All Of The Lights

For the past 3 years my street has pooled resources and done fireworks in the park for Victoria Day.  This year, the woman who usually grabs them was away, so I did the organizing and volunteered to grab them from the fireworks store.  I can't remember what we spent last year per family, maybe $15?

I went to Kaboom! and it was hands-down one of the best customer service experiences I've ever had. First of all, I walk in, and it's like 3 Asian dudes who must have maxed out at age 22, going to town on a late lunch from Domino's that consisted of a THREE large pieces, a bunch of garlic knot things and wings.  A large pizza per person is SO CLASSY, in my books.  Then, one of those sweet kids agreed to stand outside and keep an eye on the van while the Wonder Twins snoozed so I could shop.  Then, the 22 year old store manager personally walked me around the store and helped me sort out a show.  This guy was an expert.  In the past, I think the woman has just bought those "kits" which are pretty lame - a million roman candles and burning schoolhouses.  SNOOZERS.  This guy made sure my show had a narrative arc with a beginning, middle, and end and I will say, that after witnessing the show on Sunday night, à la carte is the way to go.  I went a *little* bit crazy and spent like, $150, but the kid manager totally threw in a million sparklers and gave me mad deals on what I bought.  It was amazing.

People who complain about paying that much for fireworks are also the kind of people who can't appreciate how awesome it is when a kid manager buys his staff a large pizza each.  I would love to work in that environment.  Talk about morale!

We had such a nice long weekend.  Saw friends every day - the Roomie and baby T, dinner with JJ and S, MHui and her fambam, our friends B & G and their new baby.  So sweet!  We went for walks and ate ice cream and went out for a restaurant dinner, all five of us, which is pretty special.  When it goes off well, it's like, TOP OF THE WORLD, MA!  Eating at a REAL restaurant?  That is a feat, my friends.

JJ & S's kids are super-geniuses.  I was being a goofball and I was asking their 9 year old a series of inane questions: "Do you like to eat meatballs?  Do you like to eat giant meatballs the size of your head?" and he didn't answer me, so I said, "B! What, you're not talking to me?" and he said, "I assumed the question was rhetorical."  LOL!  He's NINE.

I can only hope my kids are that smart.  The Big Yam has been trying to figure out a bunch of stuff lately.  "Where does pee come from?"  "Where's my bladder?"  "What belly did Baba come from?"  "What does a Japanese spider crab eat?"  It's hilarious and amazing watching him process your answers.  You can see the wheels turning as he figures out how to phrase his question, and then again once you've given your answer.  My neighbour turned me onto these Youtube dudes called the "Slo Mo Guys" who basically make things explode and record it in super HD and play it back in slow motion.  Everything in that preceding sentence is the manifestation of the totality of little kid fantasies.  When the Big Yam isn't watching hours of ocean documentaries, he wants to watch this:

Meanwhile, the Quincess continues to be such a quiet, clever little lad.  He's like a classic middle child, which is hilarious, because he's the middle child by four minutes.  You basically show him something once and he'll give you a classic Quincess side-eye and then try to figure it out or start to mimic you.  Meanwhile, Lindsay Lou-Lou is, as the Dotytron said the other night, "kinesthetically smart" and then, in a whisper, "the fake kind of smart."  LOL!  Poor Lindsay Lou-Lou.  I don't want to box them in from the time they are babies though, so I will say that, right now,  Lindsay is physically advanced and is very attuned to his own emotions (read: he's very sensitive).

Now, a photo dump:

My garden, 2 weeks ago, freshly mulched and looking fiiine.  

Lendigan just back from the Grateful Dead concert

Happy, crooked smiling Quincess

11 month shot!  So squirmy!

The Big Yam and the babies and I spent all of a gloriously sunny yesterday picnicking in the park.  They've turned out the splash pad water but yesterday was the first real day it's been warm enough to think about getting wet.  Look at that little munchkin' swagger!

21st century manhood

Minds: blown (they can't figure out 2D pics of people they know)

More from our picnic

Lendigan making a run for it

Chicken Milanese dinner on a bed of roasted grape tomatoes and baby arugula

Cinqo de Mayo posole

Meat-free meal - tagliatelle tossed with wilted radicchio and bagna cauda and topped with a fried egg

Mother's day meal: seared rib eyes, brussels sprouts roasted on the grill, potatoes grilled with red onions

That time I ate 2lbs of macaroni and cheese with crispy thyme breadcrumbs

Meat-free meal: roasted asparagus on garlic toast with a fried egg, hollandaise, and leftover thyme breadcrumbs

Stromboli (basically, pizza dough rolled up with sopressata and provolone and roasted red peppers), served with tomato sauce and arugula salad

Alsatian flammenkuchen - caramelized onion, lardon, and crème frâiche on pizza dough.

French chocolate "silk" pie - basically chocolate mousse in a pie crust - I made a pretzel crust but wasn't happy with it.  Next time, will either use a chocolate sablé crust, or the standard piecrust, parbaked.  The filling is worth making again.  Will post the recipe below.

Based on one of my favorite sandwiches from La Cubana - grilled halibut with an avocado-pineapple salsa and a Greek salad.

Fin.

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

French Chocolate Silk Pie

serves 10-12

1 piecrust, parbaked

1 c. heavy cream

8 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped

3 eggs

3/4 c. granulated sugar

2 T. water

8 T. unsalted butter, room temperature, cut into roughly tablespoon-sized pieces

- whip the heavy cream until stiff peaks form, set aside in the fridge.

- melt the chocolate, stirring until smooth, set aside

- whisk the eggs, sugar, and water together in a bowl set over a pot of simmering water (double boiler style), and whisk until the mixture feels hot to the touch when you dip a finger in it.  Remove, and beat with a whisk attachment or beaters until thickened and cooled to room temperature.

- beat in the butter, piece by piece, then beat in the melted chocolate.

- fold in the whipped cream.

- pour mixture into your cooled pie shell vehicle of choice, then place plastic wrap directly on the surface and chill for a few hours, or overnight.  

- top with additional whipped cream and serve.

Work hard. Play hard.

(Sometimes).

This weekend was life-affirming in so very many ways.  We got so much done and we got to do so much!  It's mind-blowing.  Sometimes I have anxiety that being a parent means the end of all fun but weekends like this past one make all those reservations disappear into the ether.

Friday night takeout night was a Little India blowout.  Somehow we spent $40?!?  The Dotytron bullied me into it.  We went to Bombay Chowpatty - a DVD rental/street snack emporium.  The food was fantastic - we had their paneer kathi, which is scrambled paneer flecked with chilies, rolled up in a flaky, buttery roti.  Ummm...DELICIOUS.  We also got their samosa chat and one of their Indian "burgers" (potato patty).  Obviously, our little Tamil Tiger Big Yam was loving life.  That kind can handle spice like you wouldn't believe.  His face scrunches up and he complains, "Hot!" but then he just goes back for more.  He ate a tonne of food.  The Dotytron was convinced that the snacks I ordered wasn't enough so he got this beef shank curry which was kind of lame - just TWO pieces of beef shank (1.5" cubes) floating in a flavourless, oil-slicked sauce.  Never doing that again (this was from a different place).  He was still worried that we didn't have enough food so then we got kebabs and naan from the Pakistani place on the corner.  Last week Lolly was trying to convince me that we should sell Lil' Ugmo and trade up (which is actually impossible - to get something bigger than our current house in our 'hood, we'd have to pay around 800gs), but when I can have this Indo-Pakistani feast after a 5 minute walk, why would I?  The alternatives are too grim (e.g. moving to a desolate stretch of the East side that borders on Scarborough).  No thanks!

Especially once you consider that we chased the meal with hangs with the neighbs and all the rugrats outside into the early summer evening.  I love my street and I love my 'hood too much.

Saturday morning I woke up at 5am and was UP.   So I banged off a batch of scones so they'd be warm out of the oven when the rest of my household woke up, threw on some laundry, and went to work planning our back deck.  This job was originally one we were going to postpone, but I don't think I can countenance another summer at Lil' Ugmo without the option of entertaining.  Plus, the idea that we'll have three kids with us this summer and the twerps will be so wee just made me dream of filling up a pool of water for the Big Yam and dozing under the shade of the giant tree back there, with a baby in each arm, on a lounge chair, listening to the sound of ice clink in the Dotytron's gin and tonic.  I like the idea that we can just have a day outside in our own home instead of having to pack everyone up to go to the beach (which is like, 5 minutes away, so I don't really know why I'm complaining) or to the pool (which is 2 minutes away, LOL!)  I just miss having people over for big dinners in the summer.  Plus, it'll be a relatively cheap job, I think?  Anyway, I got all the planning and conceptualizing done and was feeling pretty good about life.

We went to the garden centre and picked out our mulch and flowers for the Dotytron's big backyard revitalization project and by that time our babysitter showed up and the Dotytron and I went to see our afternoon documentary.  We saw VH1's Finding the Funk which is produced by Questlove and Nelson George (a prominent author who writes about black modern musics).  This documentary was okay.  It was kind of a primer and didn't really go into any great depth.  The Dotytron knew most of the stuff already so it was kind of a gloss on the genre, but it doesn't make sense because you would think that if you were into funk enough to want to see a documentary, you would already know all the intro stuff.  I think they didn't have the opportunity to clear the rights to the songs, which was kind of a let down, because you didn't get a chance to hear snippets when they referenced particular tracks and so you were kind of working blind.

We went with our friends B & G and then hung out on a patio with them and then split off and went on a failed test-drive mission.  We ended up doing an aimless walk in Little Italy (it is so so so lovely to do an aimless walk with your beau!  It's a treat I rarely get nowadays) and then went to meet Dr. Rei and Hanbo for dinner at this new restaurant, Bar Isabel.  It's opened by someone I used to work with at Canoe and it's a Spanish-influenced tavern-type place.  The vibe is incredible.  I loved the space - it's all moulded wood panels and hanging blown glass lanterns and a beautiful Mosaic tile floor and archways.  As soon as you step foot through the door it's like you've wandered into some European bar - it feels so different from any restaurant in Toronto right now and very uncontrived and entirely original and welcoming.  We ate like pigs!

A sampling of our starts: devilled eggs with blood sausage, salt cod, and hollandaise; the salumi plate; and the boquerones (little teeny tiny boneless marinated fish fillets) - which came with roasted red pepper and thinly sliced pickled chili and with impeccable chips for eating them with.  The boquerones were one of my favorite dishes of the night.  Love little fishes!  

The cheese plate.

Roasted bone marrow - very simply served with salt and grilled bread.  After eating the bone marrow and snails at Porzia, this simple preparation is still delicious, but is missing a little something.

Larger dishes now - fried chicken and sweet eggplant.  The eggplant was like custard and the chicken was moist beyond belief.  The two elements of the dish didn't really harmonize for me, but both components were delicious in their own right.  Just not sure they should be served together.

Octopus (perfectly cooked - so tender), chorizo, and potatoes.  A classic Spanish dish.  All the parts were expertly prepared.  This dish didn't blow my mind, but it's very much a faithful rendition of a Spanish tapas classic.

Tripe with soft boiled egg.

Their "whole fish" ceviche - in this case, it was sea bream, seasoned impeccably with chunks of avocado and served with a tangle of frizzled scallion (I think).  They also fry the fish skeleton for you so that you can pick at cheek meat if you so desire.  I loved the ceviche but found the price a tad steep and also, I'm not used to eating ceviche without some kind of tortilla chip to go along with it.

Overall, I would go back there in a heartbeat.  All that food, 3 cocktails, and 3 or 4 beers came to $242.00, tax included and we were stuffed.  The service was great, the cocktails list was interesting, and my oenophile friends tell me the wine list is equally nice.  My only small quibble is that for certain dishes, like the tripe or the salumi/cheese plate, the server asked if you wanted bread with it.  A side of 5 slices of bread was $4!!!  To me, the tripe and the cheese plate should either come with bread or not.  Don't try to upsell me on the bread!  Jeez.  Even the Olive Garden includes unlimited bread!

Sunday was another lovely day.  I went and grabbed some fresh croissants from Bonjour Brioche - the best croissants in the city, as far as I'm concerned.  Being able to throw on a pair of grubby pants and go braless to bring home amazing pain au chocolat, almond croissants, and croissants (not to mention a superlative baguette) in under 5 minutes by car is one in yet another million reasons why I will never want to leave my 'hood.  We ate them with eggs scrambled with chunks of nduja and shallots:

Then we spent the morning gardening.  Behold, the fruits of my labour:

We splurged on the cacao shell mulch again this year.  Look at how nice and neat everything looks!  Still so much to come - my alliums, my peony, the poppies, the shasta daisies, my echinacea.  

We worked hard and then the Big Yam and I played in the front with the rugrats from the 'hood and they helped "water" the garden and then one of the neighbours distributed freezies and then the Big Yam barfed on my neighbour's steps when I tried to get him to eat a raw whole grape tomato.  Amazing.  After that, the Big Yam and the Dotytron rested and listened to Count Basie while I went to my happy place and assembled the Ikea dresser I had bought for the Big Yam's room.  We were pretty darned productive, I must say, which means we earned our fun that evening - my friend L hosted us at her place in High Park for a Russian Easter feast: guinea fowl eggs, Polish potato salad, roasted potatoes, roasted leg of lamb with gravy, asparagus, grated beet salad, lentils, and an arugula and baby dandelion greens salad (!!!!!)  We started with cocktails and olives on the porch and then moved to the back patio and sat under the shade of a gorgeous tree.  It was lovely - wine and vodka flowing with beautiful, interesting, talented people.  I made two desserts: a flourless chocolate roll cake and that hazelnut brown butter cake with a chocolate ganache.  The Dotytron always forgets to bring wine unless I ask him to, but I feel like if I'm bringing a component of the meal, that I shouldn't have to bring wine on top of it?  Is that weird?  I dunno...I feel like wine as a host present is the default thing you bring when you can't or don't bring anything else.  

We had Hot Docs tickets that night so our friends S & P took the Big Yam back to their place and looked after him so we could see the documentary.  They rule so hard.  P is the youngest of five kids (all sisters) who all have giant broods of their own and S is super-Polish so they are totally comfortable and experienced looking after kids.  It was so nice of them to do!  

We saw a documentary called, Brothers Hypnotic, about the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble.  Here's a link to their song "War" which was featured in the Hunger Games.  No big deal (BIG DEAL!)  We were hipped to them from this Rub mix a couple of years back.  They are all blood brothers and the sons of this musician who used to play with Sun-Ra.  The stuff is amazing.  It was a really interesting look at the family dynamic and their rise to fame.  Their father was really into black empowerment and they grew up kind of poor in Chicago's south side, in a really unconventional, non-nuclear family arrangement.  Two or three mothers gave birth to like, 23 children or something like that (not all the kids are in the ensemble), and two of the three mothers raised all the kids, in a seemingly non-competitive, loving family.  It's kind of awesome, as a model.  The Dotytron's takeaway of an awesome model is that the father started each kid playing on a brass instrument at age 3 or 4.  The kids were indoctrinated and woke up at 5am for practice, which always started with a long tone (the ability to sustain a single tone, in key).  The dad would give a kid a mouthpiece and say that until they could make a sustained tone with the mouthpiece, they wouldn't be allowed an instrument, and the kids were so driven that they would go and practice all day to earn their instrument.  Totally amazing!

This is the tune that the Rub played in their mix (uhh, sorry about the cover photo for the video):

We came home at midnight, completely wrecked, but full of love and gratitude in our hearts.  To be able to do so much in a weekend and thanks to the amazing help from our family of friends, was beyond nice.

This is what we've been eating the past little while:

A fantastic spring bowl: roasted potatoes, roasted asparagus, fried haloumi chunks, all topped with a poached egg and a squeeze of lemon with a pinch of flaky sea salt.

A GIANT oyster po'boy - cornmeal crusted fried oysters on top of a fried green tomato, shredded lettuce, on a buttered toasted bun, slathered in remoulade.  This sandwich was no joke, 5" tall.

Russian dinner courtesy of stuff the Dotytron picked up from this Russian grocery (where the default cashier language is Russian) called Yummy Market.  That potato salad I'm obsessed with (it comes with peas, chunks of pickle, pieces of cooked carrot, and chunks of bologna!), beet salad, sausages we braised with beer and sauerkraut, and perogies we served with sour cream.

Last night we had a simple dinner of cheese tortellini in a sausage rosé sauce with arugula and grape tomato salad.

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.

I forgot

...that I'm boring.  Also, I forgot to add that the funniest thing Mad Eye Moody said about the garbage bins was that, "well, I have a friend who knew the people who used to live in my house and he said that THEY were the ones that spray painted 'come walk with me' on the bins."  I was like, UHHHH...100% FALSE.  Rude fact: that's a line from Twin Peaks, so if the previous people who lived there (who we knew and who had the semi-charming habit of having bi-yearly domestics in the street) spray painted a Twin Peaks quote onto their garbage, recycling and green bins, then I will EAT the bins and the can of spray paint.


LOL!


Oh, Mad Eye...you and your mad eye are such a mad, mad, mad...eye.

Anyway.  Weekend was a relaxing/buck combo.  I had the Friday post locked and loaded and then didn't get to pull the trigger because things were so busy.  What were they busy with?  Let's see...Saturday was grocery shopping and keeping the Boobla occupied so that the Dotytron could work on his resume and cover letter for the first wave of job postings that will be coming down the pipeline shortly.  This is after a bomb-diggity breakfast I made featuring challah French toast that I dipped in the usual French toast batter but then chased with a quick dredge of one side in Momofuku's cornflake crunch.  And THEN I pan-fried that in some butter.  UMMMMM...omg...so freakin' delicious!  The cornflake crunch is a perfect balance of sweet, salty, buttery texture, so adding it to French toast is so extra.  Served with some fried peameal.  


Then SMcKay came over and gave us family haircuts and witnessed me and the Dotytron getting into a screaming fight about the creation of the Tupac hologram.  I was like, "they built that from scratch" and the Dotytron was like, "no, the technology isn't there to do that, they took existing concert footage - that's why it looks so real" and I'm like, "I'm pretty sure you can build a CGI person" and then the Dotytron got all patronizing like, "you're an idiot, do you even know what a hologram is?" and we were getting increasingly pissy about it, until I found the following quote (or a similar one):


“This is not based on archival footage,” says Ed Ulbrich, chief creative officer at Digital Domain. “This is not him performing at some point. This a completely original, exclusive performance only for Coachella and that audience.” In other words, it’s a digital likeness of Tupac designed to interact with his co-performers and the crowd. At one point, Tupac even shouts “What the f— is up, Coachella!” even though the music festival didn’t exist until three years after his death." 

So of course I was like, "EAT IT, YOU IDIOT!" and then I got 'pon the iPad and played this:
 

and we all practically cried, laughing.  Because this ^^^ is obviously the best.  Love my haircut!  Love the trimmy trim trim that SMcKay gave the Big Yam...he looks so cute with his neat little crop.  I made us eggplant parmesan for dinner - this new, lighter, easier way, where you roast thick slices of eggplant instead of breading and frying them, layer them with homemade tomato sauce, basil, and slices of fresh mozzarella and then top it with breadcrumbs that get crispy in the oven:

It was aces.  Sunday morning we got up at the buttcrack of dawn (or it felt like that anyway) to go swimming and then we went to take my mum and Poh Poh out for an early dim sum brunch.  Then BACK downtown to help Momma D weed and prune her garden, and then home for the afternoon.  On our way home we stopped and got the jogging attachment for our Chariot bike trailer and went for a family run, which was basically the dorkiest thing ever.  We hated ourselves while doing it, but it's the only way we're going to be able to BOTH fit running into our schedule - if we have the flexibility to take him with us, it makes it a lot more feasible.  But we hated ourselves for being such colossal Mountain Equipment Co-Op-y dorks.  The good thing is: the tires on the jogging attachment are serious, which will be nice when we take the Chariot to the beach or through the snow (assuming we ever get snow again in Toronto).  Then Momma D came over for dinner:

I made us roast chicken, with duck-fat roasted tatties, roasted asparagus, and brussels sprouts steamed and tossed with mustard, olive oil and lemon.  Mona's Mother's Mother's cookies with cornflake crunch and other odds and sods for dessert.

For dim sum we went to Chili Secrets and it was sooo good!  They have all kinds of yummytown Sichuan dumplings (lamb and carrot, wontons with chili oil!) and most importantly, they serve one of my FAVORITE desserts of all time, which is steamed ginger milk pudding.  Basically, a bowl of softly set, lightly sweetened with sugar and smelling of ginger juice.  It is the food of my dotage, calling it now.  Through some magical alchemy, if you mix milk and ginger juice together the ginger juice will cause the milk to set, just-so.  Is there anything more comforting in the world?  If I'm ever laid up, I want a big bowl of steamed ginger milk pudding that I can rest on my belly and have spoon-fed to me.  MARK THESE WORDS.  

THEN we went to our buddy A's CD release part at The Rex.  Are you keeping count?  That was like, six activities in ONE Sunday.  Which means I was a zombie at work all today.

Sometimes I feel like a total lamewad when we haven't seen people in a while and they're like, "so, what's new?" I NEVER know how to answer that question!  We Skyped with Ehmdo on Friday night and she asked what was new and I feel like I always disappoint her with how boring our lives are.  But I don't like, feel our lives are boring...it's just not like, news-worthy in the way BIG EVENTS are news worthy.  Like, I'm not getting hitched, having a baby, buying a house, travelling, and having people die every second (THANK GOODNESS!)  I think once you hit a certain point in your life, things settle into a bit of a routine, which means less of the peaks and valleys of BIG NEWS events and more just like, the Dotytron working on a new composition or me starting to cut pieces for a new quilt or the Big Yam helping us with Momma D's garden (so cute by the way - it's so funny how at a certain age, they're just like, "oh we're doing this now?" and just do their own thing.  We started working in her garden and I gave him a trowel and he just worked on this project of his own devising [moving pebbles from the garden into a planter.]  It's just so cute how they become autonomous little people.)  I mean, my new quilt is terribly exciting for ME, but I can see how it's not that exciting for other people.  And my job is terribly exciting (I think) but it's not glamorous.  

I guess it depends on who I'm talking to.  Most of my friends don't do the "what's new" thing - we just start riffing or talking about current events, what have you.  I do feel like I'm a colossal disappointment though when someone asks me "what's new?" and I inevitably freeze up.  I guess my point is: stuff doesn't have to be new all the time?!?!  And I get weird performance anxiety when someone asks what's new because I like, can't immediately come up with a snappy reply with something super-fun and exciting!  Other than my new quilt...which I really do believe is super-fun and exciting.  It's my own quasi-design.  I didn't have enough material to use an online template so I downloaded some Cartesian graph paper and went to town drawing out and doing my stupid calculations.  I've said it before but I'll say it again: if I had only known as a young buck how much math I would need for sewing - I would have stuck it out all the way through to OAC.  As it is...I'm making sure that the Big Yam grows up in a house of math, not a house of Tupac (that's a line courtesy of Dr. Rei's dad.)  

Tonight was a fridge-clearing choose your own adventure dinner.  I had dinner at work because I was working the night shift.

Fin.