Done.

For realsies this time. Finished my final take home exam for my Public Accounting and Finance course, which was as scintillating and uninformative as the course title would suggest. It's kind of alarming how many paragraphs I can fill with sound and fury, signifying nothing. Worked hard on it all day Monday and Tuesday and now I'm DONE! So now I can embark on my weekend in good conscience. What's that you say? The weekend is still three days away? That today is only the proverbial "hump" day? FALSE! My weekend starts today - with a trip to work to celebrate a colleagues 60th birthday (and to eat cake for breakfast!), a visit from Lolly and JSculls (with sweet baby V in tow) so that we can loll around by the pool and eat brunch and otherwise be ladies of leisure, and the inaugural meeting of my Knit Club tonight.

Knit Club features a lot of overlapping members of Academic Book Club - except this time, we bring a crafting/sewing/knitting project and sit around flapping our gums and getting work done at the same time. Fun! I'm toting my sewing machine to start piecing together my blocks for the chevron quilt I'm making for the Big Yam.

A Big Yam, who, quite possibly, is lagging behind on his fine motor skills. We took him in for his 9 month well baby visit (no shots!) where our Doctor asked me a series of questions about his development. He's killing it on the gross motor skills front - crawling, he's been pulling himself up to standing for a while, etc. But fine motor skills? I dunno. Pincer grip? Not so much. Passing an object from one hand to the other? Meh. Putting his arms up to be picked up? Nope. Although I have to say, those skills seem pretty arbitrary. Take waving "bye bye" - we just don't have much of an occasion to do that around these parts. We don't leave him on a regular basis with other people. He's with me all the time! We're past the point of saying "hi" and "bye" - it's like waving hi and bye to your roommate. It just doesn't happen. The Dotytron thinks that he passes an object from one hand to another, but I haven't seen it. And when he wants to be picked up, he crawls over to us and hoists himself up, looking cute. Why isn't looking cute a fine motor skill?

Monday was a bit of a rough day. I was feeling stressed about the pinch on our finances, about some drama with my bros, and to cap it all off, I received a letter from my bio dad saying that after the series of dramas we've been having for the past few months (which I had thought we had come to a workable resolution to at our last in person meeting in early July), his wife had informed him that that she would divorce him if he continued to see us and that the stress and upheaval weren't worth it to him. So I guess I'm effectively estranged from my big poose of a bio dad. And the Big Yam will have seen him all of one time in his life, and that when he was less than a month old. Ah well. It's not like the Big Yam's missing much. I will say that at our last meeting, when I questioned why my dad wanted to be involved with us at all, seeing as how his interest in us was diffident at best, he said that he wanted to keep tabs on the Big Yam because from the first time he saw the Boobla, he could read his future on his face (there's a Chinese expression for it) and that the Big Yam was/is/will be destined for a "remarkable" future and remarkable things. When he said that, I flashed to images of the Big Yam looking like this:

and like this:

and I was like, "remarkable? Really?" LOL. I'm kind of sad about the whole thing - I think it's unfortunate but ultimately, it's my dad's loss. I feel sorry for him and his sad, lonely life, where these are the kinds of choices you make.

Onto a happier subject: tomorrow we're leaving to visit H & A for a long weekend in Cleveland! Yay! H has apparently planned our weekend down to the minute. According to him, Cleveland is actually pretty cool (for a weekend) and he wants every second to count. Friday night we're apparently going to some 20s style speakeasy party under a bridge. How cool is that? Love those guys - can't wait! Road trip!

Onto even more happier subjects: dinner! Tuesday night I made us a seared steak caesar salad:

Last night we had breaded and fried tilapia fingers with homemade tartar sauce and a red cabbage/scallion slaw:

Tonight the plan is lamb burgers with some kind of salad.

Fin.

Hiatus

I've taken an extended March Break hiatus from blogging, which isn't to say there hasn't been mucho excitement 'round these parts. We spent the bulk of the break down in Geneseo with my sis and Uncle Rico and the family, which meant a lot of eating fatty food, checking out the designer reissues at Target, prepping for my interview, and loafing. We did manage to squeeze in some activity time - we hit the bowling alley whereupon I promptly DECIMATED my previous all-time bowling best score by bowling a game with 3 strikes, which is practically unheard of for me and was made all the more staggering considering I did so with the Big Yam riding shotgun in the wrap on my back. Amazing!

Little Little Cuz is cute-ing up like crazy. This is a picture from late February when my sis and fam were in town for my Kung Kung's funeral, but look at what a little gaffer he is:

He has an extremely endearing baby pterodactyl scratchy thin voice and is capable of exhibiting much anguish. It's very cute. He has these hoarse little high pitched wailing cries which are hilarious.

Geneseo also involved Wii Jeopardy which was SO. MUCH. FUN (if you're a Jeopardy-fanatic - and I come from a family of Jeopardy disciples.)

We came back in time to experience the tail half of a March Break that's been filled with socializing. On St. Paddy's Day we entertained no less than THREE sets of visitors - starting with H and baby D in the early afternoon, then JSculls and Lolly, and THEN for dinner we had A in from NYC and Bobes. I was busy doing interview prep so the Dotytron was in charge of the annual St. Paddy's feast - he did a bang-up job. We had champ (scallion mashed potatoes), braised cabbage with apples & bacon, and mustard-brown sugar oven baked corned beef:

I had my interview yesterday. I *think* it went well. The prep work that I did and the suggestions my sister, the Dotytron, and Bruce Wayne (who was also down in Geneseo) offered was really valuable. I was making the standard mistake of burying my answers and offering too much explanation when we were prepping - so during the interview I made sure to front-load the answer and then spend the time with the explanation and background. You're always going to beat yourself up - there were some points that I wish I had wanted to hit that I neglected to, some of the situational questions took me off guard, and I stumbled on a really basic question (describe how a bill gets passed into law), but otherwise, I think I came off as poised and eloquent. Ultimately, I have a job that I love and I would prefer to ride out the rest of my maternity leave and not have to scramble any more than I already am for daycare. The thought of leaving the Big Yam before he's even eating solid foods yet is a little heart-wrenching. It's a pretty good position to be in - the most important thing is that I put my face out there and have more interview experience under my belt - it's win-win.

I bought a Mossimo sedate, somewhat matronly, serious grey dress at Target for the interview. The Designer Re-Issues (featuring the best of 5 years of Target designer collaborations) were picked over like whoa by the time I got there, the day after they were released. All that was left was a jersey, blue and green striped Libertine dress that was okay for casual wear, but I found the puffed sleeves unflattering to my jiggly arms, some Rodarte stuff that I thought looked uber-cheap, a Zac Posen party dress (same), a Proenza Schouler pink/purple number in XL, and some Luella and that was about it. I really wanted the Thakoon cyber-floral print dress but it was already gone. Le sigh. Ah well, better than fighting tooth and nail through a pack of rabid PYTs on opening day. My interest in fashion has definitely changed and I'm less committed to putting together stand-out looks...although I do love a good shop now and then. I love my spring/summer wardrobe of vaguely boho muumuus and vintage dresses and smocked stuff but winter is a different story. Having a baby really does mean you dress for comfort and ready access to the boobs so I'm feeling the pinch of having spent the past 3 years building up my work wardrobe. The other thing I love about my current position is that it's pretty business casual (more on the casual side). We can't wear jeans but I can get away with a lot more than I would otherwise. There is a part of me that is looking to start dressing a little more maturely - I'm worried my youthful looks (the florist we worked with for Kung Kung's funeral was shocked I wasn't in late high school, early undergrad) are undermining my professional development. Things I want: a pair of open-toed dark brown-black clogs (that I can wear with tights in the winter and around in the summer), and boyfriend-cut trousers or a pair of jeans that I can roll up at the leg. More colourful flats and belts and candy-coloured cardigans for layering.

Yesterday after the interview it was ANOTHER 3 visit day. I met up with K from work to pick up my Hot Docs festival pass (wahoo!) With a baby, a festival pass is probably ambitious but TPat is visiting with me from Vancouver while it's happening, so I figure that we can go out and watch some docs while the Dotytron watches the baby perhaps...we'll figure something out! Then I came home and met up with S for some coffee and pastries at Bobette and Belle (so dangerous that they're around the corner from us!!!). We rode our bikes and it was my first time on the silver bullet in oh, EIGHT MONTHS AND OH LORD IT FELT SO GOOD! I felt FREE. I'd love to buy myself a new bike this summer or invest in a trailer for Master T, but the Chariot brand ones are like, $600! It's crazy! And because they're so expensive they're hard to come by used. Also, I'm not sure what the smallest size of baby bike helmets are.

Then we had dinner with Dr. Rei at her place, drinking flat root beer and playing with Master T and grilled Hanbo on derivatives when he got home.

Today we woke up early and headed over to the Evergreen Brickworks Farmer's Market. It was my first time going to that complex - it's pretty boss! They have skating and there are trails and the place is huge. The winter's farmer's market was a little meagre, but I could see how it would be bumping in the summer. It was earnest-lefty-urbanite mecca. There's 40 acres of space around there so I'm excited to walk the trails in the summer. We paid $10 for a "big" breakfast from one of the stands that was supposed to feature scrambled eggs, sausage, biscuits, gravy. We got the equivalent of HALF an egg, not even scrambled, but in sad, folded, rubbery, flat pancake form, one sausage patty, two of the densest, most disgusting biscuits I've ever had (we were only supposed to get 1, but he gave us an extra because it was a little small) and some mixed greens. FOR TEN DOLLARS. As soon as we walked away from the stand the Dotytron turned to me and said, "meagre" and it was. I replied, "Ummm...have you ever been to CRACKER BARREL?" I forgot to mention that the sausage gravy was thin, brown, and watery. I'm 100% Canadian but how is it that I know that sausage gravy is a cream-based, flour-thickened concoction and this guy doesn't? At Cracker Barrel you get about 3 times the amount of food and it's actually delicious. The Dotytron kept saying that the breakfast was "wack attack" and that the best thing about it was the salad and that wasn't saying much. We followed it up with a crepe with ham, cheese, green onions, hollandaise, and a fried egg which was much, much better.

So you've been warned. If you go to the Brickworks Farmer's Market, DO NOT get the "big breakfast" but stick with the crepes. Or, do as Master T did and try a pear:

Baby Led Weaning! BLW! We're starting to think about solid food introduction. He's still got the tongue thrust reflex so it's a little early for rice cereal, but I ordered some laminated cotton to make a giant placemat and something to put under the high chair and I've gotten out the spoons and bowls and starting to think about it more concretely. I cut up the pear when we got home into elongated chunks and let him pick it up and play with it and suck on it. I figure if he's going to be gumming anything or gnawing on something, it's better if it's food - even if pears are pretty sweet.

Tonight we're having dinner with B & G and S & P. Fun! Apparently dinner is "Irish themed." Looking forward to seeing those guys. I'm such a lucky pig - so many people to love and see around me.

The most exciting thing that's been happening around here is some family drama involving my deadbeat da' and the woman he married. Without getting into all the ugly details, let's just say it got kicked into high gear with an email from her, to me, calling me a "RUDE HEARTLESS MISERABLE B***H" (capslock hers). CRAY-CRAY! I wasn't too fussed about it because I'm used to that kind of behavior from her, but the Dotytron was pretty upset. In his words, "you are rude and you are a b***h, but you are NOT heartless. You're ALL heart." I think he was offended that someone would think he would allow a heartless person to be the mother of his progeny. Thanks for having my back, Dotytron. I think.

Fin.

the comfort of routine

a somewhat frenzied, depressed, scattershot and piecemeal start to 2011 has now settled into something of a routine that seems to be working for all parties in the dotytron lagerfeld household.

the babe has been going to bed around 10-10:30 and staying down until around 6am or thereabouts. the dotytron and i, in light of our respective responsibilities and creative pursuits, have settled on a divide and conquer approach. the dotytron wakes up at 6 and barring any supply teaching responsibilities, does his lesson planning, life-stuff, guitar playing in the morning while the boobla snoozes with me after his 6am feed. when the dotytron comes home at night, we eat dinner together and then he takes over baby duties so that i can work on school, and then we converge again at 9ish to bathe, read, sing, and put master T down.

this is all working so far, but things are going to change. monday and tuesday nights the dotytron isn't home until 8pm, after teaching his private lessons. wednesday nights i have school, and we've all signed up for friday night dodgeball. so it's working for right now, but once things ratchet up, it'll be tough to keep that nice and tidy division of labour going.

my day is divided into two rough chunks of productivity centred around naptimes. in the morning i do my administrative housey type stuff: making phone calls, answering emails, house cleaning. then we either go on an outing or stay in. afternoons are for dinner prep and school work. i wish i wasn't so busy, but i guess that's just our lives right now. i sometimes find myself gazing covetously at ipads and iphones, but then i realize i don't really have the free time to occupy myself with apps. i'm not an app person. there isn't a ukulele practicing app, or a knit a scarf app, or a make a quilt app, or a cook a dinner app, or a have brunch with friends app...so until there is, i don't think i'd get my monies worth. we barely watch tv in this house...our cable bill is a complete wash.

the boobla has started doing this thing which is beyond awesome. well, there are a few things. first: he's super-fixated on me right now. if me and the dotytron are both vying for his attention, he inevitably zeros in on my face and saves a lot of his special smiles for me. he is smiling A LOT. and so much of my day is spent engineering and coaxing out the big, hearty, open-mouthed lappy grins that turn his cherubic face into a conferences of semi-circles. eyes squinting with joy, his little mouth open and gummy, his cheeks lifted and further rounded into edible smooth peachy bites. the other morning, i was feeding him and he looked up at me and made one of his cooing "aahhgahh" noises, that i repeated to him. he looked at me, and you could really see that he was comprehending that i was matching his sound and it thrilled him. we talked back and forth for a while and my heart broke into a billion rainbows. each time i repeated back his noise, he would pause, and you could watch the dawning awareness of his understanding that he was being heard and mimicked...watching the synapses fire and watching his little brain soaking it in was incredible.

i've sent an email off to this organization, roots of empathy, to see if he and i can volunteer to be a "seeds of empathy" family. it's a non-profit organization committed to building community. you basically bring your baby into the classroom of kids on a regular basis so they can watch a kid grow and feel a sense of empathy with others and build a sense of reflexivity. we'll see if i get picked.

we're also going to the open house for the alternative school in our neighbourhood. i know, i know. so flaky and mama dread! the thing is, the alternative school is in the same building as the school we're in district for...so if the kid is heading out that way anyway, why not at least check out what the alternative school is about? the dotytron has been put in charge of "checking out schools" duty and he said that the school has their own facebook page and is SUPER white and flaky-waldorf-y about it. which to me, is all the more reason why they need an inter racial wu-wear-wearing little o.d.b. and his cray-cray, curmudgeon, contrarian, loud-mouth mum. just to mix things up a bit. i've already determined that i'm going to be the scourge of parent council anyway. might as well be tussling with other mama dreads. is there something to be said for your kid toughing it out in public school with the great unwashed? hells, yeah. it worked for me (although going to school in the burbs is a great equalizing factor). but i also thing there's something to be said for your kid going to school and not being overlooked just because he doesn't rest at either end of the spectrum.

anyway, we'll see what we think post-info session. it's a lottery system anyway (how, "waiting for superman"!)

so my mom is reading my blog all the time...and sent me an email with the subject line: "chinkglish" about how i accidentally wrote "one an award" instead of "won an award." lol! thanks, mom. p.s. i'm writing these posts in a frenzy during T.V.'s nap time! cut me some slack!

random story: over the break, my deadbeat dad invited us all over for breakfast at his house with his crazy jacked up wife, lucy. so obviously, my sister feels guilty and obligated to go, s-dawg feels sad for the guy and obligated to go, and i emphatically could care less and am ambivalent about going (i'm mad about wasting a meal while in markham and i'm also mad that my deadbeat da' has suddenly decided to feign an interest in his grandchildren, borne out of retirement boredom and the fact that he married a woman who is an idiot and probably makes exceedingly boring company for the long years of your dotage.) the day before, i had pretty much rallied the troops to make sure we could make our excuses and not have to go, or at the very least, meet him at a neutral location (mcdonald's - our usual meeting spot, where he is notorious for a) not paying for breakfast; and b) ordering and eating his breakfast before we get there).

anyway, i called him and was trying to make our excuses, but he said he'd already bought the stuff for breakfast, and specifically mentioned, "ham, sausages" so then **i** felt bad and said we should go. well, well, well. when we show up, we are treated to a totally insane, immigrant spread of: deli ham (like, not even black forest ham...like the cheap, flaccid, pale, blotchy pink stuff in paper thin slices that's been formed into a rectangle), OVEN ROASTED HOT DOGS (immigrant "sausages"?!?), toast that was toasted easily 45 minutes prior, kraft single slices, juice, and peanut butter that has separated into cemented peanut goo on the bottom and an oily slick on top. the dotytron and i were the first to enter, and lucy was bustling around asking us how we wanted our eggs. because it was a whole heap of us (including all significant others AND c-hova) i suggested scrambled eggs because it would be easy for a crowd. "no, no, tell me how you want your eggs, i can do any kind you like," she insisted. the dotytron and i exchanged a wary glance and then put in our usual, over-easy. when the plate of eggs finally emerged from the kitchen to be passed around, i almost vomited. i doubt that a blind manatee could have butchered eggs more. it was comically bad.

master T, showing infinite wisdom, slept through the whole ordeal. the dotytron swears that at one point, he saw the boobla open one eye, take a look around, realize he was still there, and then promptly decide that feigning sleep was his best defense. he was right.

tuesday night's dinner of baked macaroni and cheese was scrumptious - very carb-heavy and cheesy:

last night we had freezer turkey noodle casserole, which had held up amazingly despite being almost 3 months frozen. i sided it with sautéed brussel sprouts and roasted parsnip chips:

bonus shot of the boobla looking like a baby pope:

and now i have to frantically go dust the entire house before he awakes from his morning slumber.

fin.

i'm gonna be a great dad

i spent all of yesterday doing fun, house-chores type stuff like making a batch of chicken soup for the dotytron, who is capable of psychosomatic-ing/manifest destiny-ing illness at the slightest provocation or in response to any perceived stress. i also prepped and painted the white wall in the dining room, edging and giving it 2 coats. i also puttied up a hole that resulted from us moving a picture, tidied, dusted, and supervised the installation of new shelving in the bathroom. it was IMMENSELY satisfying, even if sunday will go down in infamy as the time the dotytron made his preggos wife paint the dining room by herself. any time i can wear my home depot painting hat:

and walk around with a measuring tape and level and prep a room for painting and otherwise work on the house on the kind of gorgeous, hot, early-summer day that makes everyone else play hooky from house stuff and flock outside in droves, is a good day. i was seriously born to be a dad. i'm totally going to be angry dad sports team coach. or, futzing around the house in overalls dad. the dotytron has generously offered to step up and be the mom, which is kind of awesome.

here are my painting rules for success. the first rule is really, SET YOURSELF UP FOR SUCCESS. which means do all the boring prep work and make sure you have all the tools so that when you're ready to go, you're READY TO GO and all you have to do is paint:

1) USE THE 3M BLUE PAINTERS TAPE. green tape is poo. don't even bother. you're just throwing money away.
2) get one of the paint can plastic lip things:
- you stick it to the edge of the can and then it curves around and lets you get a clean pour
3) get a paint can opener:


4) tape down your drop cloths and do all the boring taping (note: i'm assuming that most people are NOT like me and find taping supremely boring - i am a freak that loves doing this kind of prep work)
5) have all your tools out and ready to go

saturday night was the funnest. we hitched a ride with lolls to kdubs and had a FEAST OF EPIC PROPORTIONS including: grilled sausages, chicken breast, veggie burgers, portobello mushrooms, vegetables, red quinoa salad, asparagus risotto, orzo salad, bacon-wrapped grilled jalepeno poppers, green salad, macaroni salad, chocolate hazelnut mousse cake, and key lime pie. it was so the best. there was also a spirited discussion on the proper use of the semi-colon and hair cuts. lolls also played the marriage ref for me and the dotytron on the way home. it was cute.

however, we got home super-late and i've been battling a low-grade headache and feeling like i need to sleep like, all the time since friday, so i was a bad daughter and bailed on my mum for brunch. i was supposed to take her to the black hoof for breakkie but i knew we'd have to leave the house super-early to get a table and i needed the extra sleep. she was very cute and sweet about it though...even though she woke up at 7AM ON A SUNDAY to make sure she got downtown in time! lol.

this was sunday breakkie:

 

a bacon, egg, avocado, lettuce, tomato, and mayo sammie on a whole wheat kaiser.

later in the afternoon our buddy L came over to help measure our kitchen and help us conceptualize how the redesign might go. then our supper club met for dinner. i suggested queen margherita pizza. the dotytron got the prix fixe and i got just a pizza. the good news is: they've improved on the bread situation. this time the bread came out and it was nicely toasted and was of a better quality than the tuesday night visit. he started with the capicollo appetizer, which had 2 strips of capicollo, a small pile of diced roasted peppers, and a small pile of olives:

 

this appetizer was kind of ill-conceived and poorly executed. the peppers were cold and the portion was kind of small. i much enjoyed the ricotta with honey and the potatoes, sausage, and peppers from last tuesday. i can appreciate that they want to change the apps every day, but i kind of think that they should make sure they have a roster of like, 3 or 4 equally good ones, first.

the dotytron got a pizza that was supposed to have spicy sausage, olives, and tomatoes, but was absent the sausage and with no good reason or explanation:

 

i got the pizza quattro formaggio with funghi, which was curiously absent the funghi:

 

mine was really good though. the four cheeses (ricotta, fior di latte, gorgonzola, and something else) really melded together nicely. the advertised mushrooms would have definitely added to the dish, but they weren't missed. what WAS missed was the complete lack of acknowledgement that they were supposed to be there in the first place!

the dotytron picked an arugala and pomegranate seed salad for his post-pizza salad:
i have to say, the prix fixe is A LOT of food. the pizzas are pretty big (12") and very filling. i ended up getting a nondescript panna cotta for dessert, served with a strawberry water.

tonight i was working the late shift at work which means i packed my dinner. it was the aforementioned chicken vegetable soup and that moroccan potato, pepper and egg sandwich with harissa that i make:



fin.

le weekend that was

peep our food at phoenix. it was so good! we went buck and ordered a tonne of food. first up is my hainan chicken rice. soooo silky! they serve it with a mashed ginger dipping sauce and this sweet-sour thai style sauce. and a little cup of the broth for dipping:

dotytron got the beef tendon malaysian curry which is fragrant with coconut milk and slightly fishy-tasting (i mean that in a good, south asian kind of way) and has chunks of tender potato. served with rice:

then we split an order of deep fried fish and squid balls with spicy salt:

and we each got a red bean shake with vanilla ice cream. it's basically red bean on the bottom, shaved ice, vanilla ice cream and evaporated milk. i LOVE evaporated milk. my peeps generally do. one of my favorite dim sum dishes was almond milk jello with evaporated milk poured on top. or chilled mango pudding with evaporated milk. basically, evaporated milk makes gelatinized sweet dishes better:

 

in the interests of clarity and for your own personal edification, i've included pictures of the two kinds of rice. the top photo is the hainan chicken rice and the bottom is the steamed rice that came with the curry. you can see that the hainan rice is a slightly different colour and has a slight, oily sheen:

the funeral on saturday morning was really, really sad. it made me sad that my deadbeat dad didn't care enough to foster a better relationship between his kids and his family. uncle bruce was a really sweet, gentle, laid back guy - as my mum said, he would never get riled or get angsty over anything - just take it as it comes. his daughter's eulogy was so moving and i was so glad that the three of us kids and my mum went to show our support for the family. it was an emotionally draining morning. the chinese tradition is that after a funeral you have to go someplace to eat immediately after. so the four of us went to tim horton's and reminisced and talk smack about my deadbeat dad - it was very cathartic. then we had to go home and shower (another chinese tradition - so you're not carrying the funeral around with you?)

for lunch we went to takebashi, this japanese noodle place in markham. i had the shrimp and veggie udon ramen and we split a couple of caterpila (their spelling) rolls:

i somehow convinced the dotytron that we should do our grocery shopping on saturday, to get it out of the way. saturday, if you recall, was the wettest, coldest, most miserable day in recent memory. it was just unpleasant all around. the dotytron put up a good fight but eventually acquiesced. so we went out with our shopping bags and braved the stores on saturday afternoon, sheltered under the giant canopy of my bacardi golf umbrella. when we got to sun valley, i stood deliberating in front of the deli counter, thinking about what kind of olives to get. out of the corner of my eye, i see the tip of the golf umbrella (wielded by the dotytron) appear and rap imperiously on the glass of the display case: tap, tap, tap, on the glass of the display case, right where the pimento stuffed green olives are. i look up and the dotytron says, "get the pimento stuffed ones" [note: the dotytron in particular and the dotytron family in general has a peculiar yen for pimento stuffed green olives]. "i dunno," i said, "i want it for the olive garden salad, i think black olives would be better," instead of a reply, he gives me his ipso facto look and the stupid golf umbrella emerges and raps the glass again, TAP TAP TAP. lol! i dunno why, but the memory of the dotytron tapping on the glass of the deli case with that "you're an idiot, just listen to me" look on his face makes me howl every time i think about it.

on saturday night we went to our friend S and P's gorgeous, huge apartment in seaton village for dinner. it was such a feast! we had chai, this amazing butter chicken, a sag paneer, and a cauliflower and potato dish. there was also a chunky raita and a chickpea-parsley salad. steamed rice and naan. i stuffed myself silly. they totally set the bar HIGH for the next round of dinners with this crew. and for dessert we had P's patented "poopsicles" which are chocolate covered frozen bananas that he serves out of this poopsicle stand - it's kind of hard to explain but i guess for a while there in his early 20s he went around the country dragging this poopsicle stand in a trailer and selling poopsicles out of it. the stand is a big wooden contraption on 3 wheels. it was pretty hilarious.

sunday breakkie was a bacon, onion, thyme and goat's cheese frittata with whole wheat toast:

then i spent the day working on sashing my quilt top, went to a yoga class and at night had pizza and salad at the roomie's apartment - she consented to babysit me while the dotytron went and did boy stuff with his thornhill crew up in king city or some shiz.

so that's the boring rundown of a fairly uneventful weekend.

 

 

tonight for dinner i made us clam pizza with kale chips and steamed aritchokes with lemon-garlic butter. i LOVE new haven style clam pizza. LOVE LOVE LOVE it. basically what i do is start with a prepared pizza dough crust and roll it out thin. then i sauté some diced onion and garlic in a bit of butter, add whole manila clams in the shell and white wine and steam them until the clams are open. i take the meat out of the clams, discard the shells and take any clam liquid and put it back in the pan. i reduce the pan liquid until it's only about a few tablespoons. i brush the pizza crust with roasted garlic olive oil (or regular olive oil) scatter with the clam meat, drizzle with the reserved reduced juices with the onions and garlic, top with grated parm and some finely chopped parsley and cook as i would any pizza - on my pizza stone in a smoking hot oven.

kale chips are easy too - it was my first time making them. i tore up the big leaves of kale (i discard the stems) and rinsed them and dried them in my salad spinner. i tossed the dry leaves with some olive oil and kosher salt and put them on sheet pans in a hot oven until they got browned and crispy.

the artichokes i prepped so that they were basically just the hearts and cooked them in about 1" of acidulated water. sprinkled with salt and sauced with a couple of tablespoons of melted butter with minced garlic and lemon zest.

i have some film and book reviews for you tomorrow.

fin.

loves me a good deal

score! so you know how i was talking about how redonkulously expensive those glass doorknobs were at the door store? i told my colleague and she sent me a link to a bucket of glass knobs that just got deposited at the habitat for humanity restore in north york. people and businesses make donations of new and gently used stuff to the restores, which they sell at discounted prices. they had a heap of knobs for $25/set!!!

so i sent the dotytron and he snagged 5 for us...for the same price (actually, much less) than we would have paid for ONE at the door store! wooee! now we just have to buy the rosettes and latches - i found a guy on ebay selling retrofit sets including rosettes and latches in a variety of finishes for $25 USD/set...but we're still going to see if home depot or lowe's has any first. SO ACES! so we're going to get the entire thing done for less than $60/door which i can totally live with. $180 door when you have cheap doors is just silly. i think they're going to look pretty amazing when we have them set up.

the colour of our dining room is starting to drive me kind of crazy...i really want to repaint it, but i'll probably be sensible and wait until we have our kitchen done (a year or two? depending on when i win the lottery?):

this is the kind of colour i'm going for. i think that kind of rich, jewel tone will look lovely against the deep purple in the living room and provide a gorgeous backdrop to bring out the tones in the sideboard and will make the white accents in the room (the chairs, the centrepiece) really pop.

okay...so here's the annoying thing about the dudes on my dodgeball team (the dudes and ladies) which you might be able to chalk up to the fact that they're young, but mostly due to the fact that they're dummies. so i put together this dancehall, hip-hoppy mix of tunes with some ragga jungle thrown in to get the team (read: me and doty) pumped. there's been some controversy because s-dawg has been playing his mix which includes your standard kind of stadium fist-pumpers along with the theme from "rocky" (the orchestral theme), which when it came on, totally through two members of the team (they're young girls) for a loop and they were all like, *curled lip* "WHAT IS THIS?!" and being all snarky and one of them turned it off, even though the dotytron and s-dawg were getting all hype because they've actually SEEN "rocky" (i haven't, but i don't get ruffled by the tunes that people play during dball, generally. like, most of the time my team when they play on sundays plays really stupid metal and i just shrug it off.)

ANYWAY, sister nancy's "bam bam" comes on:



and AGAIN the two girls are curling their lips (p.s. one of them DOESN'T EVEN PLAY DBALL AND IS THE GIRLFRIEND OF ONE OF THE PLAYERS AND IS LIKE AN ELEVENTEEN YEAR OLD WHO WORKS RETAIL - NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING INTRINSICALLY WRONG WITH THAT) and asking incredulously, "what IS this?!?" like they've NEVER HEARD DANCEHALL or reggae or music made by black people before.

and i'm like, b***h, SHUT IT. it's infuriating. like, i don't expect everyone to know EVERYTHING, ça c'est impossible. i get it. but you don't have to be all like, "what is this freak music for jerks" about it, when really IT JUST SHOWS THAT YOU are a small-minded, sheltered weirdo from HICKSVILLE, WHITEYTOWN! (your standard caveats about context, blah blah blah) like, there's an opinion about music after having listened to it and giving it a chance and then there's just showing your ignorance and being a jerk about it.

like, how come i can take the time to know what fleet foxes and ok go and tragically hip and ALL THAT OTHER CRAP I THINK IS THE WORSTEST sounds like, so that i can say, "you know what? it's not my thing" but you can ONLY know the tragically hip and think all songs written by non white hairy dudes that aren't derivative to the max is "weird"? COME ON. and as usual, HAVE YOU MET YOU?

and then the dotytron told me that when then this tune came on:



and one of the tithead girls comes running up and is like, "i know this! it's sean paul!" and was all crestfallen when she realized it wasn't dance mix 2005. not that there's anything wrong with sean de paul. but they're BABIES. who DON'T KNOW ANYTHING. and most egregiously, DON'T KNOW THAT THEY DON'T KNOW ANYTHING AND MASK THEIR PROFOUND AND TOTAL IGNORANCE WITH DISGUST.

gah. it just makes you feel old. but i mean, i don't think there should be an age limit on being as well-rounded as you can be. there's no time when it's okay not to be curious about stuff.

yesterday's meals were all about the poultry and fries. my colleage T took me to lunch at this place on yonge called the coach house which is the kind of old fashioned diner-type places with vinyl seats, an ancient cash register up at the front, and formica tables and where they serve the classics like hot turkey sandwiches on white bread with boiled veggies and fries with real chunks of turkey and fake gravy. it was awesome. we went halfsies on the club and hot turkey and ate fries and i was stuffed. then after dodgeball we met up with old kitchen friends of mine M and F who are married and ate duff's wings and fries for dinner. i worked with M at bymark but he got out of the business and now does landscaping and F is the sous chef at george and is trying to get out of the business or at least reduce the hours/time spent in the kitchen. it's a hard mentality to break. only working 10 hours days instead of 12+ and leaving at a reasonable time and not feeling guilty when you say goodbye to the other line cooks that you know still have 6 hours of service and clean up ahead of them.

tonight we're heading up to markham to visit with my sis and the kids, sans outlaw bro. sis is in town to go with s-dawg and myself to my uncle's funeral tomorrow. it's my deadbeat dad's bro. we've only met him a handful of times so i'm feeling a little removed - but it's always sad when people go before their time.

for dinner the dotytron and i are going to phoenix, which is famous for their hainan chicken rice and hk style food (well, this type of restaurant tends to do like, hong kong takes on singaporean and malaysian style food - and hong kong style western food. malaysian curries, ox tongue spaghetti and whatnot.) i'll take a photo of our meal and post it. hainan chicken rice is rice that's been poached in a chicken stock that gets re-used over and over to produce an ultra-flavourful, concentrated stock. the accompanying rice is cooked in a fatty, rich chicken stock resulting in fragrant, perfumed rice with a distinct unctuousness and separate, fluffy grains. it's traditionally served with a piquant ginger-scallion relish for dipping. it's so addictive. totally comfort food all slippery and slightly neutral and gentle on your stomach. the best is now restaurants make the hainan chicken BONELESS. sweet mother of all that is good that was a major step forward in hainan chicken rice preparation.

fin.

baby deer on ice

teetery ice legs continueth. i think if i hit the ice for a half hour or 45 minutes 3 times a week, by the end of the outdoor rink season, i should be fairly decent. i'm getting incrementally better and a little more confident each time out - the span between when i release my death-grip on the chain link fence rimming the rink and when i'm actually moving with some degree of limb control seems shorter each time out. i was super-pissed last night because two dudes were fooling around with sticks and pucks on the free skate rink...when there's an entire rink dedicated to shinny right beside it! it's so annoying. one of the dudes playing shinny gave them heck and even though it didn't shame them into switching, it still gladdened my heart.

i had lunch with my deadbeat dad today. what a messy, complicated relationship THAT is. my ability to tolerate his blustering, detached obliviousness changes depending on the day and the topic he's decided to hold court on. because his life is a non-stop round the world journey on one cruise ship or another with his wife, lunches with his children are like less-picturesque-than-usual stops in some exceptionally utilitarian port of call. he breezes in, condescends a bit, acts wounded a bit, informs me of his upcoming travel plans, we parry back and forth and then i leave with a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. my rejoinders in this ritual are considerably handicapped by the fact that despite his peerless ability to be a pompous aggravator, he's an old man, with watery eyes and a perpetually runny nose, who gets certain details confused and thinks his $16,000 finished basement with the finished bar, parquet floors, and GIANT (like 40-something inch) CRT tv for karaoke is the bee's knees. how can you truly get mad at that? is it better that i feel sorry for him? is it better that i leave our lunches with a conflicting, warring mish-mash of emotions that runs the gamut between profound relief that i've logged my filial duty for the month, and piercing pity for his aging fragility and his ambling, routine existence - where your children view the simple act of a 1 hour lunch time rendezvous as something of an endurance sport? something that one has to gird oneself for, something not to be embarked upon without first a shoring of steely resolve?

he keeps angling after an invitation to our house, in none-too-subtle phrases and tones that ensure that everyone within a five mile radius knows what stone-hearted progeny he spawned. it's an invite that i'm peevishly and pettily refusing to extend. i don't think that just because someone is retired means that they can summarily decide to renegotiate a carefully calibrated, 20-years-in-the-making détente. the problem is, there's the sentimentalist in me that remembers how he taught me to fish and ski, how he would takes us kids to do the kind of nature-y, all-canadian things that my mum and big d wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole (like a week spent at a family lodge in georgian bay), how we would ride in the back of his wood-paneled station wagon on our weekends with him listening to cat stevens and neil diamond squinting sleepily into the sun, and how he would patiently sit reading a newspaper at fantasy fair and chuck-e-cheese biding his time in solitary, caregiver boredom until we were done running wild. that's one of the threads that keeps me tethered to him, joining the other threads of biology, my siblings, happenstance, history, filial piety. those threads are so slender, so much more about our investment in them then the actual substance of them (but isn't everything about our investment rather than the thing itself?), but unbreakable nonetheless. to ignore them is to call them into existence through the non-acknowledgement of their being. to dance around their shadows even as we tell ourselves we're jiving in the spotlight.

so i meet him for lunch. and sometimes it's nice and sometimes it's something to grit your teeth through - but it's still something. our two silhouettes brought to face each other with the negative space between the profiles filled with memory and history and the genealogical ties that bind, with an unquantifiable portion left fallow for potential.

why am i being so moody and reflective on the subject of family? probably (most definitely) spurred by finishing this book, jonathan tropper's "this is where i leave you":

it's astoundingly, astonishingly, read-it-in-4-hours good. seriously. i bought the book on friday and it was done on monday. it popped up on entertainment weekly's year-end "best fiction of 2009" list and it happened to coincide with my turn to pick something for the work book club and my desire to read something funny. this is wickedly funny - the kind of funny that makes you crack-up on public transportation and makes people glance at you with a faint degree of worry, trying to calculate whether you're one of those "ruin the rush hour ride home" crazies and in a pinch, how much distance can be put between you and them when you go postal.

the story is about a man, judd foxman, who returns home one day to find that his wife has been cheating on him with his own boss. broken, alone for the first time in 10 years, and humiliated, the event coincides with his father's death and dying wish that the entire foxman clan (judd, his 2 brothers, sister, and widowed mum) sit shiva at the family home. the fractious, emotionally constipated, and bruised clan come together with all their baggage and history and the story unfolds over their 7 days in jewish mourning. the humour is pure acid, darkly funny and rings with veracity for someone (like me) who comes from an outspoken family where everything and nothing are on display - where no subjects are taboo, nothing so sacred that it can't be made fun of, no insult too cutting not to be expressed. at the same time that the dry humour provides a measure of levity, this book is also about loneliness, history, the past, family, and death. it's about the fragile bonds we forge with the people around us, about the shared history we have with people we grow up with, and how we're always trying to escape the inevitable: our personalities, our past, our present, and our own mortality. how we're such confused, muddled, messed up people trying to fumble our way through the capricious world we live in.

beneath each joke, each clever turn of the phrase, each stinging allusion there was a shadowed rumination on connectivity and the false security that "family" provides. it's also about how family comes through, how we make peace with our mistakes and the choices of others, how life is a dizzying miasma of resignation, struggle, grasping, and glory. so for all my talk of how uproariously funny it is, like life, each moment of humour has its twin moment of downward spiraling reflection. on monday night the dotytron walked in from work to find me curled up in my craft room, nose buried, thoroughly saddened and overwhelmed by how pathetic people are - how transparent our desperate attempts to construct a measure of meaning out of nothing. nice guy that he is, he gave me a hug and let me talk it out. it helped.

it's nice to read a tale of infidelity told from the guy's point of view - and a romantic, regular guy, too...not one of those polished, sociopathic cads, but a dude who loved his wife and a marriage that lost its way, the way things can, gradually, over time, in tiny incremental steps until you're wondering if this is your beautiful life, or beautiful car. GO OUT AND READ THIS BOOK. you can borrow my copy (after the book club meeting) if you promise to give it back.

after last night's leftover mandate, i threw together a 2 course dinner in 30 minutes (on the nose) tonight - trying to get food in our bellies before the dotytron's private guitar lesson.


first, a linguine with garlic, chilies (T's dried kind packed in oil), lemon zest, parsley, and shaved bottarga. so easy! not even deserving of a recipe - you could seriously put any proportion of the above together (with some pasta cooking water, of course) and it would taste divine. that was the last of my firenze bottarga, i'm sad...but we had a good run (over a year!)


this salad though was the real star - oh goodness was this ever the tastiest shiz ever. the combo of the breadcrumbs, the dressing, and the sieved egg totally mellowed all but the gentlest note of bitterness in the radicchio. i'm going to post the recipe at the end. this one is definitely going in my regular repertoire.

i also knit my dad a hat. by his request, he wanted a plain, black toque big enough to fit over his not insubstantial noggin and with a rounded top. as he so eloquently put it in an email, he sees a lot of chinese men walking around in toques with pointed tops like dorks. (?) i used the a very plain hat pattern by feather and fan. pretty simple - knit in the round, ribbed band, yarn held double when it comes to the non-ribbing part so that it's extra warm and cozy. i added some inches to the length and a few extra stitches to the circumference to account for my pop's extra large head. it went pretty quickly but i took a long hiatus to finish up other projects. knitting from both ends of the ball can be pretty annoying and lead to a lot of tangles so i needed to take a time out at a certain point.

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radicchio salad with anchovy vinaigrette, breadcrumbs, egg

adapted from the zuni cafe cookbook, serves 4 as a side

2 heads radicchio, outer leaves discarded, cut in half, cored and thinly sliced
1 garlic clove
2 anchovy filets
2 T. red wine vinegar
6 T. olive oil
salt and pepper
3/4 c. coarse breadcrumbs (i used panko, natch)
2 eggs, hard boiled and peeled

- heap the radicchio in a bowl
- take the breadcrumbs and toss with 1 T. of the olive oil. spread on a baking sheet or in an oven-proof dish and toast in a preheated 400F oven, until evenly golden brown (approx. 10 minutes), stirring occasionally.
- meanwhile, mince the garlic clove and anchovy filets in another small bowl (i used the food processor for the entire dressing). whisk in the red wine vinegar and 5 T. of the olive oil until emulsified, adding some salt and pepper to taste.
- when the breadcrumbs are ready, toss the vinaigrette with the radicchio. sprinkle the breadcrumbs over. pass the egg through the holes of a large-holed sieve and sprinkle on top of the salad and serve.

fin.