#Views

The other night I had a really hilarious dream about Drake.  I'm not generally into his music.  I've been unmoved by most of what I've heard.

In the dream, I was supposed to be arranging pick up of an item I had purchased off one of those Facebook buy and sell groups.  Then when I finally meet the guy, it's DRAKE.  And in my dream, him being Drake means the same thing as it would IRL, except it's strangely not a big deal, but he's still very famous and very sought after and kind of a beta male.  Anyway, we're talking and I notice he's wearing like, 5 t-shirts layered on top of each other, and I'm gently chiding him about it, and it comes out that he's super self-conscious about his body?!  So the next time I come over, he's wearing a sleeveless t-shirt, and he's very self conscious about it, and his body is okay...like it's fine...he's not overweight or anything but everything is kind of lacking definition in a way that I now know (after a quick - and satisfying! - Google image search) it is not IRL, and in the dream I was trying to be supportive and comforting him and then it turned into FULL MAKE-OUT TIMES AT UNLIKELY PAIRINGS HIGH.  Like, I basically woke up out of making out with Drake.

Maybe this means I'm softening my stance a bit?  Dr. Rei basically curated a list of (two) recent Drake tunes that she said I should listen to and the ones she recommended ARE the ones I'm the most likely to be into...but I didn't think it was enough to send me headlong into Drake apologist mode.

Whereas, listening to The Life of Pablo put me right back into Kanye apologist mode and I was ready to fight anyone who says he's not a musical genius.  The Life of Pablo is so so so good, you guys.  So good.  Singing 'Ye is the best 'Ye.

I've seen two great documentaries this week.

On Monday the Dotytron and I went to see When Two Worlds Collide.  This was a documentary that took 9 years to make.  It follows indigenous Peruvian people living in the Peruvian Amazon who call for the repeal of laws that threaten the land they have traditionally used and occupied.  The laws were introduced by a government that is courting progress in the form of allowing transnational oil and gas interests to set up camp in the Amazon rainforest.  The indigenous people form a coalition and their coalition has a president, Alberto Pizango who is their spokesperson and leader.  The indigenous people start a protest that sees them blocking roads and surrounding oil infrastructure.  The protests are peaceful, but after a sham legislative debate that sees the government refuse to consider repealing the laws, the government sends armed police in to break up the protests and things turn violent.  Indigenous people and police die.  I came away from this doc feeling really bad about capitalism and how capitalism is so relentless - forcing people to submit, whether they want to or not.  

It also made me check my own assumptions and terrible biases and ignorance on indigenous Canadian issues and how we're doing the same thing, here.  I sometimes find myself thinking, "well, why do you even want to live in Attiwapiskat anyway?" and then I realize that this has been their home and that part of living in a just and liberal society is allowing people to live how they choose and honoring those agreements and histories.  It's not for us to decide what's the best way for people to live.  And they predate the f**k out of us.  So how can we make this work?  How can we bridge capitalism and indigenous ways of life?  

I also went to see Sour Grapes with JJ.  This was about the rise of wine auctions during the dot-com boom and this mysterious figure, Rudy Kurniawan who becomes a player in the wine scene and is known for his palate.  He ends up making $35 million from auctioning rare wines from his collection and it turns out that he might have been counterfeiting them.  He basically would bid on wines, drive up the price, and then a month later, auction the same wines at an even more inflated price (parallels to Wall Street malfeasance!)  Well, poor Bill Koch (of the Koch brothers) suspects that some of his wine might be counterfeit and hires a private investigator and things start to close in around Rudy.  Rudy ends up going to jail for 10 years, and his defense attorneys are like, this is ridiculous.  We've seen mobsters with bodies in the ground not serve time like that.  After the lights came on, I turned to JJ and said, "I'm on team Rudy!  I like his entrepreneurial spirit! And are we REALLY supposed to feel bad for one of the Koch brothers?"  

Rudy made friends with Hollywood producers and got invited to these exclusive wine parties that were all white and male and super in the dick-measuring vein.  Anyway, there were interesting parallels with class and race that this film illustrated, as well as the corrupting power of money and these types of interests.  Some of Rudy's friends stay loyal to him to this day and the movie talks about the collusion between the grifter and the mark, but I found the loyalty of these doofus Hollywood, Michael Bay-types to be kind of endearing.  This was really good - I highly recommend it.

I've got two more documentaries this week and then Hot Docs 2016 will be done.  There are so many things going on!  Our May calendar is like a solid block of colour but I'm enjoying every minute of it.  I love all the cultural things we're getting to do and the people I'm seeing.  A talk, raving, Hot Docs, dinners out, the Comic Arts Festival all in the same month?!  That's soul satisfying stuff, my friends.

We watched Beyoncé's "visual album" (aka music videos strung together), Lemonade last night and...well...I have thoughts.  I will say that I'm not a member of the Beyhive - BUT! - I know that people are going crazy for it because as she matures in her career, we're seeing Bey start to take ownership and exercise creative control and try stuff in a way she hasn't before.  So yeah, that's cool.  But also, at the end of the day, it's not THAT cool?  I mean, it's a bunch of music videos strung together and there are some arresting images, but it's not like, high art.  Also, the songs are almost all pretty bad, but I just don't like her music, so fine, I get that.  I like that she goes in different directions and there was maybe 2 or 3 songs that I enjoyed. 

The most important element was how she's using her platform to shine a spotlight on black women artists and black artists in general.  That's incredible and that in an of itself is laudable.  I'm so glad that Warsan Shire is in my life now.  I wish I had watched Lemonade first, in a way.  But Bey is NO Warsan Shire and once you hear Warsan Shire recite her own poetry, then Beyoncé's affected, almost Miss Universe delivery just falls real short.  You can see how hard Bey is trying to be something great and I applaud her, but you can also see the effort and true greatness - you don't see the effort, mang.  So yeah, it did the thing it was supposed to do, which is cause a big hubub on the internet, inspire a lot of gossipy speculation, result in lots of think pieces, and then made Bey and Jigga s boatload of money.  Cool story, bruh.  

I almost think the brouhaha about the who "Becky with the good hair" is was a misstep and a silly distraction.  If Bey wanted to be taken seriously as an artist, fanning those flames was unnecessary and really takes away from her central message - which is that she's too awesome to be trifled with.  Ultimately, that's a message I can get behind, but it's delivered in a forgettable manner.  This ain't no Purple Rain, sons.

Last weekend we went on this amazing nature walk that really made you feel removed from the city.  I loved it.

We also went out dancing and it was incredible, though we barely made it through Sunday by the skin of our teeth.  We were cranky AF and the poor kids suffered.  It was worth the one day's aftermath of hell for the pleasure of feeling like a person again.

Of course our recovery day was rainy and miserable so we took the kids to Pacific Mall and ate a million of those puffy pancake things and some overcooked, hand-pulled noodles.  

Here are things we've eaten lately:

The aforementioned hand-pulled, overcooked noodles

Quickie weeknight freezer meal: meatballs from the freezer, tomato sauce from the freezer, garlic bread and green beans.  Basically the Dotytron-Lagerfeld tots' Platonic ideal.

A rhubarb browned butter pie that I pretty much ended up eating all to myself?  

Squash soup and cheddar sage biscuits

Bacon, squash, and kale risotto with a poached egg

Leftover risotto turned into fresh mozzarella stuffed arancini with tomato sauce, German onion sausages, and zucchini fritters

Banana chocolate chip pancakes and English bacon for a Sunday breakkie

This AMAZING poundcake with the most delectable browned butter glaze.  From this recipe here: Sour Cream Coffee Cake with Browned Butter Glaze. The only thing I think I would change is to omit the cinnamon swirl.  I thought it detracted from the overall butteriness.  I think what I"m after is a basic, bundt or pound cake and that delicious glaze.

Orzo made Spanish rice style with chicken thighs and peas.

Chai-spiced creme brulee.  A throwback dessert.  It's so delicious though!  Why don't people make creme brulee anymore?

Fin.

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Peanut Butter Mousse Pie

Serves 10-12

Crust:

1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs, or chocolate wafer crumbs, or pretzel crumbs

3 T. sugar

1/2 cup of melted butter

- mix all together, press onto bottom and slightly up sides of a 9" springform pan.  Bake in a preheated 350F oven for about 10-12 minutes until lightly golden.

Filling:

3/4 cup sugar 

3 eggs, separated

1 1/2 cups of creamy peanut butter

2 1/2 cups of heavy cream, whipped

- mix the egg yolks with 1/2 cup of  sugar on top of a double boiler until warm to the touch (keep whisking so the eggs don't cook)

- remove from heat and stir in the peanut butter until smooth.  Set aside to cool.

- meanwhile, whisk the egg whites with the remaining 1/4 cup of sugar until it forms stiff peaks.  Fold into peanut mixture.

- fold whipped cream into the peanut mixture and pour into prepared crust.  Refrigerate at least overnight. 

- serve with hot fudge sauce.

Living and Thinking and Carrying On

Things I've been thinking about, lately:

1) Decentreing whiteness (and heternormativity) and how so many (white, heteronormative) people get so bent out of shape as soon as they're not the focus of like, everything.  It's like, seriously?  Have some chill for once in your damned lives.  The number of assumptions that get made on a daily basis by white people about what the cultural touchstones should be has been really chafing me lately.

2) Further to the above, I've been thinking about how annoying white moms are on the internet.  I mean, as was rightly pointed out to me, "that's on you." Haha!  That's true, I don't have to go looking for anxious, spun up, privileged intensive mothers who are going to make my blood boil with their neuroses and anxieties and constant need for validation from randoms.  But sometimes...I come across it and it makes me SO ANGRY that capable women are choosing to be oppressed and neurotic about the dumbest s**t, that I just can't even.

I got into it with this woman on my twins forum who was basically ready to fire her nanny because of some small infraction (the woman's son wouldn't let the nanny leave because he wanted to hold the nanny's umbrella and so the nanny told him to go take a bite of an apple and then she would let him hold the umbrella and when he went to eat the apple, she snuck out - this of course led to a chorus of [all white] women freaking out about how "deceptive" a practice this is, etc.,) and then of course the conversation spiraled into these wackadoos and their wackadoo expectations for the less privileged (almost universally), women of colour (ditto) who look after their children for not very much money at all.  These employers expect gold-plated service but certainly don't pay the amount that you would assume if you expect your caregiver to basically have a Phd in child psychology, or be an exact proxy for the parent.  There's a different between a caregiver and a parent.  There are huge structural differences between the (often vulnerable) people we pay to look aft our children and us.  It sucks, and you know what, lady?  Some people have real problems.  Why don't you go to Emergency a few more times because your kid has a "strange rash."

Further to the above, someone posted this thing on Facebook that was women's stories of being "assaulted" in child birth by medical practitioners who performed c-sections "without consent" and where women were "shackled" to fetal monitors and "strapped" to hospital beds and "forcibly" coerced into one "medicalized" procedure or another.  My immediate reaction was, that this whole thing of women thinking they know better than medical professionals about what's safe and natural for their children is what lead to the anti-vaccine movement?  I ended up running it by my midwife friend who had some smart points - namely, there's a difference between trauma and assault.  Lots of births can be traumatic - she said that she even found my birth, with the twins, traumatic, but that there is a fundamental difference between trauma and assault.  Like, having to have your baby's collarbone broken so that they can fit through your pelvic opening is super traumatic.  Labour and delivery is such an intimate experience that it's kind of already poised for trauma - you're dealing with life and death!  I think it's wonderful that evidenced-based decision making and women becoming their own health advocates is more and more of a thing, however, we need to strike that balance and dichotomizing the issue so that you have midwives on one hand and evil, military-industrial complex OBs on the other doesn't really sense.  As I was looking into this, I saw that some people use the term "birth rape" which is hugely problematic.

3) I have so many thoughts on the Ghomeshi trial, which is obviously a flashpoint for feminists.  I think ultimately, I feel like I can support and believe women who have been the victims of sexual assault and at the same time, feel like he is absolutely guilty in the court of real life, but that also, the judge's verdict does not constitute a miscarriage of justice.  I don't know how the courts will reconcile the fluidity of consent with the necessary standard of guilt required by the law, I don't know that the courts are the place to do this, even as they are so much a necessary piece of the larger framework.

Right now, I have a kid who likes to strum his junk like a guitar and thinks it's hilarious to do so in mixed company.  I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that and how to manage that, in a way that preserves his innocence and still doesn't allow the calcification of misogyny.

I recently read Chester Brown's The Playboy, which is a comic that was originally published in 1990 and was reissued.  It details Brown's (author of Louis Riel, among other comics) anxiety and guilt around masturbation and purchasing Playboy magazine.  The Dotytron and I both read it, and even though we both agreed that Chester Brown, as a person, is kind of gross, the Dotytron thought that Brown does a good job of honestly representing the shame spiral that happens for adolescent boys faced with the driving compulsions of their desire.  Like, apparently it feels like your brain kind of shuts off and your primordial lizard brain takes over when you're masturbating and then when it's done and you've had an orgasm, then shame comes flooding in.  Shame at what?  He (the Dotytron) posits that the shame is rooted in how quickly the lizard brain takes over and how subsumed the person is to it - like your desire to masturbate is so all-consuming that you're embarrassed and how you let it control your life.

This spurred a conversation about how to negotiate this, as the parents to three boys.  Is the shame and guilt necessary?  Does it have to be that way?  My favorite podcast, Pop Rocket recently had a sex-themed episode and two of the hosts, who are around my age talked about going into bookstores or the library and taking out the sex manuals and moving to a different part of the store/library and furtively thumbing through the pages.  HOW INNOCENT IS THAT?!?  Like, now, you can see the most depraved, disgusting, dehumanizing stuff with the right search string (or even a very wrong search string!).  How do you mitigate THAT? How do you make sure that your kid is processing and on some level, critically engaging with the stuff that shapes their sexuality?

Hell if I know.

Snapchat is kind of the best.

Last weekend was B-A-N-A-N-A-S.  But it was the kind of soul-affirming weekend that grizzled parents need sometime to remind us that we are multi-dimensional people with brilliant, smart, funny, dear friends.

Auntie Em got the twins these jackets recently and they are THE BEST.  Look at these guys!  It's almost like they get along!

I made a new friend!  At JJ and S's house, we were invited to brunch along with their colleagues, whom we had never met before.  At first, the Dotytron and I were like, "no new friends" and were kind of being sour pusses about it, but it turns out these people are AWESOME.  They live in our 'hood, they are both professors at U of T, they are funny, and the woman was automatic kindred spirit.  We are both obsessed with American Crime Story and Togetherness and she is just lovely and smart and their daughter is adorable.  This is a woman who described author Junot Diaz as: "His 'decolonial' love' shtick is kind of catnip for woke WOC" - a million heart eyes emojis.

 Corned beef hash is pretty much the best dish post-late-night dancing dish in the world.

That night I went to Pusha T with my buddy Merrick and it was everything this ol' gal needed.  Pusha T was incendiary.  The crowd was a beautiful multi-ethnic mix of hip hop heads and I got to dance my butt off and it was amazing.

Came home and Record Club was in full swing, which meant that I got to swan in, high off an amazing hip hop show and try to weasel my way in as the only woman in Record Club with my thoughtful insights into Kamasi Washington's album, The Epic.  Late night, and the next day the Dotytron was pretty ruined, so I made myself some corned beef hash and eggs, and then the Dotytron rallied enough so that we could take the kids to an east side indoor play space, which we love, because it's big and clean and the Dotytron and I can go head-to-head on the pop-a-shot game:

Twin A is terrible at this.

Our general modus operandi when doing stuff with the kids is to act like giant idiots and have all the fun while our kids tool around untended.  Half the time we take the kids to a playground, the Dotytron and I are challenging each other to weird parkour or rock climbing stunts while our kids give us the side-eye and other kids stand staring at us, mouth agape, because we generally cavort like fools.  Being able to be a ding dong around kids is very important.  Never lose your silly.

 Then on Sunday, our supper club of mostly high school friends met at Magic Noodle on Harbord. They do Northern Chinese hand-cut noodles in broth and some small shareable plates.  I got the brisket soup which was delicious, and the noodles were fantastic (nicely chewy), but the small plates were hit or miss.  In the top right of the picture above you can see there's a chicken dish which had this weird, mala-style Sichuan peppercorn based sauce that just tasted weird and funky.  We got this potato salad which was good, and lamb skewers (also good).  I don't know if I'd go again, especially given we're on such a ramen kick lately.  

 Quincess wearing his goggles.

Speaking of ramen, we took it easy this weekend and visited my grandma in Markham, followed by Sansotei with my mum.  This crew.

Sansotei why are you so damned delicious???

Some of what I'm doing on Snapchat - a van full of Peppas on the way to the pool.

 

My classic bin of beans made its first appearance for the twins this weekend.  It kept them quietly occupied and giggling for about 30 minutes?  Which is next level.  But then they started dumping beans everywhere which was annoying and inevitable.

Twin A double-fisting this disgusting breakfast concoction I force them to eat: steel cut oats, mixed with full fat cottage cheese, apple sauce, vitamin D droplets and hemp/flax oil.  It's so gross!  

 

Twin B singing the Totoro main theme in Japanese.

Twin A has a huge sweet tooth and loves all things cake, cookies, ice cream, chocolate, etc.  When we had Momma D and Ehmdo over for dinner last night, we took a break after finishing dinner to tidy up the kitchen, pack away leftovers, and open presents before the cake portion.  I popped my head out of the kitchen and saw that Twin A was still sitting in his high chair, so I asked Ehmdo to take him out.  She said that she had tried to do that, but he refused.  As it turns out, he was doggedly sitting in the chair because he was waiting for the dessert portion of the meal.  He sat there for 30 minutes, craning his neck to see the action in the living room, and refused to let us even turn his chair to face the living room.  Such a crafty little sugar butt:

Wanting to be involved, but wanting more, for cake.

For the birthday dinner I roasted two chickens, made gravy, roasted potatoes, roasted cauliflower, and roasted brussels sprouts.  It was an all-oven meal:

I also made this cake, which is known as "The World's Best Cake."  It's Norwegian in origin and features two duplicate layers of butter cake, with a layer of almond-flecked soft and marshmallowy meringue adhered to the cake, and the two layers held together with whipped cream.  I think next time I might add some sliced strawberries to the middle layer, but otherwise, it might not be quite the "world's best" cake, but it's pretty damned delicious.  I've posted the recipe below.

Other things I've eaten/made lately:

I made Smitten Kitchen's spaghetti pie (which is based on cacio e pepe) and I thought it was kind of meh.  I used good fontina and the cheese flavour was kind of pungent but the overall dish was bland and the baked spaghetti texture just wasn't a good fit.  We had this with a classic chocolate cake (I used this Food52 recipe), which turned out good, but not as fudgy as my go-to devil's food cake recipe and the frosting was only so-so.  Still on the hunt for the perfect quick and easy chocolate frosting (not buttercream).  This cake was adapted from the classic Hershey's chocolate cake recipe and I honestly think the Hershey's is better.  Can't improve on that.

Breakfast burritos: scrambled eggs with spinach, piled in a large flour tortilla that's been spread with refried beans (I made mine but easily could be canned), with some grated cheddar.  Rolled up burrito style and then pressed on a panini press and served with tomatillo salsa, sour cream, and guacamole.

Ribollita - basically a version of minestrone with kale, and lots of vegetables and plump canellini beans.  Topped with a very necessary dollop if Italian style salsa verde (parsley, mint, garlic, capers, etc.) and big slices of my sourdough bread with grated parm, toasted for dunking.

Yellow dhal with coconut and muttar paneer and brown basmati rice.

Leftover Micelli Monday taco meat became a giant taco salad - a whole heap of greens, diced tomatoes, sliced black olives, tossed together and topped with the taco meat, optional beans, guacamole, salsa, sour cream, and crunched up tortilla chips for extra texture.  

The Big Yam is obsessed (OBSESSED) with pulses of all shapes and sizes.  Good thing this year is the year of the pulse, according to the WHO.  This is an oldie, bacon-braised lentils, atop a bed of baby spinach, and breaded, fried pucks of goat's cheese to be smeared on crusty bread.  It's a go-to meatless meal.

My St. Paddy's day meal.  Once I started baking corned beef, I've never gone back.  I smear it with a paste of brown sugar and grainy mustard and then bake it in a foil packet until tender. With champ and roasted brussels sprouts and maple carrots.

This was the birthday bundt cake that I made for my mom that she didn't care for.  The recipe (from Baked Occasions) had me right up until I was supposed to mix a portion of the batter with cocoa powder and chocolate and use that to make the dark tunnel.  I dunno, I think I just like a classic, pound-cakey kind of bundt cake.  The chocolate-coconut tunnel was kind of dry and crumbly and tasted neither chocolately or coconutty.  I wouldn't make this again.

 Fin.


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The World's Best Cake
Serves 10-12, technique adapted from Sweet Paul Magazine

10½ tablespoons (1 stick plus 21⁄2 tablespoons) butter, softened

1 2⁄ 3 cups granulated sugar, separated

1 1⁄ 3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

5 large eggs, separated

1⁄ 3 cup whole milk

1⁄4 cup sliced almonds

1 cup heavy cream

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F, with a rack in the middle position. Line 2 8" round cake pans with parchment paper. Grease the pans and the paper.  The original recipe recommended using metal pans over glass. I had metal pans so that's what I used so I can't comment on the glass.
2. Beat the butter and 2⁄ 3 cup of the sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer until light and creamy, about 3 minutes.
3. Add the flour and baking powder and mix well on low speed.
4. Mix in the egg yolks and milk.
5. Scrape the batter into the baking pan (the batter will be thick - I used an offset spatula to spread it).
6. In a large clean bowl, beat the egg whites and the remaining 1 cup sugar to soft peaks. Spread on top of the cake layer. Sprinkle with the almond slices.
7. Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until the meringue is golden brown and puffed. Cool on a wire rack in the pan. Gently unmold one of the cake layers and place cake-side-down on a serving platter.
8. When the cake is cool, put the cream in a medium bowl and add some vanilla extract (I used 1/2 tsp. of vanilla bean paste). Beat to medium-firm peaks with an electric mixer, about 3 minutes.
9. Cover the cake on the platter with the cream. Gently unmold the other cake from the baking pan.  Place the other half, meringue side up, on top.
10. Let the cake sit for 1 hour in the fridge before serving.

I'm All About

I'm INTO a lot of things, lately, and as it goes when you're a modern day Renaissance woman with too many interests surrounded by inspiring, brilliant people, the things I'm INTO are varied and range from the profound to the frivolous.

1) This exchange between Roxane Gay, Tressie McMillan Cottom, and David Simon on the barring of journalist Tim Tai's from the University of Missouri's student activist tent city.  It happened on Twitter.  It is electrifying reading.  Gay and Simon I knew already, but Tressie McMillan Cottom is new to me and she is everything. Razor sharp, eloquent, invested.  Remember when thinkers would debate each other and it was televised?  I kind of want to go back to that time.  The fact that this happened on Twitter is a sign of the modern era, but imagine what it would have been like to have these three in the same room together?  Without the constraints of Twitter?  I know Twitter is what facilitated this spontaneous conversation, but I want to go back to the time when you could turn on the TV and see Michel Foucault debating Noam Chomsky:

Anyway, David Simon gets served and is STILL AT IT.  Some of McMillan Cottom's responses are the best.  Like this one:

Tressie Mc ‏@tressiemcphd  Nov 17

Tressie Mc Retweeted David Simon

David.

Tressie Mc added,

David Simon @AoDespair

@jondresner @biblioracle @tressiemcphd It means to Mussolini what it does. But a battered wife tied long-term to abusive spouse gets fascism

Insert me doing a million "OHHHHHH, S**T!!!*  motions.  David Simon gets pwned all over the place and comes off looking really grasp-y and petulant and unhinged in the process, when all it would take is a simple acknowledgement of "Yes, I can see how the media can be a tool for mis-representation and oppression."  At one point, Cottom is like, "I can't believe I have to explain this to the guy who wrote THE WIRE." and I'm like, damn right.  Simon is also getting pwned because he doesn't know how to work Twitter properly, but he's so fixated on his ideal, that he's not looking at the actual situation, or acknowledging how contingent that reified ideal is.

2) On a (slightly) less heady note: I'm all about this coat from Madewell.

I bought some shoes from Madewell last spring and they didn't fit so I returned them for store credit.  This fall, after I got my new job, I invested in some pieces and splurged on a coat (a hella splurge, considering the abysmal state of the Canadian dollar) that is a step above my usual fare.  It's sleek, modern, blocky and bulky enough to be proportionally balanced against my skinnies and tights, and elevates my weekend slovenly jeans-based outfits and finishes my more polished weekday work wear.  It's a lady coat and I love it.  I love the high collar, the slightly oversized cut, and the small details (zippers on the sleeves, deep pockets).  Anyway, because I bought it with store credit, I managed to get a few pieces for what felt like much less, even though I was spending money I had already spent.  My next lady coat purchase will be a mid-calf length bulky duster/cocoon type, assuming it doesn't make me look stumpy.

3)

The new John Mulaney special on Netflix, The Comeback Kid.  I first experienced Mulaney as one half of the "Too Much Tuna" duo on Nick Kroll's Kroll Show.  Then a friend mentioned his special New In Town (also on Netflix) and the Dotytron and I watched it and died laughing.  Seriously, nothing has hit us this hard since we stumbled upon Kevin Hart lo' these many years ago.  Something about the humour, the references, the wit...it all really connected.  Mulaney is "coming back" from a disastrous rapidly-cancelled sitcom that was called Mulaney.  I never watched it, but I know that he's funny (Wikipedia tells me he wrote on SNL for 6 years and won Emmys) and I highly recommend his stuff.

I generally can't with a lot of stand-up because I find it can veer into basic bro territory really quickly. This is very much not that.

4)

So old, right?  I know, I know.  How dare I talk about something that was binged-watched two weeks ago?!  The point is, this show is amazing.  It's basically tailor-made for my peer group, amirite?  It has heart, it's sincere, it talks about being a first-generation something with immigrant parents, it has a multi-ethnic cast that isn't token, or special.  They're just people living their lives in an urban setting and it is so sad that this is a thing that's worthy of note.  Like, things have gotten better for people of colour, but Fresh off the Boat and Blackish are all about the playing off of being different from the American "norm" and using that for laughs, which, don't get me wrong, is also moving in the right direction, but the characters of Denise and Dev are just people, and they're not defined by their sexuality or colour status and that is so freaking amazing.  Or, when they are defined by it, it's in the service of talking about racist casting in Hollywood (see the stand-out episode, "Indians on TV").  I want a world in which niche markets aren't the only place for black stories (e.g. Tyler Perry movies).  I want a world where shows like A Different World can exist alongside Fresh off the Boat and a scripted series from Wong Kar Wei or whatever and it's just part of the amazing smorgasbord of television available.  The show is funny and has a killer score with loads of classic hip hop and class Aphex Twin (lol!) and I can't love it more.

5) This podcast: Pop Rocket.  I went on a new podcast tear a while ago looking for new road trip material for me and the Dotytron, for the rare minutes when we're not blasting the Pirates of the Caribbean theme for our young 'uns.  We tried a bunch of different ones, some for a second time: Radio Lab, Love & Radio, All Things Considered, and Pop Rocket.  Now, all we want to do is listen to Pop Rocket.  I would listen to it when I would run, we listened to it in the car on our way down to visit my sister.  Now that we've finished Master of None and the new Mulaney stand-up and we're generally uninspired by TV, we've contemplated just listening to podcasts while we stretch (which is possibly the dorkiest combination of activities, ever).  It is that good.

Here is (are) my problem(s) with Radio Lab and others: 1) NPR voice.  Is there no diversity in the world of podcasts universally beloved by white people?  Do they teach nebbishy voice in public-radio school?  I hate the sound of the voices because they're all such a thing.  Pop Rocket has people who sound like themselves.  That being said, I CANNOT HANDLE John Oliver because I hate his voice and his face.  I also don't like someone screaming at me all the time?  Sorry?!  2) No perspective.  We listened to a Radio Lab episode on Patient Zero and one on the Galapagos, and look - I'm a generally interested person.  I like stuff, okay?  My interests are far-reaching.  HOWEVER, I want you to have a perspective on the stuff.  Don't just report to me, because not all of the topics are fascinating enough in and of themselves.  I need an angle.  FRAME THE ISSUE.  On Radio Lab, they say stuff like, "Wow. That is so weird." "Isn't that crazy?" and it's literally the blandest, most obvious reactions. If YOU are not invested in the topic, how am I supposed to be???

I have more points, but let me tell you about why I love Pop Rocket.  The core people are amazing - Margaret Wapler is a writer - former arts writer for the LA Times.  Oliver Wang is a DJ and academic.  Wynter Mitchell is a digital strategist, who came up with the "Straight Outta..." meme for Straight Outta Compton.  Guy Brannum is a writer and comedian who is currently working on the Mindy Project.  These people KNOW their shiz.  They know so much about popular culture and they have thoughts and ideas and Guy Brannum is a brilliant, smart, interested in all things commentator and I can't love it enough.  It's so good.  Their interests are so wide-ranging and the things they have to say and how they agree or disagree with each other is fantastic.

6) My kids.  I freakin' love my kids!  We had a crazy weekend that was jam-packed.  Friday I had the day off and took the twins to my work where they wreaked havoc and hugged my executive director and then I took them to the ROM where they were claimed to be scared of almost everything but in reality, weren't.  Then that night we got a sitter and the Dotytron and I went to try Brando's Fried Chicken which is a pop-up fried chicken place.  There was nowhere to sit so we took our chicken to go and sat in the car and ate it while listening to Pop Rocket.  We were still hungry and had a million hours to kill so we went and had a second dinner at Porchetta and Co (more fried chicken).  Then we went to my brother's belated birthday celebration which was archery tag (more like archery dodgeball) and it was fun and we got home late and it was life-affirming.

The next day we were hosting Friendsgiving, which is 15 adults and 6 kids in our little mouse house.  It was such a fun night.  We provided turkey and stuffing and I made pies and other people brought more deliciousness and there was a signature cocktail and we talked and laughed and I marveled at being around the table with this group of people, the core group of which have known each other for over 20 years.  It is incredible and heartening and I love my beautiful, diverse, talented, funny, accomplished friends with all my heart.  I love them.  That was another late night.

Sunday was about running a million loads of dishes and then going out to dinner with our friend A and his wife C who were in town from NYC and seeing A's gig, which meant the third night in a row that I didn't get to put my kids down to bed and I felt it keenly.  I'm craving it.  I love these little nuggets.

Language acquisition for the twins is proceeding at an epic clip and I feel like Lindsay is losing his fat toddler belly and it pains me.  Just this morning, I came down from getting dressed and he was in his high chair and he said to me, "Hi, mama.  I'm awake now," and I died.  DIED. DEAD. GONE.  He sleeps on the floor on a pile of blankets in their shared room even though we have a perfectly good crib mattress two feet away.  Quincess is still in his crib and he goes down with an arm around a mouse, a moose, and insists on his clutching a book which means that his arms are full.

The Big Yam is a sweet little nut and I love his butt so hard.  The other day, he had wandered off and when the Dotytron went to find him, he discovered that the Big Yam had found the iPad, closed our door, and was illicitly watching Team Umi Zoomi.  This is the first time we've caught him doing something overtly sneaky and the Dotytron impressed upon him how serious an infraction it is and told him he was supposed to come down and tell me what happened.  After 10 minutes, I went up to find him, and he was sitting on the corner of our bed in the dark.  READ THAT SENTENCE AGAIN AND TRY NOT TO HAVE YOUR HEART BREAK INTO A MILLION PIECES.  I pretended I didn't know what had happened and was like, "Hey buddy, it's dinner time, whatcha doing?" and at first he said, "Nothing," but he stayed where he was.  I asked some gently probing questions, "Is there something you want to tell me?" and after a few nos, he broke down and started bawling.  Like, those great, hiccuping, gasping sobs because he felt so bad.  Genuine kid tears from sadness (as opposed to kid tears from frustration at not getting something, or tears from being a flop when your sibling taps you) will end you.

The other day I came home and the Big Yam was on the couch, looking miserable - he was upset because he couldn't get his piano piece down (!!!!!).  I mean, c'mon!!!  I did what any self-respecting parent would do, and I put on an OG-Sesame Street video with Don Music:

I'm also into the following meals we've had lately:

Pulled pork sandwiches, made with pork shoulder braised in the slow cooker with apple cider, brown sugar, a bit of soy, and some bourbon.  Served on pretzel buns with a bit of my homemade chipotle barbecue sauce, with mashed sweet potatoes and a brussels sprouts and apple slaw.

Freezer rice, minced ginger, garlic, a jar of chopped kimchi, frozen peas, soy, rice wine, sesame oil, a bit of sugar, and shrimp. Topped with a fried egg.  That night I was convinced I had norovirus because I felt like I was going to barf on the streetcar - after punishing a bowl and a half of this stuff, realized that I was just hungry.

Freezer eggplant orzo with mozzarella which the kids hated, but which I loved because it was Thursday hell night.

Soup + bread is one of my meal templates.  My kids loved orange/red pureed soups so this was a roasted tomato soup pulled from the freezer with leftover pulled pork, sliced apple, and aged cheddar grilled cheese sandwiches.  HUGE.

Loblaws sells T&T's coconut bread in a loaf and they'll slice it on site for you.  I turned it into French toast and won the hearts of my goon squad for all eternity.

Biscuits from the Ovenly cookbook.  Recipe copied below.  These have honey in the mix and are brushed with a warm butter-honey mixture (supposed to be hot honey, but I didn't have it, but just imagine!) and then baked a bit more.  These were insanely, insanely delicious.

Great Nany Doty's pasta with rosé sauce, and a salad of roasted buttercup squash on a bed of spinach with a lemon tahini dressing and toasted pine nuts.

Smitten's cheddar broccoli soup (which is so much better than my usual recipe), with feta-basil-scallion muffins from the Ovenly cookbook.  These muffins were another huge hit.  Definitely work making a double batch and then freezing the rest...if I had an inch of extra space in my freezer.  Which I don't...because I'm a psycho prepper.  I'll post the recipe for the muffins tomorrow.

Annual fall risotto - kale, roasted squash, and bacon with sumac roasted heirloom carrots.

We recently did a Yummy Market run, which means part of the reason I'm out of freezer space is because it's stuffed with pierogies.  I always serve them with caramelized onions (pierogies are parboiled and then roasted in the oven with the onions), and the fullest fattest sour cream I can find (Pinehedge Organize 18% for the win!).  My local butcher who is a 3rd generation, anti-hipster type, makes very weird, very soft, very onion-y German sausages which are strangely delicious even thought they have no right to be, and the combo of the 'rogies and the sausage made for a killer meal.

Friendsgiving turkey - a full 20lbs.  I did the turkey flip thing this time around because I find the air circulation is never good enough to get that full expanse of juicy thigh meat skin properly browned.  It worked really well overall, but the flipping process was a mite precarious/fraught.

Smitten's baked ziti, which is basically like my skillet lasagne/regular lasagne/every pasta bake but I made it with Barilla's super skinny penne rigate noodles which made for a high proportion of crusty edges.  I am not the kind of parent who is above telling my kids that they "won't like" the layer of bronzed, chewy cheese on top and denuding their portions of it accordingly.

Listen, Smitten Kitchen's Deb Perelman is a freakin' culinary, home cooking saint, and she is justifiably beloved in the food blogging world.  She just KNOWS WHAT REGULAR PEOPLE WANT TO EAT AND HOW THEY WANT IT TO TASTE.  Which is why her recipes are featured so heavily.  She's good for some inspiration and for dialing in exactly what you want.  I made her pecan pie for Friendsgiving and people: IT IS SINE NON QUA.  Go out and make this right away.  Her recipe comes down to two parts: toasting the nuts (why didn't I do this before?!  AM I NEW?!?) and replacing the cloying, gummy corn syrup with golden syrup.  If you've ever tasted golden syrup (and this was my first time) it has a roasted, toasted, barley-ish depth to it that highlights the nuts, whereas the corn syrup just kinds of drowns the nuts in sweetness.  The texture of this pie was divine - mostly nuts mixed evenly with this round, caramely filling.  So often when you get pecan pie, it's a thin layer of pecans sitting atop an inch of goo.  This was so good.  

Still trying to get back into the regular swing of blogging.  BUT IT'S ALMOST XMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OH GAWWWWWWWD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fin.

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Biscuits with Honey and Thyme

Adapted a bit from the Ovenly cookbook.

Makes 12-14 very sturdy, substantial biscuits

18 T. unsalted butter

5 c. all purpose flour

2 T. sugar

2 T. baking powder

1 T. salt

1 t. chopped fresh thyme (I didn't have any, so I omitted)

5 T. hot honey (I just used regular honey)

2 c. cold buttermilk

- Standard biscuit procedure.  Mix dry ingredients together in a big bowl.  Cut 15 T. of the butter into dry ingredients until the butter is in small, pea-sized pieces.  Mix 3 T. of the honey into 1 3/4 c. of the buttermilk (reserve the 1/4 c. in case you need it if the dough is dry) and stir into the dry ingredients until the dry is incorporated.  

- Turn the dough onto a flour surface and pat it gently into a 1/2" thick rectangle (approximately 12" x 6").  Fold dough into thirds (like a letter) and then pat it down again so it's 3/4" thick throughout.  T

- The recipe says to cut the dough into 8 rectangles, but that's insane.  I made 12 and they were hefty...you could probably get away with 14.

- Put the biscuits on a greased baking tray and bake in a preheated 400F oven for 18 minutes.  Remove from oven.

- Mix together remaining 2 T. of honey with 1 t. chopped fresh thyme (if using) with the remaining 3 T. of butter (melted).  Brush over the tops of the biscuits and reduce oven temperature to 350F.  Bake the biscuits for an additional 10 minutes more until they are a burnished, deep golden brown.