a full fledged graduate

of the midwifery pre/post natal program! master T had his last midwife visit yesterday - he's still chubbing out largecore. he's now at 9lb 11oz, and he's only gestationally 2 weeks post-partum. that means if i had been term, i would've given birth to a 9lb porker. so thankful that the smart little chicken opted to spare my vagine that indignity.

this weekend is going to be mega-fun, but again, mega-busy which means that i'm probably going to mega-not-write my stupid constitutional law assignment. haha. at least i have a valid excuse. it really IS hard to get stuff done in between the all you can eat buffet that master T has made of my nippular region.

tonight we're doing AYCE japanese in markham with lolly (if she's not sick), her bf T, and R & R. then sleeping over in markham so that my mum can visit with master T. then tomorrow after the dotytron's done teaching his lesson, it's a day of errand running, which will hopefully end in me successfully convincing the dotytron to brave the war zone that is the pacific mall parking lot so that i can procure some beard papa cream puffs, then a faux american thanksgiving dinner at the roomie's place because our friend pingy is in town. sunday the dotys are descending en masse to our abode to record some tunes for the xmas cd. this year's cd is gonna be pretty sweet (i mean, in the saccharine, gentle way, not the skater dude "sweet!" way).

last night's dinner was pretty boss. first we met with a guy about a deck. i'm not sure if i've told you about the parking issues with our neighbour we share the driveway with, but suffice to say that confrontations have ensued that have front-loaded fencing in our yard and re-doing the deck to the top of our lil 'ugmo makeover list. there's also the fact that we can probably budget a deck this year, but we can't budget a kitchen (especially after i was laughed out of the bank for asking for an increase on my line of credit). i also felt the lack of a nice bbqing, eating al fresco space last summer quite keenly. also, we want a bit of space for a certain someone to totter around on chubby legs on, and hopefully a spot for a kiddie pool (as you may or may not know, my dream in life is to bbq on a hot summer's day with my feet in a kiddie pool) or a sandbox. we spent all last summer eating out on our front stoop, which was nice, because we got to really know our neighbours, but i want a space to host people outdoors again. we're going to meet with 4 different deck/fence people over all. we've gotten one low quote and one high one from the dude last night. but the dude last night said he can work within our budget.

i also scammed his price list from him. lol! basically, the company last night, hickory dickory decks has a detailed price list so decking is quoted at X per square foot (depending on material and finishes) and fencing is per linear foot. so he was looking at a price sheet and i just blurted out, "can i have that?" and he was all like, "uhhhhh..." and i reach across the table and took it from him and was like, "thanks!" lol! it's handy to have because it gives us a benchmark to go with for any other contractors...plus we can do a lot of fiddling with the numbers. is it weird that i get all flush and heady when i get free stuff? EVEN IF THE FREE THING CONSISTS OF A SCAMMED PRICING LIST FROM A DECK CONTRACTOR?!? it's like a weird high for me. i don't care what it is, if there's an element of schiesty-ness and free involved, i totally get a gambler's high.

oh yeah, last night's dinner. here's a picture:

i know it looks like a dangler with some shriveled testies...but it was tasty! and pretty quick. it's braised sausages with caramelized onions, grapes, and balsamic, served over a plain risotto. i can post the recipe below.

i should take advantage of master T's slumber to read some articles.

i bid you, adieu.

fin.


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braised sausages with caramelized onions & grapes

serves 2

4 italian sausages
1 red onion, sliced
some minced garlic
1 c. of white wine
1/4 c. balsamic
1 c. of red, seedless grapes
salt and pepper to taste

- sear the sausages in some olive oil and set aside.
- throw the onions in the pan and caramelize over pretty high heat to get them nice and brown and develop a nice fond on the bottom of the pan. i pretty much forgot about my onions so they were dark, bordering on burned, before i stirred them, and it ended up working in my favor.
- turn the heat lower, add the garlic and the sausages back in, and add the white wine to deglaze, scraping up the fond on the bottom of the pan as best you can.
- add the balsamic, some salt and pepper, and the grapes, put a lid on the pan and turn the heat low for about 10 minutes
- when you're ready to serve, turn the heat back up to high, and take the lid off the pan to let the sauce/juices reduce a bit
- serve over risotto.

*this would also be good served over mashed potatoes, egg noodles, anything to soak up the vaguely sweet/sour (agrodolce!) sauce. this dish can also be multiplied to feed as many as you need

weirdest and yet most topical dream ever

so last night i had a dream that the dotytron and i were in new delhi staying with these friends of big d's sister. i don't remember much about the place we were staying, except that my dream state must have conflated it with our friend pingy's actual apartment in brooklyn where we stayed in the spring (in the real-deal flesh world, not in dream world). there was one room with soaring ceilings (in dream world) and suspended at various levels on fishing line were these 3 dimensional, wooden owl cutouts that were quite beautiful.

another room had 360 degree views and was built suspended over a cliff overlooking the new delhi landscape (i know new delhi is a city - i've never been there, but in my dream world, the room looked out over mountains that panorama'd into forests). in this room was a toilet. next to the toilet was this thing stuck into the ground that looked like the end of a trumpet (the end the sound comes out of). the long and short of the dream was: i chonged the toilet. lol!!! and evidence of said chonging was made apparent to my own, growing, dream world horror, when water slowly started spilling out of the trumpet thing in the carpet, and seeping across the floor. imagine how embarrassed i was!!! to chong the toilet of hosts that were practically strangers to me! and ruin their carpet!!!

then the dream featured angelina jolie and brad pitt somehow. then i woke up.

the reason this dream is hilarious and topical is because i'm notorious for chonging our home toilet. and then making the dotytron plunger it. and in exchange, in payment for me not having to deal with the disgustingness that is touching the plunger, we struck a deal where each time he performed the service, i would buy him a jar of artisanal honey. we recently changed the deal to make it that each time he had to unclog the toilet, i would pay him $10 towards his gujin (that obscure chinese instrument he covets).

that was probably TMI, but if you're reading this, then you know me, and if you know me, you know that there's nothing i won't blab (over share) about.

ANYWAY. in other random ephemera, on sunday, we were doing our grocery shopping at the big carrot, and the dotytron picked up a new shower scrubby...you know, one of the ones that look like this:

these things have been around for at least like, 15 years, so i technically didn't even have to post that picture, but whatevs.

we're checking out, and the cashier, takes the scrubby, scans it, and then says, "oh! this is one of those things for exfoliating, right?" *mimes exfoliating his face with the scrubby* we're like, "uh, yeah" (thinking to ourselves, "where the crap has this guy been that he doesn't know what a shower scrubby is/does?") then he CONTINUES to mime scrubbing at his face (and the scrubby is practically rubbing up against his sallow, gaunt cheek) and says, "they're supposed to be really good at getting rid of dead skin" and we're like, "uhhh, yeah" and then, STILL MIMING, he goes, "i bet they REALLY do a good job!" and finally stops and we finish the transaction and grab our stuff and leave. as soon as we were out of earshot i turned to the dotytron and said, "i could have used about 150% less of that guy rubbing his junk with the shower scrubby" and the dotytron started like, dry-heaving. it was so gross (and yet, funny, considering how traumatized the dotytron was at the defiling of his shower scrubby.)

on monday for dinner i made us a tater tot turkey casserole, which is as DELICIOUS and trashy as the name implies. cream of mushroom soup mix, defrosted thanksgiving turkey chunks, mayo, onions, mushrooms, celery, all topped with tater tots that i coaxed into oven-baked crispiness by tossing with oil, salt and pepper before strewing on the casserole. it was hella good:

 

tuesday night was an off day - and by "off" i mean "wendy's" - i had a double bacon mushroom melt combo AND a spicy chicken sandwich. oy.

here's a shot of the banana walnut upside down cake:

 

tonight i did some more freezer busting (i need that space for xmas cookies, yo!) and reheated up a fig, arugala and gorgonzola quiche i had tucked away. with it i made a baby spinach salad with toasted pecans and a warm bacon-mustard vinaigrette:

 

on tuesday we tried putting the boobla khan in his crib to sleep. he's been napping in there periodically as i've moved my base camp back upstairs after being ensconced like jabba the hut on the living room couch for the past month. last night was the first night he started the night's sleep in the crib. but then i got all sadface about it. about him growing up. about how your days when your little baby can sleep in bed with you and you can fall asleep with the sound of their sweet breathing in your ear are limited. how he's not going to be so soft and cute and squishable forever. so as soon as he woke up for his middle of the night feeding, i hustled him back into our room and our bed. i'm a total co-sleeper! what happened to my ideals? but i defy you not to smuggle this cargo into your bed either:



here's a bonus shot of master T, featuring cute little baby toes:

buh. my defenses are useless against that level of artillery.

fin.

unbelievable

uhhh...master T slept for SEVEN HOURS STRAIGHT last night. we were trying to get him back on track after a few late nights scrambled his brains again a bit, so we were waking him up to feed him every 3 hours on the hour. after dinner last night, he basically wanted to feed every hour, so i indulged him with boob. he took his daily bottle 9pm, crushed almost 5 oz of boob juice and then crashed from 11pm to 6am.

this morning when he started stirring i nudged the dotytron to change his diaper and he woke up, checked his cell phone, and was all like, "is this right? did the power go out? it's SIX AM!!!" what a smart little boobla khan.

our friend A gave us this book that his sister swore by, which the dotytron has been half-a**edly flipping through, which basically said that if you followed her program, your kid would be sleeping 12 hours. it comes down to stuffing them full of boob juice right before bed...which is kind of what we did, based on what master T was requesting, and it totally worked! it was a combination of that advice and our midwives advice, who basically said that we should feed him as much as he wants up until 10pm and then hopefully, he'll conk out.

this weekend was ram-jammed but so much fun. thursday night my friend H bailed on us for the leslieville wanderlust, so i strapped on master T and we went on our own little jaunt, which SOMEHOW resulted in us ending up at bobbette and belle. they were giving out free hot chocolate with homemade marshmallows and i ended up buying some cupcakes. these are the best purchased cupcakes ever. soft, moist, tender cake topped with the airiest buttercream. so good! from the bottom left we have: vanilla cake with raspberry buttercream, vanilla cupcake with espresso buttercream, and their chocolate cupcake with gianduja buttercream. ho boy, imma gonna get chub chub with them around the corner from us:

on friday night, our friends S and P hosted us and our buddies B & G for a polish dinner at their house. S is polish and won't be going home for xmas this year, so she worked out her homesickness by preparing us a multi-course polish extravaganza. we started with this kind of polish charcuterie board, consisting of fried polish sausage, a pepperoni type stick, a rolled pork belly cold cut, pork pate, and a raw pork tenderloin that's been smoked. i also had my first pickled herring experience. i don't know why i ever avoided it. it was SO good! almost like gravlax - S says sometimes it can get pretty funky and fermented, but this was clean and light and was served with lightly pickled white onions. you're supposed to spread rye bread really thick with butter, top it with the herring and onions and do a shot of vodka. if you say so, poland!

then we had these little dumplings stuffed with sauerkraut and mushrooms, that translated means "ears" - fried in butter with lots of browned, crispy onions:

cucumbers with dill, a grated beet salad, roasted green beans, salted sliced tomatoes with green onions:

finally, our main course, with sauerkraut with bacon, brisket, and pork sausage:

this dish was insane. you hardboil eggs and then take them out of the shell, chop them up with parsley and dill and put them BACK into the shell and top them with breadcrumbs and bake it. SO CRAZY!!!

there was also ANOTHER dish that i didn't take a picture of, a soup course that was a white borscht, based on a sour dough starter, with chopped egg and more pork sausage.

finally, an apple cheesecake. HOLY CRAP, RIGHT? i mean, i cook for people, but this was INSANE! it was a really fun night. we hung out there until about midnight (thus, scrambling our son's brains), but it was so worth it. i think we're going to join their softball team in the summer, and P gave us all "poopsicle" baseball hats, based on this business he had selling poopsicles out of a poopsicle cart he dragged across canada. poopsicles are chocolate covered frozen bananas (his idea predates arrested development). the whole night master T was so good. he snoozed away, did a little whiny cry for like, 1 second when he woke up to let me know he was hungry, and then let himself be carried by everyone, passed around like a football.

saturday we went to the dotytron's cousins weddings, which was crawling with dotys of all stripes and persuasions. here is the boobla with nany (now great-nany):

so cute!!! i swear, this guy loves making us look good when we leave the house. throughout the ceremony, and for most of the 8 hours we were there, he was sleeping. he woke up, did another little mewling cry and then snoozed away as he was passed from arm to arm. he saves all his long crying jags for us at home...but it's like he's got a sixth sense - when we're out, he sleeps and makes us look like we're amazing parents.

sunday we met up with dr. rei, hanbo, and bwonger for some "harry potter and the deathly hallows" part 1 action. there's not much to say. most everyone i know has read the books so you can't talk about the plot. i can say that they made really smart decisions in what to include in the movie and what not to, in terms of what makes a gripping film. i was a little worried, because i found the first half of the 7th installment of the book to be a bit of a slog, the second half is where things REALLY pick up, but the film totally delivers. there are some brilliant, beautiful scenes and the tone is DARK. yates renders everything in inky, moody blacks and bleak, wintery greys.

i was actually surprised that some idiot parents took their young, young kids to see the movies. the books and movies mature at the rate that harry does as a character. so if you started when you were 11 and read one a year, by the time you were 18 you'd be equipped to handle what happens. i wouldn't take a 5 year old to see the deathly hallows - the thing is rife with death, blood, despair, nazi overtones, decay. there are some pretty graphic, violent scenes that would've scared the crap out of young me.

all the performances are fantastic. ron weasley really shines in this one - he provides a lot of the levity and humour and there's a lovely, lovely scene with harry and hermione without any dialogue that underscores how far the three of them have come as friends. it was fantastic. i can't wait to see the last one, but in the meantime, i can re-read the books and get lost in that world again (and refresh the holes in my memory of what happens).

the dotytron always laughs at me because every now and then, i'll pick up the last book and read the "king's cross" chapter and just bawl my eyes out. but i'll probably start from the beginning and read it through. the dotytron has been starting from the beginning and i got into the habit of reading out loud to master T from "harry potter and the philosopher's stone" during the middle of the night feeding. i think he likes it.

while we were at the movie, the boobla was being watched by momma and poppa d so after the movie we trooped over there for a staycation. i love hanging out there. same way i love hanging out at my parents' place in markham. now that we have a baby, we're so coddled and spoiled! so last night momma d made us a delicious pot roast dinner - i had 2 helpings, it was so good:

today i'm getting cracking at school. for dinner i'm making a tater tot turkey casserole with chunks of leftover thanksgiving turkey, sliced mushrooms and celery all bound up with cream of mushroom soup and topped with tater tots. we'll have a salad to offset the betty crocker-ness of what i just typed out up there.

for dessert, i made that banana walnut upside down cake for my contribution to last night's dinner, so we'll have the last of that with a scoop of ice cream.

fin.

little big cuz

has arrived! markus, the gentle giant, showed up as scheduled on monday, weighing in at a whopping 9lb 1oz, he outweighed master T by about almost 3/4 of a lb. he's got a really chubalub, wide noggin, but he looks very cute and smushable.

i'm going out of my mind wanting to visit my sis like, yesterday. gah! i can't wait! we're hopefully going down to the ol' geneseo the first weekend in december, if all goes according to plan.

not much to report here, lately. i have to bring the boobla into the midwives today for a visit that's going to result in major dramas. when babies are born they have their feet pricked to get blood for a series of metabolic tests that are mandated by the government (i think). checking for thyroid issues, etc. anyway, we had it done at the hospital but the lab just called and said they got insufficient amounts of blood!!! so now the little guy has to go in and get his foot pricked again. he's also started doing this thing where he cries himself hoarse if he's upset and we're not giving him what he wants. such dramas!!! luckily for us, the boobla has kind of a low voice. so it's not as brain-melting as other newborn cries. the roomie noticed it, too - and she sees a s**t f**k load more babies than i do, so i know now it wasn't all in my head. anyway, low voice is a blessing because he's been a bit of a fussy bo bussy lately.

last night was supposed to be my triumphant return to the wednesday night class...but i ditched and used the boobla as an excuse. heehee. i just felt that staying home and working on my paper on constitutional barriers to senate reform would be a much more quality use of my time. so instead of course, i procrastinated by working on a kitchen design in ikea. which i then accidentally ERASED like a loser. so frustrating.

dinner on monday was whole wheat fusilli with pancetta, fennel, onions, and grated parm, which we had with caesar salad:

tuesday night we had a freezer treasure meal of cabbage rolls, with my new favorite winter salad - caramelized pears, endive, dried cranberries, and toasted walnuts in a maple-mustard vinaigrette:

last night for dinner i made a semolina gnocchi gratin and topped it with a spinach, swiss chard, and mushroom gorgonzola ragout - freakin' hella tasty. the semolina gnocchi came together in about 10 minutes, too:

i'll post the recipe for it at the bottom.

i'm feeling very overwhelmed by the rapidly approaching holiday season right now. we haven't even finished planting all our spring bulbs yet! and we haven't raked any leaves. every time we set out to do it, we put it off, and then it rains and gets bitterly cold. rain + bitter cold are not conducive conditions for leaf wrangling. we have to put up our lights and get a tree and trim said tree and our weekends are RAMMED! i feel like we don't have a free moment, let alone finding time to carve out to write 2 assignments, 1 research paper proposal, a research paper presentation, AND the research paper itself. ugh. i just made myself sick to the stomach. i've only got one batch of cookie dough balled up and ready to go in the freezer - i've got to do a lot more. i keep reminding myself that it'll be easier this year because i'm not working, but being chained to the boob and watching after the little guy IS work and it's harder work, too. it's non-stop! at least with my job, when i come home, i leave work there. i don't have work following me around and screaming its guts out.

we've started on the cloth diapers. so far, so good. we had a bit of a learning curve with learning the right fold to avoid a**plosions, but it seems to be working okay. because the cloth doesn't wick away the moisture and because master T sleeps long hours at night and we don't want him a) stewing in his own urine/feces and b) waking up because of said stewing; we're doing disposables at night. i've heard that things become considerably more crazy once they start eating solid food. the breast milk poops are like nothing, really.

i better get down to business. tonight i'm supposed to meet up with H and baby D to check out the leslieville holiday wanderlust. basically, a bunch of the shops on queen east offer deals and have special promotions and throw open their doors and serve mulled apple cider and have fun stuff for you to check out. i think it should be really fun.

next blog post should feature some book reviews and hopefully more progress made on my schooling. *gulp*

fin.

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semolina gnocchi gratin

serves 2

2 c. milk (or a mix of milk and water)
1 t. salt
1/2 c. semolina
1/4 c. grated parmesan cheese
2 T. unsalted butter

- bring milk, salt, and semolina to a boil in a medium saucepan. reduce heat and whisk/stir semolina until it becomes quite thick, about 5 minutes on medium-low.
- pour the semolina mixture into a greased 8" square baking pan and put it in the fridge to cool and firm up (about 1 hour)
- invert the baking pan and cut the semolina cake into squares (i used a round cutter just to be fancy)
- lay the squares in a buttered gratin dish, overlapping slightly
- sprinkle with the grated parm and dot with the butter
- bake it in a 425F oven for about 30 minutes or until the top is nicely golden brown.

this makes a great base for a lot of different things. you could do the veggie ragout route like i did, but it would also be tasty as a base for a bolognese, or any thick meat sauce, or as a side for grilled meats or a braise like osso buco. to make a semolina gnocchi souffle, i would add about 2 eggs to the semolina mixture, just after it thickens in the pot and before you pour it into the baking pan. the eggs should make the semolina puff up a bit.
- butter a shallow gratin dish

countdown...

to little big cousin's appearance into the world!!! eeks!!! can't wait to find out if i have a new niece or nephew! i'm calling the baby "little big cuz" because the boobla just got weighed at the midwives last week and is a whopping 8lb 5oz - gaining over an oz a day, BUT i think that's how much little big cuz weighed like, 3 weeks ago, in utero. my mum has taken to calling little big cuz the jolly green giant and referring to the boobla as sprout.

i can't imagine how rough it's going to be for my poor sis recovering from a c-section - it's major surgery! it's not like they can take a baby out laparoscopically. that and the fact that she gets 7 weeks off before she has to go back to work.

this weekend was fun! friday we had dinner at dr. rei and hanbo's house which resulted in this deliciousness courtesy of dr. rei (a lamb/eggplant dish with rice with raisins and carrots and a fattoush salad [not pictured] on the side):

my contribution was whipping my boob out during the meal and also a pumpkin/squash cheesecake that i forgot to flavour with pumpkin pie spice because i'm only half here, brain-wise lately. i was so stressed about it tasting weird that i had a slice of it during the day, which resulted in me bringing a pac-man cheescake over to their house. i had used this piece of squash/pumpkin from our CSA, it was a varietal i'd never heard of, which was MASSIVE. i roasted off cubes of it and then pureed it and folded it into the cheesecake batter in lieu of canned pumpkin. it definitely tasted fuller than canned pumpkin, but i think some cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger would have smoothed out the squashiness.

conversation on friday was aces as usual. we started talking about music and die antwoord came up and dr. rei started fuming, "die antwoord makes owl city [whom she had just been slagging] sound like freakin' pavarotti!" and we were all like, "PAVAROTTI?!? what does that even mean? is that a good thing or a bad thing?!?" it was jokes. it was also jokes when i caught dr. rei talking about how much she hates vince carter and managed to make her see that she hates vince carter for the same reason cleveland hates lebron (whom she had previously defended for defecting to miami). i felt so vindicated watching the dawning realization on her face when she realized she'd been caught.

saturday i went to school. ugh ugh ugh! the first hour i was like, WTF is going on?!? and then i eased into it. i went after lunch to maximize my time and left the dotytron at home for his longest solo stretch with the boobla ever. the boobla made it easy on him by basically snoozing the day away, the little champ. we had spaghetti and meatballs and a baby spinach salad for dinner:

and i baked off some of these macadamia shortbread cookies which are AMAZING! the ground up macadamia nuts add a rich butteriness that just underscores the natural butteriness of shortbread and the texture is insane. so crumbly and tender! these are definitely going in the xmas cookie tin this year for sure:



our saturday night was spent watching "toy story 3" which is SO GOOD. wow. pixar effin' nails every movie they make and they just keep getting better and better. the level of emotion they manage to squeeze into completely imaginary, computer generated characters should make james cameron and all those motion capture idiots writhe in their inferiority. the entire movie had me welling up every 10 minutes or so. so sad! and so cute! and so funny! there are so many genuine, laugh out loud moments that don't rely on cheap sophomoric humour - many live-action comedies should aspire to as much. blargh...so entertaining - i can't recommend it enough.

it was particularly affecting because the theme of the 3rd installment is all about growing up and coming to terms with growing up and i've had to grapple with that lately as the boobla continues to chub out and change on a daily basis and i've seen how his first month has literally FLOWN by. one of my favorite things in the world is after a feed, when he passes out milk drunk against my chest, and his eyes are closed, and his little mouth is gaping open in a little "o" shape and he's breathing all heavy and completely unaware of anything else - he's so defenceless and vulnerable, his little body slumped up against me is so small and trusting. looking down at him on friday night i started crying, because i was already missing the point when he wouldn't do that anymore. and i know that every stage just gets better and better, but it's hard to imagine anything more perfect than his being at every moment in the present. so hormonal!!!

sunday we strapped him into the ergo and went on a leslieville walk about. we wanted to try this coffee place that our neighbour, a coffee aficionado, recommended. it's called voulez-vous cafe and it's on queen, between greenwood and coxwell. the leslieville strip is rife with gourmet coffee retailers. we've got the original dark horse espresso bar, mercury espresso bar, te aro, tango palace coffee company, red rocket coffee company, and now voulez vous. the dotytron has been on a macchiato tour of all those places and agreed with the neighbour that voulez vous was the best, richest, most nuanced cup he's had so far. the ambiance is really nice, too. tonnes of magazines (my favorite is that they have lots of current issues of dwell) and a big, industrial communal table made from old bowling alley flooring.

then we headed down to visit my old canoe colleague, S's new storefront for her french macaron/wedding cake company, bobette and belle. they're a short, 10 minute walk from us and the store is GORGEOUS! just take a look at the wedding cakes on their site - freakin' incredible. and lots of delicious flavours, too. they've expanded so that the store also sells baked goods, pastries, cookies, and candies and it's a jewel box of a location with a full production kitchen in the back. we bought two cupcakes (red velvet and a chocolate hazelnut crunch), both topped with the airiest buttercream and a blueberry scone, which comes with a little pot of whipped devonshire cream. mmmmmmmmmm!!! we had the cupcakes late last night and they were DIVINE. moist, rich, cake topped with the fluffiest, lightest, most intensely flavoured buttercream imaginable, and all for the very reasonable price of $2.75 each! i'm so happy for S, her business is going so well - they did a bunch of macarons for the new york times party during the film fest, and they do cakes for the rich and famous and are routinely featured in high-end magazines.

i'm also selfishly happy that they set up shop in our hood. when we first bought lil' ugmo, i was more than a little upset to be moving away from my beloved danforth, home to my favorite grocery stores/cheese mongers/hardware stores, etc. and leslieville seemed SO gentrified to me. but now i freakin' love it. i love living in between two thriving, fantastic neighbourhoods that are equally accessible and yet are still far from the madding crowd. leslieville has amazing boutiques for clothes, vintage stores, more vintage furniture stores than you could ever possibly hope for, a plethora of charming neighbourhood restaurants, and SO. MANY. BAKERIES and brunch spots. plus my massage therapist and access to all the fast food along the lakeshore. then, when i have to do my grocery shopping, i can just nip up the danforht, which has all those material, daily life needs covered, but has a dearth of the "fun stuff" stores that queen east has. and in the middle of it all, is chinatown east and little india for arcane spices and cheap seafood. best! i love love love my hood!!!

for sunday breakkie, as a nod to the fact that we were scheduled to go to guu izakaya with mhui and her hubby for our quasi anniversary dinner, we had an OPEN FACED sausage and egg mcmuffin. i'll let you be the judge as to whether we actually exercised a lick of restraint or not:

not so much, eh? we dropped off the boobla for his first ever adventures in babysitting with momma and poppa d and went to guu for dinner and feasted like pigs. it was so good! i love that restaurant more than anything. i want in!!! how do i get in as an investor?!? mhui and her hubby (who were ALSO celebrating their quasi anniversary) eat the way we do (and by that i mean, a lot) and they love their guu hard. we just narrowly got into the restaurant, which almost resulted in a domestic.

the dotytron and i drove by at 4:40 and there was nobody there, so i made the call that he should drive me to my work so that i could pick up some books. i was also like, "don't worry! it's sunday night and it's raining! the hype has died down! we'll be there by 5pm!" we WERE there by 5pm to find that there was a LINE UP TO THE SIDEWALK. he wanted to murder me. we were the last people to the door when the host said the restaurant was officially full at which point you might as well have started making funeral arrangements for me. i asked if he would mind shifting people around at the bar and he agreed so we got to sit together. disaster averted (narrowly!) we ended up ordering 24 dishes at guu. plus drinks and dessert. amazing!!!

the outlaw grandparents were fine with the boobla, who again made it easy on them by basically snoozing for the entire four hours that we were gone. he was up long enough that momma d managed to finally get some photos of him with his eyes open:

what a little gaffer! goddamn, he's a cute kid.

fin.

remembrance day

an enormous outpouring of gratitude for the greatest generation. as these veterans get older and older and as the horrors of world wars become more and more remote - it's important to remember what they did for us and the sacrifices they made, and how unlikely it is that the cosseted, coddled, subsequent generations that followed would have the courage, self-sacrifice and fortitude to do the same.

today also marks the one-month birthday of the boobla khan who entered our lives and obliterated all memory of what came before and for whom i would find the courage, self-sacrifice, and fortitude to protect and preserve.

i'm sorry that grandpa reid and poppa didn't get a chance to meet their great grandson but i know their legacy lives on - both in the mystery of the little tiger's genetic code and in his ability to live in this world as it is.

a world where he can feast on boob and collapse into a blissful, milk-drunk stupor in a little bear-printed sleeper:



one day, we'll take him to visit his great grandpas and explain to him why they were such amazing men and how important it is for him to live up their legacy.

fin.

9 years

almost a decade a hits with this guy:



i really really really like both of those dudes picture above. but my love for the smaller guy is a tributary of my preexisting love for the big guy, which has been going for 9 years today!

the dotytron is truly a prince amongst men. i called him when he was leaving work yesterday when i was at my wit's end with the boobla, who as i've mentioned, had his brains scrambled from daylight saving time and was up and being fussy pretty much all day. long jags of crying and being inconsolable and not wanting to nap and sharting up a storm. not fun. the dotytron came home and took the reins and let me just check out from mama duty for a while and it was blissful. he changed master T, gave him his bottles, burped him, comforted him, and stayed up with him until about 12:30 in the morning (this despite having to be up for work at 6:30 today) and let me have an uninterrupted stretch of almost 5 hours of sleep.

he's the best. the running gag around here is that i'm probably the most unsuitable candidate for maternity leave ever, while the dotytron is the one DYING to take a paternity leave and it's only due to the vagaries of our employers respective benefits packages that i'm the one who ended up being off for the year. it's like ladyhawk. so tragic!

we're postponing our celebratory dinner until sunday, when momma and poppa d have graciously (and bravely) decided to do their first solo, extended babysitting session. the miracles of cellular mobile phone technology certainly makes babysitting a lot more convenient and stress-free.

so we had a very unsexy, uncelebratory dinner of leftover frozen minestrone with buttered, warm walnut sourdough bread from brick street bakery. leading up the birth of the boobla i stocked up our chest freezer with meals in anticipation of my lack of time/energy for cooking post-partum. because i've bounced back quickly and because i have loads of energy for making dinner, we now have a serious back-log to get through. so a night of freezer busting plus a night of leftover eating (i still haven't managed to figure out cooking for dos) plus all our dinners out with friends/family means that i have like 3 nights a week when i'm actually cooking, which is not nearly enough time for me to crank out all the fall/winter food deliciousness that i want to. le sigh. shouts out to my first world problems.

i did make a concession to the day and ventured out to procure us some day-old cake slices from dufflet in the beaches (thrifty housewife!) which meant that i had a billion heart attacks en route as i drove for the first time in forever, in cranky, it's-dark-at-5pm rush hour traffic along local roads. i'm way too easily bullied as a driver. i was signalling to turn left onto queen from woodbine, after assiduously noting that the signage prohibited left turns between the hours of 4-6pm (it was 6:30pm). i must have checked and re-checked the sign and the clock on the dash half a dozen times. reassured that i was in the right, i moved into the left hand lane and signaled my intention. then i looked in the rear view mirror to see the bro-dawg in the car behind me gesticulating at my car wildly and saying, "WHAT THE F**K?!?" and then he started honking at me. so i got all freaked out and meekly continued on through, which meant that i got caught up in the east-end construction/warren of one-way streets and it took me twice as long to get home. buh. next time imma gonna stick to my guns.

we watched "scott pilgrim versus the world" last night. we both weren't really feeling it. i had a few problems with it:

a) i felt it was kind of racist. the jokes about knives chau (ie. her being called "kung pao chicken") seemed to trade on stereotypes (asian school girl, etc.) that weren't being unpacked in a way that was either clever, or self-aware enough for them not to be slightly distasteful
b) what was the big deal with ramona flowers? why was everyone dogging her? she seemed like a total b***h and her relationship with scott seemed really unbelievable and based on nothing other than her dyed hair and the fact that she was a throwback to the idealized, early 90s grunge goddess
c) speaking of that, the teenagers in this film were sooo anachronistic. are there even teenagers who look/act/behave like this anymore? it definitely spoke more to my teenage experience than a contemporaneous one. this film was so sonic unyon/dinosaur jr./thrift store grunge! kids aren't like that nowadays! and i guess it makes sense because the author of the comic is probably my age, but at the same time, i don't really have the patience to go back to teenage me and get inside the head of stupid white boy world circa me. i think i would probably enjoy the comic more.
d) the visual flourishes weren't my style and i found them distracting - along with the slender plot and the extended fighting sequences. more character development would have been ideal.
e) i just felt really bad for knives, who gets used by scott in multiple ways and then ends up sacrificing her own happiness for his and ramona's. ghey. there were a few one-liners i thought were decently funny - and i did enjoy seeing the toronto landmarks (even if the dotytron was getting on my nerves by calling out all the locations: "pizza pizza" "lee's palace" "sonic boom" - i finally snapped and was like, "I KNOW WHAT THOSE PLACES ARE, TOO") but that wasn't enough to sustain interest in the movie. i can see why it didn't do so well at the box office.

fin.

there is no substitute...

for a mother's arms. except of course, 2 pillows, a swaddling blanket, a pre-fold swaddler, and a mom who has s**t to do.

so we bought a nursing pillow which turned out to be garbage for nursing, but makes a pretty awesome ground-control-it's-major-tom command centre for the boobla:

here he's all like, "whaat up?!"/kicking it old school and doing the mashed potato. we love it when he's all eyes open, toronto. it's the best. i can't believe he decided to turn into a white guy though. he started off so asian and now he's shedding it the way his belly button is slowly shedding its appearance of being a secondary mouth.

big d insisted on hosting a family one-month dinner for the boobla. it was pretty boss. shark's fin soup and eggs dyed red and lobster and other kinds of goodness:






the dotytron's movember 'stache is looking very fraaanche.

all the profs in my program (well, the 2 of them) are being super-nice about giving me extensions and i think the program director has washed his hands of me. i emailed him as a courtesy to let him know that i was going to be coming to the saturday class this week, but after lunch, because it's not the best use of my time away from the little tiger direct to show up for class at 10 for an hour's recap of last class and then sit through lunch and he was all like "sort something out with the professor to make up for your absence" and the prof is like, "we'll discuss this later" - sweet!


i made cinnamon pecan buns on the weekend - probably my most successful attempt to date - i'm going to throw out all my other recipes and just keep this one. i got it from food and wine magazine (fluffy, buttery, cinnamon rolls) and did some small tweaks to make it less fussy (ie. only dividing the dough in half instead of in quarters and skipping the parchment paper step) - the recipe was a little confusing - i'm not sure how you would have fit all the buns into one 10" springform pan. i split the dough in half and baked off two 9" springform pans and wrapped one and froze it to take to my sister when we finally get to see her and introduce the new cousins to one another.


tonight for dinner i made us a baked mac'n'cheese with a random crumb topping - i just smushed up a bunch of pretzel crackers, ritz crackers, and other hard, bread-like things and mixed it with butter and thyme to top the mac'n'cheese with. served alongside that fennel, radicchio, romano bean and parsley salad that we love in the winter.

fin.

lucky buttons galore

wow. so far it's been a humdinger of a weekend.

friday our friend S came for a visit with the boobla khan and then dr. rei showed up with her friend L and then my MOM showed up (totally forgot she was coming by) and then the dotytron came home from school so it was a full house of visitors showering love on the the little chicken. my mom was also being hilarious and chatty and turning on the charm and we got to regale people with stories of how the dotytron's very existence basically puts big d on edge. like how everything the dotytron touches at my parent's house in markham basically sends big d off into a tailspin of anger. lol!

par example, on the topmost shelf of the kitchen cabinets where my parents keep their glasses, they have like, novelty plastic glasses shaped like the CN tower from 1984 or something. one time, the dotytron had the temerity to take one of those glasses to make himself a drink, and then he got yelled at by big d. lol! on the same shelf, big d also has a collection of mini-booze bottles (like from airplanes and stuff) and one time, the dotytron asked if he could use one to make himself a drink and big d yelled at him (do you see a trend here?) big d has also yelled at the dotytron for making himself an espresso with my mum's espresso maker, which fulfills the "big d yelling at the dotytron" conditions: 1) the dotytron is involved; 2) drinks are involved. lol!!! it's actually comical how often big d yells at the dotytron.

saturday was a little buckshot - got up, took the boober to the danforth to do some grocery shopping came home, the dotytron went for a massage, i went for a massage, came home, met up with smckay and the 3000 for some hair cutting and visiting...look how cute they are with the bambino:


adorable, huh? then we went to meet the rest of the kdubsguelph tdot crew for uncle J's birthday dinner at yamato in yorkville.

this was an informative experience. informative because it reiterated AGAIN how much longer it takes to leave the house when you have a baby and also of the shortcomings and failings of my leaving-the-house-for-an-extended period preparedness skills. for example, the little guy blew ass at the restaurant, and the backup outfit i have in the diaper bag is a little skimpy for the cold weather. or, i brought all the components for my breast pump, EXCEPT the actual part that connects to the boob, which means that by the end of the night, we were dealing with a little of the ol' leak-through-the-top bizness:

so classy, eh? on the plus side, look at what a bangin' job smckay did on my hairs. on the negative side, look at how wall-eyed my boobs are. they're practically in two different area codes. i needs me some nursing bras, stat. being unable to pump also meant that my boobs were filled with rocks by the end of the evening - watching a little baby try to nurse on super-engorged boobs is so sad. it's the equivalent of the squirrels who keep valiantly trying to eat the pumpkins - their mouths are too damn small for the everest they're attempting to conquer.

anyway, because of the giant clusterf**k that was us leaving the house (which included forgetting uncle J's present at home - nice!) and the dotytron's colossally poor judgement call to take the MOST CONGESTED AND TRAFFIC LIGHT HEAVY ROAD OF ALL TIME there, we were about 15 minutes late - to a restaurant. in yorkville. on a saturday night. a restaurant that has an intensely axis-of-evil maitre d' and the most s.s. reservation policy known to man. they'll hold your reso for 15 minutes and ONLY seat you once the whole party is there. so of course, everyone else was there except for us. and they were all seated and the maitre d' refused to accommodate us, even though there were EMPTY teppanyaki tables elsewhere - or tables that only had a couple sitting there who had clearly just been seated and could have switched tables with us so that we could all sit together. but no. so we were all dejected and the four of us sat on the sushi side. you know who was totally unflappable throughout the whole situation and made us look like a star? this guy:



we made the best of it though and it ended up being a really fun time. we were so mad at the restaurant that we were being hilariously jokey about occupying the table for AS LONG AS WE G-D PLEASED and ordering one dish at a time and maybe doing a dine and dash (we didn't).

can i just say that smckay is an amazing person? her ability to get s**t done and mcguyver a situation is simply beyond. the little guy blew a** at the resto and i wasn't going to change him but smckay scoped out the situation, determined that there was a narrow sliver of counter that we could use between the two sinks in the women's bathroom and we hustled him in there. once there, the counter was SOPPING wet (because they had those stupid sinks that SIT ON TOP OF THE COUNTER - i hate those sinks!) and the paper towel dispenser was all jammed up. smckay breaks into the paper towel dispenser, thinks about throwing away the key to give the ol' finger to the restaurant and their stupid reservation policy, but decides against it, and we strip down the little guy who has sharted EVERYWHERE. she grabs his backup outfit and i'm in the middle of using a billion wipes to clean up the mess when she suggests that we wash off his little butt in the fancy pants yorkville sink ON TOP of the counter. so we do. much the amusement of the two nice ladies who came into the bathroom to pee and found that the whole hand-washing area was taken up by a nuclear poo, a billion wipes, soggy paper towels, a baby who'd practically been sponged-bathed in the sink, and a stinky diaper.

then we trooped over to lolly's place and hung out there, so in the end, we did get to spend time with everyone even if we were put into the sushi-side internment camp of yamato. baby's first experience in yorkville, what what!

watching everyone coo and cuddle the little boober made my heat melt. he got passed around from hand to hand and this morning i got all weepy looking at all the photos from last night, seeing everyone holding him and thinking about how he doesn't even KNOW how lucky he is to be born into an extended family of people who love the crap out of him just because he's around (and showing no overtly a**hole-y tendencies - yet.) i seriously was tearing up telling the dotytron how lucky the boober is and the dotytron was like, "well, it's our job to let him know how lucky he is to have this network, and to feel sympathy for people who don't have this sheer wall of love surrounding and supporting them." wise words, dotytron. i'm so excited to share the next phase of my life with these amazing people we have in our lives - to love the crap outta their kids and smush the 2nd generation of us and our connections and to see the little boober grow up with this crew of friends - this is the stuff that makes life so amazing and miraculous. to see these connections continue to grow through time, to see relationships and friendships deepen, to see the love your family and friends will have for your kid just because YOU made this little being happen - it's the best. seriously the best. like love transformed into a giant polar fleece slanket giving you the hug you need to face the cold winter of life.

so many lucky buttons gathered together!

fin.

chubalubalub

randy macho man savage pose! incidentally, the dotytron determined a long time ago, that the "bananarama bo bama" song that you sing where you insert someone's name and riff on it (do you know what i'm talking about?) unequivocally DOESN'T work when you use the name "randy macho man savage" - it's the one exception to the rule - you know, the bananarama bo bama song rule.

well, feeding like a demon is causing SOMEONE to chunk up. he's a little less scrawny chicken in the limbs and his torso and head are getting all filled out. it makes him even MORE kissable than he was before. we love kissing him. my life is like a pulp science fiction/horror movie now - i birthed something whose appetites far exceed mine. for the past three nights he's been only up twice in the night - we're hoping the good luck streak continues.

in other news: i fired off my midterm today. the prof made a special allowance and gave me a take home, open book version of the mid term. i had to answer more questions than my classmates who did the in-class version. it felt good to get back into the groove of academic b.s.-ing - my specialty. i did 2/3 of it last night and finished off the final 1/3 this morning in an hour or so. it felt like a re-entry into the real world and it was nice knowing that i could cross another activity off the school checklist, and that i could manage to do it with the boobla khan only being less than a month old. i'm feeling pretty optimistic about my abilities to stay on top of this degree during mat leave.

in OTHER other news - GUESS WHO I SAW TODAY during my daily constitutional with master star eyes? THAT MEDIA PERSONALITY that was hitting on me in the grossest way imaginable earlier this year. convergence! there was a stabbing around the corner from our house (it was an isolated domestic situation, no worries) - actually, the story is kind of hilariously wonky. the dude accused of the stabbing was out on bail for another stabbing! and the people he stabbed are thought to be the people who posted bail for him but then wanted to withdraw. the people who got stabbed are okay, which is what makes me saying "lol!" okay. ANYWAY, i stopped with the stroller and was trying to ascertain what had happened when i met the dude's eyes. he looked at me, i smiled in a friendly fashion, and then HE PROCEEDED TO PRETEND NOT-KNOW ME. you know how you can tell when someone totally recognizes you and then makes the call to pretend not-know you? this was a clear cut case of that. ah well, the most important thing is that he knows i was preggos. it was becoming a running joke that i hadn't run into him at work since starting to obviously show and then the chicken boo came early so i didn't get to stake him out and act all nonchalant about my knocked-up state. best!

on tuesday night i made us a pretty boss dinner. i roasted delicata and acorn squash in a high oven in rendered pancetta fat with torn up sage leaves and garlic and then tossed this, the reserved crispy pancetta, some pasta cooking water, and parmesan cheese with whole wheat pasta. i also made us a wintery salad of chopped belgian endive with pan-roasted pears chunks, dried cranberries, and toasted walnuts in a maple vinaigrette. i'm loving dried fruits and nuts in wintery salads lately - i used to hate the idea of dried fruit in things but i've totally come around:


tonight and last night were leftover busting nights in attempt to rid fridge of backlog...however, as a treat to myself for getting my midterm done, i made chewy chocolate chip cookies with skor bits in them:



i've got some movie reviews and book review for yous...but in the meantime -

roll call of awesome:

the it gets better project and the outpouring of support for this initiative makes me cry. more correctly, the fact that this project had to come about to give hope to LGBT kids in freakin' small minded towns who are being bullied by total a**holes who are terminally unhot, uncool, and giant losers makes me cry. it's beyond upsetting to me that awesome kids are letting losers determine their lives and don't have the support system to know how those po dunk jerkwads are po dunk jerkwads.

i dressed up the boobla khan in a pretty flaming, cruising-the-strip-in-miami onesie today and the thought of him being bullied if he turns out to be gay infuriated me. for his sake, i'm glad that he's going to grow up in toronto, with me and the dotytron for his parents - because i know we'll support the f**k out of him and that if anyone ever messes with my kid, i'm going to make their lives a living hell. i'm really good at that. and yes, it will probably embarrass the hell outta my child to have to witness his parent dressing down and verbally harassing ANOTHER child, but you don't mess with me and mine. i will mess you up good. mark my words.

i just wish all these underdog kids everywhere had someone like me in their corner.



on a somewhat related tip, "rainbow connection" is one of the best songs ever written. hand's down. this also makes me cry.

fin.