No, YOU'RE spamming ME.

OK.  For real, I'm back this time.  I came back from my work trip and things were mental with my timelines and extra commitments but I just submitted the thing that's been consuming me for the past three weeks and I'm free for the time being.

It has been a SLOG.  Travelling for work involved grueling days - up at 6am, in meetings all day from 8am to 5pm, then packing up, going to the airport, hopping on our tiny charter plane and then going to the next destination, checking into the hotel around 8pm.  I didn't really get the hang of how to travel with this group until mid-week, at which point, after consecutive nights of indigestion from eating dinner at 9pm, I came up with a quasi-solution that involved wolfing down my lunch in 15 minutes, then going for a walk so that I might grab something I could eat on the plane and then have a reasonable digestion window before going to bed.  Travelling with my clients meant that I had to be on all day, every day, and even though my threshold for being "on" is high - I am, after all, master of the inane questions-based small talk - being in anonymous hotel rooms without the benefit or "your" stuff or "your" people wears on you.

I did get to do some fun things.  Like:

Win $20 at blackjack at the casino in Windsor.  UGH! Gambling is so FUN!  Why is it so fun?!?  My heart was racing and I had to make a decided effort not to spend my whole night there. 

  Marvel at how Robo-Cop-y Detroit looked across the river.

Order $20 worth of Johnny Rockets and eat it in my bed in my pajamas uninterrupted.

I wanted to try this restaurant called the Hoito in Thunder Bay - it's the oldest restaurant in Thunder Bay and sells Finnish pancakes.  My colleague told me to "just call an Uber," there were "so many" when he was in "Tiny Tom," Ontario (in retrospect, totally a made up, place!)  so I woke up at 6am, got ready, and opened the Uber app on my phone.  Radio silence.  I called a cab and misunderstood the distance AND cab rates in Northern Ontario.  I ended up paying $30 EACH WAY for this $10 breakfast.  It was good, but not $70 good.  I was a proper city-girl n00b and I deserved the taxi fare pwnage I received.

Northern Ontario is a mess.  After sitting through a bunch of deputations, I totally get why everyone hates Toronto and the Greater Golden Horseshoe.  The discrepancies between infrastructure funding up there versus down here are appalling.  First Nations communities who are the potato in the hot potato game between the various levels of government, high unemployment, high addiction and homelessness issues, sectors with razor thin margins that are being pushed beyond the limit.  I felt for these companies and industries, who are trying to create jobs, being squeezed by pressures from well-intentioned labour and environmental policies.  It's really a conundrum - there are no easy answers at all.  But I do think it's important to at least attempt to view things through a rural/Northern lens when we're developing public policy.  In the same way that I think it's important for urban advocates to understand and journey to the outer reaches of our city (and don't give me the whole, "I don't travel north of Bloor" parsimony) before they go ahead and propose policies that work against people who can't bike to work and don't want to.  This myopic tendency is a thing, and it's a thing that we have to work against, in order to build and nurture the relationships that are going to create the impetus for change.

After my eye-opening week abroad (I also got into green smoothies while I was away - so for real: travel does change you), I came back to work and have just been in head-down, beast mode trying to summarize over 300 oral and written submissions and then turn that into a draft report, after two days of local hearings.  It's been a sedentary marathon.  My butt's been glued to my desk chair and my muscles have definitely atrophied, but my deadline is insane and this is just what you gotta do to facilitate the democratic process, 'naw mean?

In the midst of all this I was contending with that fundraiser family dance I'm organizing (done this past weekend - YES!), and my parent council commitments, and dealing with static from weirdoes in the service of my parent council commitments.  Like, people are cray.  There's no way around it.  I'm the "volunteer coordinator" which means that I signed up for this new role and got no direction.  Fine, I can deal with that.  I set up this spreadsheet and aggregated volunteer names but the list isn't robust because at the Big Yam's school, parents in charge of certain activities are very proprietary about "their" lists of volunteers.  Which is weird, but okay, I can deal with that, too, I guess?

Anyway, someone wanted me to send out an email to ask for volunteers.  I do, with a nice italicized message underneath my name saying that if you don't want to be on the list, just email me.  This broad emails me and tells me she never asked to be on the list and that according to Canada's new anti-spam legislation I can't email people who haven't asked to be emailed, blah blah blah and then she links the Anti-Spam FAQ in the email. Da fuuuuuuuuq?!?  I research for a living, you b!  Don't test me!  So I fire back an email and say, no problem, I'll remove you from the list, sorry for the inconvenience,  I don't think that calling for volunteers constitutes the "commercial activity" the legislation is referencing.  Warm regards, me. Then she WRITES BACK.  BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE CRAY (remember how I told you that?  Still true.)  "Regardless of what the legislation says I still don't want to be on the list."  Oooookay.  I didn't respond to that email (BECAUSE I'M NOT A PSYCHO).  THEN!  Four days later, she emails me AGAIN!  She forwards me this thing and says, "I checked and you're right, requests for volunteers aren't considered spam. I still don't think anyone should be on this email list unless they requested it." (Italics mine).  At this point, I'm like, YOU'RE spamming ME!  Why can't you just shut up?!  Why do you care about having the last word with the volunteer coordinator for our kids' school?  Are you seriously so inept that you don't know how to ignore and/or delete the one email a month (at most) you're getting from me?!?!  I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS BULL!

I just can't.

Leftover picture from when we went to Lolly's farm over the holidays.

Sick Twin B

Throughout this time I've gone through my usual whirlwind of micro-obsessions.  I have many many thoughts on Beyoncé's Formation video.  The Big Yam has started saying, "Excuse-me moi" to preface his points and it is amazing.

So we watched the movie Dope on the weekend, which is a fun, awesome movie that speaks to everything I'm into.  I'm super into teen caper movies (teen comes into ill begotten gains, uses it to their own advantage to shine on some adults, hilarity/wisecracking ensues) which I'm convinced is a genre, but when pressed by the Dotytron, I couldn't think of any other examples (The Secret of My Success)?  I'm almost positive this is a thing.  I'm totally obsessed with all the style in the film, but particularly, Diggy's (the girl on the right, above).  Her outfits were amazing and if I were 20 years younger, I would totally go for it.  The costume designer went for an overtly 90s aesthetic, so if I were 20 years younger, I would have been period-appropriate, though I don't think I had the style sense or body confidence to put things together with half as much panache.  The movie is like Attack the Block - teens, of a very particular type (in this case, geeks, in Attack the Block they were chavs), get in over their heads and meet some characters as they hustle.  I loved it.

THIS. BOOK. OBSESSED.  Remember Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl?  In that book, the protagonist wrote fanfic (that was peppered throughout the novel) about these two characters, Simon (a mage) and Baz (a vampire and mage), who were from this Harry Potter-like series written by a fictional author in the Fangirl world.  Well, Rainbow Rowell, being the amazing creature that she is, took those characters and wrote a book about them, in her own voice, and it was SO FREAKIN' GOOD.  I squee'd my way through the whole thing, savouring pages with gay romance and kissing and quips, and then as soon as I finished it, picked it up and read it right through again.  A book that should have taken me 2 nights to read, I stretched over a week (twice!) because I loved it so.  The characters were fully-realized and the dynamic between Simon and Baz is the perfect antagonistic stuff of teen-beat dreams.  It's like Buffy and Spike, Riggins and Layla, Veronica Mars and Logan Echolls.  There's a strong female friend, Penelope, who is even better than Hermione because she's got more of a sense of humour and is more overtly misanthropic.  People have dismissed the world of Carry On as Harry Potter fanfic, but I disagree.  It's its own thing, which is what makes it so addictive.  The story is self-contained and the narrative is compelling - it falls a part a bit near the end - I'm not clear on what we're supposed to think of the principle villain, but notwithstanding my love of British magician boarding school tales (and make no mistake: Rowell knows what makes for good British magician boarding school tales [read: she includes a lot of food descriptions]), I would have read a single volume for each year of Simon Snow at Watford (their Hogwart's).  The modern world is acknowledged (they have cell phones), and all in all, the romance was delightful and the supporting characters are fantastic and feel real.

I've read a few gay romances and they never did anything for me, and I was beginning to worry that I was too heteronormative to handle it, but based on the HOURS I spent looking up Simon and Baz fan art and additional fanfic, I can report that I was just waiting for the right story and the right characters and Rainbow Rowell served them up to me on a platter.  I can't recommend this enough.  One of my top books of 2015/16 (it was released in 2015) for sure.

Dead. Seriously. So hot.

I can't even.  Thank you, teenage girls everywhere for pouring all your frothing, hormonal, tentative sexual energies into making Simon and Baz fanart/fanfic.  You are treasures, the lot of you.  

I went from reading that (twice!) to tackling Jonathan Franzen's Purity (for academic book club, obviously) and seriously?  Like, what is this?  Is this white privilege in book form?  Because that's how it feels to me.  I can't even (in the bad way).  Now I'm at the 20% mark and am somewhat committed to seeing it through.  UGH.

After a long week and a weekend that felt even longer, I warmed up a coconut bun and put it on the dining room table.  I went to supervise the Big Yam practicing piano for about 1 minute, and when I came back to retrieve my treat, I saw that Twin A had stuffed the ENTIRE thing into his mouth.  He looked up at me, and through a mouth full of ill begotten gains, said, "I ate it all."  This is kind of what it sounded like, but his cute, soft voice was even cuter muffled through a coconut bun filter.

Here's what we've been eating for dinner, lately:

Bi bim bap.  I bought the thinly sliced ribeye that's in the freezer section of Chinese grocery stores (for hot pot) and mixed it with purchased kalbi marinade, stir fried it, and then added thinly sliced carrots, mushrooms, and snowpeas with a touch more marinade and piled this on top of rice.  Topped with a fried egg and sesame seeds, this was a very budget-friendly weeknight dinner (total cost was about $20!)

More budget weeknight dinners - French onion soup and croque hermaphrodites (ham and swiss with a fried egg on top)

Sunday supper a few weeks ago was meatloaf - sauteed brussels sprouts (which Twin B strangely loves), and a sweet potato-cauliflower-yukon gold mash.  Things my kids hate: mashed potatoes.  I don't get it.  

Another budget weeknight meal - sausage and peppers (sear Italian sausages, then bake on a tray with sliced peppers, onions, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with oregano and chili flakes) served up with soft mascarpone polenta (done in the slow cooker), and sauteed rapini.  My kids hated this meal, but I loved it.

Lately I've been craving retro 90s, 2000s desserts like creme brulee and molten chocolate cakes.  I don't know why molten chocolate cakes fell out of favour, but there's really no reason why?  Who doesn't like an underbaked, warm, gooey brownie topped with ice cream and salted caramel sauce?  Clearly not me, judging by my nightly consumption of one such dessert.

Budget weeknight dinners: Hawaii edition.  Steamed rice, topped with fried spam, a fried egg, with canned gravy on top = moco loco.  Hawaiian people are geniuses.

I was all inspired by my Discerning Coyote friend so I pulled my 9 year old (!) sourdough starter out of the freezer where it's been for 3 years (!) and brought it back to life.  I made two ugly loaves that tasted pretty good, all things considered (all things being: I was rushed, I subbed wheat bran for wheat germ, my starter is sluggish, I didn't have a razor blade to cut the tops, and I was rushing like whoa).

Yesterday was pancake Tuesday, so we had Swedish pancakes with lingonberry preserves and maple syrup and bacon from the Mennonites, which is the very best bacon in the world.

Fin.

catching up

chicago part 4 and the standalone, highly anticipated alinea review will have to wait, i've got some weekend catching up to do.

first here are some pics of the niece and nephew being very cute:


saturday, i was pretty busy futzing around. i made a loaf of semolina sandwich bread, using regular yeast, not sourdough. i was inspired by the spectacular rise and mie of the specimen found here. mine wasn't nearly so impressive, although it was wonderful feeling the dough transform from a coarse, ropey mass to the smooth, elastic ball that yielded this after the second rise:

semolina flour is much coarser than regular flour...you can feel each grain, like fine sand. i was skeptical that it would come together and form a smooth dough, but did it ever! i'm not sure why i didn't get the same airy height as the one in the recipe linked above...maybe i should have let it rise longer before baking? this is the finished product:

i don't have a picture of the mie, but it was just slightly tighter than the one from the fresh loaf. the bread is a very utilitarian affair - because of the saffron colour of the interior, you're almost expecting a sweet, challah-like egg bread, but it's much more savoury. not much taste in and of itself, i can see why it's touted as a sandwich loaf - it's very sturdy and would let the sandwich fillings shine.

saturday night we had the dotytron's mater and pater and sister over for dinner. i did a ham, glazed with ginger-pear jam:

isn't she a beaut?

i served her with champ (mashed yukon gold potatoes with scallions that i've slowly poached in butter and cream) and roasted asparagus. the theme of the meal was "spring awakening" aka make-up easter because we were in chicago and didn't get to do easter dinnie with the dotytron clan.


for dessert i made pavlovas, except maybe they weren't pavlovas because i didn't make them chewy/marshmallowy on the inside - basically cooked the meringues straight through so that they were pretty crispy. then i put in lemon curd, a blackberry compote, and topped it with whipped cream.

even though i went to the trouble of straightening my hair and everyt'ing, by the time the familia dotytron had left, it was too late to go and party with my dodgeball peeps when i only wanted to stay an hour or so (a general yardstick i use is that it shouldn't take twice as long to get to and from the place as you're planning on staying at the event in question.) so i got some face time with the dotytron which was for the best, because the next morning i had 10am brunch plans with my friends L and N - i biked 10 km to get to liberty village (newsflash: just because you call it "liberty village" doesn't make it cozy or nice!) to eat at school bakery and café.

the school theme is a little obnoxious. there are ubiquitous chalkboards, institutional clocks all set to the wrong time, your bill arrives in the form of a "report card" and there are apples on every table. it's too much. the kicker is the fact that the female waitstaff wear school girl uniforms consisting of tight black t-shirts and pleated black microminis. i'm sorry, but i'm not into seeing my server's business first thing in the morning when i'm thinking about how i want my eggs done. this isn't hooters!

i ordered the chipotle breakfast sandwich, which was ham, egg, and cheddar in a cheddar biscuit, served with sweet potato and regular potato homefries which were soggy and were particularly galling after our brief sojourn in the u.s. of a, where i got a graduate education in proper homefries. the biscuit was nice and tender...but all in all, it was ham and egg in a freakin' biscuit. i think i'm kind of over going out for brunch - there just aren't enough places in toronto that can do it better than me. i mean, if i was the kind of person inclined to make cereal for sunday breakkie, so my choices were cereal or eggs benny, then fine. but i go all out for sunday breakkie, so paying for stuff that's of equal or lesser value (much less LINING UP FOR IT if i have the temerity to go out for food past 10:30am on a sunday morning) fails the cost benefit analysis.

after going to school, i met up with dr. rei and chatted it up at their place with the hanbo and dropped off some of my precious tres leches cargo. then i played dodgeball and then came home. it was jam-packed!

for dinner last night we ordered from city fried chicken up the street. the chicken was straight out of the fryer...it's just simply dredged in some kind of seasoned flour, so it actually tastes lighter than popeye's full-battered goodness. it was quite nice and very affordable and convenient for being up the street - a nice alternative when we don't want to wait 45 minutes for popeye's delivery. we wanted a salad alongside so we ordered something from magic oven. NEVER AGAIN! i called and asked how big the large salad (priced at SEVENTEEN dollars) was. it was supposed to feature "mixed greens, mixed grilled vegetables, goat's cheese, balsamic vinaigrette." i was assured that it would easily feed 3-4 people. the thing came in one of those cardboard takeout containers that are the size of a like, a regular spiral bound notebook - 6"x8" and it was DISGUSTING. the grilled vegetables were slimey and tasted like they had been cooked aeons ago, and the otherwise we were paying for chopped up romaine and a sprinkling of goat's cheese. I HATE MAGIC OVEN. i know they've roused my ire before but this is IT. they are henceforth dead to me.

for our sunday night dessert i layered up the elements from the pavlova the night before in a glass - i think i actually like it better this way...something about the way the flavours meld makes it tastier

tonight for dinner i made eggplant bharta and green beans thoren and steamed some brown rice. i bought saag and some naan from makkah up the street:



fin.

rebranding

the weekend ended up going out with a whimper - family stuff during the day and then at night maximum schluffiness on the couch with the dotytron. i'm doggedly trying to finish my now-horrifically backlogged xmas knitting, with no hope for resolution in sight. since i'm sure my nephew doesn't read my blurg, i can spoiler-alert and say that i'm knitting him a sweater that he BETTER LOVE AND CHERISH WITH EVERY ATOM IN HIS WEE LITTLE DOOSIER BODY. it's probably the biggest garment i've ever knit - mind you: i've been working in baby scale for my whole knitting career (2 years?) so moving up to small child scale is daunting. i also have something in mind for my niece but no hope in hell of having it done in time.

anyway, we ended up putting the kibosh on the dotytron's birthday dinner out for the time being, to be rescheduled at a later date. there was a storm coming in and we didn't feel like trekking out in the snow and we were super-full and stuffed from our 3 plates of food (or maybe that was just me) at the annual doty family christmas brunch thing, this year held at the weston golf and country club. the food was pretty awesome...big juicy breakfast sausages, a succulent ham, eggs benny, pancakes, waffles, scrambled eggs. probably one of the best doty family christmas brunch showings in a couple of years.  this is a pic of us at the brunch:

this is us with (from the left): beryl (pronounced - inexplicably - "burl"), nany and poppa. they're kind of the best. even if poppa is a staunch conservative. whatever i say or do, nany is unremittingly positive and supportive and thinks it's great.

this is us with (from left): uncle mert (short for merlin) aunt debbie, and mert's wife pat. mert and pat and nany and poppa are thick as thieves. mert and poppa are brothers but those four do everything together. they've traveled together, dine together frequently, and finish each other's sentences. uncle mert is very stylin' in a hep cat kind of way. he's a graphic designer who came up with inspector smartie. i've never actually seen inspector smartie, but he purportedly exists. however, a thorough search (read: google) does not retrieve any evidence. so inspector smartie's internet footprint is pretty minuscule (read: non existent, seemingly.) beryl has lead a crazy life too...she's sang on records and she's a fire cracker...i think she's 90? check out that outfit! she's sharp as a tack and really picante.

so we had a faux-celebratory dinner of popeye's - which is rapidly becoming the preferred caterer for all of me and the dotytron's major life moments. lol! but popeye's is rebranding! it's weird! now they're called popeye's louisiana kitchen - i was a bit disturbed, but it seems they've kept the core menu that we know and love (deep fried apple pie, spicy fried chicken, mashed po' with cajun gravy) and supplemented it with a knock-off of the kfc bowl (can't wait to try it!) and some wraps and stuff. as long as they don't mess with the chicken recipe, i'm perfectly happy.

so "the house bunny" was pretty decent, but i have this weird affinity for anna faris (the same way i have a weird affinity for james franco) - i find her so cute! and that movie poster cracks me up, as do lines such as: "the eyes...are the nipples of the face" lol! it was very insubstantial and formulaic but i find her very endearing.

now we're slogging through season 2 of "dexter." we don't love it, but we don't hate it, and we obviously like it enough to see it through. the addition of lila (pictured below) has done a lot to keep us interested as we both find her ferociously sexy and she adds a welcome note of raciness (especially when compared to dexter's primary love interest - the boring rita and her shrill kids.)

the dotytron also took it upon himself to download THE ENTIRE SERIES OF "HOUSE" which he tried to make me watch. we sat through one episode with me shooting daggers out of my eyes and the dotytron getting increasingly nervous and mouthing "sorry" to me as we sat through one of the BORINGEST shows of ALL TIME. it's SO SO SO boring! the worst! i kind of hate procedurals...so maybe dr. house and i aren't meant to get along, but even at that, i found it mind-numbing.

tonight is a pretty low-key night...i have to do some baking and some prep for my family's xmas trifle dessert. we're eating our way through the leftovers in the fridge slowly but surely (there's no point in cooking anything new!) i made two loaves of olive-thyme bread yesterday, the dotytron baked them off. here is how they turned out - no shots of the mie as they've been ear-marked for the farm next week and for the dotytron's family as part of their annual xmas food basket. tonight i'm also going to start two new loaves of the rosemary olive oil bread for the dotytron to bake off tomorrow. the dotytron make a booboo and didn't score the olive loaves. lest you think that such forgetfulness goes unpunished, i filled his shoes with sourdough starter. he's gotta learn!

anyway, i'm getting pretty amped for the holidays. 1.5 days to go!

fin.