Buffets can be scary, depending on the restaurant. I usually opt for ordering from the menu because of this, but a friend recommended the one at Agra Fine Indian Cuisine (Yonge/Sheppard) so I decided to investigate the lunch buffet. For just $9.95, you can choose from over 40 items including vegetarian as well as meat dishes.

Read more about Agra Fine Indian Cuisine in the Restaurants section.

I found out about Jeff Cottrill's Guilt Pasta while exploring Toronto's Word On The Street, at the Burning Effigy Press booth. The title intrigued me (I like pasta and I'm familiar with guilt) so I bought it.

Turns out that Jeff is a Toronto-based satirist, fiction writer, and spoken-word performer who has toured with the Perpetual Motion Roadshow, and performed throughout Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. He's also the Managing Editor of DivorceMagazine.com, and his arts reviews, interviews and articles have appeared in publications like NOW, Vu, Exclaim!, The Village Post, and The Independent Weekly.

Guilt Pasta is his third chapbook of fiction and satirical monologues. Some are brief slice-of-life snippets, like his interactions with a clueless co-worker ("The Fiver"). Some of the characters in Jeff's stories may not be the sort of people I'd want to hang out with personally, but I found them intriguing ("To Kill A Mouse"), funny ("Sally Dumps Johnny"), and poignant ("Winners' Whistles").

My favourite piece was "Beautiful Swan," which is a re-telling (sort of) of The Ugly Duckling story. The first time I read through it, I found it hilarious. The second time, heartbreakingly sad. And that's part of what I found so compelling about many of the pieces in Guilt Pasta, that the each story or anecdote can hit you differently, depending on your own mood and experiences.

Last night, I was first in line at Jasper Fforde's book launch at The Sleuth Of Baker Street on Bayview Avenue, clutching my newly-purchased copies of First Among Sequels, latest in his Thursday Next series. Mr. Fforde had the whole rakish Indiana Jones thing going (it worked, at least for me) and was utterly charming, plus I'm a sucker for British accents. But I digress.

I've been a fan of Edward Gorey ever since I read The Gashlycrumb Tinies, a macabre tale of 26 children (one for each letter in the alphabet) and their untimely demise. One of my favourites was "N is for Neville who died of ennui." As a child, I mourned for poor Neville yet secretly admired him. To manage to die of ennui, after all! Quite the feat.

This afternoon I dropped by the Osborne Collection Of Early Children's Books and visited the Gorey Tales exhibit: selections from the Edward Gorey Collection, which is running until December 7th. You can find the Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books in Toronto Public Library's Lillian H. Smith District Branch at College and Spadina, on the fourth floor.

So you've planned a huge weekend brunch and have invited everyone you know. By Friday night, you're sure you've got it all covered: the food, the drinks, the tunes...even those horrible little pork rinds that your friend Ryan adores so much.

You wake in the middle of the night with a sense of impending dread, however, as you suddenly realize that you forgot the orange juice. AUGH. It's 2 am. Where on earth are you going to find a grocery store at this time of night/morning?

Don't panic. Toronto's not exactly a 24-hour city, but here's a list of some grocery stores that are open around the clock. (UPDATED with a handy Google Map!)

Order the Saganaki (not pictured above) in this Greek restaurant and you'll get the traditional "Opa!" when it's served. I didn't know what this meant, so I looked it up. According to Urban Dictionary, it can mean "Wanna dance?", "Hurray!", "Hell, yeah!", "Yeehaw!"

Unless the waiter was Dutch instead of Greek, in which case he was calling me Grandpa.

Read more about Penelope in Restaurants.