Peter's Useful Crap

White Spot is very flexible with their menu, and in my experience, always nice about it too. I’m not talking about being annoyingly creative and telling them how to combine different raw ingredients in different ways. As an example, the lunch-only menu item “dippin’ with caesar” (breaded chicken strips) can always be ordered at dinner. As a more general and useful rule, if you see anything in any menu item, you can often mix and match. (Except maybe asking for breakfast items in the afternoon or evening… although it doesn’t hurt to try.) The sides are especially substitutable: mashed potatoes, steamed vegetables — often broccoli and/or carrots and red peppers — and zoo sticks (breaded, fried zucchini) are substitutable for fries either for free or for a small extra charge, although they’re not explicitly mentioned as such.

This may sound like a silly post, but I’ve been to many other casual dining places that refuse to do any sort of substitution for items that are on the menu, even for an extra charge. Every White Spot location that I’ve been to has been good about it.

When it comes to credit cards, I usually recommend a no fee, cash-back reward credit card. This way, you can get money back for purchases you would normally make anyway, and then you can also decide to do whatever you want with that money. Even if you calculate that non-cash rewards have an equivalent monetary value higher than cash rewards, you must still factor in that the non-cash reward has to be used for a specific purpose, such buying a specific brand of car that might not seem desirable by the time you get around to using the points.

However, the Aeroplan system (and the several credit cards linked to it) deserves consideration for anyone who travels by air within Canada and the US. This is largely based on the fact that 25,000 points can be redeemed for a flight anywhere within Canada and the US (mostly on Air Canada, but also on other Star Alliance airlines), whether that’s from Vancouver to Oregon or Vancouver to Florida.

Unlike normal bookings, which have fluctuating prices depending on sales and time of year, the redemption level of 25,000 points is constant. Of course, Aeroplan seats are subject to availability: in the past I’d noticed that you often had to book quite far in advance, but I’ve noticed significantly increased availability since their announcement about the addition of more “last-minute” flights. As an extreme example, my business was looking at flights from Vancouver to Washington, DC to attend a conference. Even a month in advance, the cheapest return flights were $1,300, while there was plenty of availability through Aeroplan for most of the month. In this case, Aeroplan points can serve as a sort of insurance, or alternative option for flight bookings. You should do your own research to check availabilities on the routes you’re interested in.

Aeroplan miles / points are earned by flying, by using an Aeroplan-affiliated credit card, and by spending money at an Aeroplan partner such as Esso or Home Hardware. If you spend a lot and fly a lot, you might already have an Aeroplan account and possibly an Aeroplan-affiliated credit card that usually earns 1 to 1.5 miles / points per dollar spent. Some of the Aeroplan-affiliated credit cards come with rather enticing bonus offers, even when you factor in annual fees. (And there’s no reason why you can’t cancel the card before the first year is up.) For example, here are some current offers:

• American Express AeroplanPlus Gold: 20,000 mile bonus; must charge $1,000 in the first 3 months; $120 annual fee
• American Express AeroplanPlus Platinum: 50,000 mile bonus; must charge $1,000 in the first 3 months; $499 annual fee
• American Express Business Gold Rewards: 25,000 point bonus (1 point = 1 Aeroplan mile); must charge $1,000 in the first 3 months; first year free ($180 annual fee)

You should browse through the Aeroplan website or do a web search for full details on the affiliated credit cards.

Sugar Mountain Catering is an experienced, Vancouver-based wedding caterer company that I can recommend. The food was highly reviewed by many guests, the servers were friendly, and the entire process from consultation to setup was well organized.

Head chef David MacMillan was our main point of contact. He has settled into a sweet spot by being an experienced industry veteran (Sugar Mountain being in existence since 1999) but also providing personal, individualized attention. He replies fast, is calm and relaxed, and his team is good to work with. Here are a few notable details:

• Sugar Mountain provided us with a free, in-home taste test, not only to sample the food, but to get to know the chef and the company. It was of course a no-obligation taste test, but certainly a crucial selling point!
• The quote given was all-inclusive (plus tax and tip), without, for example, a corking fee or details about cutlery and related supplies. We did have to order bar and wine glasses separately through a bartender, but on the whole the all-inclusive element made things simple.
• Sugar Mountain was familiar with our North Delta venue, and also had a relationship with the supplier that provided chair rentals (Lonsdale Events). We were able to submit and pay our rental order through Sugar Mountain, and thus did not have to coordinate delivery ourselves.
• Sugar Mountain asked us for a list of people with important food allergies or who weren’t very mobile. They were then able to create modified dishes for some; and for the less mobile, they prepared and served dessert plates from the dessert buffet.
• Sugar Mountain helped us finalize the table layout at the wedding venue.
• Sugar Mountain knows a lot of other wedding vendors and was able to provide recommendations.

If I have to point out an area of improvement, it would be that a couple of times, Sugar Mountain was late to meetings. However, there was no concern about their ability to be prompt for the wedding itself.

Sugar Mountain Catering can serve a buffet or plated meal. We had a plated meal that also included appetizers, bread rolls, and a dessert buffet. The presentation was beautiful.

(picture by Morgan Hargreaves Photography)

We were able to create our menu from a long list of possible dishes, and Sugar Mountain was also open to modifications or dish suggestions (although we were satisfied enough with the existing choices). Here is the menu we went with as an example:

Appetizers

• Chilled grilled asparagus with proscuitto di Parma and lemon aioli.
• Sweet potato latkes with pineapple-papaya salsa and lime crema.
• Mini smoked gouda cheeseburger sliders with roasted tomato chutney.
• Corn arepas with smoked chicken and avocado salsa.

Here is a photo of the asparagus, taken by Lyndsay London Photography:

First course

• Watercress with roasted pears, candied pecans, Saltspring Island chevre and lemon vinaigrette.

Main

Choice of:

• Baked BC halibut filet with wasabi mashed potatoes, tobiko beurre-blanc and fresh vegetables.
• Roasted beef tenderloin with sauce foyot, herb roasted Pemberton Valley fingerling potatoes and fresh vegetables.
• Pan-roasted free range chicken breast with fontina, proscuitto, fresh sage, saffron risotto and fresh vegetables.
• African fruit and vegetable curry with steamed basmati rice.

Here is a photo of the beef tenderloin, taken by Morgan Hargreaves Photography:

Recently, I had to do some formatting on existing HTML code, to transform nested paragraphs within blockquotes into individual blockquotes, for XML processing. For example, turning this:


... lots of different HTML before this
<blockquote><p>This is a quote with a <a href="http://www.theblog.ca" title="Peter's Useful Crap">link to a fun site</a></p><p>You should come back often</p></blockquote>
... lots of different HTML after this


Into this:

... lots of different HTML before this
<blockquote>This is a quote with a <a href="http://www.theblog.ca" title="Peter's Useful Crap">link to a fun site</a></blockquote><blockquote>You should come back often</blockquote>
... lots of different HTML after this


This is not a particularly exciting or common task, but it comes with a simple tip. As you will see, below, my solution was to use the “e” directive on your preg_replace function so that you can run code on the match only. In my case, I had a simple str_replace:


<?php

function stripParagraphsFromBlockquotes( $text )
{
    $find = '/<blockquote><p>(.*?)<\/p><\/blockquote>/ise';
    $replace = "'<blockquote>' . stripslashes( str_replace( '</p><p>', '</blockquote>\n<blockquote>', '\\1' ) ) . \"</blockquote>\n\"";
    $text = preg_replace( $find, $replace, $text );
    return $text;
?>


At first, however, I did not have the outer stripslashes call, and was ending up with this output, which breaks XML parsers:


<blockquote>This is a quote with a <a href=\"http://www.theblog.ca\" title=\"Peter's Useful Crap\">link to a great fun</a></blockquote><blockquote>You should come back often</blockquote>


The tip is to use stripslashes on your inner “replace” code, since the “e” modifier automatically adds slashes on the preg_replace match ‘\\1′.

Heading up to the Haleakala crater at sunrise is one of the must-do Maui activities. The pictures and descriptions cause little hesitation about getting up at 2 or 3am in order to experience it. You can drive up yourself, or take a tour, or take a tour with a bike ride down. You can explore much of it on foot as well.

There are plenty of places on the Hawaiian islands where it is almost always sunny and dry; Haleakala is not one of them! The weather up there is generally cold and windy, but you can deal with that by bundling up appropriately. Most importantly, it can be cloudy and rainy up to 25% of the time at Haleakala. On those days, the sunrise will consist of standing inside the visitor centre, huddled close together with everyone else, looking at the varying shades of gray of the clouds! I know this firsthand, because I made the mistake of not checking the forecast before booking a non-refundable tour!

By all accounts, it is a beautiful sunrise, the crater itself looks like another planet, and there is plenty of interesting vegetation… but do a bit of weather forecast research beforehand — and plan your scheduling accordingly — to increase your chances of actually being able to see it all!