Alternative School Parents Are The Worst

...but most other parents are also brutal.  You can't convince me otherwise.  Last week we had curriculum night at our school, which is basically an opportunity for the parents to come with the kids and check out their kid's classroom and find out what the overall objectives are for the year.

Our school shares a space with this alternative school, which is filled with 99% entitled white kids who think they are special stars (that's not me being racist, that's a legit observation - lack of diversity in the alternative school has been identified by all parties and they're trying to step up their "recruitment" as a result).  The schools share a principal, who takes great pains at every opportunity to tell you that he's the principal of two very busy, very active schools, the subtext of which is: "don't bother me."  This all means that during his presentation at curriculum night, the alternative school kids were running amok and being loud and he didn't try to have the room in control before starting his short presentation, so you couldn't hear anything and the audience was bananas.  It was a gong-show.  The alternative school is tiny, like maybe a hundred kids, max in total, but their parents are apparently very demanding.  As the Dotytron has astutely noted, why is funding going towards that?!  Why don't we have an autism school, or something equivalent that is desperately needed in the province?  Instead, our alternative school has the kids call their teachers by their first names, and they sit outside a bunch and it's supposed to teach the "whole child" (as opposed to regular school, where they only teach the kid's armpits?)

This is what you learn when you become a parent of a school-aged chld in downtown Toronto: OTHER PARENTS ARE CRAY.  The investment, outrage, and entitlement that people feel engaging with a public system is laughable, almost.  It's where a failure of the imagination, ego, misunderstanding of redistribution and community, and the zero-sum game that is modern, urban, educated elite parenting swirl together in a seething mass of bristling ignorance.  The same women who would stop me during my maternity leave and marvel at the fact that I had the guts to leave the house with a 3 year old and twin infants in tow, are the SAME PEOPLE who expect a teacher to personally shepherd their child to the bathroom, each time they have to go pee, in a class of TWENTY FOUR other students!  Mom who is wigging that the FREE SNACK provided was a yoghurt tube and not whatever the f**k tasteless brick of coconut oil and flax flour you wanted to make, here's a pro tip: ABSTAIN FROM THE FREE SNACK.  Or, better yet, JUNIOR KINDERGARTEN IS OPTIONAL, PULL YOUR KID OUT!  People basically just want to create little private schools without paying a single extra cent.  It's mind-boggling, really.

Here's the seedy underside of this: IT MAKES YOU CRAY, TOO.  Or it does me at any rate.  When you're caught up in a nattering maelstrom of helicopter, attachment-parenting types it's easy to lose your centre and get swept up in madness.  The Dotytron is really good at staying above the fray and putting things in perspective.  Last night after curriculum night he said look, at the end of the day, does the Big Yam feel safe?  Does he feel supported and comfortable?  If those requirements are being met we are lucky in that we can fill the other potential gaps in his education on our own, if need be.  The Big Yam has made a little friend and they are super-cute together:

Also, we have a new principal who is making classic new principal mistakes and kow-towing to the demands of the crazy parents.  I emailed the principal about them losing the Big Yam, because I thought the communication (mainly from the administration) wasn't great.  So I went early late last week to meet with him and the the Big Yam's teacher and he TOTALLY THREW THE TEACHER UNDER THE BUS!  He turned to her during the meeting and was like, "What are YOU going to do so that this doesn't happen again?"  and I was like, "wait, whaaaat?  That s**t ain't right, son."  To me, that's crappy management.  I was there with the express purpose of working WITH them to figure out what we might need to change from an operational standpoint so that you don't lose a kid on the first day, maybe.  I've talked to some teacher friends, and the consensus is that usually what happens in these meetings, is the teacher and the principal work together BEFORE the parent shows up, come up with a plan, and then the principal says during the meeting, "we are going to do x, y, z" and the teacher says, "uh huh" and then boom, it's done.  The way he handled this seriously made me think he was a giant a-hole.  Then, he threw her under the bus AGAIN, privately, when he pulled me into the office and assured me that what she did was unacceptable, and he took it seriously.  I intellectually know what happened.  He thought I was one of those cray helicopter parents and was going to like, sue the school or something.  Uh, no.  I get that it can happen, no biggie.  What I'm less impressed with is you undermining your staff member in front of me and hanging them out to dry.

Is our kindergarten teacher the greatest?  No.  I'm not like, stoked to have her and I don't think I would want the Big Yam in her class next year, if we decide to stay.  But, she hasn't done anything so far that makes me outraged.  She seems kind of checked out, but she's 24 years into her career.  I don't blame her.  I'm certainly not wigging the way one of the other parents is, because her daughter had an accident at recess and so the teacher sent her daughter in with an SK buddy to go get changed in the cubby area, and at the end of the day, her daughter's dirty clothes were strewn in the cubby area.  Mom is all like, "where was the follow through?  Isn't that a safety issue?"  And I'm like, uh, why don't you talk to your kid about putting their dirty clothes back in their bag after?  Do you expect teacher to personally shepherd your kid to get changed?  And what, leave the other 13 kids out front during recess by themselves?  How does that make sense?  Of course, mom felt the need to take that to the principal (?!?)

Anyway, I can't handle that shiz.  When I can, I do the drop off and pick-up (like on my days off, or even on days like today, when I'm home sick), because cray-cray parents would have you believe that that's when you get the "scoop" and "gossip."  But to me, it's not worth it.  My friends who dump their kids at daycare in the morning and then pickup from daycare are blissfully removed from the s**tstorm of crazy and I'd rather be in with them.

In the interests of transparency, I feel like I owe it to you to be truthful and say that after touting the systems we've developed to ease our transition, week 2 was a bit rough.  The Big Yam was crying every day wanting me to take him to school and not understanding that I have to go to work.  Last week I got stuck on public transit for an hour coming home and wasn't prepared and by the time I came home they had all eaten dinner without me.   Last Friday, our nanny called in sick so the Dotytron and I had to do the whole 6am/staredown/decide who is going to bite the bullet thing.  Thankfully, things seem to have settled this week.  I think the Big Yam gets that this is his new reality and seems to be adjusting fine.  He's such a laid back kid.  We are lucky, although I will say that based purely on anecdotal evidence, laid back parents tend to have laid back kids.  One mom of a classmate of the Big Yam's keeps sending histrionic texts about how her anxiety is at "through the roof" levels because teacher has been off sick for the past few days and they've had a couple of different supply teachers in.  Really?  There are some people who have real problems.  Remember that.

I feel like they finally seem like real babies.  The Quincess has bulked up like whoa.

Quincess pose - LOL!

Weeknight dinners: a smoke gouda, potato, bacon, and kale quiche

Shrimp and salmon corn chowder with cheddar sage biscuits

Pot roast & root vegetable mash

Breaded tilapia, homemade tartar sauce, salted heirlooms, and buffalo fried cauliflower, which is AMAZING.

Fin.

G8/G20

before i delve headlong into the inanity, let's have a moment of quiet reflection. our inspiration: my harbord fish'n'chips haddock dinner last night.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

okay, let's carry on then, shall we?

my thoughts on the g8/g20 gathering and the resulting protests and media frenzy and looting and chupidness can be basically summed up in the following series of random musings and pithy quips:

- people i want to hear talking about global capitalism: 1) not you 2) economists and economic theorists

- apple products advertising brainwashing > g20 media coverage brainwashing. p.s. 9/11 was an inside job, right?

- as much as i romanticize paris, 1968 - i do blame it for the commodification of protest culture. violence against protesters is totally traded as cultural capital.

principally, i'm just tired of the rhetoric and ideological nature of the discourse. like, COULD IT REALLY HAVE GONE ANY OTHER WAY? of course not! this is the only way that these meetings of global leaders can play out. what's tiresome is how predictable the narrative and roles are. on the one hand you have your protesters - the peaceful and the jacked-up-on-delusions-of-grandeur machismo/garbled anti-capitalist types. on the other hand you have "the state" the face of which are the police. if there HADN'T have been any violence or any s**tshow, would the protesters have been satisfied? i doubt it, because an essential part of the narrative is that there be some kind of police crackdown and resulting media frenzy. would the cops have been satisfied? no, because there has to be a justification for the expenditure of funds. the space is there and people just blindly step into it and act their roles...so banal.

everything is so garbled and messed up. what does it MEAN to be anti-capitalist? what does it MEAN to have people protesting? and protesting WHAT? to me, the seattle riots make more sense, that's the WTO, and we all know those guys are MAD shady. but it's ridiculous to me to be protesting world leaders getting together to talk stuff out. and seriously? you're complaining that there's no binding resolutions that come out of the g8/g20 talks? DO YOU REALLY WANT THERE TO BE?!? have you ever read through UN resolutions? it's MIND-NUMBING!!! guess how effective the UN is?!? guess how NOT bound up by bureaucracy they are?!? crikey. there is nothing that comes out of the g8/g20 meetings that wasn't already in place before or was planned a long time ago. they're only meeting for like, 3 days. let's be realistic here. haven't you ever sat in on a committee meeting at your own workplace? (anarchists: obviously not, which is YET ANOTHER REASON why you're so stupid). how effective are those meetings? holding the world leaders to what's discussed over a 3 day period on issues that affect THE GLOBE is beyond stupid. it's for people who want the coles' notes versions of global events.

you know what the most effective way of making sure that your views are represented? WORKING AT A GRASSROOTS LEVEL TO MAKE SURE THAT LEADERS WHO REPRESENT YOUR VIEWS ARE ELECTED TO BRING THE ISSUES YOU CARE ABOUT TO THE TABLE. that means NOT preaching to the converted but getting your ish together to persuade people who stand on the opposite side of the fence. that's WAY harder than marching along and staging silly, situationist type flashmobs and the like.

what is OXFAM working towards? how are they aligned with labour, native groups, women's groups, etc? in this day and age, can we really subsume all these issues under ONE banner that maintains a tight, cohesive, coherent, critical, and above all INTELLIGENT message? what does protesting in this way actually achieve in this day and age (i've been saying this since 4th year university - watching the quebec riots, thanks cultural studies!!!)

how is it surprising to anyone that cops are racist? guess what? old people are racist! and probably in higher percentages than in cops! accountants are racist! engineers are racist! instead of focusing your energy on the most visible caricature of "the state" your energies would be better applied working in your communities to raise kids who are going to go out into the world, and be whatever they're going to be (doctors, cops, teachers, etc.) and NOT be racist. instead of pointing out the obvious. let's fight racism on a SYSTEMIC level!

the dotytron had a fairly brilliant idea. he was like, all the protesters and groups should band together, sign an affidavit agreeing NOT to protest at all, and then direct the 1 billion spent on security towards a clean water initiative in africa. that's money well spent. because marching in the street is one of the most impotent forms of expressing dissent in a DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY. especially marching in the street like this - when you have like, 50 bazillion different groups who all want different, amorphous things, banding together.

it's just so adbuster-y/culture-jamming-y: the collusion of soft, a-critical minds trading in tired, entrenched ideological positions that have no nuance. it's as predictable and threatening as cream of wheat.

i also think that protesters should be honest with themselves and agree that there's a certain fetishization of these clashes between themselves and the state. violence against protesters is courted to a certain extent, because those stories are then traded as cultural capital. as much as drinking stories or getting high stories or tales from the trading floor. if it had been entirely peaceful there would have been nothing to report, no machine to feed from all ends and it's the WILLINGNESS of people to participate in this narrative that i find the most saddening. such a lack of creativity, vision, context, imagination. don't you SEE?!?

also, how DARE you talk about state oppression IN ONTARIO, CANADA. how dare you?! how DARE you in the privileged north try to align yourselves with people who ACTUALLY experience oppression in iran, china, countless other places as a ROUTINE part of their daily lives. how dare you smash blackberries and then record the smashing with your iphone? how dare you try to make your life more meaningful in the cheapest way imaginable - simultaneously exerting colonial privilege AND trivializing the struggles of people who ACTUALLY have it bad? are you serious?

blargh. so frustrating!


in more pleasant news, tonight for dinner we had zucchini blossom and little baby zucchini pancakes with sour cream and mint.


we also had slow grilled kolbassa served with caramelized onions and sauerkraut in beer on a bun with spicy mustard. my inspiration was from this recipe here, with some minor tweaks. i grilled the kolbassa but caramelized the onions on the stove as i wanted them to get all sweet and sticky and then drained and rinsed the sauerkraut so it wasn't all so briny. i was trying to be carb conscious so i only ate half a bun. ta-da!

fin.

being normal in toronto

for the benefit of dr. rei who gets confused when i post things out of order - this is friday's post that i'm just getting around to making live today (saturday)

first - the dotytron has gone plum crazy making 80s mixes. on the road trip down to geneseo he unveiled version 1 of his series. in case you think he goes the "cool" route of 80s new wave - you'd be wrong! instead, he compiled the ultimate 80s cougar mix. it doesn't start off that way - initially you're lulled by toto (who, incidentally, we like a super band of studio heads - did you know that?), bowie, and queen. then it totally goes into cougar town with glass tiger, don henley, pat benatar, and heart. it's the best! the best singing along ever! i love singing along with the dotytron in the car because a) he's a guy who likes singing aloud, which is rare enough; and b) he'll automatically start doing the harmonies, which is fun cuz then you feel like you're REALLY singing. last night on our way to dodgeball we both tried hitting the high note in aha's "take on me" - just take a moment, sit back, close your eyes, and imagine that. lol!

knit night as per usual featured me being the only one knitting. but it was really fun! the conversation was great - at one point, two of the participants started reflecting back on the G7 protests in quebec city in april, 2001. they were talking about how weird it was to go out and get gas masks and how a friend of one of the girls was carrying twins but lost one of the twins because of the tear gas. call me a right d**k, but when i start hearing stories like that, my bulls**t, snopes detector starts beeping. when pressed by another of the dinner guests, who was suitably horrified (unlike i. apparently i'm JUST enough of a skeptical, critical jerk to question such things), the recounter of the event admitted, "well, she was really early along and she didn't get tests or know for sure, but she was pretty sure that the tear gas made her lose the baby." don't get me wrong: it is a horrible thing to have a miscarriage and i'm empathetic of anyone who has to experience that. but couldn't one argue that it is to a lesser extent also horrible to use a miscarriage as a form of counter-cultural capital? getting gassed in quebec is the equivalent (i'm not saying that i put the two on the same plane, but they occupy the same level of symbolic cachet for bleeding heart, liberal, middle-class university students) of participating in the paris riots, or like, not staying at a resort in cuba. if you didn't get gassed in quebec, how would you know you were a liberal arts student?

meanwhile, i vividly remember standing in the living room of my shared house in peterborough, as my two roommates stared transfixed at the coverage of the G7 protests on the television, convinced we were on the cusp of a new, communist world order. i was trying doggedly to pierce their idealistic bubble by expounding at length on how in this day and age of short attention spans the ritualized act of mass demonstration is a politically impotent form of civic engagement, etc etc (insert critique of situationism, adbusters, flash-mobbing, shout-out to performativity, blah blah blah). isn't that so me? at least i stay consistent. it's not like i WANT mass protest to be ineffectual - it would be great if, when people stormed the streets, the powers that be woke up and changed the error of their ways. BUT, there have to be a few crucial steps that preclude this: critical thinking, intelligence, nuance, the usual stuff i'm always bemoaning the lack of.

later we got into a conversation about film. OF COURSE people who were at the quebec riots would also LOVE wes anderson and lars von trier and michel gondry. OF COURSE! never mind that lars von trier is a misogynist who makes torture porn for the bourgeois or that wes anderson's films (save for "bottle rocket" and "rushmore") are celluloid exemplars of SMUG and TWEE. art direction does not a film make! never mind that michel gondry mistakes community and imagination for a patronizing naiveté bordering on brain damaged. no no, if you fancy yourself a cultural arbiter and you're of a certain age in an urban locale, you simply MUST worship blindly at the altar of crappy film, acritically.

anyway, i was obviously in fine form - there are few things i love more than the opportunity to express a dissenting opinion. haha! just kidding. it was just fun to talk film and debate and discuss.


last night i made us an EXTRA delicious dinner. salmon cakes! i took about a pound of wild salmon, skinned it, cut it into small cubes and tossed it with torn, crustless bread, an egg, a chopped shallot, some mayonnaise, tabasco and salt and pepper. then i took scoops of the mix and pan-fried them on either side in a little bit of oil. kind of like your classic chesapeake crab cake. as i told the dotytron, "fish cakes maryland style" to which he replied, "oh i know her, we used to jam together back in the day" lol! i served them with some prepared mayonnaise that i mixed with chopped dill and lemon juice. they were super tasty. i also made a salad that i cribbed from someone on facebook - butternut squash cubes roasted with sage, on top of mixed greens, with crumbled mild goat's cheese and a maple mustard vinaigrette. delish! but not quite enough food - when i came back from dodgeball i was famished and ate almost an entire box of samoas with a glass of milk.

today i had a lovely lunch with dr. rei where we talked about how stupid it is when living in toronto makes you crazy and all keeping up with the joneses. how our generation is so entitled and so conspicuous consumption-driven that we fail to remember to take our time, to wait, to do things slowly, to not expect everything to look ripped out of the pages of dwell or apartment therapy in a day. i'm totally guilty of it, probably moreso than dr. rei because i'm such a balls-out, hyper-workaholic perfectionist. it's nice to have grounded people like dr. rei bring you back down to earth. to remind you that people's houses (par example) are the product of 20 years worth of work - that you can do things incrementally, over time, and that that's okay and moreover, that that's NORMAL. we live our lives so much in the eyes of others (says the confessional blogger) that we forget what it's like to be NORMAL people with regular, lowkey values. that a 1000 square foot home is totally fine to raise kids in and that kids are raised the world over with greater injustices than having to share a room. toronto living can make you crazy that way. thank goodness i have dr. rei's hamilton-hardened clear-eyed vision to save me from myself.

tonight we're going to eat a quick chino loco's takeout meal and then meeting up with the gang for some "twilight: new moon" action aka STARE EYES.

fin.

i can't believe it's only early afternoon on sunday

so far this weekend i've:

- eaten conch
- played TWO rounds of kickball
- went to a strawberry-less strawberry festival
- had my first 'montana's outhouse' experience (or is it 'montana's cookhouse'?)
- ate too much cake
- snoozed my way through the movie 'doubt'
- had a conversation about child pornography sentencing in the united states and the failure of the left
- gotten hosed at a second hand book store. i was a willing accomplice (nay, instigator!) in my own hosing

friday night's dinner was a blur. as usual, my grandparents INSISTED on our attendance but then scarcely paid any attention to the kids and rushed through a dinner seen as an inconvenient and unwelcome interruption to their mah jong wheeling and dealing. that's where the conch came into play. we had it mixed with mushrooms and bechamel and stuffed into a conch shell and broiled with a breadcrumb topping. it was pretty good! they also had a new kind of shark's fin soup on the menu and soy braised quail.

the next morning the dotytron went to work while we had brunch and then we went to the park and played kickball, my outlaw brother against everyone. in this case, "everyone" turned out to be me and my sister, as my niece rapidly went apocalyptica when she realized she didn't know the rules of the game and thus, was losing (did i mention that competitiveness runs in my family?) little ze clearly had less of a comprehension of the rules than my niece and was basically running in circles making sound effects. in the end, me and my sister got destroyed like, 10 to 2. it was an ignominious defeat that only stoked my desire for a rematch.

after that, we briefly regrouped and then hit the stouffville strawberry festival. call me crazy, but i kind of expected STRAWBERRIES to be featured. boy, was i wrong! instead there was the usual town festival assortment of sunglasses, hats, and garden decorations for sale, fried food, funnel cakes, and various main street stouffville enterprises setting up shop trying to entice people to buy their wares. there was a strawberry cafe, that sold strawberry shortcake (SPRAY CAN WHIPPED CREAM! a travesty!), strawberry pie, a bowl of strawberries and cream, and cookies and water. the cafe was a tired, sad looking thing. no decorations to speak of - only a ragtag group of community centre tables with a few forlorn people half-heartedly picking and their food. the shortcake was abysmal. airy, foamy cake split and topped with the aforementioned spray can whipped cream (NO NAME BRAND!!!!!!) it grieved my food and fair and festival loving soul. i also got into a tussle with one of the doddering old women who was running the show. i ordered: 2 strawberry pies with ice cream, 1 strawberry shortcake, and 1 bowl of strawberries and cream. she asked me, "was that 2 shortcakes and 1 pie?" and i repeated the whole order again (politely!) and then she CHASTISED ME for MAKING HER CONFUSED. lady, please!

there were some very shady carnival rides - shady even by carnival standards. so shady that everything was coated in a fine film of wd-40 and tetanus and a hepatitis cocktail.

the best part of the strawberry festival was that when we came upon a funnel cake stand, my sister turned to me, her eyes glowing, a beatific smile on her face, pointed, and said, "FUNNEL CAKES!" and then my outlaw bro said, "get one!" and she said, triumphantly, "SEE! he supports me!" lol! and that my friends, is how you make a relationship work. when your partner wants a funnel cake, you support them, dammit!

we came home and played ANOTHER round of kickball, this time with the dotytron on our team, and we STILL lost. this is after c-hova came out to give outlaw bro a hand playing outfield and twisted his ankle in his rookie debut. somehow for dinner we ended up at montana's. ummmm...that place is THE WORST. the worst, the worst, the worst! we paid $8.99 for a calamari portion that was little 1/2 a cup of rings and tentacles. THE WORST!



playing two rounds of kickball and then wandering the stouffville strawberry festival like the tribe of issachar was tiring to say the least. we ate cake and then passed out. the cake was a TWELVE layer cake. in retrospect, i should have made a double batch of chocolate buttercream and used that to sandwich in between each layer. instead, i alternated layers of jam and nutella and then frosted the whole thing with chocolate buttercream. it was pretty good, but could be improved. it certainly LOOKS impressive. i used 8" foil pans to make all the cake layers. i can fit 8 into my oven at a time, but the layers took a long time to cook. the most time consuming part was really cutting out the parchment circles to line the cake pans and then greasing and flouring the pans. overall, i think the cake base recipe could use some work...it tastes kind of under done and not very overwhelming. i'd probably just double a standard cake recipe that i really like, or use 1.5 times the recipe and go with that instead of the one provided. live and learn!

we were supposed to go see "public enemies" but it's tracking at 60% on rotten tomatoes so we were hesitant. plus it's uber-long and the only show we would be in time for was the late one. so we watched "doubt" instead. and by "watched" i mean "snoozed intermittently through." it was BORING. so boring! i say this having watched maybe 5 minutes total. i trust my opinion though.

so now we're at home, waiting for the dotytron's new guitar student to show up, even though it looks like she's bailed. for dinner we're going to try this new place called the stockyards. i'm totally pumped for it! i hope it doesn't disappoint!

full review to come a demain.

fin.

there but for the grace of robaxacet

i would not have come into work today. i'm so effin' sore! what the hell? what did i do to deserve this?

this has also been a bit of a piggerton day. i stayed in bed way longer than i should have, because i physically couldn't get UP without twinges of pain in my shoulder and neck (i hope it's not meningitis!) the dotytron packed me a robaxacet care package but cautioned me against dosing before eating. i didn't have time to eat breakfast so i had a bacon and egg bagel from the caf (only my 5th ever caf meal, in almost 2 years of working here). then i had pre-existing lunch plans with my friend M at the indian buffet close by. now i have dinner plans at tacos el asador with L and her bf N. it's nice seeing people but i really want to go home and lay the eff down and regain my full range of motion.

i didn't get to watch 'the reader' last night because A was in a chatty mood so we ended up talking most of the night. it was nice. i like him!

in the happy files: i managed to score some discounted thakoon stuff from target while in the states...because the line is old (in target time) i got some sick deals. a skirt for THIRTEEN DOLLARS! a spring coat for TWENTY! what a scoop! apparently alexander mcqueen is doing the next designer line. i love you target! don't ever make the mistake of coming to canada and getting sullied!

in the sad files: my clunky, cheapo winter boots that i bought for sixty bucks like, 5 years ago have sprung a small leak. heartbreaking. luckily, i scored an equally ugly, no-name (i'm NOT spending $150 on sorels, thanks) cheapo pair from sears for $40. sweet! i believe in sacrificing form for function sometimes.

in the happy files: i made the discovery that the chicago architecture foundation offers tours of the lakefront by SEGWAY.



...



has it sunk in yet?!???? BY SEGWAY PEOPLE!!!!! the dotytron and i have a mild obsession (me: mild, dotyron: raging) with segways. it's kind of expensive and you have to wear helmets but in the grand tradition of us taking on outlandish modes of transportation while on foreign soil (the tandem bike in bruges, anyone?!???), i think it'll be worth it for the hilarity alone. my prediction is more time spent taking pictures of each other on the segway than in listening/paying attention to the tour.

dearest readers! i have such a backlog of stories/events/reviews/random musings with which to regale you! and so little time!!!

i'm filling out my oscar ballot right now...i think i'm going to fill out two. one of who i think SHOULD win, and the official one of who is GOING to win. that way i can reconcile my heart and integrity with my more mercenary interests.

tomorrow i'm going to be up bright and early to accompany the dotytron up to markham to await the arrival of my sis and outlaw bro and the kids. they're in town for my grandpa's birthday dinner tomorrow night. i'm going to spend the day there, make dinner, then head back downtown to hit this show: amit @ el mocambo i'm mostly in it for chrisc64's (of C&C friend factory fame) old skool set with the gunnderson. it's going to be boss (if he plays it dancefloor friendly, otherwise known as "tunes that lagerfeld wants to hear" - i represent the dancing desires of the masses).

i'm excited! this weekend is going to be so fun!

in other news...i find some of the food peeps on this messageboard i still stupidly post on to be hella irritating. they're like the kind of people who made canada debase itself for obama yesterday. like, totally swept up into the food zeitgeist like, 10 months (or in some cases, years) too late. and they don't KNOW anything! but they preen like you wouldn't believe! they're almost a-critical. you can almost graph the fall out --> toronto life and/or now post a foaming at the mouth review --> 10 weeks later, they whip themselves into a frenzy discussing how much they want to eat there --> 2 weeks after that, they do, and are A-CRITICAL! they're like the worst kind of upwardly mobile n00bs. gah. i don't know why i go on there (i know why: habit/procrastination)

as an aside: the obama coverage bordered on embarrassing - seriously canada? HE'S NOT YOUR PRESIDENT. HE'S ALSO PRETTY CENTRIST. HIS STIMULATION PACKAGE IS MEH. it's just embarrassing to be canadian and watch them go buck like that, prostrating themselves out of adulation for THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT (because that's how you're supposed to perform when he's around?) it's cringe inducing. i don't know what i prefer more, the rabid 'twilight' fan or the rabid canadian obama fan. i might have to pick the 'twilight' fan. at least they've done their reading (at the very least it can be said that few can match prepubescent girls for their obsessive research skills when it comes to the objects of their hormonal outpouring.)

sorry peeps, i got a little ranty there. i blame the robaxacet. and that i'm super-full but wish i was super-not so that i could suck the marrow out of el asador (who am i kidding? i'll probably go whole hog and then end up filled with regret. and by "filled with regret" i mean: "crawling out of bed to hit the pepto at three am") upcoming posts will include reviews of the YA fiction i've been filling my brain with lately, as well as a dramatic account of my initiation into a ponzi scheme!

fin.

oh hai, i can has tendonitis?

sad update from the department for prolific and overly verbose posting here at chinotto is my nemesis. i've been felled by a wicked case of tendonitis/tennis elbow. after working for about an hour on monday, i started getting some flashes of numbness in my left arm and slight twinges of pain. not good!

today, before they sent us home early from the wicked snowstorm, i adjusted the height of my arm rests on my chair (i usually angle them in at about a 25 degree angle and put them up fairly high so that my elbows are bent at a 90 angle and my wrists kind of hover over the keyboard, and there was instant relief! that means someone was fuxoring with my chair while i was away on friday (not good!) at least i can type now...one-handed typing is the worst. i'd rather hand write (that's a bald-faced lie.)

so, dear readers, you'll have to be rewarded for your faithful and dogged dedication to this little space with pictures of pasta instead of the promised book reviews, which are growing by the day and becoming quite the unwieldy and oppressive presence, skulking and squatting on my yellow sticky pad on my igoogle.

coming up with new meals can be a little taxing sometimes...i know what you're going to say, "you could always repeat" - but that's basically like saying to me, "you could just let your green bin get all stinky and gross" or, "you could just avoid using words like 'harridan' in disagreements with people if you want the stinging barb to land true" - it's just not the lagerfeld way.

that's not to say that you haven't seen repeats on here in the 2+ years i've been blogging...just that food captures my imagination to such an extent that repeating seems like a waste of a perfectly good culinary opportunity (not that i don't make exceptions for fried chicken, mac'n'cheese, steaks, eggplant parm, etc.)

to complicate things, there are also certain parameters i set for myself when i'm doing the menu planning. 1 meal (weeknight dodgeball night) is takeout (to help me maintain my sanity); 1 meal is leftovers; meals cooked earlier in the week (say, monday through thursday) should yield plentiful leftovers for varied lunches and not require *too* much cooking time; fridays and saturdays are for one-off/elaborate type meals (with fridays favoring quicker preparations); and sundays are for the big, elaborate, but still cozy family sunday supper meal. in addition, i try for meat twice a week, seafood once or twice a week, and veggie the rest of the time. that's a lot of variables to juggle!

with all of this though, i seem to have settled on a fairly predictable formula for a quick, weeknight pasta. take 1 part cured pork product (in this case, some leftover cacciatora i had lurking in my fridge, feel free to substitute proscuitto, chorizo, pancetta, etc. at will), 1 part greens, 1 part legume (usually chickpeas), add some of T's peppers, and pasta and pasta cooking water and voila! last night we had broccoli with the aforementioned cacciatora, chickpeas, T's peppers, and parm over penne. delicious!

tonight, i made a moroccan (it always takes me a minimum of 3 tries to spell that right - i always get confused what letter i'm doubling) butternut squash and chickpea stew, in my trusty enameled cast iron (from here on in, this pot will be referred to as the le creuset, even though the nomenclature is not technically correct and mine is a american-made imposter) dutch oven, served over couscous that we FINALLY got right. the key is NOT to take couscous and pour 1.5x the amount of boiling water over it, cover, and let sit and fluff with a fork. if you ever read another recipe that tells you to malign the couscous thusly, THROW IT AWAY.

no, the method that yields fluffy, distinct, tender grains of semolina goodness is this one documented here. my friends, STEAMING is the key! steaming and a little before and post dousing with water and salt and a final, gentle rub down with some olive oil. sure, it requires maybe 10% more effort, but the results are SO WORTH IT.

the recipe i used for the stew, i adapted from smitten kitchen. it was probably my most successful attempt at moroccan, ever. it was delicious. i ended up buying preserved lemons as i didn't have a chance to make them...the ones you buy are much different - less salty, small, middle eastern lemons floating in a saline bath flecked with nigella seeds. they have a faintly perfumey, rose-water type aroma which i was afraid would overpower the dish...my fears were irrational, you could barely taste it, and if i ever repeat the recipe, i'll bump up the preserved lemon quantities to a full one.

but before i give you the recipe, feast your eyes on THIS (it appeared in today's new york times "dining" section...tip of the hat to my dodgeball boyfriend for bringing it to my attention.)  ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present to you  the bacon explosion

in other news, i got into a verbal disagreement (conducted in a civil, polite, and genial manner) with some striking york cupe members on the grounds of my work this morning. i went up to one of them and said, "excuse me, are you a graduate student?" when she replied "yes" i said, "well, when i was a graduate assistant at york university, we were only paid based on 10 hours of work a week, is that still the case?" she nodded. then i said, "well then, don't you find the rhetoric being employed by the union that graduate assistants make below the poverty line a bit of a specious argument, considering the fact that you're not working anywhere near full time hours or even for a full year?" and she said that the union had taken that off the bargaining table and that now the fight was for benefits. but then she added this, "well, it's only for 10 hours a week, but york doesn't want us working any outside hours because they want us focusing on our studies, and writing papers, and publishing, so we're being asked to live off what we earn because we're discouraged from making additional income" [emphasis mine] [author's note: when i was at york as a grad assistant i was paid a little more than $1000/month, for 40 hours of work, most of which was photocopying ish for my professor]

ummmmmmmm...i could basically pilot the hindenburg through the holes and RANK ENTITLEMENT that underlies that argument. york "doesn't want" you working more hours? okay, babyface...how about you get york to wipe your butt for you, too? how about you try getting off your butt and doing what YOU need to do to survive, like COUNTLESS other people in this great city dO, without the benefit of a graduate stipend? if you're a masters' student in the humanities, you're looking at 12 hours of class time a week. i'm going to be generous and DOUBLE the class time for prep (reading, writing, etc) (but you don't need it.) that still gives you 26 HOURS A WEEK YOU COULD BE WORKING A PART TIME JOB, you succubus! how about you get a work ethic, and THEN you've EARNED YOUR TIME ON THE PICKET LINE?!? heaven forbid you actually have to apply yourself and maximize your time so that you might actually contribute to the elevation of the rapidly degenerating canadian intellectual community.

crikey. and don't get me started on an the ndp. does a party that's so in DIRE need of an image and ideological overhaul, really need to step in on behalf of some 3000 and change striking workers who, if they were really deserving of the tenured positions they covet so, would have found such positions in other academic institutions? thanks for representing the wishes of your constituents, buddies. oh wait, i forgot, canadian politics DOESN'T DO THAT.

wow. i cranked out some maximum rent on a manky elbow. better give you guys what you want. i've posted the recipe below.

fin.

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Squash and Chickpea Moroccan Stew
Adapted from Aida Mollencamp
Serves 6 to 8

1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, small dice
4 medium cloves garlic, thinly sliced
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 (3-inch) cinnamon stick
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 pound butternut squash, large dice
3/4 pound red potatoes, large dice
2 cups low-sodium chicken or vegetable broth
2 cups cooked chickpeas, drained
1 (14-ounce) can diced tomatoes, with juices
Pinch saffron threads (optional)
1/2 preserved lemon, finely chopped
1 cup brined green olives
Steamed couscous, for serving 
Toasted slivered almonds, for garnish
Plain yogurt, for garnish
Hot sauce of your choice (for serving)

Heat butter and olive oil in a 3- to 4-quart Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed saucepan with a tight fitting lid over medium heat. When oil shimmers, add onion, garlic, cumin, and cinnamon, and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until spices are aromatic and onions are soft and translucent, about 5 minutes.

Add squash and potatoes, season with salt and freshly ground black pepper, stir to coat, and cook until just tender, about 3 minutes. Add broth, chickpeas, tomatoes and their juices, lemon, olives, and saffron, if using. Bring mixture to a boil then reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer until squash is fork tender, about 10 minutes.

Serve over couscous garnished with cilantro, almonds, and yogurt.