I’m back!

I’m back in Montreal! It’s been a bit more than 3 months since I left and it’s nice to be back in “La Belle Province.”

Today was the first garbage day since I’ve gotten back, and it showed that the city hadn’t run out of awesome garbage in the time that I was gone (which I admit was a minor fear of mine).

So let’s get to it, shall we?

I found all this on Esplanade near St Joseph. A bunch of decent clay pots (which I stashed in an alley for later or for others), an old cookbook (I deemed it worthy of taking based on one of the recipes being a vegetarian lentil salad), and a really cool, if beat up old tray.

Here’s a close up of the tray. It’s really quite beautiful, and it’s too bad it’s in such poor shape. The glass in the middle is cracked in two, but that’s not as bad as the glass that’s missing altogether. I had to take it, though. It’s still quite lovely and I’m pondering ways that I can creatively restore it, if not to it’s former glory than to some Frankenstein-y modern glory.

Someone through out a massive box of dates (or prunes or figs?) and a huge bag of dessicated (dried) coconut. Not sure if anything was wrong with either, as they both looked fine. I was going to take the coconut and offer it for free on Craigslist, but I left it on the street so I could come and pick it up later. Later, I found some stuff that took priority over a massive bag of coconut. I may go back later, but it may be too late.

I pulled this out of a bag outside some posh apartments on Laurier. At first I was going to leave it, as it’s pretty nasty, but then I figured that it might clean up just fine.

Here’s the “after” picture. It’s more or less like-new. It’s stainless steel and has a “Cooks Quarters” marque. Pretty decent quality pot by the looks of things. This is when having a strong stomach pays off.

An old clawfoot tub. Nothing really wrong with it (obviously, since these things are pure iron and weigh over 9000 pounds). Needless to say though, there’s no way I’m getting it home. Hopefully someone can come pick it up – there’s money to be made if someone can restore it. At the very least it’s worth a bit in scrap metal.