Running the Gauntlet

What a week.

It's cool and drizzly out and I can't tell you how much I'm loving the Saturday we've had so far.  We were under the impression that the Big Yam was starting Chinese school so we hauled a** to get out of the house and to the school in time, only to find that the mad scramble was in vain and we were a week early.  Is there anything worse, when you're a parent, than a mad scramble for naught?  Not really.  So much wasted coordination and energy.

Faced with an unexpectedly free Saturday, we did our grocery shopping, hung around in the park, then we had quiet time and I started Roxane Gay's already-excellent Bad Feminist and died a few deaths at how good it is (to give you an idea of JUSTHOWVERYGOODITIS I'm only halfway through the introduction).  The heat has broken, it is easy to believe that we're slowly slouching into fall, and the rain means that you don't feel guilty for cozying up at home.  The best thing about fall and winter is cozying up at home.  Luxuriating in your home and your family.

I wasn't one of those kids who imagined what my adult life would be like.  Like, I had lofty goals about maybe being a writer, or an academic, or a perhaps some high-powered 80s lady, but the idea of having a family of my own didn't register.  Remember: for a long, long time, I didn't think I was going to have kids.  I associated having kids with some kind of betrayal of radical feminism.  When we decided to start a family, I still didn't spend time trying to picture what that might be like.  I never imagined how much I would covet and enjoy an insular weekend afternoon spent with my own family.  How an open afternoon with nothing pressing to do, perhaps making dinner, definitely lying on the couch reading while my boys careened around me, would be so fulfilling.   How I could so enjoy seeing just these 4 faces engaged in the mundane.

Edit: fast-forward to Monday evening - I reveled so much in my free afternoon that I abandoned blogging

Summer ended in a roar of activity and culminated in last week's insanity.  We hit summer, HARD, and we're wringing out every last drop of goodness.  We went to the CNE, we went to the beach, had one more glorious swim in the outdoor pool, and hit up some nature walks with some of the people we love best.

 These two photos make me laugh because you can see various stages of Quincess trying to scale that log.  He's trying so hard!

Big Yam didn't want to sit in the front because he wasn't sure how he would "drive" this thing

School started last week and chaos of the first day was given a thematic supporting assist from some truly hellish weather.  I dropped the Big Yam off at his new school and it was hot, humid, muggy, oppressive.  His new school made the tactical error of letting the parents into the kindergarten area to drop off their kids which obviously resulted in a smaller-scale recreation of that Civil War scene from Gone With the Wind.  There were people strewn about the halls, widespread pandemonium, tears.  The Big Yam had been on board with me up to that point but when he walked into his classroom, he went AWOL on me.  Flipped right out.  I tried everything.  I spoke calmly, I was upbeat, I tried distractions.  He was having none of it.  Finally, I had to do something I'm not proud of - which was to shame him into snapping into it.  "I've been very nice and calm with you up to now, and you're leaving me no choice.  I'm going to have to get stern with you and cross.  Do you want me to get stern and cross in front of all your new friends?"  I re-live that moment and squirm inside every time.  But you know what?  IT F**KING WORKED, okay?  And there's a small part of me that doesn't regret the fact that I was able to deposit my kid in the system and get to work *only* an hour late.  You do what you gotta do, desperate times, etc., etc.

  

 This guy's ridiculous, crooked-mouth, old man, elvish face kills me

Sunday we intended to do a hike in the Rouge Valley Conservation area, but it was raining so we skipped to the city's first ever Kothu fest.  We picked up Kothu and supplemented with Babu for the kids.  It was a bit of a bust, but we wanted to show our support for kothu and Scarborough.

Also, every other day since then has been beyond fine.  He's found himself some homies, he's adjusting well, this new school - first day tactical error notwithstanding - has been head and shoulders above the previous one.  They just have their s**t together and are inspiring a great deal of confidence in us.  We're happy with the transition over all.

I mean, it probably wasn't helped by the fact that  I had three consecutive interviews last week.  By the time the week ended we were all DONE.  So the lazy Saturday described above was exactly the reset we needed.

I'm hoping that one of those interviews results in something, but even if it doesn't, I'm happy with my current job, I'm happy with my home position - so I think I'm in a pretty good spot, overall.  All the preparation and work that went into the interview process was harrowing, but it's behind me, and I think I know better now than to sign up for back-to-back-to-back interviews again.  Although knowing me, and the my masochistic need to put myself in the line of fire, I wouldn't put it past me.

Every day, I come home from work, put away my bike, take off my shoes and bag and put the finishing touches on dinner.  Within 10-15 minutes of me being home, the Wonder Twins cotton on to the fact that I'm in the building, and they clamber up the stairs and I get this exact same greeting:

Every. Single. Day.  "Hi, mama."  It kills me.

We started watching the new Netflix series, Narcos on the weekend and blew through 6 episodes.  I didn't think I'd like it.  I'm only so-so into drug movies.  They can get kind of repetitive after a while - the tropes, the delivery.  This series has a killer first episode, but I do recall wondering how they were going to sustain it for 9 more.  For me, they don't do a good job of delivering.  This is "history comes to life" type of watching.  It relies on some narrative clichés and some clunky exposition, but it's anchored by a compelling score and charismatic performances.  Like, how do I end up having the hots for Pablo Escobar?  Granted, he's a bawss.  But he's also a really, really, really bad person?  That does terrible, terrible things?  Yet when you watch him, as embodied by Wagner Moura, you can see how you fall under his thrall.  It's good for watching while you're knitting (*raises hand*), but I only half pay attention.

Quincess has been using the placeholder, "Ummm..." before he answers a question.  It's friggin' adorable.  Lindsay doesn't have time for placeholders, because he's too busy aiming at my head with a baseball bat and saying, "shoot mama?" "No, we don't shoot people."  "Shoot baba?" (and so on, until we go through the entire list of everyone he knows, who he's NOT allowed to shoot), or trying to wrestle a giant couch cushion, UP the stairs.  

End of summer means blueberry pudding cake.  Blueberry pudding cake means blueberry pudding cake and whipped cream breakfasts, with a boiled egg for respectability.

Smitten's hazlenut plum tart.  Which I may have talked about already?  I doubled the hazlenuts but would reduce the butter and omit the custard filling, so all you have is toasted hazlenuts, crunchy around a thin layer of plums turned jammy in the oven.  

Meal templates to the rescue of busy week/school days!  Taco Tuesday: salad edition

A pound of zucchini, thinly sliced, fried in olive oil with minced garlic, some sliced basil, and tossed with artisanal pasta, topped with grated ricotta salata and a fried egg

We hung onto summer hard this past weekend - lobster rolls on buttered brioche buns, fried pickles, and this roasted cabbage salad that I've been obsessed with, ever since Dr. Rei made it at the cottage.  Thinly sliced cabbage, tossed with oil, roasted and turned every now and then at high heat in the oven until crispy, tossed with a spicy mayo dressing.

Smitten's crispy peach cobbler.  This was a HUGE hit.  You sprinkle a generous amount of sugar on top of the cobbler topping and then sprinkle that with water.  It makes a shellac that bakes up in the oven until it shatters.  A nice mix of textures against some fresh, juicy, yielding peaches.

The textbook Lagerfeld late-summer pasta - fried eggplant cubes, cooked with minced garlic, some grape tomatoes thrown in and cooked in the pan with the lid on until they burst, with some kalamata olives and basil, tossed with pasta.

Fin.

Things That Have Made Me Laugh, Lately.

NEW BLOGGING SCHEDULE SAY WHAT WHAT WHAT.

The Big Yam saying, "If you put a bag that says 'popcorn' in the microwave, you get magic."

The Dotytron threatening to take all the gimmicky board books away from the Wonder Twins, (gimmicks are stuff like, lift-the-flaps, really simple, non-narrative driven books) because they're too "indulgent" and "hedonistic" (!)  At one point, he pointed over at Quincess and said, "See!  Look at how gratuitous and hedonistic this is!" - cut to this scene:

Yup. So indulgent.

The Big Yam saying, "Yowza" while watching Jurassic World.  Apparently Jurassic Park franchise movies turn him into a member of Our Gang (you'll remember how he said "Goll-lee" watching the first film.)  When the Jurassic Park theme came on during the new film, ever so faintly, he said, "They have my favorite song!  How did they know it's my favorite song?" 

The Big Yam asking the other kids from the neighbourhood during our camping trip, "DOES ANYONE LIKE JOHN WILLIAMS???"

The Big Yam explaining the birds and the bees to me on the way to the grocery store: "If a woman who is a girl wants to be a mummy, she has to find a boy, tell him her name, and have birth."  [Since I straight-up never refer to mysel as "mummy" I at first he was talking about a preserved human.]

We went camping a couple of weekends ago (more on that later), and Lindsay learned a new skill - climbing out of his crib.  This lead to our return Sunday night's sleep being pretty brutal.  We were up and down all night picking him up, putting him back in the crib and telling him: "It's bedtime.  Lindsay sleeps here." Last night, as I was putting him to bed, I put a few layers of thick blankets on the ground so that if he fell, he wouldn't get hurt.  I checked in on the twins later and walked into the room to find Lindsay lying face down, head turned away from the door, one arm up over his head.  As I opened the door, he said, (without turning his head): "sleep here?"  It was so slovenly it was gold.  I was like, fine, whatever buddy...if you want to sleep on the floor you can until we sort out converting the crib to a toddler bed. 

This video of the kids slow-motion running towards some giant bubbles:

Slo-mo video in your pocket is the best thing to happen to life.  I can't wait to get it when I upgrade my phone in T-minus 8 years.

Camping, camping, camping.  Is it a surprise to anyone that I took to camping like a fiend?  We did a big car camp with our neighbours (five families - 24 people total) to the Warsaw Caves conservation area.  One of the main pros of car camping is that you can be as hedonistic (not in the Quincess quietly reading himself a book sense, in the "you can bring as much s**t as your car can take" sense) as you like.  Space and weight aren't an issue.  So we had blowup mattresses and I brought my cast-iron pan and I bought us a giant, 8 person tent which is about the same size as our living room in Lil' Ugmo, and we ate like kings.

It was a really nice long weekend.  The site was large so we weren't on top of each other, the fire pit was huge.  The good thing about our street crew is that the kids know each other so well that they can all entertain themselves and the adults can chill.  The other good thing is that we're all so used to being around each other's kids that we are all at ease with parenting (read: disciplining) each other's children.  We see each other's kids alot, in a "home from work, bra off" kind of setting, which means that a lot of the social barriers and "fear of imposing" have long gone out the window.  When you're outside after dinner as much as my street is, you rapidly get to the point where people are getting testy with their spouses and screaming at their kids with impunity.  It's easy for me to ask one of my neighbours to take the Big Yam to brush his teeth and not worry that they're going to be put out or worry about not taking his s**t.  We're also all used to monitoring a herd of small children, so whereas some of my friends are still in their "entirely focused on my one child" phase, and adding another kid into the mix would be adding to their plate unduly, with the neighbours it's effortless.

Like cottaging, camping is an extreme form of grown-up sleepovers.  Once the kids had FINALLY gone to bed we could sit around the fire and chat.  I mean, it would have been EVEN BETTER with some of my real homies.  Don't get me wrong, I'm relatively unfiltered around the neighbs but it's still gonna be different than hanging with people who've known me for 20 years.  I came home fired up with plans to do it again with our Markham crew, or maybe the Roomie et al.  This inaugural trip was all it took to open the floodgates.  I'm up for a canoe-in site.  I up for driving to Kilarney to see Ontario in all its wild, untamed, pump-up-the-volume glory.

Do I think I'm going to become one of those gear-heads who goes on a epic portages deep into the bush and dehydrates food?  Uh, no.  I don't ever want to be so constrained with having to "pack light" that I don't get to eat deliciousness and I'm eating astronaut pouches for dinner.  Part of the whole fun is setting up camp, and then cooking, because really, what else is there to do?  Food tastes better when you're outside.  We were lucky in that we had no rain...I can imagine that it sucks pretty hard when it rains the whole time, but it's still something you'll remember and that brings a family together.

So yeah, I went away a camping neophyte and came back a Griswold.

Scenes like this certainly helped:

Look, I like nature.  That's a legacy from my deadbeat dad (remember how I have a DAD?!  WHO HAS NEVER MET HIS TWIN GRANDSONS BECAUSE HE'S A GIANT REPRESSED WEIRDO PSYCHO WHO CHOSE HIS WIFE OVER HIS OWN BLOOD?!).  My dad taught me how to fish, and took us cottaging, and took us to cottage resorts when I was a kid.  I have really good memories of those experiences with my sister and Bruce Wayne.  Anyway, I like nature.  I'm a Romantic at heart - I dig my sublime, okay?

We took the kids to Bluffer's beach last Friday.  A little piece of urban paradise, a 15 minute drive from my house, deep in Scarborough.  Fine sand framed by towering rugged cliffs and warm, idyllic lake Ontario water rock-free, and knee high for a good 30 feet out.  We didn't go prepared but you better believe we will next time - set up our umbrella and laze the day away while the kids bank their sand-drenched sun sleep.  I dumped a metric tonne of sand out of water shoes on my way home (solo!  Imagine packing up 3 little ones from the beach, solo - the Dotytron broke off and went to school to set up for the year ahead), and it was one of those drives where I was frantically looking in the rearview mirror and entreating the Wonder Twins to stay with me, please please please, just stay awake and answer my inane questions about what noises animals make, until we get home so that you can serve your full nap in your own beds.

We also went on a hike through the Don Valley on Saturday, post-Evergreen Brickworks Farmers' Market.  All this was in lieu of visiting our friends S & P.  We went to our local farmer's market on Sunday, smoked 3 racks of ribs and had a feast with our friends B & G, and had a Micelli Monday on Saturday, so it was still a full, active weekend, but one where there were lulls during nap time when I could lie on my own couch and read a book and drift in and out of sleep to the sound of cicadas in the trees and the smoke from my neighbour's brush-burning fire drifting in.  It was perfect really.  I can't remember when we've had that kind of weekend in town...not since early July?

That lazy, drifty, frowsy kind of  Sunday is the exact opposite of my day today - when I took the kids to the CNE and there but for the grace of the neighbours who came with me, would probably have ended up buried under the sand sculpture, my face frozen in mid-disciplinarian "that crazy mom" shouting mode.  I made it out, but just barely.  CNE with kids is the perfect example of Einstein's theory of relativity.  TIME SLOWS DOWN THERE, AND THERE'S NO WAY YOU CAN TELL ME DIFFERENT.  I lived about 10 lifetimes today.

My work hosted a "kids day" which was an employee engagement initiative spearheaded by my lovely colleague.  I would prefer my employee engagement in the form of a respectful, not-stifling work culture fostered by senior management, but maybe that's not always possible?  Heh.  The Dotytron brought the kids and it was pretty stressful because I have such a low tolerance for unacceptable behaviour and of course the kids were going buck.  Anyway, we ended up at A3 Napoli for dinner - which is a Naples-influenced street food spot brought to you by two of my Toronto favorites: Porchetta and Co and Pizzeria Libretto.  I thought it was going to be a gong show - Yelp said unequivocally "good for kids: NO" and the dining space was all those super-high bar-height tables that always have me inelegantly clambering stools like a bullrider being helped aboard an especially ungainly bull.  However!  We got there and they had two extra-tall high chairs and some colouring and the food was delicious.  We had a pizza, their gran fritto misto (which is a mixed bag of stuff from the fryer, served with pesto, mayo, and marinara).  Our fritto consisted of: fried zucchini (bliss!), fried scallions (like verdant onion rings!), fried meatballs (bogarted by Quincess!), fried arancini (oozing with cheese inside that was more cream than cheese!), calamari (as you would expect!), and frittatini (their version of macaroni and cheese, fried! Think: macaroni carbonara - then fried !!!!!).  We also had their batt, which is half a pizza fritta (touted as for one, but if you're ordering other stuff, totally enough food), which made me go in paroxysms of ecstasy.  Imagine if you will, the most perfectly thin-crisped fried, ungreasy dough edge, giving way to a Naples style pizza chew, the perfect bread-to-filling ratio giving way to the most creamy, unctuous, pure tasting essence of dairy (it's stuffed with buffalo ricotta, provola [I'm assuming provolone?] and cicciola [I had to look it up - pressed cakes of fatty pork.  OH YES].  The service was quick, they had decent beers on tap, and feeding our family of five cost about $60, which all combines to a win for me.

We went to visit my sister a few weekends ago and had a good time, (Dotytron found a bottle of rarer bourbon, we went to an indoor trampoline place, we avoided buying things because of our s**ty dollar, I taught my niece how to style her hair a la 50s rockabilly), and on our last day we hit the local veterans' food truck rodeo fundraiser thingy (they were raffling guns!).  Our crew is mostly pictured above.  As we were walking back to the car, I turned to the Dotytron, who had Quincess in his arms and the Big Yam by his side, "That was fun, do you want me to drive home?" at which point he turned to answer me, and then said, "UMMMM...WHERE'S LINDSAY?!????!!!"  S**t sons, I almost home-aloned my kid, in some village in New York State!  Thankfully the rodeo was tiny and I found the little miscreant standing under an adjacent tent to where we had been eating, shaking an open water bottle and cackling with glee.  I got lucky.  

The other night I made Marc Vetri's pappardelle with corn crema and charred scallions and it was deeeelicious.  Like the best creamed corn you've ever had.  I doubled the corn in the recipe because my kids are cornholios.  I served it with my go-to late summer salad of baby arugula, grilled peaches, and fried haloumi.  

I made Smitten Kitchen's sesame noodles (with Chinese thick wheat noodles) and served it with seared salmon (which my kids gobble up) and smashed cucumbers with tahini dressing.  Honestly, smashed cucumbers are all the rage, but I didn't think the smashing really did anything here, other than add time and effort.  

Back to school means that there's more Scarborough goodness back in my life.  Last week's takeout night was Babu.  Mutton rolls are my life.  

I made Smitten's hazlenut crumb plum tart for our dinner with B & G.  I doubled the hazlenuts because I love toasted hazlenuts, but should have upped the flour accordingly to absorb the extra fat.  My crust edges were crisp but the bottom got soggy from being too buttery (didn't know there was such a thing!).  I also would omit the custard next time and just throw in lightly sweetened plums, and perhaps more of them with a bit of something to bind the juices.  The custard got lost and the plums (I used Italian prune plums) didn't shine through against the toasty nutty strength of the hazlenuts.  I would make this again, but would tinker with it.  Hazlenuts should go in all crisps and crumbs though, as far as I'm concerned.  

Finally, the Big Yam has been OBSESSED with the concept of Taco Tuesday, so I've been trying to make that happen for him because it makes him so happy.  We had a taco salad tonight - lettuce, cabbage, leftover slaw topped with taco beef and black beans, guac, pickled onions, shredded cheddar (this is kind of a key component), sliced olives, sour cream, and salsa with some crunched up tostadas for added texture.  A very satisfying dinner salad.

Fin.