Too Many Interests...Too Little Time

Squeezing out a little bit of time to update this dusty corner of ye olde interwebs, in between weighing in on, among other things: Jian Ghomeshi, the municipal election here in Toronto, and Cyrus Beene's hair situation on Scandal.  I wish I had more time to spend here, because I HAVE ALL THE THOUGHTS AND ALL THE FEELINGS.  I haven't even had a chance to record for posterity how I feel about the whole, "Hello Kitty is not a cat" Sanrio bombshell.  WHAT HAS MY LIFE BECOME?!

Guys, I am STRETCHED.  I wake up at 5:30am so I can put a proper breakfast out for my goon squad and have a proper dinner to come home to.  I want to knit, and see movies, and catch-up on the news, and have time to read, and work on crafts, and think about FREAKIN' XMAS (which I hate with the fieriness of a million suns), and make quilts, and keep a clean house, and figure out all the stupid renovation stuff, and see my friends, and make sure the Big Yam sees HIS friends, and make sure that the babies see enough of my face full-on (as in, I'm looking at them and they're not just getting the weird side-angle of my face with the computer screen/my phone casting its pall on my complexion), that they don't imprint on our caregiver or, the cats.  I fall asleep at 10pm and it is the exhausted sleep of the damned, filled with mundane dreams where I "escape" to such flights of subconscious as, "my family is coming over for dinner and my brother brings nothing to contribute" or "the basement underpin has started and the shared driveway has a giant pile of dirt in it" (real, actual dreams I've had lately.  I'm the worst).  This basically says to me that I'm not nurturing my interior life enough.

First things first: the whole Jian thing.  I am SHOCKED at how many defenders he has/had!  In the grand tradition of me being right about stuff without knowing anything detailed about them and going only on my superficial assumptions (which I could teach a graduate-level course in, quite frankly), I WAS SO RIGHT ABOUT JIAN.  I've thought he was so gross from even BEFORE Dr. Rei hipped me to the XO Jane "blind" item.  Then, while on maternity leave and driving the babies around to their various medical appointments, I actually heard his show.  HE'S NOT THAT GOOD, GUYS.  After an event of particular cultural import, he would always do these little op-ed monologue "essays" over washy, synth pads and his thoughts were SO BANAL.  SO TRITE.  Like, more banal than Stuart McLean (aka Garrison Keillor for all my American readers).  Did you ever think such a thing was possible?  To my mind, Jian became famous because of the Billy Bob Thornton thing, and really, that's basically becoming famous and well-known because you were on the receiving end of a notable jerk being a notable jerk.  La-di-dah.

Anyway, there's nothing about Jian that doesn't scream "I'm a gross pig."  The hair!  The look!  The general douchebaggy way he presents himself (I totally feel like Jian is a douchebag, which refutes the contention of this widely-circulated article, that "douchebag" always refers to a white person.  Tiger Woods?  Total douchebag).   Even if, as the Dotytron contends, I consider "Eeks. Totes diff vibes from yest" an indictable offense and would support locking someone behind bars for that alone, I think the way he's handled this whole thing shows that painting him with broad "disgusting pig-dog" strokes wasn't off base in the least.  Let's also talk about the PR firm he hired, Navigator.  They took him as a client, they must have signed off on that sad, pathetic, and TMI Facebook post Jian wrote, and then, when more and more women started coming forward, they dropped him.  Way to do your due diligence, you idiots.  I should charge them as a consultant to sit in a room when they're entertaining new clients so they don't have to be in the position of taking on and then subsequently dropping sick f**kwads.  HOW DID YOU NOT KNOW, NAVIGATOR?!?

I sometimes wish I could just apply for jobs with a CV that states all the times I was right about stuff ahead of the curve.  Granted, most of the times it has to do with pop culture, but still!  That's got to count for something, somewhere, right?

We need a palate cleanser after the unpleasantness of talking about Jian.  This photo has been making my heart sing, lately:

I love everyone's face in this photo - from the Big Yam's cheesy smile to Lenny's wide-faced muppet-mouthed grin.  

The above photo was taken on a Don Valley nature walk we did to take in the fall colours.  It was one of those perfect Sundays that happens about twice a year for us - a leisurely, laid back Sunday where we had an attainable amount of household chores on the docket, but we got to go out and do something outside that was enjoyable for all members of the family, and still had enough time left that I got to lie on the couch under a blanket and read for a good chunk of the afternoon and tuck into a giant bowl of spaghetti and meatballs for dinner.  Like seriously, could you imagine a more perfect fall Sunday?  I need more of those in my life, to center me and make me a reasonable person again.

This past weekend was the antithesis of that halcyon one.  Here's something no one tells you about Halloween before you become a parent: IT IS THE LONGEST DAY OF YOUR LIFE.  I always take Halloween off from work to mitigate how much of a frenzied dash it is when kids are knocking on your door and you're trying to get the pumpkin carved/lit/out and finishing up dinner and bundling up your kids (because inevitably, Halloween is on the rainiest, coldest day in a week otherwise filled with temperate, sun-filled fall days) for the trek.  

It's always worth it, in the end.  For this:

and this:

This year everyone asked me what I did about limiting the Big Yam's candy consumption and if I had ever heard about the "Switch Witch" which is yet another new newfangled parenting thing n00b parents do because they can't tell their kids no?  The Switch Witch comes and takes all your Halloween candy in the night and leaves a book or something instead.  I've found we don't have to do anything that requires me to go out and get ANOTHER thing in addition to all the regular Halloween crap.  I made him sort his candy (what you see above) and then because he's 4, I told him he could have 4 pieces of his choosing.  He was fine with that.  He's basically forgotten all about it and I've just been using the Halloween candy as an incentive for him to do his "homework" after school.  I am very, very luck though, that the Big Yam is such a sweet, agreeable little guy.  He's so amenable.  I was able to do drop-off on Friday and ran into another parent who told me that the Big Yam sat with her when she chaperoned the field trip and she wanted to tell me what a good, smart, sweet little boy he is.  Apparently he spent the entire bus ride talking and telling them all kinds of facts and describing/explaining stuff and she kept reiterating how intelligent and well behaved and pleasant he was to be around.  

That kind of unsolicited feedback is the stuff of dreams.  I told the Dotytron and we both teared up.  I felt so proud of the Big Yam for representing himself so well and making us look good.  I don't know what role, if any, we played in how he's developed.  I know we set high expectations and we're very strict, but who knows if that works?  I can tell you that already, Lenny and the Quincess are completely different in their general approach to life.  Lenny is an Evil Knievel, daredevil, classic baby type of baby.  He climbs things, he gets into stuff, he puts food in his mouth.  He's like your textbook baby.  The Quincess is a sweet-faced, observant, cerebral, very funny baby.  I always say that Lenny is baby-funny, but the Quincess is legit, regular person funny.  He has a very wry sense of humour, and I'm continually flabbergasted by the fact that I can ascertain that and he is ONLY SIXTEEN MONTHS OLD.  

The babies have a lot of words right now, relative to their age (based on the feedback I got from their neo-natal follow up appointment).  To date, this is their tally:

- ball (their first word)
- baba
- book
- this
- that
- mama
- dung-dung (Cantonese for light)
- hot
- "moo"
- "woof"
- "down"
- "naai naai" (Cantonese for milk, but Lenny uses it generally for food)
- nana (banana)
- bot (robot)
- "poh poh" (Cantonese for "pick me up")
- elephant sound
- monkey sound
- lion sound
- "brown bear" (we're pretty sure Quincess says it, and he also reads "Brown Bear" to himself with this funny little cadence that I have to make a point of catching on video
- more/please (sign language)
- all done (sign language)

The rest of the weekend was a blur of social engagements.  We had a neighbour Halloween party on Saturday, then saw Dr. Rei and Hanbo and Big Al for dinner that night, then on Sunday we had Friendsgiving.  This all took place under the wider of umbrella of me stressing to the point of a huge eczema flare up (on my face!  OF COURSE!) about the underpinning, which is supposed to start imminently, at which point, our family of 5 will be without laundry for the duration.

Enough of my whinging on that front!  Let's see some basement renovation/finishing mood boards, shall we?  

The colour palette is light neutrals.  White, brass, grey, with blue and orange accents.  Because it's a basement, and doesn't get a lot (any) natural light, I want it to feel as airy as possible.  

  

Definitely some kind of light to medium-toned, possibly variegated laminate flooring.  A graphic, patterend rug, definitely the George Nelson bubble lamp and some brass sconces like this:

This Ikea sectional:

I found a company online that does special legs for Ikea furniture, which is a brilliant idea.  They're called Prettypegs.  We will probably need a round coffee table to offset the blocky, rectangular proportions of the main room.  I love the Ikea fauxdenza hack I've seen everywhere, and we will likely do that as a TV/entertainment centre:

We want to nest our speakers inside the credenza, so I think we'd try to get two cabinet doors with a glass inset, and then replace the glass with aluminum decorative radiator grills, spray-painted white, to allow the sound through, but still protect the speakers from Lenny's tweeter-poking fingers.  There are also plans afoot to upgrade to a king sized bed, since it's a tight fit at the moment when everyone is piled in.  

My top secret crafting project is finally out of the bag.  I made Big Al a quilt:

The back is flannel with a Bay stripe offset down the length because as is the trend when I quilt, the technical aspects of the math almost broke me, and I didn't calculate the right length/width of the batting.  I based the design off something I saw online.  The stripes are made up of 2.5" blocks made up of alternating horizontal and vertical strips of fabric.  Again, the math almost killed me and all the blue blocks and the yellow blocks were about 1/2" too small, so I had to cut a million little 1/2" pieces and sew them on when I thought I was onto the piecing stage.  I love the striped border of the binding (not my idea, again ripped off of the one I saw online) and this is my biggest quilt to date.  I did a big chunk of it when we were at my ED's cottage this summer.  It was overall a very pleasurable experience making it and I can't wait for Big Al to be big enough so that I can tell him about it, or that I can read him stories with it tucked up around our legs.  

Here's what our dinners have been like, lately:

Teriyaki salmon, with steamed brown rice and breaded zucchini "fries" I made using this recipe as a base (pretty standard, flour, egg wash, panko/parmesan crust, baked on a rack in the oven.  My notes: DON'T FORGET TO SPRAY/OIL THE RACK!  Otherwise, you end up with the crust sticking to the rack and not in your belly.  Sadface).  I feel like teriyaki salmon is SUCH a mom dish, in the "Good Housekeeping" sense of the word mom.  

Salted caramel swirl pumpkin cheesecake bars.  I based these on this recipe, but made quite a few changes (recipe below).  The best part of these bars was the crust, which was all chewy and caramely from the brown sugar.

The aforementioned spaghetti and meatballs

I made a lentil soup but followed Serious Eats' suggestion and added some gremolata, which elevated the dish considerably.  We had this with cheddar-apple melted toasts on Tiller's bread.

I can (and did) eat an ungodly amount of this shepherd's pie that night.  Alongside roasted cauliflower - cauliflower, cut into thick steaks, tossed with oil and za'atar and salt and pepper and roasted at high heat until it's covered in crisp edges.

Kale and kimchi fried rice topped with fried eggs.  Eaten at 8pm, while I was frantically making salted browned butter rice krispie ghosts to take to the Big Yam's classroom Halloween party.  I also made (assembled) a dip for the drop-in centre Halloween party and honestly guys, next year, tell me to save myself the trouble.  NO ONE CARES.  NO ONE.  

Last week I hung out with Dr. Rei and we went to The Federal.  It's a cute, cozy, tiny little brunch spot.  I had a breakfast sandwich there that immediately consumed me.  It featured: scrambled eggs, bacon, mayo, cheddar cheese, and the kicker, sliced pickle, on an English muffin. It's like a breakfast Big Mac.  Amazing.  I recreated it on the weekend, and made a roasted garlic mayo and it was divine.

New chocolate babka rolled out!  I used Smitten's revamped recipe and did find it relatively easy to execute and more restrained, without any diminished flavour/indulgence returns.  Y'all know I loves me some chocolate babka.  I'm going to make more this weekend.  The only tweak I did was to add some chopped chocolate to the melted chocolate smear.  Mine might actually be *too* chocolatey, but honestly, I haven't been mad at it when I eat my obligatory slice in front of the TV before bed.

Last night's dinner was arroz con pollo with a wackload of steamed green beans.

Fin.


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Salted Caramel Swirl Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars
makes 12 bars

Crust:

1/2 c. unsalted butter, melted
2 c. graham cracker crumbs
1/2 c. brown sugar
1 T cornstarch
pinch salt

Filling

2  egg
12 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1/2 c. granulated sugar
1 c. pumpkin puree
2 1/2 t. pumpkin pie spice (I just do my own version with 3 parts cinnamon to 2 parts ginger and 1 part clove, allspice, nutmeg)
2 T. flour
1/4 c. salted caramel sauce

- mix all the crust ingredients together and press onto the bottom of a 9" square baking pan (bottom lined with parchment, helps)
- bake in a preheated 350F oven for about 10 minutes.  Take the pan out and leave the oven on.
- beat all the filling ingredients together (minus the salted caramel sauce) until smooth.  Pour into the pan and drop the salted caramel sauce on top of the filling and swirl with a knife.  Bake for about 30-40 minutes or until the filling is set with just a slight wobbliness in the very middle.  A knife inserted into the centre should come out dry and not wet and streaky.  Let cool in the fridge, slice into bars and serve.

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.

Epic funtimes

Big epic fun-times this weekend.  A *little* too much driving around doing ghey errands (why, Costco, why?) but other than that, it was really nice.


I had the morning with the Big Yam on Friday and we hung out and chilled and then met up with J and the Big Yam's homies at the park.  I had a massage.  I skipped out on softball to be in solidarity with the Dotytron who was helping our neighbour that we've hired to build a fence (in exchange for a break on our share of the cost), tear up the existing chain link fence.  It's a good thing, because apparently the team we played on Friday was big on the smack talk and fisticuffs almost broke out.  Rude fact: in any competitive sport situation in which trash talk might lead to a physical altercation - it's best if I'm not around, as I am more help (in terms of fanning the aggro flames) than hindrance. 

I wait all year long for Ontario strawberries to be in season to make this fresh strawberry pie.  It's divine.  Recipes like this are one of the reasons I lament the ending of Gourmet magazine. So good.  I brought this to a park picnic I had with my friend E last Thursday night.

Friday night's dinner was salmon burgers with tzatiki, lettuce and tomato. Tasty! We had a salad alongside.

Saturday was a fun, fun day.


#1 I made us an awesome breakfast.  We got chanterelles from our CSA so I sautéed them in butter and thinly sliced CSA spring onions and we served them over scrambled eggs with breakfast sausage, toast, and an arugala salad.

#2 PINGY IS IN TOWN!!!  So she came over and I loaned her a pretty slamming outfit to wear to a wedding she was going to and then we went and visited the Roomie and L'Armi and the wee babe who has a provisional first name (FINALLY) but they're still waffling on the middle name.  I love me some Ping.


#3 Badminton & splash pad!  SMckay and the FroYo Baron came by and brought their badminton set and we took the Big Yam to the splash pad.  The Dotytron had spent all day tearing up fence posts and doing hard labour and was covered in dust and dirt and so he came with us to the park to cool down.  Then he kind of went all foul owl on us, which was kind of funny, because it's the first time SMckay has seen the Dotytron in one of his "moods."  Dr. Rei is well familiar with how awful it is when the Dotytron flips the switch and turns all foul owl.  Basically, it's like the entire sky darkens and there's no light in the world and your ONLY GOAL becomes making the Dotytron go back to being Captain Funtimes Easy-go again and it's like the hardest and most demoralizing thing ever because he gets STUCK in his foul owl-ness pretty hardcore.  Luckily, taking a shower at the splash pad helped.


#4 Lolly came over!  She was at our place before we got back from the splash pad and was all like, "Sooo, I let myself in and the Dotytron said, 'I'm just getting out of the shower!' and then he put jazz on and I didn't know if that was an invitation or not."  LOL x 1000000000000000!  So funny.  We got Burger's Priest and manged that and then went to see Snow White and the Huntsman but not before,


#5 SMckay gave the Big Yam a very Friar Tuck haircut.  Which ended up being topical because now the Big Yam looked like one of the baddies in the movie:

This was also topical because SMckay gave me the gears when I accidentally cut the Boobla's hair too short and made him look all dumb & dumber:

Really though, I don't think there's anything you can do about the Boobla looking like a monk when you trim his bangs.  It's just the nature of his head shape.  He does still look awfully cute though:

#6 The trailer for the Les Miserables movie was one of our previews and at the opening notes of the music I raised my fist in the air and looked around...to find a completely indifferent theatre.  That didn't stop Lolly, Steph and I from holding hands for the duration of the preview.

#7 The movie.  This movie has been getting middling reviews, and yet I found it pretty entertaining in a high-gloss, low-narrative consistency kind of way.  It's over-the-top like a slick music video and some of the imagery is fantastic.  It's also got this feminist narrative (ie. what makes Charlize Theron's deliciously campy Queen Ravenna so vicious is because she was taught that men only give power to beautiful women and she learned to use their sexism against them) and Snow White isn't some maiden to be rescued, she leads the army in the charge to take the castle back.  But: does it make me a bad feminist that even though I intellectually appreciated all that, I wanted a big, juicy, make out scene between Snow and her hottie huntsman, Chris Hemsworth?  Chris Hemsworth is definitely the hotter of the Hemsworth bros.  I'm awarding him the title because he also had the good sense to NOT propose to a 19 year old Miley Cyrus.  What the heck are you thinking, Liam Hemsworth?!?  Jeez.  Anyway, elder Hemsworth is super-hot and buff and alpha male.  He's also wicked as Thor.  So, done and done.  The movie plays around with the outlines of the Snow White story and comes up with something that has some of the same tell-tale elements (dwarves, apple) but makes them a little more contemporary and inserts a political point about womyn, that in the process robs audiences of the making out scene they so desperately want AND garbles some of the story elements (ie. why does Snow need the Huntsman to kiss her awake? Why does the Wicken Queen have to be the fairest? We dun know.)  Anyway, this was a fun enough disposable viewing, although not something for the ages.

Sunday was Father's Day.  We slept in, schlepped up to Markham to have breakfast with Big D and company and then went to Costco and dim sum.  Then we came home, I finished a quilt top while the Dotytron and the Boobla napped and then we went to J & S's house for dinner with the Discerning Coyote and his gf.  It was a delicious meal.  I made us pimento cheese spread which we ate with pita chips.  The Discerning Coyote made a lovely, light potato salad.  J & S made ribs and baked beans and a roasted beet and goat's cheese salad and biscuits.  I made that toasted almond, lemon curd semifreddo and J made cheesecake with rhubarb sauce.  I was full to bursting and we had a great time eating and hanging with their kids, who are adorable, punchy, smart little tykes.  


The little Boobla might be teething.  He's been a fussy fussbudget mini-St. Bernard drool monster lately and he woke up crying at an ungodly hour Sunday morning so I hustled him into bed with us and he slept there. On my arm. Which was awkwardly trapped in a weird twisted position under his giant head.  And yet. And yet having him in bed with us is one of my greatest, secret pleasures and I will take my sore arm as payment gladly.

Pingy came over for dinner tonight.  I made us that torched spicy salmon rice bowl thing that I like to make.  It was delicious.  We chased it with cheesecake and my homemade mint crackle ice cream, which is divine.

I've been going a little crazy with the chilled desserts action.  This is a fresh mint bittersweet chocolate crackle ice cream I made.  It's soooo good and minty!  If I had had US-style Girl Guide Thin Mint cookies (the kind without the mint goo) I would have folded some up in there for some more texture.

Fin. 

All of the lights

Life insists on going on, seemingly without regard for what I want. Young Master T has his own internal rhythms and expectations that have to be met and so I have to step up to the plate and make sure that his days are full with stimulating new experiences, reassuring old ones, belly laughs, tickles, and big love.

I have a joy-filled kid so far and for that I'm very, very grateful. Yes, he's not so into waving bye-bye or listening when we issue short instructions, but I'm more proud of the fact that the little guy loves dancing. More specifically, he does the dutty wine - the boy's got moooooves. Lots of slow, bass-driven, winding in the lower half region. He doesn't so much dance as groove. It's pretty adorable - the best is that sometimes you'll put a tune, he'll look at you for a couple of seconds, find the rhythm, and then start getting down and it's so endearing.

So is watching the little nut at the wading pool:

For Friday Night Takeout/Eat Out night we went to Paul and Sandy's Real Barbecue out in Etobicoke. It's been getting good reviews from various barbecue aficionados and the positive buzz is well earned. It's a small little joint - with a lone man (obviously Paul) manning the open kitchen and Sandy and some other local yokels doing front of the house. Maybe 20 or so seats in all. They start you off with a complimentary basket of warm, toasted garlic bread drenched in garlic butter:

We were starving so we ordered some fried zucchini sticks (which was totally overkill) - these were delicious and we polished them off (and burned the roofs of our mouths in the process) in about 5 seconds:

For our mains we opted to split the sample platter for 2, which comes with 2 sides (we picked baked beans and potato salad and got an additional side of coleslaw - again in our ignorance, contributing to the gluttony and our eventual acquiescence to the inevitability of leftovers). The red skin potato salad is cool and creamy, and the sample platter is divine. You get a full rack of baby back ribs, brisket, pulled pork, smoked chicken, and smoked meatloaf. Alongside are the house made bbq sauces, one spicy, one not. The brisket and the ribs were perfect - the brisket was so moist and juicy, capped with the thinnest, sheerest layer of melting fat. The ribs were held together by a dark, lacquered barque that yielded at the gentlest pull of your teeth into smoke-ringed, pink shards of tender meat. The pulled pork was so-so, but the meatloaf was divine - oniony ground beef infused with smoky flavour. Normally I'm not a fan of smoked chicken but the spice rub on the skin gave it a savoury crust and Paul is experienced enough that the white meat was supple instead of dry. We can't wait to go back. Dinner for 2 with 1 beer and 1 pop came out to $60, including tax and tip:

Boobla Khan ate generously from our plates - downing brisket, chicken, pork, and lots of baked beans. In the car ride home he experienced his first-ever dance with the 'itis and got right fartsacked:

Poor little Boobla.

Yesterday we did some errands - I worked on my quilt (more on that later) and we took dinner over to Momma and Poppa D's house and had a visit with Ehmdo at the same time. I made a green salad with roasted beets and chevre croutons, polenta lasagna (inspired by a fantastic dish Lolly made at the cottage), and chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches with vanilla ice cream from Ed's Real Scoop. Pretty tasty, all told:

This morning for Sunday breakkie I made us a fat baby and garlic pork breakfast sausages from the Mennonites:

This afternoon we're headed up to Markham to hang with my mom, Poh Poh and my brothers - looking forward to some Chinese eats.

I've been working real hard on my quilt top and quilt back for the last week and finished both yesterday. The front probably took me about a month, off and on - the chevron pattern requires a lot of minute cutting and trimming and sewing. Quilting is fussy work! Way fussier than knitting, which is fairly straightforward - you make a mistake, it's easy to fix and the proportions of the things you're wrestling with are small. Quilting is taking small things, making them bigger, attaching them to other things, trimming that, and piecing things together bit by bit. The quilt back came together a lot easier, but that's because I was kind of winging it. I feel more confident know with being able to wing something - the math involved in quilting damn near kills me, though:

I accidentally attached the last row of blue zig zags upside down. I've since fixed it. Now all I have to do is get batting, make the quilt sandwich, quilt the monster, make binding, and sew it on! Le sigh.

Fin.