Junglism

On Friday the Dotytron and I had the Big Yam sleep over at Momma D's and we went out to a bomb-a** old skool jungle party.  That music is like, 20 years old.  Crazy-cray.  This is how far I am from my raving days:

1) I was originally wearing my Birkenstocks and then realized they didn't go with my outfit so I changed into a pair of flats.  The Dotytron is like, "You changed into those shoes?!?!" and I explained my outfit-consistency rationale.  Then we get to the party and I'm like, "Oh yeah.  Right."  Because, in jungle, EVERYONE WEARS RUNNERS.  It's like, a ballgown and KSwiss.

2) One of the MCs called "Hold tight for the DJ Lush and Marcus" and I asked the Dotytron, "are they here?" and he says to me, "He said, 'HOLD TIGHT'.  YOU'RE NOT LISTENING!  YOU'VE FORGOTTEN HOW TO 'HOLD TIGHT'"  LOL!

Basically, everyone looked the same as in our halycon raving days of yore, except like, fatter.  In some cases - MUY fatter.

It was the best.  I heard about a zillion tunes that I loved and rude bass and I danced and we were out super late and it was the funnest.

Right now we're living at Momma D's house which is *high sing-songy voice* THE BOMB.  She has a dishwasher!  She has central air!  She has this gorgeous giant backyard patio/garden with wicked patio furniture that we can lounge on like kings!  It's amazing.  I'm having a minor struggle trying to adapt my weekly menu plan to a white person kitchen (e.g. Uncle Ben's rice in the cupboard, no room temperature butter, no food processor), but other than that, we're loving the access to a comprehensive cable package and whatnot.

On Saturday night we had Dr. Rei and Hanbo over for swimming and then a dinner of lobster rolls, deep fried pickles, and corn pudding and chocolate pudding pie and then we played two games of Settlers and it was so good.  Seriously, playing Settlers with those guys is hilariousness.  Like Dr. Rei and I spilling glasses of water on the Settlers board within minutes of each other.  And Hanbo and the Dotytron going down the water slide at the pool.  So good.

Sunday we met up with SMckay and the FroYo Baron in Kensington for pedestrian Sundays which was crowded.  As the Dotytron said (or sang, rather): "You pay a million dollars, to hang out with bums" - which basically sums up our experience.  Pluses: dulce de leche filled churros from Don Churros, good snacks.  Minuses: me getting snookered into spending SIXTEEN DOLLARS on TWO tostadas from foodie favorite Agave y Aquacate.  I'm like, seriously?!  Two chicken tinga tostadas?  While they were tasty, eight dollars is highway robbery, in my humble opinion.  The other thing is that the Dotytron got it into his head that we should get a $5 portrait of the Big Yam done by this sketch artist who had set up shop.  Basically, the price is based on how much time she spends on the picture - $5 for five minutes, $10 for 10 minutes, etc.  The artist had sample portraits displayed that showed the level of detail you get for each price category.  These were really good.  I'd say on par with what you'd find at a high-traffic boardwalk/beach (like Malibu-calibre or something).  So we got a $5 portrait done.  At one point she says to the Big Yam, "can I see your eyes?" and then she hands over the portrait:

Ummmm...THAT'S NOT MY KID.  LOL!  We basically paid $5 for a picture of some other kid.  I'd say the only part that looks like the Boobla Khan is the top right 2" quadrant of hair/forehead.  The Dotytron was like, 100% she didn't do those other sample portraits.  We were laughing about how she asked to see the Big Yam's eyes and then DIDN'T DRAW HIS EYES AT ALL.

So hilarious.  We're going to take him to Scarborough Town Centre where they have one of those booths where you can get a "hand-drawn" portrait done in a number of styles.  Like, the Dotytron and I have a Rembrandt version of us when we were young pups that is one of our favourite photos of us of all time.

Last night for dinner I made us Baltimore crab cakes with andouille sausage, corn, and tomato-cucumber salad.  Pretty simple.

Tonight we had pulled pork sandwiches and mashed cauliflower and cheese patties and coleslaw:

Fin.

Metamorphosis

Looks like Lil' Ugmo is getting a bit of a facelift this summer, thanks to the generosity of our sponsor, Momma D.  As with all things home renovations, things spiralled.  Momma D has never liked that our staircase is enclosed on both sides with walls and has no railing for her or the Big Yam to hold onto.  She gave us money to have that fixed.


So, in order to get a paint-grade poplar stair railing, the wall had to come down.  Since that wall was coming down, as with all things home renovations, it made sense that all the walls in the living room/dining room come down since we wanted to open up the space.  Despite my frequent avowals that I don't like open concept houses, I had to compromise my morals when I saw that opening up the space would make things a little easier for the Big Yam to careen around in.  I also maintained a shred of my integrity by deciding that the kitchen will always be enclosed and that I will NEVER succumb to pot lights.  Taking down the walls, meant doing new floors.  Doing new floors (on the downstairs) meant doing new baseboards.  And the whole thing means a new coat of paint.  Ai-yi-yi.


I'm envisioning the two couches facing each other.  The rosewood buffet to be centred between them against the purple wall (eventually, when - if! - we ever dig down and do the basement, the living area will be a music/library and all entertainment devices will be in the basement and we'll replace the buffet with a piano)  We're going to jettison the 4x4 Ikea Expedit and replace it with two 1x5 (only losing 2 squares of shelving for a slimmer profile), and the purple wall will continue the whole length.  Everything else will be painted white.  Except for the hallway wall, which goes all the way to the second floor.  That will be grey.


Here's a little snapshot of stuff I like:

On the hallway wall, instead of the current felt ball garland, which will now be relegated to Christmas, I'm going to put up two parallel Ikea Dignetet curtain wires to display cards, art work, etc.

A console table where we I can set up a little display and where we can put keys, wallets, mail, etc.  Above this, I want to hang this big, oval mirror I bought for $10 at a junk sail and my Berkeley illustration animal prints.

We've been in need of a coffee table for a long time.  I had been thinking a teak, mid-century one, but I think with the small space we're dealing with, a clear one like the CB2 one above and the side tables would be versatile, practical, and still let the room breath.

At first I was thinking of a rug that would pick up the colour scheme for the main floor - grey, white, bright, acid yellow.  Then I realized that this would be a little matchy-matchy.  

I saw the above rug on the Anthropologie website and I fell in love.  It picks up all the colours in the downstairs, without being too YELLOW! GREY! WHITE! about it and it leaves the door open for lots of fun accent colours.  It also means that I could do a really fun, graphic, magenta runner on the stairs if I wanted.  The clear coffee tables and side tables would be great here as they would still let the colours and pattern of the rug take centre stage and pop.  Seriously, I LOOOOVE that rug!

We'll see how everything comes together in the end.  I think we're going to go with Benjamin Moore's Coventry Grey for the hallway (or Stonington Grey).  I have yet to find a runner that I really like for the stairs, but that'll be a future concern, too.

We got new baseboards for the main floor as well - 7 1/4" - really nice and tall and sharp looking.  The Dotytron will be putting a coat of paint on them so they're ready to be installed by our floor guy.

Dinners have been stupendous lately - last night we had a nicoise salad with poached egg and bagna cauda:

Tonight we had Vietnamese grilled pork/turkey meatballs on top of a rice noodle salad with daikon, carrot, cucumber, mint, lettuce & home made nuoc cham:

Fin.

Uhhh...

does it make me a bad person that I hate people who quote the Dalai Lama?  That guy never SAYS anything!  It's always "peace, awareness, people before things, blah blah blah."  I honestly feel that Robert Fulghum, beloved author of late 80s mainstay, Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, is more quotable, and really, their messages are the same.

Funny AND sad

I never realized how many moments in parenthood would straddle the heretofore unknown line of heart-breaking/funny.  To wit: on Saturday we dropped off the Boobla with Momma D so we could go see a movie (review below).  When we walked in the door three hours later, he was sitting next to his Nana on the couch, shoulders slumped, a little dejected, and his eyes were BRIMMING with tears.  According to Momma D, he was fine the whole time he was there for the most part, except at a few moments, she would just sense that he would just start to get kind of sad.  He wouldn't cry, or make any noise, but I guess he just started thinking about us (specifically, me) and then he would just get kind of teary and down.

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

That is the CUTEST/SADDEST thing, ever!  He was so weepy - poor little bubby.  Just picturing the little Big Yam having like, sad thoughts, is the worst.  But it's also funny seeing him there all welling up with emotion because he doesn't know where we are.

We've seen a few movies lately - here's the rundown:

Young Adult.  Written by Diablo Cody.  Directed by her co-conspirator Jason Reitman, it's about a rotten, juvenile, high-school queen bee whose life has gone nowhere and who decides to go back to her podunk hometown to steal back her high school boyfriend.  It's a nasty piece with Charlize Theron's Mavis an evil, morally bankrupt, self-absorbed piece of work.  It's supposed to be black comedy but I dunno - I'm not really sure why it got the awards buzz that it got.  It's okay.  Kind of forgettable.  

Ahhh, Lars von Trier.  You with your weird Cannes nazi-comments and your Dogme 95 and your shaky cam and your sadistic pleasure in watching women suffer.  Melancholia racked up the awards at Cannes for Kiki and for the film.  It's about a woman, Justine, who is suffering from a deep depression but seems to find some kind of solace as a heretofore hidden planet, Melancholia, is on track to crash into Earth and obliterate us all.  The film starts so promisingly - with an overbearing Wagner refrain repeated accompanying absolutely gorgeous, saturated, moving pictures of stunning beauty.  It ends strongly, too.  The final image is equally beautiful.  But the middle...the middle gets all typical Lars on you - it meanders, there is a wedding rife with awkward moments (what is with those Scandinavians and their awkward wedding movies?  See: The Celebration), there are scenes that seem fraught with meaning and subtext but might just be what they are at face value, there is shaky cam.  There is a mis-cast Kiefer Sutherland looking like he's trying very very hard to be a SERIOUS actor and there is Lars fave Charlotte Gainsbourg trying to convince everyone that yes, in some universe, she could be Kirsten Dunst's sister.  Everyone in this film seems like they had their names picked out of a hat to be in the movie - the accents clash, there is no harmony to the performances.  It is punctuated by beautiful scenes but I don't think this film is for me.  If I want long, arty silences, I'd prefer Meek's Cutoff (which we got halfway through and then stopped.  We'll have to pick it up again).

DON'T READ THIS, SIS, IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS.  AND I KNOW YOU WANT SPOILERS, BUT I WANT YOU TO SEE THE MOVIE FIRST BEFORE YOU READ WHAT I THOUGHT OF IT.

Seriously - this review contains spoilers.

Okay.  The Dark Knight Rises.  Hrm.  Hmm.  I liked it, but I didn't LOVE it.  It's kind of garbled (like Bane's speech, haha!)  It's hard to end on a Bane note.  As a baddie, Bane is set up to have these weird, Occupy-like, Communist-revolution class warfare motivations but the political message is deeply, deeply garbled and flawed.  It just makes no sense.  Why are we trying to take down decadent Gothamites?  Are people who resent the rich really just thugs?  Or, if the movie is to be believed, are they really just victims of an unhappy childhood?  See?  It's a weird poli-sci 101 and pop psychology 101 mashup.  I don't love Anne Hathaway, but her presence here is okay, although I have a hard time buying her as a love interest for Batman.  I think my chief complaint was how murky the message was.  The message in The Dark Knight is clear - Batman has to struggle with his own raison-d'etre in light of the anarchy and nihilism of his double, the Joker.  This movie is a lot more confusing and unfocused.

It is very, very difficult to top Heath Ledger's Joker's charisma and villainy.  It was a perfect performance and a near-perfect film.  Ending with Bane as your resident baddie can't help but feel like a let down after.  Tom Hardy also has to try to act without much of his face or voice, which is challenging.  I remember reading the comics when Bane was introduced.  He was scary as all f**k.  More so than the Joker.  This is someone who could actually beat Batman.  In this film, Bane can physically do it - but it's not very fear or awe-inducing - it's like watching a UFC match when one of the contestants is a giant, juiced up, Cro-Magnon specimen.

There were also some technical issues.  I think in response to the early criticisms of Bane's unitelligible delivery in the early teasers, they overdubbed his voice (it's still only partly telligible - ha).  Unfortunately, they overdubbed it poorly.  Bane's voice wasn't integrated into the film, so it sounds like he's sitting right next to you instead of part of the action - they didn't (couldn't) capture the ambient room sound that makes it seem like he's right there.  His vocal track was just laid on top.  It's pretty distracting.  The film also suffers from a classic Nolan issue - TOO. MUCH. EXPOSITION.  Ai ya!  It's the worst!  He's got to wean himself off of it.

I loved the strong women in the film - Marion Cotillard and Anne Hathaway.  The big reveal ending was super touching and super empowering for women.  Nolan ends the series with a flourish.  I think part of my problem is that I don't want to live in a world without Nolan's Batman in it.  So I'm being nit-picky.  It's definitely worth seeing but I didn't love it.  I really really liked it.

We had a lovely, lovely weekend.  Swimming with J & the Hungarian Princess at Lolly's house on Friday.  Breakfast with my mum and Poh Poh on Saturday.  A Saturday afternoon spent doing not all that much and then eating a southern style menu of chicken fried steak, corn pudding (I love my corn pudding recipe, so!), tuna macaroni salad, and some grilled zucchini just so it wasn't completely off the rails (I fried the steaks in lard).  Then I made us peach cobbler for dessert.

Sunday we went to the Farmer's Market and went on a long bike ride and then we met up with R & R at High Park and partook in Barque's Family Supper - you pay $30 and they bring out platters of food - a good amount for the price - we were stuffed.  There were roasted radishes with smoked bacon butter, salt cod crostini, gazpacho, clams with chorizo, anise roasted chicken, ribs, a green salad with apple and shallots, spinach with blue cheese and roasted tomatoes (which was absent from our platter), and mocha brownies for dessert.  It was a feast.  And good company to boot.

Tonight we had grilled coca-cola marinated pork chops with cauliflower and fennel pakoras and zucchini pancakes.

Fin.

So many books!

Even though I chose to read a nominal amount for my degree, I think I'm subconsciously trying to rebel against being force to read boring stuff (ie. 99.97% of my degree readings) by plowing through books this summer.  My nights are the nerdiest right now: after an hour or two outside with the neighbours after dinner and putting the Big Yam to bed, it turns into one hour of playing the New York Times crossword puzzle app on the iPad and then maybe an episode of TV (but rarely) and then staying up far too late reading.  So enjoyable!  But so, so deeply tragic.  I feel like if you took a snapshot of my evenings in 50 years: it would be the exact same scene.

I'm SO HOOKED on the New York Times crossword puzzle app!  I can barely stand it.  The puzzles get harder throughout the week culminating in the epic Saturday crossword puzzle.  I haven't gotten past the Tuesday ones.  I'm also feeling very cheatypants because there's a "check word" function that I'm using far too often and I'm relying on the internet at least once for every puzzle.  Is that cheating?  How am I supposed to know the acronyms of random U.S. lobby groups?!?  I've made a deal with myself that I'm only allowed to use the knowledge of the internet once per game. WORST DEAL EVER!

Bitterblue is the latest book I've read in Kristin Cashore's series of books that take place in the kingdom's of Graceling (see my reviews of Graceling and Fire).  You're either kind of into these books or not.  I am BIGTIME into them.  They take place in a middle-ages world and owe a huge debt to Robin McKinley who is a YA author who wrote vaguely medieval, fantasy type novels that I devoured as a child.  Cashore is a thoughtful, considered writer who writes very strong, independent female characters and is conscious of stuff like disability politics.  It's just a cracking good read.  This book is considerably darker than the others (even though the others had their own dark moments) and deals with Bitterblue, now Queen, trying to come to terms with the aftermath of King Leck's sociopathic reign.  None of those words will mean anything to you if you haven't read the other books and might actually turn you off from reading them.  To that I say, you don't get to be a New York Times best selling author like Cashore if you don't write good, addictive fiction.  This was the least favorite of mine in the series, because I don't find Bitterblue as compelling a character as Katsa and Fire, but it could be because unlike the other two principal characters, Bitterblue has no special powers. She's just an ordinary girl of 18 with a lot of responsibility trying to find the truth and help her kingdom heal.

Veronica Roth's Divergent trilogy (only two books have been published as yet - Divergent and Insurgent) is hyped as "the next Hunger Games" and is only semi-deserving of the title.  As an aside though: can I just say how PLEASED I am that YA is getting so many daps lately?  As other genres are shrinking, YA literature is booming and it gladdens my heart that a) kids are reading; and b) this much-maligned genre is getting the high-culture legitimacy it so richly deserves.  Huzzah!  Anyway, Divergent is being made into a movie.  It makes me sad that there's less effort made to turn say, Cashore's work into a movie, but that could be because the fantastical elements might be harder to bring to the screen, and because movie production companies are very limited in their imaginative scope and like to repeat existing formulas (ie. that the story is similar to form to The Hunger Games).  But imagine what say, Guillermo Del Toro or Peter Jackson could do with Daughter of Smoke and Bone?!?  It would be fantastic!!!  I just checked, the rights to Daughter of Smoke and Bone have been optioned - but I'm not optimistic that anything will come of it.

I didn't love these books but I grew to like them.  Again, it might be because the main character, Beatrice (Tris) is kind of ordinary and boring (unlike Katniss, who is THE GIRL ON FIRE FOR F**K'S SAKES!).  The novels take place in a near-future dystopia where people are divided into factions: Candor (honest), Amity (peaceful), Erudite (smart), Dauntless (brave), and Abnegation (self-sacrificing).  When you're 16, you take a test that marks you for a particular faction and then you go through an initiation.  The thing with Tris though, is that her tests mark her as "divergent" (DUN DUN DUUUUUUN), that is, belonging to more than one faction and that is VEDDY DANGEROUS in this world.  The first book is all about Tris learning about her divergence and coming into her own in her faction and the second book is about this civil war that's started and how they deal with it.  Again, I was so-so on this book.  I thought the first one kind of dragged and the second one was okay, but not much happened...it all seemed to be filler leading up to the big reveal at the end.  I like this series and I would recommend it, but I don't LOVE them.

More trilogies!!! Delirium is also wildly popular.  It's about another near-future world where love is considered a disease and so the governments have devised a "cure" for love that people undergo when they're 16 and then you're matched and you live out your lives as a compliant zombie.  Lena, is another ordinary girl who starts to push back and gets the disease.  I found this one more compelling than Divergent.  The concept is a little more interesting to me.  Lena is a bit more of a realistic heroine (for example, her transition or awakening to her inner strength isn't so out of the blue as it is for Tris) and Oliver does a good job of fleshing out the other characters better.  I've started reading the second one in the series, Pandemonium.  

In a divergence (haha - see what I did there?) from all my YA reading, I read Carol Anshaw's Carry the One which has been getting RAVE reviews.  It's the story of siblings who come together for a wedding and then end up hitting and killing a girl with their car as they leave (no spoiler there...it happens in the first chapter).  The book then alternates between the three siblings' stories for the next 30 or so years tracking how the event changed them and marks them.  It sounds heavy, but it was a surprisingly breezy read.  For some reason, I found myself reminded of Judy Blume's adult novels - like Summer Sisters - at least in the tone - it's an easy read and even when things get heavy, it still feels light.  I don't know how to explain it better than that. It was one of those "ah life" books that didn't really reverberate with me - it was mildly soapy, but an enjoyable, quick read.

Arcadia is about a boy who grows up in a commune, Arcadia, in upstate New York, raised in the 60s counter-culture idealists.  Changes to society, the popularity of the commune, and growing dissatisfaction with their charismatic leader result in the splintering of the commune and with the main character, known as Bit growing up the in city.  This was a great story.  The characters are human and true, and my survivalist, Little House on the Prairie side loved the descriptions of commune life.  The story is touching and beautiful.  It's a good read.


Dinners lately have been boss.  


I made us galbi banh mi:

Last night was a "it's too hot out" charcuterie meal:

Tonight was grilled chicken thighs tossed with melted butter and Old Bay seasoning (our new favorite chicken preparation - seriously, we could eat 10 million of these and have to stop ourselves from pigging out largecore), sautéed corn, and green beans tossed with scape pesto:

Fin.

Drag me to hell

Super-hyperbolic but exactly how I felt this morning thinking about leaving bed to go to work.  I just really want to continue cottage life - engrossed in a book, lazing, snuggling with the Big Yam.  The time with him is what I was missing the most.  At the cottage, a few times he had nightmares so I pulled him into bed with me and we slept all smushed up together like mashed potatoes and gravy and I felt my heart thrum with love and the awareness that he is growing up lightning fast.  So many words!  Too many to document.  Sentences: "Mama more chicken please" (does that constitute a sentence? We were wondering what parts of speech have to be present for a sentence to be duly constituted.)  (Edit: I just checked - a subject and a predicate.  Not really sure what that means though.  Will report back.  <-- is that a sentence?!?)  He's been practising with randomly calling us Mommy and Daddy and I find it kind of syrupy and gross but there's nothing I can do about it. He will also now just start randomly parroting words back at you as soon as you say them.  It's so cute!  Toddlers are really, truly the best.  Young, new, fresh-dough babies are cute and all, but nowhere near as entertaining as toddlers.


I gave the Dotytron a near heart attack one night at the cottage because I kept hearing this weird sound and I was convinced that someone had broken into the house to steal the Big Yam from his bed.  I wrecked both our night's sleep on account of my paranoia.  Worst!  People who mess with babies are the scummiest scumholes of the world.  Hands down.  I kept picturing how scared the Big Yam would be and how alone and how he'd totally just be going "Done. Done. Done." the whole time (which is what he says when he's done with something and/or confronted with a situation he's uncomfortable with - e.g. old people smiling at him) and I was totally beside myself.  What's wrong with me that I actually imagine those worst case scenarios?  I'm too much of a worrier.


Why do kids have to grow up into jerks teenagers?  What's with that?  Why will he one day grow up and (hopefully) find love and then love someone more than me?  WHAT'S WITH THAT?!  I gave you life!  Whoever he's going to shack up with is just giving him nookie!!!  And what if WE DON'T GET ALONG?!?


I need to get a grip.  To temper all the wanting to quit work and never being farther than arm's reach away from him, I have to take a deep breath and remember all the time outs at the cottage and how I relished those blessed, blessed minutes of not getting smacked in the face or dealing with whining.

Speaking of not getting along with your parents, one of the (many) books I've finished recently is Alison Bechdel's latest, Are You My Mother?  Taking as its title inspiration the well-loved P.D. Eastman children's book of the same name, it's Bechdel's graphic novel memoir that details her relationship with her mother.  The pall cast by her closeted father (who is thought to have committed suicide) on the family and on Alison's own burgeoning lesbianism is documented in her earlier comic memoir, Fun Home.  This piece is very different.  I'd say that her mother figures marginally in the overall work and instead, it deals with the residual affects of her mother on Bechdel's psyche (e.g. her mother stopped kissing her goodnight when Bechdel was 7, saying she was "too old" for such things).  There's a lot of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic talk in the book, which I wasn't expecting.  Bechdel uses the work of a particular psychoanalyst, Donald Winnicott to attempt to come to grips with her own dreams, feelings of failure, anxieties, neuroses, and attachments to her therapists as substitutes for her mother.  I found this book a little difficult.  It's deeply personal but lacks the narrative grace of a successful memoir.  Bechdel is a little too much in the book - it meanders and you get the sense of you yourself getting lost and becoming too intimate with someone's psyche - someone whose issues seem not terribly fraught or aren't presented in a way that makes the issues of particular interest to an outsider.  It was enjoyable, but nowhere near as engrossing as her comic strips or Fun Home (too much psychobabble and Virginia Woolf!)  


One of Bechdel's realizations did resonate with me, in light of my own fractured relationship with my own mother.  Over a late-night telephone conversation where Bechdel's mother chastises her for being public about her lesbianism, Bechdel cries and hangs up on her.  But she comes to an awareness that she is asking for something from her mother that her mother cannot give because it is not in her to do so.  Again, it comes back to accepting people for who they are.  Bechdel realizes that her mother loves her, in her own fashion, and that what Bechdel wants from her mother her mother cannot give, not because she doesn't want to, but because it is not in her to do so.  Through this realization, Bechdel understands that because of this, it is not a fundamental failing in her that she is unable to illicit what she wants from her mother.  In so doing, they are both released from the tortuous detente they had occupied and are free to enjoy each other as they are.  I was deeply struck by this and I think this is something I am going to try to take forward into all my relationships in general, but with my mum in particular.


Last night was our street's 2nd Annual Street Party.  It was so much fun!  Look at it: 

Kids lining up for the shoe toss competition 

 Ladies lining up for our shoe toss (I did terribly - I got negative points and kicked my shoe backward. I blame being too relaxed from the cottage - no muscle tone.)

Super-cute, right?  As usual I went buck and overcompensated and made too much food.  Next year I'm not going to make a side.  This year I made a BLT macaroni salad thing (macaroni, bacon, tomatoes, lettuce, and avocadoes all bound with scallion mayo), smoked 4 racks of ribs for five hours (using wild black cherry and sugar maple), and I made brownies and tres leches cake.  I've NAILED the tres leches cake recipe.  I'll post the recipe at the end.  I made some changes to a recipe from Serious Eats.  


We had a decent amount of food at the party:

I'm trying to cut down on carbs a bit, so tonight we had a quinoa, duck egg, avocado, and chickpea salad with scallion mayo.


Fin.


---------------------------------------------------------
Coconut Tres Leches Cake
makes a 9x13 sized cake


2 c. all-purpose flour
4 t. baking powder 
6 large eggs, separated 
1 teaspoon salt 
1 1/2 c. sugar 
1/2 c. milk, at room temperature 
2 t. pure vanilla extract 
2 c. sweetened shredded coconut 


2 cans coconut milk 
1 can sweetened condensed milk 
1 can evaporated milk


1 1/2 c. whipping cream
1 c. sweetened shredded coconut, toasted 
1 c. flaked almonds, toasted


- preheat oven to 325°F
- whisk flour and baking powder together in small bowl; set aside. 
- in the bowl of your stand mixer or a large bowl, beat egg whites and salt with whisk attachment on medium-low speed until whites begin to loosen and froth.  Increase speed to medium-high and beat whites until soft peaks form. Slowly add the sugar and continue beating until stiff, glossy peaks form. 
- add egg yolks and beat just until combined. 
- decrease speed to low and add flour mixture in three batches, alternating with milk. Scrape down sides of bowl with rubber spatula.
- add vanilla and fold in coconut with rubber spatula. 
- pour batter into a lightly greased 13x9" baking dish and smooth top. Bake until cake tester inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 45 to 50 minutes. 
- cool cake for 30 minutes, then poke cake all over with a fork or skewer and run a knife along the edges of the cake to separate it from the sides of the pan.


- in a large measuring cup or bowl whisk together the coconut, evaporated, and condensed milk.  Pour this mixture evenly over the cake, allowing the cake to absorb the milk between applications.  Wrap the cake in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for 4 hours or overnight.


- just before serving, whip the whipping cream until soft peaks form.  Spread the whipped cream over the top of the cake and then sprinkle with the toasted coconut and almonds.  Cut into squares and serve.

Cottage photo dump

We're back.  Nothing much to say, really.  We had a lovely, quiet, relaxing time.  The cottage was perfect - well-stocked (really, the owner thought of everything), gorgeous, spacious, new.  Most importantly, there was about 100ft of sandy, beachy shoreline across the front and the water was only about a foot and a half deep at the end of the dock.  Which meant that we could lounge on the deck and the Big Yam could entertain himself nicely on the beach or wading.  I'd definitely go back to this cottage - it was perfect for young kids. 

It was nice to have some quiet family time with the Dotytron's family.  Poppa D's presence was missed and felt and remembered.  

Here's a photo dump:

 The Big Yam's art installation

 Psyching himself up for his first real "boat" (of the paddle variety) ride.  He was super-pumped but then his expression changed to this when we actually started getting the boat ready.

 The owners had cleared away a lot of trees near the front of the property, which made it look a lot more open than the classic, rugged shoreline I generally prefer.  This did mean that the frontage got plenty of light though, and in exchange, you get the sandy beach area.

 Momma D treated us to wing night at the local bar/restaurant/hotel (the Schmeler).  The Big Yam sitting at the bar.

Coming back home to a giant, sweltering wet sweater of a city was a bit of a drag.  Today is the annual street party, though, so that will be fun.  After some pizza and splash-padding yesterday I was happy to be home.


Fin.

Briefly

I dreamed that I was attending the wedding of this girl who used to post extensively on Tribe Magazine and who I was kinda rave friends with back in the day (Booty Bits, for those who know!) and her wedding was big and obnoxious but was happening AT THE SAME TIME as the princess of Thailand's wedding.  The princess of Thailand's wedding featured like, choreographed street dancing and I remember thinking it was SO RUDE for Booty Bits to be doing her thing right next door.


Then the dream shifted and I was in line to get this thing called "bubble ice cream" which is ice cream that takes the form of the outline of a bubble...so like spherical and thin.  Anyway, you could get a base ice cream and have it topped with bubble ice cream so I ordered mint with oreo bits and what the staffer (who was totally slow and inept) gave me was mint flavoured with Diet Coke and Cherry Coke with the oreos.  I was pissed!  Then she scooped my brother's ice cream which was chocolate (he was also getting the bubble ice cream topping) but had it sitting there for a while so by the time she handed him the cone (standard styrofoam cone, not sugar cone), the chocolate ice cream had melted and was oozing and dripping down the cone so the bubble ice cream staffer picked it up, GAVE IT A LICK ALL AROUND THE CONE TO CLEAN IT UP and then passed it to Bruce Wayne.  Bruce Wayne and I looked at each other for a beat and then I said, "ummm, that's not okay" and that's how the dream ended.


TELL ME WHAT THIS MEANS, OH SAGES OF THE INTERNET!!! 


Fin.

Louis CK's Daddy Daycare

These articles have been making the rounds lately (of limited interest to non-parents, maybe?  I don't know, I think it's interesting even if you're not a parent because we're talking about gender inequity, class, ethnicity, through the lens of parenting).


Spoiled Rotten: Why Do Kids Rule the Roost? By Elizabeth Kolbert (in the New Yorker) has the usual complaints about how North American children are so indolent, can't do anything for themselves, are coddled, etc - the usual dirge.  I found the article totally boring and totally obvi and I wasn't a fan of the whole "remote tribe" comparison - uhhh...noble savage AND apples and oranges, much?


Why Women Still Can't Have It All by Anne-Marie Slaughter (in the Atlantic) is a pretty damning and depressing examination of the false promises of 2nd wave feminism and the impossibilities of a work-life balance for women (professional development and our role as parents always having to be sacrificed to each other).  She has a series of suggestions for things that need to change in order for women to have it all and it's a pretty grim picture overall.  First of all, is it weird that I kinda feel like I can totally have it all?  Granted, I'm not a high-powered Washington politico.  I don't have those ambitions, but I have managed to do 90% of a Masters degree that will (hopefully...*crosses fingers and toes* *weak laughter*) help me progress to a more professionally satisfying position and still give me the ability to manage my home life and be a good parent.  It's all so fully of privileged anxieties and naval-gazing for me.  I dunno...I just don't think about it.  I had a mum who worked and who never showed up for school plays or my graduation and I turned out okay (my contentious relationship with my mother is separate from these events).  What does "having it all" mean? If you can only see your kid for a couple of hours a day but you're fully and completely present and aware and with them, then that matters just as much and your kid will be none the poorer for it.  That kind of professional/parental anxiety just doesn't factor into my psyche at all.  I don't generally tend to question or be anxious about my parenting or professional decisions.  But I have a remarkable capacity for resilience, so maybe that's it.  I dunno...I just kinda feel like that's a WP (white person) problem.  LOL!  Just live your life, WPs, just live your life and stop being so neurotic!


This article talks about Louis C.K. and the cult of lowered expectations for fathers.  It's pretty good.  Louis C.K. is such a bada**.  He's funny, he's a feminist, he's circumventing capitalism with his direct-to-consumer mode of selling his goods...it's just the best.  He talks about how it's important for dads not to rest on their laurels and just accept the big, shiny gold star you get for just showing up.  Which I agree with.  I was telling the Dotytron about the article and the Dotytron was like, "Ummm...are you telling me this just to tell me or because you think you could actually let go and NOT give me a list and not be a giant control freak?"  Haha.  He knows me so well.


This is all to say that Dotytron Daycare started yesterday and I'm working through trying to not micromanage the process.  It's been cute.  The Dotytron posted a picture of the Big Yam at the beach and when I called just now to call an audible on dinner the two of them were stringing snow peas together, and the Dotytron had to get off the phone in a hurry with the words, "Hey buddy, noooo, don't tear them in half! - *click*"  It's cute picturing that they're going to have their own adventures together and their own bonding time, stringing snow peas and being all cute and whatnot.


My problem is that I'm such a giant micromanager that I have to have things done MY way.  It's something I've got to work on.


The rest of the weekend was lovely.  We had dinner with the Roomie, L'Armi, and Montreal I and baby T at our house and then pulled a blanket onto our neighbours lawn and talked late into the night and listened to the pop of fireworks.  We had a Pizzeria Libretto picnic in Withrow Park with the same crew the next morning and then we had a picnic with our friends B & G at Balmy Beach.  The Big Yam was being AMAZING.  It was perfect.  We set up the sport-brella and hung back and ate and talked while he played a little ways in front of us in the sand.  Because it's just a broad expanse of sand and then the lake and you can see him, it's the perfect spot to bring a kid.  He doesn't get too distracted (as he would if there was playground equipment around) and he can just kind of chill and do his own thing and you can keep an eye on him and get to him in time if he needs it.  Lovely.

See?

Tonight we're getting ready for the cottage.  For dinner we're having zucchini pancakes, corn on the cob, and snowpeas from the CSA.  We also have a tonne of lettuce to use up from the CSA and I'm kind of at a loss of how to do it.  I'll probably bring some to the cottage with us.  


Fin.

Lucky Button-ing

I'm on day 3 of my 4 day long weekend and feeling awash with love and general good vibrations.  It's been lovely so far.

On Friday I hooked up with Momma D and we walked around and took the Big Yam to the wading pool where he pretty much had the best time of his life.  The one we went to looks out onto Queen Street and so not only is there a playground and a wading pool, there is also a non-stop cavalcade of streetcars, buses, and at one particularly thrilling (for him) moment: a FIRETRUCK BEING TOWED BY A GIANT TOW TRUCK.  He was loving life.

Then we went to this new place that opened up in Leslieville called Paulette's.  They sell fried chicken and doughnuts, which would be a winning combination, but unfortunately, the doughnuts leave a lot to be desired.  Before I put it to rest, I'll definitely try the fried chicken but I wasn't impressed.  It's a lot of style, very little substance.  The place is cute, all turquoise and the servers are all kitted out with little paper hats and white aprons, like old soda shop servers.  The branding is fantastic.  Oh that the food tasted as good!  The outfit is small, one lady takes your order and two other people behind the small counter grab your doughnuts (from a rolling rack) and your chicken (from some kind of oven/holding device).  Even though all the food is prepared and ready to go, it takes a loooong time to get it.  I went 4 days after they had opened though, so I'll forgive them as they iron out the kinks.  Of the 6 kinds of doughnuts offered, we got 5 (they were sold out of the strawberry jammies).  Blueberry balsamic, root beer float, mango-yuzu, and the D'oreo.  Now this is where things start to go awry: ALL THE DOUGHNUTS ARE THE SAME CAKE BASE AND THE ONLY FLAVOUR DIFFERENTIAL IS THE GLAZE!  Now, if any of you have ever been to Doughnut Plant, you know that they do cake AND yeasted doughnuts and the glazes, cake doughnuts, and the fillings differ, offering different flavour profiles and experiences.  Not so Paulette's.  It's all the same nutmeg-flavoured white cake doughnut base.  The doughnut itself is nice - tender, good crumb, nice amount of nutmeg.  But it's not $2.75 nice (the size is the same as a Timmy Ho's).  Then they make the criminal mistake of DOUSING the doughnut in saccarine, unbalanced, and one-note glazes.  

So yes, the Root Beer Float doughnut tastes like a root beer float, but do I want that in a doughnut?  I'm not sure.  The mango yuzu tastes (and I lOVE yuzu) tastes like the concentrated mango puree straight outta the package with barely any hints of yuzu.  The D'Oreo one actually didn't taste at all like an oreo - the flavour was really muted.  The best one was by far the blueberry balsamic - it wasn't too sweet and the balsamic acidity cut through and allowed the other flavours to shine.  That was the only doughnut where I could eat the whole thing.  Everything else, I took one bite and had to put it down.


I'll reserve judgement until I try their fried chicken, but since they only do two things, the fact that one of those things was disappointing doesn't bode well.

Regardless, we had an awesome morning/afternoon with Momma D.  I was ridiculously productive in the morning with the Big Yam.  We banged out meringues for pavlova, strawberry ice cream base, scallion mayo, scape pesto, cornflake crunch, and prepped and shelled 3 lobsters (Bill's was having a deal of 3 1lb lobsters for $23) For dinner I made us this wicked (if I do say so myself) meal of some of my favorite things: lobster rolls (just lobster meat, a bit of celery, bound with scallion mayo and served in a split, buttered, pan-toasted bun) with deep fried pickles (I prefer pickle spears) and chips (bought).  So good!  The Dotytron and I had our doughnut tasting on the front stoop during dusk and then capped it off by playing street badminton.  Love!

 

 Saturday morning breakfast: rapini, roasted pepper & goat's cheese frittata w/ scape pesto.

Saturday we got our errands done and then my sis and my outlaw bro and the kids came over and we fed them Burger's Priest and then went to the pool and splash pad and had a blast.  Then we went to celebrate Poh Poh's 90th Birthday with a big banquet in Markham.  The Big Yam ate a tonne!  He does this weird thing where he gets more adventurous with food the more full he is.  He was starving and ate his entire snack trap of cheerios and dried fruit and then crushed his milk and THEN went on to go to town on shark's fin soup, steamed fish, fried rice, and lobster.  So much lobster.  We also rigged him up to look like one of the staff at Guu.

Today we're having brunch with my siblings and then Montreal I is coming to stay with us and we're going to dine with the Roomie and family.  Fun!

Fin.