By The Way...

It looks like we are on the tail end of another round of sickness that swept through Casa Dotytron Lagerfeld.  Two Fridays ago, I packed up the Wonder Twins for my weekly round of grocery shopping.  I pulled up in front of our vegetable/fruit store, and heard the unmistakeable sounds (followed by the unmistakeable odour) of Lindsay Lou-Lou garfing in the back seat.  In his car seat.  He had eaten cottage cheese for breakfast.  I'll leave the rest to your imagination.  After unloading the contents of his stomach, he promptly slumped over and fell asleep.

I came home, and then he proceeded to evacuate from his bottom end.  It was epic poop-splosion times at Dotytron-Lagerfeld high.  Like, diaper changes that required full body showers (him and me) and outfit changes and the whole rigmarole.  Then, while I was running Lindsay Lou-Lou through the wash for the second time, a naked Quincess, who had just emerged from the shower, was cruising around on the floor of their room, sans helmet, and decided to faceplant on the non-rug-covered portion of the floor.  This resulted in him evacuating his sinuses and a next-level bloody nose, and me frantically Googling "how to tell if baby has a broken nose."

I got everyone cleaned up, and sent the Dotytron very angsty, caps-lock heavy texts to the effect of: COME HOME NOW. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. DON'T DELAY. SEND HELP. SOS SOS SOS.  The Dotytron came home, things settled down, we went to bed.

Next day was our high school friends baby shower.  It was so nice and so much fun.  It was all people we've known since, well, high school with some newer crew in the mix.  I've been told that I tend to do a lot of nicknames for people - the Wonder Twins themselves have a rotation of 5 different nicknames on the go at any given time.  I suspect it's something from my Markham high school days.  It seems like everyone had at least a nickname or two or three.  I had a buddy who was known by his last name initials, by the nickname "C**shot Wolfie" and by the nickname "Dirty Vagina" ("Diva" for short).  We have a buddy we STILL refer to as Fox, which was the spirit animal name he was given in some weird pseudo-Wiccan ravine naming ceremony that happened in like, grade 10.  Anyway, that's all to say that when I meet someone for the first time named Brian and then promptly start to refer to him as "Bri-Bri" or "Bri-Bro," it's a cultural thing.

Now that it's been safely gifted, I can show off the quilt I've been working on for the past, oh, 10 months or so.  Once I get going on a quilt, it's not slow-going, but this one nearly did me in.  It was supposed to be an alternating yellow and white herringbone pattern (like this quilt) but of course, me being me, I made a mistake cutting out the pieces so they were all angled incorrectly and then I measured and calculated wrong so I ended up having to jerry-rig my own design.  In the end, I'm fairly happy with it.  I like the back a lot more than the front, but I need to tighten up my actual quilting skills - I had some bunching issues.  I've started work on another and am totally into quilting as my creative/crafty outlet at the moment.

Anyway, we go to the baby shower, come home, hang out with Dr. Rei and Hanbo, get completely obliterated and owned by the co-operative board game Pandemic, laugh a tonne, go to bed.  The Big Yam comes into our room to sleep.  In the middle of the night, he wakes up, and a slow but inexorable river of garf starts to come out of him.  It was the grossest.  Parenting is NOT for people who have bodily fluid issues.  I used to be one of those people.  I used to say that poop was my nemesis.  I'm not saying that now I'm so inured to poop that I'm all, "ain't no thang" about it, but I will say that situations that I had thought before having children, would have broken me, haven't.  So there's that.

The long and short of the sickness briefing is, the Dotytron was the last member of the family to get it and he's getting over it now.  As usual, I was relatively unscathed which meant that as usual, I was feeling simultaneously smug about my immune system and put-upon by the fact that ONCE AGAIN, it was up to me to hold everyone together.

On Saturday morning, apropos of nothing, while we were enjoying a breakfast of waffles and bacon, the Big Yam said casually, "By the way...how was your night out?"  It was beyond funny (though somewhat cruel, seeing as how our "night out" consisted of eating Ben & Jerry's ice cream and passing out at 9pm on the couch).  He's such a little professor sometimes.  And other times, like this evening, when we discovered him standing on his step stool, peeing from on high into the toilet, and pumping his arms to this weird affirmation: "I...am smart!  I...am smart!" (to an audience of no one - he didn't know we were watching him), he is more like a particularly boorish member of Animal House.

Last week our friend Pingy was in town, I met up with a friend from the Canoe days for lunch at a newish Cuban restaurant on Roncesvalles, I interviewed a wackload of prospective contractors, I went with my mum to another orthotics check-up for the Quincess, and my mum stayed over and helped with the kids while I went to my first annual general meeting for the not-for-profit community complex that runs one of the early year centre (in addition to seniors, teen, baby, and newcomer programming) that the Big Yam frequents.  Here's the thing about my mum: she will rarely babysit if it means that the Dotytron and I can have a night out to ourselves, or go out for dinner...but tell her that I want to join the board and want to attend an AGM and she's THERE.  As I've mentioned before, my mum is a community organizer par excellence.  She is a constant inspiration to me for her commitment to holding the government accountable for her pet projects (mostly related to hospitals and health care in Scarborough), and her commitment to getting people engaged and becoming active participants in community initiatives.

I was too late to get on the board of the community complex, but fully intend to serve a two year term the next time openings become available.  I consider this a stepping stone to my school board trustee ambitions.  I feel like Canadians are so spoiled in certain respects.  Our generous and comprehensive social programs allow people to abdicate responsibility to the state and expect the state to pick up the tab for everything.  Maybe it's all the university academics I'm around all the time, but I hear a lot of griping about how this, that, and the other thing should be better funded.  This was made all the more clear during my last Academic Book Club session, when we discussed Orange is the New Black, the memoir upon which the Netflix series is based.  The deplorable state of prisons and the lack of rehabilitation opportunities and the futility of America's war on drugs was hashed over in detail.  My point is this, though - you can't sell prison reform to people.  Given the choice between prison reform and like, health care, people are going to pick health care (and given the choice of health care or higher taxes, unfortunately most people will pick complaining about health care and lower taxes).   The simple fact of the matter is that there aren't enough funds to cover all the things that people want, and we as citizens have to step in with at best our dollars or at the very least our time, to take up that slack.  We can't just expect the state to be able to provide everything.  Because then you live in Sweden, and while I love Scandinavian design, I do not love Scandinavian racism.

We started watching the Kroll Show and are big fans.  This skit exemplifies everything wrong with Europe and North Americans who are obsessed with Scandinavian countries. They cut out one of the best lines, which is when he's like, "We like to complain about Israel and the West Bank but then also treat our Arabs terribly."  LOL!  

Probably my favorite skit - Too Much Tuna.  

La Cubana on Roncesvalles.  We had the corn fritters, served with a spicy aioli dipping sauce, some yucca fries, and because I am crazy, I got two medianoches: the "traditional" with ham, pork, and gruyere; and the guava glazed beef shortrib (in my defence, I ate half of each one and brought the rest home to the Dotytron).  If this is what Cuban food is like in Cuba, I don't know why I've been so resistant to go to an all inclusive there!  Just kidding: everything I've heard is that the food in Cuba is terrible.  But North American renditions by ex-pats?  Sign me up!  Everything here was absolutely delicious.

I wanted to take my mum to Seven Lives on our way to Quincess' doctor's appointment, but it was closed, so thanks to an Instagram tip from my Discerning Coyote friend, we hit up Pancho Y Emiliano, which occupies a second floor space on Augusta in Kensington Market, right next to La Tortilleria.  We had the baja fish tacos, which were good - battered fish served with a crunchy vegetable topping and drizzled with a spicy mayonnaise (fresh, grassy hot sauces are available at the table so you can adjust the heat level on your own).  

Chicken pibil tostada.  I love a tostada, but not the best for sharing.  I find that chicken-based tacos always taste kind of watery and same-y  This was good, but not as good as the fish taco.

The pastor tostada was TERRIBLE.  Most pastor tacos feature slightly dry pieces of pork mixed with pineapple (pastor is usually prepared like a schwarma, with a big pile of pork rotating on a spit, topped with a pineapple).  This was almost like, stewed pork, heavy on the beans and gravy, light on the meat and pineapple.  Not great.

A favorite spring dish - tempura battered haddock, artichokes, and lemons (fried lemon is SO GOOD) on top of a bed of arugula, drizzled with tartar sauce.

Crab carbonara with pappardelle.  Pappardelle has been my noodle shape of 2013/2014

I made a "broken" skillet lasagne - basically instead of layering all the elements, you make a quick sausage tomato sauce in a big skillet and stir in broken lasagne noodles and cook the noodles in the sauce.  Then I dollop on ricotta and top with mozzarella and throw it under the broiler.  I found it tasty but my mum was meh about it.  I can tell when my mum is "meh" about one of my dishes because she doesn't try to brazenly pack up all the leftovers for herself.  

Roasted asparagus, on top of scape pesto and garlic butter broiled toasts, with poached eggs and hollandaise.

More slow-cooker Asian ribs and cornbread, broccoli slaw, and steamed green beans.

A salted caramel chocolate pudding cake.  From this recipe, but simplified (I basically dumped all the cake ingredients together, instead of putting all the components in separate bowls and then combining them).  The next time, I would reduce the amount of espresso powder in the sauce - the coffee flavour overwhelmed the other ones.  This was so good I'd make it again in a heartbeat.

Last night's shrimp and grits and okra.

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Because my mum is nothing if not a raging egomaniac, she chastised me recently in email format for not mentioning that she got to meet HRH Prince Charles and whatever-her-title-is Camilla during their royal tour of Toronto.


So there, I mentioned it!  No really, it was kind of a big deal.  And mum, for the record, I brag about you all the time to my colleagues at work.  I bragged when she won a Woman of Distinction Award from the Ontario Women's Directorate, I brag that she's so active in the Scarborough community, I brag about her being a lawyer with her own practice, I brag about her being on the board of the Trillium Gift of Life board, and I did brag about her meeting Chuck and Cammy.  I WAS worried that my mum, who has a tendency to pull out the fabulous whatever the occasion (ie. wearing stiletto bandage heels and slinging a Prada bag at my baby shower, which was like, white old lady Talbot's central), was going to over-dress, but she did her research.  She says that after seeing what Camilla was wearing on the tour, she dressed in business attire.


Thank goodness!


Still waiting on photos of her shaking hands with the horse-faced duo.  What IS it about British royals that makes them look so old?  I swear, Kate looks like she's 40-something.  I don't get it.  They love their old-looking women over there.  Same thing with Adele - can someone explain to me why a GIRL of like, 24 is dolled up to look like a 35 year old matron?  It makes no sense.  To put it in perspective, Emma Stone and Adele are like, the same age.  Another observation: not to generalize (which is the internationally accepted as the words that will ALWAYS IMMEDIATELY PRECEDE A GROSS, UNFAIR, AND USUALLY RACIST GENERALIZATION), but like, why is it that whenever I see an older woman of in her 40s with dyed fuchsia hair wearing like, a sailor style dress with contrasting piping, and she opens her mouth, she's almost always a Brit?  I feel like sailor-style dresses (like the kind you'd find at that store, Fresh Collective, in Toronto) are the dresses most likely to highlight age-inappropriateness from the wearer.  Sailor dresses are only for the very very young or the very very burlesque or rockabilly (if you even allow that being burlesque and rockabilly in this post-Suicide Girls age is okay, which I DO NOT).  And yet grown women with old faces for some reason LOVE to cavort around in them and it makes me die a little inside.


People with old faces who dress too young is a major issue of mine.  I AGONIZE over the age-appropriateness of what I'm wearing.  Obviously, if you look young, then all the power to you.  That's how Zooey's stylist is getting away with it.  But!  If you have an older face, then FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, dress your age!  It's okay!  They make luscious, lovely, gorgeous frocks for all ages!  It's very easy to be a super fresh older lady in this day and age.  To my mum's credit, when she pulls out the fabulousness, she nails it.  It can be done.


Fin.

"Everyone but myself"

Blah blah blah, crazy weekend, blah blah blah. So busy! We're never going to try to head up to Markham for 7pm dinner plans again. I actually said we were going to get to R & R's house by 6:30pm. LAUGHABLE! We didn't get there until quarter after 7. It's too crazy - what with getting home, packing up the car, dealing with a hungry Big Yam who I think misses his mama and his nai nai a little too much. When we finally arrived, it was THE BEST! but I think we're going to scale back the ambitions for our Friday night socializing. Weekend was a busy blur. Visits with MHui and her delightful family, Bamiyan takeout on Friday night, Babu takeout on Saturday night (good news: we DIDN'T get Babu'd this time!), Baskin Robbins ice cream cake, swimming with the Big Yam, brunch with Nany and Momma D - it was a lot. A fun lot that still gave us time to do our house stuff like laundry and whatnot - but still it was a lot.

This is my apple pie with brown butter oat streusel. I wish the brown butter flavour had come through a bit more - I think I pulled the butter off the pan a little prematurely.

In other news - I'm not happy with my work outfit today but it's too late to change anything. I feel I look like a mom.

So last weekend for Thanksgiving I went and bought my mom about a half dozen pastries from Bonjour Brioche. A nice little, "just because" kind of present. Later I didn't see the bag, so I asked her about them. "What happened to the croissants and stuff?" My mom, "I hid them" Me: "Uhh...from who?' Her, without an iota of embarrassment: "From everyone but myself." LOL!!! That is SO my mom the way Raven Simone is SO Raven. It's textbook her. Then she started in with, "Last week, I went downstairs and there were cupcakes and then later I went and they were GONE!" Me: "Mom, I bought those for [my sister]'s birthday. The cupcakes were a birthday present for her." My mom: "That's not very nice. Buying cupcakes and not getting any for me." (Note: as far as I know, she didn't get my sister anything for her birthday.) Me: "Well, I still have some leftover birthday cake you can have if you want" (Note: the birthday cake I made for Master T's birthday lunch) Her, with a derisive face and a snicker, "I don't want that. I didn't like it."

Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to grow up with a mum who doesn't require you to prostrate yourself paying tribute to her and who is you know, like supportive and nurturing and stuff.

I guess I'll never know.

Ha! I love my mum, I do. She's the only one I got. She's just kinda cray sometimes. I kind of wonder what stories the Big Yam will tell of his cray mum when he gets old enough to realize that I'm certifiable.

Dinner tonight is an oldie but a goodie - linguine with clam sauce and a baby spinach salad.

Fin.

In which I embrace...

being a tiger mom and capitalization. Yup, 2011 is the year in which Lagerfeld embraces proper punctuation and grammar again. Or at least attempts to. We'll see how long this will last.

Much has been made in recent days of Amy Chua's memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother following a recent slate of interviews to promote the book and a polarizing excerpt, entitled, "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior" in the Wall Street Journal. I had no less than 4 different people send me the link to either the excerpt or sites referencing Chua and the fallout from her essay and book yesterday.

In short, I pretty much think Chua is bang-on. "Western" parents are waaay too lax on their kids and totally let them quit too early. It's a fundamental truth that things aren't fun until you get good at them and getting good at them entails practice, perseverance, and dedication. Whether it be music, knitting, cooking, whatever. You get good over time and it's inevitable that things are going to suck for a while. I think that Western kids are generally over-scheduled. What's the point in enrolling them in 10 billion different activities? So that they can be poor at all of them? What's the point in setting the bar low so that you can rejoice when they meet minimum expectations? I was raised in a way similar to that. My mum is notorious for offering frank (some would say, tactless and bordering on mean) criticism of my face, clothing, hair, and "thunder thighs."

My mum and Big D were both pretty strict with me, after being pretty lenient with my sister. I was discouraged from participating in extra-curricular activities (mostly because we lived far from public transportation and they didn't want to drive me) and hanging out with friends was also kind of frowned upon. Having a boyfriend made them apoplectic with worry about my virtue and my ambition. I really think they thought I was going to end up pregnant and working at a gas station with some of my less savory high school beaus. They didn't really drill me or oversee my homework the way Chua did with her kids, but failure to produce good grades would result in long, weekly, "family meetings" about how I was on a downward spiral towards welfare and they enrolled me in Kumon math.

I do think there's a happy balance, which Chua reiterates at the end of the article. In talking it over with the Dotytron yesterday, he said that he's definitely come around the Tiger way of parenting, seeing first-hand the aptitude and drive of the Asian and Southeast Asian kids he sees in the primary grades who are raised that way. He says he has a hard time applying it, but I think I'll be strict enough for the both of us. Big D drilled it into my head from a very young age that there is a right way of doing things and a wrong way (none of that namby-pamby, soft, "just give it your best shot" lowest common denominator pap for him). The Dotytron also thinks you should start off tough and then ease off once you've established the work habits and dedication and valuation of scholastic achievement when they're young. Set the foundation and then let them understand that you have faith in the foundation and trust them to have some autonomy and conduct themselves accordingly.

The thing is, this parenting style is an embodiment of the tenet of "do your best" - a tenet that so frequently gets perverted and mis-applied both in parents' expectations of their children and in the school system. A differentiated learning model at its best should be about expecting kids to do their best, but I really think all too often "do your best" becomes a cloak for the acceptance and valorization of mediocrity, which to me, is completely unacceptable. As a parent, I think you know what your kid is capable of, and accepting anything less than their best under the auspices of being "kind" is doing them a greater disservice in the long run, both individually and to their ability to participate and contribute to the greater community at large.

I mean, obviously I'm not going to force my kid to pick one of two potential instruments (if we're going stringed instrument, I would definitely prefer the cello) but I do expect my kid to apply themselves and understand that things being difficult and challenging are all building blocks to your mastery of a craft. I say this now - who knows what I'll be like or what Master T will submit to. Having said that, I do believe there is too much autonomy and agency given to the child. University is not being presented as an option in this house. Not while I'm paying the bills and not while I gave you life! (See...sounding like a Chinese mom already.)

My mum came over on Monday and helped with the boobla. It was so nice to have a visit with her. She was speaking Cantonese with him, which is something I've started doing at home. He seems to perk up a bit and really clue in when I do - maybe it's the change in the sounds he's used to hearing. My mum thinks he should learn Mandarin, but that's tough, since I don't speak Mandarin, but I guess we can learn together. The Dotytron downloaded the Rosetta Stone so that we can work on it, and one of the Tiger mom classes I'll send the boobla to is going to be Mandarin. So he'll do a summer sport, a music lesson, Mandarin and a martial art in the winter.

For dinner on Monday I made that tilapia braised with grape tomatoes and chorizo and arugala that I do all the time, served on orzo tossed with roasted garlic oil:

I also added some sliced red pepper and saffron to give it even more of a Spanish vibe. Last night I made us turkey and dumplings, with dilled cornmeal dumplings, adapted from this Gourmet recipe:

My changes include using boneless leftover Christmas turkey, using leeks instead of shallots and adding mushrooms, parsnips, celery, carrots, fresh thyme and sage to the poultry mixture. I also added chopped dill to the cornmeal dumplings. The dish was delicious.

Tonight we're having leftover freezer chili and cornbread. Because it's a snowy day I want to do some baking - I'm thinking either cookies or trying my hand at the Baked brownie recipe. The problem is, I don't have very nice chocolate with which to try it. My outing today with the Boobla is to the library and the grocery store, so we'll see if I can find some nice Ghiardelli squares or something there.

Fin.

maxing and relaxing

after the labours and non-stop work of last weekend, this weekend found us with a surprisingly light plate of house chores and "things to do." it's been lovely.

the challenges of dressing continue - although i'm still getting by with non-mat clothes. friday i buttoned myself into a shirt that has started to gape between the buttons over my widening belly and i turned to the dotytron and said, "is this appropriate for work?" to which in answer i received an appreciative nod and the approving words, "your boobs are getting bigger!" which did and didn't answer my question.

we had a professional development afternoon on friday, complete with a motivational speaker who somehow makes a living traveling the globe delivering platitudes like, "have you ever met someone who's negativity just sucks all the energy out of the room?" "did you know it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile? just think about that." and so on and so forth. i feel like i'm too much an cynical misanthrope for that to work, but i guess it must work for SOMEONE because this lady gets gigs all over.

the best part of the professional development afternoon was that we got to leave early on a friday, not before we heard a presentation from our work security detail scaring the bejeezus out of me regarding the upcoming g20 protests. i'm not really sure how it's going to affect my work or how i'm going to get IN to work. i guess i didn't think it was going to effect me much, but who knows what those loony first year university students and "anarchists" are capable of. don't get me wrong: i'm all for protesting. i'm not as much for looting and rioting and firebombing, especially from the privileged, not-so-disenfranchised elite. there are better ways of getting your point across that aren't so self-serving and self-aggrandizing. think to yourself when you're putting together your molotov cocktail: when i lob this through the window of a bank, am i really serving the southern hemisphere, or am i just stoking the amorphous fires of youth and shoring up stories with which to regale other, stupider people?

for dinner i made us steak sandwiches with the other half of the flank steak that i froze from dinner the previous week. i grilled it up and sliced it thin and piled it on a bun with arugala, tomato, chimichurri and triple cream cheese. we also had strawberry shortcakes because ontario strawberries are in season and i'm making sure to consume at least a dry quart of them a day, if i can help it.

 

 

we also rented a movie from the film buff called "tokyo decadence" which can only be described as a very racy, sexier, take on a david lynch film. it was very weird. we went in there looking for "more than a game," that documentary about the final season of the team that lebron james was on in high school, then we briefly considered a re-watching of "the fantastic mr fox" and from there, ended up lured by the salacious, titillating text on the back of the "tokyo decadence" dvd case. basically it follows around a high class prostitute as she goes on calls with some of tokyo's depraved businessmen in hotels. it's lynchian in the sense that there's a very odd tension throughout the movie and the director is clearly fixated with the idea of the filth and decrepitude underpinning modern tokyo society, all seemingly repressed and proper (similar to david lynch's fixation with the dark underbelly of america.) there's a very odd sequence at the end featuring disjointed weird people coming together to dance in a moonlit park - i didn't really know what to make of it. it featured a LOT of s&m sequences though. very strange, though not not entertaining.

saturday was delightful. a lazy breakfast consisting of toasted challah sandwiching some provolone, a fried egg, arugala, sliced tomato, and chimichurri:

 

followed by a long walk and an even longer nap. i passed out on the couch for a solid 2 hours - the kind of hazy, deep, druggy sleep that you wake from intermittently, aware that you really SHOULD wake up but unable to will yourself from the weighty torpor to summon consciousness. i slept and slept for over 2 hours and woke up feeling stupid and groggy and mildly depressed. i always find that napping too long can do that to you. i don't know why.

 

dinner was a salmon burger with more arugala and tomato and chili mayo on a bun, along with some crispy bacon. i pan-fried the patties to make it easier on myself.

so we were invited to our friend L's kegger - we kept agonizing all day over whether or not we wanted to go. it was so gloomy and drizzly and cold out that the weather was really steering us towards another night holed up in lil' ugmo. but wonder of wonders, we summoned the energy to emerge from our lair and put on our best, "so, what's your story?" faces and braved the kegger to small talk with new people. it was fun. we knew a good number of people there and we also ran into our friends S & P, who we're having dinner with tonight at B & G's house (they know the other roommate in L's house) and it was fun. i only got stuck in one boring conversation with this guy mark from vancouver who is an animator and is intensely, intensely boring. that's the worst. getting trapped at house parties in boring conversations. when you can HEAR another conversation that sounds so much more interesting and your mind is going a million miles a minute with all the funny, well-received interjections into the OTHER conversation you could be making, and instead, you have to say stuff like, "so, have you lived in vancouver all your life?" and then wait for a response you don't really give 2 s**ts about. my other problem is that i'm a stationary partier. like, i like to stay in one spot. so i'm a more likely candidate for getting trapped. the other problem is that I'M STONE SOBER. all things considered, we had a really fun time and i was proud we made it out.

this morning we took my mum for her delayed mother's day present - which was brunch at the black hoof. we shared everything: bone marrow beignets, the bone marrow proper (good god i love bone marrow), foie gras brioche french toast with strawberries and macadamia nuts, suckling pig eggs benny, and the tongue grilled cheese:

 

 

 

 

now we're off to do some more lazy day errands. hopefully i can squeeze in another nap in there, and then we're having dinner as mentioned at B & G's house (they had the foresight to buy on the east end of toronto, thank goodness) with S & P.

tomorrow is our obstetrical ultrasound. if spumante cooperates we'll be finding out the sex and if everything is growing as it should be. wish us an anatomically correct fatburger!

fin.

local kitchen & wine bar

on friday night the dotytron and i took my mum out for a birthday dinner at local kitchen and wine bar, out on queen west at roncesvalles, in parkdale.

it's a tiny, tiny little place that makes their own charcuterie and prides themselves on sourcing local ingredients, making their own pasta and cooking seasonally.

first, a look at the birthday girl, considering the menu. isn't she the cutest?

we started with the rabbit stuffed olives, which were breaded and deep fried. we all thought these were pretty meh. a decent concept, but the execution was spoiled by a too-thick breading and an unsavory temperature (by the time they made it to the table, they were lukewarm bordering on cold.)


next we split the large salumi board, which featured (from the top): berkshire pork proscuittino, soppressata, a toscano, something made with intestine and a smoked duck proscuitto, which was really really good and pleasantly smoky. the two twisty things are fennel seed crackers. our favorites were the duck proscuitto, the toscano, and the intestine thing. the salumi board came with a selection of pickled vegetables - pickled leeks, pickled squash chunks and curried pickled cauliflower.

then we split the special of veal tartar, mixed with capers and shallots and well seasoned with a raw quail egg on top. the flavours were definitely there but i was a little disappointed by the texture of the tartar - it was a little too finely ground (tasted like it was machine-ground instead of hand-chopped) - so that it was almost a paste. the seasoning was bang-on, though.

then we split a small order of the tortelli with mushrooms in a bone marrow enriched sauce. we LOVED this dish. it was delicious and the sauce was to die for - really light and brothy but punched up with chunks of melting bone marrow.

we also shared a small order of the black pepper tagliatelle with guanciale - which was very much like a carbonara. the tagliatelle was cooked perfectly, chewy and very al dente. the only problem with this dish was again, it had sat too long up in the window and there were bits of it that were literally cold to the touch.

we also split the special of the day which was seared calf's liver with kale and "patatini" which turned out to be little potato cubes, fried. the dish was very good and i preferred the way the kitchen served the liver in a thicker chunk, rather than the thin slices you get elsewhere - it's easier to serve the liver medium this way and you have less of a chance of over-cooking it. for $22 and considering the cost of the ingredients, i found the portion rather small.

the kitchen had a problem with pacing. we'd wait up to 15 minutes between the arrival of our appetizers and the poor couple sitting next to us waited almost half an hour from the time of placing their order to receive TWO salad appetizers! the service was nice but i don't think the kitchen knows how to handle the rush and the servers should be pacing things a little better. i don't like eating a cold carbonara.

for dessert we got the pistachio cannoli, which is served more like a sandwich, with two florentine-like cookies studded with pistachios sandwiching a creamy, smooth, chocolate-flecked ricotta filling. it was actually a very nice presentation and much easier than your standard cannoli, what with the frying and the shaping and whatnot.

the total bill for all that food and 2 mill streets was $140 including tip. so i thought the pricing was generally fair, except for the liver dish. it's the kind of place that fills up quickly and they don't have anywhere to seat the overflow, so we were wise to get there right when they opened at 6pm. overall, a fairly decent neighbourhood type restaurant but not one that i would necessarily travel across town for on the regular.

my sister and outlaw bro and the kids were supposed to come up to celebrate chova and my mom's birthday, but their car leaked all its coolant pretty much as they were crossing the border so it was a giant cluster f**k and they had to get the car towed back to geneseo. also, the two truck driver wouldn't take kids in the tow truck (???) so they had to get the outlaw bro's family in buffalo to drive them home. what a nuisance. i was a little weirded out by that. like, they have triple AAA and we have a CAA membership. don't they have an obligation to get you home? or at least someplace safe? what if you were LITERALLY stuck in the middle of nowhere as a family? they're going to tow the car someplace safe but leave you behind? it makes no sense!

anyway, it didn't make sense for them to come up so we called a giant audible and the rest of the family figured something out. we went for lunch at this place in markham called "chili secrets" which my mum calls the "dan dan noodle place" and which is EXTREMELY busy. it's pretty legit. they serve a combo of shanghai dimsum AND cantonese dim sum favorites and it was all really delicious. i'm not usually a fan of dan dan noodles. other places i've had them (like asian legend) serves them in a really peanut-heavy, thick, soup that i find kind of disgusting and cloying. i'm not generally a fan of peanut sauces. the one at chili secrets was THE BOMB. so spicy! ramen-type noodles with a subtle dry spice (the dotytron thought it was similar to the musky notes of oregano) in a chili-kicked soup that was positively incendiary. my mum said it's classic sichuan style. it was freakin' amazing.

they also serve other dim sum that you don't usually get like chiu chow style dumplings.

most importantly (for me) is that they served STEAMED GINGER MILK PUDDING for dessert. sweet bliss! i love steamed ginger milk pudding. it's like the most comforting, gentle, pablum you could ever ingest.

after dim sum, we dropped my mum off at home, which left me, the dotytron, s-dawg and chova with nothing to do. so WE WENT TO PLAY LASER TAG. which i haven't done in oh, maybe 16 years or so. IT WAS THE BEST! lol! it was so much fun...chova was "the don," s-dawg was "hawkeye" (because they wouldn't let him be "bullseye" because of the violent connotation), the dotytron was "swarly" (a "how i met your mother" reference) and i was "young jeezy." we got separated from chova and s-dawg and the dotytron and i were being stalked by a 10 year old who was getting all up in our grills and being super obnoxious. he basically followed us and shot us a zillion times and we were idiots and didn't stand our ground but ran like little pansies. it was kind of embarrassing. but now we have our strategy in place. plus, chova and s-dawg apparently found the most mint location so next time, we know where to go. laser tag is seriously the best. s-dawg was super-pissed because it used to be that when you shot people on the shoulder, you would get more points than hitting them straight on (smaller target, harder to aim, etc.) when we were poring over our stats, we discovered that all the shots are weighted the same. laaame!

so i think s-dawg is going to write the president of laser tag a letter that goes something like this:

"dear laser tag, i am miffed that shoulder hits are now weighted the same as targets on the laser, the front, and the bag of the player, due to the relative size of the shoulder target. signed, hawkeye."

LOL!!!!!!! the whole "miffed" part makes me laugh out loud like an idiot. i have the funnest family in the whole damn world.

we were going to follow that up with glow-in-the-dark mini putt at "the putting edge" but we ended up going bowling instead. my bowling was WAY off. i was horrible. if we had hit laser tag, mini putt, AND bowling in the same day, it would have been the BEST grade 5 birthday party day of all time. even 2 out of 3 was pretty ace.

later that night we went for dinner at big mouth kee. big d is THE BEST at big mouth kee. he's always in fine form. all of his jokes always end in "...i'm going to kill you!" and we were sharing stories of what we were like when we were little kids. we started running down the list of all our nannies/housekeepers over the years. my mum said i used to mouth off to them when i was like, 5 - saying stuff like, "you're just the hired help!" (sounds like me, doesn't it?) we had one nanny that basically raised chova from when he was born til like, he was 9 or 10. when she left, apparently chova was crying, and according to my mom, i was standing over him, giving him heck, saying, "what are you crying for? she's just the hired help!" LOL!!! it just goes to show you - nature versus nurture - there's a HUGE amount of nature that you can't account for.

sunday breakkie today was jimmy dean sausage, over easy eggs, and whole wheat toast (in keeping with my recent obsession with my fiber intake.)

tonight i made us chicken pot pies with purchased puff pastry tops. the filling consisted of poached chicken, leftover heritage turkey, peas, carrots, mushrooms, leeks, thyme and sage in a milk and chicken broth sauce thicken with roux. we had that with a big salad of mixed baby greens, orange pepper, grape tomatoes, red onion, cucumber and avocado.

for dessert we made blood orange floats (vanilla ice cream, freshly squeezed blood orange juice, topped with club soda). so good!

fin.