blintzes et al.

hangs with the kdubsguelph tdot crew were the best! i seriously love those guys to the moon, even if we are all collectively a little cray-cray. it's cray-cray in a good way (mostly.) we ended up going to great burger kitchen again - and i gotta say, night two was a little underwhelming. i figured i'd branch out and try the lamb burger, but i wanted it without blue cheese and they put it on anyway. the place has only been open since wednesday of this past week, so some blips are to be expected. my lamb burger was intensely overcooked and a dry tasting puck, flecked with acrid bits of carbon. not pleasant. they also didn't have veggie burgers for the veggies in the crew. le sigh. i hate it when i talk a place up and then it disappoints. you have to believe me - the mexican poutine and the onion rings were delicious and the classic burger was GOOD on friday night. like, seriously good! some people were complaining about the amount of onion rings but to me, it seemed on par with the portion size at harvey's.

we celebrated earth hour (somewhat reluctantly on my part - i hate mass forms of "political" action that mean jack s**t - i consider it cheap and throwaway - like international "buy nothing" day.) it was nice having 11 people clustered around our dining room table and finding that we could fit that number easily - it was a little squishy, but i like a table with peeps all around it.

for sunday breakkie i made us blintzes with blueberry sauce:

i couldn't find farmer's cheese so i used all cottage cheese in the filling - it was a little runny. next time i'm going to sub in some quark for 1/2 the amount of cottage cheese and drain the cottage cheese overnight to firm it up some. i do love a good blintz though. what's not to love about a stuffed, eggy pancake that then gets kissed again with hot butter in a frying pan and drenched in sauce?

we had a lazy day on sunday. went for a rainy bike ride to pick up some groceries i had forgotten about. then nany and poppa and momma and poppa d and ehmdo came over for dinner. we had a belated st. paddy's day feast. i made my baked corned beef (spread with mustard and brown sugar and then steamed in a foil packet for about 2-3 hours in a low oven. i made champ (mashed potatoes w/ scallions) and creamed cabbage that i also put some apples and freshly grated horseradish in. i also made a minted pea puree which was a big hit. i love peas!



for dessert i made a lemon chiffon pie in a graham cracker crust:

the recipe calls for a gingersnap crust but i didn't have it in me to make gingersnaps just to grind them up and i didn't want to sully my kitchen with a cheap box of purchased gingersnaps because i know i wouldn't have used them all and then i'd be stuck with a craptacular box of gingersnaps laying around in the pantry. i like a nice lemon chiffon pie - it's kind of nice and light and refreshing - it doesn't have the same intensity as a lemon curd.

i also LOVE hosting grandparents. especially nany and poppa because it's never too late a night, which is what you want on a rainy sunday. they come at 5:30pm, we have a nice pre-dinner drink and catch-up and then we eat and have tea and coffee and they're out the door by 9pm. totally civilized! they also got us some adorable easter goodies and housewarming gifts consisting of 2 very cute egg cups and a golf set for the dotytron and a frilly, girly, half apron for me which is almost too pretty to wear whilst cooking. i almost want to sew up the back and turn it into a skirt.

for today's night class packable dinner i made us a pretty effin' tasty dish. it's macaroni pasta tossed with roasted grape tomatoes, parsley, mint, feta, chickpeas, and garlicky, spicy shrimp in a lemon vinaigrette. the best part is that you can eat it hot, cold, or tepid:



to go with and to up my veggie intake a i made us a quick pickled cucumber-dill salad:

okay...here i come with the book reviews.

"fire" is by kristin cashore, the same author who wrote that other YA fantasy-ish book i raved about, "graceling." it's spun as a companion to graceling sharing a minor character in common and taking place in the same world, but a different land from graceling. instead of those who are graced, the world of "fire" features monsters, which are spectacularly coloured, unspeakably beautiful versions of regular creatures and humans, but who through their beauty can entrance and control the minds of regular animals and people - more often than not to prey on them. "fire" is a monster girl who's living under the horrible, brutal legacy left by her monster father, who used his monster powers for his own capricious, selfish, and sadistic means. there's action, adventure, court intrigue and of course, a little romance. cashore makes a conscious effort to craft strong female characters who break (or bend) the mold and i applaud her for it. this book was really good, but fire is less of an enticing, anti-establishment heroine than graceling's katsa was. still an engaging, enjoyable read and i would definitely recommend it.

my work got a kindle to try out and when i was test-driving it, this book was one of the ones already loaded onto the e-reader. kathryn stockett's "the help" has been a huge, runaway, new york times bestselling word-of-mouth hit, from a first-time novelist. entertainment weekly grouped it with other word-of-mouth hits like "the guernsey literary and potato peel pie society" and "the time traveler's wife" - both of which became giant sleeper chart busters and were by first time authors. i had kind of dismissed it as mom lit and wasn't feeling it and then one day on the ttc when i was test-driving the kindle i flipped randomly to a chapter and started reading it and found myself sucked in. it's compulsively readable! i'd say it's strangely addictive - like if i tried to isolate what it is exactly that makes you want to keep turning the pages, i can't quite pinpoint it, but it's there all the same.

the help is about jackson mississippi's slow crawl towards a kinda sorta integration, told through a story-within-a-story approach. it tracks the lives of 3 different women, 2 of them black maids and 1 of them a white woman who embarks on a project to record the stories of "the help" as a way of becoming a journalist or writer. the book switches between their three perspectives and describes what life was like for african americans in a deeply segregated, racist community as the world was beginning to change around them. i found the maid characters were much more sympathetic than the white lady, who i still thought of as exploiting the maids for her own personal gain even as the narrative tries to attenuate that kind of dichotomous depiction. i wasn't buying it! some of the stories are horrid and makes you grateful at how far we've come (in some ways) and how deeply scarred the american south is by the burden of this racial history - how deeply entrenched the misconceptions and ignorance are. it's not the kind of book that lingers with you, but it's a fast quick read - like beachy vacation airplane reading.

"the photographer" is an awesome, awesome testament to the power and flexibility of the comic to tell a story. didier lefevre is the titular photographer, who follows a doctors without borders mission into afghanistan. he is aided by comic artist emmanuel guibert (who wrote "alan's war") and colorist/designer frederic lemercier. lefevre's gorgeous photos and observations are interspersed with illustrations that capture the rugged, barren beauty of the land and the differences of afghani culture - from the armed and exuberant muj to tribal leaders and those dispossessed by the war. the work of doctor's without borders is brought to startling light - these are noble, brave people and their organization will probably be the recipient of my charitable donations in future years. it's incredible. this is one of those stories made so much richer by the medium - the combination of text, drawings and photos adds a layer of depth that any one of those forms wouldn't have been able to capture singly. imagine an annotated national geographic article with drawings. this was a little difficult to get through - the communities of afghanis are quite impoverished and it's quite sad - your eye also wants to linger on each page and each of lefevre's brilliant photos.

finally, aravind adiga's "white tiger" - the booker prize winning novel about the thieving, grasping, indian underclass rising up against their masters. this book was an easy read, but i wasn't super into it. i wasn't feeling the main character (you're not really supposed to - he's very upfront about being a vicious murderer) but even knowing that i'm not supposed to necessarily feel aligned with him didn't make me more inclined to spend a lot of time with his voice inside my head. i also found the structuring of the novel a little needlessly cutesy and kind of condescending (it's structured as a series of letters that balram, the main character, is writing to the premier of china.) i guess it's a refreshing antidote to the whole post-colonial, magic realism thing - to show the dirty, poor, and great unwashed members of what the author refers to as the "rooster coop" - enslaved into horrible, disposable lives of deepest poverty by their own willingness to comply with the traditions of the caste system. i mean, i get it - the hideous underbelly of the world's biggest democracy - beset with poverty, corruption, blah blah blah. i just wasn't feeling it. it was an unpleasant read and not in the way that it's supposed to be discomfiting and unpleasant, more in that i was kinda like, well yeah, obvs. i could see why it would make the booker people go buck. people eat this shiz up. i'd give it a sideways thumb.

okay! i'm donezo!

fin.

a night in tunisia

training started in earnest yesterday, with a 20 minute, 2.86km run (a very very slow job, actually), some crunches, weights, push-ups and yoga. it's easy when the weather is all springlike and sunny.

i finally managed to convince the dotytron to go to the castlefield design district so that we could do some research on lighting at union lighting and research some door knobs (i want to replace our brass fittings on all the doors with antique, glass knobs) at the door store. the good news is, union lighting had a pretty decent supply of schoolhouse fixtures that were reasonably priced. we can get stuff that we like for the whole house for about $350, which is way more affordable than i thought it was going to be. the bad news is, antique doorknobs run about $100/knob (minimum...some of them were $285/knob - and the price changes on the knob depending on the finish you want.) because we don't have antique doors but new doors with the new whole drilled in, we have to get these weird converter plates made by a company that allows people with pre-drilled doors to have old knobs fitted. those are a minimum of $30/plate (you need 2 per door) and then to get them darkened is an extra $10 and then to have them re-plated (if you don't like an antiqued bronze look but want pewter or nickle or chrome) is bajillions more.

the long and short of it is: the knobs will be the LAST thing we do. and for all of you homeowners, helping homeowners out there, nice doorknobs are EFFIN' EXPENSIVE!

we had dinner with my friends D and N last night. they're both pretty adventurous eaters so we headed to this tunisian restaurant, djerba ladouce on the danforth. it was SOOOOO GOOD! i couldn't believe it! they don't serve alcohol, so we started our meal off with mint tea. the tea was served hot and poured dramatically from a silver tea pot very high into pretty, tiny, embossed glasses. the tea was tooth-achingly sweet and not particularly my style.

the restaurant is nothing to look at. there are some hand painted murals on the wall and the chairs and tables are standard-issue thrifted from some dated second hand restaurant supply store. you don't go for the decor. the chef proprietor (pictured on the homepage) came and answered our questions about the menu. D asked what the "salad grill mushwa" was and he said it was a pureed salad and that it was fantastic so we ordered that to share. technically, the chef owner said that EVERYTHING was good and recommended the calamari, which, he claimed, was like "no calamari anywhere else." despite that enticing endorsement, we opted to just go with the mushwa instead.

the salad mushwa was DELICIOUS. oh my goodness! according to the online menu it's a puree of garlic, roasted tomato and onion. there are capers and olives strewn about and a bit of hard boiled egg. bits of crunchy pickled cucumbers and a hefty dousing of fresh parsley brighten the rich, smooth flavours of the dish. served with warm pita for scooping it was positively addictive. so freakin' good! it was hard to identify the spicing but alls i know is, it tasted divine.

i ordered the lamb couscous which was a generous, properly braised shank portion on top of impossibly fluffy couscous (every time i make it, the grains clump, but at restaurants, each little bead is always distinct and tender) with a mix of vegetables: tender baby carrots and cabbage predominantly in some gentle spicing. it was delicious and so affordable at $13 for the dish.

the dotytron got the merguez "platter" which featured links of lamb merguez sausage in a hearty, smooth, and intensely flavourful spiced sauce with vegetables and bits of french-fried potato. served with warmed pita for sopping up the delicious sauce.

D got the trout platter which was a huge plate of poached trout covered in a herb sauce that was very rich and creamy but didn't appear to have any cream in it.

everything was amazingly delicious and the bill came to $73 total (incl. tax, without tip, cash only). i'm excited to go back again. the food was unlike any i had ever had before and really satisfying - exciting for the taste buds.

this morning we're doing small futzy things around the house. sunday breakkie will be a BLT with egg on a whole wheat kaiser. we're having goosetang over for an oscar/thanksgiving party. we haven't had an only-goosetang hang since montreal - i'm so excited! it's a slash-thanksgiving party because i got snookered into buying a heritage turkey from the mennonites - i ordered a goose, they convinced me to buy a turkey instead, claiming it was a heritage breed that's like, all dark meat, when i tried to change my order to a duck, they guilt-tripped me saying they had already ordered it and the farmer was weeping silent tears on their doorstep blah blah blah. anyway, i didn't get to cook thanksgiving dinner this year, so i'm doing it now. we're having: roast turkey, sage stuffing, garlic mashed potatoes, gravy, brussel sprout and carrot horseradish casserole, and i'm kicking around the idea of doing another vegetable as well - maybe mashed sweet potatoes with marshmallow topping. but i feel like that already is a lot of food for 5 people, especially with sticky toffee pudding and bourbon caramel sauce for dessert...so i might hold off.

it's going to be a fun/productive day!

fin.

surprise!

you weren't expecting THIS little face-lift, were you? aren't you secretly relieved? i know i am. the fact that my blog header was hovering OVER the existing template header has been niggling and naggling at me since i threw the darned thing up 3 years ago. isn't this better? comments/constructive criticism would be appreciated. this has been the product of way too many hours on a commitment-free sunday that would have been better spent doing more tangible face-lifts, like touching up the paint on the walls and trim at lil' ugmo.

so the weekend. elvis bossa nova was fun, even though we could only stay to hear one of their numbers. they've come a LONG way since the last time we saw them, in their early days at the dakota. it's a much more polished, full, swinging sound now - they're well deserving of all the accolades they're getting. bwong met up with us there and we caught the opening band together - they were kind of a folksy, rootsy, twangy thing. the best part was that the lead singer/guitar player broke the string on his guitar, played out the tune, and then asked the audience if there was anyone there who knew how to change a guitar string. so i naturally looked over at the dotytron, who firmly shook his head and said, "no way. i do that all day for kids in band." the dude up on stage continued his banter for a bit but then went, "seriously folks, if anyone know hows to change a guitar string out there..." at which point bwong and i started hooting and hollering and pointing at the dotytron and shouting: "IAN! IAN! IAN!" and causing such a ruckus that basically the dotytron HAD to slink up to the front of the stage and grab the guitar and change the strings off to the side. it was kind of the best (for me and bwong, not so much for the dotytron.)

of course i took a photo to commemorate:

then we saw some of our high school peeps (sadly, no appearance by the dotytron's ex-gf) and then tried to make it out to evil dee but me and the dotytron got into a bit of a tiff and dr. rei wasn't itching to go and so it all fell apart. we kept lingering at elvis bossa nova so that we could hear 1 song, but by the time that happened, we were too late for the $5 cover at the drake underground AND there would have been a massive line. the good news is: the dotytron and i are no longer in a fight. we technically resolved it that night.

yesterday we did our errands and then went over to nany and poppa's for dinner. what a FEAST! nany is the best old-skool, kind of 70s hip, mom-cook i know. this is what she made us. we started off with one of the weirdest, unironic salads i've ever eaten. it consisted of canned pear halves, with mayonnaise in their little cores, and iceberg lettuce chunks, sprinkled with grated cheddar cheese:

totally weird, right? strangely tasty, though! kind of crunchy and sweet and slippery with a bit of sharp salt from the cheddar. awesome.

then we had pot roast, with green beans mixed with cream of mushroom soup, bob evans' mashed potatoes (which i was raving about, thinking they were homemade, and then started raving even MORE when i found out they were bob evans' mashed potatoes AND they were NINETY NINE CENTS), and carrots and onions. this was served with these things that nany off-handedly referred to as little "jiggers" - which is basically buttered white bread with the crusts cut off that's been baked until crispy:

the star ingredient in the pot roast? lipton's onion soup mix, natch.

i contributed dessert, which was a sour cream apple pie with cinnamon streusel and vanilla ice cream:

nany sets a mean table...you can kind of get a glimpse of it here, beyond the dotytron and em's head:

it was a lot of fun. we came home and basically passed out.

i had a strike of inspiration last night to make a breakfast of biscuits, sausage gravy and eggs. the very THOUGHT of this breakfast had me hankering for sunday morning from about 10pm saturday night on. sunday morning could NOT come fast enough. can you blame me? check out the goods:



this was a FREAKING KILLER breakfast of champions. zomg. i can't believe it's taken me this long to realize i could make this. i gotta say, if i ever open a brunch place, i would probably be a zillionaire. nobody ever gets it just right. like, they serve you 10 different kinds of benny (which i find excessive), but then you have to go someplace else for corned beef hash. and the corned beef hash place ONLY has corned beef hash and no huevos. and NO ONE in toronto serves biscuits with sausage gravy and eggs, i'll tell you that much.

i tried a new technique for the biscuits - almost like a quick puff pastry...you smear the biscuit dough with butter, fold it like puff in thirds and then turn it and pat it out again. you do that three times. the recipe is from by way of blackberry farms by way of gourmet magazine. the recipe is here: buttermilk biscuits

on the way to pick up our water filters for our hippie dippy terra cotta water filtration system...i came up with a new me-ism. this is AFTER i spent a good chunk of time laughing at my own responses to the "things in a box" game we played at the farm. yes, you read that right. i was remembering my OWN answers to the "things in a box" game and laughing out loud about them - almost a week and a half after the fact. but c'maaan...they were pretty gold.

category: places you would feel comfortable taking a stranger
my response: loblaws and/or shoppers

category: things that don't live up to the hype
my response: apple versus pc

category: things you do on your break from work (this was from 2 years ago at the farm
my response: research native american history

LOL! it was during this little laughing fit (did i mention that i was driving?) that the dotytron decided that he doesn't find me 1/8 as funny as i apparently find myself. for those of you who don't know the game, a category is pulled and read out loud. players then write their responses to the question/category prompt. all the answers are collected and read out loud to the active "player" in that round. the player has to match the response with the person they think wrote it and they get a point for each correct guess. all incorrect guesses go to the person reading the categories (there's variations on this part.) it's pretty darned fun.

anyway, the new lagerfeld saying was instigated by some a**hole honking at me while i was trying to decide which lane to go in. at which point, i said, "look. sometimes you just gotta suck the tit, and go." which makes NO SENSE but is so freakin' funny that i'm laughing out loud just typing it out. this will be added to the long list of me-isms...the most notable one being: "stick a gun in me - i'm done."

we went skating today for about a half hour...by the end i was definitely cruising with a bit more confidence and getting a bit more a rhythm going, plus my ankles were stronger and not as hurty, so i'm gradually improving. that or my skating muscles are wakening from their torpor and harnessing some long-forgotten vestigial memory of my grade 6 skating lessons.

tonight for dinner i made us tourtiere - ground pork cooked up with onion, garlic, potatoes, frozen peas, seasonings (plenty of thyme, sage, a bit of rosemary) and stuffed between two flaky crusts. served with my apple-pear-cranberry relish and a wintery salad of romaine, radicchio, sliced pear, and toasted chopped hazelnuts in a maple balsamic vinaigrette.

fin.

empty nest

the roomie has left the building. flown the coop. gotten the hell outta dodge. blown the popsicle stand. uhhhh...i ran out of aphorisms.

she technically made the move on saturday. it was hectic. tonight is our first real night alone though, as T was here last night and left this morning (we woke up at an ungodly hour to drive her to the airport.) it doesn't feel that different. we have a giant empty room in the house now. that's kind of different. but the room still feels vaguely off-limits. the fact that we're not planning on doing anything with the extra space (it seems silly to set up the living room when we're moving shortly) makes it still feel kind of occupied. we're going to use the room as a place to throw all our junk as we start to slowly pack up our gear.

yesterday for breakkie i treated T to the fat baby. look at that rise! it's magical. she was suitably impressed.

we kind of loafed around and tidied up after the upheaval of the weekend and then i headed to dodgeball for the semi-finals. we won against my brother's team. the best is when people try to badmouth my own brothers to me. either not knowing we're related, or underestimating my allegiance and loyalty to my crazy, f**ked up family. seriously, guys...i know i play dodgeball with you for a couple of hours each week, but these dudes are my KIN. we stick together and stand up for each other against ALL interlopers.


for dinner i made muttar paneer with steamed brown rice and purchased saag and naan. our buddy A came over and hung out and gave us the lowdowns on what's what in the life of a swinging jazz musician about town.

for dessert, i cranked out a batch of cookie dough. it's on my shortlist as my entry into the work picnic cookie baking contest. it's a recipe i got from the dotytron's family. they're called mona's mother's mother's favorite cookie recipe. i've included it below. they're like a mix between oatmeal cookies, florentines, and a crisp and chewy chocolate chip cookie. they're delicious.

tonight we went and visited trevor d. i'm feeling really good about our grillz. he's kind of awesome. i haven't received my gear yet but i think i would whole heartedly endorse him to anyone looking for some mouth hardware or custom jewels. as it turns out...we know people in common! lol! he said he thought we looked familiar the first time we were in. my life is totally absurd. T was totally in shock of how many people i saw out and about from various avenues of my life. not friends...total randoms. like my nemesis from library school, a friend of dr. rei's out and about, a girl i met at L's farm over new year's, some dude who i play dodgeball against bouncing at a club on college on saturday night, a dude i used to cook with on the platform waiting for the ossington bus on sunday. i actually saw trevor d out on the danny on sunday AND the dotytron's cousin. what a hodgepodge. you know you've lead an interesting life when you cross paths with so many different types - the scarborough burnout, the rocker, the cook, the brit, the ponce. i'm certainly well rounded...just not in the way that makes you a rhodes scholar or anything.

anyway, we took the molds and put in our request. he's totally hype on it. we'll be his first set of wedding grillz. heh.

then we went and got the dotytron's suit and shirt and tie and got him some snappy, narrow, classic shoes to go with. this week i'm hoping to print out the invites and have those mailed off. the invites are mostly a formality. but i had fun making them, i must say...even if it revealed my distressing tendency towards twee and cutesy design.

i'm not gonna lie. it's been a hella long day. we woke up at 5 in the a.m. to get T to the airport on time. i'm a super sad perogie that she's gone. i know a zillion people but have like, 2 friends. it sucks the big one when one of them lives across the country.

fin.

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

mona's mother's mother's favourite cookie recipe

1 c. butter, softened
1 c. sugar
1/2 c. brown sugar
1 egg
1 c. flour
1 1/4 c. rolled oats
3/4 c. shredded coconut
1 t. baking powder
1 t. baking soda
1 1/2 c. chocolate chips (i used milk chocolate ones this time, just to be saucy)

- cream the butter and sugars together until fluffy
- add the egg
- stir in the rest of the ingredients
- chill that shiz down
- preheat the oven to 350F. scoop out tablespoon sized balls and roll them up (i make mine on the large side - using the 1 1/2" diametre ice cream scoop) place them well apart on a silpat lined cookie tray (they spread. beware!)
- bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown and lacy.
- cool on tray until they keep their shape and savour with a glass of cold milk

EPIC

zomg. i came home at 3:30 last night (this morning). THREE THIRTY! that doesn't happen anymore! i'm so chuffed about it.

the past few days have been epic. let's start with friday night. got home from work and got all gussied up to take T and the dotytron out for dinner - to celebrate T being in town and the dotytron being DONE m-f'n TEACHER'S COLLEGE! i thought this day would NEVER come!

we went to tomi-kro restaurant in leslieville. it's close by and i've been meaning to try it for a long time. we also did a walk by of lil' ugmo as well (it was en route) to show T what is giving me periodic knots of anxiety in the flesh.

anyway, the meal was really lovely! we all had three courses, a bottle of wine, and one martini. here's what went down...

bread. basically warmed, pita triangles that had been brushed with an herbed oil. pretty tasty, but kind of nondescript.

lobster maki balls. bits of lobster mixed with chili mayo and avocado, encased in sushi rice which is then rolled in nori, dipped in tempura batter, and then deep fried. the lobster was barely noticeable, but i tend to be a sucker for deep fried maki. it's served with a slightly spicy wakame salad and more chili mayo on the plate. it's tasty because crispy+maki+spicy mayo is always a winning combination and this dish capitalizes on it.

at the top, foie gras brulé. a generous ramekin of foie mousse with a bruléed crispy sugar topping. served with toast and some kind of tart fruit preserve and other foie gras accoutrements. it was really really tasty. the foie mousse was whipped and airy and smooth and the bitter/sweet crunch of the bruléed sugar provided a nice texture and flavour contrast.

on the bottom, we have the miami short ribs. these were braised and then grilled and served with a vaguely asian, five-spice enhanced sauce. they were tender and delicious and generously portioned.

beet salad. huge slices of tender, chilled, beet topped with a goat-cheese cream studded with pistachios on top of greens. i loved this dish. it went over really well with a table of beet lovers.

i ordered the veal osso bucco. three tender, meaty chunks of veal shank, braised and topped with a rich, mushroom-cream infused sauce. this dish was quite heavy for summer but it was actually just what i wanted after waiting until 9pm to have dinner and walking through leslieville to find eats. the meat could have used a touch more seasoning but other than that, it was a nice take on osso bucco - extra points for a particularly huge slippery knot of marrow.

dr. rei ordered the seared salmon with tempura battered sweet peas and some kind of cole slaw type thing (or vinegary shredded stuff.) the salmon was served medium rare and had a sweet glaze going on.

T had the tuna, which came rolled in sesame seeds, seared, and served with some kind of miso sauce on edamame hummous. i didn't get to try it but T said it was yummy.

the dotytron ordered the filet of beef. it came with some kind of root mash and sauce. i was getting full at this point so even though we were going splitsies, i didn't eat as much of it as i thought i would. the meat was as tender as filet should be and cooked the requisite medium-rare.

despite my above assertions that i was approaching fullness, that didn't stop me from ordering dessert. i ordered the flourless chocolate cake, which is a silky, dense, mousse-like triangle of pure chocolate flavour, accented with whipped cream and berries.

dr. rei ordered the chocolate pudding, which came with a chocolate brownie (i found the brownie a touch dry.)

the dotytron and T had the dulce de leche cheesecake. it was also very good and and restrained with the caramel flavours, which can sometimes get too sickening and cloying.

all in all, i thought the food was really good and pretty fairly priced, for the portion size and the execution. we paid $280 including taxes and tip for four people to have 3 courses each and a bottle of decent wine and one cocktail. i would go there again.

yesterday was a loooooooong day. the roomie was moving out yesterday, so T and i hightailed it to bonjour brioche to get out of her hair. plus, i wanted to take T there because it's something a little different in the brunch department. on our way, the area that i live in now was having a massive street sale, so we walked through that. some of the prices were exorbitant and not in the spirit of yard sale-ing. for example, some dude was selling a plastic radio flyer wagon for EIGHTY DOLLARS. that's not good yard sale etiquette. do you want to get rid of the stuff or NOT? on the way back, we spotted H and baby D and H's mom J. they stopped over for a visit and showed off some of their finds from their trawl through the yard sale. H has the best yard sale/goodwill/value village luck i've ever seen.

then S came over to look at some furniture and we visited with her for a bit. it turns out all the stuff i'm getting rid of is too big for her new place so it's not going to work out. but it was nice catching up.

finally, after the cavalcade of stars, we headed out for our day of shopping. i didn't buy much. i got a straw hat for myself and a pair of shorts for the dotytron. pretty restrained considering i saw a bunch of nice stuff i wanted. i'm really into the thin, button down, breezy, rolled up shirt/dress look this summer. i think it's so crisp and clean and like, blake lively strolling through martha's vineyard on a hot summer's day.


this is kind of what i'm talking about. so nice! so breezy and crisp and still relaxed and vaguely hippie for hot climes. it's very vacationy. but i was good and didn't succumb. i'll do a trawl through the sale racks if and when i ever get some disposable coin. i definitely don't want to pay full price for that stuff.

we walked and walked and walked and had a serious case of barking dogs. we met up with the dotytron at harbord fish'n'chips and mowed down and then came back home and napped. we met up with our buddy B at the subway and headed over to our buddy M and fox's apartment in kensington where we did some pre drinking with other peeps. bwong came and met us there and was winningly insouciant as per usual. we headed out to supermarket first and were bored to death with some crappy disco-y standards ("pyt" etc.) i went up to the dj and asked if they were going to play any hip hop and requested m.o.p's "ante up" and he said he'd play it. we sat through some more indeterminate crap tunes and were just about to leave when he dropped it and the crowd went OFF. what the hell dudes, just let me program a set. then he played some more old skool hip hop but it might have been too little too late. we trooped over to thymeless but they were full (!!!) so i convinced people to go to some random jungle party at toi bar featuring the sounds of dj saigon and possibly frankie gunns.

we squeezed in just before last call and got a reduced rate. T and i bonded at trent university over le jungle, bwong is an old torontojungle.com stalwart, the dotytron and i met via jungle, and some other random friend of friend of the dotytron's high school crew who was in attendance was also a former jungle devotee. it was a BLAST. we danced our butts off to really crappy jungle and it was awesome. lol! i think my voice was hoarse from "brup"ing and "bo"ing. ahahahahaha. at one point, i started rolling up the legs of my jeans and told a (shocked) bwong that i was really going there. T had been worried about being under-dressed for supermarket but we were totally OVER dressed for jungle. ahahahahaha! so good!!! i also got hit on by a n00b. he offered to buy me a drink. i ordered a gin and soda (T's drink of choice) thinking i could pass it along to her but the bar was closed. the point is, i got hit on (i'll take what i can get) and i still got it for skeevy jungle dudes (like i said: i'll take what i can get. lol!) we kinda closed the place down. like, the lights came on. then we dip-setted out of there with bwong shouting, "quick! before the lights come on!" and then we kind of staggered out because it felt like we had all just like blacked out and fell into a time warp. it totally escalated quickly. all in all, a super fun night. can't ask for more.

i'm about to make some breakkie and get this day started.

fin.

well, that escalated quickly

dearest readers...i bought a CREDENZA! and it is GORGEOUS! it's a gorgeous teak with a very dark, almost walnut stain. long and low, 6 feet long with both shelves AND drawers. it was a very fortuitous find and i'm absolutely in love love love with it.

i've been on the lookout for a long, long, long, time. i hate our tv stand and the stupid bookcase we inherited (it got left behind in a previous apartment) to store our dvds and videos (yes, i said videos.) so i've been trawling craigslist, various used furniture stores, ikea, looking for something suitable. everything was either too expensive, or not quite right, or overpriced (ie. craigslist - people overvalue their stuff like crazy.)

i was considering this piece on craigslist:

but i wasn't too sure of the wood colour or the leather top. it was okay, but not perfect.

this little number seemed aight...but all the way in etobicoke. and the finish was meh.

i had kind of resigned myself that i might get two of the ikea ps lockers in red:

this is an affordable option (although not really, if you get two, you're up at $260.) plus it has its drawbacks: the doors open only with a key, which means you have to either never lose the key, or keep the key in the lock and turn it every time you want to open it and access the dvd/vcr whatever inside. plus you'd have to drill holes in the metal to get the cords running through and i don't even know how to do that.

yesterday i did my crafting, did some light spring cleaning, then went over to help H move, showing up fortuitously in time to grab the last garbage bag...lol! some help i was. then i zipped down to queen east to see if i could find anything in the junk stores around.

i stopped in at one place...he didn't have any teak, but he had some walnut pieces (i like walnut too, i'm not a 100% teak fetishist.) they were too tall. finally, he showed me something that looked like this:


with a 4 shelf bookcase on top, the whole thing selling for $395. the credenza bit was only maybe 2-3 feet wide...and he was willing to separate the two pieces and sell the bottom to me separately for $225 plus tax. the finish was more blonde...i didn't love it, but i think i was in a credenza buying/nesting/roomie moving out so i have a proper living room again frenzy...so i thought about it and seriously considered it. then i called the roomie cuz she was in the area and i thought we could shove it in her car and be on our merry way. i went to meet up with her, but en route, popped into another store, and lo and behold fell in LOVE with my little beauty piece.

i don't have a picture. it's gorgeous. it has some minor scuffs and nicks...nothing a little go over with steel wool and teak oil won't take care of. it has shelves on either side hidden with sliding doors, and three drawers in the middle. one of the drawers was missing, the dude at the store told me it was being fixed. it was being sold for $250. TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY! i had just walked along a strip of queen east where similar sizes (already oiled up) were going for $1000+. so i snapped it up. i was in lovelovelove and it felt rightrightright. it turns out that the drawer is outright missing...but i can deal with that. i can slide the doors over to cover the space, or take out drawers entirely, put in shelving, and put the vcr/dvd/pvr (eventually) player on that. that's why it was so cheap. it's so lovely! i'm in total love with it. the drawers slide smoothly, and everything is in good shape. i can deal with scuffs...i mean, if the piece is from the 1970s, i don't expect it to look new. otherwise, i'd buy a reproduction, right?

i also really love these industrial things...but i figured i should get out while i'm ahead:




then i went by upsidedive to pick up a dress of H's that she had bought online. they're having a $5 clothing sale. i bought a $5 stripey, cotton, polo tennis dress thing with a drop drawstring waist for FIVE DOLLARS! i'm in lurve with it. it's grey and pink. i can't believe it was still there. it's the perfect beach/swimsuit coverup. then i saw THIS and fell in love all over again:

a chrome rocker!!! i sat it in it...it's pretty comfy...nice high arms would make it good for knitting. it's rare to find vintage rockers that aren't all colonial style...or the DAR chairs...i hate the DAR rockers (example below)...i think they're super ugly:

we're going back today to grab the rocker...and then i'm done buying stuff. lol! we're going to get some expedit bookcases to sub out for our mismatched, falling apart ones...and then stick everything back in the living room once the roomie is gone. i'm so excited!

ohhhh!!! i also picked up this little number at upside dive:

hi cute apple clock! why are you so cute?!? isn't it adorable?!??? i love love love upside dive. they're the best. they're a team of siblings (it helps that the guy is kinda hot! lol!) and everything is really gently priced and they're super nice and so close to my house! they're the ones that sold me my bedframe.

look at my crafting! my bread bags turned out really swell! i'm pleased...i especially love the poppy print.


this is last night's dinner. i almost poosed out and had us order pizza, cuz i spent about a million hours at H's helping them unpack. i hate moving but i'm a fiendish unpacker...i'd rather stay up all night unpacking because the sooner the new place is in order, the sooner my troubled heart can be at ease. H was ready to quit a few times but i was totally bossing her into finishing the kitchen. ha. the last few times we've moved, the dotytron has taken beer breaks and he'll come back and i've got two rooms done. i have the energy of like, 5 mes when i'm moving. considering how much money i spent yesterday, i decided it was prudent to cook. it was delicious! yummy tartar sauce, yummy fried artichokes, the arugala cut through everything, the shaved parm add a little salt and texture. and the fried lemons! i love fried lemons! i sliced them on the mandoline, peel and all, and then battered them and fried them and sprinkled them with salt. i could snack on fried lemons like chips.

okay, i'm about to eat a bacon'n'egg breakie and then embark on shopping with the dotytron hell. wish me luck! then goosetang forever!

fin.