2:1

2:1 is the current ratio of good ol' Gloria Gaynor's weight gain to the Great Gazoo's.  Gloria Gaynor gained a pound since the last check up and the Great Gazoo gained about 8 ounces.  If this continues, then the already comical differences between our non-identical identical twins are going to only get more comical.  Ultimately, they are two individuals who were born at the same time, so we treat them as such.

We saw the paediatrician for the Great Gazoo's noggin yesterday.  The news is good!  The paediatrician said that cranial synostosis is very rare, and that flattening from positioning is very, very common.  Plus, he has all the environmental factors: born premature (skull is still very soft), twin (he was head down from at least 20 weeks on), he favours looking over to one side - according to the paediatrician this all points to it being due to those conditions, as opposed to synostosis.  The usual protocol is to see if the new positioning and exercises that our physiotherapist prescribed due something over the course of the next 6 weeks and then go from there.  Professor Gantok has the opposite problem.  Whereas the Great Gazoo always looks straight up at the ceiling and needs to take the pressure off the back of his head, Professor Gantok is always tilting his head from side to side, and his head is getting elongated from front to back.  He actually needs to spend more time on the back of his head, so the paediatrician gave us an exercise for that.  It's mostly cosmetic but also, you want babies to have the full range of motion in their necks and be able to look from side to side and dead on, so that's why you adjust their positioning.

PHEW!

They are doing really, really well.  Based on the Dotytron's concerns that I'm going to be a pile of tears every day when he starts work again in September (which I think is false), we've started implementing a more "school-like" schedule.  It's working really well so far.  We used to do our patented mega-bottle at 11:30pm and then the both of us would do another bottle feed from 3-4am.  Now, we do our mega-bottle at 10pm, they get up at around 3-4am, Dotytron changes their diapers and then passes them off to me for a breastfeed, I put them down in their crib in their own room (as opposed to the bassinets in our room) and then go back to my room to sleep.  They wake up again anywhere from 7-8pm.  I actually have been waking them up closer to 7am because that works better for the morning routine so that I can get the Big Yam to daycare on time.  My daycare provider said that she could take the Big Yam for an extra day each week, so he'll be at daycare 3 days a week and home with us 2 days a week.  If by December I feel like I can take on more, then I have the option of keeping him home one extra day.

We had a lovely weekend, the highlight of which was the Dotytron and I leaving all three (!) kids with Momma D and her sister so that we could go out for my birthday dinner.  I chose Hopgood's Foodliner, and it was stellar.  The chef there formerly helmed the Hoof Café.  This restaurant is a nod to his east-coast roots, serving fine-dining updates of regional dishes with a heavy emphasis on seafood.

Sunday night is their chicken sandwich night, which is an homage to a sandwich served at a particular Halifax food truck.  The sandwiches are $5.  It is not overstating things to say that we could have made a whole meal of these, and in fact, started our meal with one and after everything else we had ordered had arrived, decided to close with one more.  It is the chickeniest sandwich I've ever had.  The server seriously undersold it.  It is a butter-fried bun, topped with chunks of juicy, moist chicken, topped with a light-but-rich chicken gravy shot through with a brunoise of chicken skin crackling, topped with a lightly dressed cole slaw.  It is the essence of chicken and deliciousness - like your favorite memories of St. Hubert's served on a bun.  I can't say enough good things about this.

The ham plate: slices of capicollo like ham, that you were supposed to wrap around the chicharron and then dip in the smoked mayo.  A fantastic bar snack.

Their hot crab dip served with toasted Triscuits.  Like the best version of that holiday buffet pot luck staple.  This dish was really good, but you lost some of the crab flavour.  The cauliflower clams casino made me nearly cry tears of joy.  Shucked clams, mixed with cauliflower puree and Comte cheese, topped with parmesan panko and broiled, served with pickle cauliflower.  So freakin' good.

Crispy sweetbreads served with an heirloom potato salad and a tangle of shredded radish.  Perfectly cooked sweetbreads, with a proper crunchy outside giving way to an al dente interior.  

Sea bream and sour plum crudo.  This dish was so-so.  It was served with olive oil and sedum.  The sedum had a flavour akin to watermelon rind but I think the dish was overwhelmed with the olive oil - you lost the flavour of the fish and the sour plum acidity was missing entirely.

We also started our meal with their house pickles (asparagus served in a little mason jar - a savvy use of asparagus ends) and ended with their crispy toffee - which is a bar of homemade toffee enrobed in chocolate - the toffee is like a cross between a Crunchie bar and regular toffee - very buttery but light.

I would definitely go back.  The entire meal with tax and tip including one (overpriced) hibiscus soda and two beers for the Dotytron was about $170.  Very nice for a good dinner out.  The Dotytron knew nothing about the restaurant and was pleasantly surprised by the experience.  The food was spectacular and the setting is low-key - it has a neighbourhood feel.  I like that they're doing something a little different from the norm.  I don't mind paying for that, but will refuse to pay for your standard "fine dining" type food.  The restaurant landscape has changed so much in the past 10 years.  Those bastions of fine dining are becoming dinosaurs - you have talented young chefs churning out food that's of the same quality, but a lot less stuffy and for less money.  It's fantastic.

Other things that are fantastic:

Post feed gassy, goofy smiles from milk drunk Prof. Gantok

Onesies and knee socks

Our friend from Montréal is visiting this week so we're seeing lots of her and the Roomie.  Last week we had an awesome instalment in what is becoming a nice tradition - movie night with Lolly and SMckay complete with themed food.  

We also checked out this new park on the east side - the Corktown Commons.  It's amazing.  Designed as flood protection from the Don at the base of a number of condo projects - it's got a wide grassy amphitheatre area, a timed/triggered modern splash pad with that rubbery footing underneath, a playground, a beautiful covered area, concrete picnic tables, a view of the Toronto skyline.  It is clean and patrolled by security.  It made me get all PLUR-tastic about Toronto:

and we also took the Big Yam to the Beach on Saturday, just us and him, which also made me dissolve into rapturous love for this city:

I mean, COME ON.  A five minute bike ride from our home is this?!  What's not to love?

I met Dr. Rei for lunch last week and she took me to the Kathi Roll Express, by our respective workplaces.  It was so good!  I got a lamb seekh kathi roll - which is a paratha, topped with an egg, wrapped around a kebab and served with that mint-coriander chutney that Indian people eat.  So tasty.  I instantly wanted about 10 more and wanted to try them all:

I also bought myself a long-coveted pair of Hunter boots - matte black (would have preferred glossy, but oh well) that ended up costing me only $18 through a combination of long-held gift cards and signing up for an HBC card that I'll never use but that saved me 15%.  HUZZAH!  Super-pumped to find Hunter's that have an adjustable back to accommodate the world's largest calves.  I could squeeze into the regular Hunter's but wouldn't have been able to wear them over jeans or pants.  I kind of want it to rain just so I can test them out.  

You know, I fake-complain about having three kids under three but based on this past week alone - I'm feeling like a pretty big lucky button.  I can't believe all the things I've gotten to do, without feeling like I've sacrificed the ability to enjoy my city and be out and eat out and try new restaurants and visit with friends.  I feel profoundly grateful.

From the dinner diaries:

Our friends H & A brought us the BEST pierogi I've ever tasted from Cleveland - which is a hotbed of Eastern European cuisine.  We pan-fried them in butter and finished them in the oven with chunks of pan-fried kolbassa and onion.  Served with CSA green beans.

Kalbi-marinated grilled pork banh mi.  The Dotytron didn't think it tasted like banh mi but it made a good sandwich, regardless.  I served it with a green mango salad which was sooo easy and sooo good: thinly sliced green mango, cucumber, red pepper, and red onion, tossed with some lime juice and salt.  So refreshing.

Low-concept summer meal: seared scallops, corn bacon cherry tomato sauté, and beloved (only by me, the other eaters in the family are less enthused) zucchini fritters.  

I don't want to get all "end of summer" reflective, pensive right now, because we are still in it, and I want to be as in it as possible until I can't be in it any more.  I will say that I started June by going into labour and then spent three tumultuous weeks in the NICU and had no idea then that things would settle and yield a summer so rich in experiences and friends and family and love.  

Now if only I had time to see some of the new movies I want to see so desperately: Elysium, The Spectacular Now, Fruitvale Station.

!!!!! 

This movie is MADE FOR ME!  

Back later with a post documenting books read, and parenting a toddler-in-transition lessons learned.

Fin.

Hackz0red!

So the Dotytron's credit card got hackz0red.  I manage all our finances because I'm a type A micro-managing budgeting psycho, so I was paying the bills and noticed this weird PayPal charge on his credit card.  And of COURSE I wigged out like the controlling freakazoid I am and was all like, "ummmm...what are you buying on PayPal that's not a play kitchen or clothes for the Big Yam (read: "antique milk glass plates and cutesy stuff on Etsy for me)?!?"  Then we had a message from TD Loss Prevention on home line.  So I had him call loss prevention and they're like, "this charge was made by Karl Lagerfeld on PayPal" which is weird, because his credit card isn't linked on my PayPal account and the charges weren't showing up on EITHER of our PayPal accounts.  It was annoying because the credit card company wasn't willing to refund the money and wanted us to do it on the PayPal side of things (which is stupid, since their loss prevention program was already on the case!)  So I call PayPal and talk to their fraud department and the dude is all like, "Ms. Lagerfeld, do you have a 932 area code?" Me: "no."  Then, "Ms. Lagerfeld, do you have an aol account?"  Me: "Uh...no.  Does ANYONE have an aol account any more?"  So they're going to reverse the charges.  But this is crazy for a few reasons:


1) the sophistication of the scam.  A charge made on the Dotytron's card, with MY name authorizing it.  How did that happen?
2) how insulted I was that someone thought I would have an aol email account.  What is this? 1994?  
3) this is probably an indication that I should be more circumspect about shredding stuff.  I'm always like, "oh, this credit card statement?  Booooring!  Into the recycling with you, friend!"  


In unrelated news, Purple Rain came on the radio the other day.  

My favorite part starts at the 3:30 minute mark, basically when the guitar solo kicks in and the whole tune gets launched into the slow-jam anthem stratosphere.  Singing this song and reflecting on how that anthemic-guitar-solo-accompanied-by-Prince-falsetto-hoo-hooing made me feel got me thinking about how there aren't a lot of hands-in-the-air, rock anthem slow jams.  Like, there are slow jams, but anthemic, heart-pumping slow jams?  Not as easy to pin down.  Can you think of any others?  November Rain kind of counts, but it still isn't as heart-poundingly uplifting.  November rain is a bit of a downer.  The Dotytron suggested Alone, by Heart, but again, a bit of a downer.  Let me know if you think of anything.

That being said, Alone ROCKS.  When Nancy drops to the floor on her knees and wails on the guitar in her sweeping, giant-collared, black trench coat with her magnificent heaving bosom?  Quit it!  If Heart comes back this summer, I'm so going.  When the (synthesized) drums kick in, I will without fail, do the most horrible, awkward, unintuitive and inaccurate air drum fill you have ever witnessed in your time on this earth.  And yet, I CAN'T STOP MYSELF.  

Sooooooooo...last night I was at the Eaton Centre before class returning some kiddie stuff for the Big Yam and I saw this tank top on a mannequin outside of Hot Topic and I kind of stopped dead in my tracks and I kinda sorta really really really want it.  I know.  GIANT NERDLINGER.  The thought processes are as follows:


a) how nerdlinger is it to get a Hunger Games tank top?
b) am I too old to be wearing this kind of tank top?  Note the fact that the model in the picture is probably like, 14 MAX
c) it IS pretty tasteful
d) am I too old to be setting foot in Hot Topic buying something for myself?


I feel like I need to be talked down from the ledge here, folks.  Help me help myself.


In other news, I'm still dutifully slogging my way through The Emperor of All Maladies which is that (award-winning!) biography of cancer but which is kind of mucho depressing and disheartening.  Then my Academic Book Club picked Joseph Boyden's Through Black Spruce as our next read and I'm already super-depressed.  I don't want arty-Canadian literature about First Nations people!  I want more Daughter of Smoke and Bone and I want it stat!  I know what I want, and I want it now!  


The Big Yam had his follow-up appointment with Sick Kids dentistry after Tooth-Gate-gate and his gums are healing well.  Now it's up to the pediatric dentist to monitor the situation and keep an eye on whether his bottom adult teeth grow properly and space themselves right.  Stay true, bottom adult teeth, stay true.


Fin.

2011 will forever go down in infamy

as the year we paid about $500 in parking/speeding/driving without valid insurance card tickets. Seriously. We can't take Captain Save-A-Ho anywhere without getting dinged with a ticket. Add to that what we had to pay because it turns out that the Dotytron GOT HIS LICENSE SUSPENDED (he fought a parking ticket, missed the court date because of what happened with his da', forget to pay the resulting fine, and BOOM! that's the recipe for getting your license suspended in case you were wondering).

This means that this week he's been getting up just after 5am to TTC it to work. We *could* risk having him drive with a suspended license, but knowing our luck, he'd get pulled over or rear-ended or we'd end up like my friend G's neighbour, who got pulled over with his kids in the car with a suspended license and they were going to call Child Services to have his kids taken away.

Just thinking about all that money is enough to make my hanging-on-to-middle-class-by-the-skin-of-my-teeth a** cry. I keep thinking about our long-delayed kitchen/bathroom renos and how all those tickets could have gotten us...I don't know...a Toto toilet or something. Thinking about kitchen/bath renos has been consuming me lately. But that's okay. When it gets done, we are going to do it RIGHT. I'm talking: Toto toilet, Bosh dishwasher, composite counters, Marimekko shower curtain - the whole lot. Maybe...maybe...a 36" stove. Neither me, nor my line of credit(s) that will be subsidizing this venture are f**king around. We're going whole hog and it's going to look gorgeous.

Which isn't to say I'm not happy now. Look at what we had for dinner on Monday night - made in our current kitchen, with the manky mirror and the holes in the ceiling that are getting cobwebbed:

That's a delicious bacon, roasted pumpkin, and swiss chard risotto with asiago cheese. Pretty darned fantastic.

Also, truth be told, getting up just after 5am doesn't make a huge difference when you're GOING TO BED AT 9PM. LOL! That's what we do now. We watch 1 episode of television (lately it's been The Walking Dead), then go upstairs, brush our teeth, go peek in on the Boobla, and then read a book/knit/massage myrrh into our nail beds (I'll leave it to you to assign the preceding activities to the fitting party) and pass out. Also, I don't know how we could push back our mornings any more. The Big Yam wakes up at 6am invariably...and in order to get out of the house by 7:45, I need that much time for feeding the two of us, cleaning the two of us, dressing the two of us, and packing the two of us up to start our days.

The new baby has started at the daycare. He's a bit of a crybaby. Like, any time he's put down he cries. Which had been making me worry about the amount of attention that the Big Yam is getting but J is fantastic. As she says, crybaby "he has to learn" and she makes a point of distributing the love. She also seems to favour the Big Yam a bit right now because he's such a good sport about, well, everything. He smiled his way through his fever and roseola and he starts every day with her so calm and good - I think she appreciates that so far, he's a chill baby. Hopefully he stays that way so she'll stay in the biz and be willing to look after any potential future chillun of ours.

Tonight we're having twice baked potatoes for dinner. I love me a baked potato. Did you guys know that a lot of people don't eat the potato skins? That's like, a travesty for me. Potato skins are SO FREAKING good, ESPECIALLY as vehicles for sour cream and butter and dill. I love the textural contrast of that papery, dry, chewy skin giving way to a flood of buttery, dairy, potentially-bacon-studded richness. Anyway, yeah, twice baked potatoes for dinner topped with Guinness infused cheddar. Nom nom.

I devoured Mindy Kaling's book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) with unseemly haste. Well, maybe it was seemly, considering I've had it pre-ordered since early last year. I found this collection of essays so entertaining. Kaling is whip-smart, self-aware, okay with being narcissistic and frivolous and aware of pop culture (which is where I find myself warming to her more than say, Tina Fey) and as a consequence, I find her very easy to relate to. She's also hilarious - her lists and the stories of her growing up with her professional parents as an androgynous, chubby child are laugh out loud funny, which is precisely what I needed after the heaviness that was Tom Perrotta. She has also perfected the modern, social-media fostered technique of giving the reader the impression that you're getting "real" access to her - which was nice, because I personally found Bossypants (Tina Fey's essay collection) too guarded. I don't know why I'm comparing the two - is it anti-feminist to compare the two? That seems to be the trend - both Tina and Mindy are like, "don't compare us just because we're two funny, Ivy-educated women who published books of humorous essays within the same year" but I'm like, "I get that, but why shouldn't I compare you? Wouldn't I compare two autobiographies of Andrew Jackson, 7th president of the United States of America if they were published with fanfare within the same calendar year?" Like, what's more sexist here? To compare, or to allege that the comparison is sexist?

I dunno. All I know is that I found this book utterly charming and funny and her depictions of the strictness of 1st generation American parents resonated. Go get it!

Sigh. There's a new Oscar season ramping up and I feel like I've barely made a dent in the films I wanted to see last year. What's a girl to do? This season is pretty thin, IMO. Not too enthused. Did I also mention that we're pretty much booked up until the New Year? [deadpan] yay [/deadpan]

Fin.

unpause

easing back into the regular rhythm of life, slowly but surely.

i thought i'd resume blogging with some film reviews and do a major catch-up later this week when i've had time to sort through my thoughts and feelings a bit more to be able to do them justice.

on saturday night my family saw "dinner for schmucks" - it was TERRIBLE. long, boring, and very, very unfunny. the problem with the film (other than that it's SUPPOSED to be a comedy and isn't by a long shot) is that the farcical elements aren't really dumb ENOUGH and are anchored by this very "serious", non-farcical storyline around paul rudd's character and his gf - it turns into this increasingly implausible comedy of errors regarding their relationship, but the serious turn takes you out of the comedy, and both narratives end up suffering. unlike movies like "airplane!" or "naked gun" or "major league" which are out-and-out slapstick, stupidly funny farces, this one was always stumbling with these serious interludes and a pretty bad case of mis-casting. paul rudd wasn't allowed to be funny, and i'm pretty tired of zach galifianakis' schtick, which i don't find very amusing, generally. steve carrell's lovable idiot wasn't a fully-fleshed out character so the audience's credulity is stretched without the pay-off of the big laughs that you get in some of the other comedies mentioned above. the short of it is: DON'T GO.

the dotytron and i saw "inception" on sunday night. overall, i think the mixed reviews are deserved. people have been so hopped up in anticipation of this film, which is admittedly good, but is also standing uncontested in what has been a very lacklustre 2010 for movies so far. i think critics and audiences were really hungry for SOMETHING decent at the cineplex, and christopher nolan has that kind of "thinking man's blockbuster" appeal that provides succor to people numbed out by the summer blockbuster afterbirth that the writer's strike spawned.

this is a good movie, but not great. conceptually, it is interesting, my major complaint is that it's not interesting ENOUGH. i personally didn't find it as complicated as so many people have been claiming, it's not that crazy a mind f**k - it's basically just a few layers of the same thing. i agree with critics who found that ellen page's clunky expository dialogue to be a bit laboured and forced, she might as well have broken the fourth wall and addressed the audience directly. my principal issues with the film is the failure of the imagination - these are the most mundane, plodding "dreams" that i've ever encountered. as we left the theatre, the dotytron wondered aloud what slavoj zizek would think (he's a theorist that writes on film and does a lot with psychoanalytic stuff - his comments on "the children of men" dvd extras are quite prescient in my opinion) about "inception" and i guessed that he wouldn't have much to say at all - the subconscious is so banal, so dreary, so mechanical in "inception."

i found it a little too easy for cobb's team to plant the idea, playing on the very linear psychology of cillian murphy's character. i thought that the character named "mal" would have been a LOT more malevolent and that the big reveal of her motivations and her role in cobb's life ended up being quite reductive and unnuanced. people weren't tortured ENOUGH given the set-up of the film. when i think back to movies like "jacob's ladder" or "being john malkovich" i feel like the depiction of the subconscious there and the tricks the mind can play on you spoke more to the untold mysteries of our deepest, darkest, psychological depths. the world created by cobb and mal in their "limbo" was terrible! really? you spend a lifetime with your love in a world of your own making and what you come up with is a generic midwestern u.s. metropolis with some childhood relics thrown in?!? c'mon!

if you think back to your own dreams and how fantastical and nonsensical they can be, it makes the dreamscapes depicted by nolan to be quite utilitarian which is at odds with the way the film labours to set up this top-notch caper-y team of experts. ariadne's (again, the portentous naming of the characters belies their relatively nondescript personalities) set designs never approach the fantastical mystery hinted at with the mc escher staircase or the maze which she teases the audience with only to swap out a nondescript hotel and james bond stock alps bunker. the movie lacked an emotional depth and creativity, once you get beyond the initial concept.

i can't say that i wasn't engrossed - the film kept me captivated, i just think that nolan is ultimately more mathematical, puzzle-brain guy as opposed to creative guy - there was a lot more opportunity for dazzle in that film and it was under-realized.

we saw some abysmal trailers. the new ben affleck boston-ode "the town" was SPOILED by a trailer that gave away far, far too much. why would you do that?!? dear hollywood: GIVE THE AUDIENCE SOME CREDIT!

the new david fincher movie looks kind of boring, imo. guess who doesn't care about the rise of mark zuckerberg and the creation of facebook? THIS GUY *points thumbs at self* i'll probably see it because it's ALREADY generating oscar buzz but i don't have high hopes. the trailer gives it all away and tries to make it seem all serious-o and like, HEAVY when it's really about a bunch of privileged harvard barbershop quartet dudes (for some reason, i'm CONVINCED that all guys do in harvard is join weird barbershop quartets and do other stupidly east coast male-bonding things like that) making a website. i mean, it's cool that facebook is so widely used and whatnot and blah blah blah social networking blah blah, but like, toothbrushes and toilet paper are also equally as ubiquitous and i don't really need to see a super dramatic movie made about the inventors of those two items. also: children's choir, much?!???!!! so so so lame! pop music use of children's choirs takes all the intrinsic heart-warming qualities of children's choirs and decimates them.

this trailer is also balls. i haven't seen the original "wall street" (film club?!???!!) but this one looks awful, just awful, and so antiquated. i'm not really a fan of carey mulligan - she seems a little droopy dog - i call it over-steamed dumpling face. and the story and everything just looks so dullsville. the theatrical trailer we saw had the rolling stones' "sympathy for the devil" playing over it and that STILL wasn't enough to make you want to see it.

we're intrigued by "tron: legacy" if only because we think that seeing it in imax 3D will be like watching a really long daft punk video with excellent sound and 9 years with the dotytron has taught me nothing if not appreciating dynamic range and sound engineering as an element of the film going experience. one of the best moments in "inception" was that i could see the dotytron staying for the credits and i knew it was because he wanted to find out who had scored the film. i guess hans zimmer and he disagreed (the low brass was a bit of a decoy and kind of un-zimmer-esque, overall) but i was right! i love being right!

the next day i failed to correctly identify john coltrane in some video footage.

and so the eternal balance of life continues.


fin.

dedicated to

what a weekend - and it's only 3/4 over!

friday night AYCE meant that we basically closed the place down. it was one of those meandering conversations that resulted in a LOT of homework for everyone. my homework involved finding out what fred durst has been up to lately. as i had (correctly) claimed, he's been directing indie and not-so-indie features like "the education of charlie banks" and "the longshots."

hanbo expressed some doubts as to the racism in "avatar" - racism that i clicked on as soon as i saw the depiction of the na'vi, their idyllic lives, their pan-african/pan-"Other" accents and attire, and the same tired "noble savage" pony being tricked out in 3D gear for the next generation of colonial apologists. because i'm not as eloquent as others, here is a good essay on the topic:

on avatar, the movie

again, my principal issue is that the film doesn't treat the na'vi as anything other than a plot device to facilitate the moral awakening of the white, male protagonist. they're stereotyped, blue, set dressing objects, not subjects. heck, even in "dances with wolves" (the film with which avatar is frequently, though incorrectly, compared), the tribe in which kevin costner's character finds himself is a warring tribe - not like the na'vi and their peaceful and child-like (i would argue) naivété.

saturday morning the dotytron dumped me at a starbucks near his private lesson where i spent a leisurely hour drooling over the momofoku cookbook.

so, we have this thing called the internet now and because of it, i kind of thought i was over buying cookbooks. especially because i really think (and agree with michael ruhlman on this) that the cookbook market is way oversaturated with a lot of titles that we don't particularly need or have a use for. but this...this is a beast of a different colour. i went to momofoku noodle bar with the dottyron in the year after it first opened - the buzz was building like you wouldn't believe and it popped up on my radar and we stood in line for a transcendent bowl of ramen. it was so very of-the-moment. quick, inexpensive food served in an appropriately slightly undone-but-still urban industrial space in the east village, no reservations, top flight ingredients prepared with care. it was amazing. since that visit, chef david chang has kept up the momentum by opening more and more - momofoku ssam bar, momofoku ko, and momofoku milk bar. i think my next trip to nyc will just be spent haunting all 3 new sites. the cookbook is amazing and features a special guest segment with my beloved wylie dufresne AND a recipe for deep fried apple pie. we ALL know how much i love a deep fried apple pie and lament the loss of this fast food treasure at mcdonald's.

did you also know that THIS little gem existed? i can probably pin point my growing love for all things gastronomical with my first forays into reading with the "little house on the prairie" series. "little house in the big woods" was as much about the food as it was about little laura's trials and tribulations being the dark haired, rambunctious sister to saintly mary. this makes sense, considering pioneer times hinged on the successful preparation, storage, and preservation of food. i remember reading about the spring sugaring-off and pouring hot boiled maple syrup onto snow to make maple candy and wondering what magic that must taste like. don't even get me started on johnny cakes and hoppin' john and baked beans and all the other solid, american, homestead cooking. when i found out about this cookbook and i told my sister she was THRILLED, to say the least. this is another one i'm going to bend the "no more buying cookbooks" rule for.

after the dotytron was done teaching we packed up to head to kdubs. i was going to hang with tillers and J all day. i felt like a kid being dropped off with my godparents. they planned so many activities! i was going to be taken to check out papa lou's, i was told to bring my records in case i wanted to play around on the decks, and to bring my mat in case i wanted to go to a hot yoga class. i was also told that i was going to be taken bra shopping (more on that later). i went with tillers and J to look at bath fixtures at the BIGGEST home hardware i've ever seen in my life, idyllically named "glen briar." all while the dotytron was out and about. what was he doing in kdubs, you might ask? oh, just hanging out with tillers and J's friend C's DAD. yup, you read that right. the dotytron was driving out to kdubs to attend a luthiers meeting with a bunch of nerdlinger woodworking dads who build guitars. LOL. that's kind of the dotytron's life now - he's all about the dad hangs. when we re-met up with him after he said he was the youngest at the meeting by about 20 years. so cute. anyway, tillers and J kept me well occupied and then smckay came over and gave haircuts and C and K came over and we all went for dinner.

i ended up skipping out on a lot of the activities as there was a giant rumble in the bronx. my digestive system was all out of whack, possibly from eating a questionable burger at staff appreciation day and also because i was crampy and bloaty. not fun!

despite smckay's best attempts to steer us towards eating dinner at pizza hut (for the record, it was probably the most impassioned, sustained, and concerted campaign for pizza hut that i've witnessed yet in my 30 years on this planet), we ended up at this delightful thai/vietnamese placec where a clean, light bowl of rare beef pho and a red bean and coconut shake sorted out my tummy and settled things down.

then we went to joe for bra shopping. why was i taken bra shopping you might ask? well, apparently at the farm, during a bra-reveal (there are a LOT of women at the farm - bra reveals are kind of par for the course), it was determined that my bras were not up to snuff. this is what i've been sporting since i decided to start wearing a bra on the regular (so, for the past 2 years - i went on a 12 year hiatus between high school and starting full time work as a professional):

it's a pull-on affair. no wires, 100% cotton, and apparently the subject of much derision amongst the female contingent in the kdubsguelph crew. according to the kdubsguelph girls, that's not a bra. it's like a swimsuit or an undershirt, which has been giving me wall-eyed boobs. lol!

this is what i got:

except all in black and a nude one ($8! joe fresh holllaaaa!) so now it has like, straps, and proper cups and underwire and that weird hook-and-eye closure that's impossible to get on.

i was forced to do a before and after for the crew when we got home. the before was in my american apparel bra (wearing a shirt of course) to the tune of "girl, you'll be a woman soon" and the after was wearing my new joe bra under a shirt to "she's a lady" lol! non-stop laughs.

then smckay poosed out and left after cutting my hair (new year, new boobs, new hair, new me!) and we hung out and watched saturday night live and got the munchies. so we did this:



and that's why, this post is dedicated to smckay.

fin.

the kind of guy you marry

i was never the kind of kid to sit around dreaming of my future wedding day, the kind of guy i would end up with (other than balthazar getty - "young guns 2" say what!), or any of the other standard, young heterosexual girl fantasies (the kind that are mercilessly peddled by avaricious hollywood purveyors of heternormative heroin like "bride wars"). not me. i was too busy reading e. nesbit stories of well-behaved yet still adventuring children, making toilet paper tube crafts, and running around the yards in my little fiefdom lugging the neighbours' siamese cats hither and yon.

i was super-duper ANTI-wedding and marriage for like, forever (still am.) i didn't have a prince charming in mind or a checklist of qualities i wanted in my future life partner; no, the ever-prosaic and practical kid-version of me was all like, "you're together for as long as you're together" or "love is what's made over time" and all the rest.

yesterday, after brunch, the dotytron and i retreated to our separate lairs and worked in individual silence for 3-4 hours; me cranking out quilting blocks and he in the pursuit of cover letter eloquence and compositional glory. at around 5 in the afternoon, in the dimming light of day, i heard the door of the craft room open behind me. i turned to behold the dotytron, who without words of greeting or acknowledgement simply said, "i'm pretty sure i've got some raccoon sex happening outside if you want to come see."

i didn't know it then as a kid, but as we stood at the window to gawk like nosy tenement dwellers at the slow-moving, methodical display of woodland animal copulation, joined together by our silent, depraved titillation and profoundly immature thrill at the sight before us, as i stood there with him by my side, i realized that THIS is the kind of man you (and by "you" i mean, "i") marry. it couldn't have been any other way, really. as a child i floundered in blessed ignorance of the ringing truth: that at the end of the day, you really want to marry the kind of guy who'll alert you to raccoons f**king outside your window.

last night we ended up using our harvey's coupons for dinner. i'm all over the fast-food chain coupons that come in the mail, now. even if they do result in me sitting at the dining room table, wasting precious half hours with the flyers spread before me, contemplating the vagaries of their deals and combos and value-added whosits with talmudic intensity. there really is no way of getting the better of them. of not having your usual order attenuated by the unyielding force of their rules and bylaws. foolish, chinese me that i am, always on the hunt for a slightly better bargain or deal, i still try to pit the full might of my enculturated calculatory instincts against the outputs of countless well-compensated actuarial scientists employed by mcdonald's, taco bell, etc. in the end, i always hve to concede defeat. so, we paid a bit extra to upgrade our fries to poutine and settled for the standard original burger instead of the double.

we watched the golden globes even though the dotytron was hating every minute of it. lol! it was worth it to watch ricky gervais almost lose his s**t when he made the joke about no one loving a good drink more than mel gibson. lol!!! it was considerably less charming when mel gibson tried to act like he was in on the joke by pretending to be a stumbling, slack-faced drunk - mostly because he turned into an anti-semitic lout last time he got trashed. i also enjoyed hearing arnold schwarzenegger pronouncing "avatar" "ahvuhdarr"

look at helen mirren. just look at her. i've loved her since i saw her in "oh lucky man" for OAC writer's craft lo, 13+ years ago...



and look at this ADORABLE photo of diane kruger and joshua jackson:

the gofugyourself girls are always going on and on about how awesome they are as a couple and how adorable joshua jackson is and i agree 100%.

other random thoughts on the golden globes: christina hendricks has a mighty pair of golden globes of her own (hyuk, hyuk). RDJ stole the show with the best speech of the night. drew barrymore's breathiness seemed like a total affectation to me. i loved chloe sevigny, marion cotillard, and zoe saldana's dresses. i thought anna kendrick's dress totally washed her out. and carey mulligan is totally over-rated in my opinion and she always has a strangely mincing, tight-lipped smile that i find off-putting (also her dress was doing nothing for her.) and "nine" looks like one of the worst movies i'm ever not-going-to-see in my life.


tonight for dinner i made penne carbonara with guanciale from firenze. i also made this new salad consisting of thinly shaved fennel tossed with olive oil and salt, a layer of mixed baby greens tossed with balsamic and salt, a layer of proscuitto, and pomegranate seeds.

it still boggles my mind that there used to be a time when i didn't like fennel. it seems like a dream. i love it now.

organizing photos and putting them into albums has given me a raging headache. peace out.

fin.

no time!

i'm posting on the run...working on a tight deadline question THROUGH my lunch. i'm hungry! it's not being helped by the fact that in the lull between phone calls and searches i'm researching places to narrow down for my definitive food tour of chicago.

here's what's on the short list so far:

- chicago deep dish (duh) WITH the giant thin sausage patty
- mexican food
- alinea
- blackbird OR avec
- an italian beef sandwich (chicago's answer to a philly cheeseteak

then i'll probably supplement that with a bakery or diner or something. TUMMY GROWLING!

tonight i'm going to see "revolutionary road" with K and possibly D from work (VERY interesting combo of people! not so much K...we've hung before...the D element jazzes things up some.) i'm going armed with the harvey's gift card that one of the dotytron's students gifted him for xmas. we're going to the amc and the BEST THEATRE FOOD COURT OF LIFE of COURSE has a harvey's! i haven't had harvey's in forever. i'm practically going faint just thinking of what i'm going to order (poutine fo' sho' and some kind of beef burger.) the dotytron admonished me to save him some money on the gift card because - "it's mine! i earned it" lol!!! he's so crazy in the head sometimes.

okay...gotta flash!

fin.

literary bent

i haven't been completely swallowed up by design and finance blogs...i've been reading too - just got a little backlogged in my book reviewing.  i'm still slowly working my way through "the watchmen" - i want to be ready in time for the movie (although it looks like it's caught up in some legal wrangling between the studio that initially owned the rights and the one currently distributing the movie - super sucky...almost as sucky as the powers that be arbitrarily making us wait for "harry potter and the half blood prince")  

i finished barbara kingsolver's "animal, vegetable, miracle" AGES ago, but a search of ye olde blogge didn't uncover a review.  her command of the english language and her ability to cannily pepper her prose with evocative, apt metaphors tempers what in the wrong hands ("100-mile diet team, i'm looking at you!) would be a self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing project (her family takes a vow to only eat what they grow or can source locally for 1 full year.) it's a warm, open book suffused with maternal, farm-girl wisdom, lightened with self-awareness. there's a spattering of recipes (really homespun...i personally wouldn't try to cook anything out of the book) and guest writing from her daughter camille on the values of eating locally and mostly vegetarian (camille is like, 19 when contributes - let's just say that i thought her segments were the weakest part of the book and i could have done without, thanks.) i loved it and it definitely inspired the back-to-the-land lust that i have somewhere deep within my first generation canadian of hong kong chinese descent body to come burbling to the surface. it's a quick, satisfying read.

at my brother s-dawg's urging, i plowed through the trades of "fables" - a comic series about characters from fables and fairytales we all know and love, living in exile in a small patch of new york city, ousted from their "homeland" by a mysterious force known only as "the adversary." it took me a little while to warm up to it...the hard-boiled detective stories of the first few issues were a little uninteresting, but once the characters are established and you find out who the adversary is...things kick into high gear/epic battle between good and evil time. the cover art is breathtaking - i could stare at the covers for hours. the other art is done by a rotating stable of artists...some had styles i preferred over the others. bits of fairy tale and fable lore are woven into the narrative and informs the choices and storylines in a clever way - seamlessly bridging the old and the new. i would definitely recommend it.

last night i finished "reading" amy sedaris' "i like you: hospitality under the influence" which is by all evidence a fairly straight forward hospitality guide (replete with menus and crafts and recipes) given an amy sedaris acerbic, darkly humourous spin. i'm not sure i would buy it per se, or could recommend it...it occupies this weird space - if you're not looking for a hospitality guide, it won't be of much use to you, but also, if you're not looking for an outside-the-lines off-kilter hospitality guide (that is funny a lot of the time) it's not much use to you either. she rides the line between being utterly sincere and at the same time, completely herself (which superficially bears the veneer of irony) - so it's pretty tricky to negotiate and i'm not sure who would be the intended audience for the book. the laughs aren't sustained enough to merit purchasing a collection of recipes, and the collection of recipes isn't packaged in a way that would allow you to seriously replicate her parties (even though i'm sure she seriously replicates them herself.) an odd little thing.

here are some book-related links:

the book cover archive is exactly what it claims to be - a database of book covers, searchable by author, title, designer, etc. book cover design is a pretty awesome medium - this site is cool because it lines them all up for you so that you can see the crazy range and styles all in one place.

covers features a selection of book covers and critiques and compliments from designers...it's an interesting window into an over-looked segment of the design world.

i'm wait-listed for the fundamentals of project management class i wanted to take, but i enrolled in the other section just in case (the other section is taught by someone who DIDN'T BOTHER UPDATING THEIR INSTRUCTOR PROFILE. fail!) between all my hobbies and socializing and work and life and constant busyness - you know what's fallen by the wayside? music! i barely listen to music anymore! i'll throw on whatever's closest while i'm making dinner...but even that...my music appreciation is falling behind. the dotytron recently downloaded the best of prince, depeche mode, inxs, and tears for fears...so i've been living off that (quite comfortably, i might add) - but i have no idea what the kids are listening to.

tonight is leftover night.  i'm hoping to have the gumption and verve to walk my butt to yoga class and back so that i can indulge in gossip girl torrents and knitting in bed feeling right chuffed.

you know what else has me feeling something kind-of-but-not-really related to chuffed (except i had no part in this and therefore can't feel the sense of pride that goes along with chuffery)? these screen stills of spike jonze's "where the wild things are"



i especially love the tone of the first two shots.

fin.

1 more day!

'til christmas eve! tomorrow is a half day at work...kind of sucky, but i know we're very lucky and fortunate to get a week and a half off paid, so i'm not complaining about working a 1/2 day on christmas eve...especially since i'm not traveling anywhere far...we only have to go about two blocks over to momma and poppa d's house.

more leftovers tonight - boring! i also have to make a pound cake for my family's trifle and bake off the last batches of cookies for the xmas cookie tins, and make the dotytron's family's xmas dinner dessert - it's the caramel pecan upside down banana cake that i've made before. there's only going to be 9 of us, so one cake will still manage to feed us well with some big, fat slices (topped with a drift of whipped cream - but of course.) for xmas morning breakfast me and the dotytron are making huevos rancheros - i'm going to fry off the corn chips tomorrow so they're nice and fresh for xmas morning.

our christmas eve movie is going to be "slumdog millionaire" - i'm pumped! some of the other xmas eve movie choices i've been less than thrilled about - i think i fell asleep during "sideways" (one of the best lines from 30 rock EVER - liz lemon: "i don't see race! remember when i asked that black guy if he had seen sideways?" lol!!!), "volver" was a little too campy for me, i was only semi into "the chronicles of narnia" and its under-handed christian brainwashing, and "the golden compass" was disappointing. i really really really want to see "revolutionary road," and "the curious case of benjamin button," but they're not opening until christmas day. i wouldn't mind seeing "milk" either (franco making out with a guy! hot!) - but i've heard it's pretty hollywood and kind of pedestrian (courtesy of my film friend D at work - we agree about 90% of the time. michel gondry's oeuvre creates some hard core divisiveness, with me falling on the side of con and D falling on the side of pro.) i also really really really want to see "jcvd" and "the wrestler" although i know "the wrestler" is going to tear my heart into a million pieces - just reading the review in entertainment weekly almost broke me - the story of a decent, good man, whose glory has long passed him by, trying to eke out a living in circumstances far beneath the heights and adulation he experienced at the top of his game - TRAGIC. CUE TEARS.

funny things: last night we finally got around to eating this foie gras torchon that was gifted to us by bwong (thanks, bwong!) i warmed up my faux-poilane loaf of bread in the oven and sliced off thin slices and laid it out with the foie, some salted butter, and some fleur de sel. the dotytron was hitting the foie hard, cutting off huge chunks of it and smearing it haphazardly on his toast, so i reprimanded him with a, "DOTYTRON! it's NOT BUTTER!" followed up promptly with, "the butter on the other hand, IS BUTTER" *insert me topping my toast with 1/2 a stick of butter* lol! also, a few weeks back when we were watching "gossip girl" the dotytron unveiled this AMAZ0RZ chuck bass impression. it was hilarious - all squinty eyes and over-enunciated drawl.

"gossip girl" ended winter break on a high note - chuck and blair! chuck and blair! that show totally consumes me. i effin' love it to the stars.

edit: continued posting at 10:00pm tonight the roomie ended up being responsible for dinner. a few months back we were talking about the dotytron and how i gently hen-peck him into doing stuff and kind of run his life for him and how (roomie's opinion) he would probably cook more meals or remember to do stuff (ie. taking out the trash) more if i wasn't around to remind him all the time...basically, that he doesn't bother remembering to do this stuff because i'm so crazy i remember FOR him. the example the roomie used was how she used to cook for herself but now that she lives with us, when we go away, her cooking skills have regressed and she just orders out. so i suggested that once a month, SHE should be responsible for a meal - win-win, right? the roomie resisted MIGHTILY so now, roughly once a month or so, she pays for our takeout and calls it her "cooking." tonight she "cooked" some mamma's pizza for us. i also had wendy's for lunch with c64 (of C&C music factory fame.) my gut! my poor gut!

only 2 more sleeps til xmas!

fin.