living the high life

dudes, i cannot reiterate enough how much these every-third-fridays off PWN. it's a gift! i love it! although the dotytron informed me in no uncertain terms last night that if/when he gets a teaching job in the school board, he's going to be working 4 years on 1 year off. i can live with that.

last night i went to watch dr. rei's rec bball team, the compact pressarios, go down in ignominious defeat. actually, it wasn't all that ignominious, i just wanted to use that word. they put up a good fight, but there wasn't much they could do when they were up against a team with a GIANT, blonde, amazon who - rumour has it - used to play in europe. they were also up against the dunkingest dude ever, who easily towered by a foot over everyone. the best part of the game was that the dude who runs the league, this short, little, mustachioed gentleman who keeps score, sat all the teams down for a pre-game talking-to.

in the change room, the team that had played before had warned us that we were going to get a talking to, because apparently the notorious poor-sports of the league had gotten into mad drama with another team the preceding week. guys, the TALKING TO WAS THE BEST THING EVER. super mario called everyone and made them sit on the bench and then proceeded to ramble on about how he was giving everyone the same speech because he didn't want to show favoritism, and how everyone had to dial down the competitiveness a lot and how it pained him to have it come to this because he really had tried to create a PARADISE OF RECREATION here and it was unfortunate that some bad eggs were spoiling it, etc. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) lol!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i almost had to bite my fist that line was so ace. a paradise of recreation!!!!!!! then he went on to say, "look, there's no point getting competitive, we're all in this together, and the connections you make here with the other teams are important. i mean, i didn't want to have to say this, but there's a good chance that a lot of you are going to lose your jobs this year and the connections you make could get you work in the future." i'm paraphrasing, but the key thing to remember is that i'm going to lose my job this year (believe me, you're not half as shocked as i am to find that out) and that i'm going to be working for someone i met in rec sports. a-mazing!

this day has been awesome so far. it's unseasonably warm, so i'm doing laundry, airing out the bedroom, tidying up the house. i went to a yoga class, did my grocery shopping, gonna wax my 'stache and pluck my eyebrows and plan our chicago itinerary, book our segway tour (!!!!!!!!!!!), make a dessert for the dotytron, knit, throw together a batch of chicken stock and freeze it, prep some beignets for our new orleans feast tomorrow night, and chill the eff out. it sounds heavenly, doesn't it?

tonight for dinner we're having croque hermaphrodites (a croque monsieur with a fried egg on top, but without the bechamel/mornay sauce to make a classic croque madame) with a fennel, radicchio, and grapefruit salad. i think i'm going to throw together a batch of tapioca pudding to warm the dotytron's downtrodden, tired, overworked heart. i'll update with pictures tonight.



fin.

so i might have lied

about healthy eating starting tonight.

the weather (grey february days and rain) and my pms are conspiring to make me want to bunker down, watch torrented movies with the dotytron, and compile a bacchanalian feast of: vienna sausages (cocktail weenies to you) as a kid, i used to eat them by the CAN, sometimes with the improvised, gourmande touch of microwaving them slightly so they got browned on the outside - so gross but so good...also, the dotytron has never had a cocktail weenie! travesty of travesties!, kraft dinner, chips and dip, maybe some kolbassa (i'm craving meat like crazy), and some kind of sweet thing for dessert. maybe i'll make chocolate pudding if we have eggs at home (the roomie is supposed to pick up our re-up from the mennonites, but has been birthing babies left, right, and centre.)

the sundae pie was pretty aight for $1.50. it's got a thin brownie/cake bottom, then an indeterminate chocolate and white topping with more chocolate squiggles on top. the filling tastes like cool whip (so, freon).

anyway, i'm checking out for the night...back to business as usual and non-fat-little-weirdo states of being tomorrow.

fin.

lean back

so glad for the weekend! things picked up like crazy near the end of the week and all of a sudden i have like, 7 questions at work and all this extra stuff to do.

we were going to see "the class" tonight but the dotytron wasn't feeling up to it.

my old supervisor T and i were doing our usual, friday "what are you cooking this weekend?" exchange and i was listing off the meals i had planned when she said to me, "you really like themes, don't you?" DO I!!!!!! i LOVE thematically appropriate meals and i have to say it would totally stress me out to have a moroccan tagine with a ceasar salad or something. that's not to say that i can't think outside of the box - i can...and i think i can be a playful, creative cook sometimes, but more often than not i like to revisit what works. so tonight's meal was a night in poland/austria. we had pork schnitzel with butter-sauteed mushrooms, topped with a fried egg and a squeeze of lemon. on the side we had boiled yukon gold potatoes tossed in sour cream with chives and dill, sauteed red cabbage with some red wine vinegar, and pickled beets. after a meal like that, on a cold night like tonight, you can see why we opted out of bundling ourselves up to brave the cold to see a film. we can always go next week.

even though we're not supposed to be having dessert during the week...i had leftover tapioca pudding so i warmed that up and thinned it out with some more milk. i LUB tapioca pudding! i'll post the recipe below. it's so easy.

roll call of awesome:

les miserables (the musical - the book is good, but hella long and wicked expository) when i was a kid, ever-pliable to the pop culture influence of my sister, i went to a bunch of musicals (this was the era when andrew lloyd weber kind of owned broadway for a while.) i saw miss saigon, les miz, phantom, aida...all the big guns. i had seen cats, joseph's amazing technicolor dreamcoat, the one about rollerskating in the future (found it: starlight express), and had been lulled to sleep over many a family car ride to the tunes from jesus christ superstar. my family was one of like, 10 that actually WATCHED the tony's. then musicals became overwhelmingly uncool and i kind of left that part of my life behind.

about 3 years ago, my brother was driving us back from visiting my sister at some ungodly hour of the morning. it was 6 am, we were bleary-eyed, crammed like sleep-deprived anchovies into his yaris. it was winter. my brother got into the driver's seat, put on his winter gloves, slowly and carefully deposited a cold mountain dew into the driver's drink caddy, started the car, placed a cd into the cd player, and proceeded to sing the entire les miserables soundtrack all the way home (all parts sung by the s-dawg.) it was glorious, it was hilarious, it was the most surreal early morning drive i've ever witnessed. this past winter, bwong showed up and we went out for dinner somewhere and he drove us home blasting the soundtrack from his souped audio system in his car. les mis came up again at the farm, when we were treated to J and B's recreation of the dramatic confrontation between javert and jean valjean.

the dotytron went out and bought the original broadway cast recording, and it's effin' awesome. les miz is actually one of the only ones to truly stand the test of time. we've been listening to it while we make dinner and singing along. i've managed to cull untold humour from calling gavroche a chav, every time the little bastard pops up on the scene.

the dream is, that for the 10 year anniversary of the dotytron's annual christmas cd, we're going to assemble all our les miz-obsessed friends and family to recreate the entire musical. how awesome would that be?!??? what an opus!!!!!!


roll call of bunk:

the whole hipster/crafty fake mustache thing has gotten out of hand. i think that H's friend D is the first person i know who started sporting a curlicued mustache from the days of yore. this was at least 5 years ago. now they're everywhere! i'm not trying to suggest that D is ground zero for hip mustache appreciation except that maybe i am. also! H and M (who is incidentally, D's sister) have had a "mustache dance" since i've known them. dun dun duuuuuuuuuuuuuun.

fin.

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tapioca pudding

serves 4-6 generously (4 you get a 1 c. portion approximately, with 6 you get 3/4 c. portions)

2 c. milk
1/2 c. sugar
1 can of coconut milk
1/2 vanilla bean, scraped (optional)
6 T. pearl tapioca (not the quick cooking kind)

- bring the milk, sugar, coconut milk to a boil in a saucepan
- add the vanilla and tapioca, stirring
- reduce to a simmer, and cook for about 20-30 minutes until the tapioca is cooked through. stir occasionally so that the tapioca doesn't burn and clump up.
- serve warm, or pour into dishes and refrigerate (put plastic wrap directly on the surface if you don't want it to get the pudding skin. i'm a pudding skin fan)
- if you're reheating it, put it back into a pot and thin with a little milk to desired consistency.