lunging our way to success

i forgot to mention a particularly funny anecdote from saturday that A referenced in his comments on my last post. L's boyfriend T was talking about someone he knew in college or university, who wiped his butt after a deuce from BACK TO FRONT. which of course, due to the unnecessary complexity of such an endeavor, resulted in much hilariousness and the coining of the term "s**tnut" or "s**tballs" (the obvious by-product of such an action.) it was pretty funny.

almost as funny as the sight of the dotytron and i, going for a run last weekend, early in the morning, doing some warm-up lunges on the sidewalk, as per my little bro chova's instructions (chova has a body fat ratio of negative 10.) when we heard a commotion coming from a neighbour's house and saw workmen walking in and out with piles of lathe and dumping them in one of those rented dumpsters, we wanted to investigate, but didn't want to seem to bait up about snooping. so we LUNGED OUR WAY OVER TO THE PERSON'S HOUSE AND GAWKED (WHILE STILL LUNGING.) !!!!!!!!! imagine the dotytron, in all his 6'4" glory, LUNGING. it's funny in and of itself. then imagine us, in our wackadoo running gear (where we end up looking like twins because we have identical MEC fleece zippies), lunging our way down the street. hilarious.

this is last night's dinner. i took leftover corned beef and hand sliced it thinly. then piled it on rye bread with some sauerkraut and swiss cheese, buttered the outsides, and threw it in the panini, making a bastardized reuben of sorts. i served it with old fashioned potato cakes made with leftover champ mixed with the creamed cabbage and then fried. it was pretty effin' tasty.

we polished off the last of the lemon chiffon pie for dessert. we had the roomie over for dinner - it was nice. we're baby-sitting her while l'army is away.

some things that blew my mind today:

1) i read in business week (and apologies for being a n00b) that people actually have to pay for "extras" like a plum tree and whatnot when they play those stupid games that nobody cares about on facebook like mafia wars or farmville. WTF?!? playing those games already makes you appear to be a colossal loser of the highest order. finding out you PAY for that dubious privilege just blows you out of the water, imo.

2) uhhh, that's it, really.

tonight was "takeout night" so we ate wendy's big bacon classics (doubled) and i ordered my first ever fresca under duress. we were sitting in the drive through lane and i didn't want anything super sugary so i was asking if they had diet root beer and then the guy misunderstood my question and started rattling off the drinks and i just went all tourette's and shouted "fresca!" and that's the story of my first fresca. i kinda like it. it's zingy! like, more citric than sprite or 7up. do they even MAKE 7up anymore?!?

here's the thing with being with someone for 9 years: you kind of start to become the same person. there's a lot of "get out of my head" moments. one of the things we do when we can't decide what to do/buy etc. is we do a "on the count of 3, say what (paint colour/birthday gift/restaurant) you want" and then count to three and shout out whatever our choices are. the number of times that we're shouting the exact same thing is running at like, 98% so in order to decide on where to eat last night, we had two "on the count of 3s" - 1 for a fast food chain, and 1 for a non-chain restaurant. we both shouted wendy's and we both shouted square boy as our non-chain. it kind of streamlines the decision making process but it's also hella creepy.

fin.

blintzes et al.

hangs with the kdubsguelph tdot crew were the best! i seriously love those guys to the moon, even if we are all collectively a little cray-cray. it's cray-cray in a good way (mostly.) we ended up going to great burger kitchen again - and i gotta say, night two was a little underwhelming. i figured i'd branch out and try the lamb burger, but i wanted it without blue cheese and they put it on anyway. the place has only been open since wednesday of this past week, so some blips are to be expected. my lamb burger was intensely overcooked and a dry tasting puck, flecked with acrid bits of carbon. not pleasant. they also didn't have veggie burgers for the veggies in the crew. le sigh. i hate it when i talk a place up and then it disappoints. you have to believe me - the mexican poutine and the onion rings were delicious and the classic burger was GOOD on friday night. like, seriously good! some people were complaining about the amount of onion rings but to me, it seemed on par with the portion size at harvey's.

we celebrated earth hour (somewhat reluctantly on my part - i hate mass forms of "political" action that mean jack s**t - i consider it cheap and throwaway - like international "buy nothing" day.) it was nice having 11 people clustered around our dining room table and finding that we could fit that number easily - it was a little squishy, but i like a table with peeps all around it.

for sunday breakkie i made us blintzes with blueberry sauce:

i couldn't find farmer's cheese so i used all cottage cheese in the filling - it was a little runny. next time i'm going to sub in some quark for 1/2 the amount of cottage cheese and drain the cottage cheese overnight to firm it up some. i do love a good blintz though. what's not to love about a stuffed, eggy pancake that then gets kissed again with hot butter in a frying pan and drenched in sauce?

we had a lazy day on sunday. went for a rainy bike ride to pick up some groceries i had forgotten about. then nany and poppa and momma and poppa d and ehmdo came over for dinner. we had a belated st. paddy's day feast. i made my baked corned beef (spread with mustard and brown sugar and then steamed in a foil packet for about 2-3 hours in a low oven. i made champ (mashed potatoes w/ scallions) and creamed cabbage that i also put some apples and freshly grated horseradish in. i also made a minted pea puree which was a big hit. i love peas!



for dessert i made a lemon chiffon pie in a graham cracker crust:

the recipe calls for a gingersnap crust but i didn't have it in me to make gingersnaps just to grind them up and i didn't want to sully my kitchen with a cheap box of purchased gingersnaps because i know i wouldn't have used them all and then i'd be stuck with a craptacular box of gingersnaps laying around in the pantry. i like a nice lemon chiffon pie - it's kind of nice and light and refreshing - it doesn't have the same intensity as a lemon curd.

i also LOVE hosting grandparents. especially nany and poppa because it's never too late a night, which is what you want on a rainy sunday. they come at 5:30pm, we have a nice pre-dinner drink and catch-up and then we eat and have tea and coffee and they're out the door by 9pm. totally civilized! they also got us some adorable easter goodies and housewarming gifts consisting of 2 very cute egg cups and a golf set for the dotytron and a frilly, girly, half apron for me which is almost too pretty to wear whilst cooking. i almost want to sew up the back and turn it into a skirt.

for today's night class packable dinner i made us a pretty effin' tasty dish. it's macaroni pasta tossed with roasted grape tomatoes, parsley, mint, feta, chickpeas, and garlicky, spicy shrimp in a lemon vinaigrette. the best part is that you can eat it hot, cold, or tepid:



to go with and to up my veggie intake a i made us a quick pickled cucumber-dill salad:

okay...here i come with the book reviews.

"fire" is by kristin cashore, the same author who wrote that other YA fantasy-ish book i raved about, "graceling." it's spun as a companion to graceling sharing a minor character in common and taking place in the same world, but a different land from graceling. instead of those who are graced, the world of "fire" features monsters, which are spectacularly coloured, unspeakably beautiful versions of regular creatures and humans, but who through their beauty can entrance and control the minds of regular animals and people - more often than not to prey on them. "fire" is a monster girl who's living under the horrible, brutal legacy left by her monster father, who used his monster powers for his own capricious, selfish, and sadistic means. there's action, adventure, court intrigue and of course, a little romance. cashore makes a conscious effort to craft strong female characters who break (or bend) the mold and i applaud her for it. this book was really good, but fire is less of an enticing, anti-establishment heroine than graceling's katsa was. still an engaging, enjoyable read and i would definitely recommend it.

my work got a kindle to try out and when i was test-driving it, this book was one of the ones already loaded onto the e-reader. kathryn stockett's "the help" has been a huge, runaway, new york times bestselling word-of-mouth hit, from a first-time novelist. entertainment weekly grouped it with other word-of-mouth hits like "the guernsey literary and potato peel pie society" and "the time traveler's wife" - both of which became giant sleeper chart busters and were by first time authors. i had kind of dismissed it as mom lit and wasn't feeling it and then one day on the ttc when i was test-driving the kindle i flipped randomly to a chapter and started reading it and found myself sucked in. it's compulsively readable! i'd say it's strangely addictive - like if i tried to isolate what it is exactly that makes you want to keep turning the pages, i can't quite pinpoint it, but it's there all the same.

the help is about jackson mississippi's slow crawl towards a kinda sorta integration, told through a story-within-a-story approach. it tracks the lives of 3 different women, 2 of them black maids and 1 of them a white woman who embarks on a project to record the stories of "the help" as a way of becoming a journalist or writer. the book switches between their three perspectives and describes what life was like for african americans in a deeply segregated, racist community as the world was beginning to change around them. i found the maid characters were much more sympathetic than the white lady, who i still thought of as exploiting the maids for her own personal gain even as the narrative tries to attenuate that kind of dichotomous depiction. i wasn't buying it! some of the stories are horrid and makes you grateful at how far we've come (in some ways) and how deeply scarred the american south is by the burden of this racial history - how deeply entrenched the misconceptions and ignorance are. it's not the kind of book that lingers with you, but it's a fast quick read - like beachy vacation airplane reading.

"the photographer" is an awesome, awesome testament to the power and flexibility of the comic to tell a story. didier lefevre is the titular photographer, who follows a doctors without borders mission into afghanistan. he is aided by comic artist emmanuel guibert (who wrote "alan's war") and colorist/designer frederic lemercier. lefevre's gorgeous photos and observations are interspersed with illustrations that capture the rugged, barren beauty of the land and the differences of afghani culture - from the armed and exuberant muj to tribal leaders and those dispossessed by the war. the work of doctor's without borders is brought to startling light - these are noble, brave people and their organization will probably be the recipient of my charitable donations in future years. it's incredible. this is one of those stories made so much richer by the medium - the combination of text, drawings and photos adds a layer of depth that any one of those forms wouldn't have been able to capture singly. imagine an annotated national geographic article with drawings. this was a little difficult to get through - the communities of afghanis are quite impoverished and it's quite sad - your eye also wants to linger on each page and each of lefevre's brilliant photos.

finally, aravind adiga's "white tiger" - the booker prize winning novel about the thieving, grasping, indian underclass rising up against their masters. this book was an easy read, but i wasn't super into it. i wasn't feeling the main character (you're not really supposed to - he's very upfront about being a vicious murderer) but even knowing that i'm not supposed to necessarily feel aligned with him didn't make me more inclined to spend a lot of time with his voice inside my head. i also found the structuring of the novel a little needlessly cutesy and kind of condescending (it's structured as a series of letters that balram, the main character, is writing to the premier of china.) i guess it's a refreshing antidote to the whole post-colonial, magic realism thing - to show the dirty, poor, and great unwashed members of what the author refers to as the "rooster coop" - enslaved into horrible, disposable lives of deepest poverty by their own willingness to comply with the traditions of the caste system. i mean, i get it - the hideous underbelly of the world's biggest democracy - beset with poverty, corruption, blah blah blah. i just wasn't feeling it. it was an unpleasant read and not in the way that it's supposed to be discomfiting and unpleasant, more in that i was kinda like, well yeah, obvs. i could see why it would make the booker people go buck. people eat this shiz up. i'd give it a sideways thumb.

okay! i'm donezo!

fin.

2 legit 2 quit

great burger kitchen was legit bizness, sons. as soon as we walked in there, we were assaulted with the aroma of BEEFY goodness, lending a savoriness to the air.

they have a selection of classic burgers, with various toppings, supplemented by some alternative burger offerings (a veggie patty, a portobello burger, a lamb burger, a chicken burger). the classic burger is a beefy, thick, 6 oz served with optional (for an additional price) cheese (blue, brie, swiss, cheddar) and bacon. there are a variety of free toppings and then extra toppings that cost a little bit more. there are a selection of poutines - a lot of which sounded mundane (the ontario poutine with bacon) and awesome (the mexican poutine - with salsa, guacamole, cheddar, and sour cream - aka FRIES SUPREME BUT WITH GUACAMOLE). they also sell homemade chocolate chip cookies and what looked like hello dolly bars. pretty solid. the inside is pretty decent - warm and friendly, but not a lot of seating options - and most of what's available is taken up with hungry hordes waiting for their order.

we all got the classic burger and shared an order of onion rings, a classic poutine, and a mexican poutine. i also got a side of their "GBK" sauce which is their rendition of lick's "guk" or mcdonald's big mac sauce. here's how it looked:

 

 

 

 

the taste? pretty effin' solid all around. pricing was pretty decent. the poutines were about $6-7 a piece which considering the size of the container, was fair. the fries were chubby and crispy in some places and limp in others, acceptable given the amount of toppings in there. i thought the mexican was awesome...the addition of guacamole was inspired and it tasted kind of fresh and zingy with a bit of chopped cilantro. the poutine was very tasty as well - nice gravy, not too salty, real cheese curds. the onion rings looked disappointingly pale out of the box but were so crisp! with a light, almost gossamer batter - the only quibble from the roomie is that she prefers a thicker piece of onion in there.

GBK sauce was aight - like a thin, less chunky thousand island. it tasted okay on the burger but kind of got lost in the mix. the classic comes with lettuce, tomato, pickle, onion, ketchup, and mustard (i think). the burger patty was thick, cooked medium well, and very tasty. could have been a little juicier, a little brawny from over handling, but that's a small quibble. in terms of the burger offerings in this neck of the woods for dedicated gourmet burger places, it blew the pants off of burger shoppe (and i would argue burger shoppe quality meats), where the burgers were kind of miserly and not worth going back for. i would definitely go back to this place.

it's still not quite as good as five guys burger and fries - i dunno what it is about these gourmet places...they just can't test that winning formula. i think they over handle the meat - plus the organic beef isn't as fatty as USDA. i'd also hazard a guess that the thicker patties aren't as satisfying as the thinner kind at five guys - more of a beef puck instead of that signature five guys crumble.

still, great burger kitchen is a fantastic addition to the neighbourhood and to a somewhat depressed strip of gerrard (which could use a little love.) so pumped that it's so close by! now all we need is for that neapolitan pizza place to open up and the west side can eat it.

today is a grocery shopping, cleaning the house, prepping for dinner party tomorrow, going for a run, doing some yoga kind of a day. then waiting for the arrival of kdubsguelph tdot to touch down! we may or may not celebrate earth hour (i'm pushing to see "hot tub time machine")

fin.

LAAAAAADIES

this was my shameful, shameful dinner last night (but times the chicken x 4):

eeks! the day started off on the wrong nutritional foot when i had a bowl of mini-wheats and then went to work was was confronted with a pancake breakfast - featuring box mix pancakes, ready-crips bacon, overcooked and unseasoned scrambled eggs, syrup, juice, and fruit. so OF COURSE even though i knew all those things wouldn't taste the way they would be if they were made with love and care, i still tried to make my own mcgriddle by sandwiching the eggs and bacon with the pancakes and sousing the whole lot in syrup. it was a miserable failure. A MISERABLE FAILURE THAT I STILL ATE.

so then i met dr. rei for lunch and figured, hey, while i'm already at it, i might as well go eat a street meat polish sausage. which resulted in a horrendous case of the thirsties all afternoon.

and then i figured that since i've already gone whole-hog, i might as well indulge my lust for all things deep fried and go with a fried chicken and kd dinner. oy. the fried chicken is from city fried chicken on the danny. the person manning the fryer at this (halal) place is a 14 year old kid. seriously, i've never seen anyone else working there. he's kind of earnest and bespectacled and very good at his job. the dotytron and i call him "the young entrepreneur" - that kid fries a mean chicken. the skin is so crispy - no breading to speak of - all fat globules are fried away and leave only a shimmering, crispy, herbed flecked, lightly dredged chicken piece with moist, flavourful meat. i loves me some halal fried chicken. also - they ONLY do thighs and drumsticks, which means that rather than dealing with white meat that i don't care for, i have a 50% chance of getting my most favorite part of the chicken with each batch. score!

then i drove myself (I DROVE MYSELF) to academic book club which was at J's house. this book club is REALLY fun! i really really liked it and stayed way later than i thought i was going to. it's nice to round out my friends list with such accomplished, smart (mostly white) WOMEN. like, they're all grown ups. most of my female friends aren't grown ups like that. they either are kind of on the older side (like say, momma d or the ladies in my work book club), or youngish like me and the way i behave (by young i mean, in terms of behavior and outlook, not necessarily age), or my group of fabulous girls at work. but these are all WOMEN. who kind of talk like grown ups and have uniquely (i would say uniquely) white, upper middle class anxieties about parenting and whatnot.

it's kind of a nice change and a window into a perspective that i don't usually get to experience first-hand. they're all pretty pink, but liberal in the theoretical, political sense, as opposed to the kind of association with a really marginalized community sense. ie. they can all understand heteronormative privilege, but it's not necessarily the kind of group where i could talk about non monogamy or like drug use or something. or rather i could, but it would become a "thing" - if you know what i mean? one of the women wanted a ride to the subway because on the way to J's house she passed a park and people were smoking hoolies. you know, THAT kind of lady.

but they're all super smart and funny and seem to appreciate my zany, brash take on the world. i should note that they're not all academics, but for the purposes of differentiation, i'm calling this my academic book club. the character in the book we were reading ("white tiger" to be reviewed later) is a member of a low caste in india and rises up and kills his master (who, for the record, is kind of a d**k) so one of the questions we talked about was "could you do the same thing [kill someone]?" and they were all like, no way! that guy was so amoral! and i was like, "why are we even ASKING this question?" OF COURSE i would kill him (under the logic and conditions and auspices of the book)! i was like, "i mean, i wouldn't necessarily bludgeon him to death though." and then one of the ladies asked, "well how would you do it?" and i said, "oh, i'd connect a hose to the tail pipe of the car [the protagonist is a chauffeur for the d**k bourgeois guy( and run it into the car and kill him via carbon monoxide poisoning...or i would poison him - maybe a heroin overdose?" and then they all were kind of laughing but also giving me the sidewayseyes.

ANYWAY, last night to bring to book club i made these dulce de leche cheesecake bars, which were dead easy and sliced and cut like a dream, as long as i used a hot knife that i rinsed and dried in between cuts:

they were pretty tasty!

tonight i'm finally going to scratch my burger itch by trying this new place, great burger kitchen that's around the corner from us. they claim to be "purveyors of fine poutines" and are doing the organic, locally sourced, naturally raised beef for their burgers thing. we shall see. we're having the roomie over for lowkey hangs and movies tonight.

full review of the hombuhgeez tomorrow.

fin.

no sleeps makes lagerfeld...

a cranky puss who calls in sick to work. my sleep patterns be all messed up. i went to sleep at 9pm last night and woke up at 3am this morning and couldn't get back to sleep and felt like HELL. so i squandered one of my precious sick days to sleep in and recalibrate. i needed it like whoa.

i slept and slept and slept some more until i felt like i could face the world. and by face the world i mean, finish (finally) my nyc restaurant list. this has taken me more than 20+ hours. obviously, the nyc resto list is always a work in progress - restaurants open and close, chefs move, my tastes change. but i've finished the big chore of moving the info from the excel spreadsheet format it lived in previously to the now-preferred word table format. and i've done about 4 year's of restaurant clippings, ripped magazine pages, and bookmarked websites worth of updating.

i'm not sure what my angle is going to be when we go in may. i have a feeling it's going to be the quintessential nyc experience - i'm craving american classics right now - so i think i might eschew the hype of a momofuku (although i will go to the milk bar and try the infamous crack pie) and go to peter luger's, pearl oyster bar, shake shack, and gray's. the pizza dilemma is weighing heavily. do we trek out to di fara's again to have a pizza handmade by dom demarco as he's been doing it for decades? let's be real here, since the last time we made the pilgrimage, thanks to a whistle-blowing new york times article, there's a LINE-UP now at di fara's. heretofore, it had been a kind of underground, word-of-mouth, phenomenon. we didn't have to line up and we went on a friday night for dinner. now it's exploded! let's also be real here though, i could go to jim lahey's new joint, franny's, motorino, etc...but dom demarco isn't gonna live forever. and i'll always remember the sense of secret adventure the dotytron and i shared the first time we ventured on the Q train out to the wilds of brooklyn and landed like weary disciples on di fara's doorstep.

there are also a heap of neighbourhood restos that are generating mad buzz in the brooklyn area - too many to name, really. it's insane! decisions, decisions. i'm glad i've left myself 2 months to massage the final list. it's going to take that full amount of time, i'm sure.

tonight for dinner i made pan-fried polenta topped with a ragout of spinach and mushrooms and leeks enriched with cream, parmesan, and flavoured with thyme and rosemary. at the last minute, i added an over easy egg. it was perfect.

so i biked to the library and on my way out got slapped in the face with the neighbourly. my neighbour gets out of his car as i'm pumping up the tires in my bike and pulls his kid out of the car and says, "i was just asking {kid} if he wanted to say hi to you and {kid} said, 'where's dotytron?'" WHY IS THE DOTYTRON SUCH A KID/BABY WHISPERER?!? i've seriously never seen anything like it. like with my friends J and S, their kid met the dotytron once and the next time we were over there was all like, "i want to show the dotytron something," "can i play with the dotytron?" the other super annoying thing is that the dotyron RELISHES his kid/baby whispering supremacy. i seriously DO NOT get it. the only exception is miss ramona, my niece and it totally rankles the dotytron because it's the only blemish in his record. lol.

k...i'm going to try to stay up so that my sleep patterns go back to normal.

fin.

me right now...

i think i'm starting to feel the ill effects of too many activities/hosting a billion people all the time. my mondays now go from leaving the house at 7:30am to arriving home at 9:40pm, thanks to my classification, taxonomies, and metadata course - which i left NOT UNDERSTANDING A SINGLE FREAKING WORD THE INSTRUCTOR WAS SAYING, much less the assignment that's due in two weeks and is supposed to be "challenging."

so my week right now is (was):

monday - night class
tuesday - john carpenter film club (10 people at my house for vegan dinner and the movie)
wednesday - baking for the weekend
thursday - 1/2 game of dodgeball and then professor's book club
friday - dinner at dr. rei and hanbo's
saturday - hosting a heap of kdubsguelph tdot crew for dinner (we're totally getting takeout) and hot tub time machine
sunday - having nany, poppa, momma d, poppa d, and ehmdo over for dinner

THAT'S CRAZYGONUTS UNIVERSITY (where i'm getting a phd.) it's not sustainable. last night after class i called H in a panic freaking out about the film club. more importantly, the person who SUGGESTED the film club has NEVER hosted. NOT ONCE. don't you find that weird? anyway, H and that guy were amazing and offered to host. since i've already made a heap of tofu dumplings and have all the ingredients for the long bean and tofu stirfry, i'm going to come home, make that stuff up, and cart it over to their place so they're not totally inconvenienced by me being a flakebot and don't have to conjure up a dinner for 10 out of thin air. all they have to do is make the rice. i also made coconut tapioca pudding. i can drive myself over there...BECAUSE I PASSED MY DRIVING TEST. did i mention that already? who knows. the point is - no more mogwai driving rules. and i can start driving on the highway, even though i'm NEVER, EVER, EVER going to do that. this way, i don't even have to stay for the movie bit and can hang out and socialize and get my little keister home to do the billions of things i have to do at home (like be home.)

for the next 4 mondays or so i have night class, so i've started making the monday night dinner on sunday night. this means i have to pick stuff that's going to pack and reheat well. last night i had quite the spread - leftover salad from the night before (somehow, the chunks of avocado stayed miraculously green and didn't oxidize) and a roasted shallot, grape tomato, and orange pepper farfalle pasta. after the vegetables were roasted i tossed them with the cooked pasta and added some sliced black olives, a sliced bunch of basil, some grate parm, olive oil, and a little additional seasoning. it was pretty tasty. you could also eat it cold if you wanted to, i guess.

all i want to eat lately are burgers, burgers, and more burgers (and poutine or just regular fries and gravy.) not sure what's up with that - and i'm totally indiscriminate about it, too - well, not in the sense that i'd eat a BAD burger - but i want everything from a five guys burger and fries number to a johnny's to a wendy's to a burger king. ground meat on a bun - yum.


so tonight we're having the vegan dumplings and the stirfry with brown rice over at H and that guy's. i don't think i'll stay for the movie.

we recently watched "the young victoria." i quite liked it. i'd seen the director's other feature, the québec-made film, "C.R.A.Z.Y." and thought that while the story was a trifle long and meandering - it was a uniquely canadian coming-of-age story. the direction in "the young victoria" is sumptuous - the fabrics are rich and rustling, emily blunt's hair is glistening, candles flicker by the hundreds, and the mincing, courtly dances are executed with the swanning precision of expertly-controlled marionettes.

i don't usually like emily blunt - i find her a little cold and forced - but she made a splendid victoria - regal, and by various turns capricious, willful, and obstinate - yet still maintaining the girlishness of her youth and inexperience. the political intrigue was less interesting to me than the development of the story of her love with albert - which was sweetly told and albert was played with a touching shyness by rupert friend. you really believe in the growth and development of their love for each other and i learned some historical tidbits too - i didn't know that albert died 20 years into their relationship (not a spoiler alert, really) and i found it so moving when the film revealed that in honor of her husband, victoria had his clothes laid out every day for the rest of her life. it was an entertaining trifle - not something you think about but a visual, period-piece treat.

we also watched "the private lives of pippa lee" which was pretty bad. it's about pippa lee, played by robin wright penn, reflecting on her life and the variations iterations of herself that she's embodied - always in relation and reaction to someone else in her life (her mother, her much older husband) - and how she only comes into her own and gets to know herself for herself, in the late middle stages of her life. which COULD be interesting if the film was done with any sophistication or character development or attempt to make you give a rat's a**. unfortunately, it's an epic fail on that front. you just don't care. and it's poorly done and trades on well-worn clichés that it doesn't bother freshening up. it was a bit of a chore and trial to get through. i just found it a waste. a waste of some pretty decent talent (notably, robin wright penn who tends to be underused) and money and my time.

fin.

local kitchen & wine bar

on friday night the dotytron and i took my mum out for a birthday dinner at local kitchen and wine bar, out on queen west at roncesvalles, in parkdale.

it's a tiny, tiny little place that makes their own charcuterie and prides themselves on sourcing local ingredients, making their own pasta and cooking seasonally.

first, a look at the birthday girl, considering the menu. isn't she the cutest?

we started with the rabbit stuffed olives, which were breaded and deep fried. we all thought these were pretty meh. a decent concept, but the execution was spoiled by a too-thick breading and an unsavory temperature (by the time they made it to the table, they were lukewarm bordering on cold.)


next we split the large salumi board, which featured (from the top): berkshire pork proscuittino, soppressata, a toscano, something made with intestine and a smoked duck proscuitto, which was really really good and pleasantly smoky. the two twisty things are fennel seed crackers. our favorites were the duck proscuitto, the toscano, and the intestine thing. the salumi board came with a selection of pickled vegetables - pickled leeks, pickled squash chunks and curried pickled cauliflower.

then we split the special of veal tartar, mixed with capers and shallots and well seasoned with a raw quail egg on top. the flavours were definitely there but i was a little disappointed by the texture of the tartar - it was a little too finely ground (tasted like it was machine-ground instead of hand-chopped) - so that it was almost a paste. the seasoning was bang-on, though.

then we split a small order of the tortelli with mushrooms in a bone marrow enriched sauce. we LOVED this dish. it was delicious and the sauce was to die for - really light and brothy but punched up with chunks of melting bone marrow.

we also shared a small order of the black pepper tagliatelle with guanciale - which was very much like a carbonara. the tagliatelle was cooked perfectly, chewy and very al dente. the only problem with this dish was again, it had sat too long up in the window and there were bits of it that were literally cold to the touch.

we also split the special of the day which was seared calf's liver with kale and "patatini" which turned out to be little potato cubes, fried. the dish was very good and i preferred the way the kitchen served the liver in a thicker chunk, rather than the thin slices you get elsewhere - it's easier to serve the liver medium this way and you have less of a chance of over-cooking it. for $22 and considering the cost of the ingredients, i found the portion rather small.

the kitchen had a problem with pacing. we'd wait up to 15 minutes between the arrival of our appetizers and the poor couple sitting next to us waited almost half an hour from the time of placing their order to receive TWO salad appetizers! the service was nice but i don't think the kitchen knows how to handle the rush and the servers should be pacing things a little better. i don't like eating a cold carbonara.

for dessert we got the pistachio cannoli, which is served more like a sandwich, with two florentine-like cookies studded with pistachios sandwiching a creamy, smooth, chocolate-flecked ricotta filling. it was actually a very nice presentation and much easier than your standard cannoli, what with the frying and the shaping and whatnot.

the total bill for all that food and 2 mill streets was $140 including tip. so i thought the pricing was generally fair, except for the liver dish. it's the kind of place that fills up quickly and they don't have anywhere to seat the overflow, so we were wise to get there right when they opened at 6pm. overall, a fairly decent neighbourhood type restaurant but not one that i would necessarily travel across town for on the regular.

my sister and outlaw bro and the kids were supposed to come up to celebrate chova and my mom's birthday, but their car leaked all its coolant pretty much as they were crossing the border so it was a giant cluster f**k and they had to get the car towed back to geneseo. also, the two truck driver wouldn't take kids in the tow truck (???) so they had to get the outlaw bro's family in buffalo to drive them home. what a nuisance. i was a little weirded out by that. like, they have triple AAA and we have a CAA membership. don't they have an obligation to get you home? or at least someplace safe? what if you were LITERALLY stuck in the middle of nowhere as a family? they're going to tow the car someplace safe but leave you behind? it makes no sense!

anyway, it didn't make sense for them to come up so we called a giant audible and the rest of the family figured something out. we went for lunch at this place in markham called "chili secrets" which my mum calls the "dan dan noodle place" and which is EXTREMELY busy. it's pretty legit. they serve a combo of shanghai dimsum AND cantonese dim sum favorites and it was all really delicious. i'm not usually a fan of dan dan noodles. other places i've had them (like asian legend) serves them in a really peanut-heavy, thick, soup that i find kind of disgusting and cloying. i'm not generally a fan of peanut sauces. the one at chili secrets was THE BOMB. so spicy! ramen-type noodles with a subtle dry spice (the dotytron thought it was similar to the musky notes of oregano) in a chili-kicked soup that was positively incendiary. my mum said it's classic sichuan style. it was freakin' amazing.

they also serve other dim sum that you don't usually get like chiu chow style dumplings.

most importantly (for me) is that they served STEAMED GINGER MILK PUDDING for dessert. sweet bliss! i love steamed ginger milk pudding. it's like the most comforting, gentle, pablum you could ever ingest.

after dim sum, we dropped my mum off at home, which left me, the dotytron, s-dawg and chova with nothing to do. so WE WENT TO PLAY LASER TAG. which i haven't done in oh, maybe 16 years or so. IT WAS THE BEST! lol! it was so much fun...chova was "the don," s-dawg was "hawkeye" (because they wouldn't let him be "bullseye" because of the violent connotation), the dotytron was "swarly" (a "how i met your mother" reference) and i was "young jeezy." we got separated from chova and s-dawg and the dotytron and i were being stalked by a 10 year old who was getting all up in our grills and being super obnoxious. he basically followed us and shot us a zillion times and we were idiots and didn't stand our ground but ran like little pansies. it was kind of embarrassing. but now we have our strategy in place. plus, chova and s-dawg apparently found the most mint location so next time, we know where to go. laser tag is seriously the best. s-dawg was super-pissed because it used to be that when you shot people on the shoulder, you would get more points than hitting them straight on (smaller target, harder to aim, etc.) when we were poring over our stats, we discovered that all the shots are weighted the same. laaame!

so i think s-dawg is going to write the president of laser tag a letter that goes something like this:

"dear laser tag, i am miffed that shoulder hits are now weighted the same as targets on the laser, the front, and the bag of the player, due to the relative size of the shoulder target. signed, hawkeye."

LOL!!!!!!! the whole "miffed" part makes me laugh out loud like an idiot. i have the funnest family in the whole damn world.

we were going to follow that up with glow-in-the-dark mini putt at "the putting edge" but we ended up going bowling instead. my bowling was WAY off. i was horrible. if we had hit laser tag, mini putt, AND bowling in the same day, it would have been the BEST grade 5 birthday party day of all time. even 2 out of 3 was pretty ace.

later that night we went for dinner at big mouth kee. big d is THE BEST at big mouth kee. he's always in fine form. all of his jokes always end in "...i'm going to kill you!" and we were sharing stories of what we were like when we were little kids. we started running down the list of all our nannies/housekeepers over the years. my mum said i used to mouth off to them when i was like, 5 - saying stuff like, "you're just the hired help!" (sounds like me, doesn't it?) we had one nanny that basically raised chova from when he was born til like, he was 9 or 10. when she left, apparently chova was crying, and according to my mom, i was standing over him, giving him heck, saying, "what are you crying for? she's just the hired help!" LOL!!! it just goes to show you - nature versus nurture - there's a HUGE amount of nature that you can't account for.

sunday breakkie today was jimmy dean sausage, over easy eggs, and whole wheat toast (in keeping with my recent obsession with my fiber intake.)

tonight i made us chicken pot pies with purchased puff pastry tops. the filling consisted of poached chicken, leftover heritage turkey, peas, carrots, mushrooms, leeks, thyme and sage in a milk and chicken broth sauce thicken with roux. we had that with a big salad of mixed baby greens, orange pepper, grape tomatoes, red onion, cucumber and avocado.

for dessert we made blood orange floats (vanilla ice cream, freshly squeezed blood orange juice, topped with club soda). so good!

fin.

insert annual rant re: spring forward

it's kicking my a** this year. AND futzing everything up. to wit:

- i was doing quite well with a 6:30am run every morning in the breaking light of day. this meant that i still had time to do my morning stuff AND was jazzed enough to get into work early (and thus be able to leave a bit early)
- NOW, at 6:30am it's unbearably dark and it's nigh impossible to run without fear of getting mugged
- ergo, i have to fit in running on my lunch at work, which is okay, but kind of sucky because i have a lot of work commitments (read: lunching with dr. rei)
- i've been going to sleep at 10pm every night. which robs me OF AN HOUR of potential productivity. bogus!

so today i had my book club at lunch but i had to split my time between running AND doing the book club. it was kind of a s**tshow.

last night for dinner i made us a very very very good one. it was a pan-seared, oven-roasted hunk of salmon (seriously, i think my portion was a 1/2 lb-er) topped with a spoonful of sour cream mixed with chopped parsley, dill, and maple syrup. then i made a cold soba noodle salad with scallions, broccoli, and carrots in a chili-kicked sesame-soy dressing. so good!

i've been making a concerted effort to up my fiber intake every day. my goal is about 20 grams of dietary fibre. i'm doing pretty good! i've been starting my day with either a whole wheat bagel, 3 homemade bran muffins, or a bowl of frosted mini-wheats. then during the day i snack on almonds, at least 3 clementines, 2 grapefruits, and a fuji apple with a piece of cheddar cheese. come home to the fairly healthy and vegetable-infused meals we've been eating lately. true facts: dietary fiber is easier to come by if you cook the vegetable. so if you eat cooked broccoli instead of raw, you're like, doubling the amount of fiber.

note: i realize all this talk of dietary fiber makes me sound like a senior citizen. i am what i am. convergence: this fiber kick of mine totally coincided with the GIANT colon at my work! we walked through it today. it's kind of awesome. a 40 ft. colon you can walk through. a 40 ft. colon you can walk through that costs $12,000 to set up for 2 days. amazing.

i felt like all my good work lately was undone by the fact that i had a bowl of mangled mini-devil's food cake cupcakes with bourbon toffee sauce and whipped cream last night for dessert. AND 2 small pieces of leftover mama's pizza. SOBA NOODLE SALAD ISN'T VERY FILLING, AIGHT?

i baked the mini-cupcakes to bring to work tomorrow for a belated st. paddy's thing. i'm participating in a talk tomorrow evening after work with my executive director's class, so i thought i'd bring the cupcakes to that, too. and i'm bringing them again to my non-work book club meeting at my friend J's house next week. mini-cupcakes are the gift that keeps on giving. seriously. at 96 to a batch - you can't beat that yield!


tonight i had a massage after work and then came home and made chova and my mum's joint birthday cake (chilled hazelnut mousse cake with chocolate ganache). for dinner we had homemade ramen (i didn't actually make the ramen). purchased ramen, boiled, and then added to homemade pork stock with boiled watercress (note: I LOVE BOILED WATERCRESS - i can seriously eat like, 10 lbs of the stuff, easy) and boiled pork and leek wontons (also not homemade) with a boiled egg and chopped scallions.

have i ever mentioned that i hate spring cleaning? i do. but it's that time of year. we've kind of started. i've started switching out my summer clothes with my winter clothes and washing and sorting. we're going to do a massive re-org of the basement and install some shelving in the bathroom. we defo gotta clean out our enclosed porch. the dotytron was a prince of new england and raked up all the leaves and detritus outside with a broken, hobbit, half sized rake. you know how tall the dotytron is? it was hell. YOU KNOW WHY HE HAD TO USE THAT RAKE? BECAUSE SOMEONE STOLE OURS. OUT OF OUR BACKYARD. what a c**t thing to do. if i ever catch someone doing it i'm going to go berserker on them and rake the shiz outta their faces. nothing like poetic vigilante justice. AND we've got to start thinking about the giant litter box that was our formerly sodded front yard. and the plumbing. and the roof. and the back deck. ugh ugh ugh.

ugh. i've just spring-cleaning-talked myself out of giving you a movie and book reviews.

sorry for being boring.

fin.

le weekend that was

peep our food at phoenix. it was so good! we went buck and ordered a tonne of food. first up is my hainan chicken rice. soooo silky! they serve it with a mashed ginger dipping sauce and this sweet-sour thai style sauce. and a little cup of the broth for dipping:

dotytron got the beef tendon malaysian curry which is fragrant with coconut milk and slightly fishy-tasting (i mean that in a good, south asian kind of way) and has chunks of tender potato. served with rice:

then we split an order of deep fried fish and squid balls with spicy salt:

and we each got a red bean shake with vanilla ice cream. it's basically red bean on the bottom, shaved ice, vanilla ice cream and evaporated milk. i LOVE evaporated milk. my peeps generally do. one of my favorite dim sum dishes was almond milk jello with evaporated milk poured on top. or chilled mango pudding with evaporated milk. basically, evaporated milk makes gelatinized sweet dishes better:

 

in the interests of clarity and for your own personal edification, i've included pictures of the two kinds of rice. the top photo is the hainan chicken rice and the bottom is the steamed rice that came with the curry. you can see that the hainan rice is a slightly different colour and has a slight, oily sheen:

the funeral on saturday morning was really, really sad. it made me sad that my deadbeat dad didn't care enough to foster a better relationship between his kids and his family. uncle bruce was a really sweet, gentle, laid back guy - as my mum said, he would never get riled or get angsty over anything - just take it as it comes. his daughter's eulogy was so moving and i was so glad that the three of us kids and my mum went to show our support for the family. it was an emotionally draining morning. the chinese tradition is that after a funeral you have to go someplace to eat immediately after. so the four of us went to tim horton's and reminisced and talk smack about my deadbeat dad - it was very cathartic. then we had to go home and shower (another chinese tradition - so you're not carrying the funeral around with you?)

for lunch we went to takebashi, this japanese noodle place in markham. i had the shrimp and veggie udon ramen and we split a couple of caterpila (their spelling) rolls:

i somehow convinced the dotytron that we should do our grocery shopping on saturday, to get it out of the way. saturday, if you recall, was the wettest, coldest, most miserable day in recent memory. it was just unpleasant all around. the dotytron put up a good fight but eventually acquiesced. so we went out with our shopping bags and braved the stores on saturday afternoon, sheltered under the giant canopy of my bacardi golf umbrella. when we got to sun valley, i stood deliberating in front of the deli counter, thinking about what kind of olives to get. out of the corner of my eye, i see the tip of the golf umbrella (wielded by the dotytron) appear and rap imperiously on the glass of the display case: tap, tap, tap, on the glass of the display case, right where the pimento stuffed green olives are. i look up and the dotytron says, "get the pimento stuffed ones" [note: the dotytron in particular and the dotytron family in general has a peculiar yen for pimento stuffed green olives]. "i dunno," i said, "i want it for the olive garden salad, i think black olives would be better," instead of a reply, he gives me his ipso facto look and the stupid golf umbrella emerges and raps the glass again, TAP TAP TAP. lol! i dunno why, but the memory of the dotytron tapping on the glass of the deli case with that "you're an idiot, just listen to me" look on his face makes me howl every time i think about it.

on saturday night we went to our friend S and P's gorgeous, huge apartment in seaton village for dinner. it was such a feast! we had chai, this amazing butter chicken, a sag paneer, and a cauliflower and potato dish. there was also a chunky raita and a chickpea-parsley salad. steamed rice and naan. i stuffed myself silly. they totally set the bar HIGH for the next round of dinners with this crew. and for dessert we had P's patented "poopsicles" which are chocolate covered frozen bananas that he serves out of this poopsicle stand - it's kind of hard to explain but i guess for a while there in his early 20s he went around the country dragging this poopsicle stand in a trailer and selling poopsicles out of it. the stand is a big wooden contraption on 3 wheels. it was pretty hilarious.

sunday breakkie was a bacon, onion, thyme and goat's cheese frittata with whole wheat toast:

then i spent the day working on sashing my quilt top, went to a yoga class and at night had pizza and salad at the roomie's apartment - she consented to babysit me while the dotytron went and did boy stuff with his thornhill crew up in king city or some shiz.

so that's the boring rundown of a fairly uneventful weekend.

 

 

tonight for dinner i made us clam pizza with kale chips and steamed aritchokes with lemon-garlic butter. i LOVE new haven style clam pizza. LOVE LOVE LOVE it. basically what i do is start with a prepared pizza dough crust and roll it out thin. then i sauté some diced onion and garlic in a bit of butter, add whole manila clams in the shell and white wine and steam them until the clams are open. i take the meat out of the clams, discard the shells and take any clam liquid and put it back in the pan. i reduce the pan liquid until it's only about a few tablespoons. i brush the pizza crust with roasted garlic olive oil (or regular olive oil) scatter with the clam meat, drizzle with the reserved reduced juices with the onions and garlic, top with grated parm and some finely chopped parsley and cook as i would any pizza - on my pizza stone in a smoking hot oven.

kale chips are easy too - it was my first time making them. i tore up the big leaves of kale (i discard the stems) and rinsed them and dried them in my salad spinner. i tossed the dry leaves with some olive oil and kosher salt and put them on sheet pans in a hot oven until they got browned and crispy.

the artichokes i prepped so that they were basically just the hearts and cooked them in about 1" of acidulated water. sprinkled with salt and sauced with a couple of tablespoons of melted butter with minced garlic and lemon zest.

i have some film and book reviews for you tomorrow.

fin.