regulators!!!

resetting the regulator on my grill TOTALLY worked. BEST ADVICE EVER! i think when i tried it on saturday i wasn't turning on the propane tank slowly enough after resetting the dials. this time, i spent two minutes slowly cranking the propane tank 1/4 inch at a time and the flames burst forth strong and true. yes! i'm still going to get the barbecue pros in to give it a proper scrub down, but now it's not so dire and i can wait until my next paycheck. success! i feel like such a handy manny (an actual character on playhouse disney...who is...wait for it: a bilingual hispanic handyman.) holy racist, playhouse disney!!! why couldn't he be a hispanic doctor? or venture capitalist? anyway, i feel super capable and skilled after my weekend of building/fixing/cleaning stuff.

last night, our mission for dinner at foxley bistro was aborted because when we showed up there, they were CLEARLY not open for business, were missing a front window, and were in the process of moving a giant pane of plate glass around to presumably fix the whole. they weren't reopening until wednesday. bogus! i then suggested that we head down to delux, which is just down the street from foxley, still on ossington. it used to be the sparrow (i never went) and it's been getting a fair amount of buzz as a neighbourhood resto on the painfully hip ossington and dundas strip. according to a breathless article from that paean to all that is urbane toronto, toronto life magazine,
members from broken social scene have been known to eat there. well, i'll be! look at me keeping such indie company!


that being said, the room is a fairly long, white space, with embossed antique white wallpaper along one side, a row of booths, and a wooden bar at the end. the only adornment on the walls is a long mural with the letters of the alphabet printed in various cool, modern tones. another element is the lighting, which features bundles of spent fluorescent tubes, suspended from thin wires at either end, rigged up to provide a warm, ambient glow. we were lucky to get a walk in table...they take reservations and were continually turning people away who hadn't had the foresight to book ahead (yet another argument to support the fact that it pays to eat early!)


the meal was fairly nice overall. apps are priced at around the 10-11 dollar mark. mains are in the 20 dollar range. desserts are in the 10 area. we started with the charcuterie plate, which featured (from left to right): duck carpaccio with macerated cherries, pork and rabbit terrine, rabbit rilletes with the usual accompaniments. the rabbit rilletes were probably my favorite, with a great, light flavour and some spark from finely grated lemon zest.


i ordered the rabbit and foie boudin, which came on a pool of a fruity sauce with a haricot verts and new potato salad in a mustard vinaigrette. the boudin was very, very nice, with a clean taste that belied the addition of the foie, which added a very gentle, savoury sweetness to the delicate rabbit meat. the texture of the boudin was smooth, with a slight, spongy resistance to the tooth, and the fruit (not sure what fruit) sauce was tangy and sweet. the accompanying salad was a little dull...the vinaigrette was mostly neutral-flavoured oil without enough acid or mustard to cut through the oleaginous coating, but the vegetables were cooked correctly and the beans had a nice snap. the apps showed a deft, soothing hand in the kitchen, with restrained, delicate, flavours.


for our mains, we shared the pressed cubano sandwich (an absolute STEAL at $12!). which featured shaved, thinly sliced roasted pork, melted gruyere, thinly sliced ham, a mustardy dressing, and thinly sliced cornichon coins, all in a crusty, striped, crunchy panini. served with crispy, salty frites and an afterthought of watercress, again dressed with an oily dressing with little to no discernible flavour.


we also got the quebec duck breast which came with a beet soubise, a fennel and basil salad, and a poached apricot. everything on this dish was a little ho-hum, though well executed. it could have used something...the beet soubise was finely textured and full of saccharine beet flavour, but could have used another element to elevate it above a pretty quenelle of pureed beet. the poached apricot was also cooked correctly, but at the end of the day, was still a poached apricot. the fennel and basil salad added a counterpoint to the sweetness on the plate, but wasn't assertive enough. the dish was again, very delicate and reserved. it was good, but not as satisfying as the cubano.


then we got a cheese plate (we're in the habit of doing cheese as a pre-dessert lately). i only remember a couple of them. on the far left is beemster from holland. the creamy one in the middle that looks like a triple cream was DELICIOUS. creamier than most triple creams, with a fantastic, zingy, mouth-tingly lactic tang. loved it. it tasted very much alive (even though it's from pasteurized cow's milk). the one on the far right was very boring and i would never put it on a cheese plate if i had my druthers. it tasted like nothing. snooze! does anyone remember gnarls barkley? i don't!


then we got dessert. the dessert menu was pretty ho-hum. panna cotta, strawberry shortcake, etc. the dotytron ordered the warm chocolate cake with creme anglaise and whipped cream, which, when presented, turned out to be exactly what you want from an iteration of that crowd-pleasing, restaurant safety standby. it was a little, squat trapezoid of oozy, rich, chocolate mud, barely held together by a just-based exterior. we demolished it.


i ordered the "baked to order" chocolate chip cookies with a glass of milk. freshly baked chocolate chip cookies are hard to resist no matter what their faults, and it's a cute, homey dessert to have on the menu, and quite clever too, considering how much urban diners suscribe to nostalgia for an upbringing they rarely experienced, and the paucity of times people can say they've had warm, just-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookies. i do have a quibble though (and i don't know if this a purely individual thing), but the cookies were a little cakey. it's just not my first choice for cookies. i like chewy, soft, delicate, crumbly cookies.


all told, we were in about $100 and change before tax and tip, and that's including all of the above, plus a pre-dinner cocktail, two glasses of wine, and an after-dinner port for captain "special drinks" (that's the dotytron according to my mom). according to him, i was acting like a chupacabra last night. i kind of had a case of the stoops...i kept forgetting the ends of my sentences, and at one point, i used my outside voice to proclaim, "i'm glad we didn't order the halibut. that's a loser's dish." we could do with a little less textbook indie on the speakers. at one point, in between the apps and the mains, we heard the opening sounds of ltj bukem's horizons, which of course made us practically squeal with excitement. we were so pumped to hear it! and then of course, not even 30 seconds in, whoever is running the sound back there decided to CUT it and segueway into elvis costello or some s**t. our mouths gaped open, we were so shocked and disappointed. we got pwned.


then we came home and i messed up knitting this new lace pattern AGAIN (i cast on too many stitches...curses!) and watched "porky's". i don't know about what YOU remember porky's to be about, but i remember it being about sexy stuff and lots of tits and muff. WRONG. it's actually really boring and about taking down porky's (a redneck establishment of ill repute) and battling anti-semitism. snooze!


tonight i came home and cranked out two pies, deviled eggs, and did some errand-running for the big canada day smoke out tomorrow. i was exhausted after all that so we capitalized on a buy 1 get 1 free gyro coupon that came in the mail for messini's on the danforth. that's my pork gyro. oh yes, they put FRENCH FRIES in that mother. apparently those are "authentic" greek gyros. i can totally dig it. i'm trying desperately hard not to let it bother me that i over-cooked part of the crust of one of my pies. i'm trying really really hard to resist the urge to throw it out and start anew. it's paining me. must be less type A, must be less type A. we're getting up at 6am to throw the brisket in. eep! i'll report back with progress shots. it's my first time smoking anything, so i'm aiming low and hoping for the best.

in other news: one of our bbq guests decided to invite along some hippie flakebot (or, at least she was at the time that went to our high school) to my bbq. what the hell? what the hell do people think goes on? do you REALLY think i'm running some rinky dink bbq with like, bear claw burgers and potato salad from the ziggy's deli counter at loblaws?!?!!! is that what you think i do? is that the kind of ship it looks like i'm running? is that the kind of heart you think i'm the captain of? who DOES that? i've dropped a pretty penny on this shindig and i've planned and thought it out. the invites aren't composed willy-nilly. i would NEVER dream of inviting someone random to a friend's dinner invite. it's like last year, one of the dotytron's friends (it's ALWAYS the dotytron's friends who pull this s**t, btw...and they NEVER bring anything), invited a random to LOBSTER FEST. who DOES that? and i'm sorry, but i'm NOT going to listen to you talk about how you breastfed people in guatemala whilst simultaneously digging a well and learning woven handicrafts. i suspect she might get pwned. we'll see. she's actually pretty nice (but we all know how i feel about nice), but i suspect she's really earnest, doesn't share a similar sense of humour, and probably doesn't know important stuff, like...why my postulating that lil' wayne is miles davis' son is funny.

but i'm nothing if not fair. i'll give her a fair shot and bury my resentment at her uninvitedness and give her a chance to prove herself. see how she feels about chris brown. that kind of stuff.

fin.

the bbq whisperer

gah! so i spent about 3 hours yesterday in the (contrary to the meteorological reports) blazing hot sun, sweating and wrenching and in all other ways frankensteining and coaxing my smoker to rise from its boxed ashes like a glorious meat-tomb phoenix. (i also put together the crappy tire table). in the end, i have a lovely, sturdy little soldier taking up residence in a corner of the backyard and i only have one orphan nut! success! i undertook my endeavours under the glassy, boozy, eyes of my alcoholic neighbour dimitri, who is very interested in the smoker, and spent his concurrent time outdoors putting together a dolly (dolly as in lifting device, not as in parton or toy). i think he was inspired by my saturday-afternoon-handywoman efforts. he periodically offered me advice that i routinely ignored, but did manage to come up with the appropriately sized phillips head screwdriver - otherwise, we worked in companionable silence.

just as i was firing up my weber grill for steaks (i changed the menu around last night, the impetus for which was a pms-driven craving for animal flesh and the ferrous tang of blood), lo and behold, the flames from the burners are sluggish and slow, and even on maximum power, the thing refuses to get up to temp. it's a good thing i bought that smoker then, otherwise my planned canada day bbq would have been in jeopardy! i've checked the manual and online, and it could be one of two things:

a) the regulator needs to be reset (the regulator has this auto-compressor thing that limits the amount of gas going to the burners when it thinks there's too much pressure)
b) there's spider webs in the venturi tubes (the venturi tubes are what mixes air with the propane before sending it to the burners for ignition).

webers come with venturi tube spider screens, so i think it's the regulators. i tried doing the reset yesterday, but it was still sluggish, so i'm going to give it another go later on today. i woke up early and gave the burners a good scrub down...but my grill is looking in dire need of a solid cleaning. enter the barbecue pros. for the princely sum of $125 or so (depending on the level of cleaning required) they go over that thing with a power washer, sander, fine grit steel wool, and return it to you pretty much new. i've had the grill for four years and i had it done once. at the time, it seemed exorbitant (after all, that's pretty much the same cost as a new, albeit low quality and cheap, grill). i skipped last year, but i think once every two years is good, if it's going to prolong and extend the life of the grill. i'll probably get that done next paycheque. cleaning your own grill just isn't worth it, and i'm bourgeois enough to pay for the convenience of having someone else do the work for me.

in every other respect, yesterday was extraordinarily productive. i did laundry, errands, put together two items, did dishes, cleaned out a bookshelf, sorted through about 10 years of photos to discard the ones i don't want and cherry-pick the ones that will be going into albums, and organized and plastic-sheathed all my recipes. phew. AND did some knitting...it's my first lace pattern, but the one i tried is a 25 row pattern repeat and i've had to rip it out so many times, i'm starting with an easier one. to get my lace-knitting toes wet before i get so frustrated i never pick up a lace chart again.

that's last night's dinner. rib eye steaks, pan seared *tear*, hasselback potatoes, with bacon-dill sour cream (note to self: potatoes really do deserve full-fat sour cream), and a lovely lovely salad of watermelon, tomato, bulgarian feta, chili oil, preserve lemon julienne, and sea salt. it was DELICIOUS. we had strawberry shortcake for dessert and watched "a fish called wanda". they don't make movies like that anymore, that's for damn sure.

this morning we had fried spam on toast with over-easy eggs. i've been craving that for FOREVER, and now i don't have to eat it again for 10 years. it really is quite delicious. like corned beef hash sans potato. i'm going to an afternoon yoga class, and then the dotytron and i are going out for a nice dinner a deux. we're going to foxley, which is a new small-plates place that's been getting a lot of buzz. full review with pics tomorrow!

fin.

well, that escalated quickly

somehow, in the space of half an hour i found myself committing to this little beauty on the right, there. that's right folks! i know have a dedicated smoker to call my own! thanks to a hot messageboard tip from a food-obsessed poster i trust, when i shouldn't really have been surfing messageboards in the first place (ummm...i was on my break! uh...yeah, that's it), i heard that the model on the right was on sale at home depot for under $200. i was already planning on swinging by the home deeps to pick up some hickory chips for the bbq i'm hosting on tuesday, so i called the dotytron (who had the day off) and breathlessly hatched a plan for him to borrow the mater and pater's car so that we could haul it back home. no word of a lie, my heart was pounding with anticipation, i had butterflies in my stomach and i was giddy as all get-out.

it's propane fired. 'cue purists might think that's sacrilege, as it should be charcoal or nothing...but i mean, true 'cue purists make their own charcoal from fruit/nut woods and there's no WAY i have the space for that. i like having the heat control. i'll save charcoal for when i get a kettle bbq (next summer, maybe?). i'm kind of in love with it. and by "kind of" i mean "it's my new boyfriend". smoked meat! smoked chicken, sausages, homemade bacon! the possibilities are endless! smoked tea, cheese, fish!

we also got a glass-topped table (hella cheap at crappy tire) to supplement our picnic table. it's nice having the extra surface area for prep or to set up a bar...i don't know what i'm going to do if i ever buy a house that doesn't have a proper back yard. i'd be totally screwed. i need room for all my gear!

last night was hella fun and funny. we had ribs, bean salad, a jalepeno cornbread, and a mixed greens salad. this is the cake i made! it's a giant hostess cupcake! devil's food cake with a marshmallow cream filling. i was pretty proud of myself. i could have done a slightly better job to mirror the hostess cupcake by shaving down the sides of the cake so that they angled slightly towards the bottom...
but i left it as is. also, the cake was made on wednesday evening and it's never as good when it has to be refrigerated for a bit. that devil's food cake recipe that i use, when eaten at room temperature, is so moist and rich and essence-of-cake-y that it's a shame that time didn't allow for the full effect. i made mini-versions with the cake scraps (the circles i cut out of two layers to make the hollow) and leftover cream filling and ganache...i ate it on wednesday and it was divine.

i don't know if it's just me...but i kind of don't get the w.p. thing of serving cake with ice cream. i don't feel like the two go together at all. notable exceptions are when the cake is warm, because then you get the contrast in temperatures. but a firm, sturdy, cold slice of cake is better supplemented with whipped cream (but still, generally unnecessary because of the sweetness and texture of most frostings and buttercreams) or a cold glass of milk. PIE, on the other hand, generally improves with the addition of ice cream, but again, that's usually a temperature thing, and it's generally reserved for pastry-crusted fruit pies. there's an ineffable alchemy that occurs when flaky, warm pastry layers sandwiching sugared, acidic fruit hits the creamy coolness of vanilla ice cream or whipped cream. but i would never think of serving ice cream with like, a chocolate pudding pie or a key lime pie or a coconut cream pie. it's unnecessary, because the cream element is really supposed to offset the acid in the fruit, and provide a textural contrast. with cake, it makes no sense (imo).

it was a fun time! the ex got a little drunk and proceeded to go into high school modern western civilizations teacher mode (it's a favorite mode of his, actually) which involves tangential, flimsily constructed arguments cobbled together from mainstream, slightly-left-of-centre news sources, rick mercer, george strombolopolous, boring documentaries about dictators, and conspiracy theories targeted at angry male adolescents. it's a hoot.

the omnipresent rain today is putting a damper on my plans to assemble the smoker and table and fuss around outside. instead, i think it's going to be a tidying up the house, movies-and-knitting in front of the tv kind of a day. tonight for dinner i'm making us egg fettucini with garlic scapes and chilies, topped with a poached egg and breadcrumbs, and a salad. and strawberry shortcakes for dessert, because i have to eat strawberry shortcakes at least once a summer, and when ontario strawberries are in season, there's no better time for it. strawberry shortcakes are probably one of my all-time favorite desserts. judging by the regularity with which they appear in summer food magazines and that bible of patrician lifestyles, martha stewart living, i'm aware that i'm not alone in the sentiment. they're just about perfect. sweet, craggy, flaky biscuits, sandwiching a heap of juicy strawberries, topped with a cloud of softly whipped cream.

fin.

just a small town girl...

living in a looonely wooorld....

okay, here's one thing that makes journey so amazing. their new lead singer is this philipino dude named arnel pineda. i know, totally counterintuitive, right? WRONG! he sounds EXACTLY like steve perry. so steve perry apparently just left journey one day and didn't return their calls. so neil schon from journey starts surfing youtube and comes across arnel pineda performing with his cover band zoo and sends him an email and now he's touring with them and recorded on their latest album. soooo amazing.

here's a clip of arnel playing with zoo in the clip that won neil schon's cold, black heart. incidentally, the rest of zoo are only aight (ie. it's no surprise they didn't make the cut)...awwww, poor zoo!!! can you imagine them playing weddings and corporate events with their new, considerably less awesome lead singer???:



guys, seriously...when i listen to this clip, i come close to tears. my family has this thing where we get spontaneous, pop-culture-instigated (or anything we're really excited about...more often than not...movie trailers) goosebumps. it's like the time i almost cried talking to dr. rei about the collapse between aggregate and individual data. or when my family watched the "iron man" trailer in december. or any time we watch "the dark knight" trailer (my family also has a long history with batman.) anyway, this cinderella story coupled with arnel's soaring and impassioned vocal delivery conspire to make the fine hairs on my arm stand at attention and bring a sentimental lump to my throat.

here's a youtube clip of him performing with journey in chile:



goosebumps x a billion! you would think all the h-core journey fans would be all skeptical because of his south asian-ness...but no! apparently the messageboards and fansite are welcoming him with, (wait for it)...open arms.

here's another clip of him winning vh1's "best week ever" (and rightfully so, i might add):



i didn't get around to going to yoga yesterday, so i'm definitely going tonight. and i think i'm going to go for a run, too. i ate a really heavy lunch (2 slices of pizza and 2 banana cupcakes with about an inch of cream cheese frosting slathered on top) so i think i'm going to take it easy for dinner. eating heavy lunches really messes with me because then all i want to do is nap at work.

*edit*

i ended up eating about 2 L of salad for dinner and i'm feeling fiiiine. i also went to a yoga class. this one was really good...there were some new postures i hadn't done before and a lot of work on opening up the hips. the teacher brought in a tibetan singing bowl which was nice during shivasana. there was a leetle too much talk about bum chakras but i think i have to resign myself to that. i really like my sunday teacher because she keeps the bum chakras to a minimum. this dude was all about, "today we're going to work on our self, with a capital AND a small 's'" call me crazy, but i don't feel i need to work on myself in that kind of spiritual way. maybe i should just inform him that i'm enlightened. i also hate hate HATE doing fast sun salutations (where each movement only lasts a breath). it's so the antithesis of what i want out of yoga (basically, yoga for me is one, giant stretching session). i hate being rushed because i don't think it gives my muscles time to lengthen and unkink. overall, despite the chakra-lecture and the fast sun salutations, this dude was good and i'll go back for a during-the-week fix.

so, this weekend is PRIDE (is PRIDE an acronym? i forget) weekend here in the t.dot. me and the dotytron boycott PRIDE. not because we have anything against teh gheys. more because i don't like how it's executed and how cliched it is. all nakedness and public buffoonery and crappy dance music. i'm against the execution more than the impetus. i don't like events that turn entire blocks of cities into ancient roman bacchanals...it's all so...common and banal. i'm just a fussbudget. anyway, the dotytron and i are having our own mini SHAME celebration instead, featuring lots of together time just chillin' and hangin' and paling around together. the familial obligations on sunday were going to start at 6pm, so we ducked out, as that's awfully late for a sunday when i ostensibly have to work the next day.

tomorrow we're going to my ex bf's girlfriend's mom's house for his birthday get together. i think we're eating ribs. my contribution is the birthday cake. i went all out. it's a doozy. i want it to be a surprise so i won't post pictures...but it's pretty effin' balls-out in that signature, karl lagerfeld, esquire way. i'm pretty proud of it.

fin.

YESSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!

*pumps fist so many times my shoulder explodes*

guess who's coming to the molson amphitheatre on friday, september 5th???

oh, i don't know...just JOURNEY, HEART and CHEAP TRICK! no big deal! (i'm the least excited about cheap trick). I LOVE HEART. omg!!! my brother was going to see this tour but we thought the closest they were going to get to us was going to be syracuse, ny. i'm so amped!!! i think my sis and outlaw bro are coming. it's going to be so much fun!



in other news: today i won two free passes to a screening of that movie "the wackness" that i was talking about for next wednesday! sweet! it's apparently got a booming old skool hip hop soundtrack. olivia thirlby is in it, and she's totally precious. the only other thing i know is it's about new york teenagers in the early 90s and ben kingsley has mary kate olsen as a girlfriend. intriguing!

we had strawberry milkshakes for dessert last night, the impetus for which was the fact that i scored an entire basket of ontario strawberries at the riverdale farmer's market in what was a heady score. some of them were already on the verge of over-ripe, so those got turned into milkshakes last night, and today i'm eating a bowlful drizzled with some leftover mint-infused whipping cream. the rest of the mint-infused cream got churned up into an all-cream ice cream just now. i decided not to do a french custard base for my ice cream...we'll see how it turns out. i made the cake layers for C's birthday cake (my contribution to the birthday dinner on friday night). i also made banana cupcakes which will be frosted with cream cheese frostingi also washed and hulled all those ontario strawberries AND churned the ice cream. all the baking left only two eggs, which isn't enough for a custard for the proportions of cream that i was using (4 c. or 1 L). besides, i want to save the eggs for dinner tomorrow.

because i've been running around in an increasingly sweltering kitchen for the past 2 hours, i kept dinner simple and cold. i had leftover tabbouleh from last night, along with that chickpea salad. i neglected to mention that i threw in some baby spinach into the chickpea salad. i can't BELIEVE i used to have some weird prejudice against beans in salads. now i'm a total convert with the single-minded, maniacal zeal of a born-again christian. my old supervisor T gave me a portion of her stuffed eggplant, so i cut it in half (half for the dotytron, who has a love for T's victuals that borders on the unseemly) and ate it cold. it's so so so good! the meat is so tender, the eggplant shell is paper-thin, and it's all covered in a spritely, zingy tomato sauce.

now i'm debating whether i should try to get some photo organizing done, or whether i should just relax before heading to my yoga class.

i think relax is the right route.

fin.

today's post

in which karl lagerfeld, esquire recants my previous position on white-fleshed nectarines and peaches. i used to think they were too sickly sweet and insipid, lacking the natural acidity that gives dimension to fruit and keeps it from being a one-note, cloying, sugar-bomb. the dotytron brought home some white fleshed nectarines from california and i was all ready to lay into him, but after letting them ripen over the weekend in the fruit bowl, i'm a convert. i ate one yesterday and one today and my tastebuds are salivating for more. they have a very subtle perfume, a seductive, saccharine floral note, and the taste is divine. they're juicy, rich, succulent, and highly addictive. i think breeding a little more acidity into the fruit would still be nice, as the flavour profile as it stands is pretty round and one-dimensional, but the dimension is pretty damn tasty and they're great for eating out of hand.

in other news: i ran 4.36 km today at lunch (that's 2.7114 miles for my neighbours to the south). that's a record!!! i've never run that far continuously! now if only my stupid ipod wouldn't be so stupidly busted. it's "frozen" or "locked" and i don't know how to unlock it. basically, it won't turn on. when i plug it into the computer to charge, it does stuff, but as soon as i unplug it, it's in stasis and won't do anything. i went onto the apple site and tried to troubleshoot. they say you have to "reset" the ipod by pushing down the select button and the play button. i've done it a bunch of times but nothing happens. i'm pissed! running is way better when you have tunes. gah! what am i going to do?!??? i'm going to take it into the apple store and see what they can do...i don't want to get a new one (i mean, this one was free, so i don't want to pay for one). also, in the interests of accuracy, when i say "run" i really mean "a slow jog/canter (at best)".

that's last night's dinner pictured up above there. tonight for dinner i made a simple grilled salmon with tabbouleh (reconstituted bulghur with lots of parsley, lemon, garlic, chopped cucumber, red onion, salt and pepper) and the salad i meant to make last night but neglected to (endive, radicchio, more lemon, canned chickpeas, chili oil, salt and pepper). this constant rain is putting a damper on the bbqing, but i can't in all honesty complain because we haven't had to turn on the air conditioning more than once, the garden is going insane-o, and it's nice and cool all the time and refreshing. i broke down and got a pair of rubber boots. they're all femme-y, city-woman-cutesy in right now, but practicality with me will always win out. having dry feet is the difference between a tolerable day that you can WIN, and a day where you're losing from the get-go. and if there's one thing i hate, it's losing.

can you believe it's almost july? i can't! the nights are running away from me at an exponential rate. by the time i get home and make dinner and ready myself for the next day, there's barely any time to read, knit, do yoga, let alone all the fiddly small house stuff i want to get done. the dotytron d/l'd "apocalyptico" but i made him stop watching it because i was supremely uninterested in seeing mel gibson wallow in a self-involved exercise in gratuitous violence. what a catholic freakazoid. dude, instead of making boring movies in ancient languages, whatever happened to some good, old fashioned, self-flagellation to get your sadomasochistic tendencies out, huh?

i've put a temporary hold on comics reading to do some quilting research and catch up on my food magazines (speaking of which: my pile of torn-out recipes sitting in the corner begging to be inserted into plastic sheet protectors and catalogued in my binders is kind of weighing on me). it (the quilting research, that is) is TREMENDOUSLY exciting. and i mean, it's not THAT hard to figure out, although it's probably going to tax my admittedly meagre spatial relations skills. you basically cut out pieces of fabric and make them slightly larger all around to allow for seaming. i've gone a *little* crazy buying cute fabrics on etsy, but i can't help it! i think my first quilt with be all cool browns and cucumber greens with small shots of orange and red. a bunch of my quilting books spend a lot of time talking about colour theory, but i kind of think i'm a-ok on that front. putting colours together is one thing i think i'm naturally good at. you should have seen how pained i was last week when my top didn't go with my pants...i wanted to go home and change...i was abject with misery over it all. anyway, i'm comforting myself and my credit card with the knowledge of this pay-grade boost, and the fact that i'm getting a retroactive lump sum adjustment in a couple of paychecks. that should smooth things over nicely.

i can't wait for the weekend! although this weekend has been eaten up with family obligations that i'm none-too-keen on and am a conscientious objector to. the dotytron works on weekends (either with lessons, or at his stupid job) and it drives me crazy when a long weekend (or faux long weekend) or even just a simple sunday with a minimum of items on the agenda is wrenched from us. we're going up to pottageville to do a dotytron family picnic. i know, it SOUNDS nice, but i'm irked because it was entirely last-minute, ill-planned, and ill-advised considering the poor health of one of the hosts. i'm sure it'll be alright in the end and i know i'm being cranky and pmsy about it, but i don't like last minute gong-shows, and ESPECIALLY last minute gong shows that involve 2+ hours of driving.

ah well, there's no point being a sour puss about it. 

fin.

recharged

if you had asked me ten years ago, whether i would ever imagine a teeny tiny village in upstate new york being one of my favorite vacation destinations, i would have said something along the lines of: "twenty dollars?!? get outta here...*dissolves into incoherent mumbles*" but now, a trip down to the finger lakes region is guaranteed to recharge, refresh and refuel my not-so-in-need-of-any-of-the-above batteries (what can i say? i rarely succumb to the forces of stress and in fact, thrive when my to-do list features more than 20 items of varying lengths and duration). it's so so nice to be able to visit with my sister and outlaw bro and spend time with the kids and eat and laze about on her epically proportioned couches and watch m-tod to my hearts' content (i watched EVERY SINGLE MOVIE PREVIEW. some, like the "dark knight" trailer, we watched thrice!). so far it's been a little sluggish as far as the summer movie season goes. except for "iron man", there hasn't been anything that i've felt compelled to see. here's what's on my upcoming list (thanks, m-tod! you the best, mang!):

- "american teen" (documentary about title)
- "australia" (probably a renter, but it seems grandiose in scope and very "out of africa"-y and the old-fashioned movie trailer is tugging at my love of sprawling stories in film form)
- "dark knight" (been looking forward to this since the ending credits of "batman begins" rolled)
- "pineapple express" (james franco!!! this looks hilarious)
- "pride and glory" (this one is one that i feel like i *should* see because it's obvious oscar bait...but i'm not inherently inclined to see flicks about conflicted irish cops)
- "sisterhood of the travelling pants 2" (my sister recommended "sisterhood 1" which i didn't see, but it looks like entertaining enough teen fluff for a rainy day)
- "step brothers" (trailer looks funny, but they might have shown all the funny bits already)
- "the house bunny" (i've kind of got a soft spot for anna faris' googly-eyed, pouty, pratfalls)
- "tropic thunder" (worth it for robert downey jr's performance alone)

we watched this documentary called "resolved" while we were there. we freakin' fell in love with it and the dotytron is clamoring to own it. it's so inspiring! it follows two debate teams, one from a privileged, affluent, mostly white school, and one from a mostly visible minority, inner-city, public high school. now, you may *think* you know what goes on in high school debating, but you'd be DEAD WRONG. sometime in the 70s (as explained in the film), some dude cottoned onto the fact that if you spoke faster, you could cram more facts into your allotted time. this lead to what's known as "spread" (contraction of "speed reading") where these kids go up there and talk like the micromachine guys and barf out laundry lists of facts at this freakish rate, stopping to take heaving, gasping breaths so that they don't pass out. it's as far from what you imagine debate to be as you could possibly get. it emphasizes rote memorization and the repetition of facts over context and listening. anyway, the two inner-city kids, inspired by the writings of paulo freire (a philosopher of education who has also inspired the dotytron), go on to challenge this form of debate from within, on the grounds that it is racist, sexist, and classist. it was so inspiring! and what an illuminating look at a sub-culture i knew nothing about! it was amazing...it made me want to join a high school debate team, or wish that i had been as motivated to act on my beliefs when i was in high school (as opposed to, you know, chasing boys and whatnot). having been that dissenting voice in all levels of the education system, it's really cool to see kids going to town and expanding their minds and working towards a politicized praxis. it was so unbelievably frustrating to go to a discipline like information studies FROM cultural studies, which is all about peeling back the layers.

in semi-related news, i received an email from my faculty breathlessly proclaiming the name change from "faculty of information studies" to "faculty of information" replete with instructions on how they hope that the faculty will be come to be known as simply, "information" like "medecine" or "law". ai-yi-yi. i kind of feel like the term "information" is considerably more loaded than "medecine" or "law" and those two are already pretty contestable/contested. what idiots. why is the library field full of idiots? it almost makes me want to join the professional associations so that i can pwn n00bs.

we ate like kings. our first night in, my sis bought us slices from the cheesecake factory. the vanilla cheesecake almost had me crying tears of joy, it was so vanilla-y and moussey and soft and sweet. i also tasted the key lime cheesecake, which was awesome. the thing that makes the cheesecake factory so insane, is that even if you're a goof like the dotytron and don't like cheesecake, and want a slice of chocolate cake. the chocolate cake has a layer of cheesecake in it. BANANAS! i made bastardized huevos rancheros for breakkie one morning, which was easy and tasty. i also made dinner that night before the concert. we had littleneck clams steamed with a red pepper, tomato, onion, garlic sofrito and chorizo (as an aside, the comprehensiveness of a single wegman's is staggering and way more impressive than one of our super loblaws...i'm willing to bet that you can't get chorizo and dulce de leche at one of our super loblaws). then i seared some pacific salmon filets and served that and roasted asparagus with hollandaise, alongside wegman's version of a batard for dipping in the clam juices. i will say that wegman's is sorely lacking in the bread department...with even the "artisanal" loaves having a boringly consistent mie, spongy, soft texture and relying on commercial yeast. for dessert we did a very merry unbirthday celebration with wegman's birthday cake with whipped cream frosting. i really can't say enough how much i love wegman's birthday cake with whipped cream frosting. it's like airy, sweet, creamy, magic. love it.

the next day, my sis took us to breakfast at "brian's u.s.a. diner" where i split the belt buster (corned beef hash breakfast) and a regular breakfast (2 pancakes !!! eggs, toast, bacon, hash browns!!!) with my mom. look at the size of those plates! look at how crusty they get that canned corned beef (my kingdom for a flattop griddle in my own home!). it was AMAZING. predictably, we were all laid out with the itis after, which is when we trundled home and napped on the couch and watched m-tod and "30-rock". for dinner we went to dinosaur bbq. i had the traditional sampler plate, which comes with a quarter chicken, 1/4 rack of ribs, and texas brisket. for my sides i picked mashed potatoes and gravy and some of the most sinfully rich mac'n'cheese i've ever tasted. washed down with cold glasses of saranac root beer. bliss. for dessert we had key lime pie and their chocolate pudding pie. my sis gave me their recipe for chocolate pudding pie once, but it was too buckshot for me. they make the crust using GROUND UP OREOS. not just OREO WAFER COOKIES, oh no. THE WHOLE COOKIE, FROSTING AND ALL. that's insanity! although i recently read about a bbq staple in the south, deep fried oreos, and i've been pining for a taste of one ever since.

medeski was great! it was lovely being in downtown rochester and supporting the jazz fest on the longest day of the year. the sound needed to be bumped up, and there was a shortage of actual medeski fans which kind of put a damper on the vibe. people were more interested in the opportunity to drink outside, which is a shame, because medeski is one of those bands where when people feel it, it's a firecracker of a good time. i also missed out on eating one of rochester's fabled "garbage plates". next time, my friend, next time (that's a pic of one that i grabbed from the net. it's a thing of beauty, isn't it???). ahhh, regional, small-town america, you sure know how to woo a gal. the dotytron is pestering me to move down there, considering that you can get a 3 bedroom house on an acre+ lot for under 100 grand. what a steal! but i know they pay their librarians s**t, and i just got a raise (the whole job category got bumped up) here and i think i'm willing to sacrifice most things for public health care.

i sure do love visiting though. i'm already anxiously looking forward to my next trip there in august.

it's raining like the dickens in toronto at the moment. cracks and booms of lightning and thunder reminding us how pitiful our shelters truly are in the face of mater nature. for dinner tonight i made that braised chorizo, tilapia, arugala and grape tomato dish, spooned over orzo, with a lemony and bean-y endive and radicchio salad with olive oil and lemon juice.

fin.

in the can!

yes! i finished seaming and weaving in the ends of that baby sweater i've been working on for the past month or so). this one is ear-marked for the friends' of the roomies who had the awkward shower. i'm so far removed from them that she was due a few days ago and i'm not even on the list of people to inform when she does pop the little one out. i don't really know why i make hand-made, time-consuming gifts for people i barely know, but there you have it. the first shot is the sweater blocking. the second and third shots are the finished product. this is the second time i've knit this pattern and i can tell that i've gotten A LOT better. i knit this using dream in colour brand, "smooshy" yarn in the go go grassy colourway, which is a beautiful, clear, pale turquoise, that looks EXACTLY like the freakish colour the caribbean ocean looks in people's vacation pictures. my finishing techniques have also gotten a lot better. you can see in the fourth picture that my seam is almost invisible! unfortunately, the same can't be said for the sleeve. the stitches met up a different way and i don't think i used the proper seaming method. oh well, live and learn, right?

tomorrow evening, we (dotytron, my mater, and myself) are hopping into a rental car and driving down to visit my sis outside of rochester. the impetus for the trip was twofold. first: we love vacationing chez my sister and outlaw bro and niece and nephew, because it's inherently relaxing and filled with nothing but food and sloth. second: medeski martin and wood are playing a free (!) outdoor (!) show at the rochester jazz festival. bliss! so i'm going to spend the weekend doing that. weather permitting, of course...if it's thundershowering, i'd rather hole up at my sis' and watch m-tod. m-tod, for the pitifully uninitiated, is an entire channel DEDICATED TO MOVIE PREVIEWS. *swoon* i think a trip to dinosaur bbq is definitely in order, as i need my fix of biker ribs and brisket.

fun fun fun! now i'm going to pack and knit and try to rouse myself to schlep the 1 block to the library to grab my holds. maybe it can wait til tomorrow. tonight for dinner i made this moroccan influenced sandwich...it's a FANTASTIC 20 minute entree. so easy! i slice up an onion and saute it with garlic. then i add a thinly sliced potato (i use a mandoline, to make slicing easier and the resulting pieces quicker-cooking), a thinly sliced red pepper, and season it with salt and pepper. i add a couple of good squirts of harissa and pile that into a slightly hollowed-out kaiser. the piece de resistance is adding a hard boiled egg, cut into quarters. so so so good! if you're vegan-ly inclined, you could skip the egg and it would still be delicious. i also made another batch of banana cupcakes for the dotytron's class. i'm going to try mightily to resist their siren's call, but it's REALLY hard for me to turn down cupcakes under most ordinary circumstances.

fin.

culture round up: comics edition

last night we had dinner with my friend H and J and their increasingly adorable and delicious baby D, and their friend D. it was fun! H prepared 3 separate and equally delicious vegan curries which we had with steamed rice and pappadums. i contributed by bringing samosas from ghandi's (which are delicious, but slightly overpriced at over $1 apiece) and beer. even though i choked at the beer store, i think i did okay. then we played crokinole, which is canada's favorite past-time (or at least that's what the dotytron says everytime he plays). i love crokinole, even though i'm terrible at it (in my defense, i only played for the first time this past summer at grandpa reid's cottage).

in much the same way that summer is making me forsake "serious" film pursuits in favour of lighter, more superficially entertaining fare, i'm having a hard time doing any serious reading. i've had "the sushi economy: globalization and the making of a modern delicacy" sitting on the shelf beside the bed for a while, and i've barely made it past the introduction. i mean, it's okay reading and all, but just kind of boring, and i think i already know the thesis so i'm not all that inclined to see it through to its inevitable and manifest conclusion.

instead i've been beside myself at the prospect of hunkering down for an afternoon with sarah dessen's new book, "lock and key". remember sarah dessen? she was that YA author that i went bats**t for last summer. well, she's got a new one out and i'm slavering with anticipation to get it into my hot little hands. for my birthday this year i'm going to ask for all her books. i really need my own copies, so i can read and re-read ad nauseum. for some reason, so-called chick-lit never does it for me for a fluffy read, but YA cuts me to the core. maybe because i have a sad case of arrested development? i just can't relate to sad-sack bridget jones and her ilk. i can relate to the furtive, piercing longing of your first crush in high school, and of the realization of yourself as a physical, sexual being that follows shortly thereafter. the quickened pulse that chases the mere brush of an arm, the weight of teenage secrets, and the endless chasm of possibility that is summer break, seeming to stretch out before you in a yawning landscape of torpid dusks and stagnant, sweat-slicked days.

i started and finished reading charles burns' "black hole" in a day. i'm a particular fan of his stark, blocky, linoblock-like aesthetic. it's the story of a group of teenagers, coming of age in the late seventies in seattle. there's a mysterious "bug" that's transmitted through sex, and if you get it, grotesque things happen to your body (a second mouth, a tail, a face filled with boils, fissures running down your back). it's dark and filled with foreboding and shows the aimlessness and confusion that can suffuse adolescence. it's funny how our memories collapse all the banality and boredom down to a "best of" super-condensed version of high school that makes it seem like it was non-stop hijinks, capers, and laughs. anyway, burns captures the menacing darkness that lurks in the shadows of american teens and their muddled, at times vicious sexuality (in this way, he shares a similar perception of teen america to the vision that david lynch and gus van sant would have us believe).

mariko tamaki's "skim" was similarly devoured in a single sitting, even as my eyes lingered on the wispy, flowing, ethereal lines of jillian tamaki's illustrations (mariko wrote the words and illustrator sister jillian rendered them). huh. the first cover is the same as the one i read, but i like the second one better. "skim" is the story of an introspective, sage, confused sometimes-wiccan girl in high school in the early 90s. it's about sex, depression, suicide, and the thin, brittle veneer that shields high school-aged girls from venting their internal emotional and psychological storms on the world at large. for some reason, toronto public library has it catalogued as "children's" which is REALLY inappropriate, considering it touches on skim's growing confusion over her own sexuality, with the catalyst being an ill-advised and confusingly inappropriate relationship she has with a teacher at her school. definitely not for kids! i loved the illustrations. they had a swirling, bohemian vibe to them that reminded me of egon schiele. i really do love the name egon. future fruit of my loins, you've been forewarned!

i was going to go to a yoga class tonight but i'm feeling kind of lazy. i was going to actually COOK a dinner but again, feeling kind of lazy. this nagging, dry cough i have is also pissing me off. anyway, i bought some nacho chips and avocadoes so it's a chips and guac, salsa, and sour cream night. and a LOT of knitting. i've got tonnes of knitting to do, buckets of yarn and projects stretching from here to eternity. i've also started researching sewing machines, because i think i also want a sewing machine for my birthday. i was looking up quilting classes and there weren't any that were close or convenient or not supremely little house on the prairie-ish. so i've put some holds on books from the library and i think i can figure it out myself. i will say this: in the same way that fibre lust and yarn coveting has put a significant dent in my discretionary income...i have a sneaking suspicion that that'll be a drop in the bucket compared to my japanese fabric fixation. oy! the cutest, dearest prints you've ever seen. yet another reason why the pacific rim and asia deserve to be our rulers.

fin.

culture round-up

i've been behind on my reporting lately. at least it gives me an excuse to craft an epic post that delves, with excruciating attention to detail, into all the nooks and crannies of my cultural consumption of the last little while. first up: film reviews.

i saw "lars and the real girl" almost a month ago, on a rainy saturday spent indoors, knitting. it was okay. as much as the weather conspired to create a suitably cozy, grey, woolen ambiance to appreciate the wintry tones and chilled hush of the film's atmosphere, i don't think that summer temperatures are conducive to this kind of introspective film. or maybe i'm just too impressionable and eager to divest myself of artistic-with-a-capital-A "important" films and embrace the heady, sensory-overload whirligig of genre blockbusters when summer heat comes a'calling. seasonal-based genre classifications aside, i'm kind of tired of these kinds of films. the quirky odd-ball dramedy featuring a beguiling band of lost souls and square pegs coalescing around the lost-est soul of them all. meh. it stretched my ability to suspend disbelief and it didn't help that ryan gosling's handsome face and doe eyes were hidden beneath a ridiculous pederast's moustache and a near-constant, idiotic smirk.

"how she move" is a poor (destitute, really) man's "stomp the yard" in the same way bubba sparks is a poor man's paul wall. it wears its toronto-based narrative on its' sleeve, which unfortunately translates to hideous approximations of irie, island-accents, low-grade choreography and not enough dancing. throw into the mix the fact that all the "high school" actors look about 35 at best and things start to get a little too community-theatre/youth outreach group project for my liking. the funniest thing was a) the cameo by sean desmond, and b) the fact that dr. rei, dotytron, and myself kept talking smack about kardinal offishall's horrible acting and dancing - using his performance as a stand-in for all the movie's low-budget faults, only to find, come the rolling of the credits, that it WASN'T kardinal at all, which makes us judgmental racists. ha!

i caught glimpses and snatches of "the kingdom" when i was awakened by the gratuitous cacophony of machine-gun fire that punctuates every 10 minutes of the film. i had originally gone to sleep lulled by how utterly BORING it was, my eyelids drooping heavily even as my moral compass stirred with outrage over how OFFENSIVE and RACIST it managed to be simultaneously. jason bateman as a jacked-up, solve-problems-with-brute-force fbi agent? miscast, much? there wasn't even a tangible message to be found. was it trying to tell us that the americans were wrong? that the terrorists brought their bullet-riddled fates upon themselves by bombing "innocent" americans? i can't even credit the movie with having enough good sense to purposefully muddle the borders between right and wrong, black and white. this certainly wasn't a premeditated, calculated attempt to show how it's impossible to make clear-cut distinctions, oh no. there simply was NO THESIS to be teased out at all. blech.

"gone, baby gone" was decent, i guess. i'm not familiar with the dennis lehane story upon which it is based, so i don't know if my problems with the narrative are the fault of the author, or the screenwriter/adapter. there were some major plot holes and contrivances that i found difficult to swallow. amy ryan gives a stand-out performance, at once leathery and brittle, steeped in cheep beer and nicotine-stained fingers. omar from "the wire" is wasted in a five minute role. without spoiling too much, casey affleck's final decision makes no sense to me. when i talked about it with my film friend, D at work today, he said something pretty true (he thought it was overrated crap). D thinks it breaks down because he doesn't believe that michelle monaghan and casey affleck's characters make sense or are plausible as both a couple OR as private investigators. i have to agree. michelle monaghan's character gets schlepped around from place to place like a particularly eye-appealing dressmakers' dummy. it was entertaining, though unnecessarily creepy and grim. i always forget that there's THAT side to boston. in my head, it's all verdant, crisp, tree-buffered ivy league schools and independence trails and world-class restaurants. i've always wanted to go, but now i'm not so sure. the dotytron reassured me by saying that we just wouldn't venture into the southie. phew!

we watched most of "sweeney todd: the demon barber of fleet street" last night. BOOOOOOOOORING. utterly, hopelessly boring. which isn't to say that i wasn't taken with sondheim's score. loved the music. the lyrics and delivery, not so much. johnny depp sings like david bowie. i dunno...i just didn't give a s**t. i found the music to be at odds with the staging...usually with musicals, you're swept up in the performers' singing, their ability to transfix you (even as the staging is for the most part, fairly static) by channeling the suppressed kinetic energy into their voices, which provide all the action, so to speak. when you have less than adequate singers, they can't put the same narrative oomph into the songs, so then you're left with stiff staging, which leads me to check out and take the opportunity to manufacture some z's.

phew. that's a lot of typing. i'll save the books for another day.

last night we ended up at astoria on the danforth for dinner. the 1 time every 2 years i eat greek food (i do, after all, live smack dab in the heart of "greektown"), i always *think* that i'm craving it, and then prove to be very very wrong. meh...i hate mass-market greek food. especially on the danforth, where it's diffidently prepared at best. we split an appetizer platter with fried calamari (rubbery), dolmades (gross), taramosalata (okay), hummous (b.o.-y from too much white pepper), and spanakopita (tough). we also got saganaki (good, but no-brainer - it's fried cheese, fer crissakes) and split the large pork souvlaki, which came with terrible mccain's fries and those mountains of starch that pass for potatoes in these "greek" places. ew! it was nice just being with the dotytron though, getting caught in the rain on our walk back.


i made banana cupcakes with cream cheese frosting for the dotytron's last class with the catholic school board for the school year (he has another friday class who'll be getting the same). i made a banana bread early in the year and the kids universally went loco for it (to put it mildly). so i knew this was going to be a winner.

tonight for dinner i made panini with olive tapenade, basil leaves, roasted peppers and goat's cheese with caesar salad (i eat a lot of caesar salad, i know...i like croutons, okay?).

fin.