Best & Wurst

Blargh.  Under a lot of stress right now.  I'm feeling a lot of transposed stress from what my Outlaw Bro and Sis are going through right now - in the thick of the campaign with less than a month to go.  I just wish I could do more to help them out and it's killing me watching them have to slog through the muck and mire.

My sister and I are also polar opposites in a lot of respects.  When it comes to stuff like organization or tidiness we're like two positively charged ions.  She hasn't converted to the gospel of organization or being a type A micromanager the way I have.  BUT DON'T YOU SEE HOW MUCH EASIER IT MAKES YOUR LIFE?!??!!!  She says, to everyone else in the whole world.

This weekend was jam-packed.  It started with EPIC ARMAGEDDON between me and the Dotytron that was forged in the flames of: travelling, long-weekend traffic, the Dotytron being responsible for packing the car, and a failure to return cell phone calls.  Any one of those things will turn me into a mad dog on a good day.  Combine them all?!  It was the worst and I basically turned into this guy:

Note: I've actually never seen Yellow Submarine because I only semi-care about the Beatles.  

The point is: it got uuugggglllly.  Then in classic me armageddon-quickly-flaming-out-to-a-bed-of-cold-coals fashion, I was like, "I'm done with being an a**hole! Let's start over!"  Hahaha.  I'm a jerk of the highest order.  Anyway, we ended up at WVRST for dinner and a combination of sausages, duck-fat fried fries and a substantial list of interesting beers went a long way to tempering the Dotytron's ire.  

The concept is similar to that place in Cleveland that we LOVE, Happy Dog.  You order either a basic ($6) or gourmet (think kangaroo and duck - $9) sausage either on a bun or served currywurst style with a curried ketchup dipping sauce, you add on your choice of 2 of 4 toppings, decide if you want fries and with your fries you get a choice of 2 of many dipping sauces.  The Dotytron had the boerewors and an oktoberfest sausage, I had a brat and their calabrese.  The duck fat fries were really good - salty and crispy and improbably soft on the inside...though not necessarily worth the extra money...given that you're dunking the fries in sauce anyway.  The sausages were all uniformly good - except the Dotytron didn't like his boerewors.    The toppings are kind of uninspired - onions, under-cooked peppers, sauerkraut and hot peppers don't really add to the taste experience much.  Overall, this is a good place to go with a group of people, since splitting the bill is easy and they're all big long communal tables.  It would actually be a pretty good place to bring kids, if they weren't being such giant King West jerks about it (i.e. it's super loud in there and they turn down the lights at like, 7pm and it's full of King West bros).  The beers were expensive but the list is interesting (according to my dining companion).  I liked it but I'm not in a hurry to go back.  It's a good, quick, decently priced option though.

Saturday morning we did a 5km run (me and the Dotytron) and the rest of the family did a walk in support of this organization that helps victims of domestic abuse.  It was my first official 5km (like, I got a number and everything!) and I haven't been running in forever.  I'm not exactly sure of my overall time, BECAUSE I MISSED THE TURN TO THE FINISH POINT AND OVERRAN.  Also, trying to stay with the Dotytron slowed me down.  I was ahead of the Dotytron and he finished around 29 minutes, so I'm saying my time was 29 minutes.  I'm pretty proud of myself!  Mostly for beating the Dotytron and for not having practised at all.  As the Dotytron said, "I'm proud of you, and you're proud of you, but you're not as proud of me as I am of you, so basically, you're DOUBLY proud of yourself, but I get the shaft."  LOL!  So true!  Haha.

The rest of the day was pretty low-key.  The Dotytron and I stayed and watched the babies while the rest of the family was out stumping/doing family stuff.

This happened.  I cannot describe to you how thoroughly DISGUSTED Little Big Cuz looked when the Big Yam hopped on this little car buck-naked.  Little Big Cuz kept giving me the look like, "Uhhh...can you do something about this?" and was definitely not okay with how okay the Big Yam is with being naked.

The Big Yam LOVES his cousins.  Loves them!  It's so cute.  He's so blasé about other kids normally but he was just beaming being around them and spent time actually playing WITH Little Big Cuz instead of playing individually alongside him.  It was cute.  When the two woke up from their nap, I offered them a snack and Little Big Cuz (LBC) started chirping "snack! snack!" and led me to the snack counter at my sister's which is an impressive mountain of every name brand snack you could possible want or desire.  As we all know, I'm super-mean about sugar/salt consumption so I grabbed the healthiest option (graham crackers, which to me are the cookie equivalent of Proustian madeleines) and doled them out.  The Big Yam, who is routinely denied sweets was in the throes of ecstasy.  LBC?  Not so much.  He held the cracker in a limp, disdaining wrist and gave me the most, "b***h, PLEASE." look and then ground the cracker to crumbs on my sister's couch.  Crumbs that the Big Yam then spent 10 minutes LICKING UP.  Those two!

Sunday morning we went to an AYCE breakfast at a Veteran's Hall.  Ummmm...these oldies are NOT kidding around!  Scrambled eggs, sausage links, toast, home fries, pancakes, french toast, biscuits, sausage gravy, orange juice.  ALL YOU CAN EAT.  FOR FIVE DOLLARS A PERSON.  Like banh mi, this breakfast operates outside the laws of macro and microeconomics.  I ended up donating more because a) they're old people and b) that was one of the finest sausage gravies I've ever had in my LIFE.  So good!

Then we went to this place Stokoe Farms, which is a pumpkin patch, petting zoo type thing.  The Big Yam had his mind blown going on a tractor ride.  We launched pumpkins and climbed a giant mountain of hay bales and launched mini pumpkins at a broken down van in a field (BEST!).  There was also some ziplinining happening - check out the Dotytron's form:

In a corn maze.  What I learned: my upper limit for a corn maze participation is about 10 seconds.  Then I need to get OUT, like yesterday.

For dinner we got dinner from the hilariously named Questa Lasagna, which actually does a really, really good lasagna.  Think: heavy on the mozzarella top layer so you get a 1 cm thick gooey, burnished layer of cheese with some crispy edge bits.  Good stuff.  We also did a cake and did an early birthday celebration for the Big Yam.

Monday we headed home in the afternoon.  We took the route that takes us along side roads and through these cute towns.  We stopped at the Pok-A-Dot, which is the cutest thing I've ever seen:

The Pok-A-Dot is known for their beef on weck, which is a Western New York thing - shaved sliced roast beef served on a salt bun with optional horseradish.  The bun is what makes this dish truly special - it's flecked with caraway, which I don't usually like as a flavouring, but I think the top of the bun is brushed with salt water, so you get a nice salty kick before biting through the yielding bun into the relatively moist, unseasoned meat below.  Good stuff.

That was my weekend!  

Last night we had the Roomie and T over for dinner.  We had cheddar broccoli soup and grilled fresh mozzarella, onion, and tomato jam sammies for dinner.

LOOK AT THAT BABY!  The cutest!!!

Last week's dinner of steamed brown rice w/ Chinese sausage & Chinese stir-fry greens from my CSA, with braised pork belly 

Tonight's dinner of baked eggplant parmesan on my new Modern Twist Kyoto placemats!

I was really mad on Friday before leaving town and what turned me around was opening the trunk of the car and seeing this craft the Big Yam had made at daycare.  So freakin' cute.

Fin.

Thanksgiving weekend!

It's my favorite holiday of the year!  This year is a little different - instead of doing the big turkey and all the fixins, we're decamping to Western New York to visit my sis and family.  Bruce Wayne is coming, too!  

So yes, I'm going to be missing out on turkey, but I can cook a turkey any old time (see: 2007 when I randomly would roast a goose or do a giant glazed ham for no particular reason).  I'm going to be loading up on Aunt Cookie's subs, Cracker Barrel breakfasts, Cheesecake Factory cheesecakes, Nick Tahou's garbage plates...and because my outlaw bro is on the campaign trail and has to kiss every baby and show up at every church fundraiser in town, I think there will be a lot of community pot roasts and chicken and biscuit dinners, and apparently an all-you-can-eat breakfast fundraiser in my future.

HOWEVER.  I downloaded this app that my friend told me about called "My Fitness Pal" which is basically a calorie counter and helps you lose weight.  I input my goal weight (which is about 7 pounds less than where I'm at now) and said that I wanted to lose about 1 lb a week...AND IT GAVE ME A LIMIT OF 1200 CALORIES A DAY.  Buhhhhhhhhhhh.  THAT'S NEGATIVE FOOD!  I put in a banana and an apple and that's like, 300 calories.  WTF?!?  You can "earn" more calories by doing exercise and my average day consists of at least 40 minutes of biking and an hour+ of walking, but still!  1200 calories?!????  Get outta here!  I haven't been running lately because the string of sexual assaults has me wigged...I run in the early early morning and I've just been avoiding it.  I've also been feeling lazy.  I'm going to do a 5km run for victims of domestic assault in my sis' town though.  Nothing like a cold 5km!  HOLD THE PHONE.  Avoiding running because of sexual assaults and then doing a run to benefit domestic assaults = my run is mad topical, yo.  

Last night was crazy productive.  I finished my Halloween wreath:

This was a super-easy project that my friend G hipped me to.  I bought pipe-insulation from Home Depot (flexible foamy stuff) for about $3.75 (you definitely don't need all of it!)  I cut off about a 16-18" length and taped it into a tube.  This will look like a small circumference for a wreath but keep in mind, the wreath gets HUGE with the tulle sticking out. Then, I cut a tonne of approximately 12" lengths of orange and black tulle and using 3 at a time, double-knotted them around the foam tube until I was done. I was too excited to put it on the door (with Halloween decor, you only get a month and I'm already 5 days in!) to properly fluff it, but you get the drift.  If you used red, white, and green tulle you could do a Holiday wreath (or an Italian one?)  I've also put out my Halloween bunting garland and I'm going to turn some of my shrubs and tomato cages into ghosts (see Pinterest inspiration below):

I also finished the two birthday crowns for the Little Big Cuz and Big Big Cuz.  I'm going to do photos when we get down there.  I also packed and did some tidying so I felt really good about myself.  My friend G at work heard about my last weekend (when I made the drapes and planted bulbs) and was like, "Do you have Redbull running through your veins?!"  I'm high on life!  I can't help it!  I also found my US sim card which made me very happy.

Have a very very very happy Thanksgiving, you beautiful turkeys!

Fin.

NBD

...just the Big Yam, counting in Spanish.  Being all quad-lingual and shiz.  LOL!  Cutest video ever!  I called J yesterday and she was like, "did you see the video?" and I said, "Yes! It's the cutest thing I've ever seen!" and she said, "NO. There are no words.  I can't even tell you.  Your son, he is...amazing."  LOL!  

Needless to say, she's a big Big Yam fan.  She likes that you only have to show him something once and he gets it.  He's a pretty controlled kid.  I trained him to walk beside the stroller holding onto the side when he got the point where he could walk a distance and he just like, does it.  He doesn't try to run ahead, he doesn't try to get in the way of the stroller, he just walks beside carefully, holding the handle.  I dunno where he gets it from.  

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

Fin.

On Treme

Things that burn me:

1) Getting mail addressed to "Mr. and Mrs. I. Dotytron."  I literally SEETHE.  I'm sorry, I don't have a name or identity any more?!  WTF?  The surest way to get me to irrationally dislike whatever missive you've sent me via post is to address it like that.

2) The fact that no one watches Treme.  I've made no bones about the fact that we are die-hard Treme fans in this house.  Really, if The Wire wasn't such a huge thing I wouldn't even care that people pass by Treme.  It's the fact that there are legions of rabid Wire fans and no one knows Treme that gets me.  I think it has a lot to do with the subject matter - studying post-Katrina New Orleans is not as "cool" as studying drug dealers.  The subculture down there isn't as tied into popular culture's fetishization of urban, ghettoized black masculinity.

Here's the thing: it's easy to love The Wire.  The packaging is all set up for you!  And the civics/socio-economic lessons in The Wire, while perhaps ground-breaking at the time, in contrast to the nuance of Treme are incredibly pat.  The observations are nowhere near as keen (case in point: the youth drug-dealers using chess as a metaphor for how they're "pawns" in the towers drug trade is incredibly trite and to me, is sloppy writing).  Treme is even MORE David Simon than The Wire.  Instead of the narrative device of each season exploring a different societal aspect, what you have is incredibly deep, rich, layered characters living their lives in a town that is emblematic of all that is beautiful and deplorable in America.  Because of this, you really get to inhabit the world of Treme, in a much deeper way than you were allowed to in The Wire.  So yeah, it's not "cool" in the same way to be following New Orleans public defense lawyers and bar owners and councillors, chefs, and musicians, but the social commentary is no less incisive for it.  Every time we watch an episode, we turn to each other and say, "I love this show."

So yeah, of course, all the chef-insider business and all the musician insider business is tailor-made for me and the Dotytron and our respective interests, but I defy you to watch the recreation of a second-line tribute to a fallen musician with the sounds of the Rebirth Brass Band swelling in the background and not be moved.    What's not to love about a culture with a second-line?!  A culture with jazz funerals?!  It's a beautiful thing and y'all are missing out big-time.  Don't even get me started on the women of Treme.  Fierce, strong, stalwart, steely.

3) How busy I am right now.

Fin.

I need another weekend

I had Friday off so technically a 3 day weekend, but I'm STRESSED, sons.  I'm hustling as hard, if not harder, than Rick Ross - work is crazy.  I'm prepping for an interview I may or may not get.  Life is crazy!  And despite my best efforts to keep things calm and sane and lo-pro, it just ain't working.  I decided to keep the Big Yam home with me on Friday. We went for a walk with my friend M and her baby P.  Then we hopped on the streetcar (which was absolutely thrilling for the little guy - see below) and met up with Ehmdo who treated me to a birthday lunch.  

Ehmdo and I stumbled on a Maynard's candy ad shooting in Trinity Bellwoods.  They had a giant swedish berry, a giant fuzzy peach, and a giant whatever the apple candy is being chased by the mouth over there.

We went for lunch at County General, which is a vaguely southern themed restaurant in the Queen West strip.  It's a small, narrow room.  They don't have high chairs (of course) so we ate on the patio with the Big Yam on my lap.  They have a very small menu.  We both got the fried chicken thigh sandwich - which is two lightly floured, deep-fried thighs stacked on a wee little 3.5" bun with some avocado salsa and pickled onions.  It comes with very crunchy (though slightly over salted) fries or salad.  This was really tasty and satisfying, although for the price ($14), I kinda wanted two sandwiches?!?  Is that wrong?  It was really good, but not necessarily worth crossing town for.  I just picked up some Costco-sized packs of chicken thighs so I'm going to try to recreate it at home.  

After lunch with Ehmdo, I took the Big Yam on an epic walk through Parkdale picking up stuff for various craft/Halloween projects I've got on the go.  We stopped in at Glory Hole Donuts, which I find has an absolutely disgusting, repulsive name.  It's not cute, guys.  I got a four pack to go: pistachio, cookies'n'cream, buttered toast, and pretzel.  I thought these were kind of disappointing.  Like Paulette's, it's the same doughnut base (in this case, a yeasted doughnut to Paulette's cake variety), with different toppings.  The glazes and toppings were very ho-hum.  The yeasted doughnut was okay, but the fryer oil must not have been switched recently because it imparted a stale, old oil taste which was unpleasant.  Texturally the doughnuts had a nice chew, but nothing outstanding.  The glazes weren't overpoweringly sweet but they were just middling.  Not a lot of the promised flavour.  The best one by far was the buttered toast, which had originality and faithfulness going for it.  I hate to compare again to Doughnut Plant but I can't help it.  Once you've had a Doughnut Plant doughnut it's REEAAAALLLLY hard to taste something else and think they measure up.  Doughnut Plant has this place beat in terms of size, value for money, flavours, and execution.  I think the Doughnut Plant doughnuts are at least double the size.

I picked up Mother India rotis for Friday night takeout night.  I had the malai kofta.  The Dotytron had the chicken tikka masala.  The Big Yam had lamb curry and ate like, half a roti.  

Saturday we had Mandarin school and then I was on my own with the Big Yam because the Dotytron was at this Ontario Band Association workshop.  It was cute seeing how fired up he was after coming home from it.  I dragged the Big Yam around with me all over the place.  We went to St. Lawrence Market and picked up andouille sausage and had a breakfast sandwich.  Then we went to get gas at the cheap place.  I'm physically incapable of paying more for gas if I know there's a cheaper option, even if it means doubling back and going out of my way to save 3 cents on the litre.  Then we went out to Scarborough to go to Diana's seafood to pick up dinner supplies, then we went grocery shopping on the Danforth, and then I finally let us come home.  It was epic.  But it made it worth it when he pointed at the lobsters in the tank at Diana's and yelled, "snakes!"  

Our dinner guests ended up cancelling on us so I did a variation of what I was going to serve.  This meant that the Dotytron and I had the enviable task of taking down a dozen oysters and a dozen clams casino each.  We had French Kiss and Lucky Lime oysters and I almost killed myself shucking the clams.  I also made a caprese salad and corn on the cob and garlic bread.  It was really, really tasty.

The Big Yam and I made these butterscotch cookies with white chocolate.

There was a Nuit Blanche thingy happening around the corner from us so we went and checked that out as well.  There was some kind of interactive video installation as well as a participatory event where you could contribute to this mural that local artists are painting along the side of this revitalized building.  Pretty cool.  I didn't have to deal with all the amateur hour drunks and crowds that otherwise make Nuit Blanche so disgusting and off-putting.  I just had to deal with this lady who named her kids Trenton and Camden.  Ugh.  Why not Uxbridge?  Or Peterborough?  

Sunday was bucktown.  We went swimming super-early in the morning, which elicited mad grumbles from the Dotytron, but it was worth it because we had some major bubble blowing, kicking-on-your-back breakthroughs with the Big Yam.  Then we picked up my Poh Poh and took her with us to Costco and then lunch.  Then we came home, the Dotytron went to rehearsal and I ended up planting a million bulbs and tearing out to shrubs I wasn't happy with and transplanting our sickly peony.  As the Dotytron said when I asked him for some extra leverage help when he was on his way out the door, "Sometimes, I wish you weren't so you," meaning, that he wished for some reason that I didn't go so hard all the time.

I also made our drapes this weekend:

So easy!  The annoying thing was pinning, ironing, and measuring so much fabric.  Otherwise, it was a cinch. I used plastic snap-on grommets.  The fabric is Small Talk - blackbird by Waverly.  Here's a detail:

I also finished a chunky, teal, knotted infinity scarf:

And I'm almost finished making these two birthday crowns - one for the Big Yam and the other one for Little Big Cuz:

The finished product doesn't look as nice as the unsewn pieces up there...mainly because I'm not good with free-hand machine stitching.  This will mean nothing to most of you, but it's hard doing curved lines!  And it's hard controlling the fabric when you've lowered the feed dogs.  Ah well, it's the thought that counts, right?  I'm putting an elastic band on the back so that I don't have to do a new one every year.  

And that, was my weekend.  Too much!  

This weekend we're going to Western New York to visit my sis and family.  They've been put through the ringer with the most INSANE COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY CAMPAIGN in like, ever.  In between stuffing my face on Aunt Cookies subs I plan on spending a lot of time relaxing on one of their million overstuffed couches and prepping for my interview.

Tonight for dinner we had braised pork chops and apples with mashed sweet potato and maple syrup glazed carrots.

Fin.

Wait - who loves you?

It kind of blows my mind that when kids hit a certain age they go through a phase of getting night terrors or nightmares.  On Monday night, the Big Yam woke up screaming and crying at 3am and it was tragic. He was saying stuff like, "Baba...light!" and "Mama, help me!" (Seriously, is your heart breaking?  Mine did.)  When he's gotten upset in the past, I generally just give him squishes and then run through the list of people who love him, "Mama loves you, Baba loves you, Nana loves you, Poh Poh loves you," etc.  Recently he's started doing it himself, except it sounds like "Mama lalloo, Baba lalloo...." Super-cute, right?  Well I noticed that not too long ago he started adding his own peeps in to the mix:

That's right.  Dora loves you.  Boots loves you.  

He sometimes includes Map and Backpack too.  Man, the allure of that little Latina is impossible to resist!  Every kid goes down the Dora the Explorer rabbit hole.  I know that J sometimes lets the kids watch a bit of TV while she's getting lunch ready but I'm not fussed about it.  He doesn't get it at home and the lady has to get lunch ready!  I'm glad he's getting his popular culture there and not asking for it with us.  The other night the Dotytron was watching old Buster Keaton movies with the Big Yam and they were having a blast.  

Tuesday night's dinner of braised tilapia with chorizo (which actually wasn't chorizo), arugala, and tiny gem tomatoes from my CSA with orzo.  So good!  

Tonight is Academic Book Club.  We read Richard Ford's Canada.  This book was THE WORST!  I was literally angry loud-flipping through pages on the TTC and doing a dramatic sigh as I speed-skimmed the whole thing because I was so mad that I was wasting valuable reading time with this dreck.  You will find that my opinion is not shared.  Jane Urquhart wrote a glowing review of this for The Globe and Mail (assuming you put any credence in The Globe and Mail's culture reviews - I do not), and The New York Times was similarly favorable.  They were taken with the writing style and the richness of the language and the voice of the protagonist - all of which were things I abhorred.  The story is told from the point of view of 15 year old Dell Parsons, who recounts how his parents' decision to rob a bank irrevocably set in motion a series of events that altered his life and the life of his twin sister, Berner.  The book opens with this line:  “First I’ll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later.”  Which is admittedly a cracker of a way to start a book.  TOO BAD IT TAKES LIKE 300 PAGES TO EVEN GET TO THE BANK ROBBERY.  So much set up!  So much exposition!  So much telling instead of showing!  Unlike other reviewers, I didn't think that the author inhabited the mind of a 15 year old boy at all.  I thought as a reader, the characters' motivations and interior selves was maddeningly opaque. You'd get sentences like (and I'm paraphrasing here), "He always refused to believe that other people could think differently from him," or "As was in keeping with his tendency to blah blah blah," and I hated it.  I hated being forced to rely on the observations of this (too-reliable?) narrator.  You never question people's motivations because the protagonist tells you what to think and what they're thinking and there was no room for my imagination to fill in the gaps.  I can't tell you how much I didn't want to or didn't enjoy reading this book.  It was epically bad.  

We're doing a Canada-themed party for one of our members who recently became a Canadian citizen - so I made butter tarts.  I'm also meeting up with Dr. Rei beforehand for a nice little ramen & bootie-shopping session.  So excited about that.  

While I'm waiting for Laini Taylor's next instalment in the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy to be released (November 2nd! Can't wait!), I've got the following in my queue: the new Jonathan Tropper, The Book Thief, and Beautiful Ruins.  

Day off tomorrow!  Woot.

Fin.

Pre/Post

I walked into this weekend a kite neophyte and emerged a die-hard kite enthusiast.

Spinach & cheese manicotti - I overcooked the mozzarella topping a bit.  I like it when it gets chewy and leathery but this was just a tad over.

This weekend was another exercise in lovely.  It had a bit of everything.  Friends, family, home time, getting stuff done, personal time, nuclear family time.  It was perfectamundo and it strengthened my resolve to not over-schedule us.  We sat down to dinner on Sunday night, with the rain drizzling down and a cold, hard, bracing fall chill in the air and I looked at the faces of the people I love most in the world around the dining room table and it was one of those moments that encapsulates what life is about.  Perfect.  A big plate of spinach and three cheese stuffed manicotti, a salad, some garlic bread, a large bottle of seasonal pumpkin beer, the Big Yam randomly shouting: "Chew-ca-ba!" and his other current nonsensical catchphrase, "Bung-Gung!" and the sounds of the Dotytron's new favorite satellite radio station, the wind symphony station, filling our house with mad dynamic range and swelling emotion - it was perfect.

Friday night we squandered Friday Night Takeout Night.  Big time.  We tried this place near us, called The Fuzz Box, which purports to sell real Nova Scotian donairs.  Which apparently you JUST CAN'T GET anywhere else in Toronto.  Uhhh, there's a reason for that.  They're disgusting.  A donair is a shaved meat-stack sandwich featuring slices of peppery meat, served on a pita, with a light sprinkling of chopped tomato and onion.  I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking that this sounds an awful lot like a gyro.  Well, what differentiates a donair from a gyro is a sauce that's specific to the donair, which is charmingly called the "jizz."  It's a white, runny but viscous, condensed milk based sauce which is sweet.  Appallingly sweet.  As soon as I heard this I was deeply suspect and therefore got my donair with sauce on the side.  To me, it's disgusting.  Completely unbalanced and without it, my sandwich was dry as all get out.  Now, I LOVE the lemon sauce that comes on a gyro.  And I love tzatiki.  So the question becomes, why would I eat a donair when I could have a gyro?  That question will never be asked again, because I'm never eating another donair.  It's sooooo sweet!  We also got garlic fingers, which is a big pizza spread with garlic butter and topped with cheese and then cut into a million thin wedges which was as good and stoner-food-y as the description suggests.  We also got fried pepperoni, which is another classic Nova Scotian bar snack.  This was also good.  But neither of these were worth the price of admission.  We were bummed.  It sucks wasting a Friday Night Takeout Night.  But we're never gonna know unless we try, right?

Saturday was Mandarin.  Emery's parents (note the plural!) were BOTH there, so I'm not sure what's going on with that.  It was a review class.  Not gonna lie: I aced it.  The Big Yam, not so much.  LOL!  

Then we biked down to the Beach for Wind Fest, which is a kite festival and OMGWTFKITESKITESKITES!  Obviously the Dotytron like, immediately bought a kite.  I can't tell you the number of times he faux-casually mentioned, "there's a booth over there selling kites..." We immediately became COMPLETELY KITE OBSESSED.  Ummmmmmm...kites are the bomb.  Are they a cruel mistress?  Yes.  But is it the funnest thing in the world, controlling a kite?  YES! YES! A THOUSAND TIMES, YES!  We basically came away cursing every minute of our lives NOT spent flying a kite.  It was also cool just to watch the kites in action:

No joke, this kite was like, 30 feet long.  It's being held up by the other kite flying above it.  I can't even get into how awesome this kite was.  I took a million photos trying to capture the kite's majesty and failing miserably.  It was infuriating.  

We had R & R over for dinner on Saturday which was lovely.  R is the cutest preggo I've ever seen!  For some reason, whenever we get together with those guys it becomes the airing of the couples' grievances, which is pretty funny.  R is like me on steroids.  I mean that literally, in the sense that before she got preggo she was lifting 50lb weights, and I mean that figuratively, in that she's a souped up, more driven, more exacting version of me.  It's pretty scary/admirable.  Those two are having their baby shower at the Mandarin, which is obviously the most boss location you could pick.

Anyway, because they are the BEST GUESTS EVER, they brought oysters (Pemaquid, Kumamoto, French Kiss) and a bunch of beers - COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY, GUYS! - and I made us bouillabaisse with rouille and toast and a salad of pancetta wrapped figs & arugala and the Dotytron made an apple cake which didn't make it out of the pan in one piece, but which was still pretty delicious.

Sunday was off the chains.  I made 9 (!) jars of concord grape jelly (the process is easy, but kind of a giant pain, if that makes sense - recipe below), and we had Momma D by for breakfast (scrambled eggs with corn & scallions, salsa, avocadoes, toast, sausage from The Sausage Partners) and then she watched the Big Yam while the Dotytron and I cleaned the basement, which was in dire need of a post-reno, post-us-not-giving-a-s**t re-org.  Now it's glorious and makes sense.  Huzzah!  

 Slipper shot

So we did ALL THAT this weekend.  And yet still managed to find time to watch episodes of Louie and knit (me) and play guitar (the Dotytron) and be cozy with the Big Yam and feel like we weren't under the gun every second.  It was perfection.  I can't stress it enough.  My attempts to limit weekends to something manageable is resulting in weekends that feel restorative and constructive, which is precisely what they're meant to be, naw mean?  

Fin.




---------------------------------------------------------
Concord Grape Jelly
makes about 9 pints

8 lbs of concord grapes, stemmed
2 granny smith apples, chopped (seeds and skins and all)
4 1/2 cups of sugar

- stir together the grapes and the apples with 1/2 c. of water in a big stockpot.  Bring to a boil, put a lid on and reduce to a simmer, and simmer 10 minutes.
- strain into a measuring cup.
- strain that liquid again through a wet cheesecloth
- take the twice-strained liquid and pout into a large stock pot.  Stir in the sugar.  Turn on the heat and bring to a boil.  Boil, skimming off the foam until it reaches 220F or until desired level of set is reached.
- process in sterilized jars for 10 minutes in a boiling water canning bath.

MINE! All Mine!!!

Treat yo' self 2012.  As you know, I've been kind of obsessed with satchels.  I've had my eye on the Cambridge ones, but they were a bit too rich for my blood (ASOS was selling them for around $215 depending on the color/trim).  Anyway, this week I stumbled upon an ASOS promo code and I decided to treat myself to a 14" Leather Satchel Company schoolboy satchel in oxblood leather.  It came to $130 (including shipping) for real leather, which I think is a pretty darned good deal!  I'm in looooove with it.  

I don't know what the difference is between the Leather Satchel Company and the Cambridge Satchel Company, but I suspect that it's the same difference as Uggs vs. Emus.  Same product, different name with less cachet, lower price.  

Other than that, my fall wardrobe buying has consisted of a few pairs of tights and some stuff from Joe:

I also got a classic two-tone oxford shirt from the Gap:

And that's about it.  I'm on the lookout for some black booties and a pair of black pumps for work and I'm donezo.  I feel like the booties will look nice with all the skirts and dresses I generally wear in the winter.

Fin.

Current faves

So the Big Yam is Big Verbal right now - he can basically parrot anything you say (which can be dangerous, as in the case last night on the bench at dodgeball when he repeated the key word in my phrase, "your mama's playing like s**t tonight" - SPOILER ALERT: the key word wasn't "tonight"), and it leads to funny moments like when he says, "sixty bucks" or when he mimics my exasperated, "hello?!?" that I often yell up the stairs at a lolly-gagging Dotytron, who has invariably told me that he's ready to go but then keeps me waiting at the door while he listens to a Sonny Rollins record in his room.

One of my faves is when he gets so excited by what he's seeing that he can't formulate the words.  Last night on the way home from dodgeball we pulled up alongside a bus and he goes, "Mama! Baba! -----" and you could tell that every synapse in his brain was firing with "BUS!" and his body was vibrating with excitement but he was SO pumped he couldn't actually get the word out.  He pointed out the window and and tried to get the word out and it was the cutest thing.

Another fave is me teaching him about being "cozy."  In the morning, I've built in enough time (because I wake up at 5:45am thanks to a certain someone) that when he gets up I can scoop him into bed with me and pull the covers over his legs or pull him onto the couch with me and his bottle of nai-nai and pull Nany Dotytron's afghan over our legs and tuck the coverings in around his feet and tell him that we're being cozy.  Now he asks for it and it's the sweetest.

Final Big Yam fave.  Ever since he's been a wee bobbin, if I was wearing him in the carrier or strolling him in the stroller, I would periodically stop abruptly and say, "Guess what?  I love you."  Last week I was wearing him on my back on our way to daycare and I stopped and said, "Guess what?" and he said, "Lallooo" and it's the cutest, dearest thing ever.

Recently we watched the documentary, Marley.  It's an extremely well-produced and entertaining documentary that offers a glimpse into Bob Marley's early years and historical context for the creation and popularization of reggae music.  If I had one critique, it's that the documentary doesn't critique his womanizing (and his wife, Rita's, tacit enabling of it) or the deification of him.  First-hand testimony from his wife, some of his mistresses, his kids, and people like Bunny Wailer and Lee Scratch Perry alongside archival footage and still shots makes up the bulk of the documentary and while I still feel that Bob himself is a bit of a cipher at the core of the film, the doc is extremely well produced and interesting.  Like, hello, Rastafarianism, much?!  And what's with believing that Haile Selassie is the second coming of Jesus?  It's insanely interesting and has lead to some homework on our parts figuring out the religion and where Selassie fits in, which in turn has lead to looking up Marcus Garvey and reading up on the pan-African movement and the repatriation of Jamaica.  Fascinating stuff.

One of my favorite things from the doc was listening to early Wailers tunes - before reggae was created,  when it was ska and the unique sound that developed from the Jamaican attempt to replicate the 50s/60s doowop sound.  I particularly loved this song called "Selassie is the Chapel" which I had never heard before, but it's this sweeping, beautiful ballad with gorgeous, thrumming, swooping harmonies.  It's just gorgeous.  What the film made me realize was just how prodigiously talented Marley was and what a colossal shame that he died so young.  I mean, we've all heard the tunes off of Legend a million times over, and I am definitely guilty of feeling like they're played out, but situated within the context of musical history and culture, I have a new found respect.  Let's face it - the tunes are catchy and poppy as all get-out and they deserve to be played as often as they are.  Digging deeper into earlier catalogue is also rewarding.  Peep these two tunes:

Tuesday night's dinner was kimchi fried rice topped with a fried egg.  I've switched over to pan frying in coconut oil and I'm a total convert!  It burns clean, is loaded with good fats, and bonus: your house smells all coconutty when you heat it up (but no coconut flavour is imparted to the food).  I'm sold!  This was made with kimchi made by our neighbour's mom, who we call halmoni (the Korean word for grandmother)

Last night's Greek mac'n'cheese

Tonight was leftover night. 

Fin.

Not-PC

There's this kid in our Mandarin class named "Emery" which is a perfectly lovely name...except when it's pronounced by someone with a thick Chinese accent (as is the case with our truly amazing instructor), because then it sounds like the teacher is mis-pronouncing the name "Emily."  I know it's not very politically correct for me to find this mildly amusing - and yet I CAN'T NOT.

Tonight is the first game of dodgeball after a looooooong hiatus (almost a year?)  I had dodgeball dreams last night that involved me freaking out because our team is inexperienced (true in real life - TIRL) and no one knew what they were doing (TIRL) or had read the rules (TIRL) and I was screaming my head off (TIRL) and we lost (TBD, but probably TIRL) and I lost my voice (TBD, but probably TIRL).  I've been having funny dreams lately.  The other night, the Big Yam was upset in the middle of the night and I felt like a squish and a cuddle so I pulled him into bed with us at like, 2am.  This is generally a mistake.  This means that he will kick and roll and heavy-breathe and otherwise be a giant nuisance and disrupt my sleep, all for the numbing 5 seconds of pleasure I get upon waking up bleary eyed and seeing him sleeping soundly.  Seriously...it's never quite as idyllic as it seems in my head and I definitely never get as great a sleep.  Most of the time, anyway.  That night, I dreamed the Jean-Ralphio from Parks and Recreation (pictured above) had come up with a whistle-y 2 note song and it was repeating and driving me crazy.  Upon waking up and gazing lovingly at the prone and prostrate form of my sweet little Boobla Khan, I realized that the two note song of my dreams was really the sound of his whistling, clogged little nose as he breathed.  LOL!  Worst!

I recently finished Amy Waldman's The Submission.  I also am going on record as saying that it is CRIMINAL that this book was overlooked for the Pulitzer, or that awful, boring, tripe-y books like Emma Donoghue's Room get short-listed for prizes instead.  This is one of the smartest books I've read in a long time.  The book talks about a jury in Manhattan charged with selecting the monument that will stand in place of the World Trade Centre towers.  A blind competition, the entire process is derailed when they submission they select turns out to have been created by a Muslim-American by the name of Mohamed.  As the jury, America, the media, the architect, are thrown into each other's orbit, the author makes sage and astute observations about the state of American media, about art, about artistic intention, about Islamaphobia, about the roots of fundamentalism, about lobbyists, about politics and politicians, about grief, and about this moment in time for the America that was changed by the events of 9/11.  I know, I know.  When I write it like that you think this is going to be a boring, didactic treatise.  But it's not, I swear!  The characters are so well constructed and each position is so nuanced that you don't feel like you're being lectured.  Instead, I found that the story made me think about the intractability of Islam-focused racism in the United States and how few options there are to move forward with the discussion.  In light of the shootings at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin, the anniversary of 9/11 that recently passed, the subsequent discussions about what constitutes "terrorism," and how we still consider the default American (or Canadian) to be white, this need for this kind of discussion is heightened in my mind.  This book is a pleasure to read and made me think about the dimensions of "the nation."

I needed something lighter after that so I hate-read Pamela Druckerman's Bringing Up Bébé which capitalizes on the current fixation with motherhood and parental anxieties by telling us how American kids are  undisciplined hooligans and how French children are so well behaved and polite and will eat anything and you can take them to restaurants, etc.  I'm being glib, but look at the subject matter.  Again, this was a piece of anxious, navel-gazing parental neuroses masquerading as some kind of quasi-armchair academic study of why some other parenting style is mystical and has all the answers and why Americans are raising a generation of boors (not entirely untrue).  Basically, I found the book a bit of a bore because the author adopts this weird, neophyte voice where she's like a babe wandering through the woods: "Why is my daughter so ill-behaved?  Why won't she sleep through the night?" and the proscriptions of the French are so common sense that it's ridiculous that people feel they need someone to tell them.  I think ultimately, that's my problem with the book.  I've discovered I have a major problem when people turn to books for things that you don't need books for.  To me, it just shows a lack of critical awareness and lack of confidence in your own good judgement.  When did parenting become a thing you learned in a book?  When did it get to the point where we need someone with authority to tell us that we have to establish a framework and discipline our kids?  The problem with this book is that this book has to exist and got any traction at all.  The "French" style is basically common-sense: go into things thinking that your baby is supposed to sleep through the night, be stern, have expectations, blah blah blah.  Anyway, you don't have to read this book.  The reviews encapsulate the arguments perfectly and the author is a bit of a pill.

Tonight for dinner we had freezer Greek mac'n'cheese and a salad of baby arugala with roasted beets.

Fin.

Wa-wa-wa-weekend

In which: we are unjustly persecuted in Mandarin class (to keep things thematically sound?) and we take a side trip to Lahore and Nicaragua.

We had a big, ol' UN weekend around here.  Friday night was Sukhothai with Momma D and Ehmdo.  Saturday morning we hit up the Brickworks Farmer's Market for those breakfast crepes from that guy, Clement, that we love.  It was kind of a s**tshow though.  Clement and his assistant are super passive-aggressive with each other and work so slow it makes the former line cook in me go inwardly ballistic.  But the breakfast crepes are so good.  Ham, a cracked egg, mozzarella cheese, scallions and hollandaise.  So freakin' tasty.  AND they do that thing I love where you melt some cheese on the griddle so it gets all crispy and toasty and lacy on the outside of the crepe.  I just wish they could work twice as fast.

We picked up concord grapes which I turned into a beautiful, gorgeous, thick and luscious jelly.  I ate it this morning for breakfast on PB on toast and it was divine.  Plus, Lil' Ugmo smelled so deliciously grape-y on Sunday that it was delightful.

So yeah, Mandarin.  The teacher came up to me and the Dotytron during the break and was all like, "Jennifer said that only one parent is allowed per child." And we're like, ummmm...okay, EXCEPT THERE WERE AT LEAST 3 OTHER KIDS WHO HAD BOTH PARENTS THERE AND SHE ONLY TALKED TO US ABOUT IT.  We were, in fact, STANDING NEXT TO another kid who had both her parents there.  We were totally like, "WTF?!" about it and are prepared to make a big stink next class if we see other people getting away with it.  PERSECUTION.  Truth be told, we had already decided that we were going to divide and conquer for the Mandarin class - that way, the other person can have a morning to do their own thing at home.

Saturday was kind of bucktown.  We followed up the farmer's market and Mandarin with this apple festival being held in support for a local community centre/drop-in centre where the Big Yam had his first bouncy castle experience.  Him being the cautious, safety-conscious little bobbin that he is, he basically spent the entire time kneeling at the front of the castle, clutching the edge, and grinning cheerfully at us and looking enormously proud as he slowly rocked up and down, like a rubber ducky in a tub.  I don't know where this cautious nature comes from, but it's quite hilarious to behold.  I think he might get it from Poppa D.

Saturday night we were supposed to go to our friend L's birthday party, but bailed because we are routinely EXHAUSTED and because we had an impromptu visit from the Roomie and T and later, L'Armi.  I made us chicken tikka masala and green beans thoren with brown rice and we bought garlic naan and palak paneer from Lahore Tikka House:

Sunday morning we had breakfast - waffles and English bacon and smoothies and then we hung out and I worked on my presentation and then we had dinner with Dr. Rei and Hanbo at La Bella Managua, which is a Nicaraguan restaurant Dr. Rei recommend.  SO GOOD!  We had ceviche with plantain chips, this giant tamale, and this fried yucca and fried cheese appetizer that came with avocado salsa.  For our main, the Dotytron got a carne asada with a mix of sweet and salty plantains, rice and beans and I had this dish of fried pork (like chicharrons) layered with a cabbage salad on more yucca.  Yucca for life!  The Big Yam went to town on it.  It's so good.

Then for dessert we went to Baker Bots.  They do cookies and make build-you-own ice cream sandwiches with Greg's Ice Cream.  The cookies are soft and yielding and they pack a tonne of ice cream into the sandwich.  You can get either one cookie cut  in half or a whole cookie.  A whole cookie would be an insane amount of sweet to eat.  I got an "everything" cookie (which is similar to the Momofuku compost cookie) with sweet cream ice cream.  The Dotytron got a peanut butter cookie with sweet cream ice cream.  

Why I love my 'hood: neighbours who buy facepainting kits and paint your kid's face for you, thereby mitigating 30 minute lineups for the service.

AND this weekend I made homemade oatmeal cream pies (homage to Little Debbie) and I NAILED it.  Two soft, chewy, oat-y cookies sandwiching a filling of marshmallow cream-whoopie pie filling.  I mashed up a couple of oatmeal cookie recipes and came out with a winner, especially after pumping up the salt quotient so you got a nice sweet-salty juxtaposition.

Fin.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Oatmeal Cream Pies
makes about 12 4" sandwich cookies

For the cookie:

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter
1/2 c. + 2 T. brown sugar
1/2 c. white sugar
2 eggs
1 c. + 2 T. all purpose flour
1/2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
2 1/4 c. rolled oats

For the marshmallow cream filling:
1 stick unsalted butter
2 c. confectioner's sugar
1 7oz jar of marshmallow fluff

Cookie:
- cream butter and sugars together until fluffy, about 2-5 minutes
- add eggs and beat well
- stir in dry ingredients on low speed
- using a 1.5" ice cream scoop, portion out balls of cookie dough on a silpat-lined cookie sheet (about 8 per tray), leaving 2 inches between.  Refrigerate the dough balls for at least 1 hour.
- preheat oven to 350F.  Transfer cookie sheets directly to oven from fridge.  Bake for about 14-16 minutes until they're evenly lightly golden brown on top.
- transfer trays to racks to cool.

Filling:
- cream together all ingredients until well mixed.  Try to match up 2 cookies and spread with 1 1/2 T. of filling and then sandwich them together.

Overheard

Overheard by one of my teacher friends, who has an office where the windows allow for mad courtyard eavesdropping without being seen:

Group of boys (probably aged 12 or 13):

"I think she might like girls"
"Well, she says she's not a virgin"
"She said she's been penetrated before"
"Do you know what that means?!?  'Pene-' as in penis '-trated'!"

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Especially hilarious given the letter that is being offered to conservative Christians and Muslims asking that parents be warned before "sensitive" topics (like homosexuality, environmentalism, sexuality, marriage, and evolution) are brought up in the classroom.

Yep, that's obviously what today's kids need.  LESS INFORMATION.

Clearly, they're being taught all they need to know at home.

Fin.