ABC

ALWAYS. BE. CLOSING.  I haven't seen Glengarry Glen Ross but that's all I know about it (that's what I consider a Jeopardy-level knowledge of a topic).  

I had a humdinger of a day yesterday, which stood me in good stead when it came time to visit the car dealership last night to test drive the Dodge Caravan.  The Dotytron was super-hype on his Caravan.  I don't like the look of them, myself (wicked boxy, yo!) and I don't trust the brand - even though our mechanic (who we love more than anything) listed it as his number one minivan.  It was our mechanic's endorsement that totally turned the Dotytron around.  I think he loves our mechanic more than I do.  The Dotytron has a distressing tendency to get really attached to trades if he gets good vibes from them.  As opposed to me, where I prefer working with trades that I get good vibes from and that exhibit craftsmanship and pride in their work, but I will always, always, always, be preoccupied about the bottom line.  

Monday night we were at the Toyota dealership test driving a used minivan and they kept me waiting for like 15 minutes and I basically went ballistic.  I got super-snippy with them.  First of all, aren't you supposed to be "ALWAYS! BE! CLOSING!"???  Do you want my 25gs or not?  You are not my friend, and more importantly, my time is money, especially after work on a Monday when I haven't had my dinner yet.  I am not going to be nice to you.  I don't owe you anything.  But then I turned into good cop when it came time to haggle over the price.  I played up the whole, "Look, I really want a Toyota or a Honda, but my husband is the one who wants the domestic" thing to get a better price.  Last night I got to be bad cop.  We'll see how it goes tonight, when we're test-driving the Honda.  

I have anxieties about becoming a two-car family.  The fuel economy on vans isn't that hot so we might keep the Captain for the Dotytron to drive to and back from work and keep the van as a weekend, me tooting around vehicle.  Ugh...the environmental impact isn't sitting well with me, though.

Nice segue into a documentary I saw as part of Hot Docs on Friday.  The Human Scale is about Jan Gehl and his architectural firm, Gehl Architects, which seeks to redesign cities and urban environments to make them more friendly for people as opposed to cars, which has been the trend, certainly in North America and the developing world, for the past 100 years or so.  Using various examples of Gehl Architect projects and models, they aim to show how if you create public space, humans, as social creatures, will fill those spaces and contribute to a vibrant, urban life.  It's all very Jane Jacobs-y.  The model is Copenhagen (of COURSE it is, never mind the anti-immigrant right wing trends in those favoured Scandinavian models of urban planning) and Gehl started out his career counting people usage patterns in Siena (cut to scene of people lounging happily in the sun in the major, bowl shaped, Piazza de Campo, where Dr. Rei, the Dotytron and I ate a sandwich impregnated with racism that made Dr. Rei very sick and unable to enjoy her meal at Dario Cecchini's restaurant).  At which point, I snorted at my friend B, "Uhh, no one in Siena HAS A JOB."  They also showed some smaller scale projects (reclaiming New York's Times Square for pedestrians over vehicles) and how the World Bank is super-corrupt (no surprise there) and basically loans places like Dhaka, Bangladesh infrastructure money to build car-based projects, even though only 1% of the population there can afford a vehicle and most people get around on rickshaws, which have been outlawed in many areas.  

This is all very well and good.  But I couldn't help but wonder how you address problems in places where the suburban infrastructure is already so entrenched, like the GTA.  How do you make downtown Scarborough a busy thoroughfare, when most people commute into the core or across town to work?  It's a big conundrum.  Like, there didn't seem to be much that was workable for a city of our size.  

I generally scoff at the typical urban, privileged lefty narrow-minded rhetoric of what makes a great city (bikes! Farmer's markets for all! Coffee shops with foam art!), but at the same time, I can't deny that I succumb to it and espouse those values in my day-to-day living.  I believe in the value of vibrant neighbourhoods that have everything you might need.  We had that in our old 'hood, and we have that now.  With the majority of the world's swelling population projected to be living in cities by 2040, then I care about what my corner of the city looks like.  I am lucky, though.  We live somewhere where there are amazing restaurants, green space, beach (!), public recreational facilities, a real feeling of community, and the commercial and retail infrastructure to support modern life all conveniently located within a 30 minute walking radius.  That's a pretty darned big deal, folks.  This is what life is about.  I love those (all too rare, unfortunately) weekend days when we go for aimless walks in the neighbourhood, stopping for a macchiato for the Dotytron, a flaky true croissant for me, a chocolate croissant for the Big Yam, and just poking around at yard sales and the like.  Not having to get into a car is liberating and enriching all at the same time.    

Like, tonight I'm already thinking about walking to pick up ice cream from our local indie film rental place and then sitting on one of the benches that overlooks our park and eating ice cream on one of the first real spring days with the Dotytron and the Big Yam, watching the sun set over the city (we have a pretty view of the CN tower and the downtown skyline).  You can't beat that, folks.

We recently watched Searching for Sugarman.  This film is pure, heart-warming goodness.  It's about this singer, Rodriguez who is based in Detroit and who recorded two albums of folky, songs that didn't do very well in North America.  He subsequently faded into obscurity, but somehow the albums made it into apartheid South Africa where they sold hundreds of thousands of copies and made him a celebrity.  But none of his South African fans knew anything about him and he was rumoured to be dead.  The documentary follows the efforts of two fans to track down and find out what happened to Rodriguez.  This documentary is THE BEST.  First of all, the songs that Rodriguez wrote are like, really good.  He's compared to Bob Dylan (in the sense that he speaks to the urban poor and American disenfranchised) but frankly, his voice and song-writing are better than Dylan's, in my opinion.  We immediately went and bought both his albums.  Just listen to this song.  It's so freakin' catchy.  The production is amazing!  Definitely go see this.

We also watched Sound City, which is this documentary directed by David Grohl, about this pretty legendary recording studio.  Fleetwood Mac's first album was recorded there, and a bunch of Rick Springfield (how is Rick Springfield a thing?) and then Nirvana and a bunch of the grunge guys.  It's a paean to the glory days of analog recording technology and the skill required from engineers.  The documentary drags a bit near the end, but Grohl's enthusiasm for the material is endearing.  As someone else who also fetishizes analog (me and the Dotytron both, really), we were swayed by the position Grohl took - you know, the whole, "Dem kids! They don't make 'em like they used to" bit.

That's what we've been watching in between re-doing Veronica Mars.  

SQUEEE!  One of my top 5 TV scenes, ever.  Because I am a teenaged girl at heart.

Fin.

Tell It To the Door!

On Saturday, SMcKay came over to give the Dotytron a much-needed, getting-ready-to-go-on-interviews haircut, and she was going out in TO with friends and was crashing at our place.  The next morning, the Big Yam was getting distraught that she was leaving and got all, "I want to see Auntie S again."  So she asked him if he wanted to come and visit her and he said yes so we told him (jokingly) to go upstairs and pack a bag...AND HE STARTED WALKING UP THE STAIRS!!!  It was the cutest thing ever.  But also, heartbreaking, because I think he was super-stoked to go and visit with her.

Also on Saturday night, the Boobla was being a bit of a fuss and whining about wanting to watch Thomas and Friends.  The level and pitch of the whining was increasing exponentially and I was getting increasingly frustrated not being able to hear myself think (surprise to no one, I have a very low threshold for whining), so I finally snapped at him, "Big Yam! Stop whining! Go tell the door!" and the Dotytron and the SMcKay kind of gave me the, "what the hell is that all about?" look but the Big Yam trudged over to our front door and stood in front of it, muttering about how he wanted to watch Thomas.  !!!!! LOL!!!!!  That will never not be funny.  Unorthodox, but it worked.

In the two months since my last book review omnibus post, I have read seven books and countless cookbooks.  Here are my reviews:

Tigers in Red Weather is a deferred summer read - it's been on my list since the summer.  It's about two cousins, Nick and Helena, and deals overall with the relationships, ennui, and lack of direction of two post-war New England brides.  The focus of the book centres on the family's estate, Tiger House, in New England, where the cousins have summered and continue to summer.  A murder happens in the community and the mystery surrounding the murder reverberates through the two families, exposing deep flaws in their relationships to each other and their own drifting aimlessness and thwarted ambitions.  The story is told in four or five parts, from the perspective of a different character.  I found that of all the narratives, only Nick's section rang clearly.  Everyone seemed kind of blurry, as if Nick was the principle character and everyone else was orbiting around her.  If that was the author's intention, then using the different perspectives/different chapters approach wasn't effective as everyone else's story and experiences get subsumed by Nick's.  This would be a good summer/cottage read.  It's slight, but meaty enough to not be like, Shopaholic-level beachy.

Lauren Oliver's Delirium trilogy wrapped up with Requiem (my reviews of the other titles here and here).  Lena, the character who grew up in Maine, in a society in which love is considered a disease, has escaped her conforming Aunt and Uncle's house and chosen a life of rebellion, joining a resistance movement.  In the second novel, we see her life on the outside and follow her as she attempts to infiltrate the right-wing, pro-stamping-out-love political faction, and falls in love with Julian, the right-wing poster boy.  In the third novel, A LOT happens.  There are attempts to overthrow the governing society, Lena's first love reappears, broken and scarred, and it's all a bit of a giant, jumbling mess, really.  There's also the reintroduction of Lena's best friend, Hannah, who undergoes the procedure that essentially lobotomizes the part of your brain that experiences love.  Hannah's story is underdeveloped.  Like a lot of third acts in YA trilogies, a lot of the action and loose threads are left half-told and unfinished.  I think that's the problem of trying to tie up this dystopian reality in a third book.  Like, the questions that readers want answered - what does the new society look like, what kind of governing will take it's place, how will these relationships be resolved - are too unwieldy for a YA third chapter.  It's just all too much.  They're turning this into a series starring Emma Roberts - I think this makes sense - it will probably make for decent television and the story can be fleshed out in the longer, more forgiving format of television versus a feature film.  

Eleanor and Park is my favorite novel that I've read recently.  LOVED IT.  I would categorize it under the "kinda sorta" YA genre.  Like, there's nothing so YA about it to prevent adults from reading and enjoying it on its own merits.  Similar to The Age of Miracles, it would be YA because, and only because, the main characters are teenagers, but it's not like your'e dealing with a series like the Hunger Games or something, where the cultural criticism implicit in dystopian worlds has been watered down slightly to meet the reading needs of teens.  This is like John Green style YA.  But maybe even less YA than that.  Okay, enough with the genre hand-wringing (even though John Green wrote the New York Times book review for this book and loved it).  This is a sweet little love story about two very different teens who are both in their own way outcasts in their small, suburban town in one of those states that no one ever thinks about (I think it was Nebraska?  Montana?)  They bond over comics, music, and being forced to sit together on the school bus to and from school and the way their relationship unfolds is squealy, reminds-you-of-falling-in-love-in-high-school good.  It is natural and adorable and thrums with the excitement of mix tapes and whispers and wanting to jump out of your skin at the sight of someone in the hallway.  This book isn't pat or trite in any way - their relationship isn't easy and is fraught, but in a way that makes sense given the way the characters have been constructed - it's not movie-of-the-week diaster that pulls them apart, but stuff that could happen in anybody's world, if you were living the same circumstances.  Ugh.  I just loved this book.  I would read it again in a heartbeat and it's going to be the one I'm pestering you about reading for the next little while.

Based on my experience reading the Delirium trilogy, I decided to check out the book that put Lauren Oliver on the map, Before I Fall.  This is much more standard, YA fare.  Pretty, popular girl, who started off nice finds herself with a pack of mean-girl bffs, at the top of the social pack in high school. She ends up dying (no spoiler here) and reliving the day of her death over and over again until she gets it "right."  This was entertaining enough, I guess.  It was aight.  I didn't really like any of the characters and it's hard to root for the mean girl, even with the "everyone has their problems on the inside" tack the author takes.  

I'm pretty sure The Sisters Brothers won some kind of award or something.  It's a western, but an updated one, with told in a shades-of-Cormac-McCarthy style taciturn prose by the protagonist, Eli Sisters, who is a hired gun (along with his brother) for an unsavory, Wild West gangster type.  Eli is increasingly uneasy with his profession, and his interior monologue is what gives the novel depth.  This was an addictive read, even for someone who doesn't normally like the genre.  The modernized Western, I can get behind.  There is a beauty to the restrained prose and Eli's flashes of emotional insight.  Humour, too.  

Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle is a memoir of how she and her siblings grew up with an alcoholic, dreamer grifter father and a free-spirit mother who's benign neglect of her children in pursuit of her own selfish desires borders on neglect.  They grew up homeless, always on the run, with two parents who couldn't, or chose not to hold down jobs.  There was hunger, sometimes dire, and a falling-down house in Appalachia where they threw their garbage into a pit and eventually used a bucket for a toilet.  Despite this, Walls manages to imbue their childhood with a sense of magic and wonder.  It's not totally abject misery (in fact, far from it).  She has real affection for both her parents (who end up being really homeless in New York City, while Walls lives on Park Avenue with her first husband), who instilled in her a sense of resiliency and self-reliance and imagination and creativity.  Sometimes you're appalled by what her parents do, but Walls' gift as a writer is the ability to prevent them from becoming demonized or cariactures.  They always mean well.  This isn't the neglect that one associates with the rural poor - both her parents are brilliant people who just buy-in to an alternative lifestyle with a commitment that doesn't make them good parents (like, the kind of parents who end up taking their kids to grow up free-range on a commune or something).  It was a good read in the sense that it showed you how a) coddled kids are nowadays; and b) how teaching your kids resiliency can overcome seemingly insurmountable structural needs.  This was Academic Book Club's next read...I'm excited to hear what the ladies thought.  I don't usually love memoirs but this was a particularly good one.

Dinners, lately:

Monday was shrimp-fest.  Stir-fried shrimp with king oysters mushrooms and napa with Chinese wheat noodles.

Tuesday, the Dotytron picked up Russian goodies from the Russian grocery by his work (so Russian that the default language between staff and customers is Russian, until it becomes obvious that you don't speak it).  We had beer-braised sausages with onions and sauerkraut, this awesome beet salad, perogies, and this potato salad I"m obsessed with that comes with cut up pickles, baloney (!) and peas.

Finally, for those of you wondering how exponentially my belly is expanding, here are some preggo work bathroom shots:

Week 23

Four weeks later (!!!)

Still holding steady though - can't tell I'm preggos from behind.  It's all belly, from what I can tell.

Going to see a documentary today, then a massage, then home!  Yay days off!

Fin.

Pleased to Meat You

I have so many problems deciding whether to capitalize the blog titles like titles or just follow regular sentence style.  Decisions!

So Meat Club.  The friends we know who are part of Meat Club didn't show, so the only person we knew was the principal organizer, who we had only met once before, at our last Supper Club.  It was still fun though.  We lucked out and sat with the loveliest people by far and we had a grand time.  Richmond Station is themed like a subway station (kind of - I only read that it's supposed to be such and didn't really think so myself) but the decor is ho-hum.  The restaurant was bumping though - filled to the brim and busy the whole time we were there (from around 8pm to 11pm).  Here's what we had:

The charcuterie board.  I kind of hate it when the board features this many things and the server just comes over and rhymes them off to you in one long list.  How am I supposed to remember anything?  Just print out a piece of paper or something, or else don't bother telling us.  The charcuterie was served at the perfect temperature, but sliced a touch too thin for me.  Everything was paper thin which didn't allow you to enjoy all the textures of each type.  It was all good, it kind of got lost in the jumble.  

Presskopf (headcheese) fritters with grilled tongue, and a fried egg and greens.  This dish was outstanding.  The little breaded triangles of headcheese were hot, crispy, not the least bit greasy and so, so light.  The grilled tongue is a no-brainer for me (I love tongue) and the egg was properly runny.  This might have been my favorite bite of the night.

Seared côte de boeuf and braised beef cheeks with potatoes, sautéed spinach, roasted root vegetables and brown butter hollandaise.  They brought out the GIANT rib steaks for us to view - they were Flinstonian in scale, before whisking them back to the kitchen for finishing.  They steaks were a touch over for my liking, but there's nothing not really to love about seared meat, hollandaise, and thinly sliced gratin potatoes that are cut into triangles and then deep fried until they're little, dreamy puffs of deliciousness.  I enjoyed the steak more than the beef cheeks.  I find that braised meat treated like this can get very same-y tasting.  I actually felt that way about the côte de boeuf.  Maybe that's the problem with meat club?  The meat-centric focus means that you're getting food that isn't particularly ground-breaking or inspiring.  It's not something I couldn't get at some other restaurant. It was well prepared, though.

The Richmond Station burger - tender meat on an even more tender milk bun.  Served with textbook fries.  It's hard to really get a sense of a burger when you're only getting a quarter of one, but this was tasty enough?  

Dessert was a cinnamon bun with a walnut crumble, candied bacon, and beer sauce.  These buns were delectable - so soft and fluffy and warm.  The candied bacon was a stand-out too, taking the bacon firmly into sweet territory from the savory side.  This was delicious.  I ate two and then gazed longingly at the ones that were left, wondering who was the lucky sod who got to take the extras home (we left early to relieve Momma D from her babysitting duties).  I easily out-ate everyone there.  I even went so far as to mistakenly think that this nice guy I had just met was challenging me to an eating competition.  So charming, am I!  The Dotytron had my back though.  I take my ability to out-eat most people as a very serious skill.

Friday night was lovely.  Our neighbour kid came and knocked on our door and came in to play after daycare and then invited the Big Yam over to their house for popcorn and movies.  So cute!  I love living in a neighbourhood where the kids just knock on each other's doors asking if so-and-so is coming out to play.  It's so darned cute.  After we ate dinner we dressed up the Big Yam in his jammies and sent him over with his milk.  FOR TWO HOURS.  It was kind of the best and obviously the Dotytron and I immediately started scheming of how we could formalize the arrangement so that you did a rotating Friday Night movie night at a different neighbour's house every week.  LOL!  We're such schysters.  We offered to take the neighbour kid this coming Friday in exchange.  If we're home, I certainly don't mind having a pizza, pajama, and movie party with the kids from the 'hood.  It's cute and the Big Yam was totally and utterly THRILLED with the novelty.  

The Captain started flashing weird brake-related warning lights on our way to Chinese school on Saturday.  I think the Dotytron would have continued driving it, but because I am a GIANT nerd who thinks that we are always one dashboard indicator away from our car exploding and consuming us in a fiery inferno, I looked it up in the book and they were all like, DON'T DRIVE.  So we missed Chinese school AND missed our long-planned, oft-delayed visit with J & Tillers in KW.  It was the WORST.  I can't even tell you how annoying it was.  The Captain INSISTS on making us look bad!  It doesn't even break all that often, but it's always when we're en route to visit people from out of town.  Ugh.  As Tillers said, we probably could have driven with the indicator lights like that for a good long time but I'm a nervous nelly.  Our mechanic thinks it's just a brake fluid issue.  Le sigh.

On Sunday we had R & R over for dinner with their adorable, sweet-eyed little bambino, M.  Little babies are so cute!  They are so light!  She was experience some sleep regression and was thus a little cross.  I keep somehow convincing myself that babies are so low-key and it'll be SO EASY to juggle the twerps when they come but I feel like I might be fooling myself.  We somehow had an easy time of it with the Big Yam but that probably means the twerps will be colicky, fussy, messes.  Why is having babies so jinxy?  I just read a story about a woman who lost her baby at 38 weeks.  Worst.  

Cutest thing ever: we watched part of Mary Poppins with the Big Yam (this is after I vetoed Star Wars as age-appropriate viewing - ummm, hello, Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru's charred bodies, much?  Not cool for a 2.5 year old!), and the Big Yam was calling it: "Miss Muffin."  

The Big Yam's room is slowly coming together (conceptually).  I ordered his bed frame, dresser and mattress today.  Here is the photo that inspired me: 

I just thought this was a great, fresh, gender-neutral color scheme.  I already have orange accents going in the Big Yam's baby room, so I wanted to carry that over so I could re-use certain things.

For the bed and dresser I went with the Ikea Mandal line.  I wanted a platform bed for the low profile, and there aren't a lot of options with storage.  It'll be nice to put his bedding in there and other lighter items.  I'm not crazy about the birch outsides.  I've heard of people painting them or staining the wood a less birch-y colour, but after seeing how it's been styled, it will go well against the blue accent wall.  The rest of the shelves will be white.  I saw the bed and dresser styled in this New York Times house and it does look nice with blue and orange accents.  If it drives me crazy I'll paint or stain it in the future, but for now, I think it'll look bright and airy.

We ended up going with a deeper, more navy paint than the one in the inspiration photo - Benjamin Moore's Old Navy.  

I saw this photo that totally inspired me:  

That's a $2 Ikea bracket, people!!!  Then I searched high and low for an affordable industrial cage pendant lamp and found someone on Etsy who will make one for me with an orange cord for about $60.  Not bad!  Considering the other lighting will be Ikea, I thought it would be nice to splurge (if you can even call $60 for a light a splurge) on something not from Ikea for the room.  I'm going to paint the bracket white.  

I also ordered these sale FLOR carpet tiles in orange and bone and designed my own design on graph paper.  It's going to involve investing in a carpet knife from Home Depot, but the cost of the knife (around $11) is still way cheaper than having FLOR do the cutting.  It's a triangle based pattern so lots of cuts and FLOR charges $3 a cut!  Ridiculous!  

We'll see how everything looks when it all comes together, but I'm happy with what I'm seeing in my head.  

The Big Yam has been having the time of his freaking life with the bowl from my Kitchen Aid mixer, some styrofoam packing peanuts I saved from our stroller box, a mixing bowl and a measuring cup, a whisk, a spoon and some water.  That alone guarantees us a minimum of 45 minutes.  If I want more time, I throw in some shaving cream and some food coloring and he's good for at least an hour and usually a lot longer.  It's the best!  Clean-up is okay.  It's not hard to wash off the oil cloth and the water on the tile in the kitchen is a bit of a pain, but at least it's tile so not a big deal.  We might get a giant rubbermaid bin to contain the mess for the future, though:

Here's what we've been eating lately:

Friday night's iron-boosting dinner: a roasted crouton, asparagus, and chorizo salad with seared skirt steak.

The Big Yam pointing at which New York Times chocolate chip cookie he was going to eat as his "special treat"

Sunday breakkie: fried green tomatoes, on top of mashed avocado, with English bacon and a fried egg on sourdough toast.

What I made for Sunday dinner - that radicchio tagliatelle with bagna cauda.  Not pictured: raw kale ceasar salad.

Dessert was a roasted vanilla pineapple tart with a coconut crumble.  My first time serving pineapple as a dessert not in upside-down-cake form.  Pretty good!  I'll post the recipe below.

Fin.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Pineapple Tart with Coconut Crumble

serves 10-12

1 pie crust, enough for a 9" pie

1 large pineapple, peeled, quartered and cored

1 vanilla bean, scraped.

1/4 c. brown sugar

1/4 c. white sugar

2 T. dark rum

For the crumble topping:

1/2 c. whole wheat flour (you could use all purpose - I was trying to be healthy !)

1/3 c. brown sugar

1/3 c. oats

1/3 c. shredded coconut

1/4 t. salt

4 T. butter, melted

- put your pie crust in a 9" tart pan with a removable bottom.  Chill.

- slice the cored pineapple quarters into 1/3-1/2 inch slices

- place the pineapple slices with the sugars and vanilla in a large sauté pan.  Cook on medium heat until the juices run and the sugars are evaporated, tossing/stirring occasionally.  Increase the heat to high, add the rum, and cook until almost all the liquid is evaporated.  Set aside to cool

- meanwhile, mix all the dry crumble topping ingredients together in a bowl.  Stir in the melted butter until loose clumps form.

- with a slotted spoon, spread the cooled pineapple in the prepared crust.  Top with crumble topping.  Bake in a preheated 350F oven for about 40-50 minutes or until the pie crust is golden brown.  The coconut in the crumble will brown rapidly, so it might be necessary to tent the top with foil when the crumble is brown and finish baking this way.  

- serve with whipped cream, vanilla ice cream, or coconut ice cream.  

Real beauty

Dove has unleashed another "ground breaking" ad in their "real beauty" campaign (going on like, 8 years now?) which features women describing themselves to a forensic artist (separated by a screen) and then having someone who just met them describe them to that same forensic artist.  The two pictures are then displayed side by side to show how warped some women's self-perception is.  The ladies in the commercial (which is like, 10 billion years too long for me) start tearing up and it's all set to swelling pianos and it's kind of the gheyest thing ever, but has totally taken Facebook by storm.

I was talking about it with the Dotytron and he made me laugh so much.  His problems are as follows:

1) The lack of rigorous control mechanisms.  He thinks the women being drawn should be describing themselves in the third person, the way a forensic artist is used to having subjects described.  Hearing someone say, "My face is kinda fat" is definitely going to impact the way the artist chooses to draw the women, versus, "She has a round face."

2) He thinks the person who describes the women "as they are" is like, way too nice.  How come there isn't someone who says, "She has that kind of stank face, you know what I mean?"  LOL!!!  I would DIE if they were described as having "stank face"

My problems:

1) it's a COSMETICS/BEAUTY company trying to sell you more crap.

2) it's SO MAUDLIN and heavy-handed.  The piano makes me want to barf.

3) I can't believe some of those women start tearing up when they see the "difference" between how they perceive themselves and how others perceive them.  I'm just like, uhhh, some people have REAL PROBLEMS, yo.  Get a grip on yo'self.

I just can't even.  But the Dotytron says my critiques are invalidated because it's clearly hitting the target audience in droves - the target audience being the great semi-conscious middle-of-the-road hordes that would buy into something like this acritically.  I am clearly not the target audience, nor would I ever be the target audience.  And because it is causing a social media storm, it's obviously effective at reaching middle America so I guess it's working.  Blech.  We deserve better.

Also: some people have real problems.

It's not helped by the fact that I read an article this week about this woman who was born with a severe facial deformity that meant that she was made fun of growing up and was super-sad because she will never have a family of her own (which probably isn't true, I mean, she could adopt or something) but compared to THAT, I was like, get a grip Dove ladies!

Note: the Dotytron always thinks I extrapolate scenarios to the most extreme unnecessarily.

The bombings in Boston are terrible.  I don't feel like I have to comment here, in this space, because there are smarter people than I talking about this, in much more eloquent ways.  I will say that my sister said that my littlest nephew, Little Big Cuz, caught some of the footage on TV and later said that he was scared.  Poor little guy.  I'm pretty sensitive to what the Big Yam takes in in terms of media.  He and the Dotytron watched Finding Nemo together not that long ago and I wasn't too thrilled about it.  I mean, he's only 2 and a half and we all know that Disney and Pixar love their matricide.  I actually think the themes in Finding Nemo are very adult and not necessarily appropriate for someone who has ONLY BEEN LIVING IN THIS WORLD FOR JUST OVER TWO YEARS.  He doesn't get the pop culture references and I don't think he should.  Even though I loathe Thomas and Friends, I think the pacing of that show is perfect for his age (if he's going to be watching anything at all).  I remember once the Dotytron was watching Twin Peaks when the Big Yam was just over one and it wasn't even a very Lynchian scene or anything, but I made him turn it off.  I figure that you have your whole life to find out that the world is a weird, gruesome, awful, beautiful, place filled with innocence and experience and the later you're exposed to the sturm and drang, the better, I think.

It kills me when the Big Yam asks me: "Are you happy, Mama?"  It just breaks my heart into a million pieces.  I've been saying that I'm not very happy with him when he does something naughty and I want to be more mindful of that and try to avoid that kind of wording.  He just wants me to be happy!  I should be more conscious of how I express displeasure.  I mean, I can't be happy all the time and present a false reality, but I can also be aware of how my words have a disproportionate affect on him.  So when he does something bad, it's not like it affects my happiness per se.  I just have to word it better.

In other news: I FINALLY HAVE AN APPOINTMENT AT THE MULTIPLES CLINIC!  I saw my midwife and the last ultrasound was great.  They're measuring bang on for their gestational age, in the 40th percentile for size/weight, and practically identical in relation to each other.  I passed my gestational diabetes test, which made me happy.  See: that's why I continue to see my midwife even though I've transferred care to an OB.  My OB just says, "everything's great!" and doesn't go into any details, but my midwife goes over the results with me and just all around takes the time.  My OB was like, "I recommend you get an epidural" whereas my midwife is like, "depending on the situation, we can put in the catheter for the epidural but we don't have to administer drugs until you want to or the need arises."  INFORMED CHOICE!  My appointments with my OB are like, 10 minutes long.  My midwife appointments are 30-40 minutes long.  My iron counts are a little low - okay for someone who has had a baby already, and not at the supplement stage, but I need to incorporate more iron in my diet.  NO WONDER I WANT BURGERS ALL THE TIME.  Looking up the top 10 iron-rich foods made me VERY happy.  It's all oysters and mollusks and shrimp and red meat and liver.  YES PLEASE!  More trips to Diana's and more razor clams in my belly!

I met a friend for lunch yesterday and we went to this place called I Went to Philly.  They sell authentic philly cheesesteak sandwiches.  HOOOEEEE.  This was so good!  I got the traditional, which is cheese whiz, onions, and the beef.  Combo'd it with some fries and a ginger ale.  Fries were good - salty and crispy.  The sandwich was tasty as all get out.  The softest bun, the most tender meat, all soused in onions and tangy whiz:

Dinners have been healthful around here, prior to me getting the upping the iron intake edict.  This is a red quinoa and wild rice broccoli chicken casserole.  Kind of like the back-of-the-soup-can chicken divan recipe that's so popular.  This was really good.  I can post the recipe below.

Chocolate pecan pie bars in the not-so-virtuous news.

Last night's dinner was that broccoli rabe (blanched, and then sautéed with garlic and chili flakes), fresh mozzarella, and tomato jam grilled cheese sandwich with a raw kale salad.  Super into the raw kale lately.

Tonight is our inaugural Meat Club experience at Richmond Station.  The organizer of Meat Club has gotten the chef to prepare a special, 4 course, meat-heavy menu for us, consisting of the following:

- charcuterie, made in-house w/pickles, mustards, crackers, beet relish

- station burger on a milk bun w/pickled onions, pommes kennedy
- côte de bœuf w/brown butter hollandaise, mushrooms, fingerling potatoes
- cinnamon buns w/smoked bacon, timmies an"glaze", drunken raisons

Yum!  Can't wait.  A burger AND rib eye in the same menu sounds about right to me (hello iron!)

I'll report back.

Fin.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Chicken Broccoli Quinoa Casserole

serves 6-8

1 c. quinoa (I used red, but you could use whatever you liked), rinsed

3/4 c. wild rice

2 heads of broccoli, chopped into small pieces (I also am thrifty and peel and cut the stalk into small pieces as well, after cutting off about 1" of the bottommost part)

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, roasted in the oven until cooked (you could also use leftover roast turkey, chicken, whatever)

1 can of cream of broccoli soup (I used the reduced sodium kind)

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1/2 cup milk

1/2 lemon, zested and juiced

1 1/2 cups grated cheddar cheese

- cook the wild rice in a pot of water, until it's done (grains will be al dente but have burst).  If you haven't cooked wild rice before, it's not like cooking regular rice.  Look it up on the internet!  Drain and place in a large mixing bowl.

- in a large pot of boiling salted water, cook the quinoa.  When the quinoa is ready, add the chopped broccoli to the pot and blanch quickly.  Drain the quinoa and the broccoli and put into the large mixing bowl with the wild rice.

- cut up the cooked chicken and add it to the bowl. 

- add the remaining ingredients to the bowl and stir so that everything is tossed together and mixed through.

- put it into a 9 x 13 casserole dish (I actually split this up - half in an 8" square casserole and the other half in a square foil brownie pan for wrapping and freezing for a future meal).

- at this point, you could definitely top the casserole with breadcrumbs tossed with parm, or crushed Ritz crackers, or croutons or panko tossed with olive oil and parm if you wanted a crispy topping. I got lazy.

- bake the casserole at 400F with the old, foil on/foil off treatment for about 30 min/20 minutes.  

This Is How We Do It

Best weekend, ever!  My heart is full to bursting with love for what I ate, who I ate it with (with whom I ate?), and living in this glorious city that provides us with a bounty of experiences.  The Dotytron has been talking about wanting to move to a town like Peterborough or something (but with the caveat that we somehow convince all our friends to pack up and go with us) but after weekends like this, I don't think there's any way that I possibly could.  It just wouldn't do.

Friday night we had dinner with our friends S & P at the White Brick Kitchen.  I had been hepped to this place by my friend K, who bought me takeout from there one night.  I had been dreaming about the burger I had and wanting to eat it again for a while.  This place is opened by people who spent some time at the Stockyards and the menu is what you'd expect with people with that pedigree - American style comfort food, well prepared, well priced, and with a southern accent.  Everything was insanely, insanely delicious.  The decor isn't the greatest - it's pretty bare-bones in there with little in the way of decor or a theme, but the food is so good!  

We started with their kettle chips served with pimento cheese dip.  Their pimento cheese was a little more loose than what I'm used to, but it was perfect for dipping their deliciously crispy chips.

Half fried chicken dinner.  Juicy, with a delicious breading, served with some coleslaw, honey mustard, and a split biscuit that had been buttered and griddled.  This was some darned good fried chicken.  Juicy, moist, and with a well-seasoned crust.  

The burger!!!  Look at that cheese skirt!  They serve it with their house sauce, lettuce, tomatoes, and pickles.  I got cheese and bacon as well.  It tastes a little bit like a Big Mac (I adore homemade versions of Big Macs) and the cheese skirt is a thing of beauty.  Textbook fries.

Saturday we went to Chinese school and then I scored a cheap ($30, after haggling!) two seater wagon off Kijiji.  I LOVE BUYING SECOND HAND.  I CAN TASTE THE SAVINGS!  I also bought a second hand scooter for the Big Yam this weekend because he's been hankering after our neighbour's.  

For dinner that night we went to JJ & S's house for one of our signature themed dinners.  The theme this time was "classic steakhouse."  The Discerning Coyote was there too along with his girlfriend, N.  Did we ever feast!  

We brought oysters (choppers choice from MA and Acadian Gold from NB), along with shrimp cocktail with homemade cocktail sauce.

I also made creamed spinach.  JJ & S made rib eye with compound butter, garlic bread, ceasar salad, and baked potatoes with sour cream, chives, and bacon bits. 

For dessert, we had this textbook-perfect (no cracks!  So smooth!!!) New York style cheesecake served with a raspberry puree.  OMG.  This was DIVINE.  

JJ & S have a hilarious 9 year old son, B and an equally hilarious raspy-voiced 4 year old daughter, L.  Their basement is finished so I left the Big Yam down there with B and L.  B comes up and says, "Uhhh, Big Yam is calling for you," and JJ says to him, "B, can't you just go down there and look after him and make sure he's okay?" and B says, "HOW DO YOU EXPECT ME TO DO THAT.  I HAVE NO EXPERIENCE."  LOL!!!  So funny!!!  

Another funny moment was when S offered the Big Yam a piece of cheesecake.

Big Yam to S: "Yes, please."

*pause* *turns to me*: "Who's that guy?"

By the way, we'd already been at their house for like, FIVE HOURS at this point.  "Who's that guy?" is never not funny to me.  

Sunday we went to this place in Bloor West Village, called Creme de la Creme Café which turned out to be surprisingly delicious.  If you ordered eggs benny, it came with three eggs on 2 English muffins, and they did this weird thing where your meat for the benny (bacon, peameal, etc.) was served on the side.  The hash browns were the shredded kind, which I'm rather fond of.  The big thing in their favor though, was their pancake.  It's the middle picture on their homepage.  This pancake was unique - very lacy, but thick - kind of like a cross between a crumpet, a regular pancake, and a crepe.  I love love love lacy pancakes because I love crispy edges.  This was huge!  They folded it over in thirds.  It was really, really good.  Worth going back for, even if this place is at the ends of the earth.  

We grabbed our oysters and shrimp cocktail fixins' from Diana's in Scarborough and I couldn't resist buying razo clams when I saw they were in.  We had a seafood feast last night for dinner:

Steamed razor clams with chilies, garlic, and beer

Roasted cod and potatoes with a quick, chorizo-enhanced puttanesca sauce with fresh tomatoes

Tonight's dinner was that homemade hamburger helper thing I discovered last summer. Alongside some peas tossed in butter.  A very, very kid friendly meal.  I was too busy chowing down to take a photo.

In other news - "pay me the dollars" has been turned into a song, with a rousing finish:

Loving all the made-up songs that have been happening lately.  Lots of free-styling.

Fin.

No, I won't.

Newest Big Yam phrase: "Will you pay me the dollars, please?" - said at random moments (e.g. last night during the tail end of dinner or during play).  I find it so funny when I'm elsewhere in the house and I can hear the Dotytron say, "No! I will not pay you the dollars!!!"  I don't really know where he got it from, but it's pretty funny, and at least he asks nicely.

The whole asking nicely thing is a bit of an issue right now.  We've stressed the asking nicely (repeating the request sans whining, saying please and thank you) thing a lot, but now he thinks that when we say no, it's because he didn't ask nicely enough.  So he'll say stuff like, "I want to ask nicely now!" and get all sad and cryface about it.  Now we have to explain that even though we really appreciate that he asked nicely, sometimes, he still doesn't get the thing he wanted.  It's a bitter pill for him to swallow.

This Tumblr called Reasons My Son is Crying (which has gone viral, justifiably) encapsulates some of the madness that is parenting.

Another Big Yam thing: for the last month or so, he'll randomly want us all to hold hands in a circle, and then pump our arms up and down while we say, "Gracias, thank you, gracias, thank you" again and again.  On Sunday morning, I was thanking him and his Baba for making a delicious waffles and sausage breakfast and I got all "teachable moment" and was like, "We should also thank the farmers who harvested the grain, and the pigs who gave us their meat for sausage, and the non-unionized slaughterhouse workers for processing the pork into sausage..." and the Big Yam looked at me for one long, grave moment and then stretched out his hands to me and the Dotytron for a round of "Gracias, thank you."  It was so funny!  It might be our new family way of saying grace.

I've been dealing with mad twerps-related dramas lately.  Basically, I was supposed to have been referred to the multiples clinic at Sunnybrook at about the 20 week mark so they could monitor me.  Then, assuming everything was fine, they would release me back to the shared care of my midwife and OB once I reached the 32 week mark.  Through a series of giant clusters, mostly related to the OBs at Sunnybrook balking that a midwife is in any way involved in my care, I still haven't been to see them yet.

When I last saw my regular OB, she was all like, "So have you been to Sunnybrook yet?" and I'm like, "Uhhh, noooooo...I thought your office was handling this," and she's all like, "You NEED to see the multiples clinic, [insert comment about how the twerps are as high risk as they come]"  Here's the thing: getting in at Sunnybrook is COMPLETELY out of my control!  At first, my midwife sent in the referral, which got rejected.  Then my OB sent in the referral, and it also got rejected (because they didn't like her sharing care with the midwife).  There's weird midwifery politics going on.

There are a few factors at work here.  1) Say I went into labour tomorrow *knocks wood a billion times*, I would just have the Dotytron take me to Sunnybrook immediately, so that's a moot point.  2) Assuming I go to term and everything is all as normal as possible with the twerps, as soon as I step foot into my regular hospital, it's a transfer of care to the OB anyway.  My midwife is just around to like, catch the baby (if the OB gives the go ahead) and provide labour support and then help me with the post-natal care (home visits and the like), so that's a moot point.  OBs don't do labour support OR post-natal care.  My type of twins means that I HAVE to be under the clinical care of an OB during delivery.  I mean, I can do what I want technically.  Like, if I wanted to be all guerilla crazy-cray about things and do a homebirth, I could do that, solo, but there's no way my midwife would touch that legal firestorm-waiting-to-happen with a 10 foot pole.

Anyway, while I've been waiting in limbo, I've decided to do what I can do, which is research the f**k out of my type of twin pregnancy.  I went on PubMed and downloaded a million articles on ultrasounds and twin pregnancies and I've been reading about twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome.  It's pretty grim, guys.  Level 5 TTTS is death (I know I'm no doctor or anything, but I feel like if level 5 is fetal death, then you don't really need a level 5, do you?  Shouldn't it only go up to 4?)  Levels 3 and 4 are pretty grim, with a high rate of fetal death of one of the twins and neurological and cardiac defects in the surviving twin.  Level 1 is okay, and just requires a tonne of monitoring.  There are two kinds of TTTS, chronic, and acute.  Chronic can pop up at any time and either hold steady or progress.  Acute happens like, all of a sudden (during labour or whatever).  Statistics on TTTS occurrence for monochorionic diamniotic pregnancies (which is what I have) range anywhere from 10-15% up to 20-30%.  Again, there's nothing I can do about it.  It either happens or it doesn't.

The only way to stay on top of it is through ultrasound monitoring followed by some kind of doppler if level 1 presents itself.  Suffice to say: all this reading made me feel like a s**t person and a s**t parent.  Like, way to NOT KNOW ANYTHING, LAGERFELD.  Here I've been more concerned about my Land of Nod order coming in on time and getting the Big Yam's room set up and there's a risk of brain damage and heart problems?  I'M THE WORST.  More importantly, the lack of information has meant that I haven't been able to adequately advocate for myself during this whole process of trying to get to Sunnybrook.  I should be getting ultrasounds every 2 weeks if level 1 TTTS presents itself, otherwise, I should be managed conservatively.  My last ultrasound was at 20 weeks.  I'm getting one this week, which is week 25.  I've consoled myself that I've only technically missed one ultrasound, then.  Also, my last ultrasound was perfectly normal ("grossly normal," even).  So there wasn't a risk of TTTS at the last one.

The latest update is that based on my ultrasound this week, we'll decide what to do from there.  My OB apparently tried to refer me AGAIN to the multiples clinic this week (Sunnybrook rejected me again).  Basically my OB is at the point where she's like, "Uhhh, do we even have to bother with the multiples clinic?"
Stage 1 TTTS is determined through the presence of oligo-polyhydramnios (where the amniotic fluid index in one sac is 5cm or less [donor twin] and greater than 24cm in the other sac [recipient twin]).  If this ultrasound shows that I'm developing stage 1 or am at stage 1, then I think I'll end up at Sunnybrook.    BLARGH.  So much to think about.  If this ultrasound comes back normal, then I'll get ultrasounds every 3 weeks to monitor for the development of TTTS, until such time as I hit twins term, which is around 32 weeks (and I'll probably be getting weekly ultrasounds at that point, to watch for intrauterine growth restriction).

The OTHER complicating factor is that there's a chance that my twins aren't identical at all.  The easiest way to determine chorionicity of twins is with an ultrasound before 8 weeks.  I had my first ultrasound at 12 weeks, when it is possible that two eggs implanted and their placentas just fused together, giving the appearance of one.  There's also this thing called the twin peak sign, which indicates dichorionicity, but that also has to be picked up at a certain time.  Otherwise, we wait to until the twerps come out and inspect the placenta, or, if we REALLY cared about whether they were identical or fraternal, we could send away for genetic testing, at a cost.  Frankly, I don't care.  I just want healthy me, healthy twerps.  The thing is though, all this fretting about the potential for TTTS could all be for naught (fraternal twins can't develop TTTS).

Well, all this reading has served to simultaneously make me more freaked out AND feel better because I am now armed with knowledge and a vocabulary.  Despite what a mess this all is, I am feeling better knowing that I know more.

Tuesday night we had patty melts for dinner.  Ummmm...patty melts are LIFE.  It's basically a hamburger/grilled cheese mash-up.  The most traditional form of a patty melt is a hamburger, with caramelized onions, rye bread, and Swiss cheese.  Our rendition was a 6oz all ground-beef patty (that the Dotytron cooked PERFECTLY - look at how rosy and juicy it is inside!) that we pan-fried in butter, between slices of challah (also buttered and griddled) and aged cheddar cheese.  We instantly regretted not making 2lbs of ground beef's worth.  It is everything you want it to be - gooey, juicy, crispy, buttery.

Broiled kalbi with jap chae (with spinach, mushrooms, and carrot) on Wednesday.

Last night's dinner was spinach & artichoke melts (basically, a souped-up spinach artichoke dip sandwiched between thick-cut bread and grilled), with more dilled cucumber salad.  

I've also been working hard on this orange poppyseed cake I made with Cara Cara oranges which are THE BEST ORANGES IN THE FREE WORLD.  They're like a super-sweet cross between blood oranges and pedestrian navels.  Check it.

Fin.

90s Settlers for Life

This is going to be one of those nonsensical posts that only makes sense to Dr. Rei but will be a welcome source of humour when we're old and grey and can't remember how funny we were and how many nights like these we had.

Real talk: I couldn't love 90s Settlers Night more.  It's so good.  We started our Saturday with a bunch of errands and meeting my mum at Congee Queen for some QT Chinese food.  They make this fried lo bak goh dish (the turnip cake that you get at dim sum) that's insane.  It's basically cubes of that turnip cake, deep fried so it's crispy, mixed with shrimp and scrambled egg in a spicy/XO-type sauce.  So boss.

That night we met up with Dr. Rei and Hanbo and Hanbo came over and reamed our finances and wowed us with models and spreadsheets that would have taken me, no lie, about 6 weeks of my life to come up with (and they would have been riddled - RIDDLED! - with errors) and I would basically have been doing all the calculations on a calculator and just using Excel as a glorified table (my ability to construct formulas is rudimentary at best, but I do like figuring it out - it's like a fun puzzle).  The good news is, in a nutshell, that buying Lil' Ugmo for the price that we did when we did was one of the best decisions that the Dotytron ever made.  He's been coasting on it ever since.  And that the twerps will (hopefully) not bankrupt us.  These are all good things, folks!

When your bff marries someone that you and your significant other get along with so well and is so funny and awesome, it's like, the best thing in the world.  Embiggening a crew this way is just a sure fire route to fun times and laughing so hard you think you're going to pee your pants.

After staring our finances in the face, we went to Duff's for wings and saucy fingers and basically turned ourselves into those salt rock lamps that you see for sale and that the Dotytron wants desperately for his office. This wasn't helped by the fact that we chased the wings, fries, and dipping sauce down with 2 bags of chips and Bits'n'Bites.

The night started with the Dotytron and Dr. Rei treating us to an air-drummed, hair-whipping sing-along to Alice in Chains "Would."  It couldn't possibly have been funnier.  Hanbo, regarding the Settlers board, "I don't know where to put my first settlement," Dr. Rei, strumming her air ukulele and whipping her hair around in a frenzy, "Who cares, just let the music carry you!"  LOL!!!

We also determined that Hanbo is going to start a website with made-up facts about Evan Dando from the Lemonheads, which will include Dr. Rei's suggestion that he include the nugget that Evan Dando's middle name is Ann.  Evan Ann Dando will never not be funny to me.  Eternal hilarity!

Then I played Spacehog's "In the Meantime," which resulted in a conversation about how the lead guy was married to Liv Tyler.  Dr. Rei didn't know they had divorced, but I was like, of course they did, because at a certain point, when you're married to a musician like the lead guy from Spacehog and every day he's like, "I'm just going to go to the studio," as his spouse, you'd be like, "Why."  And also you'd be like, "you're lying, you probably just walk around the block and sit at Starbucks all day."  Can you imagine having to have that conversation with your spouse?  Like, does Gwen Stefani ever look at Gavin Rossdale and be all like, "Uhhh, what do you do all day?"

We also determined that if you don't like this song, it means you're dead inside.  Somehow we also correlated this to mean that if you love the movie Blade Runner, you're also dead inside.   Newsflash: Blade Runner is not the kind of movie that you profess to love, unless you're trying to prove that you're one of those people who are dead inside.  The WHOLE ENTIRE MOVIE is in fact, about trying to figure out if people are dead inside, so it's kind of an apt metric.

Also, Linda Perry in the "What's Going On?" video might have a wardrobe that consists of TWO DIFFERENT top hats with giant aviator goggles affixed to them.  Check it out.  Check it out and then lament the fact that there's no such thing as high school Battle of the Bands any more and it's basically Katy Perry's fault.

It was an incredibly enjoyable afternoon/evening.  We wrapped at around 1 but we could have easily kept going.

Sunday was a lazy day of outside time and errands and being chill.  Is it wrong to love your house?  I love my G-D house so G-D much, especially when we've just given it a clean in preparation for people coming over.  I love being in my home.  I revel in it.  We are thinking about digging down the basement to open up another floor and I was talking to a SAHM from the drop-in centre about our plans and she nodded sagely and said, "Yes, you're going to definitely need a playroom" and I was like, wait - what?  The Big Yam was over at our neighbour's house and their basement has been annexed and turned into kid land.  Another neighbour was talking about how toy storage was such a huge issue for her (she had loaned us an easel and I was asking if she wanted it back and she said she didn't have room for it right now).  I don't really get the idea of a playroom - it's certainly not how the Dotytron and I prioritize the limited space in our house.  Really, we want to dig down the basement so that we can put the TV down there and then have room for a piano upstairs, so that our living room will be more of a classic living room/music room/quiet study/reading space.  We've managed to keep the glut of toys at bay thankfully (so far) and storing them hasn't turned into a real big issue as of yet.  We have a 2x2 Expedit in our living room and it has a storage bin in each cubicle and that's basically all he gets (each storage bin is only 1/3 full at this point).  I might get a few more storage containers for downstairs that will be hidden under our coffee table but I don't anticipate wall-to-wall toy armageddon, unless I end up switching bodies with a nicer, more maternal person somehow.

I never grew up with a play room.  The Dotytron certainly didn't.  The idea of a whole room in your house devoted to the pursuits of someone who is UNDER THE AGE OF FIVE is completely foreign to me.  I mean, if that's your bag, by all means, you do you.  The idea of all that plastic and disposable stuff makes me break out in hives.  Especially since our house is so compact, the space has to be really edited down, and if anyone's interests/comfort are going to be prioritized, it's the people paying the billzzz.  I do acknowledge that this means that our house isn't the "fun" kid house - but I guess it depends on the target audience.  I'm hoping our house will strike the balance where it's a nirvana haven for kids like this:

So the goal is to straddle the line between immigrant-style discipline and then having just enough toys and imagination and fun so that for kids who are the products of REAL immigrants, our house is Disney World.  We'll see how we do.  Basically, the bottom line is that according to Lagerfeld and Dotytron's Hierarchy of Needs - our needs supersede kid needs (and it's debatable whether a playroom constitutes a "need," really).

Here's what I've been eating/making lately:

Green beans, tofu, scapes, ground pork and tofu in a purchased ma po tofu sauce over brown rice.

On Friday I skipped lunch and went direct from my RMT to chiro so I stopped mid-way to appease the twerps with a bacon butty (sandwich) from Rashers, this bacon-sandwich emporium in my 'hood.  The basic sandwich is 6 pieces of griddled bacon piled on soft (but not soft enough!) white bread with either a traditional British brown sauce or ketchup.  I like neither with my bacon so just went straight hog.  There are a number of variations on this theme (peameal, eggs, bun instead of sliced bread, etc.) but my overall impression was that you are paying for something that would be criminally easy to replicate yourself.  Like, pathetically easy.  It was good, but nothing to get yourself worked up over.  Nothing I would ever consider craving.

Friday night's dinner was a veal, beef, and pork lasagne with ricotta and a blanket of mozzarella cheese on top.  I tried to make it healthier by adding grated beets to the tomato sauce and then adding the beet greens to the ricotta layer.  I sided this with a raw kale salad with avocado and tomato in a sweet balsamic vinaigrette.  This was good, but I was feeling guilty from my bacon sandwich and thus didn't eat as much as I wanted to, which resulted in a 9pm Dotytron convenience store run where he bought me chips and a Klondike bar.

Sunday supper was beer-braised pork loin chops with caramelized onion and apple, alongside a mashed kabocha squash, and roasted garlic mashed potato and cauliflower.  I am ALL ABOUT putting cauliflower in my mashed potatoes lately.  So good and so healthy!  

Tonight was freezer turkey tetrazzini with more raw kale salad.  

I'm going to do my gestational diabetes test tomorrow so I'm loading up on sweet, sweet, simple sugars (and boiling a million eggs to eat afterwards).  I made this tiramisu for 90s Settlers night and it is my LIFE right now.  

Fin.