Poor Long-Form Written Word

This poor, poor blog!  So few posts compared to the halcyon days of yore.  And yet, I can't stop won't stop.  I won't give up on blogging.  Not now, not ever.  I will hold true.  There is room for the long-form reflective written word and this is my space.  You can't supplant it with all the Snapchats and Instas and FBs and Twitters...you just can't.

What have I been up to?  ONLY HAVING THE TIME OF MY LIFE.  The weekend before this past one was literally insane in the membrane.  That's the technical designation for what I did.

Friday was my day off and I spent the day running around like a maniac.  I helped out at the book fair, went back to the Big Yam's school to do sub lunch, did mad errands, and that night I met my friend M in Kensington and then had tortas from Torteria San Cosme which were DELICIOUS.  We split the chicken milanese and the cubano, and I also bought a cochinita pibil one for home.  The sandwiches are priced at around $9, which is kind of pricey, but they're substantial and so well made and they griddle the bread, which is key.  It's a nice touch.  I'm of the belief that hot sandwiches should be served on buns that have been kissed with some kind of fat and then burnished on a flat top - it provides a texture barrier and just ups the general ante.  Anyway, the space is super-cute - it looks like a little cafeteria lunch counter with excellent floor tile work.  I'm a little in love with it.

That Friday was one of the nicest spring days we've had yet, and I was running around in my very ancient, vintage Mexican embroidered shirt that I've had for over 10 years.  The moms at the Big Yam's school were going apes**t and one of them asked me if I got it from Anthropologie.  There's been a lot about cultural appropriation in the media of late (see: Justin Bieber's dreads) and I was like, damn, am I culturally appropriating?  Should I not be wearing this shirt?  Then at Torteria San Cosme, one of the Latin American women working the grill (and it was super-amazing that the whole crew behind the counter was women - assuming they also have a say in the means of production), pointed at my shirt and mouthed the words, "I love it."  That made me feel a little bit better, but also: am I just being lazy and relying on a "native insider"?!?  WHO EVEN KNOWS ANYMORE.  The point is, those sandwiches, that I might have zero business in the world eating, were freakin' delicious.

Then we saw a Frida Kahlo documentary that was meh.  It was very "classic documentary" which meant long, still shots of the light on a wall and the sound of birds chirping.  It was about this Japanese photographer who went to Kahlo's house and took photographs of Kahlo's stuff and then they framed it by also interviewing women in Oaxaca who produce the embroidered clothing (it was just a random coincidence that I wore my shirt that day, I swear) that Kahlo wore.  I get what the documentary was trying to accomplish, linking Kahlo's embrace of her Mexican heritage and work as a woman artist with the traditionally female craft work and domesticity, but it was a bit of a slog and the thesis could have been tightened up a bit.

Saturday we played in the Regent Park playground with the Wonder Twins and then followed that up with dinner at Bar Isabel with Dr. Rei and Hanbo.  Such a fun time.  I love those guys.  My mum watched the kids and was hilarious about it.

Sunday was Mother's Day.  Mother's Day has been AMPED UP in recent years.  My FB exploded with heartfelt and sentimental tributes to all mothers...it was a bit much for me, to be honest, but the Dotytron was lovely and took the kids away for a couple of hours so I could work on a quilt.  Then we went on a nature walk, and then Momma D came over and watched the kids so we could have dinner at A3 Napoli (one of my favorite restaurants) with JJ and S and then we went to see the Noma documentary at Hot Docs, Ants on a Shrimp.  

This documentary felt like a slog, to be honest.  It's ostensibly about the time the chef, Rene Redzepi, packed up the whole restaurant and transplanted Noma to Japan, for a 3 week engagement.  What emerges is this slavering fanboy flick that doesn't critique anything.  You don't get any sense of the thought processes that go into the dishes, what they're after, how the dishes taste, what the reception of this endeavour was...basically, as a viewer, you're supposed to take it on faith that the stuff tastes good.  It was very acritical and all I got out of it was flashbacks of my time on the line.  There was also all this hyper-masculine, macho stuff: the film opens with the chef de cuisine and the sous chef charged with conceptualizing the menu, both of whom are heavily tattooed dudes, and are shown in the opening scenes of the film doing weird cross-fit type stuff like pull-ups and working on rowing machine until they get blisters.  Just, ew.  Get over yourselves, stupid macho kitchen mentality.

The Don is so magical

Comic book nerds are also magical

Some of the awesome stuff I picked up.  Love that Prince and Bitch Planet poster!

This weekend we had my friend C64 and his partner over for dinner on Friday, then on Saturday we went for a rainy walk in the Don Valley with the Wonder Twins, and hung with SMckay that night.  The Dotytron went to see Lee "Scratch" Perry and on Sunday, SMckay and I hit up the Toronto Comic Arts Festival.  I dragged the Big Yam which was, in retrospect, a bit of a mistake.  Although I was gazing longingly at some of the other parents who had children, seemingly younger than the Big Yam following them throughout the crowded halls, with their noses buried in comics.  Really want to share my nerd interests with my kids, yo.

That being said, the Big Yam has been hilarious.  A few week's ago we went to see Peppa Pig at Boston Pizza.  They were blasting Peppa Pig on the screens and Peppa came around to all the tables.  At a certain point, as she was making her way, the Big Yam craned his neck to see, and announced: "Peppa Pig is coming!  ... Jesus."  LOL!!!  He's so funny.  The other night, we had our neighbours over for dinner and were having a big conversation about wants versus needs.  I asked him, "So, can you think of something that you really need, versus just want?" and he said, "Ummm...wifi?"  Touché.  Can't really argue with that, can we?

Some snaps from around here, lately:

Sleepiest bubbies

B-b-b-b-bath time!

These two.  Finally starting to get along and be friends.  They're doing more collaborating and colluding and are frequently in cahoots.  During their increasingly fraught nap times, I'll hear Quincess test the door knob of their room (we have one of those door-knob protectors which means they can't turn the knob), and report back to Twin B, "It's locked."  So cute.

Eats around here, lately:

Company dinner: tagliatelle with radicchio and bagna cauda, with a poached egg and crispy croutons

Made a pretty kickin' chicken biryani with green beans thoren.  There are some refinements to be made, but it's definitely a good foundation.  Next time I might add some plumped raisins and will make some extra rice.

Saw some stunning artichokes so we roasted them, I made chorizo potatoes, and seared some ling cod and served everything with romesco.  GAH!  Love romesco so damn much.

Fin.

My last night of relative calm...

before we embark on the craziest weekend in all of crazytown.


This is my schedule until next Monday:


Thursday night: Kinton Ramen (new ramen placed opened by the Guu crew. yay!) with the Dotytron, followed by a viewing of The Avengers (yay!)


Friday night: softball at Withrow Park (so close! yay!)


Saturday: take the Big Yam swimming in Markham (yay!), then Costco (boo!), then visit with Poh Poh and my mum and lunch with my deadbeat dad's sister (yay? verdict is still out on this one), then checking out hardwood flooring (zzz!), then hanging with R & R (yay!)


Sunday: Ladies of my street dim sum lunch (yay!), friend's baby shower (yay! but exhausting!), then dinner at B & G's house (yay!)


Final (prediction) tally:
7 full-strength yays
1 medium-strength yay (cuz baby showers are EXHAUSTING. Plus, a lot of people we don't know, PLUS my ex-bf who I practically don't know now)
1 TBD
1 zzz
1 boo


I'll do a final-final tally post-weekend.  We'll see how things compared.


What I really want to be doing is building this kid misty-tent sprayer thing this weekend:

So bada**!  The tutorial is here.  It's just PVC pipe that you hook your hose up to.  If it turns out, I'm basically going to want to live under that this summer.  It's like the Coke tent at Wonderland/every summer rave I've ever been to, but ALL THE TIME!  Although now I'm reading that maybe we should try a PVC-free alternative...maybe PEX.  It's not supposed to be that hot this weekend, so I can hold off.


Another thing I want to get: SKY LANTERNS.  So much fun!  Look:

I think it'd be fun to get them for the neighbourhood kids and adults for Canada Day or something.  I know I keep saying it, but: I LOVE MY 'HOOD!  We missed it this year because we were in Geneseo, but all the adults pooled their money and bought fireworks and went to the park and lit them.  So much fun!  So cute!


In other news, look at my peony!

My garden is killin' it this year.  Here's a sideways picture to prove it:

And here's a random photo from last Friday of the roomie, ready to pop, and the Big Yam:

So, so cute!


I've been reading a tonne lately.  Here are some book reviews:

Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon are brother comic authors from Brazil.  Daytripper si about a man who writes newspaper obituaries for other people, reflecting on his own life.  It is dreamlike and ruminative - the story asks you to wonder what events, memories, actions, make you you.  It asks you to think about the act of taking stock and tallying up what makes a life a life.  I loved it.  It's beautiful and the pictures are simultaneously sharp and hazy, alive and slithering with the energy of Brazil.  

Well, as you can see from the cover, Vera Brosgol's Anya's Ghost is heralded as a masterpiece by none other than Neil Gaiman.  I for one, am not a Neil Gaiman fan.  Just not my steeze.  This is a gothic horror comic set in contemporary times which follows a teenaged Eastern European girl who comes across a ghost who may not be all that she claims.  I liked the pictures, but the story felt slight to me.

Daniel Clowes (of Ghost World fame) wrote and illustrated Mister Wonderful which is touted as "a love story" but which is a modern, complicated version of that well-trod trope.  It's about a man who's long divorced and is dating - basically, about a schlub (a well-trodden Clowes trope), who is neurotic and self-loathing trying to find middle-aged love.  It was pretty cute and okay.  I really love Clowes' illustration style.  It's so iconic.  

This.  This is staggeringly good.  This is bring-you-to-your-knees good.  This is highlight-every-passage good writing.  Jeannette Winterson is a well-known British lesbian feminist author (I mention all those subject identities because they inform their work, not to be salacious).  I've read a couple of her books.  Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is her memoir, an account of what it was like growing up adopted by an ultra-religious depressive parent in working-class northern England.  It is also about Winterson's struggles to carve a place for herself amidst the tabula rasa of her own adoption, of the events that made her the author she is today (many, many hours spent reading "English Literature from A-Z" in the public library).  She is an erudite, evocative, gifted writer who is at once funny, wry, warm, open, and reflexive.  It's everything you want a memoir to be.  She wrote it in real time, in the sense that as the memories came back she recorded them and the events of the present - in this way, you journey along with her as she goes through her spells of depression/madness and comes out the other side.  It is funny and smart and moving.  I can't recommend this enough.  If you're into memoirs.  My Academic Book Club chose this (at my suggestion - someone wanted a memoir) and we're meant to read it alongside Alison Bechdel's Fun Home (which I had read when it first came out), which is her comic memoir of growing up in a funeral home and coming to terms with her closeted homosexual father's untimely death (likely a suicide.)  Bechdel recently released a new memoir, Are You My Mother?, which talks about her relationship with her mother and is receiving rapturously good reviews from the NYTimes, etc.  I'm chomping at the bit to get my hands on it, but for some reason, TPL is dragging it's feet.

Monday night's dinner of slow cooker thai coconut curry soup with rice noodles.  Easy!  I'll post the recipe tomorrow.

A flash of inspiration had me create this dish - a riff on all the Asian mashup cuisine that's so popular nowadays.  These are pork and beef kalbi burgers with pickled cucumber (rice vinegar, sugar, sliced red onion and togarashi) and kimchi mayonnaise.  It was a good first try, but all the flavours could be pumped up a bit.  We ate it with grill-roasted asparagus.

Wish us luck getting into Kinton tomorrow night so I can post a full review!!!

Fin.