The Thick of It

The heart of winter - we are in it.  The Xmas decorations have come down, our xmas lights hang mournful and unlit in the window, waiting for a warm day when we can take them down.  *Edit: we just flicked the switch last night and turned them back on again!  Huzzah!  Casa Dotytron-Lagerfeld - leaving our Christmas lights on until April, since 2010.  Bits and pieces of our life strewn around the house, in a holding pattern because this renovation is taking a million years (which I guess makes sense when your contractor works a solid, 8 hour work week on your job?!).  It's unremittingly cold outside and the worst kind of winter cold, too - the kind with no snow!  What's the point of winter without snow?

Truthfully, I don't mind.  Our lives have been busy and full.  One might say too busy and full, really.  Weekend visits, hosting, the return of extra curriculars in our lives, made possible by the age of the babies now mitigating prospective babysitter's qualms.  The Dotytron went to a weekly neighbourhood jazz jam last week, I went to a Board meeting on Monday and hit up Quilt Sunday at a Parkdale sewing shop.  We hosted some friends for dinner Sunday, hosted a Friday PA day Micelli Monday session...we are happy, fulfilled.  Did I go to bed at 9pm last night?  Yes.  Was I lured in part because I'm reading a corker of a book?  Yes.  See?  No complaints.

Except for how I was verbally threatened by a psycho on my way home from picking out the basement flooring.  I might have cut a guy off (but I'm not sure?), he leaned on the horn, I gave him the customary gesture one does, he stopped his car in front of mine (in the middle of the road), got out, and started banging on the window the my car and saying all kinds of rude, racist, sexually graphic things.  It was terrifying.  He looked like Bob from Twin Peaks.  He was probably mentally unhinged, definitely had anger management issues.  I took down his license plate and have been meaning to call it into the police non emergency line.  I wish I had pepper spray in my car, I would have sprayed his eyes out.  I don't understand why people (men) think it's okay to say certain things to people (women) in anger.  Like, why go there?  It reminds me of the "appropriate" responses we're constantly trying to inculcate in our children - like, the Big Yam now will (sometimes) say, "I'm SO MAD AT YOU RIGHT NOW!" I totally get that response.  People and strangers can make you mad.  If the guy had said, "You cut me off and I'm SO MAD AT YOUR RIGHT NOW!!!" I would have been like, fair enough, you're entitled to feel how you feel.  The level of detail and sexually charged violent undercurrent is not cool.  The galling thing is he took down MY license plate number (!)

The upside is that we picked out our flooring?  *Weak laugh*  We have decided on a white ash looking laminate.  We went back and forth.  Our architect recommend vinyl flooring.  They have high end vinyl now that looks like wood, comes with an acoustic backing, is virtually indestructible and 100% waterproof.  It's also kind of pricey (the good stuff is, anyway).  It's also plastic, at the end of the day.  The laminate we chose was 1/2 the price of the vinyl, and really, the basement is going to be for our personal use - it's not super high traffic, it's not a rental, we're not a condo building, so it's okay.  The waterproof argument is specious to me.  If my washer malfunctions and floods the basement, sure the floors will be okay, but it's not like I'm not going to have to replace drywall and all the other business, right?

We chose something that looks like this:

It's a white ash.  I wanted something neutral, light, and airy for the basement.  It's a basement, it doesn't get any natural light (only the bathroom and the bedroom down there will), so I wanted something that would contribute as much as possible to making the room seem expansive.  It has a slight grey wash to it, without being aggressively grey, and the floor doesn't have orange tones, which I like, because those orange tones just remind me of that awful 80s/90s parquet flooring that everyone had.

This is kind of the feel I'm going for, without being quite so stark and overtly Scandinavian/Helmut Newton-y.  About 75% less Helmut Newton.  And Helmet Lang.  LOL!  It's going to be warmed up with brass and warm wood, and big fluffy rug, and colourful throws, and oh yeah, a million kids toys and pieces of lego crunching underfoot.

This week I played a bass clarinet that the Dotytron brought home to practice with and we watched the movie Birdman and last night I went with an old friend to see Miranda July interviewed by Sheila Heti:

The average median age of the audience was about 25 and everyone looked like they had just slouched out of an Urban Outfitters store.  I was in my work clothes - black & white ikat print dress over a black turtleneck, tan belt, forest green (what my friend KD calls my "Masters" green blazer) blazer, and forest green tights, with black boots - I think I looked like I had slouched out of an Anthropologie - so one step up!  Probably more like I slouched off the Modcloth webpage.  Oh well.

Sheila Heti is the editor of that book Women In Clothes which I haven't taken a look at yet, but is all the rage with the McSweeney's set.  She's generally all the rage with the McSweeney's set.  I haven't read any of her work, but I'm thinking of suggesting her novel, How Should A Person Be? for the next next Academic Book Club.  It's described as "...A raw, startling, genre-defying novel of friendship, sex, and love in the new millenium."  It's a mix of memoir and fiction and apparently features graphic, uncomfortable sex scenes.  Like Girls meets The New Yorker.  I think it would be a good hate-read and at least engender a fruitful and spirited discussion.  I suspect the book will infuriate me and I won't find her a good writer, but that's part of the fun, isn't it?  Book club is never good when we read something beautiful and affecting and unimpeachable.  I read a critique about her much-lauded Women In Clothes project that takes the editors to task for featuring mostly white people.  Heti herself sports the misguided baby bangs of Janeane Garofolo circa Reality Bites.  Also, she's not young.  She seems nice - she smiled shyly at me when I passed her at the venue.  She makes for a horrid interviewer though.  Apparently she and Miranda July are quite close friends, but you wouldn't have known that from their interaction.  It was quite stilted and awkward.  Heti's questions didn't really seem to go anywhere and July's answers kind of spun off into nothingness.  I was like, guys, did you not go over this in advance?!?  Come ON.

It's always interesting to hear artists talk about their process and I did enjoy Miranda July's first film, You Me and Everyone We Know.  I also read her first collection of short stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You, when it first came out, but was unmoved by the writing at the time.  That being said, she wasn't a very pithy speaker.  It was all very airy and floaty, words floating above their heads without coming down to ground on anything concrete.  She talked about a performance art piece she does where she auctions off items' belonging to members' of the audience and then gives the accumulated money to the person in the audience who "needs it the most" at that very moment.  I found it an interesting take on the fluidity of capital.  In that vein, I accompanied my friend who got her book signed and so I had Miranda July sign the paper bag that had held my kathi roll dinner and I'm thinking of putting it up on ebay.  The Dotytron and I had a conversation about performativity and capital afterwards which means that the talk wasn't for naught.

Heti and July referenced Tavi Gevinson so I think that's all you need to know about that.  I admire Tavi but I will also say that her performance in the film Enough Said was the worst element about what was otherwise a sweet, naturalistic, grown-up movie.

I'm glad I went.  I like going to things like that.  It is inspiring and gets me thinking, which I need.

Otherwise, I'm knitting a cowl that is the first knitting project that I've worked on in some time that has excited me.  Perfect for winter.  This is the yarn I'm using - the softest, squishiest, delicious yarn in my collection at the moment:

I tried my hand at free motion quilting for the first time using a fancy-fancy machine at the Workroom and I FELL IN LOVE with the process.  I'm going to try tackling it at home with my perfectly serviceable but not as bells-and-whistles-loaded machine.  This quilt is for the Quincess.  It suits his personality, methinks.  

This is a latin-style "porchetta" sandwich and a shrimp po' boy from a sandwich shop (Sully's) that opened up recently in the 'hood.  These were pretty good.  The fries there are tasty.  I would go back but I'm not about to rave about it or insist you travel across town to check it out.  So don't do that, okay?  You can do whatever you want, but don't blame me if it doesn't live up to the hype.  I'm not hyping it up.

A Spanish chorizo, tripe, pork belly and chickpea dish I had in the freezer, served atop polenta with a fried egg and gremolata.  That's good stuff, folks.

Classic weeknight meal - pasta with sausage, chickpeas, and kale and parm.  The babies have been jerks lately and are only eating the pasta.  It's not good.

See?  Look at how much attitude I get during a single dinner!  By the way, that "Waof?" Lindsey says while pointing upstairs is his way of asking for a bath.  Lately, he's been pretty good about saying "puh" and then pointing upstairs at the bathroom AFTER he's already done the deed.  We are so close to a breakthrough, but it eludes us yet.

Busy weekend ahead.  Heavy agenda ahead of eating burgers and fries and chocolate pudding with salted caramel, chocolate crumbs, and whipped cream, and watching movies with the boys, tonight.  Saturday is the Big Yam's day of activities: Chinese school, then ballet, then hip hop.  Meanwhile, the twins have inexplicably been invited to a birthday party (!)  Sunday is family chill time and then Super Bowl which for us means eating ribs and nachos and baked potato skins.  All in all, forecast is calling for a pretty cozy weekend in.

Fin.

baby deer on ice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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radicchio salad with anchovy vinaigrette, breadcrumbs, egg

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

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

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

fin.

the tree skirt

that almost killed me. but before we get to that, let's start sequentially.

friday was the funnest day ever...we headed down to guelph for miss smckay's birthday party which featured THREE birthday cakes!

this was my contribution:



on the other side it said "l'chaim!" lol! (smckay has a thing for being jewish, even though she's kinda not).

cake #2:

cake #3:

there was also some of this (potentially NSFW):


it was fun seeing the whole kdubsguelph crew...i'm wondering again why we don't live in the tri-town area.

i was finally able to gift C with her knitted gifts...i made her some fingerless mitts/armwarmers:

saturday morning i had breakkie with my mom and then we trucked all the way into the scarborough hinterlands to go to a t-fal/krups/rowenta warehouse sale which was THE PITS. they had like, 8 different things for sale. wtf? what a waste! also, my mom is such a chinese mom it's the best/worst. she basically spends her time in my home engaged in variations on the following pursuits:

a) demanding that i make her meals that she can take home
b) complaining that i'm ungrateful for not doing the above
c) grilling me on how much various items in my house cost
d) telling me that whatever i paid is too expensive and you can get it cheaper somewhere else
e) critiquing my taste in furniture/accessories/clothing/face

lol!!! p.s. that's what goes down when we're getting along.

dr. zhivago night was kind of the best, although mid-way through the day, when i was wrestling with my 8 foot long QUILTED tree skirt that i had resolved to make out of flannelette i turned into a bitter bean, or as the dotytron called it, a "foul owl" - i was SO CRANKY! because it was turning out like poo! i'm such a perfectionist AND i'm ambitious that the predictably poor execution of my first quilting project made me angry to the BONE. i was so mad! but realistically, my first quilting project should have been something small and square, not something 4ft across, circular, and made up of triangular pieces. zomg. i spent so much time on the thing!!! it ruined my life!

but i was rescued by dr. rei, hanbo, and L and a night of russian themed foods:

that's chicken kiev, properly barfing herbed butter, a quick cold dilled pickled beet thing, some sautéed red cabbage and potatoes romanoff which are THE BEST. so freaking good! you take cooked potatoes, peel them, shred them, and mix them with a s**tf**k load of sour cream, cheddar cheese, scallions, dill, and salt and pepper and bake it. holy crap. so good.

my charlotte a la russe turned out so-so. i unmolded it too early:


i wasn't super big on the flavour. i brushed the lady fingers with frangelico (probably my favorite liqueur)...but the chocolate bavarian cream wasn't flavourful enough...it could have used some espresso or more chocolate. my sister used to make an almond bavarian cream the recipe for which i think she got off the knox gelatin packet that was SO FREAKIN' good...i should try to recreate it.

then we talked mad smack about tiger woods and chaz bono (p.s. listening to that phone message that tiger left on his mistress' phone is HILARIOUS - what a dork!) and settled down to watch dr. zhivago. we got 1/2way through. holy crap that movie is long! there's a 10 minute "overture" at the beginning which is basically an orchestral movement playing while there's a painted backdrop pronouncing "overture" displayed. there's also an intermission! we stopped at that point, which was already 2 hours in. i have to say, i wasn't feeling it. i feel like it was lacking character development - it basically went through a series of disjointed events in the life of dr. zhivago without much in the way of analysis or elucidation. maybe the time for that kind of film-making style has passed? either way, i didn't believe in dr. zhivago's relationship with lara (who is a complete tit, by the way). people were pretty drunk on white russians at that point, so it was still pretty funny.

then we slept in this morning, missed my friend's baby-unveiling meet'n'greet, and barely got out of the house in time to get our errands done before the dotytron had to hightail it up to richmond hill to play "hotel california" with some students of his from the school that he quit last week. lol! we got a balsam fir because it was IMPOSSIBLE to find a fraser fir that wasn't 7 feet tall. our tree turned out pretty cute! we also got a cheapie $10 tree stand and some lights. so...here's the big reveal...this is my tree skirt of doom (p.s. i spent no less than 12 hours working on this thing):


it's pretty anti-climactic. it's horrible...the stitching is so crooked and it's so fugly...although, i'm looking forward to the day when my skills are good enough that i want to make another one and my kids (?) or the dotytron stops me and says that the ugly tree skirt is an xmas tradition.

i also finally took some finished shots of my cocoon loop scarf. i usually just wear it long and loose like a big, knitted loop accessory around my neck, but it's nice that you can double it up for extra warmth...you can also wear it as a snood, if you like!


now i have to go make a million mini banana cupcakes for the dotytron's work, my mom's hearing clinic, and momma d's side of the family's annual xmas potluck afternoon hoo-ha. then i'm going to sit my butt down on the couch and knit and watch mindless tv. and glare balefully at the ugly tree skirt of doom.

fin.

nothing says long weekend

like a little saturday morning sewing machine crafting flex. what what! yesterday was a short day at work made lively by a visit from G, hubby C and sweet, serious-faced baby G. so cute! G is probably the hottest mummy i've ever seen. she's positively glowing - i guess no sleep is agreeing with her!

then i came home and got a bunch of little piddly things done. like ordering my veiling and another headpiece and sorting out the rehearsal dinner and trying to get more chairs from the rental place and calling disney to sort out some details. after that, we met up with momma and poppa d and sister em of the familia dotytron at jean's vegetarian kitchen for some veggie thai food and long conversation. we missed mother's day so it was a nice opportunity to catch up. i also FINALLY got to gift the secret knitting i've been working on for the past 2 months.

i made the ishbel shawl pattern (large size) in drops alpaca for momma d. it took me FOREVER. i started off strong, but then repeated screwups which necessitated having to undo, stitch by stich, 380 odd stitches in a row, for several rows kind of slowed my resolve. i've read of some people on ravelry finishing this thing in a week. those people obviously don't do anything but knit (there's actually a seemingly disproportionate number of knitters who are also phd students - go figure.)

readers of the blog have heard me rhapsodizing about the virtues of blocking, so i'm going to offer you a little pictorial evidence of its effects. block is particularly important when you're working on lace projects because the knitting gets all kinked up and crumpled in the process. this is what the shawl looked like after i had woven in the ends and taken it off the needles:

it doesn't look much like anything, right? a brief soak in some wool wash and tepid water and after being stretched and pinned to my blocking board, the next day when i unpinned it, it looked like this:

see? keep in mind, i'm not even that good at blocking yet. but magically, through a bit of coaxing and positioning, the lacy pattern appears from that rumpled, crumpled, kinked up mess. it's kind of like magic and it makes lace knitting totally worthwhile.

i don't know what my next knitting project is going to be. we're having regular knitting club meetings on wednesdays so i'll need a steady supply of work. i'm thinking of making myself the twilight mittens or some other cabled mitten pattern that's snug like the twilight ones were. i'd like to make something for myself for a change...maybe a cardigan? who knows...i'll figure it out.

today is an odds and sods kind of a day. i'm going to do some early morning sewing, trying to bang out a couple of quickie projects and refamiliarize myself with my long-languishing and neglected sewing machine. poor little lamb. then i'm going to be real neighbourly and help H, that guy, and sweet baby D move into their new abode. which is SO SO SO close to me! i'm so happy about that! walking distance friends are the best friends to have and they're literally just across the park. love it. i might go check out this used furniture place to see if they have any credenzas worth buying then do some light grocery shopping and come home and hopefully have time to work on the performance invites and itinerary. make dinner and bake a loaf of bread and the other usual to-do has to be fit in there somehow as well.

tomorrow is even more of a gong show...we've got to get up early, eat a nice sunday breakkie, then head down to harry rosen, the bay, and the hugo boss store to see about a suit for the dotytron. i met some guy a while ago who was trying to convince me (and half succeeded) of getting a custom job done but then common sense prevailed. it would be RIDICULOUS for the dotytron to have a custom suit, considering he has to wear a suit maybe 4 times a year. plus, the dotytron hates shopping more than anything. there are witnesses! he almost had a breakdown buying BIRKENSTOCKS in italy last year while dr. rei and i giggled away at how wound up he got. we might just break up over the whole suit thing. we'll see. here's hoping. anyway, a custom job is out of the question...we'll probably just throw down for something from the boss black label or zzegna. he's got other more conventional, man suits but i think it'd be nice for him to have something a little more european in the tailoring...slim lapels, quite fitted...probably in a dark charcoal or a grey. he has a black one, he as a blue one (that needs to be upgraded, but not just yet) so i think a dark grey is the next choice. and a new pair of regular dress shoes. and a narrow tie. and possibly a vest. the crazy thing is how EXPENSIVE men's clothes are. like girls can easily find a $20 top that would be fine for work. good luck if you're a guy. it's basically never happening.

then we're going to meet up with trevor d of trevor d custom jewelery to see about the grillz. i'm a little suspect but i'm not sure if that's because i'm being classist. i'm going in thinking, if it's good enough for dank of frank'n'dank fame, it should be good enough for me, right? right? *tugs on collar* eeks.

after that, the day slides into more relaxation mode as we get together with dr. rei and hanbo and bwong for some all you can eat japanese action up in markham. once we're stuffed to the gills we're going to head back down to our pad and watch some amadeus action. sounds like a near-perfect evening, if you ask me.

in other news, i'm seriously considering getting a masters of public administration or public policy...or an mba. doing the mba means i have to do the GMAT which i think means that i probably need to brush up on my long-lost grade 10 math skills. the masters of public policy or masters of public administration doesn't require the GMAT, so i might go that route. i really want to be a research officer and secure my place in the public sector somehow...and i kind of want to advance in my field too. a two year, course based degree seems like a good insurance policy to have in the back pocket. plus, i took a look at the courses...SNOOZE fest...i could probably do it with one eye half closed and my shoelaces tied together. the major deterrent is that the programs are hella expensive. the good thing is that a lot of them are geared to working professionals so they do intensives where you only go to class one weekend a month or something. i think with my MISt and an MPA/MPP/MBA that's basically going to make me super hire-able and eligible to work in a liberal think tank. possibly.

tonight for dinner the plan is to steal another page from paul kahan's book and copy a dish i had at publican. it's going to be fried fish, fried artichokes, fried lemon with tartar sauce, arugala and shaved parm. i'm excited. we don't have smelts readily available so i'm going to use a plain white fish like tilapia or halibut instead. it really doesn't matter as long as there's something crispy and battered with something tartar sauce-y.

i don't know if i'm going to bother making a dessert or not. i've been craving dessert like mad lately but i'm not feeling inspired to actually make anything. plus we're having key lime pies on monday at the bbq/lowkey chill time hangs i'm hosting.

time to get cracking.

fin.

trip the light fantastic

i don't know what that phrase actually means. but so strongly do i feel about e. lockhart's amazing authorial talents and so hastily did i write that post last night, that i feel i didn't hit the point home well enough yesterday. e. lockhart is a FANTASTIC author. go pick up her books. do it now! you will instantly be transported back to high school, except it's kind of the best possible high school experience because you're one removed from the ACTUAL trials and tribulations and angst. ruby oliver is a winning protagonist and her surrounding cast are equally endearing. did i mention she has hilarious sessions with her shrink and fantastically kooky parents who sound just like real (white) liberal parents living in seattle? did i mention that i'm positively salivating at the prospect of ruby oliver book 3 'a treasure map of boys' and upon its purchase anticipate unplugging myself for the entire blissful 4 hours 2 days it will take me to hastily devour (4 hours - first pass) and slowly savour it (2 days - second pass)?

i actually don't have time to talk. dr. rei is meeting me shortly and we're going to walk to the subway stop that will put me on the bus to take me to dodgeball. thursday night dodgeball is in some faraway land known as st. clair and dufferin. it's the ends of the earth! plus i have to use my precious free time feverishly finishing knitting a shawl that i want to block tonight to gift tomorrow. this shawl has been TWO months in the making. shawls should NOT take 2 months! well, i guess they do if you lead a fantastically busy life and put it in time out after one too many times undoing messed up rows (that's 300+ stitches to a row, friends.)

i'll update with more plummy book reviews tomorrow!

fin.

a compendium of oddities

this is going to be a real mish-mash of random tidbits.

so on wednesday, i walked out of work and went to the bike rack, only to find that my front tire was COMPLETELY flat. i deliberated for a bit and then opted to lock it back up, rather than wait around for an hour until the ttc says it's okay to bring bikes on the trains.

i IMMEDIATELY suspected that someone had let the air out of my tires and i was a little put out by it. i mean, i know i'm a brassy broad, but who in the world at large would hold such ill will towards me? what had i done to insult, offend, give umbrage (i know you can take umbrage, can you also give it?) the next day, i walked my bike over to the nearest bike repair place and the guy offered to put a new tire on for me while i waited. as he took the tire off the rim, i said, "when the tire is off, can you see what happened? i suspect foul play." without missing a beat, the dude said, "you're irrational." lol!!! it's funny cuz it's true! he then went on to say that most people suspect foul play but that it's rarely the case. phew. so all my haters in the public service are still deeply bored into the woodwork. when i retold the tale to the dotytron, he agreed, "you ARE irrational."

i was mad hormonal this weekend. i cried like a billion times and picked like 20 different fights with the dotytron. it was kind of awesome. i haven't been cranky like that in a long while. we barely fight ever, anymore. in between being a testy mofo, i did manage to find the time to bawl like a giant baby when s-dawg showed me the following youtube clip. LIKE A BABY. so embarrassing! all weekend he was like, "have you seen the 'christian the lion' video on youtube yet?" and i was like, NO (it sounded kind of ghey.) he kept bringing it up until finally he had me and sister as a captive audience and fired it up on his iphone. i CRIED and got goosebumps like the carefully hidden inner marshmallow i am.



i also finished knitting my niece's sweater. i'm really happy with how it turned out. this is what the original pattern is supposed to look like:

there's an inner button and button hole and the sleeves are long and the collar is floppier.

this is what i did with mine:



i made mine with short sleeves, and i shortened the collar. i also put both buttons on the front, because i thought a thick button on the inside of the sweater would be irritating, and this way, you have some options about how you flip it over. it also looks cute and symmetrical.

little miss up there was being super squirmy with the pictures. more shockingly, we had an incident that i will heretofore refer to as "chunkygate '09" my sister and i were researching a disney world vacation. more correctly, i was researching while my sister kept me company. somehow she took it upon herself to project manage the family's disney vacation, even though she HATES doing stuff like that. within half an hour, i had taken her scribbles on random pieces of paper and had organized a tidy chart complete with footnotes.

anyway, my niece was playing dress up quietly by herself while we were researching. she had put on one of my mom's old jumper from the late 80s and was looking at herself in the mirror when she idly asked, "does this make me look chunky?" my sister and i immediately gave each other significantdangereyes. injecting a forced tone of casual inquiry into our voices, we asked, "why? what's wrong with being chunky?" and my niece said, "i don't want to be chunky, like ____" "who?" i asked. "___" she repeated. my sister looked me in the eye and imperceptibly nodded, "like ___," she said, mouthing the words, "he's kind of chunky" lol!!!!! poor little chunky gaffer. so then we told her there was nothing wrong with being chunky.

later on, when we were having dinner at my grandparent's favorite restaurant she was throwing a pretend costume party for everyone while we were eating and we started giving her the gears, "can i have a chunky costume?" (me) "can i have chunky peanut butter at the party?" (dotytron) etc. exasperated at the teasing, she burst out, "why does everyone want to be CHUNKY?!??" and then we said, "what's wrong with being chunky?" and she said, "don't you see the sign?" (pointing at an imaginary spot on the wall.) me and my sister gave each other dangereyes again. "what does the sign say?" and you could totally see the expressions flicker across her unguarded, impatient little imp face. she paused, and then we prodded her. "it says: no chunky persons INVITED!" terrible!!! the poor little lamb! where is she getting this stuff from? chunky isn't even a kid word! she's only four! but kids are so crafty. when we asked her point blank, "is it okay to be chunky?" she's say yes, but you could see in her eyes that she didn't believe it.

le sigh. it's hard to know what to do and how to approach it. you don't want to turn it into a giant thing, but at the same time, there's going to be a good 10 years of the vicious cruelty of kids/young teenagers ahead of her...there's no need to get a jump on it now.

tonight for dinner i made us meatball subs with leftover frozen cooked meatballs, simmered in defrosted frozen tomato-basil sauce, and topped with provolone cheese and broiled in the oven. served with a mixed generic salad with thousand island dressing.

in other news...my family is going to disney world this summer. eeks! and then the dotytron and i are going to follow that up with a week and a bit in hawai'i. the prices at disney are SO MUCH LOWER in august. it's their low season (coinciding with hurricane and typhoon season.) we used to go in august when i was a kid. it was hot and muggy and humid and there'd be periodic flash thunderstorms when the skies would open up and unleash a torrent upon you and then five minutes later the sun would be back, turning the water into tacky, sizzling vapour. the weather we're not concerned about. we'll bring rain gear. plus, the other alternative was going during the holidays when you get GANKED on the prices and when the park is teeming with people. as i said to my sister, if disney can't protect us during a hurricane, then i don't know what can. lol!

i was worried the dotytron would feel robbed of his lune de miel by piggybacking it on a family vacay, but he was surprisingly amenable. since i'm doing all the vacation planning, it's actually kind of nice for me. before i had to worry about researching all 4 major islands and then somehow whittling it down. if we only have just over a week, we can focus on one island. because seeing the volcano and hopefully catching some lava is our primary goal, that limits us to the big island, hawai'i. much easier! i've found us some cute b&bs to stay at...i'm excited!

this is all provided of course that the upcoming ontario budget doesn't obliterate my job. *weak laughter*

no seriously. i hope i don't get laid off.

fin.

slackin'

i've been taking it pretty ez these past few night once i get home, so that's why dispatches from the lagerfeld camp have been intermittent. things have been kind of hectic at work and the dotytron is on march break which means lots of togetherness and less time to be sitting in front of the ordinateur.

we've been eating dinner and then hunkering down in front of the glowy box to watch movies while i knit knit knit away on my niece's knitted bolero. it's going to be pretty cute! i'm making some pattern adjustments to suit my taste and i'm optimistic about how they'll turn out...i had to rip it out at some point and almost ended up having to unravel the whole thing - fixing the mistake has cost me some precious time and meant that it's been consuming my thoughts/leisure time until i got it back on track and right again. the roomie is sick with a head cold so we've been enjoying the quiet comfort of escaping together into random tales from hollywoodland.

i biked to work the past two days and tried going for a run yesterday at lunch. i didn't even make it a 1/4 of the way around the park...but i kept at it...walking in between little bursts of jogging. i'm excited to get good again...the key is making sure i make it a priority to stretch afterwards, lest my already tense hamstrings retract into even tighter coils of petrified muscle.



last night for dinnie i used leftover corned beef to make us reuben sammies. it's my first time making the CLASSIC reuben, complete with sauerkraut (i had been unnecessarily suspicious of its inclusion before) and thousand island dressing (in lieu of the more traditional russian dressing.) reuben sammies are AMAZING! alongside we had a giant salad with more (kraft) thousand island dressing (i was having weird thousand island dressing cravings yesterday - a desire for a creamy salad topper instead of the usual vinaigrette coating i gussy up.) this corned beef is the gift that keeps on giving. i have enough leftovers to turn into a corned beef hash for a future breakfast or breakfast-for-dinner. that's THREE meals out of one 4.25lb corned beef. thrifty thrifty!

tonight we're continuing "irish springs" week and having lamb and guinness stew with carrots, mushrooms, rosemary, and a root vegetable mash (potato, sweet potato, rutabaga, mashed with my roasted garlic-parsley butter and some milk.) i threw in some bits of calf liver too, just to clear out the freezer some. i know that's going to gross some people out but it was really tasty. i'm testing out the new slowcooker. it's okay. i liked the old one because it had a light that turned on when you turned the knob so you knew that it was working...but really, a slow cooker is a slow cooker is a slow cooker - you don't need all the bells and whistles and for it to tweet you when the food's ready.

on monday night we watched 'little dieter needs to fly,' a documentary by our hero, werner herzog (he turned it into a feature film starring christian bale, called 'rescue dawn' - a way more michael mann-ish hollywood title befitting the fictionalized treatment.) the documentary chronicles the story of dieter dengler, who spent his whole life wanting to be a pilot. he finally gets his wish and enlists in the u.s. navy and is shot down by enemy fire during the vietnam war and captured by the viet cong, held captive, tortured, before making an escape.

it's a hellish portrait that leaves you wondering at a person's capacity to endure, process, and exist with such horrific memories and through such limit-defining experiences.

to counterbalance the monday night screening, the dotytron rented 'role models' which stars lagerfeld fan favorites paul rudd (i want to marry him) and jane lynch. this was surprisingly not not bad for a movie featuring the actor most well-known for playing stiffler. it's formulaic, kind of dumb, but not COMPLETELY insulting to the viewer's intelligence, it has a lot of heart, and it champions the causes of the underdog/oddball and LARPers (that's live action role play to you and me.) it got more than a few chuckles out of me and so was worth the rental price (just barely.)

i have a book review for you but i'll save it for another day. in the meantime, allow me to just say that while i was amongst the luddites who grumbled about the LAST facebook update and then rapidly forgot what the previous iteration even looked like...this new one is TOTAL balls. it makes everything a lot harder to use/less intuitive and it's super-annoying. almost enough to turn me off using it entirely. not impressed facebook impresarios. and when you lose a member of the creative class (i've taken up richie florida's charge and am self-applying the term) (don't you love how i call him richie florida?) you lose a not-so-valuable-though-no-less-vociferous cog in the great social networking machine.

fin.

sir thomas more = original badmon

so i'm frantically trying to finish a little knitted bolero for my former profs J & S's baby. i'm going to their place to decorate cupcakes for L's birthday party and to visit and it's a no presents party but i don't like showing up empty handed. i've made a LOT of headway (i'd say i'm about 60% done) and i'm steadily plowing my way through season 2 of 'tudors' as my knitting viewing accompaniment.

i don't think i'm giving anything away to say that sir thomas more just got iced because of his scruples. i remember reading 'a man for all seasons' in oac english and it had an indelible impact - what can i say, i gotta love people with integrity (atticus finch, i'm looking in your direction.) a little bit of wikipediaing revealed that sir thomas might have been a little teh creepz0rz (wearing a hair shirt, engaging in flagellation) but in the 1400s and 1500s, seriously, who WASN'T a little creepy? poor guy. i feel bad for him. i should re-read 'a man for all seasons' if only because i haven't read a play since the years long ago when i was required to.

you know what makes me feel old? the fact that it's 2009. more importantly, that raves were like TWENTY years ago (or just starting 20 years ago). an entire generation! it's a cultural historical footnote for the kids nowadays. they don't know what the crap it's about. it's weird to have lived through the life of a subcultural movement. i don't know why i'm fixated on that one in particular (probably because it defined my formative years) but still - IT'S TWO THOUSAND AND NINE! what the heck?!??? i was thinking about it yesterday but it was brought even closer to home because we started watching this british series called 'skins' which is about the scandalous lives of 16 year olds in britain. it's like a cross between 'coronation street' and 'gossip girl' with wackier characters and way more lasciviousness (i can't BELIEVE how the brits are so blasé about showing boobs AND hoo-has during prime time television!) anyway, at one point in the series (which is decent - it makes for pleasantly vacuous, mildly entertaining, but not very engrossing passive watching), the kids are at a showcase for these mcs, who are terrible, and whose equipment goes on the fritz. the crowd starts grumbling and there's about to be a major mutiny, when the dj steps in, and drops 'original nuttah' and everyone starts brucking out and the night is saved. to quote tina fey: "i want to go there." it would be kind of awesome to live in a city where 'original nuttah' is like, a retro pop song that you can drop anytime, anywhere. BEST!

so today is a pretty lowkey day taken up with a lot of knitting and trying to get this thing done. i'm using up leftover yarn from another project...i was worried that i didn't have enough so i had to cannibalize a baby sweater i had knit up ages ago but didn't have an intended recipient for. i thought it would be kind of traumatic unraveling a sweater but it surprisingly went down pretty easy. i'm making a dessert for dinner chez dr. rei and hanbo tomorrow and maybe doing some exercises and small errands on the danny. otherwise, it's me, henry viii and anne boleyn, and a pile of yarn i'm trying to wrassle into a garment.

but tonight! tonight we're going to see 'the watchmen' - if i'm not frantically trying to seam a garment tomorrow i'll post a full review. i've also read a slew of YA fiction lately and i have to review that. i've discovered a new favorite YA author (although really, i think his work transcends the oft-pejorative use of the classification), john green. he's EXTRAORDINARY. we're also having vegan shepherd's pie and beignets for dinner tonight. tasty!

fin.

still bit

by the travel bug. now that we've effectively saved a bundle on our nuptials all i can think about are ways to blow that cash on travel. we weren't going to take a honeymoon before but now we kinda can. there's a part of me that wants to go back to hong kong and hit shanghai and beijing. there's another part that wants to take the dotytron out west to b.c. and salt spring island. maybe spend a week at a shack in maine? or finally do our tour of the bbq states? maybe recreate 'the wire' at the towers and corners of baltimore? go back to barcelona and while away the days eating jamon iberico on crusty bread smeared with ripe tomato pulp? maybe we'll go down wicked south and hit argentina and chile!

ah, the places we'll go. the fiscally responsible thing to do is to batten down the hatches and keep saving for our down payment. but there's really no fun in that. or, no *immediate* fun at any rate.

so, we're all getting owned right now. being on the receiving end of the pwning stick is not a position i'm a) comfortable b) accustomed to and it rankles. summer beckons with the false promise of heady, sun-filled, lazy days that i know are an illusion. THOSE DAYS DON'T EXIST ANYMORE. it's a non-stop work parade. i do love being busy but i wish i had more control over when the brakes get applied. this is not to be. this summer i want to throw taking a language class into the mix. ai-ya!

a few months ago urban outfitters was offering free subscriptions to 'nylon' magazine so i signed up. i received my first issue yesterday. i took one cursory flip-through and promptly regretted everything. so contrived! it's like a magazine in the style of a reasonable hand-drawn fascimile of chloe sevigny or something, except that now even chloe has the class not to try to throw together a magazine consisting of cliches like: glassy, doe-eyed girl staring vacantly at camera in a get up that embodies the golden rule of directionless magazine stylist nightmare: too many layers, ridiculous hats, touch of neon, slouchy bad posture, one incongruous element that's meant to be "cheeky." oy vey. the only good thing is that i now have a regular and steady supply of bug-smashing instruments near at hand that i won't mind sacrificing to the cause. seriously, 'nylon' rivals 'information outlook' (special library association, natch) for "magazine that i receive in the mail but have no intention of ever reading even if i have to stare vacantly at my toes in the bathroom during an epic deuce"


on to happier things! like...spaghetti and meatballs!!! i made sauce on sunday and quickly threw together meatballs when i came home. start to finish i had dinner on the table in under an hour...a pretty impressive feat! i baked the meatballs in the oven on a rack in a pan, to let the fat drain off...ever since old supervisor T gave me the secret for proper polpette, there's been no turning back. spaghetti and meatballs has got to be one of my all-time favorite comfort foods. i made a salad but we housed too much pasta to eat it.

another happy thing: finished knitting. FINALLY. ladies and gentlemen, may i present to you:


bella's mittens from the movie 'twilight' lol!!!!!! anyway, huzzah to having some knitting to show for all my hours doggedly in pursuit of sexy results during the tudor era!

i made them for a rabid 'twilight' fan (are there any other kinds?) i'm quite proud of them...i had to make some adjustments and i had to start over once. the pattern is written for bulky wool and i used worsted. the colour is a lovely emerald-teal. i hope the recipient likes them!

fin.

shook one

i don't know what happened to me...one minute, i was a competent and adept knitter, flying through projects with the greatest of ease. now, i put the finishing touches on my mom's hat (the do-over), took it off the needles, and found that i had a giant unraveling HOLE that was growing bigger by the second. i couldn't believe my eyes - i kept tugging at the hat incredulously, watching the tiny loops unfurl and the hole widen and gape like a yawning abscess. disheartening to the max.

one of the things on my to-do list today is to "figure out knitting" (seriously, that's how it appears in my day timer) do some grocery shopping, visit a florist, pick up lobsters and then come home, do yoga and exercises, sit my butt down on the couch, watch movies and knit the (hopefully) now figured-out knitting.  i think i have to accept that i'm horribly behind on my gift-giving knitting and just start a project that feels right.  hand-made knits are always appreciated, right?  even if they're years late???

tonight for dinner we're having a family valentine's day dinner. i'm doing steamed lobsters with butter for dipping, cheddar-scallion-sage biscuits, and spanish green beans braised in a smoked-paprika kicked up sofrito.

then we're going on a double date with dr. rei and hanbo. we're going to eat dessert at this new chocolate shop/dessert place called moroco chocolat. i took a peek inside the other day on my lunch. the decor is very baroque parisian lounge (for someone who's never been to paris). everything was also REDONKULOUSLY expensive. like, $3 a macaron expensive. like, $16 for a box (beautifully packaged) of chocolate dipped candied orange PEEL expensive. ORANGE PEEL! THE PART YOU THROW AWAY! i worked with the pastry chef at sen5es...she was the one who actually hired me and oversaw the commissary. she also low-balled me on my salary. some of the stuff is similar to stuff i saw at sen5es and i also recognized the general manager of moroco - he used to do front of the house stuff at the restaurant too. anyway, dessert is going to be our one valentine's day concession. we usually go out for a meal, but considering that alinea is going to be the equivalent of all our eating out for a year, we're trying to be restrained. the place is also across the street from the cumberland, which is where the movie is showing.

i'll post a full review tomorrow and update this with dinner pics later.

fin.

TMZ ain't got nothing on this

wow. in my travels today i came across this article on john maynard keynes, who is like, the biggest comeback story of these credit crunch crisis times.  bigger than britney, kelly "i won't go running off at the mouth about clive davis anymore" clarkson, and pink's apparently resuscitated relationship with her dreamboat estranged hubby, carey hart. it's basically the expose of exposes. not only was he too much of a dirty bird to hang with virginia woolf and those other notorious bloomsbury libertines, but (according to the article) he had unlimited faith in the elite. choice quote: "he even wanted cambridge men to run america, because he didn't think anyone in the u.s. was smart enough." lol. "he also didn't like jews, the french or the working class." yikes! also, don't you find that a kind of weird grab-bag of groups to dislike? i do. that's like disliking "baha'i, samoans, and the petty bourgeoisie." actually, considering his (alleged) unwavering faith in the moral fortification of a cambridge education, his hit list kind of does seem fairly consistent.

the hat i knit my mom is too short. so i have to make her a new one. finished object satisfaction is at an all-time low over here at karl lagerfeld tricotage enterprises. my tudorian neck warmer that was supposed to be an overdue birthday gift doesn't look as nice as it should, i had to rip up the mittens i was knitting for someone else as another belated birthday gift, and now i've got to re-do my mom's hat. bogus. i feel like i've been knitting like crazy but have nothing to show for it. you know who wouldn't have this problem? a cambridge man, that's who.

today apparently is world nutella day.  we're not observing.  after work i went and practiced throwing and catching the dodgeball with c64 and his lady in the gym at his condo (technically, his gf's condo.)  then i came home and made one of my favorite pastas.  it's so easy, but so good (and i suspect, so fatty.)  it's rigatoni with spinach, mushrooms, and fontina and gorgonzola.  the original recipe had you throwing bacon in there...but i'm trying to resist dr. rei and bwong's exhortations to turn february into "biggie month."  plus, i'm feeling pangs from knowing that i've single-handedly consumed a quart of butterscotch pudding over the past 5 days.

i couldn't resist making myself some coconut tapioca pudding. it's a fine line between dessert and breakfast sometimes. tapioca pudding is practically red river cereal - the two are only separated by a slender thread of propriety. besides, all that milk is good for me bones.

roll call of awesome:

thelonius monk's advice to saxophonist steve lacy (1960)
courtesy of eric alba's blog



photos borrowed with gratitude from grain edit

the illustrations of derek yaniger, captured in the book "wildsville - the art of derek yaniger" i love love love these retro illustrations!!!! the colours and lines and forms are nostalgic and fresh at the same time with the bold, blocky compositions. they remind me of the tattered gold-spined books that i had as a kid, passed down from my sister and my mum, or, old disney cartoons from when i was a wee wee bobbin and they'd be satirizing beatniks (remember when people used to actually reference beatniks?!?) and really, who doesn't love a good tiki room? (not me and the b-52s, that's for sure!)


book cut sculptures from su blackwell, a uk artist. aren't they just so delightfully mysterious? there's a wildness to them that hints of the witching hour and the will o' the wisps that come out to cavort in the silvery, thin light of the moon. i love them.

we're nearing the end of "the tudors" season 1. what started as a mission for boobs and racy, cable tv, tarted up historical soft core has yielded a mildly interesting (though overlong) journey into the annals of history. let's just put it this way: we can't get through a whole episode without nodding off. there's too little happening to keep us interested and the endless scenes of courtly mincing tends to have a soporific effect.

fin.

------------------------------------------------
rigatoni w/ spinach, mushrooms, 2 cheeses

serves 4, main dishes

1 lb. rigatoni or other sturdy, short pasta
olive oil
1 onion, thinly sliced
4 cloves of garlic, minced
2 cello bags of spinach (approx. 1 lb), rough-chopped
1 lb of mushrooms (your choice), sliced
4 T. unsalted butter
200 g. fontina cheese, cut into smallish pieces
200 g. gorgonzola, crumbled
salt and pepper to taste

- cook the pasta in boiling salted water until al dente.
- heat the oil in a pan, sautee the onions, garlic until fragrant. add the spinach and mushrooms and sautee until caramelized and cooked through, turn off the heat.
- when the pasta is cooked, quickly drain it, then mix it with the diced cheese, the butter, and the spinach-mushroom mixture, stirring and tossing until the cheese is melted and coats the pasta.
- season to taste with salt and pepper.