stuffing my face

this is the ham and eggs i ate on sunday morning at brian's u.s.a. diner. love that place. that's 10oz of salty, porcine goodness right there.


a disproportionate number of birthday missives and greetings i received featured the phrase (or variations thereof) "stuffing your face." lol! i guess i'm pretty easy to pin down!


anytown u.s.a. came through again. holy crap that was an epic and fun-filled weekend. things got of to a very auspicious start when my stepdad, big d, was being uncharacteristically nice to me. like, insane nice. like, regular white guy dad nice. big d is a hoot. he's kind of gruff and he has angry eyebrows and he has a tendency to get all ranty and long-winded and socially awkward, but inside (DEEP inside) he's a very unique and kooky softie. he hates being hugged and gets all awkward when you do. big d is the kind of guy who once snapped at killah cam (my youngest bro): "shut up, cam, you're not r-tarded anymore." amongst other gems. he's also the kind of guy who gets mad at the kids if we use the garage door opener to open the garage door because he thinks that it has a limited number of "charges" on it, and will make you get out of the car, go into the house, and open it from the inside. he also deeply misunderstands his cell phone plan, so that when you call his phone, he won't answer, but you have to let it ring three times and hang up and then ring again three times and then he'll call you back. in other words: he's the best. a regular mensch.

so big d - not known for being the most tender-hearted of individuals - and i had been having a stand off about the transportation arrangements. basically, my niece and nephew were being babysat up at my parents' place all week because my outlaw bro and sister had conferences and stuff to do. i was hitching a ride with my parents and the kids to this rest stop on the canadian side of the border, where my outlaw bro would come and pick us up and drive us into the states. the sticking point was how i was going to get up into markham. my preference is to take the subway to don mills and get picked up at fairview mall. big d's preference is that i take public transportation (usually a combination of ttc, york region transit, and the viva) as close as possible to the family estate and then be picked up. it's the difference of about 15 minutes of driving time for big d and my mom, versus about AN HOUR of travelling time on public transit for me.

we had been tussling back and forth via email (my family's primary mode of communication...which all-too-often includes dramatic CAPSLOCK exchanges and liberal sprinklings of exclamation points and question marks used individually and tandem and frequently culminates in my mom getting offended and accusing me [in capslock, natch] of having no tact and being a rude and ungrateful daughter). finally, i consented to the viva plan.

ummm...HOLY CATS, people. big d turned into a TOTAL mushball. on friday i was receiving breathless emails (bordering on the giddy) asking me if i wanted him to pick me up anything to eat (!!!!!): "chinese noodles???? pizza???" and imploring me to call him when i reached a certain point en route so he could leave the house in due time so i wouldn't be wait too long in the hot sun !!!!!!!!! i guess you kind of have to know big d to know how crazy it is...but suffice it to say that i'm taking the viva route from now on.


we got into town and my sis showed up bearing vanilla cheesecake from the cheesecake factory. check one. killah cam and s-dawg showed up in the middle of the night and the dotytron arrived saturday afternoon after spending a soul-crushing two hours waiting at the border to get into america the beautiful.


saturday night we hit the drive in! i've never been to the drive in in canada, but something tells me that small towns in the u.s.a. do it up proper. the drive in (which is called, charmingly, "silver lakes") features an arcade, a pizza parlor, a restaurant serving burgers and stuff called the "corral", an ice cream parlor and mini putt. on saturday nights, they also have something called "chicken barbecue". ummmm...chicken barbecue is THE BEST S**T EVER. bar none. apparently it's this upstate new york thing (possibly a thing from around all the states) that churches put on for fundraising, or like, the local kiwanis dudes (or equivalent) will put on to raise money, or that you have at your wedding or something. the name refers to the preparation and the final configuration. so you get a quarter chicken, that's been marinated in an italian dressing, herby, oily marinade and grilled over charcoal (ours was improbably juicy and tender), you get baked beans, a soft roll, butter, and salt potatoes, which sit in a bucket of butter and are retrieved with a slotted spoon. apparently some chicken barbecue dinners feature pie, but with ours we got a packaged cookie. a slice of pie would have probably resulted in me quitting my job and moving to the states right then and there.


the actual drive in was really picturesque and the thunderstorm just prior resulted in rosy, amber lighting and dramatic cloud formations in the sky. we watched "the dark knight" again. i sat with my sis in her station wagon with the kids in the carseat behind us, watching their portable dvd player. when she gets tired, my niece gets to "camp" and sleep on a pile of sleeping bags and blankets in the trunk. the sky was filled with stars and it was lovely.


having rewatched "the dark knight" again, i'd like to revise my grade. i'm going to give it a solid A (8.3/10).


my niece is hilarious. this is her as patch adams (i think she makes a better one than robin williams). she's decided that she wants to be a doctor and an artist when she grows up, and she likes to do this thing where she'll say, "mom, can i have a glass of fruit punch, por favor.......that's spanish" (she's learning spanish in school). the follow up footnote is really funny.


this is a picture of my nephew doing a john waters impression with a chocolate cake thin moustache. we had wegman's cake. check two. vanilla with lemon filling for me, and chocolate with vanilla pudding (it was supposed to be blackout, with chocolate pudding, but the wegman's peeps messed it up) for the s-dawg.


on sunday we hung out and loafed and ate pizza and played bocce in the backyard. this is a family portrait we took.


monday, the dotytron and i went to play a round of golf. check three. we were TERRIBLE. we capped ourselves at 10 strokes and even still, we sucked it up largetime. i made several breakthroughs though. this year, i explored the world of clubs BEYOND the driver (last year, i tried to driver everything). i also didn't kick up my leg and improved my form. i also made solid contact 1 swing out of every 8 and i'm completely in love with that sound (golf is really a game of sounds). i also tend to hit the ball straight...which is good.

when i went to pay at the club house, the stout, gruff old man who runs the place said, "that'll be $50."
"oh," i said, "i have to rent a set of ladies clubs, too."
"okay then," he says, "that'll be $55" and stretches out his hand, palm up.

now, most people brought up in western society would be able to read the upstretched palm as a nonverbal cue that he's providing a landing pad for the money. not me! i stared at the palm, and then reached out my own right hand and shook it. it was one of those moments where even as you're doing it, you're thinking to yourself, what the HELL am i doing?!? and i could totally feel the dotytron's horror-filled eyes on me but i committed to it and executed what will probably be the most awkward handshake of my life, and definitely of my 29th year on this planet. then the guy was like, "ummm...i'm from the old school, i want you to pay." and i was losing it, giggling to myself. as we exited, the dotytron says, "ummm...i'm thinking he wasn't expecting you to slap him some skin." it was pretty funny. that explains my name (i was "the hand") on our golf score sheet (the dotytron, by process of elimination, was "the heart").


then we followed that up with a trip to stony brook state park. it's a great park. there's a spring fed swimming hole, a huge playground, campsites, and picnic tables with hibachis for people to have cookouts. i love that place and think it's such a gem. swimming in fresh water is the best.


that night, we watched "zodiac" when we got home. which resulted in me being terrified. it was pretty humid all weekend, so the poor dotytron had to contend with a 5'4", 130lb, terror-sweat-soaked weight attached to his side all night, rendering him clammy and uncomfortable. he got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and i almost hyperventilated and had a heart attack. it's weird. the movie isn't that scary...i just kind of lost it. the film is pretty good overall but loses momentum in the last third documenting jake gylenhaal's character's attempts to solve the crime and find the identity of the serial killer. anyway, i scare easy and i found it creepy, the way i tend to find serial killers whose identities are never conclusively uncovered scary. so sue me!


our last day there we filled up my sister's and outlaw bro's wading pool for the kids and played around in it. then my sister and i headed out to this quilt store (i had passed it on the way to stony brook with the dotytron) on a lark. we didn't think anything of it. my sister had wanted me to take me to this quilt store that was 40 minutes away, but i didn't want to drive so far and wanted to capitalize on my time with her and the kids. i stepped in and was immediately welcomed into the guild of small-town american quilters. my sister thought it was like some weird secret society...which it kind of was. the quilts and fabric there were much more of the amish, classic americana style (i favor more contemporary patterns, myself) but it was really homey and welcoming and we turned a corner to find a gaggle of women eating cake at a table and talking away. it was cute! they also had a selection of amish-based mystery and "romance" books there. loved it! i got set up with a self-healing cutting mat, a rotary cutter, and a beginner ruler. sweet!!! now all i need is my sewing machine and i can get started.


phew. so that's the weekend roundup. the dotytron also changed his first diaper ever ("which side is the front?") and proved once again, that he's a natural with kids. i'm a fan of the style of houses in the states. i think that clapboard houses with shutters always look really neat and tidy and cute...much nicer than the brick-heavy style favored in toronto and southern ontario.

tonight i'm going for my birthday dinner with the dotytron. he's taking me to nota bene, which is the new, more "casual" restaurant from david lee of splendido fame. it's supposed to be more rustic cooking with an emphasis on high quality ingredients and a smaller plates style. full review tomorrow!

fin.

giddy!

yayyayayayayayay!!! it's my birthday on saturday! and it's a long weekend! and tomorrow i only have to work til 3:30pm! then i'm going to rochester to hang with my sister and outlaw bro and the kids. both my bro-bros might be coming along too and the dotytron is joining us on saturday morning.

i'm soooo excited for the fun and relaxing we're going to be having/doing. MOVIE TRAILERS ON DEMAND! the DRIVE IN! golfing at the old hickory gold club (where a round WITH club rentals costs the pauperly sum of $25!!!!!) wegman's cake with whipped cream frosting (if my bro-bros come down, it's s-dawg's birthday in a week, so we might get TWO cakes. my favorite yellow cake with the lemon filling AND a blackout cake, which we've never had before!!!)! vanilla cheesecake from the cheesecake factory!!! pizza pauls!!! TARGET!!!!!

best birthday weekend ever. and my friends are cute! look what M and L got me (completely unexpectedly):


it's a cake decorating kit!

and look what H made me. it's a tweedy owl wearing a suit! look at how dapper he is! she's so talented!


aaaaaaannnnndddd...me and my partner won the work bocce tournament! it was a real nail-biter of a game. we played to 9 points and we were down 7-3. then slowly, point by point, we made an inexorable comeback until we were tied 8-8. i threw the winning bocce! it was terrifically exciting. truth be told, i'm a little sad now that the tournament is over. but there's been talk of a fall edition, so there's that to look forward to.

ex-bf c64 was there to witness it all and help out with the reffing. he came by my work to pick up the extra set of house keys so that he can change the litter and feed the cats while we're gone. we have to be EXTRA diligent about the litter because boddington has taken to peeing outside of the box when his routine is interrupted (a trait he picked up while we were in italy and left the cats in the roomie's care...something tells me she was less than circumspect about her duties). so, the roomie's excuse is that she doesn't know if she's going to be home ever (she might be at births or whatnot) and that it's better to have c64 do it then her. it's a little annoying (for all parties, i'm sure...since c64 now lives a 15 minute subway ride away) but whatever...what can you do. it gives me more ammunition the next time she bugs me about her getting a teacup chihuahua.

then i made c64 buy me a sausage cuz it's my birthday. he got off easy considering i baked him a GIANT hostess cupcake cake. for my dinner i ate two dufflet cupcakes i bought at the store. heehee. it's my birthday (soon)! i can do what i want to! in fact...i've even made up a little ditty to that effect. it goes a little something like this:

*sing song, child-like cadence*

"it's my biiiiiirrrthdaaay / i can do what i waaaaaannnnt to / cuz it's my biiiiirrrtthdaay / i can do what i waaaaannnnt to"

the dotytron likes it when i make up songs. really! i'm not lying!

speaking of making up song's...the dotytron's sister just released her cd. she got 4/4 in the toronto star (better than nas!!! better than miley cyrus!!!) and 3/5 in now (on par with nas!!! better than rza as bobby digital!! but not as good as conor oberst and john mellencamp!!!).

now i'm going to un-paint my toenails and let them breathe a bit and then go to yoga and then come home and do the final once-over for my u.s.a tour.

lucky button, signing off!

fin.

womynz and needles and yarn and crafts

tonight i hosted H and baby D and M and new friend L for a craft and dinner session at mi casa. it would probably have more properly been called a "stitch'n'bitch" if i didn't find that name completely trite and cliched and well, objectionable. besides, H doesn't knit, so she brought her own craft...in the end, we didn't end up crafting at all, but talked and ate. i also took the opportunity to wind a few skeins of yarn into yummy yarn cakes.

M is a vegan so i made a pasta of spaghettini, tossed with chopped fresh tomatoes, raw red onion, diced, a whole bunch of basil, chili oil, olive oil, minced garlic, and balsamic.


i also made a roasted garlic eggplant dip (vegan friendly) which we slathered onto slices of ace bakery sourdough baguette. i also offered olive tapenade (vegan friendly) and goat's cheese mixed with roasted red peppers and chili paste (non vegan friendly, but hella tasty).


for dessert we had vegan friendly cupcakes that H's baby daddy, "that guy" made. i also made peanut butter cookies which were sandwiched around breyers pure vanilla ice cream for ice cream sammies.


in knitting news: i'm almost done the current project i've been working on all month. now i have to whip together a baby sweater because my former prof wrote me a nice email and now i'm going to give her a baby sweater for the baby her and her husband had in february. i wasn't going to at first (because of the whole phone call fiasco), but well, my modus operandi is "knitting for strangers" (as the dotytron calls it), so she fits my profile. the dotytron and the roomie are always going on about how i totally go above and beyond the call of duty for strangers...expending time and energy and money making handknit stuff for people i barely know. maybe i'm just too nice? i really should stop though, because there are people i actually LOVE that i should be knitting for. my ravelry queue is epic and i've got 5 or 6 projects lined up after i finish this one...and i have to get a jump on holiday knitting, since christmas is only like, 5 months away!!!!!! that's right, only 5 months!!!!!

i've got a lot on my plate right now too, what with my family's cottage getaway happening soon. organizing that is a bit of a gong show, but i've got my trusty excel spreadsheets and innate project management skills to help me. oh, which reminds me...

fin.

the weekend that was

i've updated the post yesterday to include a picture of the raw chicken in question that i made bwong take with his camera phone for posterity (or future blackmailing/vengeance plots).

the other hilarious by-product of our ignominious ousting from the patience-destroying (but gastronomically satisfying) halls of el sol was that during the conversation, we somehow started talking about microsoft word, and the dotytron went on this little tirade (complete with gestures) about trying to "catch" that paperclip thing (the one that tries to "help" you with suggestions for bulleted lists that you don't want) and how the paperclip is always twisting and contorting and zipping around the screen and out of your grasp and then disappearing into a puff of smoke. lol!!!!

i contend that the paperclip is also sometimes a cat, or a professor. but that claim was hotly contested.

so saturday i woke up, packed my stuff and headed to J's shower/bachelorette party. it was a hoot but also, at the same time, a comedy of errors that was made hilarious and fun because of the company we kept. we started in guelph where i lost bigtime on the shower games but won bigtime in accolades for my banana muffin/cupcakes (or, "muffcakes") with cream cheese frosting. then we got ourselves dolled up (for dr. rei - i did dramatic eyes! i don't know how well it worked though) and piled into a comically oversized, tony micelli van and hauled our asses to niagara falls, engaging in some "would you rather" and sex sharing and truth circle girly talk on the way down to keep us occupied. once there, it was kind of a gong. mostly because the stupid bouncer at the club wouldn't accept my 13 year old driver's license as i.d. the nerve! once the bride-to-be won big on the video black jack ($20!!!) it totally got the blood pumping and the bride-to-be's rendition of "total eclipse of the heart" at the outdoor karaoke venue (complete with some random drunk ho crashing the stage and trying to steal some of J's thunder) brought us out with a bang. it was an epic night.

in other exciting news...i'm competing with a colleague in the our division's bocce tournament and we're tied for first!!! we play in the finals sometime this week. i effin' LOVE bocce. the pot isn't huge but we all know how ultra-competitive i am so i'd play for a carton of toothpicks. we each paid $2 to play and the winning team splits the pot. we've got 5 teams entered. winning is so close...i can almost taste it!


tonight for dinner i made the tandoori turkey breast that i've been marinating since friday. it was supposed to be for a special sunday dinnie for our montreal friend I and her bf, but i was so ruined on sunday that i couldn't bear the thought of having to do anything. it's one turkey breast and 2 chicken legs (i was worried the turkey breast wasn't going to be enough when there was more than just the house-family that were supposed to be eating it), that i marinated (bwong helped put it together) in tandoori spices and yoghurt and then grilled over indirect heat.


alongside, i cut up some yukon gold potatoes and then put them in a pot of cold, salted water. i put a lid on and as soon as the water came to a boil, i drained the tatties. then i fried up some onion and fennel, some coriander seed, tumeric, a bit of cumin and cayenne, and added the potatoes so they got all browned and crispy on the outside. i also made that iranian salad of tomatoes, cucumbers and red onion and lemon juice, and i added fresh mint instead of the dried that dr. rei uses.

fin.

banhammed

let's start the recounting from the very beginning: friday night. dr. rei, bwong, and i had made plans to go to el sol for a dinner. we hadn't seen bwong in a long time (maybe two weeks?) so we were totally due for some goosetang clan hanging. the roomie came too, with her friend l'armitage (her male friend whom i have previously referred to as M...i gave him a new nickname and by it he will henceforth be known).

now, everyone in the whole universe (or the toronto chowhound public) knows that el sol is slow. the internets has been known to call it "el slow." your food comes out on trolleys (whether it's platters of food, or like, a single beer) whenever the kitchen feels like making it. bwong suspects that they use each chit that comes in as a grocery list. that wouldn't be a surprise. an hour long wait is to be expected. we've been going there for 7 years now, so the dotytron and i totally know the drill. in fact, we used to phone in our orders and then show up 30 minutes later in order to cut our wait time in half...but we tried doing it the last few times and the manager dude refused. there have been a few times where we've waited so long (like, long even by el sol standards) that i've had to politely inquire about the status of the food, but overall, we know the routine and the food is exceptional and the price is right so we keep going back. this was bwong's first time there...so i prepared him for it in advance.

me, dr. rei, bwong and the roomie show up at our reserved time of 8pm. we see a large table (about 14 people) and start worrying. as we're led to our table, we see that the big group has been served their food. relief. there are maybe 10 other people total in the rest of the restaurant. we're taken to a table far off to the side that has this weird spotlight shining on it. the music is also BLASTING. we ask them if they could turn it down (three times throughout the night) and they say yes, and nothing happens. more egregious than the volume, is the tune selection. the songs would be stuff like: the "ducktales" theme, the "sex and the city" theme, the "seinfeld" theme, mixed in with huey lewis and the news, and then some mariachi remix of some eurodance hit. the super annoying thing was that each song would play for about a minute before they would switch to the next. it was like the music was being manned by a 10 year old kid from mainland china with a crate full of bootlegged dvds and serious aspberger's syndrome. the four of us place our drink orders. the drinks arrive. shortly thereafter, the dotytron and l'armitage show up and place their drink orders. 15 minutes later, the dotytron's sangria appears, but l'armitage's beer is nowhere to be seen. it takes us 5 minutes to get the attention of our server who finally brings l'armitage's drink.

then we wait. and wait. and wait. at the hour and fifteen minute point, people start getting antsy. we're blatantly being ignored. the large party has come and gone...there are maybe 8-10 other people in the restaurant and we watch trolley after trolley of food come out...with no love for our table. at the hour and a half point, tempers start to flare. people want to leave, go to square boy, get a slice of pizza, a burger, SOMETHING. bwong gets up and puts on his bag and places his hands on the table and declares: "this is unacceptable. TIME IS OUR MOST PRECIOUS RESOURCE" trying to get everyone to leave. the dotytron goes into apocalyptica mode and dr. rei is rocking herself back and forth, near feverish with hunger. we talk about leaving without paying, about not tipping. me and the roomie are holding fast to the opinion that we should stay because the food is just so good.

finally, i get up and go to our server and say, "our party has decided that we're going to leave if the food isn't ready in 5 minutes." he goes and checks on the kitchen. and still we wait. and wait. 10 minutes later, i walk up to the manager and politely say, "excuse me, we've been waiting for over an hour and a half for our food. this is unacceptable. surely there must be something you can do." (still no food). the manager walks up to our table with the bill and says that he's willing to take off 2 of the 3 virgin pina coladas we ordered. he says that they were very busy. when i tell him (still very polite. lots of "sirs" peppered in there. lots of calm voice) that there must be more that he can do, he snaps at me,

"THAT'S ALL THAT YOU'RE GETTING."

"but sir -"

"THAT'S IT."


finally, the first wave of food comes. 10 minutes later, we're still waiting for the rest of our platters. i take a bite out of my chicken soft taco and there's an uncooked, fully pink and raw-looking piece of chicken in there. i take it out and put it on my plate and call the manager over. i say this: "with all due respect sir, not only was our food late, but there's a piece of raw chicken in my burrito. i think you can do better than 2 virgin pina coladas." things escalate like crazy. he says that the solution is for me to leave and never come back there. he says that i've caused problems before. he says that i'm being difficult (!!!!!) and that they were busy. i say (still very calm and polite), "with all due respect sir, i've been working in the restaurant industry for over 7 years, and this is not the way you do things." then he raises his voice and says that i'm always going in there and causing problems. and that he doesn't like my attitude, at which point, the dotytron burst in with a, "HER attitude?!? we were all ready to leave. it's not just her, it's EVERYONE at the table" and starts to drop a few F bombs (throughout the exchange, bwong and the dotytron and l'armitage had been interjecting, but the focus of the dispute was between me as the table spokesperson and the manager). then the manager turns to the dotytron and says, "what are you going to do? are you going to do something drastic?" and makes it sound all threatening. we try to explain that we've been coming here for a long time and the manager is like, "oh i know" or something like that but it's pretty obvious that he has beef with me. i'm not sure why. maybe because i've asked about the whereabouts of my food before. he was being really mean and angry and rude.

anyway, he ended up taking off a whole platter. our friend from new york had actually gotten me and the dotytron a gift certificate, so we threw that down and then paid the rest of the bill to the last penny and didn't leave a tip. it should be a sign of just HOW BAD things were that the roomie was willing to leave a table without tipping. it was that bad.

so we basically can't ever go back there again. but i can't BELIEVE that the reaction of the establishment, when faced with a legitimate, calmly worded complaint about the slow service and the raw chicken, LASHED OUT at the customers! i've never seen anything like it! no apology, no nothing. everyone else was ready to leave and walk out, but me and the roomie honestly weren't going to go there. if at any point, one staff member had come up to us and apologized for the lateness or even checked in on us, i don't think we would have had any problems (well, bwong, the dotytron and l'armitage were fed up). it was the whole being made to feel like it was OUR fault thing that really put it over the top. el sol dumped us before we could dump them. and quite frankly, it rankles.

i think he was racist...but the roomie thinks probably more misogynist. either way...it was obviously semi personal...what with the "you've caused problems here before" and all that. and what with every other table in the restaurant having eaten and had their plates cleared before we got a single scrap of rice'n'beans.

it's probably for the best. when we first started going 7 years ago, the same platter of food was $7.99. now it's $12.99. still decent, but starting to border on the insane. and the guacamole is just unreasonable. so i'll have to go without tasty mexican food and the best damn rice and beans i've ever had. the crazy thing is...there's no way in HELL it should take almost 2 hours to cook six plates of tacos and rice and beans. no way. you know they have a vat of beans and a vat of the rice. even if they were cooking the filling for each taco separately there's still no way that it would take 2 hours.

in other news: we also found out that night that bwong used to fly kites competitively.

in other other news: the dotytron is considering retaliation by putting mice into the restaurant, one mouse at a time. this involves cupping the mouse in your hands, and whispering "tell the others" or "godspeed" before sending it on its havoc wreaking. lol. how is he so funny?

fin.

too. much.

i came stumbling home today at 11am after a whole day and night spent at my friend J's shower/bachelorette , going on way too little sleep, to find the dotytron at home (unexpectedly, as he had spent the night at the groom's bachelor party) looking surprisingly fresh and watching "ladyhawk."

i dropped my bags and declared: "i feel like i have lived a thousand lifetimes"

this weekend was epic. i am ruined. and i am NOT ready to go back to work. here's a teaser:

- got the banhammer from el sol
- epic trans-municipality shower in guelph/niagara
- the dotytron's night of hilarity
- I and M visiting from Montreal
- watched "21" (worst movie ever)
- d/l "parenthood" (best movie ever)

so beyond. so so so tired.

fin.

creeping gentrification

admittedly, my neighbourhood has no recourse against allegations of upward mobility. i live smack dab in one of the most desirable neighbourhoods in toronto (according to the frothing superlatives heaped upon leslieville and riverdale by the monthly handbook of urbanity, "toronto life"). there are well-tended parks, the largest and most well-established organic grocery, a store that sells nothing but dreamcatchers and mandalas and chunks of amethyst and quartz, thriving independent businesses, resistance to power plants but ignorant open-armed welcomes to starbucks and their "third space" ilk. there are street parties and bicycle parades and our own organic farmer's market and yoga aplenty (even a pilates studio!).


but one of the surest signs that your neighbourhood is movin' on up with nary an acknowledgment of your growing inability to ever afford property there, is the establishment of an organic butcher (NOT the mennonites...they don't count). this butcher takes a page from the cumbrae's book of meat purveying. spotless counters, not a whiff of ferrous blood or feral nature or sharp barn to sully the gleaming, subway tiled interiors, and (most importantly) exorbitant prices. riverdale is now home to blackstone organic meats. btw, i didn't take these pictures. they're borrowed with gratitude from the blogto site. my friend I and her new bf M are visiting from montreal this weekend (she's the roomie's nearest and dearest and i went to undergrad with her and lived with her for two years). i've been hankering to do a tandoori turkey breast for the last little while (you know how it goes. you always inexplicably have those hankerings to tandoori up a turkey mammary, right? right?) the mennonites don't have turkey breasts this time of year, so i'm making my first foray into blackstone. actually, that's not true. i went in once when they first opened on a recon mission to look down my nose in derision at the over-priced offerings and then turn my nose up and flounce out.

tonight i'm making banana cupcakes with cream cheese frosting for this shower/bachelorette i'm attending tomorrow and marinating said turkey breast in a blend of yoghurt and spices. then i'm having dinner at el sol with dr. rei, bwong, the dotytron, the roomie, and maybe the roomie's new male companion, M (they're just friends). i'm pretty sure i'm going to have the tacos dorados with chorizo. but i've been craving tostadas lately so maybe i'll go splitsies on an el sol platter for two with the dotytron. and knowing me...i'll probably cough up for their redonkulously expensive (and disproportionately tiny!) guacamole. it's NINE DOLLARS. for an ice cream scoop sized ball!

fin.

and another thing!

okay, here's another reason why talking to that dude from undergrad that i re-met on saturday night (anarchist university press editor dude, C) was awkward. he would ask me stuff like, "so do you still dj?" which is a fine enough question, i guess. and then he asked me if i still threw parties. again, fine...that i can deal with. so i told him no...but because he doesn't GO to parties or know ANYTHING about dance music in general and toronto specifically, it makes everything that much harder to explain.

at one point, he was like, "so, what kind of music are you listening to right now?" which is a totally innocuous question in and of itself, although bound to elicit the kind of tortured, fraught agonizing that the infamous "top 3 ___ [insert cultural product here] for a desert island" family of questions always seems to bring to the fore. what makes it less innocuous is that by all accounts, he doesn't LISTEN TO MUSIC. or KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT MUSIC. which is fine! i'm totally okay with that. i mean, you don't have to be the walking encyclopedia or share the complete same tastes as me...but you kind of have to be INTO it in some small capacity (even if your thing is ugandan afro-beat/death metal made in concert with rare elephant breeds), otherwise, there is no way in HELL that i can explain it to you. which is kind of annoying. but what makes it even more annoying, is that my inability to explain, predicated on the lack of shared understanding and cultural signifiers, makes ME look like an idiot! i didn't even know where to start...how do you condense the last 5 years of your musical history into something for someone else?

i always liken it to this story that dr. rei tells of this one time she got cornered at a party by some dude who was looking to woo her and chose the ill-fated tactic of broaching the question: "so, just who are the members of wu-tang anyway?" *tugs at collar* YIKES. seriously buddy? you're going to make someone rhyme that off? aren't some things better left to the strategy of nodding sagely and then looking it up on the internet the moment you're near a high-speed connection? i certainly think so. i mean, there's no shame in pleading ignorance to stuff...but asking questions like that and the one my poor anarchist friend did above is like tattooing "n00b" on your forehead (or worse, getting a calvin and hobbes/tribal/tweety bird/chinese character/dolphin/barbed wire tattoo).

i've been obsessed with this song lately:



and the allman brothers' "whipping post":



i made myself an on-the-go mix on my ipod for when i go running. it's a bit of an odd duck. it's got the above two tunes, pet shop boys "always on my mind," the cure's "just like heaven," the band's "the night they drove old dixie down," m.i.a.'s "paper planes," kanye's "golddigger," and other odds and sods. heh. even dusty springfield's "you don't have to say you love me," which most reasonable people would agree isn't a running tune, per se.


tonight for dinner i made this salmon sashimi dish. sliced wild salmon, tossed in a citrus soy vinaigrette, and then drizzled with a mixture of smoking hot sesame and canola oil, and finished with a scattering of toasted sesame seeds.


alongside i made a soba noodle salad with broccoli, wilted baby spinach, avocado, radish, red onion, and cooked coins of baby zucchini, also dressed in a honey-soy vinaigrette with more sesame seeds. delicious!

now i'm off to yoga.

fin.

my maths is poor

i realized, after talking to dr. rei about my running at the pool on saturday and having her express that running 5km in 20 minutes is REALLY impressive, that i plotted my route wrong on google runs. i actually run 3.77km in 20 minutes. which i'm still pretty proud of, considering that last summer, 1 lap around the track almost made me collapse like martin lawrence during a heat wave.


tonight for dinner i made that red pepper, onion, and egg sammy with harissa. it's dead easy. thinly slice an onion (multiply the amounts by whatever you have on hand versus how many people you're serving) and 2 red peppers and saute them in a bit of olive oil. add minced garlic. add a good squeeze of harissa, depending on how spicy you like it. add salt and pepper. boil eggs. mound the red pepper-onion mixture on a bun (in this case, halved whole wheat kaisers), top with the quartered eggs, and eat in under 2 minutes (the amount of eating time is up to you...if you're as hungry as i was...it goes down quickfast...like, we're talking half-life of bubbles or lightning fast). i served it with that radish and cucumber and feta salad with the dill vinaigrette. great combo. spicy, soft, yielding sammy chased with the cool, crisp, creamy, bright salad. loved it.


okay, "the dark knight" review time. [THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!] i've let it sit and simmer. i've considered, deconstructed, reflected. first, you have to know that no one WANTED to love this movie more than i or had higher expectations. i wanted it to blow me away. unfortunately, it didn't. it was very, very good. but it wasn't excellent.

the story was weak and disjointed and shoddily cobbled together, a spindly frame that exists so that heath ledger's joker (and in this case, the superlatives and breathless accolades from the world at large are well earned - but more on that later) can converge on gotham city and cross paths with his double, batman. seriously now...mob money laundering? the chinese snitch? these elements seemed pointless and superfluous and didn't contribute to the film at all.

heath ledger was outstanding. the licking of the lips, the herky-jerky broken marionette movements, the manic, sly, manipulative, charismatic machinations and scheming...the characterization was fearless and even though this film is burdened enough by the tragic legacy it carries, experiencing ledger's joker pulling you by the lapels into the movie underscores what a talented and gifted actor he was...and how few actors in his generation are capable of assuming the same mantle of fearlessness he bore.

maggie gyllenhaal is all quick and fiesty against katie holmes doe-eyed and listless earnestness. gary oldman makes a great commissioner gordon. aaron eckhart's descent into two-face felt like a rushed afterthought. although the makeup job made him look exactly like the two-face of the comics...i just wish he had been given more. the last 1/4 of the movie isn't integrated well with the rest of the film...you're sitting in the theatre, feeling like it has ended, and then it limps along to tie up the harvey dent storyline. killing rachel dawes was a smart move...although the tragedy of it was underplayed, to the detriment of the movie. bruce wayne/batman's reaction is so detached, it doesn't feel like the crux that it should be.

there were almost too many identical fight sequences/car chases for me. and the movie felt long...which is not good. the narrative trajectory went something like this: dark, indistinguishable, hand-to-hand fight sequence --> tortured exposition on what kind of man the joker/batman/harvey dent/humanity is --> dark, indistinct car chase culminating in an epic explosion. the attempts at humour were overly contrived (oh look, morgan freeman and michael caine being dry/wry!)

finally, i would probably walk across broken glass to be in the same room with christian bale...he's an equally phenomenal actor...but the gravel-voiced delivery for batman became too much. it's well suited for lurking in the shadows, but for long speeches, it seems too forced and contrived and leaves the characterization open to laughter.

overall, i'd give it a 7.9/10. i think i might like "iron man" better.

maybe i have to re-watch it. i'll leave it open to reconsideration of the grade.

fin.

rage blackouts

last night was not one of my more shining moments in the art of gentlemanly, gracious, sportsmanship. i kind of lost it. f bombs like crazy! calling the other team b***hes! threatening to key the opponents car (this i did with my teammates, not to the opponent's face)! i was all yelly mcyellerson. you'll have to excuse me i'm not at my best, styles. brutal. it was all right in the end though...doing the post-game line-up hand-slap with the other team, i supplemented my usual "good game" with a healthy peppering of "sorry for being an a**hole." the other team had some hotheads too, so it all worked out in the wash. i seriously don't know what comes over me. i have way too much of a competitive spirit...that or maybe too much testosterone.


i was at the grocery store today and saw this little tyke of about 3 or 4, with flaxen pigtails, look beseechingly up at her mother and say, "mama, can we get some swa-behwies?" and i felt nothing. in fact, my heart kind of hardened AGAINST her and my gut instinct was to flick her nose or something. i feel like this is a sign that i'm not meant to have children.



tonight for dinner i made mutter paneer. we had it with steamed rice, parathas (frozen and pan fried) and sag from makkah (the pakistani place in the neighbourhood). i've made mutter paneer before, but the recipe i tried was too watery and had too many peas. this recipe had me make a spice paste first and fry that up with onions in butter and then add crushed tomatoes, a touch of cream, the paneer cubes and the peas. it was delicious.


the following is the recipe i used (i skipped the mint and cream/milk and used chili flakes instead of the aleppo pepper flakes. i also upped the thai bird chili count to 2 and added more peas). pretty tasty and muy picante.

fin.

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

Mattar Paneer

Ingredients:

5 large cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
1 2″ cube fresh ginger, peeled and sliced
1 red Thai bird chile
1/2 teaspoon aleppo pepper flakes (aleppo is a mild chile from Turkey–optional–I get it from Penzey’s)
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon cardamom seeds
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
10 cloves
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon paprika
2 tablespoons butter
8 ounces paneer cheese cut into 1/2″ cubes
1 14 ounce can crushed Muir Glen Fire Roasted Tomatoes
1/2 cup milk
salt to taste
3/4 cup heavy cream
2 cups frozen peas, thawed
large handful fresh mint leaves, chopped roughly

Method:

Grind together the garlic, ginger and spices into a thick paste.

Melt butter in a heavy-bottomed skillet, and when it foams, add paneer. Add spice paste and cook, stirring, until the spices are very fragrant and the paneer is beginning to brown. Turn the paneer, and keep stirring. Add the tomatoes adn milk, and stir. Turn down the heat and simmer for about ten minutes. Add the heavy cream and salt to taste. Add the peas, and turn heat down to very low and simmer slowly for about an hour or so.

After it has cooked for an hour, put a lid on the pan, turn off the heat and let it sit for another hour or so. When you are ready to serve, reheat the curry to a simmer, adding a bit more milk or cream as necessary to keep it from reducing too much.

Just before serving, stir in mint leaves.

Not surprisingly, this is even better heated up the next day. You may have to add more milk to the sauce to think it out so it will reheat properly.

i can't carry this alone

okay, so here's the deal. on saturday night at J's birthday party, the host D, happens to work at this alternative, independent video store in the wellesley area. as the night was winding down, we were wondering what we were going to do (this is AFTER we received an invigorating and inspired execution of the "jumpstep" dance courtesy of J). H says, "let's watch a tony video!" M starts protesting. the dotytron and i have no idea what's going on. what follows has been indelibly burned into my retinas...i only hope i can adequately convey to you how effing CREEPY this s**t was, so i don't have to carry the burden of this knowledge on my own.

apparently, every few months, for the past 5 or 6 years, "tony" will drop off a video at the store without anyone noticing. no one has ever seen him in the store. but the staff will turn around, and there on the counter, will be a vhs tape with a label inscribed "tony music" and the year. the tape consists of 6-8 hours of non stop "music videos" that tony has made. tony kind of looks like a super haggard dog the bounty hunter/kris kristofferson/nick nolte's mug shot/andy dick's mug shot (the most recent one). the videos are super-grainy and distressed looking and feature a lot of cheesy, low-grade video editing techniques (fades, diamond cut outs, etc) and just keep running one after another. tony is standing there against a variety of exceedingly stomach-turning backdrops. they're not graphic, per se...more like saturated with an unsettling, distasteful malignance. the backdrop could be something simple like a few cloths tacked up behind him, to in front of the kitchen counter with mannekins awkwardly and disjointedly posed wearing leather garb and thiftstore leavings. other, more insidious and skin-crawling backdrops include portraits of random nudes (some hand drawn) and various photos of indeterminate origin.

all but one of the songs that i saw (a relatively upbeat, 50s elvis costello-influenced number) showcase his droning, growling, voice against eerily detached pre-set synthesizer beats, sometimes accompanied by a guitar. in some of them he's clothed. in some of them, he's naked except for a codpiece. sometimes he wears a skull mask and then pulls a mesh stocking overtop. sometimes (the most unsettling of all) he draws on his face with magic marker - carving cartoonish, malevolent skulls and twisted, stretched, clowns onto his own features. some of them feature him in creepy bondage gear, and some of them he's completely naked, dancing listlessly and completely detached before the camera.

it was so. scary. his eyes are dead most of the time and it seems like he hasn't slept in weeks. he's basically like the dude (not lecter) in "silence of the lambs." a WHOLE vhs tape (one of many) filled with his songs and these terrifying videos. the fact that he exists and indeed, is someone's neighbour just makes me feel sick to my stomach. picturing someone doing this in his dark, dank, depressing basement apartment is enough to make you never want to walk alone at night. so. effing gross.


in cheerier news...yesterday's bbq was a blast! it was as strange mishmash of people but everyone was in fine form and i NAILED the ribs (the smoking part...i kind of burned them when i finished them on the grill with the bbq sauce). i served ribs, smoked chorizo sausage, potato salad, watermelon tomato feta mint salad, and corn bread. i also made cherry pie and chocolate pudding pie. the cherry pie was AMAZING. i pwned that crust. it was flaky, buttery, tender but still strong enough to hold up to the weight of the cherries and their juices. i brushed the top of the pie with some beaten egg white and sprinkled turbinado sugar on top, which added some crunch. served slightly warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, it was a lovely, lovely thing indeed. not bad for my first-ever cherry pie! it's definitely going on the summer roster.


key moments from last night included:

- our friend S rhapsodizing about bill gates' hair. S is under the impression that bill gates has augmented his hair and hooked himself up with a "sick piece" - despite the protestations from everyone else.


- the dotytron dropping one of his signature, it-shouldn't-be-funny-but-it-is-because-of-the-sincerity-and-funny-face lines that he does. this one was related to buying tea in the dessert. to quote: "i would TOTALLY buy tea in the dessert." i laugh because it's just so the dotytron to want to buy tea in the dessert


- talking about those saucy pics of bill gates where he's draped quasi-seductively over some computers and giving the camera sleepy bedroom eyes.


>- me telling people how apparently david suzuki is a colossal jerk with no social skills and the roomie coming to his defense. the roomie also came to the defense of parkdale librarians and hipsters.

- me forcing people to clean their plates with the declaration: "there's no p***ying out in my house" while cutting people their second slice of pie.

fun times. then we watched "the dark knight"! i'll post a full review tomorrow. tonight is errands downtown and dodgeball then post-game eats at duff's on college. wings!

fin.

it's like a backstreet boys video out there...

the rain has been pouring down, flushing the humidity that's been dampening spirits in our fair city down the drain and bringing some relief from the near-total stickiness that's made contact with 99% of surfaces for the past few days a total nightmare. i've been taking no less than 3 cold showers a day. for david suzuki's benefit: they've been quick ones! just to get the film off.

yesterday was a busy one with a LOT of puttering going on. i baked the cake. the frosting was a little up in the air, but overall, it turned out REALLY good! the layers were crumbly and sweet with a hint of lemon, nicely accented by the strawberry jam layers. the frosting had a nice lemon flavour too...the "sheese" (soy cream cheese) i used approximated regular cream cheese's tang so the flavour was good. my only complaint is that it was runny as all hell, so the cake didn't look all that pretty. boo.

the party was a lot of fun, too! the host had this beautiful one bedroom apartment in a not-so-nice part of town, with a gas stove and gorgeous exposed brick and an amazing open-concept layout. it was STEAMY up there but the conversation was fun and i randomly reconnected with this dude C i went to university with. we hung out a bit in undergrad and he came to some of the attic raves my ex bf threw (we had flyers and an INFOLINE and a chill out room [where we played aphex twin and anime] and everything!). he was doing his masters at ryerson/york and he came with me to see baudrillard and spivak and susan sontag at a conference and that was the last i saw of him (this was when i was half-heartedly pursuing my masters' at york...so like...5 years ago?). then he shows up at the party! how random!

he's super nice. but like, still into anarchy. i found this out AFTER i went on my usual rampage about how "there's certain things you have to grow out of...you know...like anarchy. and drum circles." or when i was trying to describe breakcore to him, and i'm like, "it's kind of juvenile. like...rage against the machine's politics and like, grade 10 anarchy crossed with industrial-sounding drum'n'bass." then i asked him how he was connected, and he goes, "well, my roommate knows J [the birthday boy, and H's main squeeze] and i met my roommate because we used to edit the anarchist university press together. that was up until a year ago." *tugs at collar* oops. HOW THE HELL WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT 30-YEAR OLDS ARE INTO ANARCHY! there's certain things you're supposed to outgrow! like being a goth! and anarchy! sheesh. he was also kind of odd because he's finishing his phd in "urban studies" and i was trying to get him to explain what that meant and he's like, "you know...it's very interdisciplinary...like sociology, very qualitative, very cultural studies." talk like that kind of makes me hate cultural studies and i LOVE cultural studies. i just think the proponents are the wackness. that doesn't MEAN anything! and i was asking him what kind of music/movies/you know...CULTURE, he was into and he was all like, "i basically hang out at home...i rarely leave the house." how can you write about cultural studies or "urban studies" and not like, have any connection to urban culture or culture-culture?

no wonder anarchy seems like a good solution! you have NO IDEA what's going on in the world! so it's like dreamsville la-la land as far as you're concerned. it's like these people have been living in a bubble since undergrad while the rest of the world (of which i consider myself a part) has moved ON. i dunno...he's super nice and i'm super glad we met up and he's totally chill and i want to hang...i just feel very removed from his frame of reference. he's all hakim bey and i'm all i dunno...another bad creation. ha!


during the day after going buck frankenstein-ing that cake into some semblance of propriety, i went to the pool with dr. rei to de-stickify myself with the rest of the great unwashed of the east side. pools are f**king awesome. no doubt. indeed. it's so nice to sun yourself and get too hot and step five feet away into cool, refreshing, chlorinatedness. it was heavenly. then we ate freezies and then i went to the party.


now i'm chilling after eating breakfast. this is the first proper sunday breakfast in a long, long time. we just haven't been home or have been super-busy or had plans or just inclined for a step-above start for the day on sundays. it was nice. now i'm going to knit and go to a yoga class and ready myself for bbq and "the dark knight" (!!!!!!!!!!!) tonight. my bros have already seen it and my sister saw the midnight show opening night (i think) or some shiat. i told you i come from a family of diehard batman fans! the ribs are smoking away in an applewood bath of incendiary fumes, the potato salad is done, my cherry pie is textbook-correct (lattice and all!), the chocolate pudding pie has been whipped cream festooned and is chilling idly, and the last thing i have to do is put together the tomato, watermelon, feta, mint, and preserved lemon salad.

so i'm opening my arms to a leisurely sunday. love this.

fin.

unintentional sauna

holy creepers it's hot in my house today. it's hot everywhere today. i hope hope hope it doesn't rain so that i can dunk myself in some cool, pee-saturated, chlorinated waters. i need to take a billion cold showers just to feel semi-normal and semi-fresh.

the only thing left to do on the vegan cake is frost, decorate, and inscribe. it tastes pretty good! as in...really good! as in...can't tell it's vegan! i'm impressed, even if it is a b***h to work with.

i also want to tinker with my bbq as i think i have to make some adjustments to the venturi tubes again...i'm not really looking forward to that. i'm dragging my feet about leaving the house to go get more icing sugar because it stays so cool in the basement. i also have to test the propane tanks to see how much fuel we have in there...i have to make sure there's enough for tomorrow. i'd take rain today instead of tomorrow, but i don't think we'll have much luck with that. something [aka the weather network and accuweather] tells me it's going to pour tomorrow and then we'll all have to cram inside the house...boooooo.

i'll post pics of the cake tomorrow/later today.

fin.

slow on the uptake

so, apparently everyone in the whole, wide, world but me knew that "the dark knight" on imax is one of the fastest selling imax features ever and it was sold out two years ago, etc., etc. the crazy thing is, i remember reading that very fact, but for some reason, i was operating under the delusion that people in toronto aren't as committed to batman as i am, or something. i was fully convinced that i would be able to buy tickets for the sunday late show. wrrrrrong! so very, very wrong. we've got tickets to see the regular showing. i can live with that. just barely. as long as i still get to see it opening weekend.

note to self: must stop over-exerting self on friday evenings after work. i came home today and went buck until not too long ago. i pitted about 2.5lbs of sweet and sour cherries (destined for a twin peaks-worthy pie) with my new cherry pitter. i made a double batch of pie crust, i jarred my strawberry fig jam and marveled over the yield (12 jars!!!), and i made two layers of a vegan cake.

there is a problem when you do so many things after a full week of 9-5 work, on the first night of the weekend, when every synapse in your body, bred by a whole lifetime of north american enculturation in the "working for the weekend" paradigm, is crying out for beer (or the equivalent) and good, old fashioned, putting your feet up. the first problem was that pitting cherries is HELL. even with a cherry pitter. and i'm already resenting my ode to twin peaks pie. the second problem is that i don't know if i put the right amount of flour in the pie dough. oops. the third problem is...this vegan cake recipe tastes pretty good, but the yield is crapola. which means i have to make ANOTHER two layers tomorrow morning. and run the oven. during the worst heat wave of the summer so far. the vegan cake is also VERY delicate. i used this recipe. i have NO IDEA how the girl managed to cut those cake layers in half to make four. the cake is so tender and delicate, it falls apart when you look at it. moving it is mad hassles. so i'm going to double up and make an extra tall cake. the cake tasted very non-vegan though, which was promising. i'm going to sandwich it with strawberry jam and make a lemon-confectioner's sugar-toffuti cream cheese (maybe, that last ingredient is up in the air) frosting and decorate the whole thing with ontario strawberries.

did i mention that i did all this before eating dinner? i kept plowing through, the ticker-tape in my head reading "you'll order pizza when you're done...you'll order pizza when you're done" until it was 8:30 and i was starving and cranky as all hell and making s****y ass food. bad call, lagerfeld, bad call.

another bad call is trying to craft a blog entry while listening to culture beat's "mr vain" on repeat x a billion. so distracting! guys...can i just say that i'm MUY disappointed in this year's summer anthems (or the lack thereof?) what the heck is going on here? in what universe does "lollipop" count as a summer anthem? i would KILL for some "the way i are" right now. or "what you know" or "hustlin'" or "riding dirty." this summer is crap for tunes. boo. now i'm onto snap's "rhythm is a dancer." now i wish the dotytron still had two turntables so i could make a mix. hmmmmmmm...

fin.

consumerism trumps all

instead of going to the yoga class that i love, the one that helps me recalibrate and unwind and uncrimp and settle into my body, i'm here babysitting the f5 and keeping a hawkish eye on the status of my ebay auction. terrible. somewhere, a buddha-in-training is being distracted by the clatter of my rampant greed from hearing the sound of one hand clapping. oops. i can't help it! i need an outfit for an upcoming social engagement and i've found the perfect one on the infinite closet that is ebay.

besides, it's P's last night in town. tomorrow she's leaving at the crack of dawn to go to a wedding in pittsburgh. so i thought it better to shuffle around at home and spend time with her, since we won't be seeing her again til american thanksgiving. being at home is allowing me to get some admin stuff done. waxing, re-doing my toenails, menu-planning, adobe photoshop cracking (errr...just kidding big brother!), knitting, podcast listening, etc.



dinner tonight was a quick and breezy affair. panini of goat's cheese, olive tapenade, roasted red peppers, and basil on ace bakery focaccia. sided with a cool, creamy, and crisp salad of sliced, seeded cucumbers, sliced heirloom radishes (i love love love the clear hue of the purple-skinned ones), bulgarian feta, and a lemon, white wine vinegar and dill dressing. it was lovely. i could eat mountains of that salad.

this weekend is feeling very full already. tomorrow night i think i'm going to take it easy. come home, make a nice dinner, maybe bake a blueberry pie (mark my words: summertime is pie time), jar the strawberry-fig jam i cooked up last weekend, knit, wait for the dotytron to come home from teaching guitar up in richmond hill. saturday i have plans to hit the driving range with dr. rei and then cool off from our exertions by hitting the pool and terrorizing the minds and loins of the teenage boys there in our skimpy bathing attire. saturday night is a birthday party for my friend H's partner (and baby daddy) J. i'm in charge of making the birthday cake (i volunteered). it's vay-gan, as they say around my work. i have a semi-decent recipe i'm working with and i'm hoping that sugar will hide any animal-byproduct-shortage-induced shortcomings. sunday we're resting again and having some of the dotytron's friends over for a smoked ribs bbq and then seeing "the dark knight" on the imax. see? full but FUN.

fin.

almost there...

just a few small things and then i'm done on here. first, i really really really want to change the colours of the top toolbar so that it'll be all matchy matchy with the rest of the colour scheme. then i need a new banner thing (trust me, it pains me to the bone to have that nondescript font up there taking up valuable real estate). then upload my links and i think i'm good. oh, i also want my profile picture to have a border all the way around. i hope that isn't hard. i've taken a look at the html code and it's beyond my skill set at the moment. i also want to hook up all the links for my blog roll, but i'm kind of embarrassed about it to be honest. do people really need to know about all my grandma knitting blogs that i read? or the lame-ass food blogs i stalk?

in shocking news: i ate a summerlicious meal tonight. i know! me, the most staunch and steadfast hater of all that is summer/winter 'licious actually got snookered into going. in all honesty, the girls from work wanted an outing and it made sense. the food was aight. i thought it was pretty decent value for $25. i think summerlicious is a good experience if you're going to the mid-range places. but for restaurants like canoe, bymark, etc? forget it. you're getting dufflet's pastries (if you're lucky) and your food is being made by the most disgruntled, angry, persnickety cooks this side of a retirement home or elementary school. i loathed every minute of 'licious service and i'm so beyond grateful that those days of slapping out two hundred identical plates in a night are behind me. we went to eight wine bar on colborne lane.


for my first course, i got house-cured gravlax with avocado and a corn relish. the gravlax was smooth, if a little bland, but pair anything with crunchy sweet corn and avocado and it's a pretty winning combo.


for my main i got the flatiron steak, which came with baby vegetables (sylph-like carrots and beans), smashed potatoes, and a green peppercorn sauce. it was supposed to come with pork belly, but i couldn't detect any on the plate. the steak was cooked as i ordered it (medium rare), the peppercorn sauce tasted the way peppercorn sauces should, and the portion was pretty generous. overall, i was impressed. i wouldn't necessarily pay non-summerlicious prices for what i got, but what i tasted was well-prepared, if a little boring conceptually.


for dessert i had the banana bread pudding with rum raisin ice cream. this was very tasty. the banana bread was moist, the rum raisin ice cream light on both rum and raisins but fulfilled its obligations as the creamy-cool supporting castmate to the warm, dense, custardy bread pudding. all in all, i can't complain about the meal or the service. the room is quite small and oddly shaped, with high ceilings and a clubby, rosy glow and purposefully dim lighting that frustrates me a little because call me crazy, but i kind of like to see what people (and my food) look like. that over-dark lighting in restaurants always makes me feel like my eyesight is going and that's VERY stressful for someone with hypochondriac tendencies.

now i'm going to try for some before-bed yoga and then a before-bed cool down shower and some before-bed knitting and reading. i tried installing photoshop onto my computer but i don't know where the key generator is which is mildly stressing me out because i want to finish the aforementioned banner and be finished moving into this new iteration of the blog. in other chronicles of frustrating computer business, i let the dotytron bully me into trying to use winamp for my music organizing software instead of itunes (the only reason he could give me is that itunes is "bloated" - i don't know what that means or in what sense and when pressed for details, he just kept repeating how "bloated" it is). well, the downside is that now, neither itunes OR winamp is working and winamp is hella busy from a layout perspective. i really should just go with what i know, but nooooooooo...i had to be swayed by baseless allegations of bloat. all i want to do is subscribe to my first ever podcast. my new thing is that maybe while i'm running at lunch like a rat in a cage (despite all my rage), i should be educating myself through the vehicle of podcast. i was going to start with "this american life" which, from what i understand, all liberal urbanites of a certain age and persuasion should be listening to. i'm not quite sure i'm in that target demographic (something tells me you're also supposed to like the cbc and indiscriminate [read: boring], noodley indie music), but i'm nothing if not fair.

stop laughing. i AM nothing if not fair.

fin.

excuse the appearance...

at chinotto-hating headquarters inc. i've recently discovered that my wee little blog is quite ugly and ungainly and i've resolved to rectify the situation through the deployment of an ingenius toolkit that consists of equal parts cribbing design elements from blogs with an aesthetic i admire, tapping my more html-savvy friends (tip o' the hat to C for her offers of assistance) for help, and using the features installed on blogger to make this place a little more representative of yours truly. right now, i'm pretty keen on a sagey green and grey colour scheme, with serif-y fonts and more links. it's a work in progress...we'll see how much i can do before i have to call in the reserves.

so the ipod. i took it into irepair which is a little place run by harold and kumar (or they might as well be harold and kumar) that purports to fix ipods and apple gear and the like. it's on my way to dodgeball, so i figured i'd pop in. the dude takes it into the back room (which, judging by the size of the front room is probably a crawl space) and returns 10 minutes later telling me that my hold button is effed up. i amused myself in the meantime by shamelessly and voyeuristically reading (and judging) the itunes track list on the computer that was set up at the front desk in the new york closet-sized retail space. i have to say...kinda beyond reproach. it looked like a delicious mix of free jazz (brad mehldau) and mostly 90s dance hits. stuff like cece peniston, ace of base, mr. vain, etc. totally awesome. what was LESS awesome, was the fact that fixing the hold button only sometimes works (according to kumar) and would cost me $70 (i would only have to pay if it did work after the repair). the resulting exchange went something like this:

me: "this is BOGUS"
him: "well, you dropped it"
me: "i didn't even drop it from high up. maybe 2 feet. this is bulls**t. i hate apple"
him: "well, apple made a good product and you dropped it, you can't blame apple"
"apple didn't make a good product. they over-saturated the market," i hissed, "THERE'S A DIFFERENCE" and with that, i flounced out of the store. i did it for comedic effect and i did elicit some laughs so it was worth it. but still!

today i'm meeting dr. rei after work for some gabbing and gossiping and post-weekend-spent-apart debriefing. i think i might go to the apple store in the mall and get me a new ipod nano. why does it need to have video? so dumb! so useless! so utterly wasted on my neo-luddite butt! it's the same deal with the iphone. i don't understand why people are going so buck for it. but whatevers, i guess. i just hate spending money on something (keep in mind, my bro got me my last ipod for free as part of a td bank-luring-new-customers offer) for features i'm not ever going to use.

we had a pizza lunch today and i'm stuffed, so i'm not very much inclined to make food tonight. is it ridiculous that something as silly as a pizza lunch at work can make me so unbelievably giddy? it's like hot dog day at public school. the amount of excitement and thrill-of-the-new that can be engendered by a limp, steamed hot dog in an over-yielding bun with not-for-resale micro bags of stale, expired, plain chips and a can of pop, if properly harnessed, could probably solve our looming energy crisis.



fin.