ruined.

broken. crunked. all words that describe my current state of mind and physical condition. new year's eve eve was a tawdry night of failed hopes and broken dreams. just kidding! it actually started off with non-stop hilarity and rollicking good times in our own particular fashion, which included: discussions of race and class, researching galileo, copernicus, and christopher columbus on wikipedia, poring over our GIANT MAP OF THE WORLD (probably our best xxxmas prezzie by far...the thing is 6 feet long or something), and figuring out etymologies of such words as "bunk" and "servant". dr. rei came over and we ate a glorious feast and talked and talked and laughed and talked. it was so much fun! the turkey breast was so juicy and so turkey-tasting through and through...and i f**king NAILED the stuffing. for the first time ever. i was pretty proud. instead of the mashed turnip and apple, i blanched some beans, broccoli and baby carrots, then browned some butter with some walnuts and lemon zest, and tossed the vegetables in that. the pear pockets were a resounding hit, as they pretty much are wherever and whenever they make an appearance.

we couldn't figure out where to go, and supermarket has generally been reliable (in the sense that they will play christina aguilera's "ain't no other man" and rick ross' "hustlin'", mixed with old skool hip hop and funk), so we headed there. it was a BUST. it was completely empty, there was some kind of weird sausage fest happening in the middle of the empty dancefloor, with a bunch of frat dudes dancing in a circle doing weird frat dude things, and when dr. rei requested rick ross from dj abdominal, he was kinda rude and she got shot down. dear dj abdominal: when the dancefloor is EMPTY, take a motherf**king request!

so we headed to octopus, which had been pretty good to us last friday. this friday, not so much. the dj was jason palma, and while hottie mchothot bouncer was still there, it was pretty much an all disco line up. i HATE disco. i hate dancing to disco, listening to disco, talking about disco, and all disco-related ephemera.

we were getting pretty desperate, so we went on a hunch and checked out big primpin' at stones place, a bar we actually really like. we walked in to the sounds of luda and pharell's "moneymaker" which is a fairly reliable hit that i enjoy dancing to. things were looking up! it's basically a gay night where they play bling hop and destiny's child and stuff. the dj couldn't mix a cake. plus, he played too many of the same top40 hiphop tunes in a row...and he let them play out wicked long. dear random big primpin' dj: WE DON'T EVER NEED TO HEAR THE THIRD VERSE. cut that s**t out, son! hearing the third verse is the kiss of death. as is hearing "brown eyed girl" at a bar. thankfully, that didn't happen...but he didn't switch up the tempos or the tunes enough. dr. rei again requested rick ross and got shot down. it was tragic. the next dj who stepped up played possibly the worst set i've ever heard. and he's kinda known, the dj is called rory them finest. dr. rei has heard him before and says he's not always that brutes, but last night was a poor, poor, POOR show. he's also apparently diplo's best friend. DIPLO WAS THERE LAST NIGHT.

here's something you have to know about me and my associate, dr. rei. when we come up in contact with minor celebrities, it amps up my natural raucousness and obnoxious, and ratchets up dr rei's somewhat more latent obnoxiousness big time. one time we saw greg nori of treblecharger in the annex, which a) ellicited paroxysms of laughter b) planted the brilliant idea of following him down the street strumming imaginary guitars and singing their classic breakthrough hit, "red". i'm not sure that is a picture of greg nori, as when you google "greg nori" you first get a bunch of pictures of greyhounds, and glamour shots of greyhounds, no less.

so, seeing diplo made my anger at the craptastic djing last night go into overdrive. and i was like, "i'm going to ask diplo why he sucks!" and dr. rei was like, "no!" and then i was like, "get him to sign something" and dr. rei was like, "nooo!" but then we both got mad because diplo wouldn't give us the time of day. then i was going to confront diplo about whether he and m.i.a. were still an item, about why he loves that band css so much, which dr. rei assured me was going to be the kiss of death, but by the time i had hatched that brilliant plan, diplo had slipped off into the night like the spectacular weasel he is. sadly, the only question that didn't occur to me, was to ask whether he considered himself a musical neo-colonial-imperalist a la ry cooder. D'OH!

so we stayed until they closed the bar out and turned the lights on. two members of our party were DEAD-SET on going to this peripheral acquaintance of mine, k's party. now, i LOATHE his so-called "parties". they suck. they suck long, and hard, and epic. but i couldn't convince them otherwise, because they were just desperate to do something after the bar and we didn't know of any after-hours boozecans cuz we're not hep to that scene. the whole cab ride over i was fuming about being dragged to this party of doom and decimation. but at a certain point, i decided to be a "good sport" in signature karl lagerfeld fashion, which means i'm still fuming, but now i want the vindication of being right, so i see things out to the very end. i really really love being right. and oh, how right i was. it was a den of inequity. you just stepped into the space, your eyes were assaulted and burning with cigarette smoke, and it felt like sket-ball city. i was giving the "cut" sign from the moment i stepped into the door and was begging to leave. we stayed about half an hour and then made a speedy exit. i admit that it was fun because i was there with a solid crew of people that i love (roomie, the boy, montreal friend, etc), but it wasn't fun fun, it was a flirtation with fun, a shadow of what fun can be.

the evening ended with us coming home and me eating a grilled cheese sandwich, and a softball size serving of cold turkey breast.

tonight we're having our anti-nye's hooha. which involves lolling around in our pajamas, eating and watching tv, and we're having a few people over so that it doesn't get too insular. for breakkie i'm making corned beef hash with over easy fried eggs or poached eggs. then i made a bunch of grazing food for us to nibble on all night. i made a hot spinach dip to be served with pita chips. guacamole and nacho chips. a veggie tray with asparagus, beans, grape tomatoes, carrots and broccoli with green goddess dressing and bagna cauda for dipping. and smores pie. and we might order pizza too. either way, it's schluff-fest 2007!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

fin.

fresh from the farm

this is me holding a freshly born goat that was being given the banhammer by it's mum. we had to wrap it up and warm it with a blow dryer and feed it from a syringe filled with colostrum we had milked from the mother. that new jacket i bought definitely makes me look very mongolian-herder-chic. i love it!

i absolutely love going to that farm. i find it very relaxing. the proprietress is a fantastic cook, we ate like kings! one night we had a pot roast of their own beef, served with a root vegetable mash and some blanched beans tossed with browned butter, walnuts and lemon zest. the next night we had confit of duck (that i got to carve up!) with braised red cabbage and dried apricots, and shanghai choy with ginger. the next day, just before we left, she took the leftover pot roast, threw some barley in, and turned it into a hearty beef and barley potage. she really loves food and cooking, and the proprietor is really knowledgeable about things that i'm interested in, like livestock and hunting and cleaning animals. i also met their farm-hand from up the road, who asked me if i was going to get my hunting license. i just might! i'd love to hunt my own venison. we bought a goose from a meat stand up the road...a very very fat goose that would make dickens proud. AND i've been promised groundhog in the spring. i guess this all goes to show that there's very, very little i won't eat, and that for such a suburbanite, bred from a long line of metropolitan stock (you don't get much more city than good ole hong kong), i'm actually rather well suited to country living.

tonight is a night of fun! my roomie is coming back from her holiday with her family, and our guest from montreal is coming back from spending her time with her family in toronto, and we're all congregating here, having a nice meal, and then going out dancing and getting crunked.

we're effectively doing our nye's carousing tonight, instead of tomorrow, when everything is going to be wikked expensive and stupid and full of nye-noobs.

tonight we're having a roasted stuffed turkey breast with sage and celery stuffing. mashed yukon gold potato and sweet potato. mashed turnips and apples with a brown sugar crisp topping, and for dessert, pear pockets with bourbon caramel and whipped cream. it's going to be my version of the traditional christmas dinner.

fin.

la ferme

the next two days will consist of me frolicking with various farmland creatures in a picturesque pastoral idyll that would make any romantic (in the aesthetic period sense) proud. we're visiting the boy's family's friends' farm up near walkerton. i think they have something like 200 acres.

i have no idea what we'll be eating, the proprietor is a hunter...and last time the boy's parents went up, they had bear, so i'm hoping against hope for fare of a similar persuasion. at any rate, it'll definitely be a relaxing two days, filled with knitting and eating and reading.

fun!

here's a pic from the last time we were there.

fin.

santa's intel

is way off. either that, or gleaned from some back-alley transaction with a low-level triad member in shanghai. at any rate, the quantity of my post-capitalist bacchanalia spoils is not commensurate with the extent to which i was "good". unless we're in bizarre-o land and "good" equals "bad". or unless we're in baudrillard-ville where everything is a simulacra.

here is a food-porn shot of the breakfast i made yesterday morning. it requires about as much retouching as i do when a picture is taken from my bad side. here is also a picture of my bad side. there's a funny story about that. i had taken a bunch of pictures of my friend's boxer puppy, poe. the next day, we were sitting in a restaurant and i was trying to tell my friends that i have a good side and a bad side. they didn't believe me, so i took a picture of each. i was leaning across the table (they were sitting facing me) showing them the pictures, i said "here's my good side" *good side picture appears* and then, "here's my bad side" *picture of puppy appears because i scrolled back too far*

anyway, i was spoiled beyond imaginging with really thoughtful, nice gifts that way exceed my status with the boy's family as resident out-law. for all the nerdbombers out there...here's a shot of me with the gift that my sister got me for my family's xmas. oh yes, it's none other than a battlestar galactica "viper ace" t-shirt. the boy got one that says "pch bikers" and another battlestar themed one, and my brother got one that says "hearst college" and "new caprica sucked". !!!!! comic-con, here we come!

we're engaging in capitalist bacchanalia part 2: budget edition today, with some serious boxing day shopping. or at least walking around and looking at stuff...i don't know how much we'll actually buy. then we're going to pick up rotis at ghandi's if they're open and come back and mange those. that is the plan. failing that, we'll have to order or scrounge up food from somewhere else, all of which will be faithfully documented by yours truly. last night we ate a turkey dinner, with roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, and carrots and stuffing. the stuffing and the turkey were absolute home runs. i find it a little odd the white people family habit of not salting their food as they cook it, and then passing the seasoning at the table, because to me, things are then indifferently and inconsistently seasoned. but again, i do have that nostalgia for that white-bread family dinner experience that i never had growing up, so i do enjoy it in a kind of fetishistic way.

fin.

frivolity

so my friend from montreal gave me a bitchin' haircut that makes me look like an anime character come to life. i'm incredibly pleased with it, partially because it feels like i'm 10 lbs lighter. after she was done, we swept up the hair and it filled a grocery store shopping bag.

here's the deal: if i can get a decent haircut for free what's BRITNEY SPEARS' EXCUSE?!? seriously. the fact that she refuses to get a stylist stresses me out beyond imagining. here's my brilliant analogy for the britney/k-fed situation: britney squandered the good will of the world after breaking up with k-fed, in much the same way that the united states squandered the good will of the world post 9-11. isn't it apt?!? coming up with apt analogies is a bit of a party trick of mine.

last night as we were lolling on the couch we got a bunch of calls from the boy's high school crew, who were partying at this dude's ralph's house (another guy we went to high school with) and wanted us to come. here's how shallow i am. i'm only 50/50 with that crew...i LOVE hanging out with the core members, who are a bunch of solid, really intelligent dudes who get drunk and are pantloads of fun, but the peripheral high school reunion thing is so not my scene. every party always kind of turns out like that, and then it kinda gets teh awkward for me if i stay for an extended period of time. basically, all i want to do, is show up, look fierce, dazzle them with how wikked funny and cool i am, and then disappear into a puff of smoke like some fantastic apparition. it's only because i was SUCH an insecure nerdbomber in high school and few people were privy to my brilliance. so now i want to exact retribution on them. kind of like how lil jon went from looking like that, to his current incarnation. we also got a call from the boy's work friend...the last time he called he was hanging out with xzibit. so in our quest for absolute loaf-dom we might have missed the chance to hang with similar hip hop b-list royalty. like one of the ices (probably cube).

tonight the plan is the annual xmas eve holiday extravaganza with the boy's family. which usually means food and a movie. then we sleep over there and wake up to a norman rockwell kinda thing. soft xmas holiday music in the background and participation in a capitalist bacchanalia. then eating ourselves into a stupor.

i'm trying to resist the temptation to squander my education money on further capitalist bacchanalia on boxing day. eek! it's definitely a toughie.

i'm also making paella for the roomie and my friend from montreal. i bought the stuff to make it yesterday, but we ended up eating square boy instead, and i don't want the seafood to go to waste.

fin.

it was a clear black night, a clear white moon

last night was the boom boom. the club was really nice on the inside, and was just large enough to not need craploads of people to seem full, but small enough to still feel intimate and cozy. the dj needed some work...he wasn't "djing" per se, and he didn't know how to read or work the crowd. he'd get the crowd hyped with some ace tunes, and then drop in some disco and completely clear the floor and kill the vibe.

me and the boy and dr. rei stopped at the college street bar for a bit for this old skool jungle jam which was pants, and when me and the boy got back, octopus was BUMPIN'. he was playing all these reggae hits which gets me all moneymaker-shakingly happy, and then went into old skool hip hop, and THEN HE PLAYED ME AND THE BOY'S SONG! which we NEVER EVER HEAR OUT, and which i've requested on more than one occasion at never forgive action (the old skool hip hop night). the song in question is: nate dogg and warren g's "regulate". ACES!

the place was meatmarket 2006 though. here are some sample encounters i had with the male persuasion. one gentleman, let's call him yik (from degrassi) sidles up to me and proceeds to be on the receiving end of my acerbic bluntness.
yik: "hey, what's your name?"
me: "karl lagerfeld, nice to meet you"
yik: "karla?"
me: "KARL. LAGERFELD"
yik: "oh, haha...i'm edward, nice to meet you"
me (stoneface, but pleasant): "nice to meet you"
yik: "you have a beautiful smile"
me *sigh*: "are you trying to get down my pants?"
yik (taken aback): "uhh...well, i hadn't thought it through that far, but yes, i find you extremely attractive and if it went that way-"
me: "stop right there. let's just cut to the chase: i think you're trying to get down my pants, and it's a bad idea"
yik: "umm...well, i mean-"
me (firm but fair headshake): "trust me, it's a BAD idea"

then, later in the evening, i'm dancing away and this girl drags this dude over who has been eyeing me dancing for a bit.
dude: "so you're a really good dancer"
me: "i really love dancing"
dude: "i'm just going to stand over here and watch you dance, is that okay?"
me: "well, to be honest, it's actually kind of creepy"
dude: "okay, well i'll just stand over here with my back to you"
me: "thanks!"

jesus. is that what passes for courtship these days? newsflash: I'M NOT DRUNK. i need a t-shirt that says that on it, so that when i'm dancing and i get interrupted by groiny mcgroinerson, i can just point to the shirt and give the no finger-wag.

but it was really fun to dance and be merry and hang with a crew that had an awesome dynamic together.

today we went for the annual brunch with the boy's extended family. it was at this place called the doctor's house in kleinburg, it's very wasp-y and kind of banquet-flocked floral swagged windows-wedding reception stylee. the food was aight, but i was expecting brunch, and they only do it on sunday, but no one knew this until we sat down and were presented with a menu with a lot of dinner-y type options on it (sweetbread risotto, veal liver, etc). i just don't think i was equipped to handle dinner at 12pm. it was a bit much, especially when we got pretty crunked the night before.

tonight i think we're going to be lazykins and order la chalet suisse. or something equivalent and eat dessert and chips and watch tristan and isolde and re-watch battlestar galactica from the beginning with my roomie's bff, and my old friend from university, who is a big SF fan but hasn't seen it yet. i'm excited FOR her. we're basically holing up in the house and being anti-social and knitting and chiefing it up all night...which is my most favoritest kind of evening in the world. i love being surrounded with people who stimulate me and engage me to the point where i don't need or want to exert myself to get external social interaction. that's why if i had my way, all my friends and family would live within a 2 block radius. a commune of awesomeness.

tshirt ideas for the future:
le monde est un vampir
i'm not drunk
nate dogg and warren g say: regulate

fin.

torito review!

instead of hitting amuse bouche, we decided to go to torito instead. it's a tapas place in kensington that has been getting rave reviews, and we knew we'd be able to eat a lot more for less money, and it'd be a bit more interesting than fine-dining french style fare (for us at the moment). i was really sceptical about the possibility of getting proper tapas in toronto, as i've been really disappointed in the past (at cava, for example). "tapas" in toronto is starting to mean "rip off the consumer with tiny portions of standard dishes" and i was wary to say the least. torito was fantastic though. the two of us ate like pigs for approximately $50/person before booze...it was very affordable and nothing on the menu was more than $11. it gets REALLY busy though, there's usually a line up out the door, but we went really late, and i think either that or going really early will probably guarantee you a seat. we had:

this was very nice, although it wasn't cut to order. it was served with some raisins that had been plumped in a sweet-vaguely alcoholic liquid. the combination of flavours was really pleasant, with the sweetness of the raisins playing off the salty roundness of the serrano...but! everything was a little cold. the serrano was a touch chilly, which didn't bring out the fattiness, and the raisins were ice cold, which didn't pair well with the meat, and the bread was slightly chilly as well. room temperature everything would have made it awesome.

three dollars make you hollah! this was very nice, although again, a touch cold. the queso fresca had a squeaky, clean taste, nicely salted, and it came with "fiesta" which apparently is a combination of pickles and olives and chilies and beans.

grilled sardines (two!) with a fennel, radicchio, mint, parsley salad with lemon and olive oil and romano beans. absolutely delicious! the sardines were grilled perfectly, very juicy with a crispy skin. they were HUGE! and the salad was a great counterpoint, all the flavours (bitter radicchio, grassy parsley, minty mint) coming together and making the whole dish very punchy and refreshing.

these were crab croquettes with parsley aioli. the crab was very soft, and according to that boy: "it kinda tastes like chinese food!", which corresponded to my observation that it tasted vaguely of taro, in an not unpleasant way. my only quibbles are: the outside of the croquettes could have been a little crispier to provide more contrast to the squooshy insides, and that the parsley aioli could have had a touch more acid to act as more of a punctuation.

possibly my favorite dish of the evening, "chilean tripe stew". rich and smoky with smoked paprika, a touch of heat, served with bread (a little cold again, alas!), the tripe was meltingly tender, tasty, chewy, and texturally contrasted with the starchy richness of chickpeas. so awesome!

this was a roasted quail with pomegranate glaze. we were LICKING our plates clean. the pomegranate glaze was tart and sweet and so bright and cut right through the roasted quail. it was served with a mashed acorn squash and the whole dish melded really well, all the components coming together to enhance and support each other. look at the size of that portion! for $11!!!!!!! jamie kennedy can kiss my yellow ass!

this was a braised beef cheek and beef tongue. the beefiness of the cheek was short-rib-esque...richly meaty and tender, and underneath was a slab of braised beef tongue that was so tender, you could cut it with a spoon. i could eat slabs of tongue prepared like that. it was served in a consomme of the braising liquid with a tiny brunoise of mirepoix.

patatas bravdas with chorizo. something we had in spain. delicious! roasted potatoes served in a smoky pulpy tomato sauce with sizzled chunks of chorizo. each bite of chorizo was a flavour explosion: crunching through the skin, you got acidic juices, heat, smokiness, rich fattiness...this dish was superb.

piquillo peppers stuffed with salted cod with tapenade. again, another really traditional tapas that we had in spain. the piquillo peppers were hot and toasty and well, i really do love a good salt cod puree.

dessert! i had chocolate flan. i haven't had a flan in a while, this one was amazing. flan was one of the first desserts i ever made when i was like, 13 or something (stupidly ambitious of me, since it involves making caramel and dealing with burning hot sugar). it's really hard to make flan smooth without getting air bubbles...this one was like velvet, with the toasty, almost burnt sugar flavour and velvety smooth

the boy has never met a cheese course he didn't like, so he had the cabrales with mi flores honey and figs. again served a little too cold out of the fridge, but really classic and delicious.

we had an amazing experience. for the money, dollar for dollar it was a great deal...we were stuffed and i had vicious heartburn, but i would definitely go again. i really like the atmosphere, it's our kind of neighbourhood-y type of resto.

tonight for dinner i'm planning on making paella with chorizo, mussels, shrimp and squid in saffron-brothy rice with peas and roasted pepper sofrito. for dessert, pineapple upside down cake to use up the leftover pineapple from my jam making yesterday. we're supposed to be going out dancing and i'm very excited!

in other news: dear ebay, why must you continually tempt me with your sumptuous wares?!? whyfor!?!

fin.

lurve is in the air!

huzzah! my bff's new lurve is really cool and nice and funny and gives him a hard time! my roomies had gotten me all nervous that maybe she was the kind of wackjob chica who likes to arbitrarily hate on peep's exes...and that maybe she wouldn't be okay with me being the best man at the wedding. phew! i'm safe! how like me to turn new lurve into a narcissistic concern for my own wedding-party status.

in other news...today is a fun day of sociableness. the boy and i both have the whole day off, so we're meeting h at st. lawrence market for a nice, leisurely lunch, then heading home for some puttering (for me that means: making english toffee, knitting my nephew's hat, maybe getting around to that pineapple lemon jam, doing some grocery shopping). then i'm taking the boy out for an early birthday dinner at amuse bouche, which i've heard nothing but fantastic things about. then we're meeting up for drinks with the roomie's friends, whom i really really like (one of them is my exact doppelganger, but blonde and blue eyed...EXACT PERSONALITY DOPPELGANGER). i really love it when good friends of friends integrate well.

the gnocchi turned out really light and pillowy and absolutely delicious. i was really happy with the finished product, the dough came together really easily and was pliable and soft, yet forgiving to work with. there's a little lemon zest in the gnocchi mix that just brightens everything up that extra little bit.

fin.

today i hate everyone

just kidding! i LOVE THE WORLD! because i'm on vacation! last night i couldn't remember who did that song, but i could remember most of the lyrics (FYI: it's the killjoys). notable mention goes to dr. rei who suggested thrushhermit, a band i didn't even know EXISTED.

dinner yesterday was muy fantastico. the chicken was browned in a little butter and olive oil, and then set aside. in the pan, i sauteed a thinly sliced onion, garlic, and cinnamon, cumin, and ground ginger, along with some paprika. i cooked this out, then added some orange juice, chicken stock, and ground almonds. added the chicken back in and braised it in the oven (seasoned with salt and pepper). then you add some dried apricots and mint at the very end, just to plump up the apricots abit. with the eggplant and the couscous it was delicious. i think i'm going to turn this into a slow cooker staple.

tonight i'm going to see if i can make ricotta gnocchi in time. they're a version of gnocchi made without potato...i think they're also referred to as gnudi. the dough can be persnickety to work with...and it has to freeze, so we'll see. yesterday i made a batch of jumbleberry jam. today i might make some lemon-pineapple jam, but i seem to have run out of empty jam jars, so we'll see about that. i'm also going to romni wools with the roomie to get some baby cotton yarn to knit a skull and crossbones baby hat for my little nephew and niece. because, you know, it's nice to have another project or hobby on my plate. ha! i'd also like to tear my garden a new a**hole but i don't know if that's going to happen today. we had a good show last summer, but we didn't break it down in the fall so now everything's looking a little ghetto...and i figure since i have the time and the weather isn't complete poo-tastic.

anyway, dinner tonight should be ricotta gnocchi in a roasted grape tomato and basil sauce. with the leftover apple sour cream pie for dessert since we're having my BFF over with his new lurve. DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN. whatever, she seems to make him in perpetually good spirits, which means he doesn't push my buttons, which means happiness and joy for all involved.

fin.

chronicles from the land of

who DOES this s**t? so i rent the main floor and basement of a house. the upper two levels are being rented by this girl, who recently broke up with her bf. being the neighbourly person that i am, every year, i bake some cookies and make some candies and pack them in a tin, and give them to the neighbours, landlord, etc.

another deal-breaker for me: people who have had glamour shots done (unironically).

last night was wikked fun. my old bff came over and he was on his BEST behaviour. and i have a new bff and she came over too!!!

i really really want an external dvd burner...i hope they don't cost a zillion dollars. an external hard drive wouldn't hurt too. the boy is doing a massive reformat and it's got me hankering to do a computer enema.

tonight for dinner the plan is to have a chicken tagine with dried apricots and mint. served with couscous and steamed carrots and minted grilled eggplant.

fin.

early christmas!

a hodge-podge collection of random thoughts and musings inspired by the weekend (and an unseemly list of all the delicious food i ate)

- nostalgia is an extremely powerful human emotion. i'm not the biggest charlie brown fan, but lemme tells ya, when those kids start singing "hark the herald angels sing" and it gets to the line: "god and sinners reconcile", i get all teary-eyed. i'm not even the biggest christmas fan, and yet, the popular conception of christmas and the holiday season is extremely affecting. i don't know if part of the reason is that it dovetails neatly with the end of the year, and all the introspective - NOSTALGIC! - stock-taking that happens at this time, what with it being winter and all, but the sentiment of family and togetherness and peace and goodwill really tugs at the heartstrings. even all the little baby jesus stuff, moreso in songs than in imagery, because pictures of jesus tend to freak me out...but the "little drummer boy" and some of those old non-secular hymns are so pretty, they even have ME feeling a measure of awe and wonder.
- my niece and nephew are unbearably cute
- superman (the new version) is astoundingly boring
- cranium is one of the most brilliant board games ever
- americans seemingly have no counterpoint to uniquely canadian university-bar drinking songs like "home for a rest" <-- i LOATHE this song.

friday night we went to asian legend and ate like kings. peking duck, braised fatty pork belly, the usual shanghai dimsum offerings. saturday night i cooked, and i made: roast prime rib of beef, jus, mashed potatoes, brussel sprout and carrot horseradish casserole, sweet potato and cheddar gratin, and for dessert, frangipane stuffed poached pear pockets with bourbon caramel and whipped cream. sunday afternoon we went for all you can eat japanese...it was quite the deal...7 of us ate for less than $100, then sunday evening we ordered mamma's pizza so that team upstate new york could hit the road early. gluttonous! i never got back to being hungry once.

tonight we're having guests over...one of whom will be my BFF returning from scotland, where he's been for 4 whole months. i need to make something to cleanse my system so i'm going to be making that three grain (barley, brown rice, bulghur) soup with guajillo and ancho chiles, sliced shitake mushrooms and chopped zucchini and carrots in a tomato-y broth. maybe with grilled cheese sandwiches if people want. since i don't like having company over and not making dessert, we're also going to be having a sour cream apple pie.

i have a bunch of appointments to day (eye doctor, dentist, work at night) so it doesn't really feel like my xmas break has started yet. booooooooooooooo...but tomorrow, leisure awaits!!! (albeit a uniquely mercy version of leisure where i'm doing all kinds of projects and organizing all day).

fin.

superheroes

last night's "celebrations" involved the three of us lying prone on the couch (one of the rules was that we couldn't be vertical for more than five minutes at a time), with heating pads, memory foam pillows, hot water bottles, and scarfing the following: mamma's pizza, tandoori chicken wings (we get them from this place makkah, first time ever but they're freakin' good!), freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, and samosas that one of my co-workers from the library trucks out en masse from mississauga for us. they're the best samosas i've ever had. they're huge, and they're only .40 a pop! what a deal! in this day and age?! when jamie kennedy has the gall to charge $10 for 2 miami ribs?!? it was also an opportunity for me to show off one of my superhero talents. i can take one of the two boner wings (not the mini-drumstick one) and stick it in my mouth vertically and suck all the meat off in one go. it sounds a lot more sexy than it actually is in practice. in practice, i look like a trucker and it leaves people slack-jawed with horror, not lust.

we also watched "arrested development" season 1 disc 1. good god i love that show. brilliance is not even the word.

i ate so much that i came perilously close to heartburn. not too long ago, we were having a discussion with some friends regarding what super-hero talent we would want. mine was to be able to eat whatever i want and never feel full. i've been told that it's not a particularly useful superhero talent...but my response was: "hey, it's my superhero talent" then there's the other question about what existing talent you have that translates well to super-hero-dom. mine would be: organizing people's lives, and naming things. speaking of which, i thought of another name for my future progeny (to join dracula, and sharky): he-man. it's a girl's name, obviously.

the exam yesterday went down as easy as the mountains of food i ate last night.

prints of my friend's pictures are available for purchase at know your artist. if you click on one of the pictures you can see the funny write up i did for him. funny writeups are another of my superhero talents. it's a little-known fact that i introduced the cheeky writing style into rave-party promotion in toronto, through my writeups for splinter productions. i'm quite proud of the work that i did for attila, i'm trying to atone for the work i did for friends of the boy who have a company called dujoo. they barely used any of the stuff i gave them. i think they wanted work of a much more standard and "serious" nature than i'm capable of. it's hard for me to sell something in a "serious" and "standard" way, especially when i'm trying to describe or provide a mission statement for something that hasn't been nailed down yet.

in other news, here's the cover art for the cd that the record label which which i'm peripherally related has just released. i used to be a co-owner, but then i didn't like some of the other people so i dropped out. so basically i get all the perks of running a label (weighing in with marketing, doing the art direction of all the materials, writing press, etc) without the financial obligations and meetings that last too long with stupid people.

the artist is fantastic. kind of atmospheric downtempo stuff, i think he's as good as anyone who's releasing vaguely idm-ish stuff right now. he's from ireland. so if any of you want a super-hype cd of fresh music and want to support a local label started by some wee little kidlets with a dream, hit me up!

tonight is the start of the ho-lee-schiener-doty holiday fest, version 2006. which means a weekend filled with eating lots, movies, pop culture trivia, jokes at each others' expense, booze, cute little gaffers running around, and GUITAR HERO! yes!!! i think we're going to asian legend for dinner up in markham. which means shanghai dimsum. if i ever get "married" i'm going to have the reception at asian legend.

fin.

EAT THIS ,U OF T!

notwithstanding the fact that my body looks totally tubular (in the "shaped like a tube" sense, not the "radical" sense), this is my general state of mind at the moment. on the right you can also see the boy's rhodes keyboard. if you had ever told me 10 years ago that someday i would share a house with a rhodes AND be listening to john coltrane while i made dinner, i would have SCOFFED your ass right off the moon.

i'm planninng on cracking my notes and giving her a look-see right after i eat breakfast and then it's MAXIN' AND RELAXIN' CHILLIN' ALL COOL-fest 2010.

my mum was saying the other night that she thinks i wasted my time at my undergraduate school (trent university) because i just kind of ended up there because my ex-bf now bff was going there. this is partially true (and they also offered me some $$$). however! i would like to defend my alma mater (no idea if this is the correct useage of the term) and say that however i ended up there, it was probably the most brilliant of my idiot savant inklings, ever! trent has a teeny tiny small student body (i think it maxes out at 4000 students), the campus is beautiful, peterborough is a GREAT town, and they only do undergraduate stuff, focusing on tutorial settings (max tutorial size approx. 15 students). which means that i got to be TAUGHT by my profs, and build relationships with them. it's kind of got a rep for being berkeley (california) north. and it's well justified.

at the time that i was there, they were the ONLY school in canada to offer a degree in cultural studies. since cultural studies has become so fashionable, other schools (ie. mcmaster) have popped up, but trent was the only place where all these 2nd generation, frankfurt-school based profs could teach in canada...and finding cultural studies MADE my life. it gave a voice and a language to me to be able to express stuff that had been lying sublimated all my life. there were also profs teaching speculative fiction/science fiction, one of whom, jon fekete, was taught by RAYMOND WILLIAMS himself. raymond williams is the ill na na. one of my favorite theorists, and the grandpapa of cultural studies as we know it. i also got taught by an anarchist prof who told us that it was "optional" to do the readings ("if you're into that sort of thing"), and told us there were "alternatives to buying the texts". he spent his downtime from school living in mexico and following the mexican punk scene. due dates were completely arbitrary, as were most late penalties. LOVE!!! one of my profs was really into post-humanism, and another prof, was one of the leading intellectuals of his time, involved in the toronto version of the student riots of 1969.

i actually have a lot of beef with the way cultural studies programs have a) been conjoined with "communication" programs (ie. you see a lot of "communication and culture" departments) and b) the way that american-style cultural studies has de-politicized the discipline. to me, cultural studies is not a carte-blanche pass to justify your love of popular culture. that's not the end point of the analysis, and deconstructing paris hilton doesn't cut it. the removal of the decidedly marxist-based theoretical framework in what passes for contemporary cultural studies gets me pretty steamed up, because it doesn't do justice to the discipline and the huge body of work and thought behind it.

anyway, the point is, u of t is a boring old dinosaur and trent university pwns its' ass. i also can't stress enough my love for peterborough. one time we were on the way to the bar, it was pretty late at night, and this wacky looking dude strolls up to us and says: "have you ever noticed this town is full of a...malignant madness?" and then walks away. some RANDOM WACKY LOOKING DUDE. probably one of the best moments of my life. my second year we lived in a 5 bedroom house and we gutted the attic and threw raves in there...complete with hand-drawn flyers by yours truly featuring OUR HOME PHONE NUMBER AS THE INFO LINE. hahaha! we even had a "chill-out room" where we played aphex twin and showed anime flicks we rented from ted's videos (5 movies, 5 days, 5 dollars).

tonight for dinner we're having leftover soup (turned out really well...adding the corn and red pepper and carrots at the end of cooking time means they keep some texture so you have crunchy little bites...flavour develops the more you eat the soup too). with a croque monsieur. no dessert because all i ate yesterday was junk upon junk (albeit home-baked junk).

fin.

my exam yesterday

was very strange. i "studied" for maybe an hour on monday evening. i walked into the exam, HAD MY CELL PHONE RING DURING THE EXAM (so embarassing! i even looked at it that morning, and thought, 'nah, i won't turn it off, because no one EVER calls me during the day') and came out feeling that i would have done the exact same having not studied at all. which means that i either did ridiculously well, or that i missed something HUGE.
the point is, i'm taking today the hells OFF! i might crack my notes for tomorrow's exam at some point, but i'm not stressing about it. i'm grateful for the fact that come friday, i get to see my little doozer of a nephew, little ze. i also get to hang with my niece, who's the funniest kid ever. i can't wait! christmas with my family is going to be so much fun! plus we're going to eat ourselves SICK!

today the plan is to make english almond toffee, salted chocolate caramels, gingersnaps, and bake some pecan cookies to give to the neighbours and my landlord, and my library peeps. and bake some pound cake for my stepdad.

tonight's dinner is going to be a butternut squash soup, pureed. then i add in some finely diced, red pepper, carrot and corn, some finely shredded kale, and top it with some pancetta lardons that i've crisped up in a pan. depending on how hungry we are, i might serve it with a croque monsieur sandwich.

boring post peeps, not much a g'wan all up in this shiz.

fin.

jamie kennedy wine bar

is jumping the shark. torito isn't open on mondays, so my mum, the boy and i went to jamie kennedy wine bar for dinner. me and the boy have been there a few times, once just after they had opened, and it was quite good...portions were large for the price you paid, the food was well-executed, service was s**t but it still seemed like a decent deal. this time was meh at best. i don't know if maybe we know a lot more now that we're more seasoned dining veterans, but i also think that jamie has let things slide in the intervening years.

we had:
yukon gold fries as beef brisket poutine
- this dish was okay, but there were literally 20 fries with a 2 " piece of brisket, some jus, some cheddar cheese and some aioli. flavours were good, but for nine dollars?!? i KNOWS what brisket and potatoes cost, captain gougy mcshiesterson
papillotte of black cod with preserved lemon and cured tomatoes
- this dish was quite nice, the preserved lemon added a nice level of pithy acidicness and brightness to what was essentially steamed black cod. there was also some parsley sprinkled on the fish that punched it up. again, the portion was about the size of two of my thumbs put together (and no, i don't have freakishly large thumbs).
charcuterie plate of house-made pate and terrine
- this was one of the stronger dishes. the pate was silky smooth and the terrine was chunky textured and nicely meaty, especially when punched up with a brassy mustard and pickle accoutrement. three VERY slender pieces of walnut bread accompanied the dish...a few more slices of bread would have been nice. I KNOWS WHAT BREAD COSTS TOO.
duck confit with braised red cabbage
- the cabbage was very lovely, braised to silkiness and very round and earthy flavoured. the duck confit was a little dry, except when you got to the skin, which was tasty, but left a little too fatty even for my liking, which is saying alot.
berkshire pork stew with almonds
- probably my favorite dish of the evening. thick, juicy chunks of pork in a vaguely romesco-y almond enriched sauce. no bread, no accompaniment though! we asked for bread to sop up the sauce, and we were rewarded with a single slender slice of, well...toast, that had been grilled on either side and cut on the bias. C'MON DUDE!
grilled honey mustard beef shortibs
- this dish succeeded in making me mad. when you hear shortribs, what do you think? i think of this --->
what we got instead were two less than 1/8" thick, 4" long thin slices of what are generally known as miami ribs...anyone who eats korean bbq will know what i'm talking about. two! paper thin! with neither a taste of honey or mustard to be found! next to a thimble-sized portion of mandolined pickled heritage carrots. okay...you know what? when i go for all you can eat korean bbq, or all you can eat japanese up in markham, i can eat ENOUGH OF THOSE RIBS UNTIL I VOMIT, AND THEY'LL STILL BRING ME MORE. plus all the other stuff you get with the all you can eat. for $14 a person, inluding tea, rice and a scoop of indifferent ice cream for dessert. those two paper thin slices cost $10. that made me furious. it's completely unethical.
banana pecan cake with coconut ice cream
- the cake was dry...like a dry banana bread studded with some pecans and served with a scoop of coconut ice cream. this was okay as far as desserts go, but not terribly impressive by any stretch.

the service there also continues to blow. the boy and i have a great idea to make up our OWN comment cards and leave them at places. we're going to call the company: "yau mo gau chor" (phonetic cantonese for: "you gotta be kidding me" or "did you count that right?" <-- literal translation). i had the idea because restaurants really don't give you much of an opportunity to voice your opinion of the meal, outside of the tip, and i rarely take it out in tip form, cuz i'm just not into that. we'd do it for good things and bad things. but jk wine bar definitely earned itself a y.m.g.c. big thumbs DOWN.

yesterday i dropped off food at the cafe at u of t and then my architecture grad student friend took me to see the first year crits. the project was to design a museum to house a collection of obsolete media. it was really interesting, as part of the project involved a visual mapping of how the architects were going to organize the information and group the collection in some kind of order. it dovetailed really well with my program, or at least with the potential in my program. i also got to see this dude's thesis, where he talks about chris ware and i had some insight into ware's work...again it dovetails neatly with what i tackle in FIS...his thesis touches on 2.0 stuff, and organizing information and public ish. the visual and spatial dynamic of what an information professional does is a really cool concept to me.

it's not like there isn't conceptually interesting and engaging work being done in information studies. i actually find the concept of bibliographic control fascinating. we're supposed to act as the mediaries, representing a work using vocabulary to make the "intellectual content" or "aboutness" of the work transparent to the user. it calls to mind foucault's the archeology of knowledge (which i just went to look for on my bookshelf and couldn't find, so it's stressing me out not a little bit). but the kicker is: WE NEVER TALK ABOUT THIS. we never are told to look behind the curtain. it just IS. like this stuff just fell to information professionals, complete and total out of the sky like the ten commandments. very bizarre.

tonight for dinner we're having a roasted beet, swiss chard, and goat's cheese pasta. i roasted the beets in the oven until they were soft, then grated them on the big holes of a box grater (when you grate beets like this, the peels just come right off). saute some leeks and garlic, sweat them out, add swiss chard. meanwhile, cook you pasta, drain, add goat's cheese, beets, pasta, and pasta cooking water to the swiss chard, with some salt and pepper, and you've got dinner.

fin.

foods!

here are some shots of the cheeses we had on saturday night. on the left and in the foreground is a french triple cream called "pierre robert". triple cream cheeses are one of my favorites. it's like eating butter x 10000000000, but with that lactic, fermented tang of cheese. this one was a particularly fine example. the one on the right is a blue cheese called "le rassembleu", also from france. it's an unpasteurized, raw-milk, organic cheese with some of the roquefort bacteria (which for some reason i want to say is penicillin???) threaded throughout. it's got a semi-firm texture and is nippy and creamy without roquefort's ammonia-y nose and sharp bite.

this is the pear tart i made. i ate TWO slices that were THAT size. eek! the quick puff turned out lovely and got really nice and crispy and brown on the bottom. this version of the dessert is much easier to do, although the proportion of pear is significantly less.

finally, here's a shot of the family posing with the christmas gift we got from our neighbour. so sweet!!! i love having that sense of community with our neighbours and knowing that we look out for each other. we were also laughing hysterically about some drunken joke or other. our guests for dinner kept commenting on the general wide-ranging level of our topics of conversation. we're all fairly curious people, so our big thing is talking stuff out and then going to do internet research and coming back with definitive answers. prior topics have included: sonic booms (what are they?), does salt lower or raise the boiling point of water?, what do hari krishnas worship? where do maggots come from? new topic: what exactly is scar tissue? we're also planning our post-apocalyptic exit strategy so we generally grill people on what kind of skill-sets they have that would be useful in a post-apocalyptic setting.

i forgot to mention how fantastically UN-suave i was at the bar saturday night. there was a STUPENDOUSLY hot guy there (tall, dreads, a real nubian prince), and out of the blue, he asked me to dance with him. i was already currently dancing. and also i a) don't do pair dancing, and b) don't even know how one would pair-dance to hip hop, unless he wants to do the dancehall wind/freakin' thing with me, in which case, i only do that for jokes. so i answered in trademark mercy truthful fashion: "ummm...i'm not even sure HOW to dance to hip hop with someeone else" then we exchanged small chit chat for about 1 second and he made his graceful escape. what a crash and burn. how do i suck at social niceties so bad? i also dropped the ball because i should have referred him to one of my girlfriends...but i totally fumbled the situation. blew it bigtime. it sucks, because i have some absolutely great, deserving, funny, sassy, smart friends who are single of both sexes, and some of them have problems finding the right partner. and some of my girlfriends get kind of down on themselves about it.

i think it's so crazy, the emphasis our culture puts on COUPLEDOM as the be all and end all. also, the view of romantic love is totally warped and wack. i don't really believe in that kind of schmaltzy romantic love, because i think it's as far from real love as you can get. i think that we teach people (and women, especially) to de-value themselves and their other equally important and enriching friendships/relationships if they haven't found the one partner. it's beyond dumb, and it's beyond unrealistic. my relationship isn't about romance...it's about really LIKING the person that i'm with, and also, as a side bonus, wanting to do the boom-boom together as well. if you can amass a crew of like-minded people that love you and support you, then you're pretty effing lucky, and i think it's vicious of our society to denigrate that, and uphold the nuclear family as the ultimate goal. what they should teach you is that love is about endurance and compromise and the small s**ty day-to-day tasks that allow you to function.

HOWEVER, even knowing that, me and the roomie got all squealy watching season 1 of veronica mars, when logan and ronnie first start hooking up. SQUEAL-CITY! so i totally succumb to the ball of mush lurking deep within the spiky ball that is my exterior.

for dinnie tonight my mum is taking us to torito. i've heard nothing but good things about it. hopefully it lives up to the hype! expect a full-food-photo extravaganza tomorrow.

fin.

my committment

level to school right now is nil. at this moment, i'm willing to PAY THEM to let me write both my exams, cold, no studying, tomorrow morning, in half an hour, just so i can have them over with. i don't care if i fail.

last night was fun! although one of the djs disappointed big time. she was some guest dj who couldn't mix a cake, and who kept messing up the levels. which is fine. the problem is when a dj can't mix but then does the fist-pumping-in-the-air high on their own juice thing...then it gets embarassing. plus she played CRAPOLA. pre-hip hop breakbeat-y stuff. i want to hear the HITS, dammit! and she couldn't tell that she was killing the crowd. then an obnoxiously large "breakdancing" circle started. i hate breakdancing circles when they're not physically relative to the space available for non-breakdancers to dance. i also don't like it when they last FOR HOURS and it's the same people going into the circle and doing the same moves (ie. hip hop dance class 101)...then i'm just like, gimme space to DANCE, dammit!

tonight for dinner we're having people over, so i'm making a milk-braised pork loin, braised in a mixture of milk, white wine reduction, and sauteed onions, garlic, sliced fennel and a little tomato paste. we're having it with egg noodles, and braised red cabbage and sauteed zucchini. for dessert, we're having a variation on the dessert i made for my family's christmas, because i want to test my quick puff. instead of individual pear pockets, i made a square of puff pastry, with raised sides, in which i'm going to spread my frangipane, and top with peeled, sliced pears, and bake in the oven. served with whipped cream and bourbon toffee sauce.

fin.

d.u.d.e

was interesting, although i had seen a similar thing in the summer with r, when we stumbled upon a show almost exactly like it on the most auspicious and momentous day of the purchase of my muumuu. the show we went to was part of the queen west outdoor sidewalk arts sale thing, but it seemed like d.u.d.e had a lot of the same exhibitors. a lot of the stuff isn't very my style at the moment, but i can appreciate the intent. i also wasn't feeling the scene very much. lots of disaffected people wearing (DREAD!) "scarves not for warmth" or SNFW. i hate snfw. i hate a lot of ish, but snfw is one of the biggest things on my ginormous list of things that i hate, and there was a "dj" there playing electro-y/indie-esque stuff, until she came upon the (very obvious) choice to mix nellie furtado's man-eater, into hall and oates' maneater. maybe i was hot, but those kinds of events just make me pretty grumpy and increase the hater-ade quotient in me exponentially. it's just not my scene. there's too much dour/ennui, not enough hilariousness.

maybe i'm just projecting my own insecurities about not fitting into my supposed generation.

today should be very very very fun. minus the part where i have to bike to the mennonites in the freezing cold with wet hair. we're having mussels for dinner, steamed in white wine, garlic, shallots, with lots of crusty baguette and some nice french cheeses (something triple cream, something goat's or blue). then we're going to eat these cookies we made thursday night: they're called "midnights" and they're mostly melted chocolate with just enough flour and cocoa to bind them together and make them hold their shape, and we threw in some chopped walnuts and toffee chips. they're quite delicious, and they maintain their integrity for a while after they're baked, even unwrapped. then we're going to a show that the boy is spinning at, whereupon if the mood strikes, i'll hop 'pon the decks for a moment of glory. then we're going to never forgive action to dance out butts off to old skool hip hop.

nachos at sneaky dee's are tasty, but a tad overpriced. i went halfsies which is the only way to do it so that it makes any sense in the universe.

fin.

a walking spoiler alert

that's me. every year, i get all my xmas shopping done way early. the boy's birthday is also right between xmas and new year's, so i get that done early too. then we go through this ritual where i, impatient/spoiler-alert mcgee, pester him to open his presents early because i'm going to near-asplode from excitement. there's a tussle, and then with my winsome (read: unpleasant keening) ways, i eventually get him to give in. this year i JUST COULDN'T RESIST! we're not doing xmas gifts for each other, but his birthday gift was so insane i just HAD to have him have it now.

i got him a memory foam pillow. sure it LOOKS innocuous. but dear lord...it might be the best present i've ever given in the history of life. as soon as you put your head on it, it's like your head is being cradled by jesus himself. all the pressure on your head, your back, your neck (pressure you didn't even REALIZE you HAD) is lifted, and the firm-yet-yielding support makes you feel all aligned and happy. despite my usual predeliction to selfishness, it's really a sign of my **** for the boy, that i'm willing to endure a lifetime of pillow inequity - my neck contorted and squashed into an unnatural position, gazing longingly at the manifestation of my emotions cushioning his head. the next item on the agenda is a memory foam pillow for me, and a MEMORY FOAM PAD FOR THE BED. bliss!!!! another awesome thing to do with the pillow is put it under your back and lie on it...so good. i also got an amazing deal on the pillow. i went to the sleep country on the danforth and they were charging $200+ for one, whereas on my roomie's suggestion, i went to her hippie chiropractor/natural health person and they sold it to me for cost.

so you can see why a gift like that really can't be wasted, waiting for proper days and due process and whatnot. also, in my defense, there's a part II of the bday present extravaganza, which i'm going to hold out on bestowing (until i'm within at least a one week time frame...i promise!)

in other news, last night out of the blue i picked up my records and played b2b with the boy for about an hour and a half. it was fun! i'm actually not that half-bad a dj, given the infrequency with which i dabble. my one talent is that i'm really good at programming sets, and finding tunes that go exceptionally well together. i'm an idiot savant at that. it made me want to start buying records again.

also! past recipients of m and i's annual cd of holiday cheer will be glad to know that this year marks the return of a duet by your favorite bill and ted's impersonators. people who've had to endure my a-tonal caterwauling will ALSO be exceedingly glad to know that the boy has a new program called melodyne, that basically does all kinds of pitch-correcting and will make me sound like christina aguilera. score! apparently i'm not tone-deaf, i just mis-hear stuff all the time. i have "relational" tone...which means that if you have me alone singing to nothing, then i do my thing okay, but put music or someone(thing) else in the right key, and then it's a lot harder for me to match it. lack of practice and performance anxiety living with the music man.

tonight i was supposed to go to this party but my whole crew all decided to bail on each other. there's this girl playing at the party who goes by the name "pr.incest" (that's what's so great about life...you can't MAKE THIS S**T UP!!!) if you go to her myspace it's like the movie se7en as envisioned by a 17 year old goth "cutter". it's pretty hilarious and so, so delusional.

instead i'm working at the library i LOVE and then hanging out with my friend h and her crew. we're going to this DUDE show (arts and crafts by young designers...like an antidote to the one of a kind show) and having dinner at sneaky's dees. which means i get to try the fabled sneaky dee's nachos. they better live up to their rep!

fin.

a recipe for t.b.

that's basically what i'm in for at the library i work at. some nights are just particularly demoralizing: the way the entire system is designed to squash any ambition or sense of initiative you might have; the baleful, bleary eyes of a listerine-soaked rubbie; the tension and delicate ballet of navigating around said rubbie without getting them started on a yelly and occasionally violent rampage; the pervasive smell of months-unwashed bodies in the air; and finally, to put the icing on the cake of misery, lippy teenagers that i want to cuff upside the head. joy.

i really wish they'd grant me the transfer i'm begging for.

in other news, the other day we had a talk about ethics in one of my classes. we were presented with various "scenarios" and the idea was to talk in groups about how we'd respond when presented with a particular situation. the first one went something like this: "a well dressed middle-aged gentleman comes to the desk asking for information on how to make crystal meth. he says he's worried that his son might be involved in such an activity. you notice that he's carrying a bag with lots of cold medication." the responses were varied throughout the class. there were the people like me, who are staunchly for the "freedom" of information, and don't believe in profiling. then there were people who said that if they were librarians working in small communities ravaged by meth, would call the cops, or would base their decision on the age of the person asking.

at one point i raised my hand and asked the class: "how many of you have done crystal meth?" not really expecting an answer. the prof said that in the moment, we're going to be faced with situations where we won't/can't know the full extent of what we're dealing with. which is kind of my problem in the first place and is what prompted my question. our profession is predicated on this idea of "authenticity" "verifying information" and yet, we don't acknowledge our lack of critical engagement when it's a topic that hits close to home, or acknowledge our own prejeudices and biases. i'm not saying that meth labs are a good thing, but i'm kind of saying that you can't penalize people for THINKING about doing something, and that's not our job.

codes of conduct and ethics are just liminal discursive spaces, that provide a buffer for us to rest on, until such time as whatever the issue we're presented with HITS TOO CLOSE TO HOME. then it'll all go out the window. ethics conversations (in this particular discussion anyway) obfuscate the fact that they're enacted and lived through people and the decisions of people. i think this discussion also revealed (through its' invocation) the hysteria and cultural zeitgeist that rests on a surface issue. again, yes, meth labs are a problem, but the greater problem is the economic underpinnings that allow or encourage such systems to proliferate, so what do i do when someone at the library asks me to tell them more about capitalism? a reductive example but hopefully it kind of gets my point across.

pretty messy post. i'm still trying to work through what i want to say about this in a cogent fashion. i was really uncomfortable with what i said in class and it's kind of torturing me. i don't think i adequately represented myself and it's killing me.

dinner tonight is going to be pad see yew, a thai-style rice noodle dish with tofu, bok choy and shrimp in a chinese-influenced sauce with oyster sauce, fish sauce, soy, etc. i think i'm going to make some kind of cookie for dessert: at the moment it's a toss-up between the mona's mother's mother's recipe and a gingersnap. both go equally well with an ice-cold glass of milk.

fin.

groove is in the heart

is one of the best songs ever. and i'm not terribly ashamed to admit it. it's got everything! as soon as i hear it, i want to dance, herbie hancock is on it, and lady miss kier is totally cool. also, it prominently features the slide whistle, one of my favorite instruments, and the only one i (perhaps misguidedly) think i would show some mastery of (aside from the awesome instrument of MY MIND, of course). so catchy!

another song that i'm in love with right now and have been for a while, is tommy james and the shondells "crimson and clover", the extended album cut with the extended wah-y guitar solo. it's got everything! i love songs that sound like late 60s doo-wop spring fling slow dance numbers. and then this one adds in the guitar solo that's all surfy and head trippy AND the tremolo vocal effect at the end. love!!!



i've decided that zooey deschanel is my new style icon. it's been going in that direction for a while, but i decided to make it official. i've also decided that i'm going to continue my muu-muu obsession from last summer by grabbing as many trapeze dresses and vintage muumuus i can. i'm also really into the whole jumper/smock thing (in line with the shape i'm going for). i just wish i wasn't working/riding my bike all the time so that i could wear skirts and tights more often. sigh.

this post is way femme-y. the elk burgers were pretty good. elk tastes like beef times a billion...the meat has a very particular density, giving it a bouncey chewiness that you don't get with our corn fed and lethargic beef. i don't know if a burger is the right medium for it, necessarily.

tonight we're having that tuna noodle casserole from a few posts back. it already looks scrum-delish. i topped it with little cubes of challah tossed in melted butter...it's going to be the crunchiest, goldenest, yummiest casserole crown ever. we're having it with a salad.

fin.

the b.s.-ometre

went into overdrive last night. i cranked out that little bitch of a paper in about an hour. i care not! i'm two final exams and one nearly-finished (though completely un-understood) database assignment away from putting term 1 into the motherf**king ground!

i came home to find the boy rocking a 4-burner extravaganza with noticeable aplomb. everything was timed perfectly, and he had the brilliant (unprompted) idea to puree the mirepoix into the braising liquid reduction to give the sauce some additional body. we've discovered the secret to polenta: you really can't cheat that mother. you have to cook it, over low heat, stirring frequently, for about 45 minutes to an hour, and it totally transforms the dish. the little grains kind of swell and puff up and then turn into a really richly satisfying pablum, that's still got a little resistance to the bite. once you load it up with some butter, parm, and seasoning, you're in carb heaven. heaven, i say! all in all, last night's dinnie was the boom-boom.

one of the pitfalls of trawling the internet for pictures with which to pad your admittedly flimsy and thinly veiled excuse at food porn of a blog, is that you find pictures of tv characters in their civvies. not good. here's another pic of hunky (and morally fibrous!) helo.

i finished reading this book last night. it's really good! it's a collection of stories by famous chefs of their most memorable kitchen/catering disasters. it's really humbling to read, and also to note, on the eve of my embarking on my own catering entrepeneurial venture, that most of the disasters happen while on caterings. however, i LIVE to plan for contingencies. ie. one of my favorite things in the world is packing for a trip. when i visit my sister, i have a sick fascination with re-packing the diaper bag and organizing it to my liking. me and ocd are basically bff.

tonight for dinner we're having elk burgers. they're pretty lean so i think the plan of attack will be to pan fry them in a little fat (okay, maybe a lot fat), and leave 'em a little rare in the middle. we're having this with sweet potato oven fries with chili mayo and steamed broccoli.

fin.

i've found religion

and my deity is s'mores pie. as per the usual, in my pms-fueled orgiastic need for food that is bad for me (and vast quantities at that), i gorged at breakfast, felt sick, and then the moment my stomach returned to the slightest semblance of it's old self, i spear-headed a charge to order mama's pizza. which i scarfed with a can of root beer and TWO (!!!!!) slices of s'mores pie. ai-ya. my poor arteries.

i've vowed that i got to get my life (read: diet) back on track. i always make these grandiose statements and then realize that, all things considered, my diet is pretty damned awesome, considering i cook from scratch with healthy ingredients 98% of the time. i guess i'm just a fan of the grandiose (quelle surprise)

we're all caught up in battlestar. talk about bittersweet. i've got the xmas holidays coming up and no television prospects for marathoning...although i've heard some really good things about that show, heroes. in other news: the coupling of starbuck and lee adama stresses me out. because a) i don't really believe that starbuck swings that way. and b) i don't really believe that lee adama swings that way. there's something very queer as folk about him. i just totally don't buy it. anyway, the character i get all stupidly drooly about is helo. humina humina. plus, he's made of strong moral fibre. i go for that in a big way. i hate it when love stories on shows just don't make no sense. it really disrupts my suspension of disbelief.

i'm also vaguely stressed out that there wasn't a new episode of top chef for me to source out. did they take a week off? strangely, i'm NOT all that stressed out that i've left myself approximately four hours today to START and finish my assignment due tomorrow that's worth 20-25% of my mark. hahaha. it's for intro to bibliographic control. i'm not stressing because i kinda like how a) cataloguing is like detective work b) all the answers are in the handbooks they give you, it's just a matter of how carefully you read and follow the instructions. the rest is about 90% b.s. and filler. my forte.

for dinner tonight i'm making braised shortribs. i got them from the mennonites. dried them off, seasoned with salt and pepper and seared them really well in a hot pan. then i set them aside, and sauteed my mirepoix (1" chunks of onions, celery and carrots) in the remaining fat. reduced some porter ale and deglazed the pan, then put everything together in the slow cooker. we're going to have this with polenta, sauteed mushrooms, and green beans with lemon vinaigrette. the boy is in charge of the polenta...i'm a little worried but i'm sure he'll be fine. the concern is that he'll underestimate the amount of babysitting a proper polenta needs.

in the interests of honesty, i'll probably follow it up with some s'mores pie.

fin.

sunday sunday sunday

last night i went off the rails and ordered popeye's fried chicken (3 pieces, dark meat, spicy, with fries, and a side of mashed po' and gravy). i did a LOT of cooking during the day and i was exhausted and didn't want so much as to see another pan. here's what i made:
- raisin studded hermit bars to sell at the cafe
- almond coconut toffee bars to sell at the cafe
- coconut banana bread to sell at the cafe
- finished the dessert for my family's christmas.
which is a pretty labour-intensive undertaking i had to spread out over three weekends. it involves peeling forelli pears, and then using a melon baller to tunnel up from the butt end and take out the seeds, leaving a little space for stuffing. then i peel them and poach them in sweetened white wine flavoured with aromatics. then i make puff pastry. then i make frangipane. i take the pears, stuff the space with frangipane, then enclose each one in a little square of puff pastry, pulling them up and pinching along the seams so you have little pear pockets. the good thing about the dessert is that while it is intensive to make, it's easy to serve. they can be frozen, and then they get pre-baked (glazed with egg wash and demerrera sugar first) and reheated. i'm serving it with a bourbon toffee sauce and whipped cream.

i also made last night's dessert, which was a complete turnaround from the original plan for the cookies. i made a s'mores pie (from november's gourmet magazine). so i make a graham cracker crust, and par-bake it briefly. then i made a bittersweet chocolate ganache, using 70% chocolate from sharffen berger chocolate, my favorite brand available retail. my sister lovingly hauls it up from the states for me, because i can get it here, but they're usually $20.00/bar. each bar is 9 oz. and you have to search them out from speciality shops. anyway, i enriched the ganache with an egg, and you bake it in the oven. then you make homemade marshmallow topping, which is gooey and soft. spread that on the pie, throw it in the fridge. before serving, i torched it with my blowtorch so that it got all crackly and crispy on top. the gourmet recipe recommends putting it under the broiler, but their's emerged almost blackened, so the torch was the way to go. plus you have a lot more control with the torch so you don't have to worry about your crust burning. those are my extremely amateurish food photography shots of the finished (but partially consumed) product for your edification. it was overall, very nice. using a high percentage bittersweet chocolate cuts the sweetness of the dish (it isn't too sweet at all), and there's a lot of textural interest, plus the chocolate is very prominent, so it's better to use a high quality one. i think i might tinker with the ganache filling though. to make it a little less firm and pudding-like, and more fudgy and dense. i don't know how i'd do it (maybe flour? ) but it's definitely worth pursuing.

we had a visit from the boy's friend who lives in the 'hood, and the roomie came back from her bender (she's off call until the end of december...take THAT pagers and pregnant women!) and we watched battlestar galactica. so nice!

have i mentioned yet that i can't wait for term to be over??? cuz i can't. i really really can't.

for dinner tonight i'm tempted to make kraft dinner and hot dogs (we have these knackers in the freezer from the mennonites, and my bbq isn't buried under snow quite yet) or some of the elk burgers i have in the freezer. we still have to clean out the freezer backlog.

dessert will be more of the s'mores pie. and for breakfast i'm meeting some former work friends at mel's montreal delicatessen. i'm going to eat the big baby, which consists of three eggs, two kinds of meat, toast, hashbrowns (i love the way they do their hashbrowns because they make them like latkes...shredded and then crisped on a flattop), with a pancake. it's huge, but very filling and yummy. they also have montreal smoked meat as one of your breakfast side options. which is very nice. however, i dock them "authentic deli" points because they never ask how you want your meat (lean, medium-fatty, fatty fatty), which is one of the signposts of real-deal deli bizness. pms makes me crave meat like a mofo. as does the prospect of not caring about school anymore and just wanting shiz to be ovah.

fin.