i should really know better

by now. i'm an old broad. i've been around a few blocks in my day. WHY DO I STILL EXPECT GEORGE LUCAS AND EL SPIELBERGO TO PRODUCE ANYTHING WORTH WATCHING?!???!! "indiana jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull" is boring to the max. like, i fell asleep and had to wake up and whisper to the dotytron, "where are they?" boring. like, totally brutal, not funny, snoozefest 2010. crappy cgi, stuff that doesn't make sense, stilted dialogue and well-worn, tired, attempts at humour. i hate george lucas. i've been a pretty vociferous spielbergo hater in the past, but last night's waste of $11 and change was the final nail in the coffin.

it was kind of worth it to go to a theatre last night to see young girls everywhere succumbing to the marketing zeitgeist and going apes**t for the "sex and the city" movie. i'm talking like multiple lineups, the washroom packed with girls who were practically teething when the series first started with makeup kits the size of tackle boxes getting done up and creating a screeching, keening cacophony - the air in the varsity theatre last night practically oscillated with pubescent hormones and muddled ideas of femininity. seriously. it was like aritizia barfed all over toronto. hoardes of young girls dressing like a reasonable hand-drawn fascimile of what life in your 30s is *supposed* to be like, minus the styling of patricia field. i saw multiple infractions. crimes against the following:

- bubble skirts
- footless tights
- ballet flats
- too much makeup
- tunics

it makes my staunch feminist heart die a little inside.

anyway, in other news (weird and possibly contradictory topic change alert) the BEST new store opened up on the danforth for clothes. THE BEST! everything is so well-edited and has the sweetest, softest, girlish but modern patterns and lines. it's like it was made for me. dresses with hippie-ish yoking and reigned-in tent shapes, shirt dresses, everything in the softest cotton and t-shirt material, patterned skirts in jewel tones. love!!!!!

in other other news, dinner last night was tasty. C made us zucchini fritters served with sour cream, and broiled eggplant steaks topped with a mix of black olive, chickpeas, feta, roasted pepper, in this balsamic/soy/olive oil sauce. it was really tasty.

i'm feeling pangs of remorse from last night because of poor social behaviour. me, bwong, dr. rei and to a lesser extent the dotytron, engaged in some poor manners by being too hamcamp klik-y and not inclusive enough and i feel badly. granted, we share a different sensibility and frame of reference from our hosts, but i felt like we could have been a little more sensitive. especially because he female portion of that couple comes from a very different background (not like, she's from another country or something, but more like she didn't grow up listening to jungle etc.)

another story from the dotytron's teaching exploits. he told me one day that one of his students had (a little girl, around 8 or so) seemed really withdrawn and sad in class, and wasn't being responsive to talking about. he tried everything, asking gently, seeing if she would tell a friend and the friend would tell the dotytron, and finally, after much coaxing, she said that she was worried about her aunt because her aunt was in the hospital. the dotytron reassured her and told her that it's okay to feel sad and worried, but that her aunt was in good care. the little girl replied that she was really scared because her aunt needed 2 blood transfusions and she didn't know what was going on. the dotytron asked her if she knew what was wrong with her aunt. she said she didn't know.

the following week, she's in much better spirits and comes running up to the dotytron and exclaims, "i found out what's wrong with my aunt!"

dotytron: "what is it"

...wait for it...




....


little girl: "she has menopause!"

i think the dotytron almost passed out with suppressed laughter. the kid must have misunderstood what was happening at the hospital. so funny!

tonight we're having A & J over for dinner. yay! i'm making goat cheese, olive tapenade and roasted pepper panini with a bean salad. also roasted garlic eggplant dip with pita chips, olives, and some kind of rhubarb dessert. i'm thinking a strawberry rhubarb crisp with a brown butter streusel topping. or maybe that same filling but in tart form. we'll see. served with whipped cream.

fin.

the kind of friends you want to have around

are the kind that will drive back cupcakes from a noted bakery in milton, so that you can share a cupcake degustation. my food-obsessed friend J, who i know because we're similarly gastronomically inclined and post on the same rave and rave-remnant themed messageboard, called me out of the blue and stopped by with cupcakes from flourgirls, a noted bakery (he heard of them through chowhound) in milton, of all places. unlike what passes for cupcakes at the cupcake shoppe at yonge and eglinton, flourgirls uses real (cooked) buttercream and taste of fresh ingredients and quality flour and butter.

first, we had b.c. spot prawns that i cooked up in some bacon fat, beer, my old supervisor's chilies, chili flakes, and lots of garlic...with crusty ace baguette for mopping. the bacon that produced the rendered fat was crisped and put into a salad of red leaf lettuce, tomatoes, and avocados, held together with my caesar dressing.

then we got into cupcakes. there were vanilla and chocolate cake based ones, with different flavours of buttercream...banana, dulce de leche, chocolate, vanilla, maple. they were delicious. the buttercream was rich and moussey and velvety soft and smooth with subtle flavour. the cake had a nice fine crumb and maintained its' moisture nicely. all in all, they were delicious. side by side, those ARE the best cupcakes i've had in the GTA...except for babycake cupcakes' red velvet, which is extraordinary because they HAVE red velvet flavour and a decent cream cheese frosting. if babycake cupcakes didn't have that going for it, they'd be toast. we did a round robin tasting, cutting each cupcake into three (i saved a third of each one for the dotytron) and taking a bite out of each one, going around the circle twice. it was a good thing we did. the first time, we couldn't taste the banana flavour in the chocolate banana one...the second time around, compared to the chocolate flavour of the previous cupcake, the banana buttercream shined through.

i feel like a chubby chicken again, but that's probably because i'm all pmsy (like clockwork). tomorrow we're getting the dotytron's suit fitted for the last time, picking up a new shirt and tie, possibly, then having dinner at my ex bf's (who has moved/mooched his way into his gf's place) for dinner and then going to see "indiana jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull" *cue john williams*. dr. rei and bwong are coming too! my offering is a strawberry rhubarb lattice pie...and i'll probably grab some vanilla ice cream to go with.

it's so late already! tonight i'm waiting for the dotytron to come home from work and then we're going to smush into bed and watch back to back episodes of "top chef: chicago" top chef is pissing me off this season because they're OBVIOUSLY trying to make a girl win. which is fine. there have been EXTREMELY talented women in previous seasons of the show. this season, not so much. but they keep manipulating stuff to make it happen and it's making me bonkers. the calibre of the cooks this season aren't as high...there were two that stood out from the get go (dale and blais) who are really talented, but the show keeps focusing on the women, who most assuredly are mediocre at best. it's frustrating when you can see the strings being pulled so blatantly. i'm very unimpressed. actually, maybe i'm unimpressed enough to go to bravo tv and post on the messageboards about the show there. and this year, so many of the cooks came from restaurants i'd never heard of (last season, "top chef miami" featured chefs that had worked at guy savoy in las vegas and there were exec chefs of a lot of name places)...this season, they're pulling people from san francisco and there are a lot of TERRIBLE cooks who stuck around for a hella long time, because there WERE so many bad cooks. i'm VERY unimpressed with the show this season. it's bogus. let a woman win on her own merit!

bogus!!!!

fin.

viva!

dinner at mexitaco was tight. but first things first, THIS is how we do staff parties, friends. as predicted, my old supervisor did indeed, go buck. uncle buck, if you will. she made these goat cheese sandwiches, these tortilla pinwheel things (with 2 different kinds of fillings), three different kinds of dips, pickled artichoke and tomato salsa, some saffron shrimp stuff, smoked salmon, my dip and then for sweets: cannolis, english toffee, fudge, my cookies, a fruit platter, dominion chocolate cake (which isn't my favorite. i prefer the "white" cake. with the "white" frosting. only in grocery store cake world does "white" constitute a legitimate and discrete flavour), vegan carrot cake from fresh. it was insane. what was ALSO insane, as K pointed out, was how my old supervisor's "VAY-gan" pronunciation seems to have caught on like wildfire.

then i met up with my friend S from library school, who is moving back to vancouver somewhat imminently (like, on saturday) on my lunch break. then met up with dr. rei and had dinner with her and bwong and JK at mexitaco. ultimately, i'm still not the biggest fan of pure mexican tacos. too dry, guy! me and bwong shared this platter with a bunch of different tacos on it: some with pork and pineapple, beef, mexican chorizo, and this juicy pork. as was my experience at rebozos and el trompo, everything BUT the juicy pork was hella dry. it was still tasty. dr. rei got something that spelled out mexico in sour cream, which was kind of awesome in and of itself. for dessert, we got deep fried ice cream (always a treat), flan (which was terrible...like biting through a school eraser...thick, gummy, and not eggy enough...definitely adulterated with some kind of starch), and my favorite, bunuelos, which was a deep fried flour tortilla cut into wedges, topped with cajeta (caramelized goat's milk...mexico's answer to dulce de leche), and whipped cream.

consequently, i now feel like a piggie of the highest order. further consequently, i was discussing the bruno latour lecture with dr. rei and i was basically on the brink of tears from theoretical inspiration.

here is the summary of his major points:

1) the same tools now trace facts and opinion
2) the same tools allow one to inhabit the intermediary steps between individual and aggregate...both can exist in a cartographic simultaneity
3) virtual witnessing so efficient in the birth of nature...science is expanded to the simulation of all matters of concern. we have the sufficient tools to distinguish what is more partisan than the other
4) for the first time, the data scapes of social scenes begin to catch up with those of natural ones.

when i was described points 1 and 2 for dr. rei, i used the example latour gave of this team at MIT who are doing this topography of hurricane katrina victims and plotting their experiences visually in a way that simultaneously gives you access to aggregate data and their individual experiences. she said that those people might have been at a conference she attended. it's really exciting because this ability to map information and provided multiple points of discrete and collective representation and access collapses that representational entropy i've talked about before. AND, as latour says, for the first time, we can use the tools of empiricism to analyze qualitative information. it bridges the divide between qualitative and quantitative.

basically, when i was talking about it with dr. rei, i got so excited i broke out in goosebumps. conceptually, i'm so enthralled, excited, and invigorated by this. it makes me want to explode, and conversely, hole up in a cave (more ideally, the cottage) with a pile of books and mull it through.

here are my half-assed notes:

- object-oriented question raised in relation to "pragmata" (that is, practice)
- is there a political aesthetics of matters of fact?
- matters of fact versus matters of concern
- what other techniques of representation surround matters of concenr [latour is interested in]
- the nostalgic definition of objectivity suggests that by politicizing science we have polluted science [this is a retrograde belief system, according to latour]
- not science, but a hidden political epistemology
- heidegger: "gigenstand" vs. "ding" [i have to look this up]
- nature is a technique of representation
- the market is a quasi-parliament
- whitehead, alfred north. "the concept of nature"
- ian hacking
- rendering recalcitrance is what empiricism is based on
- starting to change what we mean by taking a position within a controversy
- assemble representative space for controversies
- controversy is the entire spectrum, of which assent and dissent are parts (this is more in line with how europeans use the word "controversy" whereas north americans tend to use it in a pejorative sense)
- link between scientific, artistic, political representation
- is wikipedia written in the first or third person?
- we panic because of the movement from one political epistemology to another
- instead of situating politics as the nightmare why not include politics as a technique.
- "cosmopoliticis" - cosmos to remind us that politics is not just about humans, politics to remind us that the cosmos is not just about nature
- can we move to a second degree of objectivity by using new techniques of information?
- instead of objectivity, use the word "design"
- no need to make distinction between aggregate data and individual
- "quali-quantitative" same tool will allow you to follow simultaneously fact and opinion, "rumours" can be followed with the same precision (due to the power of the tools --> collapses "truth" and "rumour") this has HUGE ramifications for our understanding of objectivity
- "the object is what makes us different"
- matters of fact aren't meant to be generalized, matters of concern CAN be generalized because we are in it
- durkheim (and the follow through of durkheimian thought) is due to bad statistics (!!!!! lol!)
- allow us to translate the space of dissent into an empirical data set.
- turning to the web for a "source" --> ramifications for objectivity in the sense that you simultaneously produce and construct and iterate an objectivity.
- peter slaterdijk's "crystal palace" (as metaphor)...the biosphere --> what it means to be "in" the world, yet has to be artificially supported and encased
- Q: what does it mean to reclaim the world? A: it means to create artificial, breathable, scale size environments/assemblies (YES! i agree...praxis!!!).

i'm always so thrilled to have my belief systems validated by people i consider to be heavy thinkers...and it's surprising how often it comes down to the same thing - that is, small scale changes based on living your praxis.

fin.

unkinked

i treated myself to a massage today, courtesy of the best massager in toronto, so now i'm as limpid and droopy as a dew-filled buttercup. she went to town on my back and butt and calves...got right into those knotted ropes with her elbows and elicited no small number of spastic twitches as she tenderized my flesh. it was lovely. the only problem is that i really really really want to be friends with her but she insists on maintaining the professional nature of our relationship...even though she sent me on my way with a lovely cupcake. she's so cool! and we're basically the same person! type A, food obsessed, organized, addicted to the same tv...it breaks my heart we can't be friends.

i'm experimenting with the closeup feature on the new camera. i don't get most food bloggers and the slavering sycophants they attract. most of the food is pretty standard, just gussied up with photoshop or slr-ing or extreme closeups. last night's dinner is first, featuring these thin links of veal sausage the italian butchers up the street from me make. it was delicious...the veal sausage packed a surprisingly old-beef-like wallop of meaty substance.

it's completely vegan-friendly (the coworker is a vegan, which my old supervisor endearingly pronounces "VAY-gan").

we had a visit from the vet tonight. after the debacle that was last year (time-line it - basically smudge was a rudebwoy and tore the vet's office apart), i decided to revert back to having a vet that does house calls. our old mobile vet no longer does visits to toronto, which is a crying shame, because we ADORED her. she was chummy and great with cats and loved cooking and would actually remember stuff about our lives and our cats. this new lady who showed up was kind of shadesball. she wouldn't take a cheque (cash only!) and charges an $85 fee just to show up to your house, IN ADDITION to the exam costs. she was also pretty brusque and cursory. i wasn't a fan. i'm going to keep shopping around. the good news is that she confirmed my worst fears that the clinic i took smudge to last year was trying to hose me to get his teeth cleaned. she said his teeth were actually fine. humph. i hate it when people try to hose me.

tonight's dinner was a quickie job - oven roasted asparagus with toasted and buttered ace bakery whole wheat baguette with poached eggs and shaved pecorino. i put the boar sausage (smuggled from ital-towns) onto the plate because i thought i might want it, but didn't end up eating it in the end.

now i'm going to take a quickie hot shower to leech out some of the lactic acid released by the manipulations of my masseuse. here are some shots of the garden to keep you occupied. you can also espy the jerry-rigged trellis i've made out of sisal, and old ladder, and bamboo stakes. it's to support our sweet peas.
something tells me it's not going to work as i did a half assed job at best. what the hell do i know about making stuff for other stuff to climb on? huh? i'll tell you what: absolutely jacks**t. i'm going to spend the rest of the evening (what's left of it - where does the time go?!?) reading on the couch to the lulling ambiance of street noises. i love the sounds of traffic and city noises...i find it really soothing. the eerie stillness of the country would really eff with my ability to sleep if the fresh air didn't knock me out first.

fin.

bam bam

okay, so my new thing is worrying about whether or not i'm too old to be doing gunshots and hands-in-the-air, and pounding on ceilings and walls, and calling for rewinds and doing my "brrrrrrrup brrrrrrrrrup" and "blap! blap!" anymore. i kinda don't know how to NOT do it when i'm feeling hype or when the spirit takes me. at the kanye show, i was going buck in that 'ardcore junglist kind of way (and i've been listening to a lot of old mixes lately) and these tit-faced 12 year old girls in front of us kept turning around and giving me the brace-face, perpetually embarassed, "OHMYGAWD" look. eeks! i just don't want to be that 40 year old lady in a miniskirt.

according to the dotytron, i get a free pass because i came up through jungle culture so it's real for me. it would be different if his mom was going off and doing that. although M told this story on saturday of how one of her worst bratty-awkward-teenage kid moments was when she told her mom to stop doing the macarena at a wedding and was all like, "that's enough now." my kid is totally going to be "that's enough now" when i do the gunshots at the kindergarten recital, or when i show up at PTA meetings with home-made silk-screened shirts that say: "*insert principal's name* is bogus".

i totally overexerted myself AGAIN this weekend. saturday i spent the majority of the day bent over at a 90 degree angle tending to the garden and hauling bags of mulch around like a regular, old, tough guy. i may or may not have over-mulched...but the garden is looking foine...i'll post pics of it tomorrow. mulch makes everything look so tidy! i also reorganized a bunch of stuff and potted a bunch of annuals. i think it looks pretty nice and i love being out there and having the space to work with. it's such a luxury. then yesterday i went for a jog, came back, stretched, cleaned house like a mofo (there are little to no discernible effects of my house-cleaning efforts), played the game of my life in dodgeball, and then came home. it was epic. on saturday night, as always happens when i watch "stomp the yard", i got all inspired and tried to crump and probably slipped about 15 different discs in my back and herniated 10 other things. it's not pretty. but i want to try! i might take a hip hop dance class this summer. heehee!

last night was hilares. the dotytron busted out this impression of lauryn hill guesting on a nas track which involves the following: four different baby bjorns strapped around her torso, strumming a guitar IN FRONT of the baby bjorns, having a tilted to the side floppy knit cap, a long denim patchwork jacket, and the clincher, a tattoo of erykah badu on her forehead, striding on stage saying, "this is what i've been up to, y'all!" dr. rei and i literally almost peed our pants. we also watched the premiere of "so you think you can dance" which also resulted in a bit where ian, in the voice of the head judge, nigel, accuses a contestant (that they tried to make feel bad for being fat) of sounding like he's "breathing through a cheeseburger" which is making me LOL as i type the words. hilarious. the dotytron's superhero talent is making up dialogue during television shows/movies that's beyond funny. i also got to rant about how spoken word is boring and lame and always about the POLICE.

there's been a shortage of food pic shots so here it is, all at once. the top pics are of the mini lamb patties i made last monday, which we had with my version of the persian salad and leftover cucumber yoghurt dr. rei made, and bulgarian feta, which we're all in love with now. then i didn't cook again til saturday. those are the little corn arepas and black bean chili with my corn chips and pineapple-filled, pistachio-sugar dusted, fried wontons.

yesterday i made stuffed artichokes with a spaghetti tossed with chilies, lemon, red onions and pecorino. really simple and tasty and fresh, and a salad of endive, radicchio, canellini beans with red wine vinegar and olive oil. again, really simple and fresh tasting. i changed the shape on the wontons and they turned out even better this way and were easier to manipulate in the fryer. they're SO SO SO good. you can eat 10 in a row without even noticing it.

today i've got to go home and prep stuff for some dude's retirement party at work on wednesday. for the retirement party, i'm thinking of making eggplant dip with pita chips and either more of the wontons or salted white chocolate oatmeal cookies. savoury and sweet, can't be beat! i'm making a sausage, fennel, and broccoli pasta with a salad for dinner.

fin.

lawd a mercy

yesterday was fun...the lecture was invigorating, semi-inspiring, and thought provoking, although i was a trifle disappointed with how uncool bruno latour looked. very uncool. like, mint-olive green suit uncool. why can't theorists and philosophers look like foucault anymore? even derrida looked effortlessly french in that documentary about him, all sweaters with collared shirts underneath. i scribbled down notes on the only paper i had on me (this week's issue of eye weekly), so i'll have to comb through them and do some deciphering before i recapitulate his talk for you, my devoted readers.

then i met up with my moms and littlest bro for dinner, where we talked frankly and openly and sampled widely from torito's never-changing menu. i like the consistency...but please! wouldn't you, as a chef, want to throw a new special or something on there...just once? it was very tasty though and everything is well prepared and the price is right, so my complaints are churlish at best.

bwong showed up and we went to thymeless. the first dj (who played for the bulk of the time we were there) BLEW. random, haphazard track selection and deplorable mixing skills for even a reggae dj. the problem was he would try to prolong the misery instead of mercifully anaesthetizing the boots-in-the-dryer with a well-time cut to the new tune. at that point, we were nearing the end of our ropes (i had been up and about since 7am), but the last few tunes got us up our of our (grungy) seats and onto the dancefloor, and marcus showed up and laid down the business. it was like a "best of" ragga jungle in reggae/dancehall form and it was awesome to hear the blessed sounds of someone who knows what they're doing behind the decks. it was also awesome seeing bwong get down. hands in the air, getting low, it was nice to dance for a change. we called it a night fairly early and headed home.

i've already done a few errands already today (one of which ended up with me buying an extremely discounted, wine-coloured, flirty betsey johnson party dress for my grandparent's diamond anniversary party). can i help it if betsey johnson makes the most beguiling party dresses a girl's heart could pine for? it was over 60% off!!! now i'm off to futz around the garden before coming back in and preparing dinner for our friends H & J and their baby D, and friend M who is also coming over. fun!!!!!

i'm making that black bean chili with those corn cakes that's my go-to vegan meal. for dessert, i'm making crispy, deep-fried wontons filled with a vanilla-infused sauteed pineapple mixture, tossed in pistachio sugar. should be tasty! i'm pumped!

fin.

F**K KEEPIN' IT REAL.

that's a choice quote from dr. rei in the midst of the mayhem, wonder, and spectacle that was kanye west's "glow in the dark" tour last night. holy eff, mofos. holy effin' eff.

doors opened at 5:30pm and of course, thanks to adam giambioneaione and his crappy streetcar vision for toronto, we got there late, of course (after yamming a delicious and long-overdue halibut burrito from burrito boyz). so, because of adam gyambeonee >and his crumbling ttc issues, everyone got there late, the show started late, so lupe only got to perform 3 (that's right, THREE!) songs, which we heard from outside the venue, standing in line while a bunch of pimply-faced entitled w.p.'s with no decency, grace, or tenderness butted in front like the jackasses they are.

can i just say that there were loads of hottie asian guys up inside the ride? and how much it warms the cockles of my heart that thanks to the wonders of urban and hip hop culture, asian boys are finally claiming their justified position as legitimate hotness? this is significant, because if this was the 80s, no one would have EVER pegged asian guys to come out on top of the hot game. i was as guilty of that as any kid enculturated in popular culture and living in the (at that point) predominantly white burbs. take THAT, long duck dong! take that john hughes! take that 80s teen flicks that warped a generation of women in favour of blaines over duckys and go nowhere losers with no prospects like john cusack in "say anything"!

all that aside, we got in, met up with my bros and proceeded to have the TIME OF OUR LIVES. actually, that's not true. n.e.r.d. blew the big one. they basically sound like korn (that's not a good thing). during the first few songs of the set, they have a dancer on stage, in a yellow hoodie with a ball cap on, who's crumping like C.R.A.Z.Y. insane, sick, pumped up dance moves. like you DUN KNOW. and the camera zooms in on him, he takes off the hood and lifts up the cap, and it's CHRIS MOTHERF**KING BROWN. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! me and my bros basically lost it, because we love "stomp the yard" and we love chris brown because we're human. i LOVE CHRIS BROWN!

then some kids jumped on stage and danced with pharrell. one of the kids ended up overstaying his welcome and had to be escorted by security off the stage. THAT'S why i never get up on stage (amongst other reasons related to oh, i don't know...the fact that i'm not that good of a dancer and don't like people staring at me). but really, there's no way to gracefully get off a stage, without looking like you're getting pwned, even if it's YOUR choice to exit. it's best to just not let yourself get into that situation. then pharrell called all these girls up on stage and told them they could stay if they were "hot" and "looked sexy". this is when things got kind of akon-y and uncomfortable, because the girls were like, 12 and they were doing the dutty wind and bar-top slut-bot dance routine, and pharrell was kind of being a pig and grinding with them and getting his face down by their butts and stuff. it was gross.

then ri ri came on and KILLED IT. killed it! i was on the fence before but i'm officially a fan. her voice sounds true, she's not pitchy, no noticeable support from a pumped up backing vocal track. she did this medley where she sang a bunch of reggae riddims, segued into m.i.a's "paper planes" and ended with lauryn hill's "doo wop (that thing)". siiiiiiiiiiiiiiick!!! we (aka my bros and myself) were on the edge of our seats thinking that during the finale, "umbrella" (of course!) that chris brown would come out and do his "cinderella" remix. I LOVE CHRIS BROWN!!!! but he didn't...but hearing "umbrella" live made me fall in love with the track way more than i did last summer, so i've been listening to it on repeat. according to dr. rei (as we sang along [as best we could] with our hands in the air): "this song is tight. you can't front this s**t" ahahahaha. I LOVE CHRIS BROWN!!! AND I LOVE CHRIS BROWN AND RI RI TOGETHER!!!!

then kanye's peeps spent forever setting up (he went on half an hour late). but boy oh boy was it WORTH IT. this is probably the best value for my ticket i've ever gotten. i mean, the amount of show that i got for $75 was insane. and i got to see four acts. the stage consists of a raised square platform that can ascend and descend. and this undulating, landscape that can look like either the surface of the moon, a planet, or grass. then there's a huge screen at the back and a smaller screen that rises and falls, and these weird lit-up spherical things. the "story" is that kanye crashes on a strange planet and has to get home again. the programming of the set was insane...starting from "good morning" and ending with the "touch the sky" encore. so sick! the screens were state of the art...and would project lava, a star field, the moon, clouds streaming across a crimson sky, and it looked SICK. even from where we were (and incidentally, the molson amphitheatre is really well set up for large shows...great screens, great sound, great view from most angles) there was also slick lighting, coloured flames, and smoke machine use. it was like a freakin' theatre production. multimedia sensory overload. the quality of the screens was fantastic...it was like some real-deal national geographic type s**t right there.

midway through the show, kanye does a performance of "hey mama" (that my friend G at work told me he rewrote after his mom's death) and then plays JOURNEY'S "don't stop believin'" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! journey and kanye!!!!! amazing! it was really moving and sweet, actually.

he was the only person on stage throughout the whole performance and he BROUGHT IT. as dr. rei oh-so-sagely said, "f**k keeping it real!" this was a real show. and kanye knows it too. he did this whole very typical kanye speech at the end where he talks about how he can come off as cocky and he knows he talks s**t, but it's because he has so much love and he's up there, when other people are saying that hip hop shows can't be live and showing people how it can be done. and how it's for us, etc. then he said, "you never know, the next president of our country could be here" and then he stopped himself and said, "wait, that made no sense, i'm not in america...i'm making this stuff up on the fly here" it was really funny. here's a review from "the seattle times": "It was a magnificent, thrilling, uplifting, sensory experience, unlike any other pop concert before it. West has rethought the whole idea of live performance, from the staging to the lighting to the overall message." so true. I LOVE CHRIS BROWN!

here's some youtube footage. sick. one of the best concerts i've ever been to. it was so worth it seeing my littlest bro with the biggest smile on his face the whole time, singing all the lyrics...and to have me, dr. rei and my bros with our hands up in the air at the same time. one love.





the best part was telling people at work today. K was nonplussed, but G totally welled up and got all goosebumpy when i told her chris brown was there, and M also wigged out hardcore with chris brown love. if i had known they were fans i would have sold my extra tickets to them.

I LOVE CHRIS BROWN!!!

tonight i went to duff's with some peeps after work. plus duff's is so amenable for groups and sharing. i really really really love playing with my new dodgeball team. it's so refreshing to show up and not have to worry about organizing people, or being the captain. it's also been good for me to doing something social with an entirely strange and new group of people. it's definitely pushed me outside of my usual comfort zone and i feel pretty good about it...once again, my social anxiety seems to be all in my head. i'm totally exhausted...i only got 5 hours sleep last night.

tomorrow is a big day. i have to work, then i'm seeing bruno latour's talk at that "future of objectivity" conference (they cut the position of student liasion so i don't get to flirt shamelessly [in an academic way] with him anymore). then i'm meeting my littlest bro and my mom and the dotytron for dinner at torito (we bought her a g/c for christmas that she's never used). then i think we're going to meet up with bwong and hit this dancehall generation party at thymeless where they're going to play tunes that have been sampled in jungle. summertime is reggaetime. brrrrrrup.

fin.

fireworks are dangerous

and because dr. rei is a fraidy cat and we were lazy bums and it was hella cold out, we opted out of shooting fireworks at each other and hunkered down instead. dinnie was stupendous. i could have used a bit more spicing on both the lamb and the beef kefta, but dr. rei had been running with egyptians just the night before and she said my shiz was 2-legit 2-quit. so i can also add egyptian grandma to my stable of inner-grandmas (i've got italian, southern black, pennsylvania dutch so far). we tried out bulgarian feta and fell in love. it's so tasty...kind of creamy, not so chalky, and not so briny and stinky as greek feta. i'm a fan for life. dessert was that coconut tapioca pudding. i toasted off some pistachios and ground them up fine, with the intention of mixing them with sugar and sprinkling that on top and bruleeing everything. the pistachios burned and it wasn't a success, so we junked that one (and by "junked" i mean, "scraped off the top and ate it anyway as a second dessert) and i just sprinkled sugar on top and went to town with the blowtorch.

this short work week is messing with my head. on the one hand, who doesn't love a short work week? on the other hand, deadlines for questions that i thought were in the distant future are zooming at me with the speed of something really fast (speed racer before they turned it into the suckiest movie imaginable? seriously...all i saw one still image from the flick like, months ago and i could have told you that it was going to suck. WHY WON'T HOLLYWOOD HIRE ME?!?)

tonight we're having leftover lamb patties in split pitas with that iranian salad, feta, and that cucumber yoghurt stuff dr. rei made. basically the same meal we had last night.

tomorrow is kanye! it totally crept up on me and i'm totally going to be the n00b who doesn't know any of the lyrics to lupe and kanye's choons. yikes. it's also supposed to rain, which is a major pisser as our seats are just on the verge of uncovered territory at molson amphitheatre. i'm meeting my youngest bro bro's gf tomorrow night. and supposedly my other bro bro is bring a date. time to put on my "guess who's coming to dinner?" face and ratchet up my interrogation skills.

fin.

big tings!

big tings a gwan this weekend. saturday night was a lovely dinner with my ex bf and his current lady. i really really like them together. we had them over here for some more ital-town influenced grub. first things first: i'm a woman with strong beliefs. i believe in greeting guests with a cocktail, cured meat, and olives. that's the dotytron's current favorite cocktail, a campari and soda. i got some olives from the italian grocers i frequent, who are THE BEST, and also this new sausage they're making, called a cotechino. it's all pork, with some pistachios, no preservatives, kind of like a headcheese. i love headcheese and i love supporting my local stores, so i love this. i followed that up with the crostini of tuscany, a chicken liver crostini. it's delicious, but i've since been reading the "babbo cookbook" and mario batali's "molto italiano" and realized that two key ingredients i neglected to include are anchovies and capers. i was wondering why the chicken liver crostinis always tasted so beefy and not so mineral-livery, and i think it must be due to those two umami-boosting elements. i did my favorite, palate-cleaning salad with the radicchio and fennel and parsley and beans. i also did a penne (that i somehow forgot to take pictures of?!?) with caramelized onions, black pepper, pecorino, and pancetta.

to say that dessert was a homerun might be an understatement of epic proportions. i had a good feeling when i was making it. i re-baked the meringues so that they go crisp, and layered
them in a mason jar with softly whipped cream, and a strawberry compote consisting of cooked strawberries and a touch of sugar, with some fresh diced strawberries added in after i turned off the heat. we loved it so much we were clamoring for more even before our second bite, so i just took the remnants and plopped it all onto a plate and we dug in. it was a pure massacre.

yesterday was a day of errands-doing. we had the dotytron's parents' car so first we hit up burger king. MY FIRST TIME! omg! whoppers are AMAZING! so beefy and char-broiled tasting and hella substantial. i got a double whopper with cheese. i liked how BIG it was, and how the bun meant business. and i liked the char-y taste and the fresh elements (lettuce, tomatoes). i also like how burger king has the option of FRIED MOZZARELLA STICKS! and POUTINE! the gravy tasted like st. hubert's gravy, which is a plus because i'm a st. hubert's fan. we also got onion rings which was the only miss. there was no discernible onion flavour, BUT! the onion rings come with this "zesty picante" sauce which tastes like thousand island dressing mixed with spicy horseradish and was pretty awesome. overall, i've accepted the burger king as my ruler.

it was a miserable, pissy day, but we got a lot done. went to canadian tire and picked up some much-needed house supplies (like a sturdy indoor/outdoor clothes dryer so we can save energy and dry out stuff using the power of air). i effin' love canadian tire. then we got the dotytron some sedimentary rock for his geo science course, and then we went to the garden centre and picked up some potting plants. it's too cold to garden at the moment so we'll have to hold off on that for the time being. this time last year i had a heap of people over for a bbq and it was cold, but not THAT cold. then we had to deal with some minor cat-related issues involving one of our cats insisting on NOT peeing in the litterbox, which was hella stressful. so we overhauled everything...new litterbox, back to the old litter, closing all doors to limit options and we're holding our breath that it takes. so far, so good.

thanks to S, who came over right before hopping on a plane to amsterdam, belgium and spain, i now have about 75% less hair. she did a GREAT job cutting my hair and it's going to be a lot more conducive to straightening it because there's SO.MUCH.LESS. you should have seen the pile i swept up...it was like a small cat/dog! here's a crappy pic of me with my less hair. loves it!

went to our friends B & G's new place for dinnie. they live around the corner now! so so so fun! i brought the chocolate pot de cremes and almond cake for dessert. and B made us a lovely indian meal with a lamb curry, dhal, rice, steamed rapini (i think), rotis, and this appetizer of roasted potatoes with sesame seeds served with raw fennel.

woke up today at TEN THIRTY. that's huuuuge! i never sleep in so much! feeling pretty good except i have a vague tickle in the back of my throat. today's going to be pretty relaxing...knitting, chilling, reading. we're having bwong and dr. rei over for a middle-eastern themed bbq. i'm making ground lamb and ground beef kebabs, with pitas, and a warm chickpea salad with chilies, lemon and parsley. dr. rei's bringing the standard persian salad of cucumber, tomato, and onion, and a cucumber-yoghurt sauce, and i'm making coconut tapioca pudding with chopped pistachios on top. simple and easy.

we saw "iron man" on saturday night. EFFIN' LOVED IT. it's the perfect role for robert downey jr. as it plays to his usual, cavalier, sarcastic and droll intelligence with its' vague undertones of ne'er do well rakishness. he's also gotten wicked buff and kind of hot. i never thought so before but seeing him all buff in character as tony stark was an awakening of sorts. gwyneth paltrow, who is usually so icy, came off really warm and endearing as pepper potts, and injected the "girl friday" type role with a refreshing jolt of independence and spunk. it was the perfect first movie for a (soon-to-be?) superhero series. action sequences were tasteful and not drawn out needlessly and the CGI was really restrained and believable (unlike, i'm afraid to report, "the hulk"...you can't do the hulk without doing crazy amounts of cgi and it inevitably looks stupid). i also had a small problem with the hans zimmer score. it was a little too overwrought and rock-y for me, and incongruous with the film during the flight sequences. apparently tom morello from rage against the machine was in the film...i think he played the love interest. ha. anyway, i loved it and can't wait to see more. as i love movie previews almost as much as i love movies, i was SO PUMPED to see the full theatrical trailers for the new "batman" flick (this one has more aaron eckart as harvey dent) and "indiana jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull." i really think that john williams' theme for the indiana jones films is stronger than the "star wars" theme. that music gets you hype.

fin.

last night's dinner

turned out really, really well, if i do say so myself. the timing was spot-on on with everything - i was searing the last pieces of veal just as momma and poppa d showed up at the door. the veal saltimbocca was medium inside, chewy, salty and delicious. i wrapped the veal cutlets in proscuitto, secured with a toothpick, with a few pieces of sage in between the two meats, then i dredged it in seasoned flour and pan-fried it in a butter/olive oil mixture. the crostinis were a touch too crunchy, but overall, very very tasty and the favas were well worth it. the bittersweet chocolate pots de creme were luscious, smooth, rich, and off-set nicely by the dry, crunchy, almond cake that i brought back from ital-towns and served alongside. all-in-all, a homerun, me thinks.

preparing favas is a labour of love. first you have to take the beans out of the fleshy, fuzzy-lined pods. then you have to blanch them, then you skin them AGAIN. i ended up with maybe 3 c. of
shelled beans (i forgot to get a shot of the final, pitiful yield). it takes a long time, but it's so worth it. when i was young and stupid i used to try to get away with not doing the final shelling. it was a terrible mistake. the skins are surprisingly tough and what you're really after when all is said and done is the sweet, nutty little flesh inside. i shaved some of the aged pecorino i brought back over top and added some julienned mint (we're having major mint-conquest garden issues at the moment) to the fava, cream, sauteed onion and garlic mixture. i love beans and mint.

momma d also brought me this lovely little serving dish that i guess used to belong to grandpa. isn't it the sweetest thing you've ever seen? the pattern is so me. i'm slowly in the process of replacing all my plates with all-white ones, and getting serving platters. i'm such a sucker for white plates.

cooking from the hip has been going well so far. i don't know what to make for dessert tonight. i was planning on doing that meringue semifreddo but it's a little humid and the meringues aren't super crisp. i also have some strawberries in the fridge so i was thinking of maybe chunking up the meringue and layering it with some lightly cooked strawberries mixed with fresh, chopped strawberries and whipped cream in parfait glasses (an eton mess, i believe this kind of dessert is called), or taking the strawberries and making a strawberry tart in a hazelnut crust (i have a disk of hazelnut dough frozen) with some kind of nut streusel. i've got the meringues back in a low oven to see if i can dry them out some more...but as of right now, i'm leaning towards the eton mess. it doesn't really go with the italian theme i've established for myself but i guess i'm okay with that. kinda (in my anal retentive heart of hearts, not really, but cooking on the fly seems to necessitate me being ever-so-slightly less control freak-y about this kind of stuff).

bwong went to nyc this week so i treated myself to some prezzies in the form of a new japanese sword and a knife bag (my other knife bag was rotten from restaurant abuse and was held together with my crushed dreams of kitchen glory and duct tape) from korin. with the dollar so strong, i'm not getting ganked quite so badly and not having to pay shipping basically cuts the cost of the knife in half. i went western-style because the japanese style knives generally are sharpened with an edge on one side, and because i'm left-handed, i need the knife-master to re-sharpen the edge for me. it's a pain when you're sharpening it at home because if you over-favour one side, your knife slants and doesn't cut straight down. even though it's "sharpened" on one side, it just means the percentage of the angle is more heavily weighted to the right or left-hand side...so when you're doing it at home, you have to try to maintain the 75-25% balance or whatever it is. too much trouble!

another thing that's making dessert tonight a pain-in-the-arse is that we're having my ex bf and his gf over. C (the girl) is lovely and she's great. C (the guy) can be a bit of a mooch and a pain. he actually emailed me and said something along the lines of, "i was wondering if you were planning on making dessert for dinner on saturday because it's C's birthday on tuesday and if i buy the ingredients i was wondering if you could bake her a cake or something" !!!!!!!!!!!! who does that?!??? he's such a weirdo (yes, i'm talking to you, chief). first of all, regular readers of this blog know that i HATE taking requests that are phrased in a certain way where it makes me feel like a freakin' short-order cook. hate it. hate it. hate it. secondly, regular readers know i ALWAYS SERVE DESSERT WHEN I HAVE PEOPLE OVER. thirdly, wouldn't the gf prefer that her BOYFRIEND bake her a cake, rather than having her BOYFRIEND'S EX-GIRLFRIEND do it on his behalf?!????? even if the cake didn't turn out amazing, it's such a cute gesture. lord knows the two times the dotytron has baked something on his own initiative i was over-the-moon happy. the first time was in 2001, when he made these brown sugar-fruit squares. the second time was in 2007 when he made me those chocolate orange cookies. see! i remember that kind of stuff!!!

it's like some people really don't get that cooking is MY THING. some people totally take it for granted. like it's not work, or effort, or the output of my love. when we were in italy i was volunteered to make dr. rei's aunt and uncle a dinner the first full day we were in florence and we were running late to the market (mercato centrale - their version of st. lawrence but a billion times better...it closes at 2pm) and i was having a major internalized meltdown because i didn't know the kitchen, didn't know what tools dr. rei's aunt had, didn't know what i was going to make, and didn't know the market. it was VERY stressful (especially cuz dr. rei [bless her bffff heart] had talked up my skills) and at first dr. rei and the dotytron didn't get why i was being a stressball about it. so i put it to the dotytron like this: "it's like me telling you [the dotytron] to put together a composition in an hour, with an instrument you're kind of familiar with but don't really know how to play (like a mandolin instead of a guitar), for people that you really want to please, after i've told them that you're the most amazing musician ever." then he got it. it's like you can't ask me to not put 100% of myself into the food i serve and not treat the food i serve as a reflection of me. the meal ended up going off fine once i came up with a plan at the market, but i'm still kind of stewing over the fact that i overcooked the pork roast.

anyway, tonight we're having a pasta with pancetta, caramelized onions, black pepper and pecorino. that radicchio, fennel, romano bean salad again. that chicken liver crostini that you get everywhere in tuscany, and dessert tbd. we're also seeing "iron man"...i'm SO SO SO pumped for that.

fin.