the pioneer in the city

before:



and after:

from the back row, we have: garlic dill pickles, bread'n'butter pickles, strawberry rhubarb jam, and there's some jumbleberry jam in there too, just not visible. it was a VERY productive canning session, although i think i upped the humidity in toronto by about 700% that weekend (during what was already a hot, humid, sticky, stretch).

i've been feeling kind of lazycakes lately - all sleepy and tired and listless - so wednesday night our plans to see the dotytron's sis' residency were curtailed by an intense need to sleep and rest and lay on the couch reading (but mostly sleeping).

canada day was much of the same. we woke up, i went for a 50/50 run/walk and the dotytron readied himself for another (probably fruitless) interview with the TDSB. the power was out so while he was gone i did some yoga and when he came back and the power was back on we ate this for breakfast:

that's a red pepper, tomato, dill, and parmesan frittata with english bacon and whole wheat sourdough toast - low carb!

then we basically just snoozed all afternoon and then went for a cold dip in the outdoor pool that is literally at the bottom of our street. it is SO ACES! i can't wait to come home and do lane swims during the week. it's very utilitarian - just a concrete deck and a big rectangle with a shallow end and a deep (no diving) end. it's maybe like, 5' deep at the deepest point. it's not the funnest for kids cuz there's no slide or anything, but it's perfect for doing laps in and the lack of a kiddie pool means that the kids make do with the splash pad in the park or go up the street to the more kid-friendly pool. bliss! they also keep it on the lightly chlorinated side. we'll see if they can keep that up as the season progresses.

came home, ate this for dinner:

that's a homemade vietnamese pork bun, consisting of pork loin slices that i marinated in sugar, lime, ginger, garlic, soy, sesame oil, and rice wine vinegar and fish sauce and then grilled. under that are rice noodles and julienned cucumber, shredded iceberg lettuce and grated carrot, with some fresh mint and chopped scallions to garnish. i also made homemade nuoc cham to douse the whole thing with. it was really tasty.

we ate it on the front porch and chatted it up with the neighbours and got a tour of one of our other neighbour's house - which was extremely illuminating. we've never invited any of our neighbours in...i guess we probably should...but their houses are all so much more done than ours. although the dotytron claims that i'm being irrational.

this also resulted in us witnessing an unfortunate car crash (i'm using the word "crash" lightly) in slow motion - a lady in a toyota pulled up, turned around in our driveway and then tried to 3 point turn her way out. she slowly kept backing up. slowly...slowly...slowly...and right into our neighbour's parked scooter, which was knocked over. then she tried to pull out to pull over but our other neighbour's tow truck driver friend stopped her and accused her of trying to get away. the neighbour who owns the scooter started taking pictures and freaking out when the hitter refused (somewhat inexplicably?) to give her DL and insurance info. the irate meltdown was made all the more dramatic by the fact that the scooter owner neighbour's face was painted up (i think she let her kids paint her face) so she looked like a deranged member of the insane clown posse, if they had blind people doing their make-up. it was very intense!!!

we packed up and headed to the roomie's pad, where our friends pingy and montréal I were converging - we sat on the roomie's upper deck and talked and drank wine and snacked on chips and this dessert i made:

this my friends, is a fig and frangipane tart - a SCRUMPTIOUS concoction and one of my go-to recipes when figs are in season from here on in. oh my. picture it: a crisp, buttery, flaky crust, the soft, cardamom-scented almond richness of homemade frangipane nestling caramelized figs, all jammy and plummy with their figgy essence. topped with a dollop of whipped cream and served warm - it was delectable. absolutely delectable. i've included the recipe below for you. i can picture the cardamom flavouring working equally well with poached pears or apples in the winter (i'm guessing you would have to poach the winter fruit to prevent that awkward, leathery drying that can occur when apple/pear slices are placed on top of a dessert without a lid to keep the moisture in). i'm going to try this tart again with cherries, very shortly. it's just so good!

today we woke up early, as is our wont. have i told you that i feel the fatburger frequently now? i guess i've been feeling it for a while, maybe the past 2-3 weeks? but i wasn't sure if what i was feeling was IT, you know? how the heck are you supposed to know? but now the motions are much more insistent to the point that there's no denying that it. i mean, it's not like i've ever felt my pancreas, uterus, stomach, intestines, etc. twitch around in there. people have different ways of describing it. my sis calls it popcorn popping. i've heard flutter, bubbles, butterfly wings. to me, it's something like this: you know when you're at the cottage and it's quiet, and you're sitting on the dock, or in your tin can fishing boat, and just a few feet away, you hear the little flick and plop of a fish eating a bug off the surface of the water? it feels to me the way that sounds. the little "plop!" of the tail going under.

we're so clueless. last night the roomie asked if we've been able to feel it from the outside yet. to be honest, i hadn't tried. but this morning i put my hands on my belly and totally felt a little pop! then i had the dotytron do it. we laid quietly and he put his hand on my lower belly and i felt the plop and i asked him, "did you feel it?" and he was like, "that wasn't you?! i totally did!" it was pretty cool, i must say.

now we're waiting for future shop to deliver our new dryer which may or may not actually fit down the stairs to the basement. whoops. they don't make dryers that aren't the size of our new one, anymore!!! what the heck are we supposed to do?!? we have about 1/4" of clearance, maybe. we're crossing our fingers. it's a front-loading (but aren't all dryers front-loading?) high efficiency number with the steam option. thrilling!!!

after that it's a rendezvous with I and the roomie again and eat brunch and talk our heads off. following that will be a trip to get new all seasons for the captain and then up to markham for the annual massive chinese banquet dog and pony show for my grandma's birthday and hanging up there for the next couple of days with my family.

fun! finally, check out our new knocker(s):

we actually got it a year ago as a wedding prezzie from ehmdo. isn't it the sweetest?

fin.

---------------------------------------------

fig frangipane tart
realistically, serves 6-8. if you have any sense, you'll eat it all to yourself

1 9" tart crust, blind-baked (10 minutes in a 375F oven with foil and beans in, 10 minutes with the foil and beans out)
2/3 c. blanched, skinless, sliced almonds
1 T. all purpose flour
7 T. sugar
3/4 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
1 egg
1/2 t. ground cardamom
1/2 t. salt
8-10 large, ripe figs, cut in half

- let your tart crust cool while you prepare the frangipane (keep the oven at 375F)
- in a food processor, blend the almonds with the flour and sugar until finely ground. add the butter, egg, cardamom, and salt until it's all mixed into a loose paste.
- spread the paste into the prepared tart shell, smoothing it out.
- tuck the figs into the frangipane in the pattern of your choosing
- bake the tart for about 40-55 minutes, or until the frangipane is set, the figs are caramelized at the edges and the top of the tart is golden brown.
- let it cool, but serve warm with a dusting of confectioner's sugar, and whipped cream.

what a blur

i've had a 4 day weekend and i can't even remember what happened on friday! i'm pretty sure that i was pretty busy...but i'm not sure with what? *consults day timer* oh yes! i remember now. i spent the morning hanging out with my former supervisor and current colleague T, cruising around bloor west village, which i'd never explored before. it was fun! there are a tonne of eastern european bakeries selling delectable, not-too-sweet, eastern european type breads, pastries, and smoked sausages. i also got to check out this store, diaper-eez, which is toronto's cloth diapering mecca. because i'm crazy and seriously considering giving cloth diapering ye olde college try. it was kind of confusing because there are so many types on the market, but i came away with a fairly good understanding of the two main types: pre-folds (which are basically a piece of reinforced cotton in a dishtowel shape that you twist around the bambino's butt and then cover with a breathable waterproof underpants type thing); and the all-in-ones, which are the breathable waterproof underpants type things, with an attached long piece of absorbent cotton/fleece that you fold up like a maxi pad in there.

the pre-folds are WAY cheaper and way more environmentally friendly - as the all-in-ones are $25 EACH and you only get 1 use out of each one before washing the insert AND the cover. whereas the pre-folds are like, $30/12 and you can just keep reusing the breathable cover provided there hasn't been a poo nuclear meltdown. both of them turn your bambino's butt into a saggy bottom boy/giant drawers type scenario, but i think for the enviro factor, i'm going to give it a go.

we had dinner with people on saturday night who are also having their first and were giving me the shockface that i was considering the cloth diapering and then tried to say that the enviro factor doesn't add up because the energy costs of heating the water and the laundering negates the effect. i kind of think the dude was wrong and was just feeling judged by my decision, which is redonkulous, because people can do whatever they damn well please. i think with the new super-high energy efficient washers and dryers, especially the front-loading ones that use less water, there's NO WAY that the enviro impact can be more than with the production AND landfill clogging nature of disposables. add to that the fact that drying in a dryer is completely optional, and you've also cut out energy there. add in the fact that purchasing cloth diapers is a one-time investment. the environmental production costs happens once, and then you resuse for subsequent children and over and over again, whereas the disposable diapers have to be CONSTANTLY produced.

ultimately, who's to say that i'm going to stick it out. but i would like to try. i mean, it's not like we're more than two generations removed from cloth diapering being the ONLY option anyway.




our friday night dinner was DELICIOUS. i had the first few selfishly procured zucchini blossoms of the season, stuffed with ricotta, lemon zest, and oaxaca cheese and battered in an ethereal tempura batter and deep fried, sprinkled with sea salt. so delicious! eaten al fresco on the front steps with the antipasto salad, which consists of sliced head lettuce, sliced hot capicollo, sliced genoa salami, chickpeas, tomatoes, roasted red peppers. sliced black olives, picled eggplant, and basil leaves, dressed in a red wine vinaigrette with chili oil. so cool and tasty and mouth-feel good.

saturday and sunday were occupied all day with 9:30-5:30pm emergency first aid and CPR certification that i signed us up for thinking that if we were going to have a bambino it would be good for us to know infant resuscitation and choking and whatnot. suffice to say the dotytron was markedly UNAMUSED at frittering away one of the prime weekends in the summer (1 of 12!!!) cooped up indoors looking at pictures of contusions. he was also very UNAMUSED when this lifeguard kid stole his roller chair during break and subbed it with a non-roller office chair. lame! we were both unamused by one of the instructors who dragged out the whole session asking stupid rhetorical questions like, "now, if you see a dirty drinking straw, do you use it to perform a tracheotomy?" and then waiting for 3-5 seconds until someone responded. i mean, one or two rhetorical questions as a device to keep snoozy students interested, i get. but it was seriously like every other line.

the good thing is that ultimately, it was a worthwhile endeavor for us to learn this info because toronto has a horrible rate of intervention when people are having heart attacks. people don't want to intervene for legal/communicable disease reasons. we found out that we're covered by the good samaritan act, which means that as long as you don't act in a grossly negligent way and try your very best, you can't be charged. there hasn't been a successfully tried case yet of someone attempting to intervene and being charged with criminal negligence. also, we wait the longest to call 911 IN OUR OWN HOMES. we were taught to recognize the signs of angina, stroke, heart attack, and how to resuscitate a non-breathing, unconscious or conscious adult, infant, and child. good to know!

saturday night we had a mexican-themed dinner at J & S's house, along with J's brother L and their friends B & C, whom we've had dinner with before. it was a lovely evening. i made that suburban 7 layer mexican dip. B & C made an avocado and mint soup, and J & S served tacos with carnitas and salsas from a tortilla place on st. clair. J also made us a tres leches cake which was delicious, piled with whipped cream and drizzled with dulce de leche. B & C are also expecting a bambino so there was a lot of parenting talk. they're like, EXTREMELY well read. they've read a million things. the dotytron and i have maybe read a single book between the two of us. maybe. it made me feel nervous that we haven't read anything. like, they were talking about how there's controversy about WHEN to cut the cord and stuff. i dunno...i'm going to leave that to our care practitioners to decide. also, we were planning on putting venetian blinds in the fatburger's room to block out the nosy neighbours and B & C are removing all cords from their house!!!

you come up against a lot of people like that - parenting has become this zero-sum competitive game. it makes you feel a bit bad that you're not really thinking about it, but what can you do? reading books on that stuff (pregnancy, labour, parenting) is THE BORINGEST. i would prefer a comic format or youtube videos. i think like in all my undertakings (knitting, quilting, making croissants from scratch, fixing stuff around the home) my mode of attack tends to be to read a little, get the basics, and then jump in with both feet and figure stuff out as it happens. i have a grand history of tackling projects that are beyond the scope of a beginner and muddling through okay - isn't having a baby the same thing?

sunday night therew as a blackout caused by a crazy torrential storm that knocked out the power for 2+ hours. it was very exciting. we set up camp in the living room and upon realizing that we had no D batteries and no matches, lit the candles that we do have with a lighter and planned a list of things to get for emergency preparedness for the home and car, which naturally included LED flashlights (the kind you have to jerk off to power), matches, bottled water, etc. i LOVE making emergency preparedness lists! we ate a cold dinner of leftover salami and leftover 7layer dip with nacho chips, and then spent the rest of the blackout reading out loud from macbeth from my norton anthology of shakespeare by candlelight. it was really really fun! it made me laugh, because another thing that B & C are doing for their kid in utero is reading out loud from children's books every night. apparently the kid starts to recognize the stories so if you read them when they're freaking out they calm right down. apparently. anyway, B & C's kid is getting "goodnight moon" in utero and we're giving our kid the tragedy of macbeth. with funny voices. lol!

monday i met up with H and sweet baby D and we hung out and she gave me some of her more unisex bambino gear. H reiterated that hanging out with other parents is the boringest, which i totally buy. like mom and tot drop ins are just giant parenting-measuring sessions that get competitive and gossipy and they're all weirdo liberal, super-privileged freaks. you don't have to tell me that twice! i'm hoping to avoid that shiz like the plague. that kind of nuttiness is totally catching.

then i came home and went to town, making garlic-dill pickles, jumbleberry jam, strawberry fig jam, and preparing some bread and butter pickles i'm going to finish on tuesday evening. the dotytron was home all day and he did errands and then napped on the couch listening to louis armstrong. it was such a throwback of an afternoon. i was in my house dress with the fans whirring, in the hot humid kitchen, putting up preserves while satchmo serenaded me from the speakers. it was a lovely (hot) way to spend an afternoon...and just looking at my jars all lined up on the dining room table is making me very happy.

we had dinner with our friends S & A at harbord fish'n'chips last night - first harbord fish'n'chips of the season! it was so delicious. then dr. rei and hanbo met us and we walked to greg's for ice cream. that's a pretty near-perfect summer evening as far as i'm concerned. the heat has broken so the next few days should be a little cooler.

stay tuned for a massive post with my thoughts on the G20 s**tshow.

fin.