Weekend shenanigans

I'm realizing that being a parent means living your days measured by how many times your love for your child is re-set. One minute I'm wrestling a baby energetically playing bucking bronco in my arms and letting forth a ululating howl of unearthly volume directly in my ear; his tongue, vibrating in tandem with his screams, made visible by the open-mouthed, downturned lip of the dramatically, pathetically distressed. I'm letting out a stream of steady shushing noises the tenor of which has rapidly degraded from soothing to a furious seethe. Finally, blessedly, the baby sleeps. And sleeps. Napping for such an unprecedented jag that I managed to finish my readings for class tomorrow, prep dinner, do the dishes, AND shower uninterrupted. I peek in on him and he looks like this:

and at that point, you realize the wisdom of his being and clamber into bed beside him, your heart swelling, your previous anxiety seeming like a distant hallucination carried away by the regularity of his steady breaths and the wonder of his little fingers curled up into tiny fists.

My friend G gave me some sage advice this week - she reminded me to ENJOY EVERY MINUTE that I get with this bundle of sweetness. That while the urge to finish projects, clean the house, and all the other sundry noise pulling at my attention can be strong, that those things will wait and that I have a very limited window when he will be so focused on me, his mother. So I'm going to try to go against my essential being and relax a bit and rejoice in the fact that when the Dotytron and I are both vying for his attention, his gaze finds and fixes on me. That he reserves his most special smiles and happiest squawks for me. Because it's not going to be like this forever and when it's time to go over the ledger of my life, I'm going to be very willing to have my dishes-and-laundry-done column in the red if it means my nose-to-nose time with the Boobla is in the black.

He is so very, very, very sweet.

Friday night we had an early dinner - I made a lamb, eggplant, and chickpea stew flavoured with vaguely Middle Eastern spices and a rice pilaf with a crunchy layer of tadiq (the Persian - I think - name for the crunchy layer at the bottom of the rice), which I have been craving since I ate it for the first time when Dr. Rei's mom made it for me, like, 4 years ago. It's THE BEST. There are a lot of tricks to making it, the most important being that you have to use high quality, WHITE basmati rice (in a nod to the Dotytron's long-held preference for white rice over brown). I added some grated carrot and saffron, but next time I might do a proper pilau and add sultanas and pistachios and caramelized onions as well. Fluffy white basmati rice IS addictive, especially when it's accompanied by the textural contrast of a butter-browned, slowly crisped, crunchy pita hat:

We narrowly lost our dodgeball game on Friday. We have a lot of new people on the team this year and we seem to have a pretty strong divide between people who are playing to win and who want to play "for fun." Now, as I've mentioned before, I have a REALLY hard time playing "for fun." I also have a REALLY hard time listening to strategies from players on my team whose understanding of the game is shaky at best. But ultimately, I'm just grateful to be playing again, so I'm trying to curb less sportsmanlike impulses. It is exceedingly frustrating when your team doesn't heed your hard-earned nuggets of dodgeball wisdom though.

On Sunday we went to Momma & Poppa D's house for a birthday brunch for Ehmdo. Momma D made us "daisies" which are eggs cooked in a cream sauce made to look like a daisy. They were most delicious. We also had fruit and I contributed monkey bread. Nany was there too and was totally taken with the monkey bread (as is everyone I've ever made it for):

Then we came home and hung out until the Goosetang clan came over to watch the Super Bowl. We pooled our resources and made a random assortment of foods: crockpot meatballs in bbq sauce, baked brie with pepper jelly, chips & Helluva Good dip, corn chips with guacamole and salsa, baba ghanouj and pita, and these homemade "kit kat" bars that are a Paula Deen recipe - they're freaking amazing...I'll post a picture tomorrow.

Watching the Super Bowl was jokes. We didn't really pay attention to it and instead had a hilarious time consisting of many soon-to-be classic gems, among them:

- trying to come up with a working definition of constipation

- a lengthy discussion about how after I tricked the Dotytron into singing the Beach Boys' Kokomo with me, we decided that our life's mission was to go to all the Kokomo places in Kokomo order (Kokomo itself will be the hardest to execute). This then segued into a conversation about the Kokomo state of mind and how difficult it is to maintain.

- a rousing game of Bananagrams

- Hanbo turning to me and saying, semi-sarcastically, "so, are you excited for the Black Eyed Peas half-time show?" fully expecting me to say "no!" and being somewhat taken aback by my wide-eyed enthusiasm when I said, with the utmost sincerity, "YES!!!" (my logic is that it's better than Bruce Springsteen, or Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers).

- During said half-time show, watching Will.I.Am's antics, I uttered the phrase, "I can't believe Will.I.Am wanted to be the mayor of Haiti"

- A prolonged discussion about the ethnicity of the fourth, oft-overlooked member of BEP (ie. not Will.I.Am, not Fergie, not the Vampire guy - the black-ish [me]/possibly Filipino [the Dotytron] dude who never gets featured).

Today is all about eating vegetables and fruit and getting our cholesterol count back in order. For dinner tonight we're having a curried sweet potato soup with a big spinach salad with all kinds of goodness chopped up in there.

Fin.

super bowl sunday

i'm starting to totally get into football, kids. it's such an intense sport! especially when you have a clear underdog/dramatic athletic success story like the saints going up against captain all american petyon manning (i absolutely HATE that name. it's like a made-up gossip girl name.) not only that, but the saints also have scott fujita on their team and he just might be the omega man.


berkeley educated with a poli-sci degree and a masters of education. vocal advocated for same-sex marriage, pro choice, and proud of his adopted japanese-american heritage. all in a totally alpha, thick-necked, fairly dreamy package. it's like the best of ALL worlds!



so we had jalepeno popper and nachos and because the dotytron can't tell the difference between a drumstick and a wing drumette, a mix of of wings and drumsticks, deep fried and lolling in a bath of equal parts butter and frank's red hot sauce. it was pretty effin' tasty, if i do say so myself. a finger-lickin' meal worthy of the lickin' the colts got at the hands of the saints. i missed the on-side kick but the security guards at work today explained it to me...dramas! we also ducked out on the who at the halftime show. carrie underwood looked pure, nascar, big-haired country-fried in her white bedazzled outfit. it aged her. she also got mad pitchy near the end of her overdrawn rendition of the "star spangled banner" but it still beats taylor swift at the grammys! i don't understand why people want to over-sing "the star spangled banner" - it's such a beautiful, rousing national anthem that's got so many peaks and valleys that it doesn't need much embellishment. unlike our national anthem, which is a sturdy, dull, mumbling little thing...the reliable, stoic, wallflower child in the class of national anthems that features the blustering bombast of "le marseillaise" and the pinched, rigid, imperialism of "god save the queen."

for sunday breakkie we had jimmy dean's maple sausage with over-easy eggs and rye toast.

for a super bowl dessert i made us fudgy chocolate brownies with ice cream and leftover bourbon toffee sauce. i love a good, fudgy brownie. i think a good portion of my baking career has been spent chasing a homemade replica of the brownie sundaes that used to be served in the dining room of a roadside howard johnson's on the long family drives to NYC from toronto, in the time before roadside food was annexed in the name of the unholy union of tim horton's pedestrian chili-in-a-bread-bowl and wendy's. there used to be some variance to road food or at the very least, there was someone manning the stoves in a kitchen behind the dining room façade. there was a kitchen! where there was turkey roasting for hot turkey sandwiches - real turkeys even if the accompanying side of vegetables was standard-issue frozen peas and carrots propping up a rapidly dissolving pat of butter (but that's a textbook hot turkey sandwich preparation - real turkey, white bread, fake gravy, fake veggies). le sigh.

where was i? i made valentine's treats for my colleagues. these coconut almond brownie bars. a thin, fudgy, brownie base topped with a lime-accented coconut topping. trimmed and cut into bars and then topped with a salted, roasted almond and coated in glaze. i was NOT happy with the glaze. i was expecting a hard, thick glaze that would coat the bars and turn them into a homemade bounty or almond joy or like a chocolate-coated petit four. the amount of cream and corn syrup in the glaze should have twigged me that it wouldn't work out as i had envisioned, or as the VERY MISLEADING MAGAZINE IMAGE depicted:

theirs...and mine:

next time, i'm just going to use a more straight-forward ganache or a tempered chocolate covering. the problem with the glaze in the recipe is that it's also extremely tacky and sticky - making for a messy eating experience. the coconut and brownie are tasty as all f**k so it's worth revisiting - it also makes a pant-load with a modicum of effort, although glazing individual petit fours approaches the upper limit of my sweets expenditure scale.

okay, that's enough outta me...i'm going to try to go have sexy dreams about scott fujita now.

fin.

the crushing sting of defeat

so the non super bowl super bowl party totally turned into a more conventional super bowl super bowl because of the presence of one hebrew hammer who arrived at the party wearing a t-shirt that was festooned with the word "football!" AND who hasn't missed a super bowl in his whole life, and really, who am i to take that away from him?

so we watched it from beginning to end and by some lucky confluence of events, we managed to cobble together the OPTIMAL conditions for fun super bowl watching. some of the variables were planned: the food, the beer - even though i FORGOT THE CHEESE STICK AND JALEPENO POPPERS AT WORK!!!!!!! we still had way too much food though...between the nachos and the ribs, and the cupcakes, (we didn't end up touching the chili); some of the variables were completely fated: the combo of people who ended up showing up were amazing - my boyfriend, N, the hammer, and for a brief bit, aussie teammate R -; the fact that it was a really exciting, nail-biter of a game, with some historic super bowl moments and a crazy rally from the underdogs (whom we were rooting for, of course); and the fact that the hammer has this crazy knowledge of football ins and outs and trivia, and the added gift of being able to explain football to laypeople in an approachable and non-alienating way. somewhere in there, there were off-colour jokes told, discussions of newton's laws of thermodynamics, gossip, a discussion of the racist term "zipperhead" (which i had never heard before, and have since subsequently discovered through some group google that as far as the origins of racist terms go, is HELLA racist and really discomfiting), and general laughs and hijinks.

i think some of my dodgeball peeps didn't show because of some drama that went down at the game last monday, where two of my teammates walked off the court, mid-way through the game and left, due to some perceived malfeasance from our opponents. i've played quite a few games in my day and while the other team was pulling the classic "deflect-the-ball-onto-own-legs-and-not-go-out" routine (if you deflect the ball onto yourself, you're out.) it wasn't BLATANT and the two dudes on my team seem to have like, passive-aggressive issues...where they won't really stand their ground on the court and instead, complain to US about it, which does nothing but make me and N look away awkwardly and pretend we don't know what's going on. it's kind of hilarious. anyway, they walked off and left us there and then sent an email the next morning using inappropriate language in a non-reappropriating way and otherwise whinging and being babies about how they just couldn't take it, blah blah blah. so i sent a well crafted (hey, it's me!) response email basically telling them that when you walk off, you let your team down, and otherwise don't prove any point to the other team other than you got SHOOK. i just didn't have any patience for pandering to that crap. apparently then there were some sour grapes about that shiz after the fact, to other peeps on the team, even though most of the people agreed with me (but stayed silent, in a political move.) in other words, once again, the straight-talking loud mouth stick to her guns broad gets hung out to dry. le sigh.

in other news...i think i've become a pretty darn good dodgeball player. i need to work on getting my throws a little harder and more consistently accurate during the scramble, and i'm pretty middling at catching (totally have to beef up on that front...catching is the holy grail of dodgeball skills because it eliminates an opponent AND brings back a sidelined player from your team), but i've gotten good at the dodge and more than anything (and you can feel ready to insert your snickers here) i *THINK* dodgeball. in yesterday's game, i stopped play at one point when i was the last person on the court, after getting three people out in a row, and exclaimed (about myself!), "dudes, that was a SICK move!" lol!!!!!!! the amount of times i get hit out when i'm busy showboating after getting someone out is totally embarrassing but worth it for the laughs it generates.

tonight i ate leftover moroccan chickpea and squash stew with couscous and i'm treating myself to butterscotch pudding when i get home. unf unf!

this sports-heavy post has been brought to you by the word:

fin.

lazy weekend

the dotytron's sickness had a nice little unintended consequence for my weekend - i took it as an excuse to do as he did, laying about, watching movies, relaxing, and removing myself from most social obligations. the roomie is away for the weekend and it was lovely to have some lowkey me and him time (even though he spent most of it regaling me with a litany of bodily complaints) without having to rush about.


last night for dinner i reheated some frozen beef and barley and mushroom soup and made a spinach, bacon, lentil, roasted red pepper and avocado salad with lemon vinaigrette. it was delicious and fortifying and nourishing. i've been craving butterscotch pudding like mad lately (ever since it popped up on all the food blogs about a month ago) and i committed to making it yesterday, using a tablespoon of bourbon and one of the dotytron's laphroiag. the recipe came out a little pasty and ever-so-slightly gritty, so i think i might use a different one next time...but it was plummy to delve into a little coupe of the stuff, my spoon catching some of the whipped cream on its' way in.

i finally saw the romanian shmashmortion movie, "4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days" it's really good. it takes place over a single day in communist romania (1987) and focuses on a girl attempting to support her friend as she gets an illegal (they're all illegal at that time) abortion. in the process, she has to make a difficult decision. the movie neither trivializes nor sensationalizes the events, which was refreshing. i think so often, with independent, critically lauded films (i'm thinking the lars von trier school, or the usual oscar/independent spirt awards nominee) you're set up for unremitting tragedy more often than not (or, you get the plucky, intelligentsia comedy of the "little miss sunshine" ilk). while the events of this film aren't anything to take lightly (and make no mistake, the movie IS NOT a comedy!), the movie takes a stark, slightly detached perspective, steeped in the realism and intimacy of the performances and the way the narrative unfolds. you get a sense of the day to day life experiences of a range of people under communism. the texture of the film, the dark landscapes, the shadowy interiors, the utilitarian aesthetic - mirror the oppressive scenarios that delineate the field of potential action for the characters. it's definitely worth seeing.

last night we also watched "man on wire," about philippe petit's successful traversing of a wire rigged between the world trade centre towers. the documentary culls from extensive archival footage and photographs taken by petit and his helpers, along with recreations and interviews with the principal figures. the film manages to give you a sense of the magic, wonder, and enormity of spirit that imbues the act, and the kind of situationist-inspired flight of the imagination that the concretization of such an improbability can engender.

the film is a little bogged down by the fact that the main figure, philipe, while as suitably fanciful and artistic as someone who would dream of such a thing can be, is in the end, all too human, and i personally found his humanity, the imperfect corporealness of his personality, to be too much at odds with the ethereal grace that is his performance on the wire. it was jarring, but perhaps that was the filmmaker's intention. the non-existence of the towers themselves provides a shadow of loss that tints the film, permeates every frame - what philipe and his accomplices accomplished can never be replicated, and the viewer is keenly aware of it, though the filmmakers never address the issue. i wonder if this film could have been made or been as impacting if the towers still stood? either way, it's worth seeing. i'm also wondering how influenced i am by the use of satie's gymnopedie no. 1 in the score. probably a lot. lol!

today i'm going to dodgeball and then hosting a super bowl party (where the super bowl is an afterthought - we may or may not have it on) for the team. i almost kiboshed the shindig because about 3/4 of my team doesn't understand the concept of rsvping. it was aggravating but understandable, because i don't think they're used to the kind of parties that i throw. i don't think they're aware that rsvping kind of makes a difference when someone is preparing a tonne of food and drink for you. it's just not their usual bag, i guess. i made a ground beef, hominy, and kidney bean chili with my usual mixture of secret herbs, spices, and dried chilies. i made a VAT of guacamole with which there'll be sour cream, tomatillo and jack's garden salsa and freshly fried corn chips. i'm deep frying some cheese stick and jalepeno poppers (purchased - i'm not THAT crazy), and i also made some ribs that i'm going to baste with a sticky sauce before finishing them in the oven. i may or may not make cornbread, depending on how many peeps show, and i made the devil's food cupcakes with brown sugar buttercream. we also have beers and cocktails if people want.

the sauce for the ribs is one that dr. rei made for us once, from a recipe in food and drink magazine. i quite liked it. she threw everything into the slow cooker (i think), but i braised my ribs separately, with the intention of basting them with the sauce for the final heating, and then cutting them into individual riblets for consumption. i made some small changes to the original recipe - i've posted it below. the sauce is a pleasant sweet-sour combo that has vaguely asian notes. i upped the lime because i love the flavour and fragrance of limes.

in sad news, i broke my slow cooker. the ceramic is NOT meant to be used for stovetop cooking apparently, and when i touched it with something cold, the ceramic bowl cracked. it's thwarted death once before, when i almost melted off the knob. i was ready to junk it then but it got a sensible, last minute death penalty-by-way-of-garbage disposal reprieve from the dotytron. i'm going to have to get a new one when i go visit my sis in a couple of weeks.

fin

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

icky sticky pile of bones (their name, not mine!!!  i would call this "sweet and sour oven-braised ribs")

4 racks pork back ribs
6 limes, 4 thinly sliced, 2 left whole
1 tsp (5 mL) whole black peppercorns
1¼ cups (300 mL) ketchup
¾ cup (175 mL) pure maple syrup
⅓ cup (75 mL) balsamic vinegar
¼ cup (50 mL) cider or red wine vinegar
2 tbsp (25 mL) soy sauce
2 tsp (10 mL) dry or Dijon mustard
¼ tsp (1 mL) cayenne pepper

- preheat oven to 350ºF (160ºC).

- cut ribs racks in half. place ribs in a 9x13" pan. place lime slices on ribs and sprinkle peppercorns onto baking sheet. pour 1½ cups (375 mL) hot water into pan. cover entire pan with foil, sealing edges tightly. Bake for 1 to 1½ hours, or until ribs are fork-tender and pulling away from the bone. discard water, lime slices and peppercorns.

- meanwhile, combine ketchup, syrup, balsamic vinegar, cider vinegar, soy sauce, mustard and cayenne in a saucepan. squeeze the juice from the two whole limes and put the juice and the juiced limes into the saucepan. bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring often. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring often, for about 20 minutes or until reduced by about one-third and thickened.

- line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or foil. place ribs on pan and brush heavily with the sauce, reserving any extra sauce. bake for about 20 minutes in a 400F oven, brushing halfway with reserved sauce, until ribs are glazed and sticky.

(dr. rei seemed to have great success with just dumping everything [minus the boiling water] into a slow cooker - i think that's how she did it!)