Long weekend! Long weekend!

Come to Lagerfeld, long weekend!  I took tomorrow off from work.  We're heading out to Geneseo and we're hoping against hope that if the Dotytron can zip out of work right when the bell tolls, we can be on the road at 4pm and maybe beat the traffic.  That would mean making it down to Geneseo nice and early enough to be able to see our niece and nephews and spend some time with them and get settled in.  But I have a bad feeling that even leaving at 4pm won't be early enough to avoid the rush-hour, get-the-hell-outta-dodge, gridlock on the QEW.

The Dotytron has got 4 interviews so far...so please do wish him luck!  It will be SO NICE to head to Geneseo and not have to think about our lives and to give my sis and Uncle Rico a hand with taking their minds of their own very busy and stressful lives.

It was me and the Boobla tonight.  We had steak sandwiches and played outside and had baths and read stories.  It was lovely. He seems to be pretty much over his incessant whinyness and now it's just a general whinyness phase.

I got a really good idea from a colleague.  She created a little teeny, tiny, personal tumblr for her kids to share with relatives, grandparents, etc.  She uploads photos and pictures of their artwork and stuff - little snippets to capture their childhood.  I thought this was FANTASTIC so I've copied it.  I made a tumblr for the Big Yam where I can post random shots and videos and his favorite things and his words.  I thought it'd be nice for him to have and look back on later...a nice record of his childhood.

The Big Yam's Big Life: a blog about a little Big Yam in a big big world.

I don't expect you lot (all 10 of you) to be interested, but it's there if you ever want to check in on what's happening in his world, or if you just want a place to see cute photos of him and find out how his vocabulary is progressing.  Surprise to no one: GRANDPARENTS LOVE THIS KIND OF THING!  LOL.  Pretty sure Momma D lost her damn mind when I sent her the link.  Hahaha!  Yes!  Outlaw-daughter brownie points!  Hopefully this makes up for the myriad ways I surely must annoy her on the regular.

In other exciting news, MHui alerted me to the opening of A NEW RAMEN RESTAURANT OPENED BY GUU.  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  AKA - every dream I've ever dreamed and every hope I've ever dared to hope, realized.  It's called Kinton Ramen and it looks AMAZING.  Dotytron and I are set to have a dinner and a movie night in a couple of weeks.  I'm so torn about where I want to go!  Really, all I've wanted to eat lately is Asian food.  I get it, I get it.  Hopgood's Foodliner, the Ace, 416Snackbar, Chantecler, and Yours Truly are all generating huge buzz.  But I care not!  I really, truly, only want to eat at Guu.  It's just my favorite place/thing in the world.  I can't help it!  I dunno...maybe we'll try to get into General Electric first thing and see if those tacos are really worth the trip to dodge (and the wait at dodge).  I really just want to eat good, affordable food, surrounded by Asians with no hipsters and no jostling and no attitude.  Luckily, in Toronto, that's not too much to ask...it just requires that you won't be eating at whatever "buzz-worthy" restaurant has been designated so by the glitterati (or Toronto Life) and instead you'll be eating like, Bamiyan kebabs and occasionally getting food poisoning from Babu.  Can you handle it?  I can.

Fin.

Hot Docs

Well, one of my favorite Toronto times of the year is here and I couldn't be happier.  Last year, doing Hot Docs with a 6 month old Big Yam was a bit more of a pain, but this year we're making it to 4 out of our 5 features, and we're only missing that one because of a conflicting, equally awesome engagement.  I think that's pretty solid.  Academic Book Club has also scheduled a Hot Docs outing on Wednesday, so I'm actually going to 5 docs, total. 

We've seen some pretty good ones - recaps below.

Krisis GR2011 - The Prism has one of the worst titles I've ever encountered (so unwieldy!), but an interesting, though superficial, premise.  The Greek-Canadian director armed 14 people in Greece with cameras and taught them how to use them.  Over a year, the footage was uploaded to a site and from all those photos, the documentary was made (interspersed with interviews).  What results is a ground-level look at the effects of Greek's debt crisis.  It was pretty interesting - if only for the fact that it reinforced that students (the ones most passionate about the protest) the world over are always young, idealistic, and woefully ignorant of macro-level understandings of economics.  Ha!  It just seems like a giant mess over there and you have a confluence of factors: history, poor government, lack of fiscal foresight, etc. all colluding to make it a giant mess with little hope for resolution.  This film screened with a "short" documentary called Yugo, about the eponymous Yugoslavian car and the closure of the factory.  This doc was about 28 minutes too long had a weird overwrought dramatic tone that we thought should have been comedic but wasn't obviously so, and was the boringest.

Made In China follows one year in the Jinyuan garment factory, a small-to-mid scale operation reeling from the effects of the global recession.  Orders are down, and so the owner/manager (Old Liu, pictured above) struggles to stay afloat and pay bills, mirroring the experiences of the people who work for him, putting in long hours and living in cramped dormitories.  The movie was filmed in a purely observational style - which made it seem a little long - some of the scenes got repetitive and it could have used a bit of editing - maybe 20 minutes could have been cut without an appreciable difference in the film overall.  The movie is heartbreaking - it shows how every person as part of the chain (minus the people selling and profiting from the selling of the goods produced) is in a bind and there's no easy answers.  We came away from that movie once again feeling how lucky we are to be born in Canada.  There's a family working for 2000 yuan a month, and one of the more heartbreaking scenes is when the husband opens his paycheck and wonders aloud, "but we only took 2 days off last month! What's the point of working so hard when you make so little?"  It's such a complicated scenario.  So yeah, I could make an effort to only buy Canadian, but what does that accomplish other than strangling the manufacturing industry in China and putting more of those people out of work?  One thing I did resolve was that the Big Yam is not going to get an easy ride.  He has to know what goes on in the greater world and how darned lucky he is and he better not give me any lip about it, either!  Otherwise, I'm going to make him sleep on a steel cot with only a thin tatami mat and then we'll see what he thinks about his lot in life.  The movie also touched on some of the generational issues that occur within these families - with children resisting joining the family in the sweatshop trade and how Confucian ideals are being tested as China continues to evolve.  

Yesterday we saw Ping Pong which is precisely the antidote we needed.  It's ADORABLE (and has my name written all over it).  The doc follows 9 different seniors (over 85) from around the world who go to compete in the Senior's Ping Ping World Championships held in China.  So many characters!  OLD PEOPLE!  Suffice to say, it's hilarious and I also simultaneously teared up about a million times.  It was heart-warming to the max.  It just goes to show you - becoming old isn't easy.  You gotta have some fight, competitive zest, and gumption to make it!  One of the women was 89 and suffered from dementia following the passing of her husband of 40 years.  She stopped eating, started to forget things, would get confused and show up at the bakery at 11pm expecting it to be open.  Recognizing that she couldn't live by herself anymore, she moved into a retirement residence and discovered table tennis, which in her words, "brought me back."  So f**king cute!  I can't recommend this doc, enough.  Is it sentimental?  OF COURSE IT IS, IT'S ABOUT OLD PEOPLE, YOU HEARTLESS A**HOLE!  Is it maudlin?  OBVI!  Will it still make you laugh and feel good about the world?  YES!  So get to it, already!


We had an impossibly full weekend.  Momma D had the Big Yam for a sleepover on Saturday night so the Dotytron and I checked out Banh Mi Boys, this restaurant doing updated Asian-Latin fusion and updated Asian mash-ups that's been getting big buzz lately.  

Of course we ordered more food than was necessary/consumable.  We had kimchi fries (twice fried crispy frites with kimchi, mayonnaise, and pulled pork on top), a squid taco, a chicken taco, a kalbi beef banh mi and a pork belly banh mi.  The tacos use a Chinese crispy pancake for a shell and feature the meat, some hot sauce, and a cabbage slaw along with pickled daikon and carrot.  The banh mi feature your protein choice inside a soft French-style bun with the pickled daikon and carrot and hot sauce.  We didn't try the bao.  I really like the bread they use for their banh mi, they're very soft, and don't have the crust that your Chinatown version has, but I thought that overall, the tacos took the day.  The banh mi were a little too bready (I don't like it when the bread to meat ratio is off - which is why we didn't try their 3rd option for food - the bao) and the meat was a little stingy.  What I love about banh mi traditionally is the slick of salted butter and the pate they spread on the bread to keep it moist.  This was missing that and thus tasted a little dry.  The banh mi are also priced at $5.99 each, whereas the tacos are $3.99 and are just as filling.  Plus the "taco" shell is a great vehicle.  The squid was super-tender and flavourful.  You kind of lost the kalbi beef and pork belly taste in the banh mi versions.  I would definitely go back for tacos and kimchi fries and indeed, am looking forward to a return visit!

Sunday we had brunch at Momma D's when we picked up the Big Yam.  She made us waffles and English bacon, which was a nice treat because we went for a run in the morning (for the record: the Dotytron held me back).  Then we saw a doc and then we met up with our Supper Club at Libretto Danforth.  We all shared a heap of appetizers and pizzas and it was all very, very good.  The Big Yam was a champ.  He basically sat in his high chair for 3 hours and was calm and cute and very personable and chill.  He didn't need to be entertained and he only started squawking when I wasn't giving him his food fast enough.  He LOVES the gnocchi fritti there (as do we!) and he ate about 2 slices worth of pizza.  He also ate the proscuitto off another slice.  I was really proud of how well behaved he was.  Three hours of compliant behaviour basically means he can handle your typical Chinese banquet meal, which is my goal.  I'm going to try very very hard to not be the parent who has the kid who runs around the restaurant and who has to whip out an iPhone or something to keep my kid entertained.  If that's your model, then great!  I'm glad that works for you, but it's not necessarily the kind of behaviour I want to foster in the Yam.  

So...this week is bonkers.  Regular work, regular life and then Tuesday night Dotytron is doing his music stuff, Wednesday night I have Academic Book Club - Hot Docs edition, then Thursday night is Academic Book Club proper.  As the Dotytron said, this week is going to be: "Monday - what's going on? Friday - how was everything?"    

Add to that the Dotytron got surplussed this year (from both his jobs!) which means that he will definitely be teaching someplace else next year.  Postings come out tomorrow...le sigh.

Tonight I made us a Mughlai chicken curry and eggplant bhurta.  The chicken curry featured a million different spice blends employed at various stages (one to marinate the chicken, one to fry in the pan, another bundle of whole spices to simmer in the sauce) and a sauce enriched with milk blended with cashews, almonds, and saffron.  We ate this with brown rice.

Fin.

NYC part deux

 The Big Yam cruising around in his bonny togs

 Day 2 we ended up at the Manhattan Children's Museum, where the admission price for adults and all children over the age of 12 months is $11 (why a children's museum would create uniform pricing for adults and children is beyond me.)  It's basically a giant indoor playground with different learning areas, sand and water play, and some cheesy "exhibits" that are of questionable ethnic integrity and intent.

 Holla!  We hit up Doughnut Plant for the most delicious doughnuts I've ever had in my life.  I tried one of each kind - cake and yeasted.  The Tres Leches cake doughnut was out of this world but the yeasted doughnut was even better, if that's even possible.  It was light, airy, and filled with the most luscious, essence-of-coconut cream filling I had ever tasted.  Bomb!

The evening of Day 2 is the night we went to Brooklyn to eat at Betto and to visit with my chef friends S (who's the chef there), and A (who is a sous chef at Lincoln) and the Dotytron's buddy A and his gf, C.  It was a lovely, lovely dinner that stretched long into the evening.

 Day 3 we started by taking a walk on the High Line, which is an elevated train track that was converted into a park.  I can't even describe how lovely this was in the spring.  It's such a phenomenal idea and a smart and savvy use of space.  The Big Yam LOVED it.  He had been wanting to be outside the whole trip so the fact that he could run up and down and zip around was positively THRILLING for him.  I can't say enough good things about it.  Definitely a not-miss attraction.

 We saw this sculpture by artist Susan Sze, who I just learned is the wife of Siddharta Mukherjee, the author of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize winning non-fiction book, The Emperor of All Maladies, which I just finished two nights ago.  When I went to read up on him after finishing the book, I found out his wife was an artist and that I had recently seen her work!  Cool!  I'll review his book in an upcoming post.

 That day we had lunch at Parm, which is a sister restaurant to one of the newest and hippest kids on the block, Torrisi Italian Specialities.  There was no way we would be able to get resos at Torrisi, so we settled for walking in for lunch at Parm, which, in keeping with the unwritten NYC policy, doesn't have high chairs.  Of course.  They specialize in Italian-American red sauce classics. The value for the dollar is good - you get a big plate of chicken parm (me) or chicken francese (Dotytron) with salad or baked ziti with "gravy" for $15.

 Our last dinner in NYC we trekked to Brooklyn to eat at Pies'n'Thighs.  Fried pickles, fried chicken, biscuits, mac'n'cheese, and a fried apple pie?  Uh-huh.  Yeah, that's right.  

 My friends A & S live in an apartment pretty close to our hotel, so we went to visit them that night and hung out on their shared rooftop terrace.  This is the view of the Empire State Building from their place.  Pretty slick.

I'm a sucker, and the Big Yam was suffering from the beginnings of his walking pneumonia...so I had in the bed with us every night.  Best. Feeling. Ever.

And that wraps up our version of NYC this time around.  Like I said, it wasn't ideal.  There are obviously more high-profile restos I would have liked to have gone to and I would have wanted a more restful vacation than what I got toting my bambino around...but it was still nice to spend a good chunk of time away from our regular lives and whatnot.  I just love, love, love NYC.  It's such an awesome, awesome city.

That wraps up the NYC coverage.  Back to regularly scheduled posting tomorrow...complete with a book review and HUNGER GAMES MOVIE WEEKEND MADNESS!!!

Fin.

DonDon Izakaya

Before everything went to hell in a hand basket this week, the Dotytron and I took advantage of some Momma D babysitting service and went out for dinner.  We took one for the team and tried the new izakaya that had opened up on Dundas, DonDon Izakaya.  We went in knowing it was a risk, given that Guu not only has the izakaya district of our hearts cornered, but is also pretty much our favorite restaurant, regardless of cuisine, in Toronto.  

Reviews on Yelp had been mixed.  I was heartened by the fact that the place was crawling with Asians (I almost always trust an Asian person's opinion of food over almost every other ethnicity - in Toronto, a place filled with young Asian couples and groups of Asian friends is a good sign indeed), but as it turns out, that hope was misplaced.  

The space is nice enough.  The staff, all of whom seemed to be Japanese, are like, the younger, less hot, less cool cousins of the Guu staff.  Part of the joy of going to Guu is ogling the Japanese eye candy (see previous posts re: my Guu boyfriend).  The crew at DonDon are not ogle-worthy.  Awwww...poor guys.  Now I feel bad for saying it.  The atmosphere is considerably less raucous than at Guu - the servers still shout at you but the vibe of the room is just...off.  No one is giving themselves over to the experience...it was like a concert where everyone is one their phones or sitting their butts in the seats and not engaging with the act.

Overall, the menu featured way less stuff we wanted to eat, and the dishes we ordered were mostly okay, with only one standout item.  The food was missing the love and the care.  

 Tako wasabi is one of our favorite dishes at Guu, where finely chopped raw octopus is mixed with wasabi and served with little sheets of nori for turning into spicy raw octopus seaweed cigarellos.  Here the tako wasabi was cut a little too big and served a little too warm.  

This was egg salad mixed with raw salmon, stuffed into a smoked egg.  It was a nice little bite, but it had been prepared way in advance and the bacon chip was cold.  Cold bacon is never appealing.  I feel like if you ordered something similar at Guu, it would have been made a la minute.  

This dish was the ONE knockout.  "Black Croquettes" - little creamy potato cod fingers coated in squid-ink panko and fried.  So good!  The insides were fluffy and light and creamy.  This was so good we ordered another round.  

They kind of do a Japadog type fusion hot dog thing.  This was a pork wiener (with a very unpleasant, mushy texture) topped with a cold kimchi-based relish.  I think if everything had been warm, this would have been better.  As it stood, the vinegariness of the kimchi and the competing temperatures didn't coalesce into a proper fusion dish.

This was advertised as a pork belly bun - a la Momofuku.  It wasn't pork belly, the bun was a little soggy from oversteaming and then sitting.  If it had been pork belly and the bun was piping hot, this would have been a good dish.  As is...it was meh.

This was chicken and mashed potatoes and bonito flakes.  Another dish that had a good underlying concept that was undone by the shoddy execution.  The chicken was a little flabby, but the mashed potatoes were divine (I suspect they were instant).

A teriyaki hot dog.  Here the hot dog was all beef and had a better texture, but it was still overwhelmed by the lack of subtlety in the teriyaki toppings.

Ahhhhhh...hamachi sashimi.  Impossible to eff up.  Impossible not to enjoy.  Why isn't there funding going to making sure that yellowtail can be farmed?  Huh?  What's up with that?!?   If we can invest billions into oil sands, then surely, hamachi farming should be equally prioritized.

Kushiyaki (stuff on sticks!) Bacon wrapped asparagus, bacon wrapped oyster mushrooms, grilled quail eggs, chicken, and gizzards.  I prefer my kushiyaki with just a sprinkling of salt.  So good.  This dish had a really nice, smoky flavour that enhanced the fattier items (like the bacon stuff).

This was supposed to be sashimi that was lightly grilled over a hay fire.  This was awful.  Here you have butterfish and tuna sashimi that was RUINED by the greasy flavour of the smoke.  It tasted the way burning butane smells.  If any of you have a grill, and have ever oiled the piece of food you want to grill and then had the oil burn over the hot heat and leave a greasy, blackened slick of burnt oil film on the food - that's what was on these beautiful pieces of fish.  We couldn't even choke this dish down.  It was sad.

Soy tofu.  Silky, custardy, served with a seasoned soy.  I prefer this dish warm.

Dessert was a nicely executed creme caramel for me and a matcha red bean thing for the Dotytron.


At one point, we saw the owner talking to another dude, and I turned to the Dotytron and asked, "do you know what language they're speaking?" He listened intently for a minute and then turned to me and shook his head.  That's right.  The owners of DonDon are CHINESE PEOPLE (they were speaking Cantonese).  This is a classic case of Chinese people ripping off and trying to cash in on a successful business model.  Sometimes, this works.  Like, say, in AYCE restaurants.  In this case, the attempt to replicate Guu but cut corners failed.  


In the end, I'm glad I took one for the team.  Technically, the "team" in question consists of MHui and her hubby, whose unbridled enthusiasm for Guu matches ours.  At least we can relegate this place to the "never again" pile.  


Sigh.  There's nothing I can do...I only want to eat at Guu (sung to the tune of Hootie and the Blowfish.)


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.

Outtakes

Here are some photos from recent travels and sojourns. This is the Dotytron and T as another public pool/wading pool in our 'hood:

Some photos from our exciting adventure in stinky tofu land, aka "T & T Nightmarket":

My people love them some giant toast (see the "giant toast" dessert at Phoenix for reference.) This stand was selling toast fingers with all kinds of crazy flavorings - we got the coffee caramel one:

This place was selling store bought ice cream with some fairly pedestrian toppings. I think they were getting mad traffic because they hopped on the bacon bandwagon AND because of the cutesy graphics and names for items (my people have no resistance to the cutesy! None!):

We got a "ninja panda" - which is black sesame ice cream with condensed milk and sugared crushed peanuts. I got her to add some coconut - but this was pretty ho-hum all things considered:

Tuesday night's dinner was tuna macaroni salad with a raw beet, apple, and horseradish salad alongside some blanched beans in a sharp mustard vinaigrette:

This is a photo of the Big Yam rocking the very Frrraaanche swimsuit JSculls bought for him - he modeled it for the first time at our pool hang yesterday - looking pretty cute!

We had the outlaw parents babysit so that the Dotytron could take me out for an early birthday dinner. We went against our gut instinct (our gut instinct is to ALWAYS go to Guu or Guu Sakabar) and tried a new place in the neighbourhood, Le Canard Mort, which is owned by the same people who own Le Rossignol, also in the neighbourhood. It was so-so. The service was a little scattered and inexperienced. One of the servers was too busy chatting up a regular about inane things to notice that we were ready for drink refills and that we wanted our check. I also took the liberty of ordering a cocktail for the Dotytron and inadvertently emasculated him by getting something that didn't come in a lowball glass. I thought a gimlet was a classic, manly drink! How am I supposed to know?!?

This is the girl who didn't understand my neighbour's specification that she was bringing "punch for the adults" to the street party and started took three big gulps of what I thought was juice punch, only to INSTANTLY start to feel a little light headed. BECAUSE IT WAS ABOUT HALF VODKA. I haven't had vodka since an ill-advised trip down puking-vodka-cooler-on-my-friend's-driveway's-lane in grade 11. So of course I got all red-faced and my heart was pounding and I realized I very much DISLIKE the sensation of tipsiness and I yammed a million carbs to soak up the light mist of booze in my belly and went up to our bathroom to splash cold water on my face and drank a million glasses of water to flush out my system. The Dotyron insists that the paranoia of being the slightest bit drunk has a greater affect on me than the actual effects of the alcohol itself. It was precautionary - nothing is more unseemly than a drunk parent at the block party, am I right?

Le Canard Mort was so-so. Kind of ho-hum. We got the sweetbreads appetizer, which is served buffalo chicken style - breaded and deep fried and doused in a buttery-hot sauce. Pros: big chunks of sweetbreads. Cons: the sauce made everything a little to soft undermined the breading. This would have been spectacular if it was crispy.

We also split an order of the potted prawns, which featured chopped prawns swimming in a buttery, rich, cheesy sauce with toast for dipping. This was quite tasty, but you just read the description, so it's a bit of a no brainer. It's like the Obvious Mayor of Obvious Culinary Combinations-ville:

I ordered the duck breast, which, as you can tell from the photo, was delivered well over the medium-rare I was informed (rather smugly I might add) it would be served. I hate that. I hate when the server says to you, "Just to warn you, we serve our duck [lamb, salmon, pork, etc.] medium rare...are you okay with that?" and then they inevitably go over. Actually, it's incredible how that invariably happens - the restaurants where servers tell you that they serve their meat "medium rare" are the ones who have no idea what medium rare is or how to get a protein to that point. The "raspberry sauce" was terrible - literally a glop of barely cooked raspberries that had been mixed with the pan sauces and then pureed - like a glob of unnuanced jam on the poor, unsuspecting duck breast.

The Dotytron ordered the chicken cordon bleu - which he said looked like a melting owl:

True! This was okay. Again it was overcooked (you can see how the breading has separated from the meat because the meat has shrunk from loss of moisture) and under seasoned. The vegetables accompanying our meal though, were perfectly crisp-tender. The desserts were underwhelming to say the least: an earl-grey lavendar creme brulee, lemon shortbread with chantilly cream, and some chocolate banana cake. I am definitely in NO hurry to go back and we decided we should have gone with our guts - our guts filled with Guu. We ended up getting a key lime pie and a coconut cream pie from the Great Canadian Pie Company and scarfed it at home watching Friday Night Lights, which is still a damned perfect evening.

It was nice dining a deux though. I like that guy.

Today we're going to see the Dotytron's culminating concert and then doing some more cottage prep.

Fin.