i can't imagine how rough it's going to be for my poor sis recovering from a c-section - it's major surgery! it's not like they can take a baby out laparoscopically. that and the fact that she gets 7 weeks off before she has to go back to work.
this weekend was fun! friday we had dinner at dr. rei and hanbo's house which resulted in this deliciousness courtesy of dr. rei (a lamb/eggplant dish with rice with raisins and carrots and a fattoush salad [not pictured] on the side):
my contribution was whipping my boob out during the meal and also a pumpkin/squash cheesecake that i forgot to flavour with pumpkin pie spice because i'm only half here, brain-wise lately. i was so stressed about it tasting weird that i had a slice of it during the day, which resulted in me bringing a pac-man cheescake over to their house. i had used this piece of squash/pumpkin from our CSA, it was a varietal i'd never heard of, which was MASSIVE. i roasted off cubes of it and then pureed it and folded it into the cheesecake batter in lieu of canned pumpkin. it definitely tasted fuller than canned pumpkin, but i think some cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger would have smoothed out the squashiness.conversation on friday was aces as usual. we started talking about music and die antwoord came up and dr. rei started fuming, "die antwoord makes owl city [whom she had just been slagging] sound like freakin' pavarotti!" and we were all like, "PAVAROTTI?!? what does that even mean? is that a good thing or a bad thing?!?" it was jokes. it was also jokes when i caught dr. rei talking about how much she hates vince carter and managed to make her see that she hates vince carter for the same reason cleveland hates lebron (whom she had previously defended for defecting to miami). i felt so vindicated watching the dawning realization on her face when she realized she'd been caught.
saturday i went to school. ugh ugh ugh! the first hour i was like, WTF is going on?!? and then i eased into it. i went after lunch to maximize my time and left the dotytron at home for his longest solo stretch with the boobla ever. the boobla made it easy on him by basically snoozing the day away, the little champ. we had spaghetti and meatballs and a baby spinach salad for dinner:
and i baked off some of these macadamia shortbread cookies which are AMAZING! the ground up macadamia nuts add a rich butteriness that just underscores the natural butteriness of shortbread and the texture is insane. so crumbly and tender! these are definitely going in the xmas cookie tin this year for sure:
our saturday night was spent watching "toy story 3" which is SO GOOD. wow. pixar effin' nails every movie they make and they just keep getting better and better. the level of emotion they manage to squeeze into completely imaginary, computer generated characters should make james cameron and all those motion capture idiots writhe in their inferiority. the entire movie had me welling up every 10 minutes or so. so sad! and so cute! and so funny! there are so many genuine, laugh out loud moments that don't rely on cheap sophomoric humour - many live-action comedies should aspire to as much. blargh...so entertaining - i can't recommend it enough.it was particularly affecting because the theme of the 3rd installment is all about growing up and coming to terms with growing up and i've had to grapple with that lately as the boobla continues to chub out and change on a daily basis and i've seen how his first month has literally FLOWN by. one of my favorite things in the world is after a feed, when he passes out milk drunk against my chest, and his eyes are closed, and his little mouth is gaping open in a little "o" shape and he's breathing all heavy and completely unaware of anything else - he's so defenceless and vulnerable, his little body slumped up against me is so small and trusting. looking down at him on friday night i started crying, because i was already missing the point when he wouldn't do that anymore. and i know that every stage just gets better and better, but it's hard to imagine anything more perfect than his being at every moment in the present. so hormonal!!!
sunday we strapped him into the ergo and went on a leslieville walk about. we wanted to try this coffee place that our neighbour, a coffee aficionado, recommended. it's called voulez-vous cafe and it's on queen, between greenwood and coxwell. the leslieville strip is rife with gourmet coffee retailers. we've got the original dark horse espresso bar, mercury espresso bar, te aro, tango palace coffee company, red rocket coffee company, and now voulez vous. the dotytron has been on a macchiato tour of all those places and agreed with the neighbour that voulez vous was the best, richest, most nuanced cup he's had so far. the ambiance is really nice, too. tonnes of magazines (my favorite is that they have lots of current issues of dwell) and a big, industrial communal table made from old bowling alley flooring.
then we headed down to visit my old canoe colleague, S's new storefront for her french macaron/wedding cake company, bobette and belle. they're a short, 10 minute walk from us and the store is GORGEOUS! just take a look at the wedding cakes on their site - freakin' incredible. and lots of delicious flavours, too. they've expanded so that the store also sells baked goods, pastries, cookies, and candies and it's a jewel box of a location with a full production kitchen in the back. we bought two cupcakes (red velvet and a chocolate hazelnut crunch), both topped with the airiest buttercream and a blueberry scone, which comes with a little pot of whipped devonshire cream. mmmmmmmmmm!!! we had the cupcakes late last night and they were DIVINE. moist, rich, cake topped with the fluffiest, lightest, most intensely flavoured buttercream imaginable, and all for the very reasonable price of $2.75 each! i'm so happy for S, her business is going so well - they did a bunch of macarons for the new york times party during the film fest, and they do cakes for the rich and famous and are routinely featured in high-end magazines.
i'm also selfishly happy that they set up shop in our hood. when we first bought lil' ugmo, i was more than a little upset to be moving away from my beloved danforth, home to my favorite grocery stores/cheese mongers/hardware stores, etc. and leslieville seemed SO gentrified to me. but now i freakin' love it. i love living in between two thriving, fantastic neighbourhoods that are equally accessible and yet are still far from the madding crowd. leslieville has amazing boutiques for clothes, vintage stores, more vintage furniture stores than you could ever possibly hope for, a plethora of charming neighbourhood restaurants, and SO. MANY. BAKERIES and brunch spots. plus my massage therapist and access to all the fast food along the lakeshore. then, when i have to do my grocery shopping, i can just nip up the danforht, which has all those material, daily life needs covered, but has a dearth of the "fun stuff" stores that queen east has. and in the middle of it all, is chinatown east and little india for arcane spices and cheap seafood. best! i love love love my hood!!!for sunday breakkie, as a nod to the fact that we were scheduled to go to guu izakaya with mhui and her hubby for our quasi anniversary dinner, we had an OPEN FACED sausage and egg mcmuffin. i'll let you be the judge as to whether we actually exercised a lick of restraint or not:
not so much, eh? we dropped off the boobla for his first ever adventures in babysitting with momma and poppa d and went to guu for dinner and feasted like pigs. it was so good! i love that restaurant more than anything. i want in!!! how do i get in as an investor?!? mhui and her hubby (who were ALSO celebrating their quasi anniversary) eat the way we do (and by that i mean, a lot) and they love their guu hard. we just narrowly got into the restaurant, which almost resulted in a domestic.the dotytron and i drove by at 4:40 and there was nobody there, so i made the call that he should drive me to my work so that i could pick up some books. i was also like, "don't worry! it's sunday night and it's raining! the hype has died down! we'll be there by 5pm!" we WERE there by 5pm to find that there was a LINE UP TO THE SIDEWALK. he wanted to murder me. we were the last people to the door when the host said the restaurant was officially full at which point you might as well have started making funeral arrangements for me. i asked if he would mind shifting people around at the bar and he agreed so we got to sit together. disaster averted (narrowly!) we ended up ordering 24 dishes at guu. plus drinks and dessert. amazing!!!
the outlaw grandparents were fine with the boobla, who again made it easy on them by basically snoozing for the entire four hours that we were gone. he was up long enough that momma d managed to finally get some photos of him with his eyes open:
what a little gaffer! goddamn, he's a cute kid.fin.
