Work hard. Play hard.

(Sometimes).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The cheese plate.

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

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

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

Tripe with soft boiled egg.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fin.

Lucky Button

Feeling like a very, very lucky button this Sunday morning.  We've got a funk mix on the stereo, we had a delicious Sunday Breakkie of Dotytron buttermilk pancakes, bacon, and a mixed-berry banana smoothie and we've got a lazy day of mostly nothing ahead of us.  As far as Daylight Savings Spring Forwards go (the worst of the Daylight Savings), we're doing okay with being robbed of that extra hour so far.

This weekend has been absolutely splendid.  I met my friend S for coffee before the ROM with the Yam on Friday and we had a nice, long one-on-one chat that was absolutely delightful and heart-warming.  She is such an incredibly talented artist and she is so committed to her craft and so inspiring to be around.  Her heart is so big and talks with her always mean getting to the heart of the matter - no b.s., no boundaries.  

The ROM itself was a bit of a bust, but a learning experience nonetheless.  The Big Yam was completely enamoured with the fish tank they have, which wasn't really worth the cost of the $15 admission for me.  He's too young.  I have to remember that.  I don't usually plan high-concept outings but then I feel pressured because so many other young, urban parents do.  I gotta trust my instincts.  The ROM isn't particularly fun for young kids, either.  As far as museums go, it's not that hot.  Children's museums and the Science Centre are way better for the under-5 set.  He was just as happy to sit outside the ROM eating a hot dog watching construction across the street and then taking the subway home.  I will say though, that I feel lucky to live in downtown Toronto.  We have access to the AGO and the ROM and it doesn't take us more than half an hour by public transit to get there.  When he gets to a certain age, it's going to be so much fun raising him with a huge metropolis at his fingertips.  

Friday night I had an awesome, side-splittingly funny International Women's Day evening with SMcKay and Lolly.  We went to Pacific Mall and got frozen yogurt and then went out for a delicious Chinese food dinner and they got to experience the wonder of Asian food value-for-dollar.  I think the price of dinner blew Lolly's mind, even if she did white person out and tip an egregious 20%.  The Dotytron's Record Club went until 2am.  It's so cute.  I love the concept and I'm glad he gets to do it.  The four guys get together, listen to an album and then drink and eat nibblies and talk about the record and associated music.  It's such a great outlet for him and the boys in the Club are a good crew.  

It was the Dotytron's first time hosting, so it was B's first time at our house.  He was really impressed with our dead-end street.  In his words: "You can't put a price on that!"  I have a few friends who are making their first forays into home buying in Toronto and it makes me feel so lucky that the Dotytron saw what he did in Lil' Ugmo.  We got really, really lucky.  In the price we paid and in all the stuff we dumb-lucked into.  I didn't think a dead-end street would be so awesome, and it is.  When you have kids?  It's the best.  Our street itself is the cutest.  Our neighbours knocked on our door yesterday afternoon and asked if the Big Yam could come out and play.  That's the kind of Jane Jacobs/Sesame Street type thing that I love about small towns like where my sister lives, and I never would have imagined that we would luck into living on a street where stuff like that happens.  It makes me so happy that the Big Yam will have the opportunity to grow up in this Norman Rockwell-y type setting in a big urban centre.  Yesterday was the first real warm day we've had - the day that signals the beginning of spring.  Thinking about walks to the beach in the summer, or playing in the splash pad or the park or the outdoor swimming pool THAT'S AT THE BOTTOM OF OUR STREET makes me feel so grateful that the Dotytron convinced me that Lil' Ugmo was the house for us.  It was the most solid call he's ever made.  We decided that he can coast on that for the rest of his life, and the only thing that will get these daps taken away from him is if he makes a call that causes us to lose the house.  Pretty fair, I'd say.

Then we had a Supper Club dinner at Momofuku Daisho.  I had pre-ordered us the Bo Ssam large format meal, which serves 8-10 and costs $240.  That's the base price and then any additional drinks, food, tax, and tip are added on top of that.  Here's the menu:

The Dotytron and I shared an extra dish of the halibut cheek crudo, because I love crudo.  The crudo was sliced a little thick for me, for a fish like halibut cheeks.  It would have been better if things had been sliced thinner.  It wasn't as nice as the crudo at Porzia.  The toppings for this crudo were kind of unimaginative (caper berries, fried wonton crisps, some thinly sliced white radish) and there wasn't any lubricating element like oil, or acid to bring all the elements of the plate together.

The Bo Ssam - a 6lb slow roasted pork shoulder served with lettuce leaves, white rice, pickled cucumber, 12 oysters, and a chili sauce, some kimchi, and a ginger-scallion sauce for making rolls.

Overall, I wasn't overly impressed with Daisho.  I thought the service, for a "fine-dining" establishment was really poor.  When the Dotytron and I walked in, we were told there was a 2 hour seating limit, which hadn't been made clear to me when I made the reservation or at any of the multiple points of contact the restaurant made to confirm the reservation.  Then, even though we were clearly waiting for the rest of our party to arrive, the server was like, "Well, your bo ssam is ready, and it's at its peak of perfection now," and I'm like, well what the heck am I supposed to do about that?  That's not MY FAULT.  What kind of restaurant expects to throw out a giant hunk of meat as soon as you sit down?  It's just poor and it set a bad tone.  The Bo Ssam was delicious, I have to admit.  The fat was nicely caramelized and the meat tore off in fat-soaked chunks.  The menu at Daisho was uninspiring, overall.  If the crudo and the service was any indication, I wasn't impressed and I had a hard time, looking at the menu, thinking of other dishes I would have ordered, had the Bo Ssam left us with any room.  The room is beautiful, but I'm in no hurry to go back.

Our company was wonderful, as always.  It's a mix of high school friends and some other peeps.  I love them all.  They are all so worldly, and interesting, and passionate, and brilliant conversationalists - it's just so nice to be surrounded by your smart, funny, accomplished friends, ya know?  Half of them we went to high school with and the other half are friends of friends and we all share a love of talking around good food and drink.  My friend L works at Hot Docs (her job is incredible) and was talking about starting a Documentary Film Club.  I love all these clubs!!!  It's like all these mini-salons with people I love.  What's not to like???

We have so many disparate groups of friends that it feels like we never get to see any of them as much as we'd like.  When we do, I'm reminded of how lucky I am to be surrounded by so many brilliant, talented, bright young things that love us as much as we love them.  So lucky.

Now we have the whole day to lazily prepare for Mexico.

Happy March Break, all!

Fin.

FAIL

I didn't get the job.  Found out yesterday early afternoon.  I was pretty gutted about it and had myself a pretty unprofesh subdued, trying-not-to-but-not-very-successful cry at my desk and then a bit of a pity-party lunchtime walk with Dr. Rei.  By the time I got home, I was feeling more myself.  I don't know that it would have been a complete perfect fit.  Plus, it was an internal candidate, so my chances were slim anyway.  If anything, I'm feeling chuffed that out of 350+ candidates, I was obviously good enough to give the internal a run for their money and make the decision-making that much harder for the people hiring.

It's demoralizing because I'm all like, uhhh...do you KNOW me?  I have Red Bull running in my veins!  I've done two graduate degrees (both while working full time, one while on maternity leave!)!  You could basically hire me for a job where I have NONE of the qualifications and I would kick about 50 different kinds of a** because I'm an exceptional person.  I think that for the sector I work in, I've got too much zing.  I think people are looking for someone with less ideas and enthusiasm and someone more meek, and if that's what they want, then I can't give that to them. Plus, I love love love my current job and I find it fulfilling and it affords me a pretty exceptional work-life balance, so at the end of the day, I didn't lose.

I'm a lucky button, still.

I came home to this from the Dotytron, who went and got me treatsies from a new, local French bakery, Bonne Journée, as a pick-me-up:

See?  I'm a lucky button with a lovely boo.

Then, the Roomie and sweet baby T came over so I got to look at this little mug while I ate my dinner:

See?  I'm a lucky button with amazing friends and adorable babies in my life.

So we had a nice long visit and I got to squish T and listen to her funny little hooting laugh and gossiped with the Roomie and planned our New Year's Eve plans and then I busted out my glue gun to finish my new and improved yarn-wrapped wreath, because my long-awaited new shipment of vintage Shiny Brite ornaments arrived yesterday:

See? Could the successful candidate do THIS?!  I don't bloody well think so!

Also, we had a splendid, rib-sticking dinner of slow cooker chili with avocado, sour cream, cheese, and cornbread on the side.

This all goes to show that when life gives you lemons, you pick up your hot glue gun and take comfort in the fact that you lead a full, fulfilling, and joy-filled life filled with good food, good friends, good family, good crafting, and love and no amount of failed job interviews can take that away from you.

That wreath was the easiest by the way (so technically, I guess the successful candidate could do it, BUT DIDN'T), and it looks classy as all f**k.  I have an allergic reaction to decorations made with cheap, plasticky dollar store ball ornaments.  They just never look...Etsy enough, for lack of a better word.  Anyway, this is a simple matter of finding ornaments and a color of yarn that produce a nice color combination - I liked the modern feel of a the tweedy brown-grey with the antiqued, faded metallic undertones of the ornaments.  First, I wrapped a foam wreath form with the yarn.  Then I took my hot glue gun out for its' maiden voyage and put a dab of glue along the edge of the ornaments so that the tops were secure and they wouldn't pop off and shatter.  Then I strung them on a 12" piece of thin, flexible, low gauge wire and alternated sizes and colors until they formed a pleasing cluster.  I twisted the wire a few times to make sure the cluster would stay put and then tied the wire around the wreath and twisted it around the back to secure it and hide the sharp edges.  Then I hung it - ta-da!

I still have the red yarn-wrapped wreath form from two years ago and I might do something similar and then give it away (I'm running out of doors to place wreaths - I put my classic, felted, "Holla!" wreath on our inner door).  

And then, to complete my full descent into young, urban, crafter cliché, I've decided that all presents this year will be wrapped in brown kraft paper and classic red baker's twine.  BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY WOULD BE.  I'M A WALKING ETSY BILLBOARD.  

Tonight we had freezer curried squash soup &amp gruyere and ham paninis for dinner and listened to holiday music (Advent Activity #5).  Even though the Big Yam's preference is to listen to his Chinese School CD, which he loves more than anything.  I guess I shouldn't complain - he's picked up two of the songs and a bunch of the vocabulary, which is reinforcing my belief that early second language introduction is both feasible and practical.

Pretty terrible picture of the Boobla (who looks 10?!) going to town on his 4th bowl of squash soup.  But I love how our tree photographs against our purple wall.

Fin.

Muy Silencio...But Agradecido

It's been muy silencio around here lately.  Apologies for that.  I can't say that I've been doing anything spectacularly interesting with my time.  Just reading, some minor crafting, and mobilizing forces and schedules and energy reserves to face the coming onslaught that is: THE HOLIDAYS.  Plus, after the whirlwind that was Friendsgiving and Pie Party, I think I've needed to just zone out and decompress as much as possible.

One of my favorite things currently is coming home and making sure I get into the house quietly, so that I can watch the Dotytron and the Big Yam in the kitchen getting dinner ready.  It's just funny and cute watching them interact.  For example, from my vantage point at the front door yesterday, I saw the Big Yam standing on the stool by the sink and then he said, "Woooooowwwwww," followed almost immediately by the Dotytron going, "DON'T EAT THAT! IT'S YUCKY!" because apparently he had plucked a piece of last night's leftover turkey from the SINK DRAIN and stuck it in his mouth.  The Big Yam's drawn-out, "wooooooowwwww" is so awesome.  Mostly because it sounds vaguely sarcastic and it's always random things that prompt it.  

My other favorite part is when the Big Yam realizes I'm home and shouts, "Mama!" and then comes running out to tell me about whatever is on his mind (usually as of late, Dora-related) and gives me a big hug.  It's a cute little ritual that warms the cockles of my heart.  Last night he came running to the door and said, "Mama!" "Moon. Stars." which was pretty freakin' adorable - the Dotytron and the Big Yam had been talking about the night sky on their way into the house.

I think the heart-warmth comes from feeling so grateful that I have a partner in life, love, and parenting who shoulders an equal amount of responsibility for the big stuff.  As a younger, more biting feminist, I used to have a very black and white view of equality.  Equality meant that EVERYTHING was 50-50.  Finances?  50-50 (regardless of differentials in earnings).  Household chores?  50-50.  I'm still pretty bad about stuff but being with the Dotytron has resulted in incremental steps towards less rigid parameters.  The problem with being rigidly 50-50 about everything is that I'm a micro-manager.  So even if I expect my partner to do 50% of something, it still has to be done to my specifications.  That is like, totally obnoxious.  I can admit it.  Having the Big Yam has definitely helped to relieve the micro-managing.  I had no say on what happened during Dotytron Daycare in the summer.  Sure, if I wanted the boys to get some shiz done, they had to work that into their day, but I wasn't responsible for packing the snacks or the bag or figuring out activities.  I like the freedom it gives me to be able to do book club or a movie night without having to "worry" about what the Big Yam and the Dotytron are getting up to.  Hell, more often than not, the Dotytron is a much better parent than I could ever hope to be.  

We play to our strengths.  Home renovations and dealing with contractors?  That's all me, kids.  Packing up the car?  Over here (I wouldn't have it any other way).  Imaginative, unstructured play?  Mostly the Dotytron.  Bedtime routine?  All Dotytron all the time (I come in for stories, but duck out when it's the moment of truth time).  Bath?  Mostly the Dotytron.  It's a good system.

 Tonight for dinner we had leftover borscht and proscuitto, pear, and brie panini

Last night's dinner: freezer borscht w/ dilled sour cream & calabrese & provolone panini

Tuesday night's dinner - so freakin' good.  Open-faced turkey sandwich on white bread with gravy and leftover Friendsgiving beets and brussels sprouts.  I loves me an open-faced turkey sandwich so hard.  It's a holdover from when my family used to do road trips and we'd stop at Howard Johnson's and I'd get a hot turkey sandwich and a brownie sundae.  So boss.  Nailed the gravy, too - it had a nice overtone from the white wine I used to deglaze the pan.

Mad soups and sandwiches around here lately.  Last week's curried acorn squash soup with the Dotytron's signature tuna melts.

Fin.

Lucky button

What a weekend!  It was exhausting but filled with good food, friends, fun, so ultimately, I can't complain, right?

Friday night's dinner: wieners & slow cooker baked beans!

Friday night's dessert: pumpkin pudding with sour cream topping - like a pumpkin pie without the crust.  This was a bit of a let-down.  I now know that part of the intrinsic pleasure of a pumpkin pie for Karl Lagerfeld, Esq., is the juxtaposition between flaky crust and creamy filling.

We skipped Chinese school to clean the house top to bottom and prep for Friendsgiving.  So I made us a little treat of leftover puff pastry scraps turned into nuttela-filled turnovers.  Delicious.

Friendsgiving version 2012 was a monster success.  11 adults, 2 toddlers all crammed into Lil' Ugmo for a night of 9 bottles of wine and near the end, tumblers filled with ice and rum.  It was epic!  We had 4 dips: carrot, hummous, white bean, and squash, with pita and sliced baguette.  Cheddar sage breadsticks.  Blue cheese-stuffed proscuitto wrapped prunes, baked until gooey and sizzling.  Fox's cheesy potatoes.  A carrot, cabbage slaw with sunflower seeds.  Roasted beets.  Brussels sprouts.  A fresh cranberry sauce and a cooked cranberry sauce.  I was responsible for the turkey (which turned out perfectly, might I say), and gravy and stuffing and a pumpkin cheesecake for dessert.  It was lovely.  I cooked the stuffing in a wide, shallow enamelled cast-iron casserole which meant that all the lovingly hand-torn bread pieces got all craggy and crispy.  Just take a look at that feast!  We shared stories and laughed and caught up and had intense policy discussions on participatory democracy.  It was everything I dream of in a gathering of friends.  I felt very, very lucky.

It was also good because leading up to it, the Dotytron and I hadn't been in the best of spirits.  His long-dormant Record Club (of which our Discerning Coyote friend is a member) was resurrected on Friday night featuring Nas' Illmatic.  So they drank 40s and beer and Hennessey with the end result being that the Dotytron didn't stumble home until 4am, and this is AFTER he missed our stop on the streetcar and had to be awoken like your garden-variety late night public transport drunkard.  Saturday was ROUGH, for the both of us.  I hadn't slept well.  The Dotytron's favorite glass broke.  I accidentally left a pot on with my butter-wine basting mixture while we went for a walk and we came back to a smoke-filled home with a burnt-beyond-recognition pot.  People were late for dinner.  It was tense.  But as we gathered up spent wine glasses at 1am and surveyed the scene, there was nothing in us but gratitude for our lovely circle of Supper Club friends.

Sunday morning's breakfast is a favorite of mine - leftover stuffing pan fried in little cakes topped with poach eggs.

Momma D came over and joined us for breakfast.  Of course, we followed this up with a PIE PARTY at JJ's house.  She made us empanadas (not pictured, sadly) and I made baked brie puff pastry hand pies (also not pictured), and the Discerning Coyote made us a deep-dish Chicago pie which I instantly want to go out and replicate:

And then...and then because meals at JJ & S's are nothing if not gluttonous extravaganzas...we had THREE different pies for dessert.  Chocolate cream (JJ), apple (Discerning Coyote) and sweet potato pecan (me).  Oy!   We were smart enough to split the spoils so now, in addition to a fridge stuffed to the gills with turkey stock, and turkey dinner leftovers, I also have leftover pumpkin cheesecake, 1 pumpkin pudding, and remnants from 3 pies.  Lordy.

Tonight's dinner: sunchoke soup w/ leftover breadsticks, pita, and dips.

Pumpkin cheesecake.

So, so, so good.  

As I was driving to JJ's house yesterday with the Big Yam in the back seat, we stopped at a stop light. There were no street cars in sight.

The Big Yam: "Mama?"

Me: "Yes?"

The Big Yam: "Street car.  In my head."  *taps forehead*  "In my head."

!!!!!  LOL!  So funny.  The little guy and his mind movies.

Fin.

A perfect night

Sometimes, everything comes together and you have a perfect night.


It's just shy of 9pm, so maybe some people will say it's too early to call it, but since I'm going to bed in about T-minus 10 seconds, I think it's safe to say: tonight was a perfect night.


Even though I woke up at 5:45am.  Even though I ran 5 km this morning and didn't shower and thus couldn't have looked more like hell at work if I tried.  Even though I spent all day in a "Presenting with Confidence" workshop (that was actually surprisingly good!), everything came together and it was a great evening.

We had a mezes meal picnic outside.  Hummous, olives, tzatiki, fried haloumi, tomato-cucumber-mint salad, whole wheat pitas.  


The Big Yam was being the best.  He was in one of his funny, jokey, good-natured, listening, helpful zones (all those factors coming together is rare) and we didn't have a single hiccup.  He learned a new word "lemon!" and put together a new sentence "go again!" and he was a treat and a joy to be around.  Just a good little buddy to be hanging with and I didn't notice or miss the absence of adult company.

We went to the park.  And this happened.  And I caught video footage of the Big Yam going down the big slide.  His signature move is sitting down on his bum-bum like, 5 feet away from the edge of the slide and taking 10 minutes to creep his way forward.  It's pretty cute (although frustrating for other kids waiting to get on).

And we also played this fun game with a squirt bottle where I basically sprayed water directly into his mouth and he thought it was a riot.  We came home and had bath and stories and I did his flash cards and he surprised me by shouting out almost all the numbers from 1-10 in Cantonese.  Smart little Boobla.


I've said it before and I'll say it again, sometimes I'm a lucky, lucky button.  *Knocks on a million pieces of wood*


Fin.

Ahhhhhhhh summer

Is there anything better? I'm looking at our calendar and so thrilled with upcoming events/hangs/activities that I feel like I'm going to burst into a million rainbows.

I'm full to bursting! Not much time to post much detail, but I had a lovely visit with my friend D today (where she was a trooper and drove in from Oakville to visit with me and then because the Big Yam was napping I made her help me with such fascinating, urban tasks as pumping up the tires on my Chariot) and now we're off to Markham to celebrate Poh Poh's birthday.

The Chariot is pretty slick. I am EXTREMELY grateful for my enclosed porch though...that thing is a bit of a beast. We took it for a test run to our local library and back and it's fantastic - I'm not going to say that I didn't notice the extra weight when I was going uphill, but it's a well designed, well engineered machine.

This is Tuesday night's dinner of a veggie coconut curry (I cheated and used purchased curry powder) with a billion bamboo shoots over brown rice:

This is a quinoa salad I made. It's quinoa, tossed with roasted asparagus spears cut into 1" pieces, chunks of medium-boiled egg, some avocado, and all bound together with a scallion-roasted garlic mayonnaise I whipped together with my immersion blender. I over seasoned it a bit so it was salty on its own, but then I mixed it with leftover brown rice which cut down the salinity AND made it a healthier, more complete meal. It made for perfect, make-ahead, hot weather sustenance:

Anyway, Bruce Wayne is here, I gotta flash!

Fin.

Grateful pig

Daily family/friend/weekend/life love affirmation time. Not in the tempting-the-fates way, more in the "Dear Fates, I truly savour every moment because I realize how lucky I am and how tenuous and fleeting life is and I want you to know I'm filled with gratitude for my countless wonders" way.

What a weekend! It started with dinner with the Friday Night Dinner crew (me, Dr. Rei, Hanbo, the Dotytron, Big Yam, Dr. Rei's broski) at Udupi Palace, a vegetarian Indian place in Little India, around the corner from us. Some things were really exquisite, some were not. The appetizer platter was kind of hit or miss - the breading on some of the fried things was a little dense and lacking in seasoning - I'm not sure if they purposefully underseason so that you can then adjust with the chutneys, but it wasn't all working for me.




The best stuff on the menu were the dosas. We had a potato masala dosa that was spicy and a masala paneer dosa that was INSANELY good - I could eat those all day, every day. I accidentally gave the Big Yam some of the potato dosa without tasting it and it was spicy and he started crying and I felt like a bad, bad, mum.

Then we went up to Markham and spent the weekend with the fam-bam. We ate out, hung out, went swimming with the kids (which almost broke us), and saw a movie. When you're dealing with infants, the optimal adult-to-infant swimming happiness and maneuverability ratio is 2:1. We had 3 adults, 2 babies, and 2 kids (the kids are self sufficient) and it was a slippery octopus, chlorine, showering, family-change room gong show. Not recommended...but still, Little Big Cuz and the Big Yam had so much fun. The Big Yam is a pretty joyful being - one day, I'll take a video of his little "joy-gasms" and post it on here, it makes my insides shut down. Little Big Cuz likes to make eyes at you, smile, can army crawl across the floor, and screams like a woman when his mama isn't in sight, which also makes my insides shut down, but in a slightly different way.




I have an epic video of the two cousins babbling at each other, which is pretty crazy, considering that babies don't generally recognize each other or engage with other babies. Check out the Big Yam's awesome lotus pose up there - would that we were all still so flexible.


My sister and I went to see Bridesmaids while the boys went to see The Hangover Part 2(which they said was horrible, which I don't find surprising in the least, since the original Hangover was a textbook case of a movie that stupid people who laugh at dumb trailers in theatres go buck over.) Bridesmaids was decent, although I'm not a fan of gross-out humour. I'm also not a fan of using fat people to be the vehicles of gross-out humour, which this movie is a little guilty of. I also thought the movie dragged a bit (I can't remember a recent comedy that wasn't a little uneven) and some of the relationships (particularly between best friends Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig) strained credulity. That being said, Kristen Wiig is quite funny and winning through a lot of the movie and some of her freakouts are hilarious, as was her impression of a penis in the face.

Obligatory "I love my hood!" interjection. I LOVE MY HOOD! I love it love it love it love it love it. Yesterday we spent the better part of the late afternoon outside on our neighbour's lawn and hung out with some of the bigger kids who were coming back from the splash pad at the bottom of the street. Then my neighbour's mom offered to watch the Big Yam while I got dinner on, which was so nice of her! Then we all went out back and watched the commotion with some baby raccoons in the big tree and bounced around some ideas about renting a bin with the neighbs and doing some demo work. Then after dinner we went outside again for the post-dinner hangs. I don't want anyone to move...I'm so scared that people are going to leave the street and change the dynamic. Everyone on the street refers to the Big Yam as "baby Theo" (as in: "baby Theo is here!" "look at what baby Theo is doing!") and there's always sidewalk chalk and skipping and a million shared tricycles, plastic cars, and balls going on.

This weekend wasn't without it's minor wrinkles. I picked a fight with the Dotytron that was pretty hilarious. On Saturday afternoon he went with Bruce Wayne and Uncle Rico to take Little Ze and Miss E out to see Kung Fu Panda 2. As we were tucking into bed that night, the Dotytron was exhausted but I wasn't read to sleep so I wanted to talk and he was all rolling over and giving me the back so I started making outrageous claims like, "you never spend time with me!!!" and "there are only 2 days on the weekend when you can hang out with the Big Yam, and instead you chose to see Kung Fu Panda" and all sorts of unreasonable, petulant, mis-directed (really, I was just awake and wanted to talk more and missed spending one-on-one time with him and was probably a little pms-y) immaturity. I was also beyond reason and wouldn't let it go, which culminated in this line from the Dotytron: "Look, I can't talk to you when you're like this, I'm going to sleep. It's over. It happened, okay? Kung Fu Panda happened." LOL x a billion. "Kung Fu Panda HAPPENED" should be on a flash card so that it can be thrown up in front of my face the next time (and these kinds of minor moments of insanity are inevitable) this happens.

Last night for dinner I made us a nice, simple, quick supper of roasted Ontario asparagus, topped with roasted garlic oil croutons, and poached eggs. I love this meal. I'll post a photo tomorrow.

Tonight we're having chicken donburi with miso glazed eggplant...provided of course, that I manage to get home from my work bocce tournament (you read that right) in time to actually cook something.

Fin.

Squeee!

Oh gosh, it's a gorgeous spring day out there and I've been listening to dancehall and feel virtuous because I went for a run (to mitigate the copious amounts of food I ate last night - more to be revealed!) and I am in love with the world!

Let's get rid of some outstanding business - this was Thursday night's dinner - the asparagus tartine with proscuitto, poached eggs, and shaved parm on top:

Last night we dropped off the Big Yam at Dr. Rei and Hanbo's for some babysitting while we went to see a documentary and apparently he gave them a REALLY hard time - which is making me stew with guilt. I feel so bad already imposing on people's generosity of spirit and then when he acts like a jerk it makes it even worse! I have to keep repeating my: "it takes a village" mantra silently in my head and know that when the time comes, the Dotytron and I will reciprocate like crazy (as if you could keep my grubby mitts away from baby Barksdale! I'm going to steal that baby!) The only thing that ended up calming him down was a ridiculous three person effort (Bwong showed up too!) where they ran the faucet, someone held him, and someone did a dance with his Sophie the giraffe. LOL!

We saw a documentary called Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo which is a lyrical piece in the "new filmmaking" tradition (according to the introductory preamble from one of the Hot Docs programmers) which talks about Japan's fixation with insects. Unlike us, in the Western world, who mostly fear and revile these tiny denizens of planet earth, it seems like in Japan, as part of the continuation of the Shinto and Buddhist beliefs and because of the tenuous nature of the environment (the statistic quoted in the film that Japan is 1/400th of the world's land mass but is home to 10% of the natural disasters elicited a respectful, almost awkward held breath amongst the screening audience - the film was made in 2009), that Japan has a long-held culturally ingrained relationship with nature that respects the circularity and interconnectedness of all things (the universe in an ant, bonsai, Zen gardens, etc.) so that they can see the entire beauty of the world in something minute. The problem with the film was that the "new filmmaking" apparently means the film goes on for 45 minutes longer than it has to, and that the director ignores several places where ending the film on a firm note of resolution would have been appropriate and sound. It also means that the filmmaker likes to bludgeon you over the head with images from people crossing Shibuya in Tokyo so that you know that people are like bugs!!!

This is what we ordered from Banjara Indian Cuisine in Christie Pitts. From left to right: bhendi masala (fried okra), andra chicken fry, butter chicken, dhal makhani, lamb vindaloo, and muttar paneer, onion bhajia. We also got parathas and naan and Dr. Rei made a million cups of rice and also yelled at Hanbo for rinsing the brown rice instead of white. The food here is really good - some of the dishes taste a little bit same-y (like the base for the butter chicken, muttar paneer, and dhal makhani), but the portions are pretty generous and they load it up with chunks of meat/cheese:

I made us pavlovas with rhubarb-blackberry compote for dessert:

Doesn't it look delicious? I nailed the meringue - crisp on the outside, chewy-marshmallowy-fluffy on the inside...so good.

Fin.