Rock and a hard place

I'm stuck in the hinterland known as the place where my practicality butts heads against my principles. It's a bit of a pickle.

Because I'm trying to move away from extravagant xmas presents from siblings, outlaw parents, outlaw grandparents, and the like, I haven't provided preemptive gift list suggestions this year, as I think doing so would be hypocritical and a tacit endorsement of a system that I'm trying to extricate myself from. Yet, at the same time, I know that by NOT providing a list, I leave myself open to all kinds of well-intentioned but misguided items that will subsequently be sitting in my basement until such time as we do a basement clean and they make their way to Goodwill and the like. Is it awful of me? I don't know. I know you're not supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth and be grateful for the sentiment, etc. - but surely we've all been the recipients of gifts where we appreciate the thought and feelings behind them but can't bring ourselves to submit to the actual execution? It's kind of crazy how wrong people can get it, sometimes.

Anyway, so I'm torn. I hate the waste when people spend their hard-earned dollars on stuff that's just not me. But I'm not going to submit a list. All this pent-up frustration has to go somewhere though, and so here are some things that I adore.

Roll Call of Awesome:

BleuForet cotton tights. These are the BEST cotton tights in the whole, wide world. They're so soft and stretchy and warm - like the very best attributes of soft, thin socks and tights mashed up together without any of the thigh-cinching, waist-pinching aspects that can go along with tight-wearing. They are ridiculously expensive, so I can accept that all my cotton tights can't be BleuForet brand. The grey, prune, violet, and pine coloured ones are particular favorites of mine.

In the winter time though, tights are generally a good bet for me. Black, opaque, fishnet, patterned, they're all good and since I almost exclusively wear skirts and dresses to work, I'm always blowing through them.

I've been pining after this for a while. David Chang edits this kind of expensive magazine called Lucky Peach (well, expensive by magazine standards, I guess - it's $28 for 4 issues). It's a compendium of food writing from people and chefs I admire, all packaged in a cool, hip little bundle.

Other good literary-based gift ideas for me: Amazon gift cards so that I can stock up my Kindle, renewing my subscription to Entertainment Weekly for me.

Cast-iron cookware. I don't use Teflon anymore and I'm almost exclusively cast-iron when it comes to cooking nowadays. The problem is, that I only have a small, 10" skillet and while it's seasoned beautifully, as you all know, when I cook, I COOK, and I cook for a crowd. So a big, 14-15" cast iron skillet would be lovely.

As a daily fruit eater tired of retrieving bruised bananas and pulpy pears from the bottom of my purse, a banana guard and a froot guard would be lovely, cheap, stocking stuffer presents for me. So practical!

You also can never go wrong with gift certificate to my favorite stores: CB2, Crate and Barrel, ModCloth, Joe Fresh, Ruched, Anthropologie, Social Butterfly on the Danforth. PEOPLE LOVE GIFT CARDS. THAT'S WHY THEY'RE UBIQUITOUS.

I just recently started using this stuff after reading about it in the pages of In Style magazine for the past 17 years. I got a trial, sample size from my friend M and it's kind of changed my life. A little blush and a bit of eyeliner go a LOOOONG way with me - turning me from a wan, snake-eyed, sickly looking thing in the winter, to someone who looks robust and healthy and glowing. Seriously. I've gotten mad compliments from colleagues who are all like, "you look fantastic after having a baby!!!" and then you have to go and admit that it's all smoke and mirrors and it's only because I'm wearing a bit of this stuff on my cheeks. It's so easy. I don't know how to use highlighter or any of that shiz - but I can rub this stuff on the apples of my cheeks. I find it hard to justify buying a full-size bottled of the stuff though. It's like $30 for a little bottle of dye. That shiz just ain't right.

Sorry for the GIANT photos. Thanks to my gal, Mindy Kaling and her super-smart guy writer friends who helped contribute to her Black Friday gift guide, I've been hepped to Creative Recreation shoes. Look at those kicks. Just look at them. That's some fly, motherf**king s**t right there, folks. That's like the perfect Dotytron shoe. Uh huh. Hot. And they're hella affordable, too.

That's it for this installment of Roll Call of Awesome.

Fin.

Things that help

get a person through a day:

1) a slamming outfit. I'm feeling pretty good about my work outfit today. Yesterday was a mumsie Talbot's write-off. Today though...today is much, much better. I *gasp* curled my hair and decided not to go super-straight and just go with the waves. It's kind of working for me, I think. The outfit is super super super skinny black pants, a thin, dark heathered grey dress with an asymmetrical neckline, and that Value Village boy blazer that I talked about ages ago but haven't gotten rid of because I have nothing else. My mustard infinity scarf looped twice around the neck for a pop of colour. I kind of look like either Elizabeth Olsen (the lesser known of the Olsen siblings) or some other young professional working in a creative field (even though my field is not, in fact creative, I like to crib from those stylings. Should also note: even though I'm not technically all that young anymore.)

I gotta say - the Gap's Really Skinny Pants are the sickest s**t ever. First of all, you have to buy them a size down, which already makes you feel like a zillion dollars. Then, they fit like a DREAM. They're like leggings except they're pant-weight and so stretchy but not saggy and they look amazing on (I had to get mine hemmed, but whatever). Seriously. Buy a pair. They're going to be my go-to leggings replacement this winter and I might go out and buy another pair in black and maybe the flint grey as well. So best.

2) Coming home to this meal, made by the Dotytron:

Doesn't that just look delicious? Imagine coming home from a long day at work and walking into a house that smells like pancetta and clams. I got home early because I biked yesterday and I was able to basically waltz in and start eating dinner and be done eating by 6:15pm which left us with almost 2 whole hours of bath and pre-bed play time with the Big Yam. So good!

3) Liberté organic 0% Vanilla flavoured Greek yogurt. This stuff is LIFE! We tried it based on a glowing recommendation from Ehmdo. It's so creamy and rich that it's a good dessert substitute if you're counting calories (which I am. Kinda. Sorta. Diffidently.) It's kind of mousse-y? The only problem is that the vanilla flavoured variety tastes a little artificial vanilla, but the plain one tastes too much like plain yogurt, but without the extra rich tang of my ultimate favorite yogurt, Saugeen Country Dairy (which tastes so wholesome and farm-fresh and good for you, but weighs in at a whopping 4% fat.) So if you're going to buy this to store in your kitchen at work so that you don't end up going to Tim Horton's for a chocolate glazed pick-me-up, go for the vanilla flavour.

Ugh. I so don't have the mustard to face class tonight. On the plus side, I've packed myself the fixin's for a meatball sammy with fresh mozzarella. I have a feeling that's going to be cold comfort around 8pm tonight when I'm falling asleep while listening to my prof drone on about evaluability assessments.

Fin.

chubalubalub

randy macho man savage pose! incidentally, the dotytron determined a long time ago, that the "bananarama bo bama" song that you sing where you insert someone's name and riff on it (do you know what i'm talking about?) unequivocally DOESN'T work when you use the name "randy macho man savage" - it's the one exception to the rule - you know, the bananarama bo bama song rule.

well, feeding like a demon is causing SOMEONE to chunk up. he's a little less scrawny chicken in the limbs and his torso and head are getting all filled out. it makes him even MORE kissable than he was before. we love kissing him. my life is like a pulp science fiction/horror movie now - i birthed something whose appetites far exceed mine. for the past three nights he's been only up twice in the night - we're hoping the good luck streak continues.

in other news: i fired off my midterm today. the prof made a special allowance and gave me a take home, open book version of the mid term. i had to answer more questions than my classmates who did the in-class version. it felt good to get back into the groove of academic b.s.-ing - my specialty. i did 2/3 of it last night and finished off the final 1/3 this morning in an hour or so. it felt like a re-entry into the real world and it was nice knowing that i could cross another activity off the school checklist, and that i could manage to do it with the boobla khan only being less than a month old. i'm feeling pretty optimistic about my abilities to stay on top of this degree during mat leave.

in OTHER other news - GUESS WHO I SAW TODAY during my daily constitutional with master star eyes? THAT MEDIA PERSONALITY that was hitting on me in the grossest way imaginable earlier this year. convergence! there was a stabbing around the corner from our house (it was an isolated domestic situation, no worries) - actually, the story is kind of hilariously wonky. the dude accused of the stabbing was out on bail for another stabbing! and the people he stabbed are thought to be the people who posted bail for him but then wanted to withdraw. the people who got stabbed are okay, which is what makes me saying "lol!" okay. ANYWAY, i stopped with the stroller and was trying to ascertain what had happened when i met the dude's eyes. he looked at me, i smiled in a friendly fashion, and then HE PROCEEDED TO PRETEND NOT-KNOW ME. you know how you can tell when someone totally recognizes you and then makes the call to pretend not-know you? this was a clear cut case of that. ah well, the most important thing is that he knows i was preggos. it was becoming a running joke that i hadn't run into him at work since starting to obviously show and then the chicken boo came early so i didn't get to stake him out and act all nonchalant about my knocked-up state. best!

on tuesday night i made us a pretty boss dinner. i roasted delicata and acorn squash in a high oven in rendered pancetta fat with torn up sage leaves and garlic and then tossed this, the reserved crispy pancetta, some pasta cooking water, and parmesan cheese with whole wheat pasta. i also made us a wintery salad of chopped belgian endive with pan-roasted pears chunks, dried cranberries, and toasted walnuts in a maple vinaigrette. i'm loving dried fruits and nuts in wintery salads lately - i used to hate the idea of dried fruit in things but i've totally come around:


tonight and last night were leftover busting nights in attempt to rid fridge of backlog...however, as a treat to myself for getting my midterm done, i made chewy chocolate chip cookies with skor bits in them:



i've got some movie reviews and book review for yous...but in the meantime -

roll call of awesome:

the it gets better project and the outpouring of support for this initiative makes me cry. more correctly, the fact that this project had to come about to give hope to LGBT kids in freakin' small minded towns who are being bullied by total a**holes who are terminally unhot, uncool, and giant losers makes me cry. it's beyond upsetting to me that awesome kids are letting losers determine their lives and don't have the support system to know how those po dunk jerkwads are po dunk jerkwads.

i dressed up the boobla khan in a pretty flaming, cruising-the-strip-in-miami onesie today and the thought of him being bullied if he turns out to be gay infuriated me. for his sake, i'm glad that he's going to grow up in toronto, with me and the dotytron for his parents - because i know we'll support the f**k out of him and that if anyone ever messes with my kid, i'm going to make their lives a living hell. i'm really good at that. and yes, it will probably embarrass the hell outta my child to have to witness his parent dressing down and verbally harassing ANOTHER child, but you don't mess with me and mine. i will mess you up good. mark my words.

i just wish all these underdog kids everywhere had someone like me in their corner.



on a somewhat related tip, "rainbow connection" is one of the best songs ever written. hand's down. this also makes me cry.

fin.

jacked

i've got a few problems right now. not like, REAL problems, more like 1st world problems (and relatively trivial ones at that).

1) i jacked up my hip doing a bunch of stupid things on the weekend, including but not limited to spending 2 hours on sunday squatted over the garden pulling weeds, raking, and bending over to put handfuls of said weeds and leaves into yard waste bags. so now whenever i put pressure on my right hip i get intense pain. which means that i couldn't go into work today

2) i don't have any casual clothes that fit over my belly. i basically have one white top and one black long sleeve top that are long enough to stretch over, otherwise, everything else becomes a mid-80s, bill s. preston style cut-off crop top that stops just under my boobs

3) i'm insanely behind on the readings for my constitutional law course.

that's about it, i guess. okay, fine...i guess i don't really have problems. the jacked up hip is kind of the worst of it.

this weekend was a nice mix of friends, eating out, eating in, and getting shiz done.

on friday night at joy bistro i forgot to take any photos, but we had a lovely time partaking in their 3 course, $30 prix fixe. to start i had a beef cheek poutine with lovely crisp fries, tender chunks of beef cheek, real cheese curds, and a lightly curried gravy. then i had a GIANT seared scallop with some kind of ravioli on top of a bed of pureed butternut squash with roasted peppers. the dotytron got the beet salad to start which had tender greens, roasted golden beets, shavings of parm, and some anise flavouring. then for his main he got the seared muscovy duck breast which came with grapes in a wine reduction. for dessert i had the cardamom apple cake with dulce de leche sauce and he had a bittersweet chocolate terrine. all for $30! the service and execution were on par with say, the harbord room, but for a fraction of the cost...which is what i mean when i say that i need a restaurant to have an angle before i go there - this whole farm-driven cuisine isn't cutting it for me anymore - especially when there's nothing to distinguish the chefs.

saturday was a bit of a gong show. lots of driving around doing errands. we picked up our cloth diapers and all the accoutrements from diaper-eez in bloor west village. we got this deal they had, where you get 30 diapers of your choosing, 6 covers, a diaper pail, 2 carbon filters, these 2 odor reducers, 2 diaper pail bags, and 2 packs of herbal wipes and they knock 10% off the entire price. it was pretty solid. it depends on what kind of cloth diaper you're going with. because we weren't doing the all-in-ones, which cost upwards of $25/piece, our entire bill worked out to $240 all in...pretty good, considering that disposables cost roughly $40/month, on average, not to mention the landfill costs. we got suckered into buying the organic, unbleached cotton pre-folds, because the ones that are bleached, which are ever-so-charmingly called "CHINESE pre-folds" (emphasis mine) weren't in stock. the idealogues at the store were like, "nobody buys them. they're BLEACHED, you know" and i was like, "i don't care if my kid is crapping in organic or bleached cotton" the price differential per dozen is $6 more for the organic...so dumb. i was a little pissed about being strong armed into the organic decision. also, lady, you've got to know that like, all the baby clothes are made from bleached cotton in CHINA, right? sheesh

then it was off to canadian tire to pick up random sundries, including my brand new beloved CHEST FREEZER! we got a pretty small one - this model:

it's quite modest - not like those 6 foot behemoths that's a mainstay in every suburban basement. i didn't know if i wanted to go there, but it's already made a huge difference. what tipped the scales in favour of going down that road was the knowledge that already, with my double-cooking meals in preparation for the ol' labour daybour we're running out of freezer room and the fact that now our friends R & R at the farm can give us exotica like goose offal and venison and we'll have room to store it. plus all my cookie doughs and other randomness. and we won't have to ration ice anymore. bonus all around.

poor dotytron had to get it into the house all by himself as none of our neighbours were around to give us a hand. thank goodness his wingspan is so mighty. it was like watching him dance with a bear.

on the way to canadian tire i idly suggested that we stop at T&T to see if they had any bbq meat to supplement our planned dinner that night and the dotytron (who loves T&T more than anything) pulled a formula 1, 180 degree tailspin in his eagerness to go. he played it really cool once we got there, though, i gotta hand it to him. my suggestions to pick up chinese bakery goods were met with, "sure...whatever you want" in a forced casual tone that belied the dancing eagerness in his eyes. he seriously, seriously, loves that place more than anything. which is good, because they're doing a promotion right now called "i *heart* T&T" where you're supposed to write a short paragraph and submit it for a draw for an ipad. if they actually read the submissions and it's not a random draw, i'm pretty sure the dotytron has it in the bag.

for dinner i made us okonomiyaki (japanese cabbage pancake thing) which turned out pretty good, but could use some minor tweaking to put it over the top. i should have separated it into two pans - mine turned out kind of thick. and it could have used a touch more salt, but overall, it was pretty delicious. you make 2 sauces to go with it - one is ketchup mixed with worcestire, and the other sauce is mayo (preferably the japanese kewpie mayo) mixed with a bit of cider vinegar. the dotytron over cider vinegared the mayo sauce though, so it was a little thin. we ate this with roasted pork and bbq pork from the T&T bbq counter.

then we headed out for our "date night" - everyone is telling us to go out while we can while it's just the two of us, because you'll never eat in a non-family restaurant again, blah blah blah. i think that's kind of bogus. i mean, we have ready and willing child care available AND i mean, of course we can't bring a baby to canoe, but we can certainly bring a baby to most of the places we like going to nowadays, like the burger's priest or the afghani kebab house or chinese restaurants.

anyway, we started off our night at xococava, which is the dessert place right next to chris macdonald's spanish tapas bar, cava, which we've eaten at before. it's great. xococava is really nice - kind of reminiscent of ferran adria's brother's place in barcelona, cacao sampaka in their adventurous truffles - some mix savoury and sweet, like birch syrup truffles or chorizo truffles. we had the 70% sipping chocolate, which came in a tiny mug and was served body-temperature warm - thick and rich and flavourful, without the astringency and acidity that can accompany really bitter 80% plus chocolate. i had mine with whipped cream - it was delicious and soothing. then we lucked out and got some fresh churros - the dotytron also had a hazelnut biscotti and i picked up a panna cotta to go. it's a small place - just a few seats at a long counter and some tables outside (not suitably for chilly fall evenings) - it's mostly a takeaway place. they're known for their ice creams but it was too cold for that. i'll come back and try them some other time - they do the sicilian thing of serving ice cream scoops in fresh brioche - which i've always wanted to check out.


we followed that up with a screening of "waiting for superman" at the varsity - i'll post a full review tomorrow.

we caught a bit of nuit blanche stuff but it seemed to suck overall and just drew out people who wanted to drink in the streets. i'm actually pro certain elements of nuit blanche: extended bar hours, extended TTC hours, public art, but the art exhibits were by and large pretty lame (the ones we happened to see anyway) and there were too many bro-dawgs just looking for an excuse to carouse and it wasn't my scene.

sunday morning i woke up obscenely early considering we were home at like, 1am and then i stayed up reading until 2:30am - i made 2 pumpkin pies for thanksgiving and a quiche for post-fatburger arrival and some items for dinner at J & S's house. we had brunch with lolls and her bf T at school bakery and cafe in liberty village and then checked out their new digs.

i was exhausted and napped all afternoon, after the aforementioned regrettable decisions to go to town on the garden. then we packed up and went to dinner at J & S's house. it was good! J made us a mexican soup and i made the main course - pork shoulder carnitas (the pork had been braised in orange, milk, oregano, and garlic until it fell apart and then i crisped it up with lard in a cast iron skillet). i brought corn tortillas for serving it with and a roasted tomatillo salsa and chunky lime avocado. J made us a jicama and carrot salad. and for dessert! dessert was an absolutely divine apple fritter that they served with ice cream and caramel sauce. soooo good.


we had an early dinner on account of it being a sunday night, which meant that we had more face time with their kids, who are usually in the process of going to bed by the time we come over for dinner. the result was fun with playdough:


that's the dotytron's mermaid scene (their daughter is really into mermaids) and that's our buddy L's mermaid with the giant bio-engineered hand.

i'm home all day so i'm going to lie down and take it easy with a heating pad and try to get mobile again. i'm also going to do my very level best to get a crapload of constitutional law reading done - wish me luck.



for dinner i made us a cabbage, kolbassa, and chickpea soup with toasted avocado-cheddar melts.

which brings me to my latest obsession -

roll call of awesome:

pita break "one bun" (which we pronounce with a jamaican accent - WHAAAN BHAAAN) multigrain pitas. so freakin' good! i was first exposed to this thin pita bun thing this past summer at the kdubsguelph cottage experience. apparently, it's the newest thing to replace the standard soft bun for burgers or sausages. i'm not exactly sold on that preparation, but i can tell you that i love eating these things for breakfast - they're so thin they get nice and crispy and i could honestly eat this spread with butter and peanut butter and washed down with a cold glass of milk every day. love these things.

fin.




-------------------------------------------------------------
tacos of carnitas roasted with orange and milk
adapted from epicurious, serves 6-8 as a main course with sides

3-4 lbs pork shoulder, cut into big pieces
lard (you could also use oil, but lard is better)
2 t. salt
2 heaping T. minced garlic
1 heaping T. oregano (preferably mexican)
1 orange, washed well
1 c. whole milk
2 c. (approx) water
freshly ground black pepper to taste

- take your pork pieces and brown them on all sides in the hot lard - in a casserole dish (i used my le creuset knock off)
- sprinkle with salt, and add the garlic and oregano to the pan
- cut the orange in half, squeeze the juice over and add the orange halves to the dish
- pour the milk over and enough water to almost cover the pork
- sprinkle in the black pepper
- cover the dish tightly with foil and roast in a 375F oven for about 2-2.5 hours or until the pork is tender and falling apart.
- put the casserole on the stove and put on high heat until all the liquid has evaporated. in a cast-iron skillet or something nonstick, fry batches of the shredded pork in the lard or fat until crispy.
- season again to taste and then serve with warm corn tortillas, salsas, chopped lettuce, diced avocado with lime, pickled onion, etc.

notes: the dish can be made ahead up until the final browning. you could also probably make this in a slow cooker up until that point. the original recipe recommended crisping the pork in the enameled cast iron (le creuset) type of pot, but i found that it wasn't crisping and was just sticking o the bottom. i had much better results frying it in small batches in my well seasoned cast iron skillet.

no motivation, zero energy

that's pretty much me right now. last night i went to bed at 8:00pm. more correctly, i passed out while re-reading e. lockhart's "ruby oliver" series of young adult fiction (that i adore more than life itself) huddled under an afghan in my freezing cold living room only to wake up an hour later with a crick in my neck and a cloudy mind. i managed to haul myself through the wet wool torpor that made my limbs and consciousness sodden and sluggish upstairs whereupon i announced to the dotytron in as pathetic a voice as i could muster that, "i don't feel so good" and then threw off my clothes and curled under the covers only to wake again at 6:00am this morning when the alarm went off.

on the plus side, i managed to pick up a whole new slew of paint chips for the dining room and they're much more promising. i just have to muster the courage to actually see my vision through and go a deep, dark, green-y teal/turquoise on the walls. 3 walls will be that colour and one wall will be white. technically, it's not even 3 full walls, as 1 of the walls has the archway into the living room and the other wall is mostly the window. do i have the nads to go dark, jewel tones in the dining room? stay tuned and find out!

anything has to be better than the namby pamby slightly too-blue/grey combo we have in there. ugh.

i've read a tonne of books lately, but i have no motivation to review them. i somehow convinced my academic book club (which i'm hosting - eek!) to read "twilight" by stephenie meyer. lol! we'll see how they do. there was some resistance but i'm like, ladies - let's find out what this is all about, shall we? having them come over in the second week of june is giving me a very fixed deadline to work towards in terms of getting the dining room ready. hopefully couch numero dos gets here in time, too. there's nothing like having a whack of people over to get your jazzed to get your house ready.

tonight we had dinner with the roomie at queen margherita pizza. i forgot my camera because forgetting things is part of my life at the moment and i've made peace with it. i have another opportunity to capture the chewy-crusted goodness on sunday as we're taking the supper club there. my capsule review is very favorable. they push the prix fixe on you but will allow you to order pizzas a la carte. some of the pizza topping combinations are lacking (plus one, libretto) but most hardcore pizza heads will tell you that pizza is ultimately about the sauce and the crust. the crust is pretty damn amazing. it's not as uniformly thin as libretto's but to me, has a more textbook correct brawny, puffy chew to it, with some nice char spots on the underside. it's more reminiscent of the naples-style pizza we had in florence (which i know is a locovore/slow foodist's nightmare, but i didn't go to naples, so suck it, aight?)

l'army couldn't make it so we ordered 2 à la carte pizzas and 2 prix fixe. first they brought out terrible, terrible bread. like, IGA generic "baguette" bread - tight, snow-white crumb, no flavour, etc. with olive oil and balsamic to make a slurry for dipping. i'm not particularly fond of dipping my bread in olive oil and balsamic under the best of circumstances and when it's crappy bread, i'm even less inclined. i don't know why they don't just send out pieces of their pizza dough - straight from the wood-fired oven.

one of our antipasti was sausage, red peppers and potatoes which is exactly as it sounds - fluffy skinless yukon gold potato chunks, big pieces of denuded fennel-flecked italian sausage and strips of red pepper in a jolly melange. this was very tasty. the other was buffalo milk ricotta with chopped pecans, cranberries, and honey. we all felt that the ricotta was delicious with the accoutrements, minus the honey - which made everything taste like honey instead of letting the milky sweetness of the ricotta shine through. plus, the cranberries provide a lovely sweet-tart counterpoint, you don't need the heavy, treacly hand of honey on a dish that delicate - throws the whole balance off.

when the pizzas arrived we passed slices around so that we got to try all four. the dotytron's pizza was the best - it had italian sausage, cheese, tomato sauce. the other fantastic thing about queen margherita is the sauce. full of pulpy, bright tomato flavour. i can't remember what the sauce at libretto tasted like. i got a vegetarian pizza that was okay, the roomie went off the rails and got a smoked salmon pizza with mascarpone that was pretty bad (but i don't really think a neapolitan style pizza place should even have smoked salmon pizza on the menu anyway), and we tried l'army's which had proscuitto cotto and olives. i will say the topping combinations at libretto are better - but again, i think if margherita dialed it back to just a few basic topping combinations, they would knock it out of the park. scrap the smoked salmon (ugh), don't do a vegetarian if you've already got the margherita, limit your topping numbers to 3. on the strength of the crust and the sauce alone, i think margherita has libretto beat.

libretto has a more extensive menu though, so they get points for that, but they're also in one of the most annoying neighbourhoods in toronto, so minus points. ultimately, margherita will win because they're a 5 minute walk from my house, they take resos, and no pizza in the world is so good that it warrants a 2 hour wait. and the crust and sauce at margherita are insanely good. you just have to pick your pizza judiciously. i think on sunday i'm going to go the classico route and order a margherita pizza - the pizza standard.

the prix fixe follows up your pizza with a salad, in this case a mixed greens with a honey drizzled pear. the dressing was pretty ace - vinegary and sweet at the same time.

we also split a dessert, "nonna's" tiramisu which apparently is ACTUALLY made by "rocco's" nonna. it was good - boozy and light. points off for the highly unorthodox whipped cream topping. additional points off for being a saucerfull of tiramisu for 7 dollars.

i'll post pics on sunday (if i remember to bring my camera).

here's an installment that we haven't had in a while:

roll call of awesome:

dan style's art prints - available here:




the world maps from these are things:


i love futura font. i think the aqua print would look great in the fatburger's room (or even ours), but we just bought this ork poster toronto print in black and white for the big wall leading up the stairs:

so i feel like the hyper-masculine black and silver one would go better with the colour story i'm developing there. i'm thinking black and greys against the pale-pale grey wall with some black and white significant photos hung with bulldog clips.

this light shade is pretty boss. it's also $950 (excluding delivery)

wylie dufresne. so awesome. we've been watching "top chef masters" and i just love his little face and his mannerisms and the fact that he uses thomas' english muffins in the deconstructed eggs benedict dish at his restaurant wd-50 because he says there's nothing better (and i totally agree - thomas' english muffins are THE BEST.) i think he's super-talented, inspiring, and still totally approachable, unlike cerebro weirdos like grant achatz.

fin.

I WANT I WANT I WANT

all my complaints around berserker aside (an unavoidable pitfall when one has a large and disparate group of adult-ish friends, a zillion hobbies, demanding families, a mortal soul, and a tendency to submit to the intractable laws of time), i quite like the rhythm of 2010. work-filled, fulfilling days on the job, lunch-time strolls with dr. rei, home for a home-cooked meal, some yoga/physical exertion, paper-work/crafting/general house tidying, in bed by 10pm for an hour of reading, asleep by 11, and weekends free for more extensive home projects to tackle and socializing.

'tis good, yah.

tonight we're double-booked. first up is our friend bobes' band, elvis bossa nova's cd release party at the lula lounge. they're getting rave reviews and CBC fans will want to listen to their interview on Q with jian gomeshi next week. then after we're hooking up with hamcamp klik and peeping evil dee of black moon/da beatminerz at never forgive action at the drake underground (for the low, low price of $5 before midnight - hotcha!)

what fun! super-pumped for some dancing and rubbing shoulders with high schoolers (sure to come out of the woodwork for this), chief amongst them possibly-thrillingly!-the dotytron's high school ex-gf (the only significant gf of note [the supernova that is moi notwithstanding] in his illustrious career tangoing with the opposite sex.) plus, the usual crew will be there, the fox, ori, B & G, etc. evil dee should also be good...you know me, i know next to nothing about le hip hop but i likes to dance to it and we haven't been out dancing in some time. plus, black moon and smif'n'wessun are kind of the goosetang's patron saints.

dinner tonight was an attempt to clear out leftovers. i had leftover chicken noodle soup and an extra-stuffed croque monsieur. so tasty and comfort-food-yen fulfilling.

okay...things i want, aka

roll call of awesome:

currently, if you recall, we have this limited edition offshore records print above our sofa:

it's a little lonely up there...and it would be nice if the print was bigger, but it's hard finding stuff to flank it. well...i've decided that i'll probably move that print elsewhere and replace the above-the-sofa real estate with three of THESE gorgeous posters commemorating 2009 as the international year of astronomy, by graphic designer simon page:





LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE. i love the cool, clinical, spare aesthetic and the muted, 70s colours. there are more...but these are the front runners. they come in a 13x19 size or a 18x24 - i'm going to cut out sheets of newspaper to block them out on the wall in each size to see which size would suit the space best. i think a grouping of 3 would be ideal. LOVE THEM.


this is one of the best halloween costumes i've ever seen for a child:

the colonel!



my fixation with paper-cut work is unabated. behold, the genius of helen musselwhite! i think my inability to have any patience for fine, precision-oriented detail work (no embroidery, paper-cutting, or elaborate cake decorating for me!) makes me appreciate people who can craft such stunning, intricate pieces all the more.

gotta bounce, kids.

fin.

in which the spirit of the season

escapes us (but is regained)

flash back to early last week - dinner is made, a stack of 50-odd xmas cards sits on the table, envelopes at the ready, return address labels printed at the UPS store, the annual newsletter obligingly waiting to be folded. i summoned the dotytron to sign and stuff cards. the dotytron: much aggrieved because we had just finished sending out the last of our thank you cards from the performance. as we plodded our way through them, tempers began to run short, glib phrases eluded us, we were forced to retreat to the comforting, bland pablum of stock holiday well wishes. "i don't know what to write!" the dotytron exclaimed, throwing down the pen in frustration. "just write SOMETHING" i hissed (need i tell you dear reader that i was well into what the dotytron calls, "monster mode"?), those are for our B-list friends ANYWAY." at which point the dotytron looked at me and the ironic weight of that statement settled into the vacuum of our ill-humour. lol!

the dotytron also said this past week, "they're not friends, they're just PEOPLE." ha!

the holiday concert dog and pony show is another thing that's turning us into miserable scrooges. poor dotytron's pedagogical philosophies and praxis are being trampled in the wake of turning miscreants into a cherub choir with non stop rehearsals and drills - all in the name of appeasing doting parents.

all i really want to do is be in my flannels and drink hot chocolate and mulled apple cider and eat warm cookies and hearty winter foods with my feet in sheepskin slippers and a ball of yarn by my side. the one thing the "where the wild things are" movie got right was how delightful it is to sleep in a pile.

so...s-dawg has been pestering us for the past few weeks to go see "the blind side." - every time we talked about what movie we were going to see, either over the holidays or at that particular convergence of the siblings, he was always pushing for "the blind side" while we were saying anything else: "up in the air" "the fantastic mr. fox" "sherlock holmes" "avatar" - thus, when i opened my email inbox yesterday morning the first thing i was confronted with was an accusatory email from s-dawg with a link trumpeting "the blind side"'s sleeper overtaking of "twilight: new moon" at the box office this past weekend and how we were all basically the worst people on earth for not trusting his sound advice! ha!

the xmas cards have been mailed...i've got 99.9% of my shopping done - i just have to wrap the last few presents. after this weekend both holiday parties with the dotytron's maternal and paternal extended families will be in the can and i can just REEELAX. my baking is 80% done...i just have to do a batch of salted caramels and a batch of cream cheese brownies and make 2 dips on saturday to bring to the party. i feel like i can relax. i'm going to put our new flannelette sheets on the bed tonight and our new duvet cover and i'm hoping i can coax the dotytron to go out skating after dinner so we can come home and drink hot chocolate and watch tv in the blinking glow of our xmas tree. i'm feeling pretty good! so the spirit of the holidays has been restored, as it always is, by the peaceful restful period that always follows in the wake of "monster mode." a little bit of (shrill) (tense) (snippy) pre-holiday pain for a lot of gain.

the moral of the story is: most of life's problems can be solved with the right bedding (and lists and preparation and sheer, iron-willed resolve and determination.) i'm a bedding junkie. i want as many outfits for my bed as i do for myself.

so i started a book club at work. the first book we read was joseph boyden's "three day road." this was a lovely, moving, deep, rich book - a perfect book club pick because it's the kind of book where as you start talking about the book, you pull a thread that connects to a theme and the whole story starts to tangle and unravel and wind itself in densely woven allegories and motifs that become available and knowable only through the discussion.

it's the story of two aboriginal boys, close enough to be brothers, one of whom returns from world war II, heavily addicted to morphine and is met by his aunt, who takes him on a 3 day canoe ride back to their home. on the trip, recollections of the war and his aunt's history are alternated and gradually laid out, trapping within the net of the narrative a greater examination of the residential school system, racism, the affects of war, humanity. it's a beautifully written literary novel - at once savage and sparse, meaty and elegant. i usually shy away from serious canadian fiction - the "canada reads" kind - not generally my cup of tea. come to think of it, heavy literary novels haven't been my cup of tea since like, undergrad. that's the good thing about a book club - it forces you to read things you might not otherwise.

after delving headlong into Serious Fiction...i ran out and grabbed sarah dessen's latest, "along for the ride" practically on the day it came out. what to say about a new sarah dessen that i haven't already said about her other works? this one was good, not as good as my two favorites, "this lullaby" and "just listen" and not as bad as the ones i don't like, "that summer" "dreamland" - it falls somewhere in the middle of the pack. by now there's a fairly predictable formula - over a summer, teenage girl going through Serious Stuff meets a boy who helps her deal with her ish, open up to her vulnerabilities, expand her horizons - they fall for each other, minor misunderstanding ensues, they resolve issues in the end with a greater understanding of kinship, friendship, family.

i know it sounds trite and predictable and pat. in the hands of a lesser author, it might very well be. but somehow sarah just gets the balance just right. it's moral and ethically sound but not preachy, cool without being totally outrageous and sensationalist like gossip girl, safe but not cliché, real without being too "this is the diary of a teenage drug addict." it's beach reading of the highest order.

the next book club book was andre dubus III's "the garden of last days." he also wrote "the house of sand and fog" which went on to become a film that was lauded in Serious Film Circles. this title was recommended by a woman in the group who abruptly left the group days before the group was supposed to meet - the way it works is the person suggesting takes "ownership" of the work and agrees to come up with some discussion questions, so we were a little loss leadered. this was okay. i found it a bit of a trial to get through. it documents the lives of variously seedy/lost drifter types of characters whose lives are vaguely interconnected because they orbit around a strip club frequented by one of the men who would go on to participate in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

i mean, intellectually, I GET IT. depraved americans, for whom you feel pity and at once respect their earnest, blundering, well-intentioned ways. the humanizing of the terrorist, the way our lives are just babel-crash-amores peros - we're just fragile little beings so distant from each other, separated by race, history, culture, not knowing how alike we are in our futile, scrabbling, frantic, brief existences on this planet. i found it hard to sympathize with any of the characters and thus, to care. as the book club talked it out, we teased out what the author might have been getting at, but overall, it didn't go over very well.

by this point, we were well into my summer reading, and the next few definitely show it.

i couldn't get my hands on the newest installment in e. lockhart's ruby oliver series fast enough. i LOVE e. lockhart. sarah dessen is kind of a "good girl" writer. she writes about pretty typical experiences, the protagonists are nearly always tall, willowy white girls from solid middle class families, and it's the kooky best friend who is ever even remotely alt. e. lockhart writes about a more relatable high school experience from the true underdog's point of view - i can see myself in her high school more than in the ultra whitebread american one of sarah dessen's world. this book is like candy. i love how lockhart writes about ruby's parents, her friends, her reactions. i love ruby's pop-culture obsession and how she's so neurotic and flawed and imperfect and messed up and has really crackpot reactions to situations that make total sense if you've ever been a teenage girl. i love the footnotes - they're funny and not at all pretentious. i'm already salivating for roo number 4, titled "real live boyfriends"

okay that's enough reviewing for me today. the next ones coming up are doozies and then i went into a solid fall comic book phase which i'm only just now getting myself out of.


tonight for dinner we had perogies with onions and bacon and a spinach salad with avocado, shallots, toasted pumpkin seeds, and a maple-balsamic vinaigrette.

roll call of awesome:

the grain edit blog makes me beyond happy. i'm in love with everything on it. the current holiday giveaway they're sponsoring hepped me to all these amazing graphic artists/illustrators/designers.

the everything okay poster by mine. from the site: "This poster is the first in our series of art prints dedicated to exploring the OK-ness of things. It features 67 thoughtfully conceived pie graphs, each depicting a different statistic which may (or may not) be OK." the colours would go perfect in the living room, above my chrome rocker.

this print from wonder thunder. can you tell i'm super into acid yellow right now???


jez burrows work.

the "visible robot" print by brian flynn.

dora drimalas' work makes me yearn for infinite wall space.

lumadessa's whimsical, charming, graphic, blocky bird prints.


christopher lee's collection of beast prints.

this adorable print from christopher bettig/the mountain label - etsy shop here.

the "things i like" print from skinny ships/richard perez printed at valhalla studios, the same people who tad carpenter (designer of my cute hi! whale print) is associated with.

that's enough eye candy for one day! in another world, where i am rich and have miles of walls, i will have all of these.

fin.