Case-hardening is a method of giving surface strength to a specific material. Hardening can only take place under conditions where there is a carbon content in the steel. In the case of some wind turbines, the gear wheels are made of a special, low-carbon, chrome-nickel steel. After the teeth are machined, the gear wheels are packed into large boxes full of bone flour or some other form of high carbon-content powder. The boxes are placed in an oven and heated for about 24 hours to a red glowing temperature. During this baking process, some of the free carbon will be transferred from the surrounding carbon-rich powder in the boxes to the gear wheel teeth surfaces.

I thought that was interesting and funny.

A couple years ago, I tried to put together a list of restaurants that offer vegan and vegetarian options for Summerlicious. It’s been a while since I revisited the ‘Licious menus and I noticed that the City of Toronto offers more informative restaurant listings.

 In 2012 Winterlicious celebrates 10 years as one of Toronto’s favourite culinary events. There are 10 restaurants participating this year who were part of the inaugural promotion in 2003. Congratulations to these 10 and all Toronto restaurants who have served more than 3.2 million meals over the past nine years and have worked to make Winterlcious and Summerlicious such successful programs.

 Those restaurants with a leaf icon offer a vegetarian option as part of their menu.

 These restaurants are serving menus with at least one dish in each course made with local Ontario produce, meat and food ingredients.

 Each restaurant and event venue was asked to identify whether their location is fully barrier-free and wheel chair accessible. Look for this icon throughout the site.

There are over 90 restaurants that offer vegetarian options this year. Happy hunting for a Winterlicious restaurant you like!

• LPK’s Culinary Groove
• Apiecalypse Now! Vegan Bakery
• The Simply Bar: Protein bars
• Girlnola Gluten-Free Gourmet Goodness
• Marni Wasserman
• Meatless Monday
• Veggie Challenge
• Vegucated
• Vegan Outreach

This year, Summerlicious runs from July 3 to July 19. Reservations will be taken for Summerlicious starting June 18, 2009. I’m told the “good” restaurants fill up quickly. By your standards, I’m guessing those are the restaurants that offer steaks and seafood, so I’m pretty safe.

I always say I’m going to go to Summerlicious, but I never end up going. The restaurant listing still lists which restaurants have vegetarian courses. This year, they’ve even included which courses are vegetarian in the menu. It might have been my wave of emails to every vegetarian-friendly restaurant to ask what was in each dish that didn’t look like it had meat, egg or cheese in it.

Summerlicious 2009 Restaurant Listing

Who knows? Maybe I’ll go this year. Has anyone seen a vegan list somewhere online for Summerlicious?

我吃素
wǒ chī sù
I eat vegetables

我吃斋
wǒ chī zhāi
I am vegetarian

我不吃…
wǒ bù chī…
I don’t eat…

… 鸡蛋
… jī dàn
… (chicken) eggs

… 鱼
… yú
… fish

… 海鲜
… hǎixiān
… seafood

Time to get the travel guides out. I wonder if I’ll have time to go see everything.

• WuhanTime.com – Best Wuhan guide I’ve seen so far.
• Wuhan.com
• Map of Wuhan, China – In English
• Map of Wuhan – In Chinese
• Virtual Tourist’s Wuhan Restaurants
• Wuhan East-Lake High-Tech Development Zone – Where my school is located.
• Wuhan Economic & Technological Development Zone
• China Planner’s Hubei Cuisine an Restaurant – A few more restaurants than China Highlights
  
• China Highlights’ Wuhan Restaurant Reviews – No reviews, just names.

There’s two vegetarian restaurants listed on Vegetarian China, you know where I’ll be going when I’m in Shanghai. If you’re a vegetarian traveling in China, there’s a restaurant guide at HappyCow for Beijing, Changchun, Fujian, Guangdong, Guilin, Hong Kong, Macau, Nanjing, Shanghai, Shanxi, Sichuan, Tibet, Xiamen, Xinjiang, and Yunnan. A blog post on WorldFoodieGuide about vegetarian food in Hong Kong and Macau. One vegetarian shared her vegetarian experience in China and how accomodating they were. Is you just want eye candy, here’s a photo gallery of places in Wuhan.

A new veggie restaurant just opened last weekend. I tried to go with PH on Saturday but it was packed when we got there and it was almost closing. So we went yesterday to give it a try. It was pretty good, I’m definitely going back to try out more of their items. They don’t have a web site yet, so I can’t send you anywhere to take a look.