Catching up

We’ve had a few blasts of warm weather, and while the projected 27 degrees forecast last weekend was making my doomsday-inclined heart palpitate – seriously the California drought is no joke!  How are people not freaking out about this MORE?!?  WHY IS THERE GRASS AT COACHELLA?!?!!!??? – when I’m given to a more superficial frame of mind (often), my thoughts have turned to spring summer style.

This year Lagerfeld is going in a bit of an unexpected direction.  Well, not really that unexpected, more of a return to the silhouette I favored in my rave days of dressing like a boy on the bottom/pocket square on top.  I recently bought a long-sleeve vintage Vision Street Wear t shirt and that’s forming the foundation of the look I’m going for.  Think Stacy Peralta, think Gleaming the Cube, think long shorts, blocky kicks, So-Cal, 80s.  I love me a long, bulky shorts like you wouldn’t believe, my favorite pair being a pair of Canadian army surplus fatiques that I chopped to a mid-calf length about 15 years ago and have been wearing ever since (moving the button on the waistband incrementally from year to year, of course).  I’m going to intersperse this with my usual Mrs. Roper, muumuu, tent dress routine – a habit I can’t shake.  Except now, bike shorts under the dresses are part of my life because my thighs rub together and that’s just the way s**t goes, sons.

If you still stubbornly read a lot of blogs (and I do), there’s a brand that bloggers of a certain ilk go crazy for, and I just don’t get it.  Ace and Jig.  They make $300 jumpsuits that look like tea-towels you find at the cottage.  I don’t get it.  If the patterns were distinctive, it’d be one thing, but they all kind of look like Turkish linen towels to me.  Y’all know I love me a Mexican Oaxacan embroidered dress/top like the next hippie, but something about the type of fabric pattern on the Ace & Jig stuff just doesn’t turn my crank in the least.  They’re like the worst possible serape blankets you could have, but you’re wearing them.  It’s like a faded cactus, wilting in the sun.  

The Wonder Twins do this odd thing where they trade off weeks of being a giant PITA.  Last week, it was Quincess, who was INCONSOLABLE during dinner every night.  Now this week, he’s been the sweetest little dear, happily eating lots of whatever is put in front of him, while Lindsay Lou Lou is a pill and screams for “Ohk!” [yogurt] and then upends everything on his tray when I don’t give him what he wants.  He also wants everything “whole!” and as soon as he’s done eating yells, “SCHIIIIIIDE?!?” [outside] where he puts on a bike helmet (“hat! Haaaaaaat!!!”) that’s 10 sizes too big and stands on a Radio Flyer 3-wheeled scooter, giving everyone cow-eyes until they opt to ruin their backs by bending over and pushing him around.  Quincess’ preferred outside activity is to push around a little baby carriage and then wait for you to turn your attention elsewhere before running into the road and laughing maniacally.  Meanwhile, the Big Yam is off in his own world playing superheroes and screaming that he’s not ready to ride a bike for a million hours.  It’s a really relaxing vibe we’ve cultivated.

Last weekend we had a visit from SMckay and the Dotytron hosted a bourbon night with his teacher friends.  While he was prepping that, SMckay and I gave the kids freezies and took them to the park, which resulted in this line from the Big Yam: “Come in my face, freezie! Come in my face!”  It was kind of awkward.  This tends to happen when SMckay comes for visits.  The last time, she was supervising the Big Yam’s bath and said something like, “No standing in the tub!” and he said, “Yeah, you do, to wash your butt and your wiener.  What’s a wiener?”  SMckay: “Oh dear.” 

Saturday morning I went with her to see the Basquiat exhibit at the AGO.  I’m glad SMckay gets me to the AGO and my art history roots.  The Basquiat exhibit was kind of amazing.  I went to the Alex Colville one and was intellectually into the exhibit because the exhibit was well curated, but I’m not generally into Colville’s style of work.  Basquiat’s work is something I would hang in my home.  Keith Haring is too cartoony for me, but Basquiat’s work is very visceral, and politically charged, and manages to be so on-the-nose, now, 30 some-odd years later.  The audio commentary was wack.  A lot of Toronto beat poets and academics who were simultaneously over-intellectualizing but also missing some of the obvious points in the works.  Commentary on a  piece that counterbalanced the a Native American with an African American man in shackles focused primarily on the very obvious statement about slavery, while failing to pay attention to the very clear parallel being drawn between the oppression of the two peoples, and how their cultures were effaced by white people.

We had my mom and brother and his fiancée over for a Mother’s Day dinner on Saturday and it was fun.  Bruce Wayne’s fiancée got me an awesome mother’s day present in the form of the best dinosaur planter/terrarium ever!  It’s amazing and I love it and love the colour.  That aqua blue/green colour is a favorite of mine and pops up in other things I have:

Mother’s Day was a bit of a gong show.   The original plan had been to keep it low key and chill.  I got an awesome card from the kids (all orchestrated by the state) and the plan had been to go and get dim sum and then to Pacific Mall to get a new iphone case for me.  In my heart of hearts, I should have known that Mother’s Day dimsum would be a gong show, but I quashed those misgivings.  We had gone back and forth on plans to see Momma D on Mother’s Day, and finally called her with our impromptu dim sum plan, planning on being home to put the twins down for their nap so I could work on my quilt and just putter (my favorite thing in the world). 

The plan went horribly, horribly awry.  The first place we went to, had a lineup out the door, and I was #57 for a table (I think they were at 20).  So we packed up and went down the street to some random place, which I think stays in business based solely on taking the overflow from the better place.  There were 4 or 5 groups ahead of me, and so I grabbed a number and told Momma D and the Dotytron to take the kids to a patch of grass by the parking lot while I waited.  Cut to 1 HOUR LATER, to me standing behind the hostessing stand and acting as the hostess, because the restaurant staff were completely inept and were handing out numbers but not managing the restaurant flow.  People were cutting the queue and sitting down at tables as they were being cleared, so as far as the restaurant was concerned, because no one was managing it properly, tables were never available, because it was just a constant flow of unethical people plonking their jerk butts down.  There was no order.  After an hour, with everyone hungry, we left.

Somehow in the process, Lenny had his wrist wrenched and was in pain, so he bawled the whole way back (we called an audible on the whole mission).  There was talk about going to a different dim sum restaurant on the Danforth (a place that does mostly takeout and has maybe 2 tables), but I put my foot down.  Anyone with kids knows that you don’t take hungry, confined kids to a second (sit-down) location.  Poor Dotytron.  Momma D and I are very different in our approaches and I think he felt conflicted by trying to appeal to us both.  I knew though, that if we had gone to the restaurant, it would have been incredibly stressful dealing with a place that in all likelihood has no high chairs or is kid-friendly, when the kids were all on the verge of melting down.  I also know that the bulk of the work managing them would have fallen on me, and while I don’t put stock in Mother’s Day (especially after this one), I do know that I should at least get to decide not to put myself through that.  Instead we went to a park, I got us pizza, and we hung out and watched the kids and it was lovely.

This week has been a monster.  My blood pressure has been skyrocketing at work and I’m feeling kind of tender and sore about it.  I’m looking forward to that extra day.  We have a fun one planned, too – movie night tonight at home, visits with Tillers and Jen tomorrow and their lovely kids, dinner at Momma D’s house (do-over!), fireworks in the park with the neighbours on Sunday, and hopefully a walk at the Scarborough bluffs with Dr. Rei and family.

 [edit: As it now takes me three weeks to write a single post, I’m including the post-Victoria Day weekend wrap-up in this one]

Our long weekend was extremely fun, but also filled with back-breaking BS labour that you have to do when you have a house – ie. sanding and sealing our deck.  That being said, it looks SO DARN GOOD and even though all I wanted was to throw money at the problem, in the end, it only took us about 4-6 hours?  We went with a clear sealant and I’ve never been happier.  The Dotytron was trying to convince me that we have to get a colour on the cedar because otherwise, it’s going to discolour, and that’s what we did 3 years ago, but I’m so glad we went clear – it looks so hype:

Visits with Tillers and Jen were so nice – we went to the park, they brought amazing homemade bread and burrata (!) and I tried to make friends with salad (despite Dotytron’s vocal objections).  The guys went to a new craft brewery in the ‘hood and then we filled up a bucket and let the kids go to town while the young-young ‘uns napped the afternoon away. 

Our planned fireworks on Sunday were a bust.  This was our fourth go-around organizing street fireworks and this is the first year we’ve ever been hassled by the cops.  I think it’s because we’re such a finely tuned machine.  Watermelon slices, blankets, popcorn for the kids, a bucket of sand, about 25 people – we were conspicuous and we got the attention of bike cops who told us we had to shut it down.  We were allowed to set off one more and then had to pack it up.  I was saying that the Dotytron should have lit them all off at once and shouted, “BLACK LIVES MATTER!” which would have been so funny!  Just imagine?  A white guy in Leslieville, holding his fist up and shouting “black lives matter” in response to being told to not light fireworks?!  So good. 

Scarborough bluffs mission was also a bust, but a hilarious one, in the grand tradition of M-R-I-H shenanigans.  At first, we were going to skip the bluffs because Dr. Rei and Dotytron were obviously in the mood to do nothing but sit around and talk about 90s hip hop for eternity.  Then, we opted to go to the beach as an alternative, but it was BUCK (obviously), so we ended up heading to the bluffs anyway.  As we passed a long line of cars snaking seemingly parked bumper-to-bumper on their way OUT of the bluffs, the Dotytron went into doomsday apocalyptica mode (which is the worst Dotytron mode of life) and was all like, “We’re idiots! We should abort!  Each car we’re passing is an hour of our life! Why did we do this?  This is so dumb, etc., etc.,”  We got to the bottom, couldn’t find parking, and realized we should turn tail and head back up, so we did, only to have Hanbo entreating Dr. Rei to at very least, Google a picture of the bluffs to show him, and the Dotytron was still going strong in doomsday mode and was (seriously) trying to convince me that I should call the police, tell them that a thousand people were stuck at the bluffs and needed their help to direct traffic and get out.  LOL!  It was epic.  In the end, it was fine, the line of cars moved relatively quickly and it didn’t break bad like we had thought it might. 

We ate Chino Loco’s at home.  The Big Yam, who had been angling for a brownie all day, couldn’t stomach his dinner and so was all angst-ridden about forfeiting his right to a brownie dessert.  He’s a forward thinking chap, though, and asked what we were eating for dinner on Tuesday.  I said that it was going to be rice and a sauce, similar to the deconstructed burrito he was turning his nose up at.  “AGAIN?!?!!!?” he cried, “COME ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” which was such a pure expression of supreme disappointment and dismay that the whole table broke down laughing.  “AGAIN?!??? COME ON!!!!!” will never not be funny.  Lately, in the same vein, he’s started shouting, “DARN IT!!!” when he’s frustrated, which is equally hilarious.

Meanwhile, these two little monkeys are routinely flouting doctor’s orders and engaging in mad bed jumping pre/post-nap:

I find this video simultaneously revolting AND compelling

We got a piano!  Best decision we've ever made, best addition to the house (including our children, j/k j/k j/k).  That's Linsday in his shirt from the Apollo Theatre that Momma D bought for him.  Our piano is a Heintzman from the 1930s that we bought for $250.  It's a beautiful piece and I love the way it looks.  It needs a tuning but needs to acclimate to our house first.  The cost of moving was as much as the piano.  

Droopy drawers

"WHOLE!!!" is this guy's eating rallying cry - which basically means that he wanted to eat a pork chop on the bone.

I made Smitten Kitchen's baked chickpeas for dinner a couple of weeks ago, and have since made it a few more times.  It makes the perfect work lunch.  Middle Eastern spiced chickpeas, served with dollops of yogurt tahini dressing, labneh (always labneh), and the classic Middle Eastern tomato-cucumber-red onion-mint-parsley salad, dressed with lemon juice, and mixed with crunchy pita chips - Smitten recommends homemade, but I used Stacy's naked pita chips, which are perfection.  It's like Middle Eastern nachos.  I will say that I think it's not necessary to bake them - I simmered subsequent batches on the stove with the lid ajar until almost all the liquid was evaporated and it worked out just fine.  This is the platonic ideal of summer food.  I love this dish so much.  

Fin.

Kitchen Reno Times

We are approaching the finish line (she jinxes herself) on the basement renovation, so what better time than now to take you through our kitchen renovation?  Our new kitchen is nearing the 9 month old mark, and we are starting to take its beauty and organization and blessed, blessed dishwasher for granted.  It feels like we've always had it, and so a Lil' Ugmo kitchen retrospective is in order, lest we forget.

NEVER FORGET:

This is what we bought.  Laminate counter in a weird burgundy/blood/black marble patina, faux wood laminate cabinets over solid wood frames (talk about BUILT IN!  Those cabinet frames were basically fashioned from 2x4s), a disgusting, cracked mirror held together with packing tape hiding lord-knows-what.  Outlet covers yellowed with age and cooking, congealed oil taunting us from the oil wells of the ventilation hood that didn't work in the five years we lived pre-kitchen reno.  It was a bit much.

We went in there, and took all the cabinets down, and painted them in the backyard of our old rental.  The Dotytron went to TOWN that summer while he was looking for a gig in the school board and cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom.  He found a rotting mouse carcass in one cabinet and we found cockroaches INSIDE our fridge.  We hired an exterminator, and then in the most cost-effective way imaginable, built a kitchen WITHIN the kitchen, by lining all the shelves with adhesive shelf paper and putting storage containers inside so our stuff wasn't touching anything.  

Even at that, before moving in, I vowed that I would never cook in there.  I tried to think of ways that I could avoid the stove and oven entirely and just fashion meals out of the slow cooker, a toaster oven, the panini press, and the microwave.  Five years of lovingly documented dinners on this blog belie my conviction to the cause.  This is how the kitchen looked a few months after we moved in:

And that's how it remained for five years, and the birth of our first son.  We washed countless baby bottles, so many dinner parties worth of dishes, and so very many pots and pans by hand.  I used to say that when the oil in the hood overflowed, then I would reno the kitchen.  We made do, and it wasn't so bad.  It's never so bad when you're living in it.  It's your home, you know?  You see that aluminum, patio door that's frozen shut and is the colour of dried blood?  That's our patio door, dammit!  I also miss the sight of all my mason jars lined up like little soldiers, out in the open.  It's so orderly and pleasing to my pioneer/faux homesteading soul.

When the time came that a kitchen reno was looking like a possibility, I spent countless hours on the Ikea kitchen planner site.  I'm not kidding you: HOURS.  So, when I tell the Dotytron in no uncertain terms that this is MY house, I mean it.  Technically, yadda yadda, his name is on the title, blah blah blah.  Details!  When it comes down to it, this house is MINE.  My decisions, my thought, my hours and hours of MY precious time went into thinking things through so that it everything has a place.  So that the tone of the backsplash tile goes with the floor tile and the cabinet finish.  So that our edge pulls on the cabinets were NOT placed vertically on cabinet uppers as my then-contractor thought.  Things I never pay a contractor for: telling me how things should look.  I just need you to be my hands, man.  If I had the time, I wouldn't even need you to do that.

This is how our kitchen looks now (or it did, 5 months ago, when there weren't a million fruits and boxes of Cheerios piled on the counter).  Ikea Akurum (now discontinued, thanks Ikea!) kitchen with Applad fronts and Berenson edge pulls.  Wolf 36" range (my precioussss).  KitchenAid fridge and dishwasher.  Vent-a-hood range hood.  

EFF Yeah, pull out pantry times!

Our fridge remained carefully curated for about 1 week.  Now you can barely find the fridge handle through the cover of letters from school and random photos.

I bought some reclaimed barnboard and my contractor made floating shelves out of them.  I love these.  They really warm up all the white.  Faucet is a Grohe, sink is a Blanco, divided sink.

New patio doors!  These have built-in blinds that are sandwiched between the glass - they never get dusty, huzzah!  You control the tilt and bring the blinds up and down with a sliding magnetized pull on the side.

I love my backsplash tile.  It has an off-set raised three dimensional pattern.  I had the tiler alternate the orientation so the pattern is more pronounced and you get some new planes and lines.  

There are some people who advocate the "save your pennies and then do the renovation/trip/whathaveyou when you can pay for it with your savings" approach.  I say, boo to that shiz!  Then you end up like the first 10 minutes of the movie Up.  You keep smashing that jar for all the little stuff and you never get to Paradise Falls.  This kitchen is our Paradise Falls.  It has made SUCH a difference in our lives.  Also, with the way house prices are going in downtown TO, we're never, ever leaving.  Unless we happen to luck out and capitalize on the 3 months of the only downtown in Toronto history, like we did when we bought Lil' Ugmo.  At this rate, semi detached houses our size, in our location, that already have the basement underpinned (full height) and have the second bathroom (check!) are going in the eight hundred thousand range.  EIGHT HUNDRED.  That is the definition of unsustainable, folks, unless our real estate market/transit infrastructure starts to change muy rapido.  

To be honest, I'm up for doing a size upgrade and doing the renos.  The Dotytron very much is not.  He thinks I'm sick in the head for even contemplating it.  I may very well be.  I should have been a general contractor.

Fin.

Pleased to Meat You

I have so many problems deciding whether to capitalize the blog titles like titles or just follow regular sentence style.  Decisions!

So Meat Club.  The friends we know who are part of Meat Club didn't show, so the only person we knew was the principal organizer, who we had only met once before, at our last Supper Club.  It was still fun though.  We lucked out and sat with the loveliest people by far and we had a grand time.  Richmond Station is themed like a subway station (kind of - I only read that it's supposed to be such and didn't really think so myself) but the decor is ho-hum.  The restaurant was bumping though - filled to the brim and busy the whole time we were there (from around 8pm to 11pm).  Here's what we had:

The charcuterie board.  I kind of hate it when the board features this many things and the server just comes over and rhymes them off to you in one long list.  How am I supposed to remember anything?  Just print out a piece of paper or something, or else don't bother telling us.  The charcuterie was served at the perfect temperature, but sliced a touch too thin for me.  Everything was paper thin which didn't allow you to enjoy all the textures of each type.  It was all good, it kind of got lost in the jumble.  

Presskopf (headcheese) fritters with grilled tongue, and a fried egg and greens.  This dish was outstanding.  The little breaded triangles of headcheese were hot, crispy, not the least bit greasy and so, so light.  The grilled tongue is a no-brainer for me (I love tongue) and the egg was properly runny.  This might have been my favorite bite of the night.

Seared côte de boeuf and braised beef cheeks with potatoes, sautéed spinach, roasted root vegetables and brown butter hollandaise.  They brought out the GIANT rib steaks for us to view - they were Flinstonian in scale, before whisking them back to the kitchen for finishing.  They steaks were a touch over for my liking, but there's nothing not really to love about seared meat, hollandaise, and thinly sliced gratin potatoes that are cut into triangles and then deep fried until they're little, dreamy puffs of deliciousness.  I enjoyed the steak more than the beef cheeks.  I find that braised meat treated like this can get very same-y tasting.  I actually felt that way about the côte de boeuf.  Maybe that's the problem with meat club?  The meat-centric focus means that you're getting food that isn't particularly ground-breaking or inspiring.  It's not something I couldn't get at some other restaurant. It was well prepared, though.

The Richmond Station burger - tender meat on an even more tender milk bun.  Served with textbook fries.  It's hard to really get a sense of a burger when you're only getting a quarter of one, but this was tasty enough?  

Dessert was a cinnamon bun with a walnut crumble, candied bacon, and beer sauce.  These buns were delectable - so soft and fluffy and warm.  The candied bacon was a stand-out too, taking the bacon firmly into sweet territory from the savory side.  This was delicious.  I ate two and then gazed longingly at the ones that were left, wondering who was the lucky sod who got to take the extras home (we left early to relieve Momma D from her babysitting duties).  I easily out-ate everyone there.  I even went so far as to mistakenly think that this nice guy I had just met was challenging me to an eating competition.  So charming, am I!  The Dotytron had my back though.  I take my ability to out-eat most people as a very serious skill.

Friday night was lovely.  Our neighbour kid came and knocked on our door and came in to play after daycare and then invited the Big Yam over to their house for popcorn and movies.  So cute!  I love living in a neighbourhood where the kids just knock on each other's doors asking if so-and-so is coming out to play.  It's so darned cute.  After we ate dinner we dressed up the Big Yam in his jammies and sent him over with his milk.  FOR TWO HOURS.  It was kind of the best and obviously the Dotytron and I immediately started scheming of how we could formalize the arrangement so that you did a rotating Friday Night movie night at a different neighbour's house every week.  LOL!  We're such schysters.  We offered to take the neighbour kid this coming Friday in exchange.  If we're home, I certainly don't mind having a pizza, pajama, and movie party with the kids from the 'hood.  It's cute and the Big Yam was totally and utterly THRILLED with the novelty.  

The Captain started flashing weird brake-related warning lights on our way to Chinese school on Saturday.  I think the Dotytron would have continued driving it, but because I am a GIANT nerd who thinks that we are always one dashboard indicator away from our car exploding and consuming us in a fiery inferno, I looked it up in the book and they were all like, DON'T DRIVE.  So we missed Chinese school AND missed our long-planned, oft-delayed visit with J & Tillers in KW.  It was the WORST.  I can't even tell you how annoying it was.  The Captain INSISTS on making us look bad!  It doesn't even break all that often, but it's always when we're en route to visit people from out of town.  Ugh.  As Tillers said, we probably could have driven with the indicator lights like that for a good long time but I'm a nervous nelly.  Our mechanic thinks it's just a brake fluid issue.  Le sigh.

On Sunday we had R & R over for dinner with their adorable, sweet-eyed little bambino, M.  Little babies are so cute!  They are so light!  She was experience some sleep regression and was thus a little cross.  I keep somehow convincing myself that babies are so low-key and it'll be SO EASY to juggle the twerps when they come but I feel like I might be fooling myself.  We somehow had an easy time of it with the Big Yam but that probably means the twerps will be colicky, fussy, messes.  Why is having babies so jinxy?  I just read a story about a woman who lost her baby at 38 weeks.  Worst.  

Cutest thing ever: we watched part of Mary Poppins with the Big Yam (this is after I vetoed Star Wars as age-appropriate viewing - ummm, hello, Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru's charred bodies, much?  Not cool for a 2.5 year old!), and the Big Yam was calling it: "Miss Muffin."  

The Big Yam's room is slowly coming together (conceptually).  I ordered his bed frame, dresser and mattress today.  Here is the photo that inspired me: 

I just thought this was a great, fresh, gender-neutral color scheme.  I already have orange accents going in the Big Yam's baby room, so I wanted to carry that over so I could re-use certain things.

For the bed and dresser I went with the Ikea Mandal line.  I wanted a platform bed for the low profile, and there aren't a lot of options with storage.  It'll be nice to put his bedding in there and other lighter items.  I'm not crazy about the birch outsides.  I've heard of people painting them or staining the wood a less birch-y colour, but after seeing how it's been styled, it will go well against the blue accent wall.  The rest of the shelves will be white.  I saw the bed and dresser styled in this New York Times house and it does look nice with blue and orange accents.  If it drives me crazy I'll paint or stain it in the future, but for now, I think it'll look bright and airy.

We ended up going with a deeper, more navy paint than the one in the inspiration photo - Benjamin Moore's Old Navy.  

I saw this photo that totally inspired me:  

That's a $2 Ikea bracket, people!!!  Then I searched high and low for an affordable industrial cage pendant lamp and found someone on Etsy who will make one for me with an orange cord for about $60.  Not bad!  Considering the other lighting will be Ikea, I thought it would be nice to splurge (if you can even call $60 for a light a splurge) on something not from Ikea for the room.  I'm going to paint the bracket white.  

I also ordered these sale FLOR carpet tiles in orange and bone and designed my own design on graph paper.  It's going to involve investing in a carpet knife from Home Depot, but the cost of the knife (around $11) is still way cheaper than having FLOR do the cutting.  It's a triangle based pattern so lots of cuts and FLOR charges $3 a cut!  Ridiculous!  

We'll see how everything looks when it all comes together, but I'm happy with what I'm seeing in my head.  

The Big Yam has been having the time of his freaking life with the bowl from my Kitchen Aid mixer, some styrofoam packing peanuts I saved from our stroller box, a mixing bowl and a measuring cup, a whisk, a spoon and some water.  That alone guarantees us a minimum of 45 minutes.  If I want more time, I throw in some shaving cream and some food coloring and he's good for at least an hour and usually a lot longer.  It's the best!  Clean-up is okay.  It's not hard to wash off the oil cloth and the water on the tile in the kitchen is a bit of a pain, but at least it's tile so not a big deal.  We might get a giant rubbermaid bin to contain the mess for the future, though:

Here's what we've been eating lately:

Friday night's iron-boosting dinner: a roasted crouton, asparagus, and chorizo salad with seared skirt steak.

The Big Yam pointing at which New York Times chocolate chip cookie he was going to eat as his "special treat"

Sunday breakkie: fried green tomatoes, on top of mashed avocado, with English bacon and a fried egg on sourdough toast.

What I made for Sunday dinner - that radicchio tagliatelle with bagna cauda.  Not pictured: raw kale ceasar salad.

Dessert was a roasted vanilla pineapple tart with a coconut crumble.  My first time serving pineapple as a dessert not in upside-down-cake form.  Pretty good!  I'll post the recipe below.

Fin.

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Pineapple Tart with Coconut Crumble

serves 10-12

1 pie crust, enough for a 9" pie

1 large pineapple, peeled, quartered and cored

1 vanilla bean, scraped.

1/4 c. brown sugar

1/4 c. white sugar

2 T. dark rum

For the crumble topping:

1/2 c. whole wheat flour (you could use all purpose - I was trying to be healthy !)

1/3 c. brown sugar

1/3 c. oats

1/3 c. shredded coconut

1/4 t. salt

4 T. butter, melted

- put your pie crust in a 9" tart pan with a removable bottom.  Chill.

- slice the cored pineapple quarters into 1/3-1/2 inch slices

- place the pineapple slices with the sugars and vanilla in a large sauté pan.  Cook on medium heat until the juices run and the sugars are evaporated, tossing/stirring occasionally.  Increase the heat to high, add the rum, and cook until almost all the liquid is evaporated.  Set aside to cool

- meanwhile, mix all the dry crumble topping ingredients together in a bowl.  Stir in the melted butter until loose clumps form.

- with a slotted spoon, spread the cooled pineapple in the prepared crust.  Top with crumble topping.  Bake in a preheated 350F oven for about 40-50 minutes or until the pie crust is golden brown.  The coconut in the crumble will brown rapidly, so it might be necessary to tent the top with foil when the crumble is brown and finish baking this way.  

- serve with whipped cream, vanilla ice cream, or coconut ice cream.  

90s Settlers for Life

This is going to be one of those nonsensical posts that only makes sense to Dr. Rei but will be a welcome source of humour when we're old and grey and can't remember how funny we were and how many nights like these we had.

Real talk: I couldn't love 90s Settlers Night more.  It's so good.  We started our Saturday with a bunch of errands and meeting my mum at Congee Queen for some QT Chinese food.  They make this fried lo bak goh dish (the turnip cake that you get at dim sum) that's insane.  It's basically cubes of that turnip cake, deep fried so it's crispy, mixed with shrimp and scrambled egg in a spicy/XO-type sauce.  So boss.

That night we met up with Dr. Rei and Hanbo and Hanbo came over and reamed our finances and wowed us with models and spreadsheets that would have taken me, no lie, about 6 weeks of my life to come up with (and they would have been riddled - RIDDLED! - with errors) and I would basically have been doing all the calculations on a calculator and just using Excel as a glorified table (my ability to construct formulas is rudimentary at best, but I do like figuring it out - it's like a fun puzzle).  The good news is, in a nutshell, that buying Lil' Ugmo for the price that we did when we did was one of the best decisions that the Dotytron ever made.  He's been coasting on it ever since.  And that the twerps will (hopefully) not bankrupt us.  These are all good things, folks!

When your bff marries someone that you and your significant other get along with so well and is so funny and awesome, it's like, the best thing in the world.  Embiggening a crew this way is just a sure fire route to fun times and laughing so hard you think you're going to pee your pants.

After staring our finances in the face, we went to Duff's for wings and saucy fingers and basically turned ourselves into those salt rock lamps that you see for sale and that the Dotytron wants desperately for his office. This wasn't helped by the fact that we chased the wings, fries, and dipping sauce down with 2 bags of chips and Bits'n'Bites.

The night started with the Dotytron and Dr. Rei treating us to an air-drummed, hair-whipping sing-along to Alice in Chains "Would."  It couldn't possibly have been funnier.  Hanbo, regarding the Settlers board, "I don't know where to put my first settlement," Dr. Rei, strumming her air ukulele and whipping her hair around in a frenzy, "Who cares, just let the music carry you!"  LOL!!!

We also determined that Hanbo is going to start a website with made-up facts about Evan Dando from the Lemonheads, which will include Dr. Rei's suggestion that he include the nugget that Evan Dando's middle name is Ann.  Evan Ann Dando will never not be funny to me.  Eternal hilarity!

Then I played Spacehog's "In the Meantime," which resulted in a conversation about how the lead guy was married to Liv Tyler.  Dr. Rei didn't know they had divorced, but I was like, of course they did, because at a certain point, when you're married to a musician like the lead guy from Spacehog and every day he's like, "I'm just going to go to the studio," as his spouse, you'd be like, "Why."  And also you'd be like, "you're lying, you probably just walk around the block and sit at Starbucks all day."  Can you imagine having to have that conversation with your spouse?  Like, does Gwen Stefani ever look at Gavin Rossdale and be all like, "Uhhh, what do you do all day?"

We also determined that if you don't like this song, it means you're dead inside.  Somehow we also correlated this to mean that if you love the movie Blade Runner, you're also dead inside.   Newsflash: Blade Runner is not the kind of movie that you profess to love, unless you're trying to prove that you're one of those people who are dead inside.  The WHOLE ENTIRE MOVIE is in fact, about trying to figure out if people are dead inside, so it's kind of an apt metric.

Also, Linda Perry in the "What's Going On?" video might have a wardrobe that consists of TWO DIFFERENT top hats with giant aviator goggles affixed to them.  Check it out.  Check it out and then lament the fact that there's no such thing as high school Battle of the Bands any more and it's basically Katy Perry's fault.

It was an incredibly enjoyable afternoon/evening.  We wrapped at around 1 but we could have easily kept going.

Sunday was a lazy day of outside time and errands and being chill.  Is it wrong to love your house?  I love my G-D house so G-D much, especially when we've just given it a clean in preparation for people coming over.  I love being in my home.  I revel in it.  We are thinking about digging down the basement to open up another floor and I was talking to a SAHM from the drop-in centre about our plans and she nodded sagely and said, "Yes, you're going to definitely need a playroom" and I was like, wait - what?  The Big Yam was over at our neighbour's house and their basement has been annexed and turned into kid land.  Another neighbour was talking about how toy storage was such a huge issue for her (she had loaned us an easel and I was asking if she wanted it back and she said she didn't have room for it right now).  I don't really get the idea of a playroom - it's certainly not how the Dotytron and I prioritize the limited space in our house.  Really, we want to dig down the basement so that we can put the TV down there and then have room for a piano upstairs, so that our living room will be more of a classic living room/music room/quiet study/reading space.  We've managed to keep the glut of toys at bay thankfully (so far) and storing them hasn't turned into a real big issue as of yet.  We have a 2x2 Expedit in our living room and it has a storage bin in each cubicle and that's basically all he gets (each storage bin is only 1/3 full at this point).  I might get a few more storage containers for downstairs that will be hidden under our coffee table but I don't anticipate wall-to-wall toy armageddon, unless I end up switching bodies with a nicer, more maternal person somehow.

I never grew up with a play room.  The Dotytron certainly didn't.  The idea of a whole room in your house devoted to the pursuits of someone who is UNDER THE AGE OF FIVE is completely foreign to me.  I mean, if that's your bag, by all means, you do you.  The idea of all that plastic and disposable stuff makes me break out in hives.  Especially since our house is so compact, the space has to be really edited down, and if anyone's interests/comfort are going to be prioritized, it's the people paying the billzzz.  I do acknowledge that this means that our house isn't the "fun" kid house - but I guess it depends on the target audience.  I'm hoping our house will strike the balance where it's a nirvana haven for kids like this:

So the goal is to straddle the line between immigrant-style discipline and then having just enough toys and imagination and fun so that for kids who are the products of REAL immigrants, our house is Disney World.  We'll see how we do.  Basically, the bottom line is that according to Lagerfeld and Dotytron's Hierarchy of Needs - our needs supersede kid needs (and it's debatable whether a playroom constitutes a "need," really).

Here's what I've been eating/making lately:

Green beans, tofu, scapes, ground pork and tofu in a purchased ma po tofu sauce over brown rice.

On Friday I skipped lunch and went direct from my RMT to chiro so I stopped mid-way to appease the twerps with a bacon butty (sandwich) from Rashers, this bacon-sandwich emporium in my 'hood.  The basic sandwich is 6 pieces of griddled bacon piled on soft (but not soft enough!) white bread with either a traditional British brown sauce or ketchup.  I like neither with my bacon so just went straight hog.  There are a number of variations on this theme (peameal, eggs, bun instead of sliced bread, etc.) but my overall impression was that you are paying for something that would be criminally easy to replicate yourself.  Like, pathetically easy.  It was good, but nothing to get yourself worked up over.  Nothing I would ever consider craving.

Friday night's dinner was a veal, beef, and pork lasagne with ricotta and a blanket of mozzarella cheese on top.  I tried to make it healthier by adding grated beets to the tomato sauce and then adding the beet greens to the ricotta layer.  I sided this with a raw kale salad with avocado and tomato in a sweet balsamic vinaigrette.  This was good, but I was feeling guilty from my bacon sandwich and thus didn't eat as much as I wanted to, which resulted in a 9pm Dotytron convenience store run where he bought me chips and a Klondike bar.

Sunday supper was beer-braised pork loin chops with caramelized onion and apple, alongside a mashed kabocha squash, and roasted garlic mashed potato and cauliflower.  I am ALL ABOUT putting cauliflower in my mashed potatoes lately.  So good and so healthy!  

Tonight was freezer turkey tetrazzini with more raw kale salad.  

I'm going to do my gestational diabetes test tomorrow so I'm loading up on sweet, sweet, simple sugars (and boiling a million eggs to eat afterwards).  I made this tiramisu for 90s Settlers night and it is my LIFE right now.  

Fin.

Italy, Poland and Back Again

Oh my.  I have a heart full to bursting.  What a weekend it's been and we're only midway through Sunday!

Friday was a delicious, multicourse extravaganza hosted by our dear friends, B & G.  They generously thanked everyone who helped with their August wedding by having us all over for an Italian dinner - featuring platters of proscuitto di parma, taleggio, pecorino, a rabbit pappardelle, an arugala salad, a slow-roasted pork shoulder with root vegetables, beans, and pannetone and panforte for dessert.  Along with different wines to pair with each course and the emergence of midnight grappa!  It was unreal!  We sat and dined and talked public policy and laughed and joke deep into the night.  The Big Yam passed out and we tucked him into our hosts bed and trundled home bleary eyed at 1am.  We had a Sleep Away Camp night because we knew it was going to be easier than trying to get him down in his crib.

The Big Yam opted to wake at his usual time (7am) so we were hurrrrrting all day yesterday.  I can't even tell you how hurting.  Not enough sleep by far.  Then we went to Momma D's for a Christmas brunch with her sister and Cousin Yeti and Cousin M.  Then, just when we thought we'd be able to nap while the Big Yam went down, I made the inexorably bad decision to try to "quickly" fix our leaky kitchen faucet.  DISASTER.  I took it apart, but then couldn't put it back together again.  Then, the valves under the sink started leaking, and then, what had been a slow drip, turned into a full throttle rush of water from the faucet.  So I called our drain guy, who as it turns out, only does drains.  He recommend a plumber, but when I called the plumber he didn't pick up.  So I went down the list of Homestars.  Settled on Mr. Rooter because I thought they were reputable and they could come right away.  So, instead of napping, I then had to DEAL WITH A TRADE.  WORST!

I should have gone with my gut.  Mr. Rooter is a scam of scams.  Basically, it's a big organization that sub-contracts n00bs who get to wear the uniform and give people the impression that uniform = experience.  This guy was the worst!  He came in and was like, "You need a whole new faucet.  It's old.  And I need to re-do the pipes that lead to the faucet."  The cost?  Replacement of faucet (where I purchase the faucet - just the labour) - $250+ tax.  Then, to fix the pipes underneath ($150+tax).  So suddenly, I'm looking at another trip to Home Depot to buy a new faucet and $400.  So I put my Chinese hat on and worked on him for a solid fifteen minutes.  Me: "How about you bill me for the pipe fixing and then I give you $100 cash and you fix the faucet and leave it off the books" (and various permutations of this).  To his credit (and this is the ONLY thing I'll give to this guy), he wouldn't take my under-the-table haggling deal.  So, I was like, since I have to pay Mr. Rooter a "just to show up" charge of $70 anyway, at the VERY least just put my faucet back together again so I can use it and I'll deal with the mini-drip.  So he stayed in my kitchen for a G-D HOUR taking up time when I could have been napping, and at the end of it...DIDN'T PUT IT BACK TOGETHER PROPERLY.  When we turned the valves back on, the water was still gushing out.  I was so pissed!!!

So I called my original guy back and he was willing to come to our house, from AJAX on a SUNDAY, and he fixed both problems in an hour, and charged me $180 total.  Lesson learned.  NEVER, EVER go with the big guys, and go with the the little dude who has a sense of craft.  The upshot is, now I have a plumber and a drain guy who I LOVE.  Seriously, drain guy called me back yesterday afternoon just to make sure I'd found someone.  What a mesnch!

Even though we were feeling very, very, very rough, we pulled it together and went to S & P's for S's annual Polish Christmas dinner.  UNREAL.  10 people, in their apartment, served the following:

- Polish charcuterie - smoked sausages, cured meats, pickles, rye bread, and this yogurt/soft cheese spread that I'm addicted to
- fried mountain cheese on rye bread
- pickled herring on buttered rye (this pickled herring was sooooo good!  S gave me some to take home, because she's a sweetheart)
- cubes of chicken & dill aspic (this was like chicken soup, but in jellied form - cold and refreshing)
- a wild mushroom soup with sour cream and dill (the best mushroom soup I've ever had), served with little puff pastry wrapped mushroom puree bites
- perogies
- potato salad
- pork roast stuffed with prunes with mashed potatoes, and grated beets
- assorted Polish sweets served with vodka & blackcurrant syrup

And I think I'm forgetting a course.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh no you di'n't!!!  One woman!  Doing all that!  For TEN PEOPLE!!!  It was unreal to the max.

I'm still dreaming of that pickled herring (I'm eating the stuff she gave me for breakfast tomorrow) and thinking longingly of that mushroom soup.

Plus, we did a Secret Santa exchange and then people gave the Big Yam sweet presents and S & P sent us home with little bags of Polish candies.

I can't even.

The conversation was so good!  We talked about animal rights and voting with your dollar and racism and other lighter topics.  A debate about whether the majority of stars are orbited by planets (which was the Dotytron's position) resulted in us tweeting Neil deGrasse Tyson for an answer (we haven't gotten one yet).  We talked about unicorns.  It was stellar.

Again, we got home super-late (for a night out with the Big Yam) - another 1am.  But wonders of wonders - the Big Yam slept in until 8am and that extra hour made all the difference.  This afternoon we have a Christmas party at our neighbours house with the kiddies.

I also forgot to mention that on Thursday I went for the Hart House Holiday Buffet lunch with MHui and G and it was the best!!!  Just look:

I mean, REALLY.  How can you NOT want to eat there?  They also had a fire going in their giant fireplace and they were projecting snow on the walls for an extra Hogwarts-y touch.

Dr. Rei and Hanbo came by and spoiled the Big Yam rotten with a book of Aesop's Fables and a mini-Gandalf.  G got the Big Yam a cute board book about the moon and MHui got the Big Yam this adorable Chewbacca stuffy that makes Chewbacca sounds:

As an aside: nerdiest collection of presents, ever!  Love it.  

That's not even counting the train and bowling set from SMckay and this cute wooden doll that S gave to T and this cute wooden car he got last night.  It's all too much, really.

My heart is full to bursting thinking of how lucky we are to be raising a kid who is loved by our community of friends and loved ones and how lucky we are to be able to count this extended network of smart, funny, talented, kind, and diverse people as our dear friends.

IT'S THE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS, RIGHT THERE!

Hilarious: while our plumber (who is an irie dude from one of the French-speaking Caribbean islands) was working on our kitchen sink, the Big Yam, clutching Gandalf up there, went up to him and said, "Look, it's Gandalf" and our plumber was all like :|

So good!

Sunday breakfast: brisket sammies with cheddar, topped with a fried egg, and tater tots.  F**king love tater tots.

Tonight for dinner we had fusilli with Italian sausage in a rosé sauce and arugala salad.  We chased these with cookies and milk.

Fin.

Brown paper packages

...tied up with string.

For the few presents we bought this year, because I'm an obsessive freak who likes my presents to be as art-directed as other elements of my life (read: all wrapped in a uniform fashion, simply), I decided to fill my urban-crafter destiny and go with baker's twine (what took me so long?) and brown kraft paper:

Ta-da!  They look pretty hype, don't you think?  The lettering was done with one of the spoils from working at the Public Library oh so many years ago - an office self-inking stamp.  It's the kind with five lines, and a little case of teeny-tiny letters and punctuation that you push into the ridged lines to make whatever message you choose, using a pair of plastic tweezers developed for precisely that purpose.  I've had the stamp for years and years, on the assumption that such a thing was going to come in handy someday, and lo, did it ever.   Is it fussy?  Yes, but LOOK AT HOW HYPE THEY LOOK!  Just look!!!  Ugh...I couldn't even deal with how pretty the packages were.  I could have personalized each one, but since we bought so few, it's easy for me to tell which package belongs to who.

This is my new signature wrapping style.  It's pretty cost-effective too.  I almost invested in a 1000ft roll of commercial brown kraft paper before my friend G hepped me to the fact that Canada Post sells them for $3 a roll.  Perfect!  And the baker's twine, while expensive, comes in a GIANT roll.  Like, epically long.  Long enough that paying $14 for one roll in a delicious aqua is a difficult decision to make when there are so many delicious colours of baker's twine and you can't justify spending another $14 on another roll just so you have variety.

In other news...I don't have much in other news.  I am working at night on my last Christmas craft and then baking off the last of the cookies for gifting and then I am done.  DONE DONE DONE!  And even though we didn't buy many gifts this year, December STILL came and kicked our accounts in the nuts.  Having to pay $400 yesterday for the Captain's misfiring engine was a bit of a pisser, too.

But!  But I am tremendously excited that as of tomorrow afternoon, once I'm finished pigging out at the Annual Hart House Holiday Buffet Lunch (which is the closest I get to eating in the Hogwart's mess hall), I don't have to come in to work for a glorious, glorious SEVENTEEN days (including weekends).  BLISS!!!

I am so excited for this I can't even tell you.  I want to take the Big Yam to the zoo (even though I'm ethically opposed to the zoo, I feel like it's okay for the stuff I think he'd get a kick out of  - like the giant snakes and things) and to sleep in and eat lazy breakfasts and drop him off at daycare so we can watch an afternoon Oscar contender movie and see friends and hopefully meet R & R's new baby and spend QT with our respective families and eat lots of good food and see Ping and Montréal I and and and...!

Tonight for dinner we had leftover brisket paninis with horseradish mayonnaise and cheddar cheese.  Alongside leftover brussels sprouts & carrot casserole.  So yum!  I was looking forward to this alllll day:

Here are some photos of Daughter of Smoke & Bone author Laini Taylor's house in Portland:

I love it!  She's pretty "Portland"-y.  Her daughter is named Clementine and she has fluorescent pink hair. Like me, she can't resist a Shiny Brite ornament. Her home is filled with all manner of quirky cute knickknacks and tchotchkes which are set off beautifully with by the stark white walls.  Looking at how all her collections can pop against that white background is making me regret (slightly) painting the grape wall in the Lil' Ugmo.  White really does allow things to pop!  But I do love the calming effect of the purple in Lil' Ugmo...so it will stay as-is (it better! After what we paid the painter!)  I don't know that an all-white space is for me, but I do appreciate it, especially when people do it up as Liani does and use it as a backdrop for crazy, colorful and bright.  I'm not a fan of stark, minimalist, white and wood Swedish style interiors.  They're calming, but have no personality, to me.

Tomorrow I will hopefully have time to unleash a slew of pop culture reviews on you.

A demain.

Fin.