can't talk...

too busy putting together ikea furniture with "gs to gents" in the background *shoots self in face* that show is HORRID. it's so mind-numbingly BORING. i had a class A wigout last night putting together our dining room tables while the dotytron lolled around on the couch like a strangely lanky seal. i very rarely indulge in mindless tv watching - like, watching something just to WATCH SOMETHING so when the dotytron does it or when i'm trying to accomplish something and that's happening in the background, it puts me on edge. since i was already putting together ikea furniture and was ALREADY on edge, i was a seething ball of barely suppressed (and frequently unleashed) rage. my mulled apple cider was too sweet! i didn't want to go into the basement to get the drill bits! my butt was sore from sitting on the ground! it's too hot in the house! COULDYOUPLEASEJUSTGETUPANDGETMETHEDRILLBITSCAN'TYOUSEEI'MPUTTINGTOGETHEROURFURNITURE?!?????!!!!

i apologized soon after the meltdown (once the chairs were done). it wasn't even a big meltdown, it was just another in the long line of classic lagerfeld and dotytron he said ("why do you have to do this now?") she said ("i'm doing it now because i want it DONE and the least you can do since YOU'RE not the one doing it is get me the small thing i want to finish the job!") testy, snippy scenario. the point is: i got my dining room chairs done. phew! i had lunch with dr. rei yesterday and she was remarking how people always ask her how her friend karl lagerfeld manages to cook dinner, make a billion crafts, etc. and how dr. rei has come to the realization that it's because i'm INSANE, and the most organized person she knows. lol! what really drove it home for her was this past summer, when we went for lunch and i was buying stuff in chinatown, and she asked me what it was for, and i said the meal, and she asked if that's what we were having tonight, and i said no, it's for two weeks from now. lol! i AM insane. and yet, 95% of the time, my insanity doesn't cause me any stress and i REALLY ENJOY it. i love being organized. i love updating my calendars. i love being a little puttering busybody. in another life, i SHOULD have been the heir to martha stewart's throne.

so, for the dining room chairs, i ended up going with these ones:

ikea gilbert, in white. they're in restaurants all over the place, pretty affordable, sturdy, comfortable, and they go with our vaguely modern mish-mash aesthetic. plus i really liked the contrast of the stark white with our dark table and the clean modern lines with the heaviness of our harvest-y table.

i'm still not happy with our dining room colour. what i wanted to be a cool, blue-grey turned more baby's room blue. a little too saccharine. i think i want to punch it up and make it more teal-y/turquoise-y blue...the exact colour in this youtube video (wait for a few seconds in, to see their kitchen colour) would go really well with the purple wall in the living room:



i'm in LOOOOOOOOOVE with our new plates. being the thrifty little parker that i am, i had originally planned on going to tap phong and loading up. then i was snooping around on crate and barrel online and found that they were having a sale on their essential dinnerware. they sell them in 16 piece sets (4 4 piece sets: 8.5" salad plates, 11.5" buffet plate, 7" bowl, and mug)...so i got 3 of those (to make 12 place settings) and then bought for extras of the plates and bowls (i didn't think i would ever need 16 mugs). we like entertaining at home so i wanted a big set, plus my family alone is 10 people and growing. anyway, ALL of that (16 buffet plates, 16 salad plates, 12 mugs, 16 bowls) in microwave and dishwasher safe porcelain okay for ovens up to 300F, was $200 INCLUDING DELIVERY. score me!

i can't bear overpaying for stuff. it makes me mental. i have two sizable williams sonoma gift cards that i can't even use because every time i go in there, their stuff is so ridiculously overpriced that i literally can't bring myself to "waste" the gift cards in there when i know i can get the item for cheaper somewhere else. it's seriously highway robbery in there - i don't even find it fun, the way other people seem to - for me, williams sonoma is not the cook's playground...it's the dilettante's playground. it's not fun over-spending. you can't take the chinese out of me! it's the same when people ask me if i'm going to trick out my kitchen when i reno with a viking range or all the rest. i mean, yeah, if i had unlimited funds a subzero would be nice, i guess? and a viking or thermidor range? but seriously? i'm not the kind of person to go buck like that. i've been banging out amazing meals on my crappy GE gas stove at the old apartment and now the made-in-mexico discontinued line moffat we inherited at lil' ugmo and i'm doing just fine. cooks can cook anywhere. fancy gadgets are nice, but not necessary, and i don't see the value for it. it's like when dilettantes go and throw money at a new hobby and get TOP OF THE LINE recording equipment or the best golf clubs - why don't you develop your craft/hobby first before going out and shelling out the big ducats? i feel like that's one of the ways you can differentiate between people who are serious about their crafts and people who think that throwing money at a leisure activity will solve everything.

tuesday night we had the ex roomie and l'army over for dinner - it was nice! i miss having her around. i made a root vegetable/squash mash (sweet potatoes, yukons, butternut) mixed with the leftover dill sour cream from borscht the night before. i made beer-braised smoked mennonite sausage and kolbassa with caramelized onions, as well as cabbage and apples braised with some salt pork. for dessert i pulled out a frozen log of pecan shortbread i had from last xmas (!) and sliced and baked those off. having frozen cookie dough that's either pre-portioned or the slice and bake kind is really, truly, a godsend.

last night i went to ikea and got to ride on the rickety wooden ikea bus. the dotytron met up with me and we bought the chairs and some picture frames (yay, credit!) and then headed home to leftovers. i'm not good at this leftovers game. to give you an idea of how bad i am at cooking for two, i ate leftover muttar paneer. we had that like, a week and a half ago!!! i finished it off.

tonight is dodgeball and it's my dodgeball boyfriend's birthday so we're going out someplace after for food and drinks. i'll stay out for a bit (to eat) and then high-tail it home to hopefully finish writing thank you cards and packing for the weekend. team geneseo is coming up! yay! after thank you cards are done then it's time for xmas cards - gadzooks! but that's easy because it's not as much handwriting and profuse thanking.

i have a whole passel of book reviews to do, but first let me say that our tv watching has started to plumb new lows. we've gotten semi-hooked on dr. drew's "sex rehab" on much music. it's the worst/best! the other "celebrity" (loosest possible definition of that term) rehabs are tough to watch because they're kind of depressing and harrowing because of the physical effects of withdrawal. but sex rehab just seems a lot sillier. even though when you start to get into the people's histories it gets really dark. so i think we're going to stop watching. also, dr. drew is the worst psychologist/psychiatrist ever. he gives you this really patronizing, faux-concerned, duck lip/nod combo that would make me turn TO an addiction, not FROM it.

fin.

what a lovely weekend

we were incredibly spoiled this weekend with much friends, food, and laughter. it was jam-packed but i'm glad we went to each and every thing on our packed roster - the quality of the company this weekend was unparalleled and i would have felts its absence keenly had we flaked out and bailed as we are generally wont to do.

saturday i worked steadily and busily - crafting a unified wrapping aesthetic for my xmas prezzies this year and working very hard to have a substantial chunk of my shopping done so that i might meet my self-imposed end of november deadline. looks like things are proceeding nicely! zellers was an unexpected and long-neglected ally - they have such cheap stuff! i couldn't believe it! so i zipped around and did errands and also bought myself a cheapie pair of hockey skates. last weekend's tottering around on the ice in my birkenstock clogs, gazing enviously at the dotytron's big bird form gliding on the ice at the arena made me hanker to revisit my own ice dancing past (i never danced on ice). the fact that there's an outdoor, public rink at the very bottom of our street was another incentive. post-work skating will definitely replace post-work running as my exercise of choice (i never ran after work). especially since skating lends itself to such plummy, norman rockwell delights as hot chocolate, mulled cider, and freshly baked cookies après skate (running lends itself to sweat, puffy face, and boredom).

saturday night we trooped over to L's house on the west side (did you know that keele is a place?!? and it's in the GTA and not like, mississauga?) and were treated to a moroccan feast - a chickpea and chopped salad thing, some sweet potatoes, some cold beets to start. followed by a chicken bastilla - flaky phyllo dusted with cinnamon wrapped around shredded warm, chicken, studded with the brightness and acidity of pomegranate seeds. i'd read about bastilla before but never tried it. i was never sure because it's always spoken of as a sweet, meat preparation and i wasn't sure that i'd be able to reconcile my expectations that a meet pastry be savory. it was delicious!

late at night (we were served the entrée at 11:30pm!) we tucked into steamed couscous with a lamb tagine, featuring lamb cooked into submission swimming in a saffron infused broth with chunks of tender zucchini and squash. it was so good! and how ambitious and brave of L to host 15 people at the innaugural saturday night supper club! we're going to miss next month's meeting but i think it's our turn to suggest a spot in january or february. bwong came too - he's got supper club written all over him. it was really fun - most of the ranks were made up of people we went to high school with and there was an easy camraderie as we caught up and talked. another person who was there was my friend, C's partner's brother, who i believe is dating L! small world!

speaking of which, shout outs to C and his family - they recently adopted an adorable little girl from china. i can't wait to meet her in person! how do i know C? he and my sis went to undergrad together - small world, six degrees, pay it forward, blah blah.

so despite the fact that the dotytron made up in whiskey what he was lacking in food whilst we waited for our late supper on saturday and was therefore suffering from a well-deserved hangover, we got ourselves up bright and early and went to school bakery and cafe i've reviewed school bakery before, but since my last time there, they have expanded their menu and serve most of their items on plates and not tiny iron skillets - improvement!

birthday girl C got the four cheese omelet soufflé with bacon, home fries and pepper biscuit. i nabbed a bite as the server was clearing the dishes away. yes, you heard that right. when the server was clearing away the used dishes i asked her if i could have the last bite from my friend's meal because you can take the girl out of the china but you can't take the china out of the girl.

the dotytron had the potato sausage omelet with melted brie, home fries, and pepper biscuit. i had a bite, it was good.

A had the blueberry pancakes. they looked really purty.


if you are me and you love hollandaise (which you would, because you would be me, and i love hollandaise like few other things) then you have a propensity to order benny whenever it appears on the menu. but if you were also me and you saw the words "toasted coconut pancakes with caramel sauce and whipped cream" you would find yourself faced with an epic quandary, maybe more epic than deciding between ribs and brisket. if you were me, you would try to find a reasonable solution to your quagmire and you would ask the server if it's possible to get a half order of the pancakes. you know, something seemly, ladylike, toward (ie. the opposite of untoward). when the server tells you that they don't do half orders, if you were me, you would then make the perfectly sensible solution to order a SIDE OF A FULL ORDER OF TOASTED COCONUT PANCAKES. especially if you were me and had just eaten a LAMB TAGINE LESS THAN 9 HOURS PREVIOUSLY. lol!

the eggs benny was nice - they make a very lemony hollandaise with a good amount of acidity - it's rare. i was less enthused to see the deli ham gracing my pepper biscuit but the egg was poached perfectly. i'm also a little less than impressed when i'm giving sweet potato homefries and there are not crusty bits. it's HARD to get crusty bits on sweet potatoes due to the high sugar/moisture content. they tend to cook quickly and mush up before they brown and crustify.

the pancakes were good, but as i later confirmed with A, we both agreed that it would be nice if the auxiliary flavour (in his case the blueberries and in mine the caramel) could be interspersed between the layers in the stack and not just poured on top because after you've eaten around the edges, the middle gets kind of dry and doughy.

either way, it's a pretty good spot - i'm more inclined to go back than i was the first time i went. although i really, really hate waiting in line for brunch. actually, the older i get, the more i really really hate waiting in line for anything.

then we headed over to lil' ugmos so that A & C could see the place and we met up with S and 3 who were there to drive my hair towards bangs-ville and do man stuff, respectively. 3 was a godsend. he basically worked his little keister off putting up the firefly pendant lamp which looks AMAZING over our crate and barrel dining room table, which thankfully, isn't too large for the space at all (i was getting worried for a bit). i think once we re-do the kitchen and open up the wall between the dining room and kitchen and put in the peninsula, it's going to be even MORE in proportion but right now you wouldn't think that the table was out of place. but i love love love my lamp! we just need to get a dimmer for it. and we went all privileged northern hemisphere and threw compact fluoros to the wind and put in filament bulbs because they look stunning in the glass globes.

S gave me the best hair cut ever. seriously, that girl is so talented. i look like a different person and got LOADS of compliments today. the key will be whether i can maintain it - but even if i can't - who cares? i had one glorious day of looking like a hot little kitten.

today was gangbusters at work, as per usual. oy. i'm part of way too many projects. i had lunch with dr. rei. my lunches with dr. rei make my work week. i'm skipping french class just to be able to go. we don't eat. we just get together and walk around and talk. i've gotten most of my xmas shopping done. i just need to get a few small things but otherwise, we're donezo.

tonight for dinner we had to get our health back on track after eating richness and fat all weekend. i made us red cabbage borscht with dilled sour cream and cheddar sage drop biscuits. the dotytron loves borscht. he got super excited when he found out we were eating it.

now i'm going to write more thank you cards. in the words of me, "stick a gun in me, i'm done."

fin.

new moon

omg, it was bucksauce. i was the one with the tickets and of COURSE i left them at home and didn't realize it until we were halfway there (we biked) and then had to zoom back home and grab them. there was an insane mad dash for seats so we ended up sitting in the front 3 rows, but it wasn't that bad because we were at the farthest back of the front 3. it kind of made it better that we were there - in the end we were glad we saw it together at the scotia theatre, which is always such a gonger.

okay, this movie is WAY better than twilight because they obviously had more money but it's STILL incredibly terrible. i'm glad there were other people there watching it for the campy value because we were totally laughing at inappropriate parts and repeatedly saying, "WHAT THE F**K" out loud - in other words, being the scourge of 14 year old girls in the theatre who probably wanted to murder us.

kristin stewart is a terrible actress. she's AWFUL in this role. unfortunately, her acting isn't helped by the fact that she's got a bit of a dummy face because she has rabbit teeth and when her face is at rest, her mouth hangs open, slack. there was WAY too much forced stuttering and heavy breathing, and her screaming during the "night terrors" elicited more than a few belly laughs. robert pattinson is also TERRIBLE. he's supposed to be ATTRACTIVE, right? he always looks like he's wearing way too much makeup, but i think that's what prepubescent girls must go for (remember leo dicaprio's heavy pancake foundation in "titanic," or zac efron every day of his life?) taylor lautner does the best job out of all of them, but his performance is definitely hampered by his baby face and when he gets saddled with the dances-with-wolves hair pre-wolfing out.

this film franchise also sends the most UNBELIEVABLY sexist, inappropriate, and awful example for young girls. a) it's basically a giant treatise for marrying young and chastity. b) bella has NO definition outside of her love for and being loved by, edward. it's insulting. she's always letting HIM drive her car! and all she does is get into situations where one alpha male or another has to "protect" her. c) bella is stupid (as dr. rei said, "how come she doesn't remember the important part of the story but all she can remember is the quaaludes or whatever" and she spends way too much time heavy breathing (seriously, kristin stewart - you can't even acting cry?!??) or forcing a weird stammer. d) she's a first-class B who has NO FRIENDS outside of whatever guy happens to be "protecting" her, and uses her seemingly perfectly decent, normal, and nice high school friends whenever she gets dumped, and finally e) she's unbelievably vapid and superficial - all she cares about is that she not age and become "old" and hideous and that she stay perpetually young and nubile for edward, who incidentally IS REALLY OLD. as one of my favorite authors, john green says on his blog, sparksflyup, edward is a pedophile: "The reason it's wrong for old people to have sexual relationships with children is not because we old people LOOK old. It's because we ARE old." lol! so true!

anyway, the CGI wolves are pretty awesome as are the totally detached and bored volturi, especially the one who sits on the left who looks like vigo from "ghostbusters 2":

the point is, we kept the tradition alive by seeing it all together and it gave us a lot of fodder for laughing.

today is a predictably busy day with a zillion errands and then saturday night supper club at L's house - she's making moroccan food.

fin.

being normal in toronto

for the benefit of dr. rei who gets confused when i post things out of order - this is friday's post that i'm just getting around to making live today (saturday)

first - the dotytron has gone plum crazy making 80s mixes. on the road trip down to geneseo he unveiled version 1 of his series. in case you think he goes the "cool" route of 80s new wave - you'd be wrong! instead, he compiled the ultimate 80s cougar mix. it doesn't start off that way - initially you're lulled by toto (who, incidentally, we like a super band of studio heads - did you know that?), bowie, and queen. then it totally goes into cougar town with glass tiger, don henley, pat benatar, and heart. it's the best! the best singing along ever! i love singing along with the dotytron in the car because a) he's a guy who likes singing aloud, which is rare enough; and b) he'll automatically start doing the harmonies, which is fun cuz then you feel like you're REALLY singing. last night on our way to dodgeball we both tried hitting the high note in aha's "take on me" - just take a moment, sit back, close your eyes, and imagine that. lol!

knit night as per usual featured me being the only one knitting. but it was really fun! the conversation was great - at one point, two of the participants started reflecting back on the G7 protests in quebec city in april, 2001. they were talking about how weird it was to go out and get gas masks and how a friend of one of the girls was carrying twins but lost one of the twins because of the tear gas. call me a right d**k, but when i start hearing stories like that, my bulls**t, snopes detector starts beeping. when pressed by another of the dinner guests, who was suitably horrified (unlike i. apparently i'm JUST enough of a skeptical, critical jerk to question such things), the recounter of the event admitted, "well, she was really early along and she didn't get tests or know for sure, but she was pretty sure that the tear gas made her lose the baby." don't get me wrong: it is a horrible thing to have a miscarriage and i'm empathetic of anyone who has to experience that. but couldn't one argue that it is to a lesser extent also horrible to use a miscarriage as a form of counter-cultural capital? getting gassed in quebec is the equivalent (i'm not saying that i put the two on the same plane, but they occupy the same level of symbolic cachet for bleeding heart, liberal, middle-class university students) of participating in the paris riots, or like, not staying at a resort in cuba. if you didn't get gassed in quebec, how would you know you were a liberal arts student?

meanwhile, i vividly remember standing in the living room of my shared house in peterborough, as my two roommates stared transfixed at the coverage of the G7 protests on the television, convinced we were on the cusp of a new, communist world order. i was trying doggedly to pierce their idealistic bubble by expounding at length on how in this day and age of short attention spans the ritualized act of mass demonstration is a politically impotent form of civic engagement, etc etc (insert critique of situationism, adbusters, flash-mobbing, shout-out to performativity, blah blah blah). isn't that so me? at least i stay consistent. it's not like i WANT mass protest to be ineffectual - it would be great if, when people stormed the streets, the powers that be woke up and changed the error of their ways. BUT, there have to be a few crucial steps that preclude this: critical thinking, intelligence, nuance, the usual stuff i'm always bemoaning the lack of.

later we got into a conversation about film. OF COURSE people who were at the quebec riots would also LOVE wes anderson and lars von trier and michel gondry. OF COURSE! never mind that lars von trier is a misogynist who makes torture porn for the bourgeois or that wes anderson's films (save for "bottle rocket" and "rushmore") are celluloid exemplars of SMUG and TWEE. art direction does not a film make! never mind that michel gondry mistakes community and imagination for a patronizing naiveté bordering on brain damaged. no no, if you fancy yourself a cultural arbiter and you're of a certain age in an urban locale, you simply MUST worship blindly at the altar of crappy film, acritically.

anyway, i was obviously in fine form - there are few things i love more than the opportunity to express a dissenting opinion. haha! just kidding. it was just fun to talk film and debate and discuss.


last night i made us an EXTRA delicious dinner. salmon cakes! i took about a pound of wild salmon, skinned it, cut it into small cubes and tossed it with torn, crustless bread, an egg, a chopped shallot, some mayonnaise, tabasco and salt and pepper. then i took scoops of the mix and pan-fried them on either side in a little bit of oil. kind of like your classic chesapeake crab cake. as i told the dotytron, "fish cakes maryland style" to which he replied, "oh i know her, we used to jam together back in the day" lol! i served them with some prepared mayonnaise that i mixed with chopped dill and lemon juice. they were super tasty. i also made a salad that i cribbed from someone on facebook - butternut squash cubes roasted with sage, on top of mixed greens, with crumbled mild goat's cheese and a maple mustard vinaigrette. delish! but not quite enough food - when i came back from dodgeball i was famished and ate almost an entire box of samoas with a glass of milk.

today i had a lovely lunch with dr. rei where we talked about how stupid it is when living in toronto makes you crazy and all keeping up with the joneses. how our generation is so entitled and so conspicuous consumption-driven that we fail to remember to take our time, to wait, to do things slowly, to not expect everything to look ripped out of the pages of dwell or apartment therapy in a day. i'm totally guilty of it, probably moreso than dr. rei because i'm such a balls-out, hyper-workaholic perfectionist. it's nice to have grounded people like dr. rei bring you back down to earth. to remind you that people's houses (par example) are the product of 20 years worth of work - that you can do things incrementally, over time, and that that's okay and moreover, that that's NORMAL. we live our lives so much in the eyes of others (says the confessional blogger) that we forget what it's like to be NORMAL people with regular, lowkey values. that a 1000 square foot home is totally fine to raise kids in and that kids are raised the world over with greater injustices than having to share a room. toronto living can make you crazy that way. thank goodness i have dr. rei's hamilton-hardened clear-eyed vision to save me from myself.

tonight we're going to eat a quick chino loco's takeout meal and then meeting up with the gang for some "twilight: new moon" action aka STARE EYES.

fin.

so boring!

is my life boring? i feel like my posts lately have been boring. but guys, this is my schedule this week (fill in the 9-5 hours with work):

wednesday: knit club meeting at H's
thursday: ikea then dodgeball
friday: lunch with dr. rei, then dinner and "twilight: new moon" with the hamcamp klik and s-dawg
saturday: errands, house stuff, xmas prep then saturday night supper club meeting at L's house
sunday: brunch with A & C and then mebbe a haircut or MORE house stuff

THAT'S SOMETHING EVERY NIGHT/DAY. that's insane! i was SUPPOSED to do something last night too (have dinner at the ex roomie and l'army's pad) but i pushed back on account of the fact that yesterday wiped me the eff out with playing catchup at work AND coming back so late on monday evening. that didn't stop s-dawg from coming over late last night unexpectedly to a) clamor for leftover halloween candy and b) try to show me links on his facebook while i was studiously attempting to write heartfelt paeans to wedding presents.

p.s. DID I MENTION THAT THE MONTH OF DECEMBER IS ALREADY SHOT FOR ME?!??? seriously! why are the holidays so stressful?

in other news, on sunday morning, i woke up after having had blast-from-the-past dreams of my undergrad/raving years. sleepily, the first words i uttered to the dotytron were, "did you ever go to industry?" and he said, "no - what is it?" and i said, "it was a club - ed rush dj'd there, i guess you weren't o.g. enough" to which he replied, "WOW. you're starting off the day with an o.g. potshot?" lol! it still makes me laugh, because really, i am PRECISELY the kind of person to start my day with an o.g. potshot.

in other news - years of fiscal responsibility have gone crumbling in the wake of winter tires, home ownership, and generally trying to maintain a middle class standard of living. i am debt ridden. riddled with debt! swimming in debt! parading on a flotilla of debt! there's no point trying to buckle down in december - the new year will bring about a spartan, monastic existence of at home time and simple, homey pleasures that don't require conspicuous consumption. all in the bid to pay down our copious debt so that we can in good conscience go with hat in hands to the bank for more - to revamp the kitchen (and more!).

i'm surprisingly okay with this - if only because i'm not really paying attention? that must be it. i just blindly make payments and praise the powers that be for the invention of overdraft.

roll call of awesome:

these are things i'm loving, lately...

how ridiculously attractive is this family? seriously? are you for real? gabriel aubry is the tallest, coolest drink of water that the parched sahara of humanity has ever known. holy cats! i'm not usually big on celebrity babies, but nahla is adorable! is this weird? i just find the whole lot of them so aesthetically pleasing.

i recently bought this print for our hallway, because really - HOW MUCH DOES THIS LOOK LIKE ME WITH MY HAIR DOWN? lol! it's hilarious! the likeness is uncanny!

this print is going in our front hall. isn't it the cutest? i got it from tad carpenter, a graphic artist who does posters for musicians i loathe like conor oberst and block party. his art prints are adorable though and i love the colourful, vaguely retro, blocky style.

we got this print for the dotytron's room in blue and red, from brainstorm print and design.

fin.

welcome to the monkey house

our new favorite thing to do when we go on long road trips is to listen to books on cd. it's kind of the best. no more fruitless trawling through the hinterlands of contemporary radio for the one song you want to sing along to in haystack that is popular music. no more frenetic jumping from station to station in search of queen. (as an aside: queen is kind of totally THE BEST.) it's nice because it generally keeps you awake and affords you an opportunity to delve into something that you might not otherwise actually find the time to read (ie. charles dickens, most classics.)

this time we loaded up with a collection of kurt vonnegut stories, entitled "welcome to the monkeyhouse" read by stars of stage and screen - maria tucci, david strathairn, etc. it was so good! so good that i was sad we weren't driving farther - we only made it through disc 2 on the drive there and back. having talented readers makes all the difference. the last one we listened to was called "life as we knew it" but we affectionately refer to it as "'miranda,' she said" because the narrator (a youngish, over-enunciating lady) refused to modulate her voice when characters changed or events happened - which meant that it seemed like a long monologue punctuated with "'miranda,' she said" over and over again. david strathairn made this collection - the stories were so good! brimming with vonnegut's signature skewering of contemporary american culture - "no one ever lost money capitalizing on americans taste for vulgarity." that kind of textbook, don't-drink-the-kool-aid counter-cultural voice is so of that generation of writers - pynchon, vonnegut, tom robbins, kesey - i love it. the problem is i don't know when we'll have the opportunity to finish the collection - there's never much cause for listening to books on tape at home.

the weekend was so relaxing. i think we slept about 70% of the time there. especially whenever we slipped into my sis' snuggie. behold, rhapsody in blue, the snuggie series:



as soon as we got there, my sister made a point of telling us: "look, you have to know, your nephew is an a**hole right now" which is never going to stop being funny to me. lol! he was actually fine. that kid is so cute it's hard to be mad at him. he's such a goofball. basically he's just into acting up and being ornery right now. whenever you bear down on him he shouts back at you, "you're the worst auntie!" but then in the next instant he's back to being a smushy goofball who gives really good hugs.

my niece is a hilarious piece of work. outlaw bro, the dotytron were driving in a car to meet me and my sis with the two kids in tow in the back. miss ramona was playing with a magnet set in the car. outlaw bro says to the dotytron, "i'm not sure how to get to so and so, i think if we take this road, it's there." to which the dotytron replied, "yeah, that's cool." at which point my niece from the back seat said idly, "it is NOT cool if daddy doesn't know where he's going." lol! how funny is that? she's such a punk.

we went to cracker barrel and stuffed ourselves with the holiday breakfast sampler. look how much food goes in that thing! it's insane!


other than that, we really just loafed. as soon as i put on the snuggie and lay down on my sis' couch, i basically fell asleep. the kind of sleep where you feel like you're swimming in molasses with a thick woolen raft - like it's impossible to drag yourself back to consciousness.

my body must have needed it though. we picked up all the stuff and got our winter tires and the captain fixed up. we went with the kids to their skating lesson and i got all jazzed on skating. i think i'm going to try to find a cheap pair of hockey skates on craigslist so that we can go this year. there is a public skating rink literally at the end of our street, so i think that'll be fun - it's good exercise and it'll be really awesome to have the opportunity to go night skating after work. i complained about xmas and how i really want to scale back. i got to go shopping with my sis for work clothes for her. i made dinner - we had steaks one night and spaghetti and meatballs the next...it was lovely.

now back to the grind - i'm already exhausted. i missed work yesterday cuz i was feeling ill and playing catch up today made me regret it. i should have just toughed it out and came in instead. i was running around all day perpetually behind. for dinner we had muttar paneer with rice and naan:

now i have to write a billion thank you cards and try to continue to get my life in order.

no fun!

fin

"do you want to have breakfast at cracker barrel tomorrow?"

"do you even have to ask?"

yes, yes...it's another hotly anticipated weekend in geneseo! sooooo pumped! the captain is going to get tricked out with some slick-a$$ winter tires and new rims (steel rims - aka the kind that give you NEGATIVE cred in the tokyo drift community); i'm going clothes shopping for my sister (a task i LOVE - nothing makes me happier than helping my sister look her best); we'll roam the aisles of wegmans and load up on bob evans sausage and scharffen berger chocolate; i'll poke around in target and try to pry the dotytron away from the $5 dvd bin (the only dvds he ever wants are in the $5 bin); and most importantly, we're going to spend time with the two greatest kids in the world. apparently miss ramona drew a picture of me on my wedding day that she wants to give me because she loves me very much. d'awwwwwwwww.

this is last night's dinner. sautéed cauliflower got bumped because i found a rapidly shrinking head of radicchio in the furthest reaches of my veggie crisper - and we had so many brussels sprouts on hand! i love brussels sprouts, i really do. i find them so tasty when they're all caramelized and browned.

today i had lunch with my dad. nothing is worse than being told by your quasi-dead-beat dad that "marriage agrees with you." *gnashes teeth* i think he's lonely. he kept making a big stink as he kept me company in line at the bank about how i had made an offhand comment that he should come by lil' ugmo but never formerly invited him and that he's been waiting and waiting and i don't call. so of course everyone at the bank thought i was the most rotten daughter around. i WOULD have brought up the years of neglect and cursory sunday visits by my pops but i didn't feel like getting into with joe q. public as witnesses. then he made a big deal about how s-dawg has been coming over fairly regularly for friday night dinner and how we should go up to richmond hill and visit him on friday nights and have dinner with him instead. and he kept repeating it! after lunch i put in a frantic call to s-dawg about this sudden, old-man guilt tripping, and s-dawg sagely noted: "this is so 'cat's in the cradle'" and then proceeded to give me line-by-line close reading of the lyrics and how they pertained to our family dynamic. lol!

it IS so "cat's in the cradle" but what the heck are you supposed to do? just forget that for a big chunk of time your pops was kind of a weird, pragmatic, apathetic, slump? the thing is, the older i get, the more i realize: yeah, you're supposed to forget it. cuz at the end of the day, he's still your dad, and as much as you want to deny it, his genetic material is inextricably a part of you and we're all just getting older except his end of older means that he walks slower and looks at you with watery eyes that force you to bite your tongue when he talks like he knows you and is always right and i couldn't manage two chickens. it's what you do.

by popular (dr. rei) demand, here is my recipe for the kale and ricotta pie.

have a lovely weekend everyone!

fin.

---------------------------------------------

kale and ricotta pie

makes 1 9" pie, or serves 4 as a main course (with salad or something else)

1 9" unbaked pie shell (can be frozen - if you're a shoemaker like that.) (i kid!)
1 bunch of kale
1/2 spanish onion, sliced (note: whenever i talk about onions, i mean a spanish onion, not a cooking onion, which means the amount of onion is probably more than you think it would be, if you're going by your standard tennis ball-sized cooking onions)
some minced garlic
1 container (approx 475g) ricotta cheese
1/2 ball of mozzarella cheese, grated
2 eggs

- sauté your sliced onion and the garlic in a glug of oil until translucent
- take your kale and thinly slice the leaves and some of the stems, but don't do ALL the stems...like, slice down the leaves until you have all the leaves and some of the stems done, but don't chop up all the stems, too. i mean, you can if you want, but it's not as nice in this dish as the leaves are
- add the kale to the onions and garlic and cook it down until it's bright green and wilted. season with salt and pepper
- dump the ricotta in a bowl and stir in the 2 eggs and the mozzarella cheese. add the cooked kale and stir it all together
- spread this mixture into the pie crust and bake in a 375F-400F oven until the crust is golden and the top of the pie is browned. a knife inserted into the pie should come out fairly dry (no streaky raw egg on the blade). it should take about 35-45 minutes.
- slice and eat!

bon anniversaire de rencontrer

momma d got these cupcakes made for the post-performance party she threw for us in august - aren't they cute?

(i don't know if my french is anywhere near correct.) yesterday was our anniversary. 8 years. huit ans! since that fateful night at the much-missed small club venue audiowerks on queen west when i laid eyes upon the dotytron after 4 years and nary a thought in between (this, after a terrible, terrible, boots-in-dryer dj set - in my defense, the monitors were TERRIBLE!)

even though my heart and stomach and gastronomic inspiration yearned for a luxe kaiseki meal at hashimoto, instead we went easy on our much-put-upon pocketbooks and trundled down to a local gastropub to suck back oysters and classic irish pub food. not a bad trade off, after all. here's a secret about the dotytron: he is the perfect companion for a night of dark beers and raw bivalves. really, he is.

we went to the ceili cottage, which is an irish local opened by patrick mcmurray, world champion oyster shucker and owner of starfish - a seafood restaurant where we've eaten in the past. patrick was holding court at the bar at the ceili last night, shucking oysters to order, and to hear him tell it, he was looking to open the kind of place that he would want to go to after work. it's close quarters - a tiny, low, white washed building with thick beams overhead and tightly packed tables around a wide bar. there was a front room that was also packed with locals and it was a real chummy atmosphere. the kind of pub where everyone's talking to everyone and there's no such thing as a private conversation. tuesdays are apparently music night so an irish jam session started with pipes and open holed flutes and organs and a guitar player. it was pretty raucous. they also have a gorgeous front patio with a roaring fire place where they burn irish moss.

it is PHENOMENAL to have toronto's best oysters shucked within walking distance of your home. i can't reiterate it enough. the dotytron ordered a cask-conditioned ale from durham county which is hand-pumped at the bar. he was in LOVE. here's another secret about the dotytron: he loves all things pickled, brined, cured, and fermented. so an unpasteurized beer is his idea of heaven.

we started with their kettle fried chips with thyme and a pickled egg. the chips were DELICIOUS. crispy, brown, salty and not at all greasy the way bagged kettle chips are (i'm looking at you, miss vickie's). the pickled egg was very demure - a hard boiled egg with the faintest whisper of brine - it could have been a little punchier, imo. these two items are from the "bar snacks" portion of the menu, which consists of things like scotch eggs, chips, roasted nuts, etc. - all things priced at a couple of bucks a pop.

then we got a dozen oysters from pei. colville bays, malpeques, etc. all ones we've had before, but shucker paddy makes sure to get "standards" which means they're FREAKING HUGE. gah! so delicious. so briny and fresh and slippery and sea-tasting. the dotytron fell in love with their mignonette (i bare-back my oysters) - i had a small taste and it was an exceptional mignonette - bright and acidic and faintly sweet without any acetic sharpness.

then we had grilled oysters, which again, were the largest specimens i've ever seen. we had them "moran" style (butter, garlic, panko - panko wasn't crisped and they were a little TOO raw garlicky), and "rockefella" (arugala, pernod, butter - i missed the breadcrumbs, but the arugala added a nice peppery undertone). these were delicious overall, but needed a slightly more restrained hand in the kitchen.

they do a weekly sunday roast and a daily roast dinnie...tuesdays is "hash" - roast, hashed potatoes, and a poached egg. the roast was turkey. this was divine...although something easily made at home...i'd prefer it to be priced at $10 or a little more generously portioned but it was delicious and hit all the right notes.


i had the ontario berkshire ham served with hot mustard and a soda scone (and also some pickled peppers). the ham was sweet and thinly sliced, ringed with a thick layer of fat. the scones were light and a perfect accompaniment to the ham - making great little sandwiches with the truly hot mustard. a lot of the time i find soda bread a little too soda-y - it can have a tartar-y mineral note that i find off-putting. in this case, there was a bit of sugar in the dough that offset that and made it much more balanced. it's a near-perfect, quick, plate of pub food. i loved it.

while the dotytron sipped a scotch (oban single malt) i had the sticky toffee pudding. i LOVE LOVE LOVE sticky toffee pudding. this one was lighter than the one i make, much more airy. it sat in a pool of buttery toffee sauce cut with the smooth dairy richness of a splodge of cream. i almost licked the plate and just thinking about it makes me want to stand vigil at the door of the ceili until i can order 4 more and keep them all to myself.

so, for all that, 2 beers (they only charged us for 1!) and the scotch, it came to $135 with tax and tip. which is slightly more than i thought we were going to spend - i kind of thought it was going to be a $100 meal with tax and tip. whoops. but we did go all out. not so all out that i wasn't contemplating another dozen oysters...but still. i can't wait to take my family there. it's so close!!!

monday night's dinner was fantastic. i made us a laksa (malaysian/singaporean spicy noodle soup). i made my own curry paste with a bunch of ingredients (ginger, galangal, lemongrass, balacan) and then added coconut milk and thai chilis to make a fiery, bright tumeric-yellow broth. i added baby shanghai choy, fried tofu cubes, and cut up chicken breast pieces as well as par cooked shanghai wheat noodles (next time i'll do thick rice noodles). it was sooo good! and it came together fairly quickly, too. i'm going to cut down on the tumeric next time and make sure that i have lime on hand to squirt in at the end. it was a spicy and restorative bowl of goodness.

today is a day off in honour of our troops and veterans. seriously folks, WWI and WWI and most W are straight f**ked and veterans (except for the racist, super-codgery ones) are the best. rrrrrrrrrespect!

i'm filling my day doing errands and cleaning the house type stuff and making and freezing xmas cookie dough and packing for my trip tomorrow after work! we're going to my sister's for the weekend. to squish the kids and hang out and collect all the stuff we've gotten shipped there lately. oops. love ya, sis! the dotytron is frantically looking for his skates and helmet because he wants to crash miss ramona and little ze's skating lesson. lol! i'm SO PUMPED. we haven't seen those guys since september!!!

tonight for dinner i'm making a wild mushroom barley risotto with a side of roasted cauliflower and brussel sprouts.

fin.

the royal winter weekend

that wasn't very wintery.

saturday was a splendid day. i went to mccall's and bought a few piping tips, some new piping bags, and a mini-muffin pan so that i can make wee little bite-sized, mini cupcakes. then i met up with D and we saw "an education." i thought this film was over-rated. the potential is there for something more, but what you get is a slender little thing with a good, believable, though not truly exceptional performance from newcomer carey mulligan - the one the critics would have you believe is the new audrey hepburn, the next "it" girl, etc. etc.

it's the story of a clever, 16 year old girl in suburban england whose options for advancement don't extend much beyond getting the grades to get into oxford. after that - there's not much more, as far as she can tell. she's swept up into a glamorous world of smoking and paris and french music and jazz by a slightly seedy, much older man (played, to my delight, by my favorite squint-eyed sleazeball, peter sarsgaard) and is seduced enough by the worldliness of the continent to not question her future or his intentions. there are some keenly observed moments that result in some genial laughs, but i felt the analysis and skewering could have gone farther. the class issues and the gender issues, and the examination of a nation slowly being awakened from post-war, stoic staidness and facing the rollicking destabilization of the swinging, mod, cultural revolution to come - all of these could have been more deeply examined to greater effect.

instead, as our heroine's eyes are rudely forced open by the implosion of her suitor's lies, we get a neat and tidy montage set to swelling strings that puts everything back right again, nice as can be. the ending was probably my principal complaint. overall though, i feel like if everything had been tuned up a notch, it would have made the entire plot more believable (what are her parents thinking - allowing a 16 year old girl to go to paris for the weekend with a 30ish suitor?!?) and the document of a girl - and a nation's - transition into modern adulthood more compelling.

saturday dinner was lovely - we always stay too late at J & S's house - i always feel bad because i know they have 2 young kids and are running on too little sleep already. J made a roasted squash soup with gruyere croutons and a mascarpone cream and L made us a hand-rolled pappardelle in a braised short rib ragu with arugala. it was delicious! my apple brown butter tart was a success, i feel. you can't really go wrong with brown butter, especially when it's housed in a crisp, crumbly tart shell and flecked with vanilla, nestled in the nooks and crannies around tender, mellow, honey crisp apples. we ate the rest of the tart last night...that's the evidence above.

for sunday breakkie i made us eggs benny with this new smoked, english-style bacon the dotytron nabbed from the mennonites. it's AMAZING. it comes with a thick, 1" layer of fat all around - so delicious - it takes me back to the most glorious english bacon sammy i had at borough market in london, which was basically a pile of this same bacon, fried on a skillet and served on a soft bun, glistening with the sweet, smoky fat. i added some baby spinach to our benny, too - just to make things respectable (somewhat).

then came the royal winter fair! yesterday was a gloriously, atypically warm november day - the kind that gives irrefutable evidence for the validity of global warming. so we biked the 10km there and the 10km back along the various bike paths that run along lakeshore. as we were doing it - i realized that the ability to bike to the CNE in about 35 minutes, was one of the reasons i loved living in toronto and why i find it really hard to see myself moving away.

here are some photos from the royal (which, btw is INSANELY expensive - it's like $18/person to get in, and that doesn't include the horse show. considering that all you do when you get in there is spend MORE money, it's a little bit of a gouging - but i do support the 4H club and i respect that farmers feed families and that rural ontario is as much a part of my ontario as any other, so in the end, i don't mind paying $18 for country mouse to come to city mouse):





look at that BUNNY! that little face!!!

we went a little buck and ate like pigs, even though we had JUST eaten like pigs 2 hours earlier:

we split perogies, an octoberfest sausage, and cabbage rolls, and a potato rosti with sour cream and cheddar cheese. then we had a cinnamon sugar elephant ear and an apple dumpling with ice cream (not pictured). this is in addition to stuffing our faces with all kinds of freebies and tasters (shortbread, summer sausage, kielbassa, etc.):





i almost got a free walking stick but then i realized we couldn't carry it back. this sucked because i listened to the whole message before getting it. the message was about how jesus is our saviour and i have to welcome ol' JC into my heart to get into heaven (the walking sticks were from the association of christian farmers and feature color-coded beads that represented sin, heaven, JC's blood, etc.) so after the message (which was LONG, btw!) i turned to the dotytron and said, "okay, i get it, so we have to wash ourselves in jesus's BLOOD." and the guy who was giving the message was all like, "well, not LITERALLY, it's a metaphor" and i was like (in my head): why are crazy religious people so humorless? like, how can they not understand satire? then dude asked me if i wanted to get into heaven and i was like, "not really" and he goes: "why?" and i say, "i don't think it seems like that big a deal" WHICH HE DIDN'T HAVE A REPLY FOR CUZ THEN HE CHANGED TACTICS AND ASKED ME IF I WAS AFRAID OF HELL and i said, "nope." and then we had already wasted enough time listening to this message and NOT getting a free walking stick so we left and i tried to weeze more free shortbread samples.

we also sat down for the superdogs show but the dotytron at the last minute decided the he thought it was going to suck and be mega-long because there were too many kids there so we left and then later all we could hear was people going APES**T for the superdogs like it was the rolling stones or wrestlemania in there or something. which resulted in lots of: "i can't believe we missed the superdogs" ribbing which is really just an excuse to repeatedly say the word "superdogs." try it. it's so much fun.

then we came home after stopping by the dotytron's parents house to dry our laundry, whereupon poppa d told us that some family members have been wondering where their thank you cards are for the performance prezzies they gave us and then i felt like crapola. i thought we had up to 6 months to send them back but then i came home and checked emily post and etiquette and they're like, "you should send them out no later than 2 weeks after your return from the honeymoon" and i was like: WHAT THE HELL! WE MOVED!!! plus, i was waiting for photos from our photog (aka the dotytron's sister) cuz i wanted to send a photo out with the thank you cards.

so then i spiralled down into depression because i really make an effort to be ON THE BALL with stuff like that (and by stuff like that, i mean sending out cards - thank you cards, birthday cards, etc.) but things have been stressful lately and i hadn't gotten around to it yet. then i got kind of mad that it's all ON ME to do it and how that's totally gendered and annoying and sexist. you think the DOTYTRON ever remembers to send out a birthday card?!???!!! hells no! he barely remembers when the birthdays of his immediate family are! it's all me! i've got them written down in my four calendars. do you think it's HIS idea to send a thank you card for xmas prezzies? or to do up cookie tins for aunts and uncles? or give frozen soup when people are sick? so i dropped the ball a little bit on the thank you cards but SERIOUSLY?!???? we were MOVING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

so it was a combination of guilt and feeling attacked and feeling like it shouldn't all be MY responsibility, especially when my crew (aka team china) isn't the one wigging. it's totally a white person thing. i just don't want people thinking i have no class or no sense of etiquette. i do. it was just kind of a crazy time in our lives and i wanted to do it right.

bah! anyway, the end result was that the dotytron felt guilty about me feeling rotten, so to placate me we ordered in pizza from a new place (bona pizza - they're good!!!) and watched the season finale of "true blood" and caught up on this season's "top chef" - which, incidentally, is AMAZING!!!!!! the calibre of talent this year is insane!

fin.

so happy it's friday

this week has been exhausting for one reason or another. wednesday night i went and watched the dotyron be a baller for the first time in like, 20 billion years. he was getting no love from the rim - every shot bounced back. poor little guy. he was subbing on dr. rei's team alongside s-dawg and s-dawg's buddy, R, who also got recruited to make up the thinning ranks of the compact pressario's.

thursday night poor dotytron had parent-teacher conferences that resulted in him coming home tired and exhausted - a state of being that i completely bulldozed over as i harangued him into coming to dodgeball. it was the haranguing of haranguings. shrill-bot 2020. after making a giant, pouty stink and basically FORCING him to go with me, i then played the CRAPPIEST GAME OF ALL ETERNITY. it was so aggravating, especially cuz last week i was ON. so so ON! we got shellacked last night. we all played pretty poorly. i hate it when that happens because the other team was ENTIRELY too pleased with themselves and thought we were a joke to play - which is the worst because if we were doing our best, we would have beat the pants off them and it would have been US being insufferably self-satisfied. gah.


treat of treats, though! we got a surprise visit from A & J last night! and s-dawg was already coming over for dinner. yay! this meant i had to high-tail it home after work, speedily pick up remaining groceries, tidy up the house, and then get dinner going. earlier in the week T gave me a jar of her sauce and some meatballs...so i mixed her sauce and my previously frozen tomato sauce with some cooked pasta and dolloped in some ricotta, topped it with mozzarella and baked it in the oven. i put the meatballs on one half so that they didn't contaminate the side for the veggies. i also made a caesar salad and croutons.

and a cardamom apple cake for dessert, served with ice cream.

okay...i already knew this, but sometimes it bears repeating: people on ebay ARE CRAZY. 15 of those mercury glass icicle ornaments are currently going for ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY SEVEN DOLLARS. that's INSANE! they're the size of my middle finger!!! (fittingly) how is it possible that a few antique beads re-strung onto wire could turn ordinary (presumably), sane (usually) individuals into a pack of sir richard bransons at a rappelling convention?!??! don't they know we're in the middle of an economic crisis? jeeeez. who has that kind of extra coin to blow on fifteen ornaments?!?

so, i've kind of made a new important discovery. that is: that i'm kind of obsessed with vintage salt and pepper shakers. i'm hunting for the PERFECT set to grace our dining room table. there are so many to choose from! i tend to be especially taken by kitsch (no surprise) animal ones...like these native american kitties, which make me LOL every time i look at the beatific, serene look on their little ceramic faces:

then there are those of the "blushing woodland animal" ilk - like these dainty, rosy-cheeked skunks and pert little dalmatians:

these very, very, old wooden ones are adorable, with their cherubic, campbell's soup kids-like faces and cheeky sidelong glances:

you can also go mega-kitsch and get the classic, attention-grabbing lobster claw route:

or the toadstool route:

my favorite vignette in "fantasia" was always the little dancing mushrooms in the nutcracker suite bit. little, wee, red-capped mushrooms are kind of played out right now in the crafty, bloggy, world - but does anything this darling ever really go out of style? i say nay. they might fall out of favour but there were always be a place for them in a damp, forest-floor corner of my heart.

i've decided which ones are going to go on my table...none of the above, actually...although the longer i stare at native american kitties, the more they make me laugh. it's a bit of a surprise. they'll go with a sweet vase i found for a song on threepotatofour that spoke to me as soon as i laid eyes on it. i can picture the table in my head...a little ceramic rectangular dish holding my vase, the salt and pepper shakers, and some nice beeswax candles. lovely! i can't wait to show you the whole vignette...we'll have to wait for the items to trickle in. and the table to arrive. and the chairs to be bought...oy.

all the winter tire research paid off. i can now call up an auto body shop/tire centre and converse like a bodmon and not fear for an instant that i'm going to get ripped off/taken for a ride. it's a wonderful feeling to have. plus, i know now how to read the markings on a tire sidewall. the problem is, we've found a mechanic we LOVE, but he's in geneseo. his prices can't be beat and he's really honest (i hope) and upfront and gives you the lowdown and guarantees his work. we just have to drive 600km there and back to see him.

today (saturday) i'm meeting old supervisor T to go to mccaul's (baking supply store) for our annual trip. i rarely buy anything. the stuff there is a little overpriced but she loves it and it's a tradition now. then i'm meeting my friend D to go see "an education" - then it's grocery shopping, errands, home, baking a brown butter apple tart, then heading to J & S's house for dinner prepared by L. holy cats! i'm kind of tired already, and it's only 9am.

fin.