2011 will forever go down in infamy

as the year we paid about $500 in parking/speeding/driving without valid insurance card tickets. Seriously. We can't take Captain Save-A-Ho anywhere without getting dinged with a ticket. Add to that what we had to pay because it turns out that the Dotytron GOT HIS LICENSE SUSPENDED (he fought a parking ticket, missed the court date because of what happened with his da', forget to pay the resulting fine, and BOOM! that's the recipe for getting your license suspended in case you were wondering).

This means that this week he's been getting up just after 5am to TTC it to work. We *could* risk having him drive with a suspended license, but knowing our luck, he'd get pulled over or rear-ended or we'd end up like my friend G's neighbour, who got pulled over with his kids in the car with a suspended license and they were going to call Child Services to have his kids taken away.

Just thinking about all that money is enough to make my hanging-on-to-middle-class-by-the-skin-of-my-teeth a** cry. I keep thinking about our long-delayed kitchen/bathroom renos and how all those tickets could have gotten us...I don't know...a Toto toilet or something. Thinking about kitchen/bath renos has been consuming me lately. But that's okay. When it gets done, we are going to do it RIGHT. I'm talking: Toto toilet, Bosh dishwasher, composite counters, Marimekko shower curtain - the whole lot. Maybe...maybe...a 36" stove. Neither me, nor my line of credit(s) that will be subsidizing this venture are f**king around. We're going whole hog and it's going to look gorgeous.

Which isn't to say I'm not happy now. Look at what we had for dinner on Monday night - made in our current kitchen, with the manky mirror and the holes in the ceiling that are getting cobwebbed:

That's a delicious bacon, roasted pumpkin, and swiss chard risotto with asiago cheese. Pretty darned fantastic.

Also, truth be told, getting up just after 5am doesn't make a huge difference when you're GOING TO BED AT 9PM. LOL! That's what we do now. We watch 1 episode of television (lately it's been The Walking Dead), then go upstairs, brush our teeth, go peek in on the Boobla, and then read a book/knit/massage myrrh into our nail beds (I'll leave it to you to assign the preceding activities to the fitting party) and pass out. Also, I don't know how we could push back our mornings any more. The Big Yam wakes up at 6am invariably...and in order to get out of the house by 7:45, I need that much time for feeding the two of us, cleaning the two of us, dressing the two of us, and packing the two of us up to start our days.

The new baby has started at the daycare. He's a bit of a crybaby. Like, any time he's put down he cries. Which had been making me worry about the amount of attention that the Big Yam is getting but J is fantastic. As she says, crybaby "he has to learn" and she makes a point of distributing the love. She also seems to favour the Big Yam a bit right now because he's such a good sport about, well, everything. He smiled his way through his fever and roseola and he starts every day with her so calm and good - I think she appreciates that so far, he's a chill baby. Hopefully he stays that way so she'll stay in the biz and be willing to look after any potential future chillun of ours.

Tonight we're having twice baked potatoes for dinner. I love me a baked potato. Did you guys know that a lot of people don't eat the potato skins? That's like, a travesty for me. Potato skins are SO FREAKING good, ESPECIALLY as vehicles for sour cream and butter and dill. I love the textural contrast of that papery, dry, chewy skin giving way to a flood of buttery, dairy, potentially-bacon-studded richness. Anyway, yeah, twice baked potatoes for dinner topped with Guinness infused cheddar. Nom nom.

I devoured Mindy Kaling's book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) with unseemly haste. Well, maybe it was seemly, considering I've had it pre-ordered since early last year. I found this collection of essays so entertaining. Kaling is whip-smart, self-aware, okay with being narcissistic and frivolous and aware of pop culture (which is where I find myself warming to her more than say, Tina Fey) and as a consequence, I find her very easy to relate to. She's also hilarious - her lists and the stories of her growing up with her professional parents as an androgynous, chubby child are laugh out loud funny, which is precisely what I needed after the heaviness that was Tom Perrotta. She has also perfected the modern, social-media fostered technique of giving the reader the impression that you're getting "real" access to her - which was nice, because I personally found Bossypants (Tina Fey's essay collection) too guarded. I don't know why I'm comparing the two - is it anti-feminist to compare the two? That seems to be the trend - both Tina and Mindy are like, "don't compare us just because we're two funny, Ivy-educated women who published books of humorous essays within the same year" but I'm like, "I get that, but why shouldn't I compare you? Wouldn't I compare two autobiographies of Andrew Jackson, 7th president of the United States of America if they were published with fanfare within the same calendar year?" Like, what's more sexist here? To compare, or to allege that the comparison is sexist?

I dunno. All I know is that I found this book utterly charming and funny and her depictions of the strictness of 1st generation American parents resonated. Go get it!

Sigh. There's a new Oscar season ramping up and I feel like I've barely made a dent in the films I wanted to see last year. What's a girl to do? This season is pretty thin, IMO. Not too enthused. Did I also mention that we're pretty much booked up until the New Year? [deadpan] yay [/deadpan]

Fin.

what the-

i'm starting to get spam comments on my blog? what the hell?!??? this can only mean one of two not terribly exciting things. 1) there are actually THOUSANDS of people reading this blog and the traffic and linking to and fro has finally caught the attention of evil spammers and trolling bots; 2) there are spammers out there that have canned searches for the following terms: "chinotto" "nemesis" "lagerfeld" "dotytron" "bucktown" - which is kind of commendable from the creativity standpoint.
guys...it's almost a new decade. in the 2000s. like, what the f88k?!? i remember when the 80s changed to the 90s it was totally a big deal and i flipped through a people magazine retrospective that was lying in my house and marveled at the 80s and wondered at what strange and wondrous things the 90s would bring. and now we're like, TWO DECADES PAST THAT. i'm old, sons!

i'm old enough to start being a fiscal conservative! so david frum was on george strombo's show (p.s. i hate george strombo) and was talking about how the right wing in america has moved away from its fiscal underpinnings and has been coopted by the loonies (i'm paraphrasing) who are interested in issues that aren't part of the realm of the traditional right (ie. like whether science is a discipline, shmashmortion, etc.) so true! guys! i'm all for fiscal restraint! i'm all for pulling up the bootstraps and buckling down and the value of hard, honest, labor. p.s. this is not an endorsement of david frum - it's a general commentary on how the whole political dialogue is being coopted by peripheral, reductive, polarizing dichotomies between talking (shouting) heads and we're losing our sense of nuance and winnowing away at our capacity to critically engage and imagine. so sad!

dr. rei and i were talking about marking rubrics today. another issue of classification! tell people what they need to get an A - try to legitimize and standardize the qualitative by subsuming it in our worship of the quantitative. ugh. i remember the first time i came across one - it accompanied my A paper on top chef that i wrote for my sociology class. "demonstrates a creative understanding of key concepts discussed during the term" - whaaaa??? i was so confused. if i was to go back for a phd in information studies - it would definitely be something to do with my representational entropy model - the slippages that occur between rubrics, metrics, and classification systems and the material things they attempt to fix, define, relate.

okay, i'm currently in LOOOOOOOOOOOOVE with my dining room. love it. love love love it. the dotytron is way more cognizant generally of spending a mint on something and then wanting to preserve it - he gets it from momma d, i think. she once graciously offered me a table pad for our former dining room table and i never used it once. i'm of the opinion that stuff is meant to be used and you shouldn't be buying stuff that might potentially get mucked up a bit. not that you shouldn't take preventative measures, mind. anyway, i've caught him wiping at stray water droplets with his sleeve so i'm going to make place mats for the table. i think i'm going to make it out of toile/lace patterned oil cloth, since the marimekko stuff i pine for goes for $50 US A YARD!!!

i wanted something with a tight enough pattern that it wouldn't compete with the rest of the room's elements. i didn't want it to be HEY LOOK AT MY CHERRY PRINT PLACEMATS! but i didn't want them to be plain, either. i thought the black toile would be a good compromise.

i'm spending the weekend at the crumbling family estate. my sis is up after her turkey day. so pumped! we brought our skates. we're going for AYCE hot pot and asian legend tonight. we're going to see "the fantastic mr. fox" - hopefully.

i love these songs:

the best is the prolonged, tortured, "oooooooooohhooooooohhh"

video under copyright











this video is also under copyright...but it's worth it because the accompanying video is HILARIOUS. lol x 1000000000000000000!!!!!!!!

we're going to montreal with dr. rei and hanbo and bwong. to celebrate the birthday's of hanbo and the dotytron. to eat at au pied du cochon (the trip was precipitated by my panic at an unsubstantiated rumour i heard that they were closing in the new year). to hang with my favorite people. to go on a road trip. i've instructed everyone to make two cds for the road featuring their personal favorite singalong songs. these are definitely on my short list.

the best is the other night in the car when the dotytron asked me if billy idol's "white wedding" was a euphemism for something, or if he really thinks it's a nice day (in the meteorological sense) for a white wedding. lol!

happy weekend all! squish someone you love!

fin.

note to self: ridiculous looking golf stretches

are meant to prevent EXCRUCIATING post-bucket-of-balls-at-the-driving-range tendonitis. ow ow ow. it's a good thing my job consists of 99% sitting in a not-so-ergonomic chair and typing. *limp wrists*

we took poppa d out to the driving range yesterday morning to shoot a bucket of balls. i had fairly consistent luck hitting about 100-125 yards, straight, with my rented driver. this prowess on the greens is offset by more than a few ABYSMAL shots that would ricochet off the side of my little driving range cubicle OR land spectacularly and tantalizingly a few feet away from me. me: "can i go and grab the ball and re-hit it if it's so close?" the dotytron: "absolutely not." i also like to MILK my bucket of balls. i do a lot of thinking and psyching myself up before a shot. the dotytron thinks it's a mistake. he claims it's a mechanical thing so you should just keep cranking. i had decent luck with a 7iron but i was way more inconsistent. the point is: I LOVE THE DRIVING RANGE AND I KIND OF LOVE GOLF. i definitely did better when i wasn't focusing on cranking and hacking away at the ball but just let myself relax into the swing. in other news: the rubber tees at that driving range (beach fairway) are set unnaturally high. seriously, the ball is like, 2" above the ground, minimum. it really messes with your game.



we collected momma d and whisked them to our place for a father's day brunch of corned beef hash and over easy eggs (thrifty housewife alert! last of the leftover corned beef used up!) and oat scones with devonshire cream and jumbleberry jam. it was a super-fortifying breakfast for what would turn out to be a day of home-based busybodying and crafting.

home-based busybodying is KIND OF AMAZING. sure it sucked being inside all day when i could have been, i don't know...walking the syringe infested boardwalk at the beach; or...rubbing elbows with sweaty, greasy, bleary-eyed hipsters spending mad ducats on queen west; possibly...squatting and listening to reggae in kensington market and avoiding being hit by bedraggled, emaciated, young'uns on fixed gear bikes. the point is: that life is NOT for me. no no, i'd rather be re-gluing the joints on the telephone tables and reupholstering the seats (staple guns are THE BEST!) (wearing my ear plugs and safety goggles of course) or scrubbing the rust off of my dumpster-rescued chrome and naugahyde chair or cleaning off the school desk or packing up books and vhs and dvds and forcing the dotytron to get rid of same or making boxes with packing tape or labeling said boxes or taping up paint samples and considering them ad nauseum with the dotytron.

that's what we did. he also used our new drill bits to drill tidy little holes in the back of the rosewood buffet and set up our home entertainment system complete with bumpin' sound system. it was so much fun! this is our life now, folks. we basically spent the rest of the evening BEAMING at our rosewood buffet. lol! i kind of always knew in my heart of hearts that home ownership was going to be the busybody project of all puttering in the known world and that i would take to it and be as happy as an otter cavorting belly up in the water.

for dinner i made a beet salad with peeled, cold, sliced beets on top of some arugala, bedecked with crumbled goat's cheese and chopped pistachios. i dressed it with a sweet-lemon vinaigrette. i also made these zucchini pancakes. i got the idea from my old supervisor T. that's what she does with her zucchini blossoms. she chops them up (in my case i just used a regular old zucchini, grated on the coarse side of the box grater) and mixes it with egg and just enough flour to make a thin batter (it's mostly egg). i added salt and pepper and fried them up. they're delicious warm or cold or room temperature. i sided them with sour cream with fresh julienned mint mixed in. they were SCRUMPTIOUS.

we've started watching "mad men." it's not bad. i kind of like it. the episodes go down real easy and i love the set design and have the hots for joan's outfits and torpedo boobs.

the dotytron is making me dinner as we speak. we're having spaghetti with pancetta and caramelized onions and black pepper and grated parm (kind of like a carbonara minus the eggs) with that italian antipasto salad we're obsessed with. eaten al fresco. ah, summer. ah, backyard. i will miss thee. eating under the sky is one of life's greatest pleasures. i think we're going to try to do some frisbeeing in the park, post-foodstuffs.

fin.

petty economizing...

lagerfeld style. behold my new rosewood buffet! it is even more beautiful and lustrous than the photo would indicate. the doors slide BACK into the sides, because they're all sliced up into a million pieces and curve back. don't ask me how it works. know only that it is BEAUTIFUL. it cost $450. not cheap. but it's definitely a collector's item that will retain its value. even after we drill holes into the back. it's our new tv stand. it works a little better than the other buffet i bought (which remember, was a steal at $280) because it's a foot shorter. the other buffet we're going to put in the dining room and use it to hold plates and bar supplies and other buffet/sideboard/credenza type things (the dotytron totally busted me on the nomenclature: "why do you keep calling it something different?") the rosewood buffet is heavy as all f**k and in better shape. i'm in love with it.

the petty economizing comes in when i bought expired tropicana orange juice at $2 off to make up for it. lol! and i am going to return all those anthropologie clothes. no more clothes for me, no sir. not for a long while (or, as long as i can stand it...which probably won't be all that long.) it's working out to my benefit that this summer isn't much for being hot. i don't have an opportunity to run through my copious amounts of summer clothes.

i've also snagged 2 very very old and rickety telephone tables which i'm going to turn into my first diy furniture refinishing project. i'll document the results. this weekend is busy with crafty projects. i'm going to try to clean up this chrome chair i pulled out of the trash. i gave one to H to go with her school desk (H and i are kind of setting up mirror homes...we have the same school desks, now the same chairs, and the same ikea tray underneath our respective kitty dishes...lol) i've done some research. you can apparently use 0000 steel wool and chrome polish, coca cola, or a ball of aluminum foil. i'm going to try all three to get the rust off.

on tuesday night i made up the last of the farro and black bean burger mix and made a new batch of the smoky red pepper spread to go along with.

tonight we just ate salad...i wasn't very hungry as i had a big lunch. we took a colleague out to lunch in the workplace dining room as a last huzzah. i had a pretty decent turkey burger with excellent, skinny-crispy sweet potato fries. after work i came home and met up with the dotytron and we played some no-rules tennis. i can't really generally handle eating a big meal at lunch and dinner unless i've kind of set myself up for it (ie. vacay/an "eat whatever i want" day, etc.) so i wasn't terribly hungry so i ate the spinach, grape tomato, red onion, avocado, and sunflower seed salad i couldn't eat last night. the dotytron supplemented his dinner with some leftover black bean chili.

now i'm gearing up to bake off my entries for the workplace cookie baking competition as part of the picnic on friday. i'm in it to win it (as they say.) no prisoners. it's been getting really ugly at work with my old supervisor, T. there have been accusations of sabotage.

in other news...my sister bought and devoured (her words!) sarah dessen's "just listen" in one night and then promptly went out and bought like, 3 more of her books. lol! amazing! i've gotten dr. rei hooked on the e. lockhart ruby oliver series too. i've still got a horrendous backlog of book reviews to do.

okay...i gotta put the finishing touches on the performance invites. eeks!

fin.

there but for the grace of robaxacet

i would not have come into work today. i'm so effin' sore! what the hell? what did i do to deserve this?

this has also been a bit of a piggerton day. i stayed in bed way longer than i should have, because i physically couldn't get UP without twinges of pain in my shoulder and neck (i hope it's not meningitis!) the dotytron packed me a robaxacet care package but cautioned me against dosing before eating. i didn't have time to eat breakfast so i had a bacon and egg bagel from the caf (only my 5th ever caf meal, in almost 2 years of working here). then i had pre-existing lunch plans with my friend M at the indian buffet close by. now i have dinner plans at tacos el asador with L and her bf N. it's nice seeing people but i really want to go home and lay the eff down and regain my full range of motion.

i didn't get to watch 'the reader' last night because A was in a chatty mood so we ended up talking most of the night. it was nice. i like him!

in the happy files: i managed to score some discounted thakoon stuff from target while in the states...because the line is old (in target time) i got some sick deals. a skirt for THIRTEEN DOLLARS! a spring coat for TWENTY! what a scoop! apparently alexander mcqueen is doing the next designer line. i love you target! don't ever make the mistake of coming to canada and getting sullied!

in the sad files: my clunky, cheapo winter boots that i bought for sixty bucks like, 5 years ago have sprung a small leak. heartbreaking. luckily, i scored an equally ugly, no-name (i'm NOT spending $150 on sorels, thanks) cheapo pair from sears for $40. sweet! i believe in sacrificing form for function sometimes.

in the happy files: i made the discovery that the chicago architecture foundation offers tours of the lakefront by SEGWAY.



...



has it sunk in yet?!???? BY SEGWAY PEOPLE!!!!! the dotytron and i have a mild obsession (me: mild, dotyron: raging) with segways. it's kind of expensive and you have to wear helmets but in the grand tradition of us taking on outlandish modes of transportation while on foreign soil (the tandem bike in bruges, anyone?!???), i think it'll be worth it for the hilarity alone. my prediction is more time spent taking pictures of each other on the segway than in listening/paying attention to the tour.

dearest readers! i have such a backlog of stories/events/reviews/random musings with which to regale you! and so little time!!!

i'm filling out my oscar ballot right now...i think i'm going to fill out two. one of who i think SHOULD win, and the official one of who is GOING to win. that way i can reconcile my heart and integrity with my more mercenary interests.

tomorrow i'm going to be up bright and early to accompany the dotytron up to markham to await the arrival of my sis and outlaw bro and the kids. they're in town for my grandpa's birthday dinner tomorrow night. i'm going to spend the day there, make dinner, then head back downtown to hit this show: amit @ el mocambo i'm mostly in it for chrisc64's (of C&C friend factory fame) old skool set with the gunnderson. it's going to be boss (if he plays it dancefloor friendly, otherwise known as "tunes that lagerfeld wants to hear" - i represent the dancing desires of the masses).

i'm excited! this weekend is going to be so fun!

in other news...i find some of the food peeps on this messageboard i still stupidly post on to be hella irritating. they're like the kind of people who made canada debase itself for obama yesterday. like, totally swept up into the food zeitgeist like, 10 months (or in some cases, years) too late. and they don't KNOW anything! but they preen like you wouldn't believe! they're almost a-critical. you can almost graph the fall out --> toronto life and/or now post a foaming at the mouth review --> 10 weeks later, they whip themselves into a frenzy discussing how much they want to eat there --> 2 weeks after that, they do, and are A-CRITICAL! they're like the worst kind of upwardly mobile n00bs. gah. i don't know why i go on there (i know why: habit/procrastination)

as an aside: the obama coverage bordered on embarrassing - seriously canada? HE'S NOT YOUR PRESIDENT. HE'S ALSO PRETTY CENTRIST. HIS STIMULATION PACKAGE IS MEH. it's just embarrassing to be canadian and watch them go buck like that, prostrating themselves out of adulation for THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT (because that's how you're supposed to perform when he's around?) it's cringe inducing. i don't know what i prefer more, the rabid 'twilight' fan or the rabid canadian obama fan. i might have to pick the 'twilight' fan. at least they've done their reading (at the very least it can be said that few can match prepubescent girls for their obsessive research skills when it comes to the objects of their hormonal outpouring.)

sorry peeps, i got a little ranty there. i blame the robaxacet. and that i'm super-full but wish i was super-not so that i could suck the marrow out of el asador (who am i kidding? i'll probably go whole hog and then end up filled with regret. and by "filled with regret" i mean: "crawling out of bed to hit the pepto at three am") upcoming posts will include reviews of the YA fiction i've been filling my brain with lately, as well as a dramatic account of my initiation into a ponzi scheme!

fin.

yoga fail

i stopped by the video store on the way home last night to see if they had any more of "the tudors" season 1 (aka the johnathan rhys meyers crazy bug eyes show) and instead, left with discs 1, 2, and 3 of "battlestar galactica" season 4, which naturally meant that i didn't go to yoga last night and instead sat in bed knitting and catching up on cylon-human relations and the search for earth with the dotytron.

the way i rationalized it to myself is that tonight is not going to be fun...it's a working friday night. we've (or rather, i) have designated tonight as PERFORMANCE AND FINANCIAL PLANNING night - we're basically setting up timelines, budgeting, and figuring out the menu with the caterers and all that jazz and also setting up a financial plan for the coming year (or what we know of it.) buoyed AND galvanized by my newfound mastery of basic (read: remedial) excel spreadsheets and formulas (before, i used to basically use my excel spreadsheets as charts, doing the calculations on a CALCULATOR and entering the pre-totaled figures into the cells - dr. dum-dum in the house!) i'm attacking fiscal responsibility with a renewed fervor.

anyway, if i stay in budget, i'm due to be finished off paying my osap 19 months from now and my line of credit should be clear by the end of march. assuming my employment situation remains stable (i had a very encouraging talk with my supervisor today that she *should* be getting the okay to cover my colleague's maternity leave, which would make my status here okay until september or october 2009...and who knows if the job interview next friday will make things look up even further), i hope to be back to saving a healthy chunk of change from march, on. my goal is 25% of net income into savings. i haven't figured out how i'm going to divide the long-term/short-term savings yet...maybe i'll try to push it to 30% of net income into savings and split long-term and short-term equally down the middle.

guys, i can't EVEN TELL YOU how titillated i get talking about how much of my net income i'm planning on putting into savings. it's absolutely THRILLING...it's like my heroin.

in other news, i'll feel much better once i have a timeline and fixed budget in place for the performance - right now i kind of feel like we're in limbo...once i have the menu and the catering set...then it's mostly the small(ish) details. i had dinner with someone recently who helped me put the whole performance thing in perspective, in a pretty macabre kind of way, but still, i found it helpful. basically, their father had passed away suddenly, from a heart attack, and he said to me, "we basically planned the funeral in 2 days - that's why i don't get how weddings are so complicated or people plan them over a year" is it tasteless that i found comfort in that? i can't tell. i mean, i obviously felt for him and his loss, but that statement really helped to me situate this event. if anything, you should spend a year planning your funeral, not your wedding...the funeral is the last "event" of your life...you kind of want to go out with a bang.

anyway, it'll be nice for me and the dotytron to sit down and talk things out (let's hope things stay civil - he already made me promise to be relaxed about it last night) and figure out what's important, what we can ditch, etc. funny story, when we first got the venue, the dotytron was like, "it'll be nice to put some decorations in there and personalize it" and which point i went all apoplectic on him and started shouting, "WHAT!!?!??! WITH WHAT MONEY?!!! WE DON'T HAVE A BUDGET FOR DECORATIONS!!!!$#$@#@" and he kind of meekly and forlornly replied, "oh. i was just thinking...streamers or something" lol!!! sometimes, i really really really like that guy (and feel really sorry for him that he has to deal with me). streamers are TOTALLY in the budget. in fact, i've been researching them online and you can get 500 FEET for 3 dollars! amazing! aside: is there anything more tragic than a forlorn dotytron? i don't think so...i'll do well to remember that the next time the ides of lagerfeld threaten to push him into such a state.

tonight for dinner we finally cracked into the bottarga we brought back from italy. here's a definition of bottarga ripped straight from wikipedia:

"Sometimes called the poor man's caviar, botargo is the roe pouch of tuna or grey mullet, or sometimes swordfish. It is massaged by hand to eliminate air pockets, then dried and cured in sea salt for a few weeks. The result is a dry hard slab, which is coated in beeswax for keeping. It is usually used sliced thinly or grated. In Italy, it is best-known in Sicilian and Sardinian cuisine; its culinary properties can be compared to those of dry anchovies, though it is much more expensive. Bottarga is often served with lemon juice as an appetizer or used in pasta dishes."

we made a sardinian style pasta, consisting of spaghetti (not the more traditional chittara - guitar string-cut pasta), tossed with a chili-breadcrumb-garlic mixture, and topped with shavings of bottarga. really easy. i'll post the "recipe" (rough guidelines) below. we had it with the ever-reliable olive garden salad. tasty.

fin.


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

spaghetti alla bottarga
serves 4

1 lb. spaghetti
2 T. unsalted butter
1 c. of dry breadcrumbs (i use panko)
1/4 c. olive oil
7-8 roasted garlic cloves
1 T. minced garlic (2-3 cloves)
1 t. dried chili flakes (we also used some of T's peppers, sliced up)
3 oz (approx) bottarga
1/4 c. chopped parsley
salt and pepper

- heat the butter in a pan and add the breadcrumbs, toss over medium heat until the breadcrumbs are browned and crispy, season with salt and pepper, set aside.
- get a pot of boiling salted for the pasta, cook pasta until al dente
- near the end of pasta cooking time, heat the 1/4 c. of olive oil with the roasted garlic (smash the cloves up a bit), the minced garlic, and the chilies, cook over medium heat until garlic and chilies are fragrant.
- grate in some bottarga, add the drained pasta, and a touch of the pasta cooking water to loosen.
- stir in the breadcrumbs and the parsley, season with salt and pepper and serve, topped with more bottarga grated on top.

i got a new attitude

new year, new modus operandi (those of you who have been on the receiving end of my cutting wit and verbal lacerations, don't rejoice too soon, textbook lagerfeld tongue lashings aren't part of the rejigging.)

we started our last sunday of vacay with our traditional new year's breakkie of choice: scones with devonshire cream and jam. we didn't do it on new year's day proper because we were at the farm, but i like ushering in a new year with devon cream - there's something fantastically proper and soul satisfying about it. i used a new scone recipe that i tinkered with a bit - with excellent results. instead of the usual 100% white flour, i added whole wheat and rolled oats, which produced a crunchy, sweet, craggy scone with a darkly golden caramelized crust and bottom - a perfect foil for the cream and my strawberry rhubarb jam.

then we went off on our day of post xmas exchanging, gift certificate redemption, etc. the new modus operandi kicked in then. i was VERY good about the conspicuous consumption...very restrained, practical, disciplined. i'm finding my patience for trawling physical stores to be less and less. vintage, yes. for vintage i'll gladly sift through my list of go-to retail gems, but even then, i don't really have the desire to dig through mountains of crap for the one piece of gold...i want the store to be well edited, well curated, in order to maximize my success rate. i'd drag the dotytron into zara only to walk one foot into the store and go, "you know what? i don't want anything here" and turn on my heel and march straight out. the dotytron was in shopping-with-me heaven (even though i'm a decisive shopper at the worst of times [she says, unconvincingly.)

there are certain stores that i know i can never set foot in again (for things for myself.) h&m is on my s**t list, urban outfitters is on life support. overpriced, poorly made crap. we went into indigo to use our gift cards but walked out empty handed because it seemed so...undignified to be walking through a physical bookstore with it's formal layout and rigid genre sectioning...i'd much rather the convenience of shopping online and having it shipped straight to my door. i got two lovely cardigans from the gap that i can already see layered over the stuff i'm going to buy from my online stores. online shopping ftw!

my brother got us this boxed set of the entire series of joss whedon's "firefly," without the receipt, which we already own. i tried to exchange it (sans receipt) at the hmv at the eaton centre but the dude working there was a douche and said that "there's no way of knowing that he bought it at an hmv" (this dude was wearing thick, plastic framed glasses [warning!] and had two full sleeve tattoos [additional warning!]) what an a**jack. we tried the hmv on queen west and managed to exchange it for "buffy" seasons 2 and 3 (2 for $30!) and season 4. SO MUCH WIN! we only had to spend $15 of our own money! we also hit sears and exchanged some random isotoner business for flannel pj pants. anyway, we came away like bandits without spending our own money AND we made sensible buying decisions and didn't buy frivolous crap we didn't need. no word of a lie, i'm kind of in love with myself right now. tax free savings account, here i come!

tonight we're going to use our chapters money and order some books online. i've pretty much decided that i'm going to get michael ruhlman's "charcuterie" - once i have cured meat under my belt, i'll only have cheesemaking left to tackle and i'll consider myself adequately equipped to feed myself should the apocalypse arrive (only if the apocalypse sends us back to a pre-industrial, agrarian, idyllic past redolent of pastoral nostalgia - anything else and i'm fuxz0red.)  i'd consider getting some fiction but buying fiction outright always seems like a colossal crapshoot.  i'd rather hedge my bets and preview fiction from the library first and then if i know i absolutely LOVE IT, then buy it for the permanent collection...the economy is way too tight to be spending money on books that i may or may not love outright.  i think the dotytron is going to buy us a copy of "the watchmen" (i'm STILL reading it! it's hella dense!) and i don't know what else...hopefully something i can read too.

for dinner we made pad thai...a last minute addition of shrimp crustaceaned up what would have otherwise been a perfectly serviceable and tasty vegetarian main. i over-egged at the end, but with some minor tweaking (mostly involving keeping an eagle eye over the ephemeral changes of rice noodles' states of being) it will be a half decent substitute for run of the mill thai, though a pale shadow of the brilliance that is jean's vegetarian kitchen. i went whole hog and used tamarind pulp instead of the cheaty pants shortcut ketchup route. yay me!

last night was hilarious (as per usual) even if we had to wait over an hour for our 6:30pm "reservation" (no face!) we got to hang out at bwong's place and meet his parents who love two things: cruises and bwong (not necessarily in that order.) it was adorable! the place was a shrine to every conceivable cruise line (replete with a map studded with push-pins of ports of call past and future) and a shrine to bwong's accomplishments (great and small.) i wonder what it would be like to live with parents who were visibly proud of you? alas, that is not for me to know. not that i would trade my madcap over-siblinged existence for all the framed york region physical fitness badges in all the land. i yam what i yam.

bwong's parents' place has the BIGGEST TV I'VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE. in the 60" range...hd, every pore visible, every piece of fur visible (they were watching "blue planet" when we showed up), i-would-never-want-to-watch-my-home-movies-on-it super clear, with surround sound. it was intense. what WASN'T intense was that the version of "harry potter and the goblet of fire" procured by dr. rei was NOT blu-ray. ergo, we played it on the regular dvd player (bwong's house accepts every format known). for some inexplicable reason, the tv got all confused by the non-hd-ness of the conventional dvd and made the movie look like crap. seriously...i made a crack that it looked like dr. who (old dr. who!) and it's one of my most accurate observations/metaphors/similies of recent memory (and let's be real here, i make a LOT of accurate metaphors/similies.) it took all the magic away! it was the oddest thing i'd ever seen...it looked so low budg it could have canadian. it looked the way it must have looked to the camera operator as it was being filmed in real time. the aspect ratio was all off, everyone looked dull, the colors were deadened, the special effects cheesy...it took all the movie magic away. unsolved mysteries!

now i'm kind of getting a bit sad panda about going back to work. winter break is never long enough!

fin.

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

whole wheat oat scones 

makes 8, adapted from january 2009 food and wine magazine

1 c. all purpose flour
1/2 c. whole wheat flour
3/4 c. rolled oats (quick cooking or regular)
2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
5 T. sugar
6 T. unsalted butter, cut into small cubes, cold
1/2 c. dried fruit of your choice - cranberries, figs, apricots, ginger (optional)
1/2 c. buttermilk, plus more for brushing
- preheat the oven to 425F
- whisk together the flour, whole wheat flour, oats, baking powder, salt and 4 T. of the sugar
- cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse meal (i never know what this means when recipes say this - basically just cut in the butter until the butter is in little, pea-sized chunks)
- stir in the dried fruit (if using) and the buttermilk until a stiff dough forms, knead gently until it just comes together
- on a lightly floured surface, pat the dough into a 3/4" round, cut into 8 wedges and place the wedges on a baking sheet.  brush the tops with a little bit of buttermilk and sprinkle with reserved 1 T. of sugar
- bake for 17-20 minutes until golden brown, cool slightly and serve warm.