfying cheese curds. Yes, Montreal invented it, might Toronto perfect it? Remains to be seen. But we're more excited than ever about our endeavour... even if by the end we were cursing the very invention. And we might have done better to roll home to Toronto.

The trip itself was wonderful. Our hotel was on the rue St. Denis, a lively area of Montreal that gave us pretty easy access to the poutineries but also to a great number of tea shops! (My other love...) So in between "courses" we had Moroccan mint teas and pu-erh cleansing teas and matcha teas and "wulong" teas as they call them in French (Wu-tang's brother... ha!) and straight-from-the-Indian-tea-farm darjeeling teas. We'd like to think that it helped balance us out. All I know is that I am cured of carbs for life.

In other news, I have a print-out of the infamous Black Sash screenplay and it's thick enough to knock out a boisterous bear. Cletis, the 6-burner gas range, and Debbie, the double-door commercial fridge, have joined the family. (As my mother informed everyone she knows in the most obtuse of ways possible... "Katie and Fred are expecting... A FRIDGE!" minor heart attacks all-around, myself included) The "coming soon" website (www.poutini.com) will go up this week and EVERYONE needs to join the Poutine Lovers of Toronto facebook group, if you don't yet love poutine, we promise you will!

So that, friends, is a day in the life of Lady Liberty... chip-girl.