Charles in charge.

It's very non chill being misrepresented in a professional capacity because, in part, I suspect that guys have the tendency to focus all their aggression on a woman, even if a woman and a man are saying the EXACT SAME THING.  

Am I loud?  Yes.  Am I outspoken?  Yes.  Have I been that way since pretty much birth?  Yes.  Am I confident in my brains and my professional judgment?  Yes.  Do I feel this is something I should apologize for, or curb?  AW HELL NO.  

I've had a very trying time, the past week and a half.  But there have been bright spots.  

Like: Dr. Rei and I hatching a plan for an awesome project together, and by extension, me being continuously nourished and sustained by this beautiful, strong, funny, smart woman's counsel, commiseration, and support.

 Like: we had my mum over for a birthday celebration for her and ate Sukho Thai takeout and I presented her with a coconut bundt cake that she didn't care for.  

Like: we took the kids to the Zoo on Friday.  We had a really fun time and it was all around splendid. At the gorilla enclosure one of the male gorillas, Sadiki, was standing right at the glass and I met his eyes for a solid 30 seconds, and I don't know what happened...but I started welling up.  He just held my gaze and the meaning behind his eyes was so primordial, still, and all-knowing...it triggered the Romantic sublime in me, and I just felt overcome.  It's like that scene in Mulholland Drive where the women are are sitting in the theatre and listening to a woman singing a Spanish (?) version of Roy Orbison's "Crying" and one of the women watching just starts to cry and cry, tears spilling silently down her face.  It was such a deep moment, and after, I felt so calm, and centred.  

The other night we were watching Broad City and I had one of my mortality moments and I felt my blood pressure skyrocket and that panicky, IDON'TWANTTODIEEVER feeling in the pit of my chest, which is usually how it goes when I think about dying.  After staring into the eyes of the gorilla though, I was acutely aware that the feeling I had when he assessed my soul, were I to think about my own mortality and death (which I did, immediately thereafter - Romantic sublime again), would carry over and I would feel peace and that maybe this is what people feel like when they're about to die.  Maybe if the conditions are right, you're not filled with panic and dread, but you tap into the ancient gorilla-gaze that lies dormant in the deepest recesses of your brain and soul.

Carrying on.

Like: we went to Barque for brunch with the kids on Sunday morning and hit the Jamie Bell adventure playground to burn off some kid steam right before.  It was such a nice morning and Barque is so kid friendly.  Like, I knew they were kid friendly because we had gone there when the Big Yam was young, but kid-friendly enough to handle a table of 5 featuring three kids to two adults is like, next level kid friendly.  They have little mini packs of play-doh for each kid!    Anyway, the kid's menu had scrambled eggs or pancakes (and some other stuff that were non-options for my guys).  I ordered pancakes for the Twins, and I asked the Big Yam what he wanted.  "Scrambled eggs."  "Are you sure?  You don't usually like scrambled eggs when I make them at home."  "Scrambled eggs."  "You're sure you don't want pancakes?" "Yes, I want scrambled eggs."  

Scrambled eggs are placed in front of him.  He glances at his brothers' pancake plates and his face crumples in abject dejection and he wails, "Awww...I should've ordered pancakes!" and then he buries his face in the Dotytron's chest and cries, "Now I wish I didn't order scrambled eggs!" and maybe there's something wrong with me, but the crushing realization of his own error in judgment was very hilarious.

Like: Twin A's new deep-throated belly laugh.

Like: Twin A's singing along to his auntie's song in his little wispy voice.

Like: Twin B's standard greeting of "Hell-lo" when you enter the room.  As well as his new thing of saying, "aww" in this funny, aggressive kind of way.  And also saying, "alright" to agree with you.

Like: the Dotytron and I getting a night out for ourselves, midweek, thanks to the babysitting services of one Momma D.  We went to Imanishi Japanese Kitchen, a new Japanese izakaya-type place.  The space is really pretty - kind of serene Japanese-rustic...like we were in a tavern in the Japanese countryside.  I think it's run by ex Kinka (née Guu) dudes.  The food was good, but not great, and while I liked eating izakaya-type food in a quiet, adult space, I thought the execution at Kinka is much better - the fish carpaccios are more inventive and the flavours make more sense at Kinka.  The standout dish at Imanishi was the corn tempura, and everything else was okay, but not as satisfying as the Kinka experience.

This was grilled sting ray fin with a dipping sauce.  This dish was a flop.  It was chewy and lightly charred but the texture was off and the flavour was vaguely funky, but not in a good way.  

You can't go wrong with fried oysters.

I didn't take a picture of every dish, but we got the beef carpaccio, and the whitefish crudo, the aforementioned corn tempura (so lacy and salty and addictive), and perfectly cooked octopus balanced against the crunchy brightness of celery.  

That's a good summary of my bright spots.  Friends, family, and food.  Pretty on-brand, I'd say.

Fin.

Childhood

We've had a series of very chill weekends of late - weekends that have found us lazing on the couch after Saturday's Big Yam AM activity glut has abated, watching TV.  Some grocery shopping, some minor visiting, trips to the hill for sledding, being cozy and insular.

We watched the film Boyhood recently, which is tied with Grand Budapest Hotel for my pick as the most deserving best picture nominee.  My film friend at work, D, claims you can never take into account the project or context for a film in your assessment - he's of the opinion that each film has to be based on what you see in front of you.  I think with Boyhood, it's too difficult to disentangle the scope of the project from what you're seeing - the collapse of time, the rumination on memory, on what makes a life, the creation of something that suggests epic in the mundane banality of childhood giving way to nascent adulthood - they're all invoked and evoked in this film.  I'm not generally a huge Richard Linklater fan, but this is an extraordinary film.  To me, it veered ever-so-slightly into melodrama (more than I would have liked), but the performances are outstanding, and the ability for this shambling series of vignettes to conjure what it means to be a kid, growing up, is incredibly, powerfully, affecting.

The film is called Boyhood, but it is just as much about the growing of all the central characters - the boy, his sister, the mom, the dad.  They all grow and change and morph on screen.  The 12 years encapsulated by the film passing by in a series of discrete non-events - the way lives are lived and remembered.  Patricia Arquette's breakdown when she realizes her son is leaving home really hit home (keep in mind, the Big Yam is my child who is closest to university-age and he's four).  I just really empathized with her state of mind.  I am going to be a WRECK when they leave home.  A wreck!  You spend 20 years of your life growing this kid and then they're supposed to go off and be independent?!  AND FORGET YOU?!?  Nuh-uh.  My heart hurts just to think of it.  Like, how can I hold onto Lindsay's awe at what happens when you crack an egg, forever?

I hope this never leaves me.  Classic Quincess with his little cocked head, observing and thinking, thinking, thinking always.

Lindsay's vocabulary has skyrocketed in recent days.  He says "pancake" and "binky" and holds up his hands when he doesn't know where something is.  He likes to enter a room and say, "Hello!" and is always good for a reaction in the vein of what you saw above.  He can do a version of the "Happy Birthday" song that is pretty recognizable.  He's a treasure.  The Quincess' latest tip has been to get a lot of epic nosebleeds in the night (Must. Remember. To. Turn. On. Humidifier).  They both understand so much!  I will never get over the sight of Quincess, the little homunculus, being a tiny walker, moving from room to room with something in his hand.

He suddenly got a fever on Sunday night and was a lethargic little homunculus hot water bottle.  Sitting dazed on the Dotytron for hours.  I'd been talking to Dr. Rei who is in a measles, anti-vax spiral and I got all freaked out Monday morning and made our caregiver bring the babies back from the drop-in centre.  She said he looked "lonely in the eyes" all day, but he seemed to recover by Tuesday.  No more fever, 78% less eye-lonely.  All good signs.

We met up with some Markham crew and drove up in a bonafide snowstorm to experience our first ever escape room.  Uhhh, those things are hella fun.  Why haven't I spent my whole life doing this?  There was a lot of back and forth and we ended up in the "easiest" room.  Despite being told, repeatedly, not to over-think things, we totally overthought things and got owned.  It was a crushing defeat:

The upside was that I got to take the gang to Phoenix and spent about $40 on 4 dishes of food for me and the Dotytron and expose everyone to my favorite restaurant.

We also celebrated Ehmdo's birthday and I made this ombré cake that was quite delicious, though a touch labour intensive.

It's a dark chocolate cake with a mint buttercream frosting and a mint ganache.  I was worried it would be too minty but it was delicious.  Kind of peppy and fresh and worth the hassle in the end.  I've attached the recipe at the end of this post.  The Baked guys tend to favour a buttercream that's akin to the roux-based buttercream that I use on my classic Hershey's chocolate cake.  I actually think I prefer that cake recipe to this one.  The buttercream quality was indistinguishable from the one the Baked guys use.  I would make this again.

We watched Episode 4 with the Big Yam, with frequent pauses so he could understand and process what he was seeing.  He still calls Obi Wan "the old man" and Han Solo "the pilot" and is weirdly fixated on the death stuff, but he's working that out at the moment and there doesn't seem to be much I can do about it.  I feel like his questions about death are his own personal journey he's undertaking at the moment.

We went mid-week to see the Dotyron play in this school board wide band that mixes teachers and students.  He was playing the bass clarinet.  Guys, having instruments around is FUN.  I can't wait to get a piano!

I ate my weight's worth in the crispy browned cheese on top of my skillet lasagne

I tried my hand at making Jamaican stew oxtail.  It was lacking.  The oxtail was tender, but it wasn't as full-bodied as I would like.  Most of the recipes I encountered had you adding in some kind of all purpose "brown sauce" or "gravy" agent and that's just not my bag.  We served it with mashed squash and brown rice.

A lot of my time has been taken up with a fundraiser I'm organizing - a family dance for a local non-profit that's also kind of a city agency.  It's complicated (the City pays for 1-2 staff positions and the rest are matched by fundraising and government grants).  I'm on the revenue generation committee and I floated the idea for the dance so I'm spearheading the coordination.  Anna and Elsa from Frozen will be in attendance.  The Dotytron will be DJing.  There will be face painting and treats.  It should be a good time!  I hope it's successful.  I sent the poster I put together to a local mom who maintains a mailing list and she kind of shamed me, "Want to put together the same thing for [Big Yam's School]?  He still goes there, you know."  

I was like, B***H, please!  How dare you?  I sat on parent council for about 3 meetings before bailing.  I joined with a very specific purpose, to fundraise to improve the music programming.  Picture the most mind-numbingly circular, redundant, namby-pamby work meeting you've ever had to sit through, and then multiply it by a factor of 50.  That was it.  No decisions, no movement, a lot of talk and opinions.  A lot of older (I'm so ageist, I know), one-and-done, stay at home moms who were freaking tits about weird stuff.  Their financials were a mess.  I couldn't read the sheets at all.  It was a nightmare.  When they decided they didn't want to put money towards what I was interested in, I bailed.  But seriously?  Why do I have to defend how I choose to be philanthropic and give to the community to YOU, SAHM?  I didn't see YOU at any of the meetings?  It was infuriating.  PS, my kid was one of the top fundraisers for his grade at the Walkathon, so SHADDUP!    

It's beyond aggravating.  

Stuff like that is the reason why I don't want to go to any of your "parent socials."  In fact, I brought up that very thing at one of the parent council meetings I attended.  I was like, "um, if I'm going to the trouble of arranging babysitting, I kind of want to hang out with my own friends."  I got some nods of understanding and some people were like, "well, I consider the other parents my friends."  WHICH IS SO REVEALING, NO?!?  If all your friends are parents?  Worst!  I was asking at my book club last month, "Are you supposed to be friends with your kid's friends' parents?" and most of the women there, who are generally about 5-8 years up on me, and have kids who are older than mine, were like, "NO."  Phew!  That just seems exhausting.

Like, if it happens organically, then fine.  But also, people are jack a**es.  Like, mean and small and socially awkward.  It's the worst.  If you go to the playground for drop-off and pick-up, there are full-on cliques happening!  All the people who are kind of "like me" (the vaguely hipster, but weathered, parent) cluster together and don't make an effort to reach out beyond people "like them."  No one talks to the South Asian parents, or the parents who clearly aren't "in the know" and don't work from home, or don't have that weird fantasy work set-up that allows them to do pick up and drop off EVERY DAY and be totally integrated into their kids' lives.  My neighbour (who has become a friend), was saying that she went with her daughter to a schoolmate's birthday party and it was so cliquey and no one was talking to her, because the other parents already knew each other.

People suck.  Like seriously?  Just try to be a nice, normal human being and reach out.  If the person happens to be a recluse introvert who doesn't know how to connect, fine, at least you can say you gave it ye olde college trye.  Excluding people because you're too scared and fragile, as someone in your 30s, to be decent and expose yourself and all you want to stick with what you know, is not a good MO.  And I say this as someone, who is a champion grumbler, who probably needs a "No new friends" t-shirt the most.

Rant over (for now).  I've also been feeling particularly rant-y because of the whole vaccine thing making the rounds.  The Dotytron's cousin, who is a chiropractor (I know, I know), posted this stupid article critiquing vaccines (from a nephrologist, of course).  When I pointed out that none of the sources referenced by the author were peer reviewed, she linked to all the sources and pointed out they were reputable journals (Journal of Pediatrics, etc.)  What she didn't know (because reading comprehension, what?) was that all the peer-reviewed citations were for quotes, that Dr. Kook was REFUTING.

My manager sent me this photo recently and it basically applies to our world, all the time, but especially anti-vax moms in the western world who have no idea how to read, use a computer, do research, be critical.  Like, they're functionally illiterate and IS NO ONE WORRIED ABOUT THAT?!

This photo is my life right now.

I've also been mildly obsessing about the kerfuffle with Kanye at the Grammys.  I am a well-documented Kanye apologist.  I can't help it.  I think hating on 'Ye is hating on someone who is putting themselves out there, all the time, and that people who slag on him just can't read the nuances.  He's sublime.  He is self-aware and oblivious at the same time.  He tries so hard!  He's the person who said on network television that "George Bush doesn't care about black people."  When has Jigga or Beyoncé, with their carefully constructed personas, ever put themselves on the line and opened themselves up to potential ridicule?  Never, because they're robots.  I don't GET the Beygency.  Anyway, never forget:

The fact that anyone would bother caring about how Kanye "disrespected" Beck, or Taylor Swift is so funny to me.  It's the Grammys.  Like, you actually care?  You actually have an opinion on that other than "let's see what people are wearing and hear the performances, okay it's a bunch of people that only basic people care about, k thx bye"?  Like, we're going to talk about how "rude" it is when Kanye interrupted Swifty?  So bizarre.  I'm sorry, I didn't read the etiquette guide for appropriate behaviour at MTV VMAs.  

"No, Kanye" forever.  This is the first time they've seemed not like robots.

“Well first of all, Beck is one of the nicest guys and one of the most respected musicians in the game. So, there’s nothing that I will want to do as a fellow musician to disrespect him in any way,” Kanye said on the air. “And the weird thing is like, and I don’t feel like I have the right to take away from people’s moments, but the reality of it is — and case in point by who came up to me right afterwards — is it’s almost like a chiropractor. You know, you just get a little crook out like, ‘Wow, this crook has been there!’ It’s just a little jolt of truth, right? And then you know, everyone feels better after the fact, or everyone is way more famous after the fact, or everyone sells way more albums after the fact, and then Kanye just goes on being an a**hole to everyone.”

Realness.

Lagerfeld OUT.

Fin.



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Baked Wintermint Cake
not adapted at all from Baked Celebrations
serves 18-20 people

Classic Chocolate Cake:

3⁄4 cup dark cocoa powder

1 1⁄4 cups hot water

2⁄3 cup sour cream

2 2⁄3 cups flour, plus more for dusting

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1⁄2 teaspoon salt

3⁄4 cup unsalted butter, softened

1⁄2 cup unflavored shortening

1 1⁄2 cups sugar

1 cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed

3 large eggs, at room temperature

1 tablespoon vanilla

Peppermint Buttercream:

1 1⁄2 cups sugar

1⁄3 cup all-purpose flour

1 1 ⁄2 cups milk

1⁄3 cup heavy cream

1 1⁄2 cups unsalted butter, soft but cool, cut into small pieces

1 teaspoon peppermint extract

Mint Chocolate Ganache:

6 oz dark chocolate (60–72%), chopped coarsely

1⁄2 cup heavy cream

1⁄2 teaspoon peppermint extract

For the Classic Chocolate Cake, preheat oven to 325° degrees.

- Butter and flour 3 cake pans, line with parchment, and butter the parchment

- Mix cocoa powder, hot water, and sour cream together and set aside to cool.

- Sift flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt, and set aside.

- Beat butter and shortening together on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes.  Add sugars beat until light and fluffy, about 5 more minutes. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, and then vanilla, and beat until incorporated. Then, slowly add the dry mixture and cocoa mixture to the batter, alternating the 2 kinds and ending with dry.

- Divide batter between 3 pans and spread evenly. Bake for 35–40 minutes (rotate the pans halfway through) or until a toothpick comes out clean. Then cool for 20 minutes then invert onto a rack to cool completely.

For the Peppermint Buttercream

-  In a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan, whisk sugar and flour together. Then add milk and cream and cook over medium heat, whisking occasionally, until mixture comes to a boil and has thickened. This will take about 10–15 minutes.

- Transfer mixture to bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat on high until cool, which will take about 7–9 minutes of mixing. Tip: Speed up the process by pressing bags of frozen berries or frozen corn against the sides and bottom of the mixing bowl.

- Reduce speed to low and add butter. Mix until incorporated.

- Increase to medium-high and beat until frosting is light and fluffy, about 1–2 minutes.

- Add vanilla and peppermint extract and continue mixing until combined. If frosting is too soft, put bowl in refrigerator to chill slightly, then beat again until it is proper consistency. If frosting is too firm, set bowl over a pot of simmering water and beat with a wooden spoon until it is the proper consistency.

For the Mint Chocolate Ganache

- In a small saucepan over medium heat, bring cream just to a boil.  Turn off the heat, add the chocolate.  Let it sit for a few minutes and then whisk together until the ganache is smooth.

eat and pour over bowl of chocolate. Then, let ganache come to room temperature.

To assemble the Wintermint Cake

- place 1 cake layer on a serving platter. Use an offset spatula to spread about 1⁄4 cup of ganache on top only. Let set for 1 minute in refrigerator.  Spread approximately 11⁄4 cups of buttercream on top of ganache.

Repeat with following 2 layers.

Crumb coat cake and refrigerate briefly, for around 15 minutes.

Frost sides and top of cake with remaining buttercream.

Winding down 2014

As is seemingly the norm around here, I started drafting this post three weeks ago.  In that time, we've had Christmas, New Year, a Dotyron birthday, a Dotytron inking, a horrible anniversary marked, and now this, the Sunday afternoon before the return to thrumming, frenetic, "normal" life.  The babies are asleep, the Dotytron is napping, the Big Yam is serving out his weekend "quiet time" with relative calm in his room, playing with Lego, and I've taken a break from piecing the back of a quilt to update.

Quiet time and lazy Sundays are the stuff that parents-of-young babies dreams' are made of.  The idea that there will be a guaranteed two hour block of everyone engaged in their own individual, quiet, personal pursuits is the harbor that the Dotytron and I cling to when we're raking a tsunami of Duplo off our carpet for the 15th time in a day.  When every counter in our newly renovated kitchen is covered with last night's dinner tailings because we just weren't up for the last and final wave of cleaning after rousing ourselves from the daily 9pm "trying to find just the right thing to watch on Netflix, giving up, and passing out" ritual, and each child is clamoring for a different morning dairy product (cottage cheese! Yogurt! Smoothie!), the flashes of the Great Promise that is family weekend quiet time is what sustains us.  Two uninterrupted hours to work are a glorious, glorious thing.

Our two week holiday was as usual, about half holiday and half visits, eating, some stress, living.  We actually had our s**t pretty much together this year - so much so that I managed to bang out a quilt top and quilt back this break.  That's not nothing, folks.  We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day with Momma D and Emdo.  We spent Boxing Day weekend with my family.  We had 4 (FOUR!) meals out (!!!!) and a very low-key NYE.

I'm telling you, man, I'm not buying a single thing for my kids ever again.  Especially not around the holidays.  It's insane!  Every year, we talk about "scaling back" and every year, present opening takes a minimum of 2 hours and by the end of it we're all pasty and clammy and shell-shocked from the whole ordeal.  The Big Yam has been consistently asking for a "skeleton" from Santa since about the end of Halloween (I think he got his holidays confused) and opened his present from Santa on Christmas Day and was such a giant nerd about how into it he was:

I love my nerdbomber kid, so much.  
Post present opening remark: "How did Santa know I like dead things?"

Pre-hairtcut photo shoot for grandparental units

Quincess Leia "cheese face"

Cousins shot - Lenny doing his "cheese" face like whoa

Lenny "cheese" face in detail

Classic Quincess - such a little daydream believer

The one year anniversary of Cousin Al's death happened over the break.  This coincided with Pixar's Up joining the regular rotation in our household which means that the Dotytron and I have had to sit through the opening montage which contains all of human life and love in one dialogue-less sucker punch to the gut (and tear ducts).  Lots of crying ensues.  Lots of tears shed into the Big Yam's head as we pull him into a wriggling, confused embrace and use him as a human handkerchief to sop up our tears.  We've found some solace recently when I showed Guillermo del Toro's new animated film, The Book of Life, which talks about the tradition of the Day of the Dead in Mexico, and how those departed loved ones of ours live a glorious, joy filled existence in the Land of the Remembered, so long as you continue to honour them and keep their memory alive.  I've said it before, but it is such a beautiful way of constructing a cosmology and taking back at least a little agency from the grip of sadness in the wake of a loved one's death.  It also mitigates the anger, too - at the capriciousness of fates, at the inevitability of our own mortality.

We celebrated the Dotytron's birthday with a Louis CK style "bang bang" (two different meals at two different restaurants).  We started at Kintori Yakitori with the seafood selection sampler and the yaktori (chicken) sampler, and added some grilled tongue and chicken knee cartilage, fried.  This place is owned and operated by the Guu crew and I dunno, man, those places just SPEAK to me.  There's something about it all - the vibe, the music, the hot Japanese cooks, the fact that the Asian to non-Asian ratio is about 80:1 - these are my people.  We hopped downstairs and hit up some shio ramen at Kinton Ramen after.  Technically, I know that it's not a true "bang bang" - I don't think it would fulfill the requirements - the meals aren't different enough and aren't like, "full" meals, but I did finish my entire bowl of ramen down to the last drop, as I decided that I wanted to join the "Kinton Bowler" club which requires you to eat insane amounts of ramen to get some throwaway prizes (30 bowls gets you a Kinton towel though!)

Other things that happened:

We left the babies with our caregiver and snuck off and ate a delicious medianoche-filled lunch at La Cubana one day.  I really like that place, teensy tiny tables, delicious habanero honey fried calamari and all.  I really hope that the normalization of Cuban-American relations doesn't change the cuisine.

I went to the AGO with the Big Yam and my friend Montreal I to check the Alex Colville exhibit.  The Big Yam was not a fan.  I was, but unfortunately, if you pay for a special exhibit, bringing a person the Big Yam's age to the AGO is not your friend.  You are working at cross-purposes.  He found the exhibit "boring," the paintings with the animals "scary," and I got a lot of "I want to go home."  He wanted to run around in the Henry Moore sculpture gallery, which is what we ended up doing.  

Mid-haircut, I had to tour a new electrician around our basement wearing this amazeballs shirt that Momma D got me for Xmas.  It would be an XL on Rita McNeil.  It is hilarious.  Oh, did I mention that half my hair was straightened and clipped up (only half?!)  

I hung out with this little bobblehead.  HOW CUTE IS THIS BABY?!?  Short answer: the cutest. 

We had the Roomie, and Montreal I, and L'Armi over one night and we were all in the kitchen cleaning up from dinner when L'Armi called disinterestedly from the living room, "Uh, we have a bit of a situation here."  So we all walked over and saw that the Quincess had smeared about half a tub of Vaseline over half his face.

I made this malted buttercream chocolate stump (it's supposed to be a buche de noel turned on its' side - or what Dr. Rei calls a "log of yule") courtesy of the Baked team.  Recipe is here.  Overall, the recipe was a bit fussy and indulgent (17 eggs!) for a decent yield.  You make a genoise and spread the buttercream on and roll it up.  I don't think I would make it in that form again.  Or maybe cut the recipe in half?  I always find genoise cakes kind of dry.  

My 2014 Xmas cookie plate (left to right, top to bottom): Tartine's salted chocolate rye cookies, classic chocolate chip, chocolate oatmeal, Smitten's buckeyes, Martha Stewart's gingerbread, malted chocolate chip, maple brown sugar, gingersnaps, Dutch vanilla almond sugar cookies.  I would re-do the Tartine ones.  The buckeyes are now standard, the gingerbread recipe produces a nice, cakey, soft gingerbread so that's our go-to now as well, as are the malted milk chocolate.  My gingersnaps always over-baked and got too crisp this year.  The Dutch sugar cookies were a bit bland and disappointing (I was supposed to be able to pipe the batter but it almost made two piping bags explode!), and the maple brown sugar ones were also too sweet.  

Our New Year's eve saw me lining up at Diana's seafood on the BUSIEST SEAFOOD DAY OF THE YEAR like a total idiot for oysters.  We also made some fresh pasta and then the Dotytron went out briefly for drinks with his friends while I snuggled in with the Big Yam and contentedly fell asleep at 9pm.  Good times.

Sunday supper was a return to normalcy (read: not cookies for dinner).  A bastardized Hungarian goulash (according to Tillers, my choice to omit the caraway is sacrilege), whole wheat spaetzle, and braised cabbage.  

I'm nearly finished a quilt!  Fastest turnaround time, ever.  Details to come, but suffice to say that on Sunday night, while the Dotytron and I puzzled through the amorphous and entirely implausible motivations of the sadistic multinational corporation pulling the strings in the Maze Runner movie, I enlisted his help with basting.  Which I will never do again as almost all his pins were stuck to the carpet and we had to re-do them anyway.  But also, look at my handsome progressive partner in his Zubaz!

Fin.

My under-used skill

- I excel at making obscure, Vanity Fair-themed jokes (the magazine, not the Thackeray novel).  There isn't a Dominic Dunne or Gore Vidal bon mot I won't drop!

The Dotytron and I had an epic conversation (after our CD of tunes from Les Misérables, West Side Story, and Wicked had cycled through) on the drive down to visit my sis about our end-of-life wishes, based on me reading that Get Your Shit Together website's recommendations.  Just talking about what constitutes life, or a quality of life, or consciousness and at what point the other person should make the decision to pull the plug.  It is probably a sign of my inherent selfishness (and issues with mortality) that I insisted that if I was in a persistent vegetative state that I be kept alive for one year to see if I come out of it.  The Dotytron is way more selfless - he's concerned about the impact on his loved ones - like what a burden it would be for me to have to visit him all the time and have him be a husk of a person.  I don't know though - the Chinese way is to approach things with the sense that becoming a burden on your loved ones is kind of expected and that your loved ones should like, grovel for the opportunity to wait on you hand and foot and inconvenience themselves for you.  I'm just living up to my culture, man.  Then the Dotytron veered into "2nd partner" territory, as in: it would be weird for him and his future replacement-Lagerfeld to have me in their house, hooked up to breathing tubes and whatnot and I was all like, why would you want to be with someone who wasn't okay with you caring for the husk of your first partner?  It would be SO LIKE the Dotytron to end up with someone who was all stereotypical evil stepmother/2nd wife syndrome.

His high school girlfriend (who was in my art classes all through high school) made herself a homemade Tori Amos t-shirt that was plain white with the words, "what's so amazing about really deep thoughts?" hand written across the front.

CASE CLOSED.

Speaking of Tori Amos, I'm hosting Academic Book Club tonight.  There has been a feverish amount of tidying going on at Lil' Ugmo.  The Tori Amos segue is apt because one of the book club members, my dear strident feminist out-of-touch-with-popular-culture friend J, talked about going to a Tori Amos concert (like, recently!  In 2012!!!) at a meeting and I was all slack-jawed and gaped at her like she was a centaur or something.  Like, I can't believe reasonable people would go to a Tori Amos concert to watch an old lady with brittle hair thrash around and hump a piano bench.  But to each their own!

Anyway, I'm putting out a spread consisting of red wine, sparkling, flat, grapes, clementines, a green pea and pecorino dip, a goat's gouda (my current favorite cheese - it reminds me of the young pecorinos you get everywhere in Florence), an old Dutch beemster that is so loaded with those Parmesano Reggiano crystalline umami-bombs that I salivate just looking at it, and Le Riopelle, a triple cream cow's milk cheese from Quebec; some gluten free crackers, some bread, some baby carrots, and I made bittersweet chocolate budinos with salted caramel and chocolate crumbs, along with gluten free peanut butter cookies.  I have a hosting reputation to uphold and since this is likely the last time I'll be up for hosting book club until, say, 2020, then I want to go out in a blaze of glory.  Call me young gun.

Sometime between posting that post on Monday and today, my stomach/metabolism has waged an all-out war on my protestations of "not being that hungry."  I'm getting hunger headaches every 2 hours.  At first, I thought it was just a return-to-desk-job-after-a-weekend-in-Geneseo headache but then I realized that it went away when I ate.  So even though I don't feel hungry, my body is HUNGRY.  Like, this is me:

I can't tell you how much it amuses me endlessly the degree to which and the sincerity with which Dr. Rei can rhapsodise about this song - her "favorite duet of all time"

By the way, I countered that by saying that one of my favorite duets might be "Islands in the Stream."  

Anyway, even the "not feeling hungry" seems to be going away and today I was hungry and thirsty ALL THE TIME.  Even though I regularly drink TWO LITRES OF WATER A DAY.  But my blood volume is supposed to increase by 100%.  What the f**k are those two little twerps doing to me?  It's super-hard to satisfy hunger healthfully.  Like, I don't know how marathon runners or professional athletes do it.  My colleagues at work today were talking about cholesterol and I got all freaked out and I changed my McDonald's order from my big mac combo/filet-o-fish chaser to a filet-o-fish combo/filet-o-fish chaser.  This is after I spent about half an hour figuring out which McDonald's versus Popeye's combo variation was less likely to kill me.  I swear, I would learn advanced Excel just to build a model that would allow me to figure this kind of stuff out (2 pieces or 3? Biscuit or mashed potatoes? Eat half the biscuit and get an extra piece of chicken? Diet soda?!?!)  Maybe I should build an app for this.  I could call it "Hungry Pigs."  

This stupid multiples book I was reading (last one! I'm through!) had all these lamewad recipes at the back for "mini meatloaves" and fish burgers made with tinned salmon (barf).  My forays into Roseanne territory aside, I really do feel like the meals we cook at home are generally healthy and balanced.  Surely I'm killing it on variety alone?  I made myself an egg white and spinach and cheese omelet the other morning for breakfast.  It was very virtuous but the flavour and satisfaction derived from eating it was inversely related to the degree of virtue.  Egg whites are the grossest.  I mean, I like me a Swiss meringue buttercream and a lemon meringue pie and an île flottante, hard.  But ALL of those dishes find a way to cleverly sneak in some yolk goodness.  Last night we had clam linguine with a tonne of garlic and some baby heirloom hothouse tomatoes thrown in and it was DELICIOUS.  I love me a linguine alle vongole so hard.   

The bottom line is: don't be surprised if this little space devolves into me talking about what I want to eat (more than usual).

The Big Yam has reached a fun, fun, fun milestone: reading stories out loud to himself.  I feel like it's a G-D miracle.  He carries around The Very Hungry Caterpillar and reads out loud and counts out the foods and it's THE BEST!  He's always pestering me in the mornings and the both of us at night to read stories and trying to get more stories out of us and it's really, really hard to say no and stick to a firm bedtime.  How can I say no to a nascent love of reading?  

The Dotytron had an assignment for his grade 6 students who are on the cusp of actually getting to play their band instruments.  He's been gradually working up to it.  The lead-up assignment was for them to research their instrument and to report back on stuff like: how to make a good tone, how your mouth should be, notable players of that instrument, etc.  He had one person come back and report on the flute.  The notable flutist was...

Alyssa Milano.

LOL!!!  Kids rule.  The kid also noted that "Alyssa Milano also plays the piano."  

As an aside: I was reading up on Syria today.  Ugh.  Not good.

I'm trying not to let on too much, but having two twerps is freaking me out.  I just feel like it increases the odds that something bad is going to happen...like the very fact that there's two twerps is tempting the fates.  I know there's nothing I can do about it and it's one of those "come what may" scenarios but I just have this low-grade nervousness.  It's partially hypochondria and partially being a worrier and partially having lived with a midwife for 4 years and partially reading too much about odds and statistics and having a shaky grasp of grade 11 finite math (which I somehow got an A in by the skin of my teeth, with the weird side effect of retaining nothing from that class.  I blame this on Dr. B, our teacher, who was so old and doddering he smelled like he was rotting from the inside out).  

Fin.

  

Kung Kung

My grandfather (Kung Kung) on my mum's side had a stroke last Wednesday. Followed by two more additional smaller strokes. The past week has been a blur of juggling hospital shifts with my siblings, taking care of my Poh Poh (grandma), and making sure the babies (plural, because my sister came up immediately with her 3 in tow) were taken care of.

This hasn't been a good year for grandpas in the Dotytron-Lagerfeld family tree. The brain is a funny, miraculous thing, though. Unlike with Poppa, whose cancer had progressed to the point where you knew it was an end-of-life care scenario, Kung Kung's situation is quite different - more touch and go. The doctors want us to be prepared for the worst but at the same time, he's still here, a week later, talking, lucid, complaining, knowing who we are. He can't move the left side of his body and he can be a bit confused sometimes - asking for his mother, reaching for a glass, etc. Other times he can be really funny - he's such a wily old fox. He really wants to get out of bed and on Sunday, when I spent a chunk of time with him, he kept asking to get out of bed, "just one step!" he said. When I told him that he couldn't, because he was attached to an IV, and we'd need a nurse to put it back in, he said, "I'll put it back in!" He's also been asking for milk tea and Perrier, with ice.

I've definitely seen the dark side of socialized medicine this past week. The hospital he's at is less than stellar and there have been numerous complications - it was impossible to get a doctor to see him, he apparently had pneumonia which was undiagnosed for THREE DAYS, and on the weekends, the hospital is a ghost town - the nurses are harried and didn't notice his IV was put in incorrectly until one of my mum's friends pointed it out. It's scary.

It's going to be a long, long road. Poh Poh and Kung Kung have been married for sixty two years. She's very much lost without him, as he's been taking care of her for that long. She doesn't really know what to do without him and even now, he's still taking care of her. When I was asking my grandma whether she took her eye drops and she said yes, I was giving her a hard time because I knew she hadn't. Out of nowhere, my grandpa, who I had thought was sound asleep, chastised me, "don't be mean to Poh Poh!" in Chinese. She has been reminiscing about how they met. How he was a total shrimp - short, skinny, and a bit of a country boy. How she didn't want to give him the time of day at first, because as she says, he didn't know how to do anything. Didn't know how to dance, didn't know how to ride horses, didn't know about a lot of things she loved to do, all he knew how to do was play mah jong. She told us how he pursued her - how he would stand in front of her desk at work and make fake bird calls that would say, "want to go for a date?" "yes! yes!" She's been talking about how clever he was - joining the Hong Kong civil service at age 16 and eventually rising to the rank of Chief Registrar. There is a whole generation of people in Hong Kong who have Kung Kung's signature on their birth certificates, marriage licenses, and death certificates.

These scenarios stretch a family to its limits and there has been a fair amount of heightened tempers. It's hard on everyone. There is no real graceful way to navigate through this - I'm so glad I have my siblings. And the Dotytron, who has been so incredible, at one point he was in charge of the two babies AND Miss Ramona and Little Ze. I came home from my shift at the hospital to find that Miss Ramona had lost a tooth, they had done some finger painting (pictures for Kung Kung's room), and he had two babies peacefully lying on the play mat. It was very sweet. The other sweet thing was that Little Ze woke up the next morning when Miss Ramona was rejoicing in her Tooth Fairy money claiming that he saw the Tooth Fairy the night before. According to him, the Tooth Fairy looked like a tiny flea and it was sparkly and had a blue light (it was a boy). I don't know how I'd be able to navigate through this without my brothers and sister and the Dotytron - and friends, too (you know who you are!)

On Sunday night, the Dotytron and I were having dinner at Gal's Sushi in Markham. We had one of those ESP moments where we both wanted the same things from the giant menu without consulting each other. I was telling him about how my grandparents had a true love story and how the Dotytron and I love each other, but it's different from the way my grandparents adore each other. The Dotytron took offense to that and claimed to adore me. I was like, "no you don't!" and he said, "the only reason I don't is because you would see that as a form of weakness and take every opportunity to capitalize on it and exploit it" LOL. So true! Then he followed it up with, "of course I adore you, just look at how I've been following you around this sushi tray" and I looked at the decimated platter and realized he had been following me around it. I'd have a piece of butterfish, and then he would, etc. Pretty darned cute.

Well, you know I'm not going to talk about something being pretty darned cute without segueing into a discussion of the Boobla. He's a grinning, happy, babbling mess right now. My mum has been calling him "Dai Fan Shu" which means "big yam" after a character with that name from this classic Chinese comic called Old Master Q - about the exploits of Old Master Q (aka Lao Fu Zi). Big yam is the one on the top right in the picture below - you can see the resemblance - big goofy smile, giant head, squat little body, extensive forehead:

Here are some recent shots of my Big Yam, laughing his head off:

Looking like such a little boy in the outfit his Auntie T got him:

and finally, chilling with his his cousin:

Fin.

the secrets of the universe...

i know why babies sleep so much. it's because they know the secrets of the universe. all this knowledge we spend our whole lives forgetting, only to be reintroduced to them again when we enter the hereafter.

last night in bed, with the little chicken boo sleeping peacefully in the bassinet beside me, and the dotytron doing his night time reading, i had one of those moments where i'm suddenly made aware of my own mortality. that i will die some day. isn't it weird that you can live each day and forget the gaping, yawning, awful totality of that immutable truth? i call those moments having a "mortality thought" and because i'm a godless infidel and because i'm a lucky button and because i'm so grateful for all that i have - the thought of those end moments, of the great nothingness or unknowable-ness of what lies beyond, fills me with fear and sadness. i wonder what it's like to be faced with the knowledge of your own mortality - to stare it in the face. you hear about people who can meet it with grace and i wonder how that's possible? how do you make peace with leaving everything you know behind?

i always cry a bit. cry at the certainty, the inescapable nature of the final act, the one thing other than being born that we all share in common. for some reason, the dotytron doesn't get as perturbed as i do about it. i think it's because he's more open to the secrets of the universe, the magic of the cosmos, his unshakable faith in the great spirit in the sky/energy/lifeforce and all the rest of that stuff that i usually dismiss as juju mumbo jumbo.

the dotytron always tells me that this cycle of being born and dying is important and necessary. that we wouldn't appreciate anything if our lives weren't finite. that nothing we have would be as precious if we could live forever. and intellectually, i know it...i just can't believe it with all my heart. i'm too tied to the material world, i think.

but then, i'll watch the little chicken boo and i come a little closer to being able to give myself to the magic and mystery of the one big question. this little being started as energy - the endless division of cells produced this little guy, and he'll end his life as energy and what's more magical than that? what speaks to the beauty of creation more than that? how can you doubt the big bang when we produce big bangs each time we bring another life into this world?

i listen to his soft snuffly breathing when he's deep in sleep and i see his eyelids flutter and his little gassy mouth twitches and i feel in my bones that he's reflecting on the secrets that he was born with - the secrets of the universe, of epistemology, of ontology, of morality, ethics, and every big issue we grapple with and mess up through the course of our lives. i see billion of years of exploding stars and black holes and the deep dark nothingness before it all began in the whorls of his little perfect ear, in his little rosebud mouth, the long fingers that grip mine with an intensity and strength that belies his bandy, scrawny arms and legs, and the dark swirls of downy, tufty hair on his head. it's easier to be okay with our limited time on this earth when you see what we're capable of and what we're returning to. when i watch the little star eyes while he's sleeping and dreaming, it's easier to reconcile myself with the great beyond - to know that i'm going to be privy to the secrets of the universe again and get full access to an understanding that is only hinted at in my baby's sleeping wonder.

the universe is pretty smart stuff, guys.

back to the material, mundane world. tonight we had rosemary beef stew for dinner. with a roasted garlic mash that i threw some jersualem artichokes into. more of those cherry oatmeal walnut cookies for dessert.



fin.

i'm baaaaaaaaaaaaack

...B****ES! just kidding. i would never say that. in fact, i find it supremely annoying when young people (and it seems to be more of a girl thing) do that. the point is, rory tate (that's my computer's name) is back up and purring like a circle researcher half his age. i LOVE a good reformat! especially when your lovely partner quietly sits downstairs while you're making dinner and loads 'er up so that when you come downstairs faintly exasperated that he hasn't been helping put meal together, you immediately feel like a cad of the highest order when you're greeted with this:

seriously, how amazing is the dotytron? i'll tell you: VERY. QUITE. THE BEST (i know that doesn't properly answer the question just posed.)


first things first, i've updated past posts with the yummy tasty dinnie pics you've been missing out on. tonight we had a little passover goodness in the form of matzoh ball soup (dr. rei: never fret, m'dear, i swapped out the matzoh ball soup for something you're going to enjoy MUCH MUCH MORE for dinner tomorrow.) we all know how much i loves me some matzoh balls. ESPECIALLY green onion and dill matzoh balls, drunkenly drifting in a chicken soup lazy river dotted with carrots, fennel, onions, and celery, butting up against parsley and dill flotsam.


i also cranked out a GIANT batch of chocolate buttercream, with which to frost the 2 dozen cupcakes i made between tonight and last night. i have discovered the secret to flat topped cupcakes. however, the devil's food cake batch i made tonight has flour nuggets in it. oops! ah well, silky, smooth, moussey chocolate buttercream hides a multitude of sins.

in other news...we have a realtor (!!!!!!!!!) we have a couple of high school chums who ended up being real estate agents but we weren't really sure about working with friends. their incentive to hustle isn't as great, plus, if it doesn't work out, you're really not as comfortable saying, "sorry bubs, you're doing a bad job, we want someone else." also, one of them is based out of markham and the other one is on the west side...we wanted someone who knew the east side of town. so we're using this girl who rented the apartment upstairs for a year. it's the perfect balance. we kind of know her, so it's not like she's a stranger (we also have some leverage because the roomie is her midwife), and she knows the east side (based out of here and bought her own house on this side of town.) i'm feeling pretty optimistic. she's already found us 28 places in our price range, which is good! it's still pretty discouraging when you check house prices in waterloo and see what you can get for the same if not less than what you pay for an okay "starter home" in toronto. it's a pretty convincing argument for us to pack up and make a new life in the 'loo with our dear dear kdubsguelph crew.

tomorrow evening me, the dotytron, and the dr. rei are hitting our friend G's 30th birthday social at B & G's house. i've adopted dr. rei for the weekend while hanbo is golfing in myrtle beach. i LOVE my bff! i LOVE my new(ish) computer! i LOVE it when it smells like spring outside and you open the windows and that sweet smell comes and washes away the winter furnace funk! so despite the fact that i've had some setbacks this week the indomitable spirit of k. lagerfeld, esquire perseveres and TRIUMPHS!

i'm aided in my pursuit by the fact that the dotytron comes home and regales me with funny stories of kids being the funny little goons they are. to wit: today in the midst of his after school guitar program, a girl in his class (which is mostly made up of grade 7s and 8s) suddenly interjected with, "what do you think happens when you die?" which spurred a lively debate, where one kid's contribution was, "i see myself climbing a giant set of stairs, and 'eye of the tiger' is playing and you get to the top and then it's heaven" which is BEYOND AWESOME. i really, really, really hope this kid is right and that's what it's like because that's the best possible ushering into the great beyond that anyone could ask for.

fin.