according to wii fit

my wii age is 46 (i had the heroin hands when i was doing the calibration and my centre of gravity was all kinds of messed up.) the good news is, that according to the genetic juju people at mount sinai, my eggs and fallopian tubes have a reproductive age equivalent to a 15 year old. i'm still kind of thinking they might have gotten the results of the first trimester screen mixed up - but i think i'm just too superstitious.

this weekend was super-busy but super-fun. on saturday we saw another documentary, "cooking up dreams" which is about the unifying cultural significance of food in peru. it uses food as the basic unifying thread tying together the disparate cultures of peru (japanese, african, indigenous, spanish, mestizo) and champions the unique ingredients of the amazon. both high-end chefs and the cooking of the jungle are given equal attention...i thought it was great - it elicited a few reactions: intense hunger, desire to try peruvian food, desire to travel to peru. here's the trailer:

Cooking Up Dreams (Trailer) from Guarango on Vimeo.

the director was there and he was so cute! such a smiley, good natured dude who you could tell was so happy to be there. i'm definitely putting toronto peruvian restos on my "to eat" list. it doesn't look like there's that many - the two main ones are el fogon and el plebeyo.

saturday night i got to scratch my hong kong style cafe itch (cha chaan teng) so we went to phoenix - the location on woodbine. i ordered a million dishes. usually at these places, you can get a "set meal" which includes a soup, some kind of bun, and a hot beverage - they're known for serving stuff like ovaltine and horlick's (the brit influence in hong kong) as well as a hot, very milky tea.

i upgraded ONE of my entrees to the set meal. the soups are generally something creamy and a borscht. i got the "seafood bisque":

this was a sweet-ish, thick, tomato-y bisque with bits of shredded crab. i drank this so quickly that the dotytron didn't get more than a couple of bites.

i also ordered a baked porkchop rice in cream sauce on rice (which has bits of scrambled egg mixed in.) this wasn't the best iteration of this dish that i've had - sometimes they mix in frozen veggies which breaks up the cream sauce but it was still really good. tender, fatty pork chop cutlets and a sauce reminiscent of the goop served on the classic yin-yang rice dish.

this was my ox tongue spaghetti (my SECOND entree) which again, while satisfying, was n't the best rendition of this dish that i've ever had. more veggies would have been nice and the sauce was really just canned tomato soup or something - it's always kind of tomato soup-y, but they usually add a little something something to gussy it up a bit. anyway, imagine super-tender pieces of ox tongue on a bed of spaghetti with ketchup/tomato soup sauce. i know it SOUNDS gross (and the dotytron certainly thought it WAS gross) but i like it.

dotytron got his beef flank malaysian curry with rice. so good.

then we met up with my little bros and we saw "kick-ass"

can i first say that we're finally feeling the results of the hollywood writer's strike? the summer movie previews have been A** ON A STICK. how many times do i have to see the trailer for "the expendables"? or "macgruber?" so brutal! there's nothing coming out this summer that i super-duper want to see. i mean, obviously "iron man 2" and maybe "salt" and definitely "eclipse" for kicks - but there aren't enough summer blockbuster tent poles. laaame!

anyway, "kick-ass" was okay. not really memorable...people were laughing in the theatre but i think it trades a lot on your ability to find an 11 year old saying the word "c**t" - i find those kinds of cheap laughs not really my style. i get it: it's shocking! the violence was pretty stylized and graphic - but i was kind of meh about the whole thing - it was empty spectacle and not particularly all that clever or winning (unlike say, rdj as tony stark in "iron man") it wasn't that it wasn't entertaining, it was just kind of forgettable overall.

the next morning we got up at SIX THIRTY AM to be keeners and to plant all the stuff we bought on saturday in the garden. the neighs were losing their minds. lol! this is what it looks like now that we mulched it tonight:

we put in a hydrangea and a wackload of perennials - some bee balm, some echinacea, some shasta daisies, and some creeping ground cover to hold in the edges of the garden, which are elevated. we also bought some blue fescue, which i like because it looks like a cute little sea urchin. i'm not doing food growing - there isn't room for that in the front and i didn't know how to elegantly divide the garden between food and flowers...we went the easy all perennial route. we also chunked up stuff from momma d's garden that she generously donated and planted that.

we mulched it tonight because we wanted to get a good rain in before we locked that moisture in - it's been so dry this april! the stepping stones we bought at this place called milliken farms, across from pac mall - we were going to do flagstones but the concrete circles were $3/piece! can't beat that. i think i'm going to lay out planter boxes along the lip of the enclosed porch and do herbs in there. it's looking pretty good! we'll shore up with a tonne more bulbs in the fall and see how things settle into place - we didn't pay much attention to when things bloomed, so we might have a spectacular late-summer show but nothing in early summer. it's a work in progress, right?

anyway, the neighbs are losing their minds about it. ha! the lady attached to us just had someone come in and give her a quote on designing their frontage - which i think is kind of ridiculous for such a tiny patch of ground, but whatevs.

after our morning being insane-o early riser gardeners (in our defense, we find it really relaxing working in the garden), we headed out to meet buns & xtina at stockyards for breakkie. now, we've been there before for dinnie and had a fairly negative experience, but the brunch card
was too irresistible for a southron hound like myself. we WOULD have been on time (seriously, getting up at 6:30am on a sunday for a 9am brunch date? how could we be foiled?!?) except the dotytron refuses to ever check traffic and weather on the 1s (on am 640) and thus always gets PWNED driving - so we got owned by a stupid sporting life marathon down yonge street, which we HAD to cross to get to the west side of toronto. so aggravating!

xtina had the biscuits and sausage gravy which was a GIANT portion of creamy, crumbled sausage milk gravy on a split biscuit (biscuit was a leetle tough, but very tasty) served with soft-scrambled eggs. it was definitely the biggest portion of the day. she also got a side of the pit beans.

the dotytron and i went halfsies. he got the smoked meat hash which comes with two deep fried poach eggs (poached eggs that are lightly dredged in a sesaoned flour and fried) and a chive sour cream. this was REALLY good as well - the hash was basically almost mashed up potatoes mixed with smoked meat - so it didn't have any distinct potato-yness left to it - but it was hella tasty.

me and buns both ordered the "eggs tommy" which is a split biscuit, topped with andouille sausage, deep fried poach egg, cajun shrimp and a lemony hollandaise. it was also delightful. my only quibble is that the twice-cooking of the egg requires you to poach the egg way under so that it emerges from the fryer with a runny yolk intact. one of the eggs i received wasn't runny anymore, which is TOTALLY the point of an eggs benny, right? the andouille was fan-freaking-tastic in there. so good!

because i'm a giant hog, i also got a side of their house sausage - which consists of very thin patties of seasoned pork - the main seasoning i could taste was salt, so they could up the spice blend a bit more (sage, thyme, etc.)

it was really quiet in there - i was expecting a madhouse because toronto is SO brunch crazy and they've been written up recently in the free weeklies. i don't know if it was the rain, or the early brunching time, or where it's located, but it was very quiet - even when we left around 11ish it wasn't that busy - which is pretty darned ideal if you ask me. i hate lining up for brunch.

we spent the afternoon watering our garden and doing small house-y finishing things - hanging pictures, etc. and then we had dr. rei and hanbo over for dinner.

i made ginger-pear jam glazed ham, roasted asparagus, a mint and pea puree and scalloped potatoes and fennel with cheddar cheese. the scalloped potatoes were exceptionally good. i also made that orange cake again, this time upping the zest amount to 2 oranges' worth as well as increasing the sour cream by 1/4 c. i baked it in a 9" pan (i'm not sure how you'd fit it in an 8" pan) and frosted it with chocolate buttercream. it was a big hit. i could eat that thing all day. the recipe is at the end of the post.

today i spent a good chunk of my lunch hour on the horn with daycares putting spumante on the waiting list as well as calling contractors. it was negative fun.


for dinner i made us a spring pasta of spaghetti with the last of my chunk of guanciale, sliced artichoke hearts (so much prep!) and grated parm. we also had olive garden salad because i love it so.

fin.


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orange cake

from gourmet magazine, 2004

serves 12

1/2 c. unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
zest from 2 medium sized oranges
2 large eggs
3/4 cup sour cream
1/4 cup fresh orange juice
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

- preheat oven to 350°F. grease a 9-inch round baking pan and line bottom with parchment, and then grease parchment.
- beat together butter, sugar, and zest in a large bowl with an electric mixer until creamy, about 2 minutes. add eggs 1 at a time, beating until incorporated and scraping down bowl.
- stir in sour cream and orange juice, then add remaining ingredients stirring until just combined.
- transfer batter to baking pan and bake in middle of oven until golden and a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean, about 30 to 40 minutes.
- cool cake in pan on a rack 10 minutes, then turn out onto rack. discard paper and cool.
- frost as desired.

notes: this would be equally tasty for an afternoon snack with just a dusting of confectioner's sugar, but could be gussied up with cream cheese frosting, an orange syrup (orange juice, sugar, maybe some orange liquer, heated together - poke holes in top of cake with skewer and pour syrup on top), chocolate ganache, or my favorite, with chocolate buttercream.

people keep axin' me

if i'm preoccupied with things to do before the big performance. am i? i don't *think* i am. should i be? i don't *think* i should be. i feel like i've got bigger fish to fry. i think the only thing i have left to do is make my bouquet and get my hair cut and figure out what i'm going to do with these unruly tresses and log some time in the recording studio (aka our walk-in closet) and book tee times for the interested golfers and make sure everyone shows up where they're supposed to be at the right time, and bake my cakes and transport said cakes and cake stands down to the states. i dunno. i think with only 20 or so attendees, it's not that big of a deal. forgot the beer? need more ice? it's a 5 minute drive to the convenience store away.

i'm taking it one week at a time. one weekend at a time. one task on the giant to-do list at a time. with a reminder that even though we're going to be very very very very very much in the red when the month of september is said and done, we'll have (hopefully) had a spectacular time. the only thing i have to promise myself is to live in the moment and enjoy it and not wish, worry, and fret the time away. on our epic bike ride on canada day on the path that runs along the lakeshore, we passed the donald d. summerville outdoor pool, which is the very first municipal outdoor pool i ever swam in, introduced to me by the dotytron during our second summer together - after he had taught me to ride a bike, when it still seemed completely natural to be riding a bmx everywhere (my poor knees!) because of the strike, it was empty and forlorn, a concrete monolith left to stew out in the sun, bereft of laughing children and the slap of wet feet on the deck cut through with the staccato tea-kettle warnings from the lifeguard whistle. "boo! i can't believe this strike means i won't be doing any swimming in pools this summer," bemoaned i. "well," the ever philosophical, perennially half-full dotytron replied, "that's true, but you know what? i'm guessing the outdoor swimming at disney is going to be pretty fun, and the outdoor swimming in hawaii is going to be EVEN MORE fun." this effectively checked my ire.

it's true. as usual, we are very very very lucky and you shouldn't let a minute go by without being mindful of how fortunate we are. yes, you. even if, unlike me, you aren't going to disney with your entire family (the luck on that is debatable, in terms of the corresponding tax exacted on sanity and peace of mind). we're lucky to be living in the northern hemisphere where living amongst refuse is a minor inconvenience instead of a fact of everyday life. where we are fortunate enough to have the time and wherewithal to go on vacations, to have the use of our limbs and faculties and to be surrounded by love. what's a few (few few few few few) thousand in debt over a lifetime compared to that? it'll all work out in the end (hopefully). gah...i wish i wasn't so superstitious...so worried that the fates are waiting to mete out retribution for my (relative) good fortune when i least expect it. know ye this, fates: i'm well aware of how very lucky a button i am and grateful for every second that i get to continue to be thus.

on my way home tonight from work, there were cops stopping and redirecting traffic along wellesley. i was really confused and there were people clustered on the corners, wondering what was transpiring. then we saw a funeral procession, flanked by police officers on motorcycles, with people in the procession waving at us in the street and waving a canadian flag. for some reason this moment filled me with sadness. the people in the funeral procession were waving at us standing on the sidewalk as if we knew who they were (for the most part, we didn't - there was only one gentleman there, standing with a sense of purpose brandishing a canadian flag) when really, we were waiting for the resumption of our everyday lives, paused by a nameless, faceless inconvenience. the two narratives weren't related, or translateable. this death, that should have been pregnant with meaning, seemed so futile. was it a soldier from afghanistan? was it an officer? for a moment i was forced out of my lists and forced to be still and to wait and i'm not even sure to what i owe that moment.

this is a horrible way to transition into a review of a bbq restaurant. i'm not always the most elegant of writers. look, i'm writing at 11pm at night while having been up at 6am to go running. cut me some slack. the stockyards was a disappointment. the dotytron and i showed up early, just after 5 and decided to take a peek in. at that point in the evening, they were ALREADY out of ribs. OUT OF RIBS. ON A SUNDAY. BEFORE THE PEAK OF DINNER SERVICE. what the blood? way to not be serious about success. oh, did i mention that they only do ribs on TUESDAYS, FRIDAYS AND SUNDAYS?!?? these are RIBS. ribs are some of the EASIEST things in the world to pre-prepare. you smoke 'em, you park 'em, you bring them back up to temp on the grill with the sauce/rub of your choice. you could have ribs going in a CONSTANT rotation, QUITE easily. this drives me nuts.

then when we rendezvoused with bwong and sidled up to the counter to place our order, we found out they were out of smoked meat, had taken the chicken and waffles off the menu (when i asked why, i was given the cryptic and non-confidence-inspiring answer that "they weren't working out" --> FOR WHO?!???), were out of the cod and chorizo fritters, were out of the smoked chicken. oh, and they were REFUSING TO FRY ONIONS RINGS. because the fryer was occupied with fries and chicken. allow me to repeat that: THEY HAD ONION RINGS ON HAND BUT WERE REFUSING TO FRY THEM BECAUSE FRYER REAL ESTATE WAS AT A PREMIUM.

que?!???!!!??

we ordered a bunch of stuff to share to maximize our variety : dollar ratio. we split the pulled pork sandwich. this was a rather stingy portion of shredded, mildly smoky pork on a textbook correct, soft, tender bun with a pittance of coleslaw acting as a buffer between porcine haystack and carbohydrate casing. the sauce was sweet, thin, and rather one note. it was okay. portion could have been bigged up.

next up, the porchetta sandwich. roasted pork, supposedly with cracklings, on a soft baguette roll, with lemon aioli. the aioli had no lemon to speak of. the pork was again, a meagre portion, with maybe a piece of crackling the size of my pinky nail somehow finding enough pig in the sandwich to hide within. inexplicable. again, the pork was tender, but the portion size and the absence of crackling put me off. i'm from the school of: "if you're advertising crackling, i want there to be CRACKLING on the plate" crackling service. don't put it on the menu if you're going to be leave me with doubts. in matters of pork crackling, there should be no questions.

the fried chicken (the fryer hog) takes 15-20 minutes. it's fried to order. the chicken was moist and steamy with a nice salty crust. it was quite good, but the chicken pieces were scrawny. plus, the fries, which ordinarily would have been to my specifications (thin, salty, crispy and lean) suffered from being kept in close quarters in the swedish chicken steam room that was the take out container's 5 minute journey from restaurant (there's only seating in there for like, 8 people max) to park bench. for $12, i thought this was decent, although if i spent an equivalent amount at popeye's i would emerge with enough self-hatred to bend the ear of a thousand confessional priests. and the chicken would be meaty AND halal.

we got one of the last orders of rib tips. these are the parts of the rib trimmed when you're cutting st. louis style ribs, where you have a befuddling network of thick cartilage around which the meat is stretched. they're pretty tasty. the specimens here were medium tender, not much of a smoke ring, very mild smoke flavour in the nose. they were still a little tough and were glazed with the same indeterminate, sweet style bbq sauce the pulled pork got. they were okay. not excellent. okay.

finally, our sides. for some reason that makes no sense to me or anyone who loves bbq, the sage minds at the stockyards opt to do a DAIRY LESS potato salad. guys, this isn't oktoberfest. if i wanted german potato salad, i would get it. i want MAYO and plenty of it, thank you very much. it was also touted as "7 herbs" - i counted 2, possibly 3, parsley and tarragon. the red skinned potato chunks were cooked correctly and swam in an oily pommery mustard slick. that's the size of the coleslaw portion you get with the fried chicken. the coleslaw wasn't mixed thoroughly so some bites were redolent of black pepper tickle and some were just sweetly, mildly briny bland.

overall, i feel like there's a LOT of room for improvement and it hurts me that they'll probably win the "best bbq in toronto" mantle by virtue of having been written up by the idiots in now and toronto life. if you're going to do it, do it RIGHT. i don't want orangina at a bbq place. i want ROOT BEER or a sasparilla. i don't want cute limeade at $3 a pop. i don't want 1/3 of the menu to be unavailable at peak hours. i want you to learn how to run a restaurant and meet demand. i want you to look at your portion sizes and price accordingly. i want my bbq to make my clothes stink with smoke. i want there to be peanut butter pie on the menu. i want A dessert at least! gimme a banana pudding. SOMETHING.

i wouldn't make the trip up to visit this place again. not worth it.


tonight for dinner i made us GIANT salmong burgers with that cucumber, radish, dill and feta salad in the sweet white wine vinaigrette. i lazied out and pan-fried the salmon patties. they're dead easy to make. i took the salmon filet, skinned it, cut it into rough chunks and then pulsed it in the food processor with some breadcrumbs, and egg, some scallion, salt and pepper (you could get fancier and add ginger, soy, sesame oil, chili sauce) until it looked like it would hold together. formed them into patties and cooked them until golden brown on each side in a bit of olive oil in my cast iron skillet.

i think we each ended up eating 1/2 lb. of salmon. i was mega-hungry. i worked like a dog all day and i've got crazy deadlines this week and friday is my day off and i've got a slew of meetings all week eating up my potential researching time. the nice thing is though, that tomorrow my colleagues are treating me to a pizza lunch (my feelings on said don't have to be repeated. oh what the hell - I LOVE PIZZA LUNCH!) to celebrate my coming nuptials. it's awfully sweet of them. the dotytron is going to come too. it's just a lowkey picnic in the park, after all.

fin.