so, apparently, guys (read: the dotytron) don't respond well to in-the-sack role-playing when the roles being played consist of "yokozuna" (me) and "the undertaker" (him). sheesh! who knew?
it's probably exacerbated by the fact that i, having assigned the roles, in the persona of yokozuna, insist on being as unsexy as possible, basically rolling onto him like a beached whale in my pajamas like a proper sumo wrestler would (hey, this is method acting at its' finest) and chortling at my own cleverness in finding newfound ways to torture the dotytron before sleep.
another thing we've adopted at casa dotytron and lagerfeld is this thing we picked up from my niece. whenever you ask her a question she doesn't feel like answering, (ie. "what do you get when you take 2 apples away from 5 apples?") she scrunches up her nose, looks slightly past you, and says, in a funny voice, "who said that?! was that a talking ____ [cloud, squirrel, crazy telephone, etc]?!??" it's a pretty ace avoidance technique. so, when i was asking the dotytron if he had put his grocery money in the jar (for the third day in a row) last night after dinner, he rinsed the same line.
tonight the plan is to meet up with C & C then walk to this portugese grocery store so that i can either pick up some osso buco for sunday dinnie. and/or rabbit, if i'm feeling adventurous. then we're going to stand in line for hours and hours at pizzeria libretto until we get a table. the dotytron will be joining us after his after-school program. good god, they love him there. word is out and the school that he teaches at has more classes than he can handle.
i'll post a full review tonight! and i'll also attach some pics of last night's dinner.
i had a successful run of grocery store clothes shopping last night. joe fresh is pretty awesome for cheap, serviceable, fashionable but basic work clothes. i dug it, hard. we went to the one on lower jarvis, which has a standalone store, unlike some of the other locations, which are a little incongruous because there'll be produce and bread and condiments and then in the middle of the store, clothes. weird! the only problem i had was that a lot of the things i wanted were gone in my sizes. and shopping with the roomie drives me crazy! she needs work clothes bigtime, but while i'm frantically running around the store (we got there an hour before closing time), snatching up armfuls of stuff, i catch her, in the YOGA AND MATERNITY section, buying ANOTHER cowl-necked cotton sweatshirt. so brutal! she already has like, 5 of those! in the same colours!!!!!!!! she's the worst for buying a million of the same item of clothing, most of which, are only appropriate as "house" (maybe camping) clothes. i just gave her the exasperated head-shake.
it's early...but hallowe'en is seriously SO SO CLOSE!!! i've already decided what pumpkins i'm going to be doing and i think we're going to montreal hallowe'en weekend, because our friend I and her bf M are throwing a party in M's blingin' loft. sweet! the house family put our heads together and we came up with a pretty solid group costume...i'm seriously pumped about it. the costume works on all counts...pretty easy to put together, comfortable, cute, and works as a group thing. i'm pretty excited (even though i tend to excite easily. still)! while we're there, i'd be pissed if we didn't eat at one of the many many many amazing montreal restos...so i think the dotytron and i are going to do an early anniversary dinner at au pied du cochon. foie gras poutine, here i come!!!
fin.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
potpourri
or, odds and sods. does jeopardy still have a "potpourri" category anymore? do people still even put bowls of potpourri on their coffee tables in their "living rooms" anymore? these are the questions that bedevil my mind.i'm sleeping like a baby lately. cool fall nights and warm fall food conspire to send me off to the land of nod at the completely unrespectable hour of 11pm. snooze!
here's what i've got rolling around in my jumbly brain lately.
katy perry. can't stand her. she's like a poor man's less stylish, less creative, and much less cute and cute-voiced version of my beloved zooey deschanel. also...she gives vintage shopping a bad name. piecing together a 40s revival outfit is so boring and uncreative! it's poor taste pastiche not clever referential. also the whole vintage explosion is driving me crazy lately because people are bidding up stuff on ebay that clearly SUCKS and quite frankly, i don't want to see you traipsing down ossington in your misguided, dressed-in-the-dark, and poorly conceptualized outfits. moreover, stop bidding on crappy shiz! ugh. i hate seeing parkdale librarians in their maudlin attempts at urban sophistication that just end up reeking of the painful provincialism that seems to be all that canada is capable of producing in large numbers in the culture department.
we watched part of "so you think you can dance - canada" last night. wow. it makes me want to claw mine own eyes out. so embarrassing! if the cbc could just get their nads together to put together ONE good show that looked as good as even the crappiest offerings on subscription-tv in the u.s. (seriously...i would lap up a canadian show that looked half as good as "walker: texas ranger"), i could have something to stand behind. but no. it's always a cringe-inducing mimesis of what we THINK popular culture looks like in the u.s. and without the amplification or appropriation of like, japan or something. no...what we project back is a markham theatre production by way of honest ed's.
i also watched the new "beverly hills, 90210" last night. BOOORING. once you've gone "gossip girl" you really can't go back. it's so terrible! the writing! the acting! it's like a fig newton. i mean, the "high school" kids on "gossip girl" look old, but NOT as old as the "beverly hills, 90210" crew. and the parents! "gossip girl" has stockard channing as one of the upper east side matriarchs. "beverly hills" has lori loughlin. aunt becky! who looks 30! i'm done with it. it's a waste of my precious time and i refuse to give it another minute more.
*edit: weird convergence alert. i wrote most of this post during my lunch break at work...then i check my rss feeds and lo and behold, the delightful vixens over at gofugyourself have posted a similar (though infinitely more entertaining [keep in mind, this is their full-time job] rant on bev hills, neuf zero deux un zero. read it because it's hilarious. i wish i could be their friend.
the dotytron's new school (the one right close to us) is turning out okay. it's not the richie rich school. that school is franklin. according to "toronto life" by way of my friend D (i don't read that rag), franklin is one of those schools that rich parents compete and struggle to get their kids into (stealing addresses, 2 year long waiting lists, etc.). i hate them on principal. ha! the dotytron's school features a healthy dose of new chinese immigrants, so his attempts to learn mandarin earlier were not in vain. he's also gotten roped into teaching a ukulele program at lunch - the by-product of what he thought was an off-the-cuff comment to the principal. the school apparently has a large number of ukuleles. the dotytron, when sneakily prodded by the principal, commented that he could probably learn to play one. by the next day, word was out that he was running the program and i come home to find a suspicious dvd on ukulele instruction from one of the preeminent ukulele pedagogues in the world. this has resulted in me torturing the dotytron when he won't pay attention to me, by perching on the spare computer chair next to his desk in my pajamas while he's doing homework. energetically and tunelessly strumming away in time to whatever hip hop, drum'n'bass, or jazz tune he happens to be listening to. there's something inherently funny about playing instruments that are mini.
he's also taking this stupid course called "teaching for the inclusive classroom" which is basically "one world, one dream" class. it has been decided by the chickenheads that run the york education program that this course requires EIGHT HOURS of class time every two weeks. EIGHT HOURS! last week the dotytron played musical chairs for FORTY FIVE minutes. FORTY FIVE! and then they had to talk about it for ANOTHER HOUR because OF COURSE, the musical chairs exercise was used as a "metaphor" for how it feels to be excluded. i hate society and i hate teacher's college if that's what we're fostering. so what, there's no such thing as people being better than other people at stuff? no such thing as competition? everybody is equal at everything all the time? nobody ever loses? SOMETIMES YOU LOSE! i hate this nanny state, coddling business. that's PRECISELY the lack of reflexive, critical engagement that results in the sheer preponderance of idiots with whom i have to contend and even entertain on a daily business. appalling. it makes me want to enroll in teacher's college just so i can cause s**t.
i hate how people can be SO WRONG in their misguided, dumb efforts to do right. it's like the ndp. i want to punch jack layton in his stupid face. i want the green party lady to fix up and look like she TRIED to put herself together before being thrust into the media spotlight. i want there to be a candidate or a party that i can actually care about, instead of voting for the ndp by default because they're closest to what i kinda sorta want even though if i was stuck in a room with them i would probably vomit in my socks from the lack of leadership and constant dithering and "teaching for the inclusive classroom"-ness of it all.
sigh. end rant.
------------------------------------
tonight for dinner i made baja style fish tacos. took some whitefish (tilapia), dredged in seasoned flour, fried, in warm corn tortillas with finely shredded red cabbage tossed with lime juice, mexican crema, and diced avocadoes (guac, more like it).
fin.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
new dodgeball rules = teh lamez0rz
so the league implemented new rules all stealth-like and some of them are kind of good (speeding up the game, keeping balls in play, keeping teams from drawing out the time) and some of them are kind of lame (i'm not going to get into it here for the dodgeball uninitiated).
i finished season 1 of "gossip girl" and feverishly d/l the torrents for the first 3 episodes of season 2. the georgina (michelle trachtenberg) storyline kind of bit the big one...wasn't feeling it at all, but i'm pro the vanessa-nate hookup.
not much else to report...i should really stay off the comptor as i've got the suspicious twinges in my forearms that herald the beginning of an RSI. i'm doing some stretches and implementing a regular yoga regimen to circumvent that...no knitting for me tonight. we're going to curl up with "the wire: season 5" instead. this is AFTER our house-family biore nosestrip party. biores are so gross but equally so amazing. i'm so conflicted about them. adding to the turmoil is the fact that they practically cost $5 a strip or something equally outrageous for what amounts to water-activated glue on paper.
the dotytron made dinner tonight (with my cyber-intervention in the form of overly-detailed email instructions). we had ground pork and long beans with black bean sauce and udon noodles. delicious.
i also went to the hygienist today for my bi-annual cleaning and emerged feeling like i *DIDN'T* get hosed. this is huge as i'm inherently distrustful of dentists (i urge new readers to timeline my previous experience with the dental profession). i got a full cleaning done but i got all suspicious when the hygienist told me that i was also concurrently scheduled for a visit from the dentist and i arbitrarily refused the visit. don't they tack on like, an extra $50 for the guy to waltz in and poke me for 2 seconds? as usual, even though i floss EVERY DAY, i'm not doing it properly. flossing is a delicate art.
fin.
i finished season 1 of "gossip girl" and feverishly d/l the torrents for the first 3 episodes of season 2. the georgina (michelle trachtenberg) storyline kind of bit the big one...wasn't feeling it at all, but i'm pro the vanessa-nate hookup.
not much else to report...i should really stay off the comptor as i've got the suspicious twinges in my forearms that herald the beginning of an RSI. i'm doing some stretches and implementing a regular yoga regimen to circumvent that...no knitting for me tonight. we're going to curl up with "the wire: season 5" instead. this is AFTER our house-family biore nosestrip party. biores are so gross but equally so amazing. i'm so conflicted about them. adding to the turmoil is the fact that they practically cost $5 a strip or something equally outrageous for what amounts to water-activated glue on paper.
the dotytron made dinner tonight (with my cyber-intervention in the form of overly-detailed email instructions). we had ground pork and long beans with black bean sauce and udon noodles. delicious.i also went to the hygienist today for my bi-annual cleaning and emerged feeling like i *DIDN'T* get hosed. this is huge as i'm inherently distrustful of dentists (i urge new readers to timeline my previous experience with the dental profession). i got a full cleaning done but i got all suspicious when the hygienist told me that i was also concurrently scheduled for a visit from the dentist and i arbitrarily refused the visit. don't they tack on like, an extra $50 for the guy to waltz in and poke me for 2 seconds? as usual, even though i floss EVERY DAY, i'm not doing it properly. flossing is a delicate art.
fin.
Monday, September 15, 2008
"blind loves"
the subtitle of which should be, "or, don't ever live in slovakia" THAT message came through loud and clear in the TIFF documentary i saw last wednesday, much clearer than the competing messages of "entertaining" "well-edited" and "interesting subjects" which were all thoroughly sublimated. this is my longhand way of saying that the documentary was in no way deserving of the accolades it had received and i thought it was a proper snoozefest.
it was very detached, very cold, very much a "window into the lives of ___" examination, which is all very well and good, when ___ make great subjects. most of the blind people in this film did not make for great viewing...quite frankly, it all came off a little sad and forlorn and dull and very post-communist eastern bloc with all the grim greyness that reference suggests.
the real kicker was the Q&A. most people who know me know that there are few things i loathe more than a Q&A. in my experience, Q&As invite every last asinine observer of the human condition who has ever longed for a soapbox to come scuttling out of the woodwork like so many banal and pretentious cockroaches. they make my teeth hurt. K, on the other hand, has somehow miraculously avoided such prototypical Q&A experiences and earlier in the day had informed me of her and J's intention to stay. D and bwong also wanted to stay. so i stayed. and lo and behold, one of the first questions shot at the director was the following: "when working with the disabled, did you ever feel uncomfortable filming them?"
keep in mind, the director seemed to understand english okay, but had a very shaky grasp on speaking english. tickets to TIFF screenings are $20. TWENTY DOLLARS. tickets to gala screenings are THIRTY DOLLARS. i mention this because i would GLADLY pay that much to hire a slovakian-english translator for the 30 minutes it would take to conduct a Q&A, instead of watching the poor director grasp at the words necessary to present his no doubt sophisticated rebuttals and explications of his thought processes to the audience. it was excruciating.
then, the nitwit above, upon realizing (belatedly) that the question was a dud, came back to the REAL reason for asking a question in a Q&A, which in my experience has been to be self-serving in some capacity or another, "because well...when i was in south america working with the poor, i felt very uncomfortable filming them for my own gain" (i'm paraphrasing, but you get the gist). ugh. it's like first year university all over again. except the ENTIRE class is filled with that one dork who read kafka and "the catcher in the rye" and nietzsche in grade 11, for "fun" (read: to impress women) and now likes to show the world how they read above the regulated reading level. basically, it's a whole class full of ethan hawke. and mature students. yikes.
then someone ACTUALLY asked this little doozy, "i noticed in your film that you really referenced the great european masters of film...was that a conscious decision to emulate fellini?" *sound of crickets*
this reminds me of this exchange that took place between the dotytron, dr. rei and myself on saturday. we were talking about theatre and dr. rei was proclaiming that she doesn't get theatre or modern art. she mentioned how she had gone to see "waiting for godot," which was boring and consisted of, in her words, "watching two guys, day in, day out, saying, 'WHERE IS HE?!?' 'I CAN'T BELIEVE HE'S NOT HERE YET'" *insert dr. rei over-enunciating and dramatically looking at a fake watch*
it was very detached, very cold, very much a "window into the lives of ___" examination, which is all very well and good, when ___ make great subjects. most of the blind people in this film did not make for great viewing...quite frankly, it all came off a little sad and forlorn and dull and very post-communist eastern bloc with all the grim greyness that reference suggests.
the real kicker was the Q&A. most people who know me know that there are few things i loathe more than a Q&A. in my experience, Q&As invite every last asinine observer of the human condition who has ever longed for a soapbox to come scuttling out of the woodwork like so many banal and pretentious cockroaches. they make my teeth hurt. K, on the other hand, has somehow miraculously avoided such prototypical Q&A experiences and earlier in the day had informed me of her and J's intention to stay. D and bwong also wanted to stay. so i stayed. and lo and behold, one of the first questions shot at the director was the following: "when working with the disabled, did you ever feel uncomfortable filming them?"
keep in mind, the director seemed to understand english okay, but had a very shaky grasp on speaking english. tickets to TIFF screenings are $20. TWENTY DOLLARS. tickets to gala screenings are THIRTY DOLLARS. i mention this because i would GLADLY pay that much to hire a slovakian-english translator for the 30 minutes it would take to conduct a Q&A, instead of watching the poor director grasp at the words necessary to present his no doubt sophisticated rebuttals and explications of his thought processes to the audience. it was excruciating.
then, the nitwit above, upon realizing (belatedly) that the question was a dud, came back to the REAL reason for asking a question in a Q&A, which in my experience has been to be self-serving in some capacity or another, "because well...when i was in south america working with the poor, i felt very uncomfortable filming them for my own gain" (i'm paraphrasing, but you get the gist). ugh. it's like first year university all over again. except the ENTIRE class is filled with that one dork who read kafka and "the catcher in the rye" and nietzsche in grade 11, for "fun" (read: to impress women) and now likes to show the world how they read above the regulated reading level. basically, it's a whole class full of ethan hawke. and mature students. yikes.
then someone ACTUALLY asked this little doozy, "i noticed in your film that you really referenced the great european masters of film...was that a conscious decision to emulate fellini?" *sound of crickets*
this reminds me of this exchange that took place between the dotytron, dr. rei and myself on saturday. we were talking about theatre and dr. rei was proclaiming that she doesn't get theatre or modern art. she mentioned how she had gone to see "waiting for godot," which was boring and consisted of, in her words, "watching two guys, day in, day out, saying, 'WHERE IS HE?!?' 'I CAN'T BELIEVE HE'S NOT HERE YET'" *insert dr. rei over-enunciating and dramatically looking at a fake watch*
at which point, i interjected, "is that what it's about? i always thought it was two dudes expounding on philosophy and stuff" lol! i'm so gullible! can you believe that i actually almost let dr. rei lead me to believe that "waiting for godot" consisted of two guys going "WHERE IS HE?" hahahaha! she's a slippery little badger is that dr. rei. always trying to pounce on my innate initial instinct to take her seriously. she tried to convince me that what i thought danzig sounded like isn't what danzig actually sounds like. HA! wrong! danzig sounds EXACTLY what i thought danzig would sound like. this was a by-product of a conversation where it was revealed that faith no more doesn't sound anything like what i thought faith no more sounded like. i thought they sounded like danzig. on that, i'm willing to concede defeat.
on a different note, watching "gossip girl" with the dotytron is one of the best experiences of life. the dotytron's boundless enthusiasm is so infectious. the very first episode, as the cast scrolled across the screen, he exclaimed, "penn badgley? blake lively? chace crawford? they really went all out with these characters" when i told him that those were the actors names he got all saucer eyed. hilarious. his impression of nate is so funny. i'm so obsessed with gossip girl...i only have maybe 3 more episodes before i'm done the first season and have to watch them in real time and it's kind of breaking my heart. chuck and blair are the best couple of life. i love the redemption of the tortured bad boy. my friend I called on saturday to speak to the roomie and upon hearing her voice i screeched into the phone, "I LOVE GOSSIP GIRL!" i'm lucky it was her. i'm pretty sure if it had been a telemarketer, coming as i was off of mainlining 3 hours of episodes, i would have done pretty much the same thing.
tonight is the first dodgeball game of the season. afterwards, i'm rewarding myself with tacos al asador and i'm picking up takeout for the house family.
tonight is the first dodgeball game of the season. afterwards, i'm rewarding myself with tacos al asador and i'm picking up takeout for the house family.
fin.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
i gotta stop doing this...
and by "this" i mean, "overextending myself on the weekends." we're entertaining TWICE today. twice! that's ludicrous! we're having the dotytron's family over for brunch and then having our friends A and S and the dotytron's old thornhill friends D and her kids, and J over for an early bbq dinner. phew.
last night me, dr. rei and the dotytron went to the dodgeball party. we weren't planning on staying very long because they're all pretty much very much younger than us and i have a feeling we have a different sense of what it means to party...like, when i say "party" i mean "talk s**t and laugh all night" whereas i suspect that their definition of party encompasses mine, but also includes "watergun fights with red wine in the hallway" which gives me mild seizures just thinking about it. at any rate, i wanted to go to c64's thing, but in the end, we got called away cuz the roomie got sick and was sent home by the midwives who wanted to make sure that someone was home with her. the roomie is NEVER sick so we went home right away. it turns out she just had a migraine, but she'd never had one before, and was so disoriented when it first came on that she forgot our home phone number, which is what made the midwives reluctant to send her home without someone there. she's lucky. she has a great work support systems and we have a great home support system.
the party was aight. we went AFTER hoovering down 4 slices of pizza each in the space of about 5 minutes, and chasing it with the cheesecake brownies i made (pictured above). yesterday was pure bliss. i got rid of all the stuff i had to do by 1:30pm and was going to meet dr. rei and her parents downtown but bailed on that to lie at home on the couch, marathoning "gossip girl" and knitting. so happy. i effin love that show. it's a delectable treat. and a million times better than "the hills" which is way too vapid. "gossip girl" by comparison is a delicious, well-crafted little morsel...it's like a french macaroon and "the hills" is a cookie from a 7/11.
so the party last night was hosted by this girl on my team who's in canada for a bit on her 'round the world tour...she's from australia. the house she lives in is shared with 6 other people, one of whom is a japanese guy, who obviously doesn't speak much english. he introduced himself to me and i THOUGHT i heard the name "tucker." so i kept calling him by name, which is a trick i employ to make people feel included. "tucker! thanks for the snacks!" "it was nice meeting you tucker!" as we left, dr. rei burst into laughter, because she's pretty sure his name ISN'T tucker, and is in fact, taka or something. so i embarrassed myself hugely by calling this poor dude by the wrong name...and at that, the most IMPLAUSIBLE name imaginable (as the dotytron said, "you don't meet CAUCASIAN people named TUCKER!"). pretty brutes. tucker/taka was so cute though! he meekly brought over an array of bowls filled with sunchips, regular chips, and roasted peanuts and put them on the coffee table. so cute!!!!!!!! i was so full but i made me and dr. rei eat some. adorable. i really empathize with new immigrants like crazy. i'm the champion of the underdog.
this was brunch this morning. i quite like brunch entertaining. you get a solid visit in, but then you still have the rest of the day to do stuff. if only i could get more people on board! we had: bob evans sausage, swedish pancakes, blueberry whole wheat muffins, bourbon peach compote, juice, whipped cream, maple syrup, and momma d brought over a big platter of fruit and some brie with mushrooms. yum!
for the bbq tonight i'm making my famous burgers, with either cheddar cheese or the brie with mushrooms melted on top, and our friend J is bringing a salad, and i think i'm going to make a sauteed corn and scallion salad with lime. for dessert i made blueberry sour cream pie with almond streusel, which i'm going to serve with vanilla ice cream.
fin.
last night me, dr. rei and the dotytron went to the dodgeball party. we weren't planning on staying very long because they're all pretty much very much younger than us and i have a feeling we have a different sense of what it means to party...like, when i say "party" i mean "talk s**t and laugh all night" whereas i suspect that their definition of party encompasses mine, but also includes "watergun fights with red wine in the hallway" which gives me mild seizures just thinking about it. at any rate, i wanted to go to c64's thing, but in the end, we got called away cuz the roomie got sick and was sent home by the midwives who wanted to make sure that someone was home with her. the roomie is NEVER sick so we went home right away. it turns out she just had a migraine, but she'd never had one before, and was so disoriented when it first came on that she forgot our home phone number, which is what made the midwives reluctant to send her home without someone there. she's lucky. she has a great work support systems and we have a great home support system.
the party was aight. we went AFTER hoovering down 4 slices of pizza each in the space of about 5 minutes, and chasing it with the cheesecake brownies i made (pictured above). yesterday was pure bliss. i got rid of all the stuff i had to do by 1:30pm and was going to meet dr. rei and her parents downtown but bailed on that to lie at home on the couch, marathoning "gossip girl" and knitting. so happy. i effin love that show. it's a delectable treat. and a million times better than "the hills" which is way too vapid. "gossip girl" by comparison is a delicious, well-crafted little morsel...it's like a french macaroon and "the hills" is a cookie from a 7/11.so the party last night was hosted by this girl on my team who's in canada for a bit on her 'round the world tour...she's from australia. the house she lives in is shared with 6 other people, one of whom is a japanese guy, who obviously doesn't speak much english. he introduced himself to me and i THOUGHT i heard the name "tucker." so i kept calling him by name, which is a trick i employ to make people feel included. "tucker! thanks for the snacks!" "it was nice meeting you tucker!" as we left, dr. rei burst into laughter, because she's pretty sure his name ISN'T tucker, and is in fact, taka or something. so i embarrassed myself hugely by calling this poor dude by the wrong name...and at that, the most IMPLAUSIBLE name imaginable (as the dotytron said, "you don't meet CAUCASIAN people named TUCKER!"). pretty brutes. tucker/taka was so cute though! he meekly brought over an array of bowls filled with sunchips, regular chips, and roasted peanuts and put them on the coffee table. so cute!!!!!!!! i was so full but i made me and dr. rei eat some. adorable. i really empathize with new immigrants like crazy. i'm the champion of the underdog.
this was brunch this morning. i quite like brunch entertaining. you get a solid visit in, but then you still have the rest of the day to do stuff. if only i could get more people on board! we had: bob evans sausage, swedish pancakes, blueberry whole wheat muffins, bourbon peach compote, juice, whipped cream, maple syrup, and momma d brought over a big platter of fruit and some brie with mushrooms. yum! 
for the bbq tonight i'm making my famous burgers, with either cheddar cheese or the brie with mushrooms melted on top, and our friend J is bringing a salad, and i think i'm going to make a sauteed corn and scallion salad with lime. for dessert i made blueberry sour cream pie with almond streusel, which i'm going to serve with vanilla ice cream. fin.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
abbatoir cat
last night we had dinner with our friends, B & G. we originally wanted to go to foxley...but it was packed full of the members of broken social scene and their loser, plaid-shirted, trust fund skeevy hangers-on. it was an hour long wait. i refuse to wait an hour for tapas. especially on ossington. then we wandered over to pizza libretto. but it was packed full of the readership of toronto life who had left their babies and bugaboo strollers at home. it was an hour long wait. i refuse to wait an hour for pizza. especially on ossington.
i had a feeling this was going to happen. i'm starting to hate ossington as a street. i had compiled a list of backup options during the day because of the aforementioned feeling. we consulted the list and ended up at the niagara street cafe. the website has annoying flash and a ghey song. fast-forward that shiz. i would describe the menu as "new american" or "urban farmstead." i didn't make up those terms. the food world did. the space is nice, with a big patio...we opted to sit outside because the weather was sultry.
we started off with sliced and warmed fred's potato sourdough bread with a caramelized onion and arbequina olive oil jam. this was tasty (but i was also very, very hungry).
we shared a bunch of appetizers.
we had poached ontario artichokes with lemon vinaigrette and bacon mayo. this was tasty...they had cleaned the artichokes until you were at the mostly tender leaves near the heart...you had to pull the leaves off, dip them in the bacon mayo and then scrape them against your bottom teeth. my general preference is an entirely cleaned artichoke that you can just go to town on, but this was nice.
then we had their heirloom tomato and goat cheese tartelette with zucchini blossoms and greens. i didn't see any zucchini blossoms, but this was also yummy...the tomato was really ripe and the goat cheese had been whipped and was quite mild. the stack sat on top of a flaky pastry square.
rabbit rillettes with bacon jam, grainy mustard, and house preserve. i didn't taste any of the accoutrements but the rabbit rillettes was tender, delicate, fine textured, with a faint lemon flavour. delicious.
raspberry point oysters with cucumber mint salad, sugar-chili vinaigrette, and raspberry szechuan pepper granita. i tasted the first two accompaniments, but not the raspberry granita thing (probably superfluous anyway). the oysters were cold and the other elements paired with the brininess well...a good amount of heat offset by the crisp texture of the crunchy cucumber.
i went halfsies with the dotytron. i ordered the braised pig's cheek and confit of tongue with sprouts and lentil salad. i really loved the tenderness of the tongue and the braised pig's cheek had been crisped up and was super-tasty. the meat portion was quite small and i definitely did NOT like the taste of the raw, grassy sprouts with the lentils. it made everything taste really alfalfa-y and the greenness wasn't what the otherwise warm, round, plate needed.
the dotytron ordered the slow cooked cumbrae's brisket with asian greens, baby shitakes, and panko egg yolk. this i dug. the brisket was moist, fatty, rich, and beefy. the panko egg yolk was flash-fried and broke open over the whole dish (and we all know how much i loves raw egg yolk). i personally could have done with more conventional greens instead of the asian greens. i thought the baby shanghai choi was again, a little too "green" tasting and chewy for the dish. i think baby snap peas and baby carrots would have been a better match, but overall, i thought it was well cooked. i would order this again over my dish.
for dessert i ordered the almond milk panna cotta with macerated cherries and biscotti. i love almond milk, ESPECIALLY in a panna cotta. this flavour was quite subdued...i've had punchier, stronger almond milk panna cottas before, but it was a nice finish to a meal. the panna cotta was lighter than i personally prefer and the cherries were a bit of an afterthought. i think i also would have enjoyed the dessert if it had been served a little cooler. the biscotti was crisp and crumbly...i really liked the texture and flavour of it (faintly lemon).
the dotytron got the soma chocolate tart with salted caramel sauce and cardamom chantilly (whipped cream to you and i). the tart was rich and bitter with an acceptably flaky crust. the salted caramel sauce was barely present on the plate and the cardamom whipped cream was a nice gesture, but unnecessary.
overall, i'd go there again, EXCEPT for the fact that near the end of the meal, the nearby abbatoir must have received a shipment, because the air was suddenly suffused with a distinctly barnyard funk that tempered the experience slightly. if you sit inside, you're fine. we went on a hunt for the abbatoir and saw the back end of it, complete with a mangy, feral, abbatoir cat. i think the other thing about niagara cafe is that the menu is tiny, so if they don't change it up enough, then it wasn't so extraordinary that i'd rush back as there weren't that many things on the menu that i was interested in revisiting. the apps were stronger than the mains, i thought. it was quite affordable though. for 4 people, 2 bottles of wine, 3 courses each we paid $315 including tax and tip. i thought that was pretty decent.
today is a day of errand-doing. i've made a pie and blueberry muffins and done two loads of laundry and laboriously punched out 4 packs of stencil letters and alphabetized them to make the t-shirt making a little easier tonight. tonight is my dodgeball t-shirt making party. i'm not planning on staying too long...i'm also thinking of hitting up the why? festival...which is a party that my buddy c64 is throwing featuring bogdan raczynski from rephlex (aphex twin's label) records. i'm on the fence because i ALSO want to come home and sit on the couch and watch gossip girl and knit with the dotytron. it's a tough call.
i was going to go and check out grocery-store clothes at joe fresh...but the roomie wants to come too so i've put that on hold. i'm running on money fumes right now. september and august have both been uncharacteristically expensive months so i'm running on a deficit. luckily, october is a 3 paycheck month...the sucky thing is that the deficit i'm running cuts into my plans to dump my 3rd paycheck into my savings account which i'm trying to bulk up in case my contract doesn't get renewed. it's a tough life. the other sucky thing is...i do need to continue shoring up my work wardrobe with more professional fall/winter work clothes. i can't keep falling on the "casual" side of office casual.
fin.
i had a feeling this was going to happen. i'm starting to hate ossington as a street. i had compiled a list of backup options during the day because of the aforementioned feeling. we consulted the list and ended up at the niagara street cafe. the website has annoying flash and a ghey song. fast-forward that shiz. i would describe the menu as "new american" or "urban farmstead." i didn't make up those terms. the food world did. the space is nice, with a big patio...we opted to sit outside because the weather was sultry.
we started off with sliced and warmed fred's potato sourdough bread with a caramelized onion and arbequina olive oil jam. this was tasty (but i was also very, very hungry).we shared a bunch of appetizers.
we had poached ontario artichokes with lemon vinaigrette and bacon mayo. this was tasty...they had cleaned the artichokes until you were at the mostly tender leaves near the heart...you had to pull the leaves off, dip them in the bacon mayo and then scrape them against your bottom teeth. my general preference is an entirely cleaned artichoke that you can just go to town on, but this was nice. 
then we had their heirloom tomato and goat cheese tartelette with zucchini blossoms and greens. i didn't see any zucchini blossoms, but this was also yummy...the tomato was really ripe and the goat cheese had been whipped and was quite mild. the stack sat on top of a flaky pastry square.
rabbit rillettes with bacon jam, grainy mustard, and house preserve. i didn't taste any of the accoutrements but the rabbit rillettes was tender, delicate, fine textured, with a faint lemon flavour. delicious.
raspberry point oysters with cucumber mint salad, sugar-chili vinaigrette, and raspberry szechuan pepper granita. i tasted the first two accompaniments, but not the raspberry granita thing (probably superfluous anyway). the oysters were cold and the other elements paired with the brininess well...a good amount of heat offset by the crisp texture of the crunchy cucumber.
i went halfsies with the dotytron. i ordered the braised pig's cheek and confit of tongue with sprouts and lentil salad. i really loved the tenderness of the tongue and the braised pig's cheek had been crisped up and was super-tasty. the meat portion was quite small and i definitely did NOT like the taste of the raw, grassy sprouts with the lentils. it made everything taste really alfalfa-y and the greenness wasn't what the otherwise warm, round, plate needed. 
the dotytron ordered the slow cooked cumbrae's brisket with asian greens, baby shitakes, and panko egg yolk. this i dug. the brisket was moist, fatty, rich, and beefy. the panko egg yolk was flash-fried and broke open over the whole dish (and we all know how much i loves raw egg yolk). i personally could have done with more conventional greens instead of the asian greens. i thought the baby shanghai choi was again, a little too "green" tasting and chewy for the dish. i think baby snap peas and baby carrots would have been a better match, but overall, i thought it was well cooked. i would order this again over my dish.
for dessert i ordered the almond milk panna cotta with macerated cherries and biscotti. i love almond milk, ESPECIALLY in a panna cotta. this flavour was quite subdued...i've had punchier, stronger almond milk panna cottas before, but it was a nice finish to a meal. the panna cotta was lighter than i personally prefer and the cherries were a bit of an afterthought. i think i also would have enjoyed the dessert if it had been served a little cooler. the biscotti was crisp and crumbly...i really liked the texture and flavour of it (faintly lemon).
the dotytron got the soma chocolate tart with salted caramel sauce and cardamom chantilly (whipped cream to you and i). the tart was rich and bitter with an acceptably flaky crust. the salted caramel sauce was barely present on the plate and the cardamom whipped cream was a nice gesture, but unnecessary. overall, i'd go there again, EXCEPT for the fact that near the end of the meal, the nearby abbatoir must have received a shipment, because the air was suddenly suffused with a distinctly barnyard funk that tempered the experience slightly. if you sit inside, you're fine. we went on a hunt for the abbatoir and saw the back end of it, complete with a mangy, feral, abbatoir cat. i think the other thing about niagara cafe is that the menu is tiny, so if they don't change it up enough, then it wasn't so extraordinary that i'd rush back as there weren't that many things on the menu that i was interested in revisiting. the apps were stronger than the mains, i thought. it was quite affordable though. for 4 people, 2 bottles of wine, 3 courses each we paid $315 including tax and tip. i thought that was pretty decent.
today is a day of errand-doing. i've made a pie and blueberry muffins and done two loads of laundry and laboriously punched out 4 packs of stencil letters and alphabetized them to make the t-shirt making a little easier tonight. tonight is my dodgeball t-shirt making party. i'm not planning on staying too long...i'm also thinking of hitting up the why? festival...which is a party that my buddy c64 is throwing featuring bogdan raczynski from rephlex (aphex twin's label) records. i'm on the fence because i ALSO want to come home and sit on the couch and watch gossip girl and knit with the dotytron. it's a tough call.
i was going to go and check out grocery-store clothes at joe fresh...but the roomie wants to come too so i've put that on hold. i'm running on money fumes right now. september and august have both been uncharacteristically expensive months so i'm running on a deficit. luckily, october is a 3 paycheck month...the sucky thing is that the deficit i'm running cuts into my plans to dump my 3rd paycheck into my savings account which i'm trying to bulk up in case my contract doesn't get renewed. it's a tough life. the other sucky thing is...i do need to continue shoring up my work wardrobe with more professional fall/winter work clothes. i can't keep falling on the "casual" side of office casual.
fin.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
roget's v. the world
i know K is waiting for my "scathing" (her words) review of "blind loves"...but i'm afraid she'll have to wait a day or two longer (but isn't the above review enough?) in light of the fact that yesterday heralded the firing up of the large hadron collider (LHC) by the european organization for nuclear research (CERN) - thereby kick-starting not only the very real possibility that we'll be able to replicate the events milliseconds after the big bang, discover new particles, AND perhaps create a black hole and get sucked into an infinite singularity, but also adding yet ANOTHER cause for concern in my growing list of things to fret and worry over (currently taking pride of place on that list: diabetes, cancer, aneurysms, and dementia) - i'm going to review cormac mccarthy's "the road": a pulitzer prize winning novel that was ALSO given the benediction of no less an authority than the mighty and unimpeachable oprah herself.
"the road" is a post-apocalyptic tale to end all post-apocalyptic tales (quite fitting, for the genre). it follows the story of a man and his child (whose age i peg at around 8 or 9) as they spend endless days walking through a charred, benighted, sepulchral america after a nameless catastrophe (the implication is war, perhaps of the nuclear variety). the landscape is grey, the sun can't penetrate the ash-sodden atmosphere, twisted, blackened trees claw at an unyielding and remote sky. everything is burned and there is no animal, bird, or vegetable life...no anything but this man and this boy, bound by their blood and their faith and their dumb humanity to continue to exist. what people there are who haven't succumbed to starvation and the worst of humanity in crisis have turned to cannibalism. it's a gross, haunting, bleak existence (if you can call it that), made all the more potent by mccarthy's sparse, staccato prose, stripped of the adornment of unnecessary punctuation (commas and periods). people speak in clipped statements that at the same time intimate at the immeasurably vast richness of what was lost...the spaces between the words and what isn't said becomes its own character and landscape in the novel.
i couldn't put it down, even as it ate away at me. it's a terse, powerful, novel that uses silence and negative space to create a chiaroscuro portrait of what we can be, at our very best and worst. it's at once hopeless and hopeful.
regular readers know that i have a somewhat unhealthy preoccupation with the apocalypse...i've read a bunch of the hallmarks of that genre, i appreciate the thought experiments at work and the reflection of our current situation that the totality of the end highlights so concisely. i like the idea of starting over, off the grid, re-making the world from scratch. mccarthy takes these idyllic pastoral fantasies and smashes them against immutable, total, bleakness. this book beat the apocalypse out of me. it made me deeply afraid and unsettled. it was a difficult read and it was also insidious in its' ability to linger in my thoughts even as i went about my day-to-day business of affirming my existence.
the big bedroom reorganization of aught 8 was preceded by a systematic culling of our bookcase by yours truly. i had a pile of fiction and non-fiction that i was ready to donate to the library. shortly after i finished reading "the road," we were packing up titles to drop off. as i piled books into milk crates, i hesitated over my copy of roget's thesaurus. very rarely do i flip open a print dictionary or thesaurus anymore - it's much easier and intuitive to turn to dictionary.com, or merriam-webster online. the darkness of "the road" stayed with me though...enough so that i spared my thesaurus its' charitable fate. i couldn't help but think of a world in which our ivory towers have burned down to twisted skeletal spires and when our memories of what we could be have been swept away by the grim spectre of survival. so i slipped it back on the shelf. an insurance policy against regression.
*that's not the same cover as the book that i read, but it's the creepiest and most fitting of all the ones i've seen online
-----------------------------
in a bid for seasonality last night i nixed the asparagus and lemon in the spaghetti and threw myself into fall with a shitake, button, and oyster mushroom pasta with thyme, onions, and pecorino. 
D made a green bean salad with feta and pecans, vinaigrette and dice onion.dorie greenspan plum cake made a repeat appearance on the table and was better after a day or two...the flavours had deepened and mellowed and turned a little richer. it also suited the creamy sweetness of ice cream better than whipped cream. so, maybe it'll get filed away for a future revisit after all.
tonight i continued the late summer/early fall assault with mennonite garlic farmer's sausage braised in caramelized onions and leffe beer. sided with a summer succotash of green beans and corn kernals sauteed in crisp pancetta (an amazing combo), and D's leftover bean salad tossed on baby spinach leaves with some balsamic vinaigrette - the result of fridge-cleaning.fin.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
gossip girl = unicorn
ummm...so gossip girl is kind of AMAZING. i loves it. it's good, solid, fashion-y, trashy fun. completely over-the-top, but what do you expect from an expose of the lives of rich "teenagers" on the upper east side? the actors all have weird, magical, mythical creature names like: blake lively! leighton meester! penn badgley! chase crawford! sophie lancelot! (okay, i made the last one up). they look 27!!! it's steamy and racy and features awesome nyc locales and outfits. also...BEST SOUNDTRACK EVER! and by best soundtrack ever, read: they played "the way i r" AND akon's "don't matter" in the same episode. BEST BEST BEST!for some reason, i find it way more believable than the o.c., which was overwrought but also kind of not? i dunno...could never get into the o.c...didn't buy the whole kid-who-looks-like-a-lion-cub-from-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-who-spends-the-whole-series-brawling angle. i liked seth and summer, but the tone was weird and the conversations seemed all tv/real world talky (like, gilmore girls or even dawson's creek...where the characters speak in this hyper-literate way that's supposedto be realistic...as opposed to when characters speak in a hyper-literate obviously contrived way that makes perfect sense in tv-land [ie. frasier???? for lack of a better example]). plus, i kind of hate mischa barton.
the point is, the o.c. always looked hella low budg but gossip girl doesn't. and i think i have a crush on penn badgley. i mean, as much as i loved logan echolls (played by the normal-named jason dohring) on v-mars, i have to admit it was the bruised, snarky character i loved, not so much the packaging. penn badgley, however, is a cool drink of water on a hot summer's day. he is foine. ed westwick's ("chuck") sleepy bedroom eyes do kind of gross me out. it doesn't help that they outfit him as the serpentine, sleazy-brit (even though he plays an american) second coming of oscar wilde. it's gross! the actual "gossip girl" part of it (voiced by veronica mars! convergence) is kinda ghey but she just pops in briefly. the other annoying thing is that two sole minority characters have nothing to do but stand there and be mostly mute, affirmative-action, place fillers.
wow. this breathless paean to all things gossip girl might very well give you the impression that all i fill my head with are pop culture puff pieces. not true! tonight i'm going to see "blind loves" at the toronto international film festival. it's been getting rave reviews. a tip of the hat to K for doing the legwork. TIFF is way too unwieldy a festival for me. most of the stuff i want to see comes out anyway. that's why it's a boon when you have a friend like K who is willing to scour the massive tomb of a schedule/film list and present you with a neat and tidy short list of potentials replete with screening times and locations. amazing! she should be a film festival gun-for-hire. my friend D is also coming.
D's coming over for dinner. she's making a salad. i'm making spaghetti with asparagus, shitakes, and lemon. leftover plum cake with vanilla ice cream for dessert.
fin.
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
back to school = meltdown?
or maybe it's just me. suffice it to say that i had a grade A wig-out at the dotytron this morning as i was leaving the house because he wouldn't master the dodgeball mix i had assembled for the monday night iteration of my team, "the west coast rap ball-stars." more correctly, saint that he is, he agreed to master it (it's an old school/new school hip hop mix and the levels are all over the place) but didn't want to chop it up into discrete tracks again. his reasoning was that he didn't have the time. which (of course) resulted in me having a rage blackout and flouncing out of the house and threatening to cancel all our social engagements if he "doesn't have time."
of course, by the time i went to the bank to get my ttc money, the dotytron and i converged on the corner on our way into the subway station and calmer heads had prevailed and i realized that i was being a bumblehead. ah, life. heehee. what can i say...things get all jumbled up in the rolling, cavernous recesses of my brains sometimes. i'm a jumble brain. and seriously...this is NOTHING compared to the flash-fire apocalyptica that i used to be a victim of, back when i was pumping myself full of artificial hormones. and the dotytron freaks out too! i just never tell you about them! he almost had a few mental breakdowns when we did the big studio/bedroom retrofit a few weekends ago. put him within a five millimetre radius of ikea furniture and an allan key and it's OVER. we had to get a new linen storage thing because our old ikea one became his mortal nemesis over the course of a few minutes...i think he ended up punching it into submission (in his defense, the thing would topple over if you looked at it funny and it was so ungainly and awkward it was like trying to get a comatose andre the giant into a pair of pantyhose while hauling him up a spiral staircase).
i've got a lot to keep track of! back to school has dire implications on the meal planning. meals with portable leftovers have to be strategically situated within the week so that the roomie and the dotytron have stuff to pack for lunches. portable, quasi-healthy, mid-day snacks have to be made (right now we've got granola bars with pumpkin seeds, almonds, sunflower seeds, coconut, raisins), grocery shopping AND cooking are now all me, and i've got all my extracurricular activities to slot in.
today after work i'm meeting up with dr. rei and H and baby D and we're going to get supplies for my dodgeball team to make our t-shirts for the monday nights (oh yes, i'm playing TWO nights of dodgeball this fall...yes!). my brother's team is ALSO playing on sundays and mondays. dun dun duuuuuuuuun. my sunday night team is called the ballbarians and my t-shirt name is "big beef and cheddar." for monday nights, we had to pick a rap alter ego. i'm torn between "tony! toni! tone! (all 3 of them)" or dr. rei's pick: "buckshot shorty." they're both pretty apt.
then i'm going home to make dinner and park my butt in front of the tv and wax my upper lip and knit. i rented season 1, disc 1 of "gossip girl." i'm going to try it on for size. we'll see if it fits. i don't like my teen stuff too adult and too whatup bring the drama. i like there to be some substance to it (come back to me, veronica mars and buffy!). not much on my tv radar for the fall season outside of joss whedon's new offering, "dollhouse." other than that...i've got gossip girl, season 4 of battlestar, generation kill, season 4 of entourage, and season 5 of the wire on backlog to keep me occupied. i'll wait til the dust settles on the fall season and pick through the survivors. i'm thinking of picking up "mad men," but other than the period-correctness of it, i gotta say, it looks kind of boring.
-------------------------------------
for dinner tonight i made a salad of baby spinach and baby arugala, roasted figs (sprinkled figs with sugar and pan roasted with oil, salt, and pepper), oven crisped pancetta, and breaded, fried, buffalo mozzarella with some crusty toast spread with roasted garlic butter.
fin.
of course, by the time i went to the bank to get my ttc money, the dotytron and i converged on the corner on our way into the subway station and calmer heads had prevailed and i realized that i was being a bumblehead. ah, life. heehee. what can i say...things get all jumbled up in the rolling, cavernous recesses of my brains sometimes. i'm a jumble brain. and seriously...this is NOTHING compared to the flash-fire apocalyptica that i used to be a victim of, back when i was pumping myself full of artificial hormones. and the dotytron freaks out too! i just never tell you about them! he almost had a few mental breakdowns when we did the big studio/bedroom retrofit a few weekends ago. put him within a five millimetre radius of ikea furniture and an allan key and it's OVER. we had to get a new linen storage thing because our old ikea one became his mortal nemesis over the course of a few minutes...i think he ended up punching it into submission (in his defense, the thing would topple over if you looked at it funny and it was so ungainly and awkward it was like trying to get a comatose andre the giant into a pair of pantyhose while hauling him up a spiral staircase).
i've got a lot to keep track of! back to school has dire implications on the meal planning. meals with portable leftovers have to be strategically situated within the week so that the roomie and the dotytron have stuff to pack for lunches. portable, quasi-healthy, mid-day snacks have to be made (right now we've got granola bars with pumpkin seeds, almonds, sunflower seeds, coconut, raisins), grocery shopping AND cooking are now all me, and i've got all my extracurricular activities to slot in.
today after work i'm meeting up with dr. rei and H and baby D and we're going to get supplies for my dodgeball team to make our t-shirts for the monday nights (oh yes, i'm playing TWO nights of dodgeball this fall...yes!). my brother's team is ALSO playing on sundays and mondays. dun dun duuuuuuuuun. my sunday night team is called the ballbarians and my t-shirt name is "big beef and cheddar." for monday nights, we had to pick a rap alter ego. i'm torn between "tony! toni! tone! (all 3 of them)" or dr. rei's pick: "buckshot shorty." they're both pretty apt.
then i'm going home to make dinner and park my butt in front of the tv and wax my upper lip and knit. i rented season 1, disc 1 of "gossip girl." i'm going to try it on for size. we'll see if it fits. i don't like my teen stuff too adult and too whatup bring the drama. i like there to be some substance to it (come back to me, veronica mars and buffy!). not much on my tv radar for the fall season outside of joss whedon's new offering, "dollhouse." other than that...i've got gossip girl, season 4 of battlestar, generation kill, season 4 of entourage, and season 5 of the wire on backlog to keep me occupied. i'll wait til the dust settles on the fall season and pick through the survivors. i'm thinking of picking up "mad men," but other than the period-correctness of it, i gotta say, it looks kind of boring.
-------------------------------------
for dinner tonight i made a salad of baby spinach and baby arugala, roasted figs (sprinkled figs with sugar and pan roasted with oil, salt, and pepper), oven crisped pancetta, and breaded, fried, buffalo mozzarella with some crusty toast spread with roasted garlic butter.fin.
Monday, September 08, 2008
i've said it before...
and i'll say it again...itunes and apple are a bunch of no-good, sneaky, a** bandits. i had really high hopes for winamp with their large bento skin...but alas, it wasn't to be. constant, unremitting crashing has forced me to go slinking back to itunes with my tail between my legs, to the accompaniment of the dotytron, pantomiming bloat along with dry-heaving, bubbly sound effects.
boooooooo...i hate being forced to do anything.
in other news...i tried taking a stand against the ongoing intellectual entropy that's a hallmark of modern western culture today - i failed miserably. i don't want to get into details...suffice to say that the concept of comparable, authoritative information is an elusive chimera.
i'm clearly cranky right now. i just spent about 2 hours bundling cables that run betwixt and between my computer/printer/speakers/monitor/external hard drive/usb hub, etc. it was maddening, dusty work and then i had to contend with a recalcitrant ipod and stupid, fascist itunes on top of it. and now it's 10:00pm and i'm going to bed in a hour. yay.
this is a picture of the dimply plum cake i made last night for dessert. it's a dorie greenspan recipe. dorie greenspan is lionized in the food blog world and her recipes are the inspiration for a monthly series called "daring bakers" where food bloggers the world over all tackle one of her recipes a month and then breathlessly recount every detail of its' execution.
well, i gotta say...i've yet to be impressed by a dorie greenspan recipe. this plum cake looked really pretty but the taste fell flat. it just tasted like nothing much at all...like a non-cake; this after i took the liberties of upping the amount of cinnamon called for in the cake and adding some ground caradmom. the cake baked up with a nice crusty top, but the sides were sawdusty and bready and flavourless. this cake just needed more. more tenderness, more crumble, more sweetness, more of a distinctive flavour. i'll probably tool around with it because i do like the look of it...and there's something so homespun and charming about a plum cake served with a drift of whipped cream.
this is what i made for dinner tonight. i took two thin slices of eggplant and sandwiched them around a filling of goat's cheese run through in a food processor with some basil, salt, and pepper. then i took the eggplant sandwiches and breaded them and fried them. delicious! few things benefit more from a coating of flour, egg, and breadcrumb/panko than eggplant. the result was a crisp coating surrounding a barely solid mess of basil-flavoured eggplant custard. sooo good. i ate 5 of 'em.
alongside i made a quick chickpea salad. warm chickpeas with diced red onion, garlic, T's chilies, lemon juice, parsley, salt and pepper.
fin.
boooooooo...i hate being forced to do anything.
in other news...i tried taking a stand against the ongoing intellectual entropy that's a hallmark of modern western culture today - i failed miserably. i don't want to get into details...suffice to say that the concept of comparable, authoritative information is an elusive chimera.
i'm clearly cranky right now. i just spent about 2 hours bundling cables that run betwixt and between my computer/printer/speakers/monitor/external hard drive/usb hub, etc. it was maddening, dusty work and then i had to contend with a recalcitrant ipod and stupid, fascist itunes on top of it. and now it's 10:00pm and i'm going to bed in a hour. yay.
this is a picture of the dimply plum cake i made last night for dessert. it's a dorie greenspan recipe. dorie greenspan is lionized in the food blog world and her recipes are the inspiration for a monthly series called "daring bakers" where food bloggers the world over all tackle one of her recipes a month and then breathlessly recount every detail of its' execution.well, i gotta say...i've yet to be impressed by a dorie greenspan recipe. this plum cake looked really pretty but the taste fell flat. it just tasted like nothing much at all...like a non-cake; this after i took the liberties of upping the amount of cinnamon called for in the cake and adding some ground caradmom. the cake baked up with a nice crusty top, but the sides were sawdusty and bready and flavourless. this cake just needed more. more tenderness, more crumble, more sweetness, more of a distinctive flavour. i'll probably tool around with it because i do like the look of it...and there's something so homespun and charming about a plum cake served with a drift of whipped cream.
this is what i made for dinner tonight. i took two thin slices of eggplant and sandwiched them around a filling of goat's cheese run through in a food processor with some basil, salt, and pepper. then i took the eggplant sandwiches and breaded them and fried them. delicious! few things benefit more from a coating of flour, egg, and breadcrumb/panko than eggplant. the result was a crisp coating surrounding a barely solid mess of basil-flavoured eggplant custard. sooo good. i ate 5 of 'em.
alongside i made a quick chickpea salad. warm chickpeas with diced red onion, garlic, T's chilies, lemon juice, parsley, salt and pepper.
fin.
Sunday, September 07, 2008
so much for one world, one dream
the dotytron is really messed up about everything that went down with his school placement...and now that i've heard the whole story, it seems like it's pretty blatant and obvious discrimination and it's got me and my family hoppin' mad. my mum and sister and outlaw bro (the lawyerly types) are all up in arms and getting riled and my mum is firing on all pistons.
--------------------
in other news...the concert was amazing. heart was THE BEST. they played most of the hits, but for some reason opted to play a who cover song and a led zeppelin cover...which doesn't make that much sense but whatever. nancy and ann are effin' incredible. best women rockers of all time...seriously...who can test? i know there are some people out there who would claim that the breeders, or l7 or some of those other washington/grunge-era women rockers were the shiznit...but seriously? seriously? in terms of longevity of the career and pure songwriting and execution, heart slaughters them all.
and little arnel pineda killed it. so cute! jumping around the stage. he's basically the reincarnation of steve perry before steve perry is even dead.
yesterday we hung around the house and went for dim sum and then my brother bought a wii so that's what we did all night. we're going for lunch today and then heading back home.
tonight we're having bwong over for dinner and then chilling and maybe going to see the roomie's friend from b.c.'s band playing at sneaky dee's.
fin.
--------------------
in other news...the concert was amazing. heart was THE BEST. they played most of the hits, but for some reason opted to play a who cover song and a led zeppelin cover...which doesn't make that much sense but whatever. nancy and ann are effin' incredible. best women rockers of all time...seriously...who can test? i know there are some people out there who would claim that the breeders, or l7 or some of those other washington/grunge-era women rockers were the shiznit...but seriously? seriously? in terms of longevity of the career and pure songwriting and execution, heart slaughters them all.
and little arnel pineda killed it. so cute! jumping around the stage. he's basically the reincarnation of steve perry before steve perry is even dead.
yesterday we hung around the house and went for dim sum and then my brother bought a wii so that's what we did all night. we're going for lunch today and then heading back home.
tonight we're having bwong over for dinner and then chilling and maybe going to see the roomie's friend from b.c.'s band playing at sneaky dee's.
fin.
Friday, September 05, 2008
it's pineda-time!
yessssssssssss! the long awaited 80s hair-rock-schlock fest has arrived! tonight i'll be staying dry (hopefully) and winding and dancing and singing along to the soaring vocal acrobatics of ann wilson (heart) and arnel pineda (journey). i'm so pumped! my sis and outlaw bro are picking me up from work and then we're going to pick up some grub and then head to the amphitheatre where we're meeting up with the dotytron and S. i'm calling it as coug-fest 08 for sheezy.
yesterday i went to get my security pass renewed and when i mentioned my weekend plans to the woman who processes them she flipped out! she's going to see if she can get tickets...lol! it was so cute...she was so pumped. apparently she saw styx a couple of years ago and got invited to after-party with the band. amaze.
then S is coming back with us for a sleepover and haircut if there's time (i have mad dead-ends, yo!) and then we're spending all saturday up in markham eating our faces off. sunday we'll have an early lunch and then head back downtown, where we're having dinner with bwong and then maybe hitting the roomie's friend from b.c.'s band's show at sneaky dee's. holy eff. just another ram-jammed weekend at the lagerfelds. phew!
the dotytron is un petit peu bummed because he's getting switched out of his current placement which he's already fallen in love with. apparently the fact that the teachers-in-training placed at the catholic school weren't catholic caused a problem with the v.p. the good news is the dotytron's new placement is literally a 5 minute walk from our house.
the bad news is...he really loved his original placement, which was in the scarbs (he reps the scarbs so hard now and it makes me love him even more). he got along really super well with his mentor teacher and felt he could learn a lot from her. the class was huge (35 kids) and was SO diverse with a lot of people from mixed economic backgrounds and levels of english proficiency, and a huge contingent of new immigrants.
key characters who i was eagerly anticipating hearing stories about included:
- a kid who was legally blind
- a kid who is the classic trouble maker, attention hog (ie. while sitting in the corner after getting in trouble, will ask the dotytron, "hey man...can you beatbox?") and drops lines like tracy jordan (both in delivery and content). for example, this kid is friends with a much smaller ) kid who is really well adjusted and is apparently really good with video games. kid B was telling the dotytron, "yeah, the first time i picked up a video game, i was just really good at it, i was a natural," at which point, kid A interjects with, "the first time i picked up a video game, I ATE THE CD! i did! swear on my life!" lol! kid A is also obsessed with this other kid in the class who's straight out of jamaica and talks with the thickest patois. kid A apparently can't get enough of the way jamaican kid talks.
- there's also a crew of slick little tykes straight out of columbia with crazy faux-hawk pompadour hairstyles who wear the best, hippest clothes and look like little men. the columbian kids also DESTROY the other kids at soccer. the dotytron says it's ridiculous...they're like little (apparently they're all really short) ballerinas. haha! so this one kid was complaining about not wanting to play soccer because all the columbian kids are so good at it and the teacher was saying that that's not true, it's a stereotype, etc. the kid waits for the teacher to leave, turns to the dotytron and says, "they're all good at soccer, aren't they!" to which the dotytron tried to explain that columbia was a big country, it's a stereotype, etc. so the dotytron asks complaining kid what his ethnic background is, to try to draw a parallel with stereotyping. the kid is iraqi so the dotytron was stuck, trying to think of a common misconception about iraqis that was suitable for that context. lol! according to the complainer kid, iraqis are known for being good at soccer...so there you have it...make sense of that how you will.
booooooooooooooooooooooo...i think the dotytron is so good with kids and ESPECIALLY amazing with kids who are all slick and street and from different backgrounds that he'd do really well in the scarbs...cuz the scarbs needs the love of a good dotytron. we checked out the school he's going to...it looks pretty slick and homogenous. and i'm hoping it's not all riverdale-privileged. i also hope he gets along as well with his mentor as he did with his current one...it sucks going from a situation that you know is amazing and a good fit to one that might be an entirely different story.
fin.
yesterday i went to get my security pass renewed and when i mentioned my weekend plans to the woman who processes them she flipped out! she's going to see if she can get tickets...lol! it was so cute...she was so pumped. apparently she saw styx a couple of years ago and got invited to after-party with the band. amaze.
then S is coming back with us for a sleepover and haircut if there's time (i have mad dead-ends, yo!) and then we're spending all saturday up in markham eating our faces off. sunday we'll have an early lunch and then head back downtown, where we're having dinner with bwong and then maybe hitting the roomie's friend from b.c.'s band's show at sneaky dee's. holy eff. just another ram-jammed weekend at the lagerfelds. phew!
the dotytron is un petit peu bummed because he's getting switched out of his current placement which he's already fallen in love with. apparently the fact that the teachers-in-training placed at the catholic school weren't catholic caused a problem with the v.p. the good news is the dotytron's new placement is literally a 5 minute walk from our house.
the bad news is...he really loved his original placement, which was in the scarbs (he reps the scarbs so hard now and it makes me love him even more). he got along really super well with his mentor teacher and felt he could learn a lot from her. the class was huge (35 kids) and was SO diverse with a lot of people from mixed economic backgrounds and levels of english proficiency, and a huge contingent of new immigrants.
key characters who i was eagerly anticipating hearing stories about included:
- a kid who was legally blind
- a kid who is the classic trouble maker, attention hog (ie. while sitting in the corner after getting in trouble, will ask the dotytron, "hey man...can you beatbox?") and drops lines like tracy jordan (both in delivery and content). for example, this kid is friends with a much smaller ) kid who is really well adjusted and is apparently really good with video games. kid B was telling the dotytron, "yeah, the first time i picked up a video game, i was just really good at it, i was a natural," at which point, kid A interjects with, "the first time i picked up a video game, I ATE THE CD! i did! swear on my life!" lol! kid A is also obsessed with this other kid in the class who's straight out of jamaica and talks with the thickest patois. kid A apparently can't get enough of the way jamaican kid talks.
- there's also a crew of slick little tykes straight out of columbia with crazy faux-hawk pompadour hairstyles who wear the best, hippest clothes and look like little men. the columbian kids also DESTROY the other kids at soccer. the dotytron says it's ridiculous...they're like little (apparently they're all really short) ballerinas. haha! so this one kid was complaining about not wanting to play soccer because all the columbian kids are so good at it and the teacher was saying that that's not true, it's a stereotype, etc. the kid waits for the teacher to leave, turns to the dotytron and says, "they're all good at soccer, aren't they!" to which the dotytron tried to explain that columbia was a big country, it's a stereotype, etc. so the dotytron asks complaining kid what his ethnic background is, to try to draw a parallel with stereotyping. the kid is iraqi so the dotytron was stuck, trying to think of a common misconception about iraqis that was suitable for that context. lol! according to the complainer kid, iraqis are known for being good at soccer...so there you have it...make sense of that how you will.
booooooooooooooooooooooo...i think the dotytron is so good with kids and ESPECIALLY amazing with kids who are all slick and street and from different backgrounds that he'd do really well in the scarbs...cuz the scarbs needs the love of a good dotytron. we checked out the school he's going to...it looks pretty slick and homogenous. and i'm hoping it's not all riverdale-privileged. i also hope he gets along as well with his mentor as he did with his current one...it sucks going from a situation that you know is amazing and a good fit to one that might be an entirely different story.
fin.
Thursday, September 04, 2008
swedish for
...drives my dotytron crazy. yes indeedy. tonight after work and after a trip to our trusted menswear retailer around the corner from us and after picking up some pakistani take out for dinner, we're making a trip to the wilds of north york for ikea goods.
i know. i know. it sucks that EVERYONE in a certain age group and bracket has an apartment with the same cooly modern looking doo-dads and gee-gaws and furnishings and accessories. but what is a cash-strapped apartment dweller/home owner to do? really? i've reconciled myself to the fact that i'm a not-so-special star in a universe of not-so-special, not-so-unique stars. for people with limited wherewithal and limited time and home decor vision, than ikea is IT. what would you have me do? spend precious minutes away from my billions of other interests to go traipsing around toronto for the latest new, mid-century modern thing? eff that! and i EFFING LOVE mid-century modern furniture! do you know how much it pains me to see privileged urbanite jerkwads the world over crawling over sectional sofas and turquoise and chocolate brown colour schemes and sagey greens and neutral taupes and teak everything that i know i'll never be able to afford or justify in my ever-practical soul, in which children and their inevitable trail of destruction loom in the not-so-distant future?
whatever...ikea (swedish for "path of least resistance" and "reasonably well made and durable") it is. the dotytron loathes ikea like you wouldn't believe. he hates how you have to walk through the ENTIRE store to pick up the stuff you need at the very end in the big warehouse space that's inaccessible by any other means. he thinks he's being fiendishly clever by suggesting we somehow finangle our way directly into the warehouse area, pull a blitzkreig, and run. unfortunately, the stuff we're after today (lamps, curtain stuff, small storage) isn't IN the big warehouse part (which is mostly for big furniture)...it's in the regular store part (i'm almost 100% certain of this) so we're screwed. i'm hoping a fattened belly and a more considerate than usual me will allow us to navigate this trying situation with grace, aplomb, and a minimum of screaming meltdowns.
once we're done though...we'll be done with house stuff for a while. i mean, aside from needing a bed frame, new boxspring and mattress (or a tempurepedic one!), new couch, side tables, toaster, etc. you know.
i have to say though, a trip to the municipal dump while at the cottage had a sobering impact on my consumerist ways. it was DISGUSTING and i think should be required field trip material for every grade school kid at some point in their lives. piles upon piles of crap lying in a fetid, stinking, rotting depression in the ground, sunlight reflecting off the mountains of plastic bottles and blinding you even while your nose is being assaulted with that wet-garbage/hot day smell and you're being accosted by screaming gulls. it was like a scene out of mad max, replete with a smoldering tire fire blazing in the distance. ughhhh...if i was a rabid garbage sorter and recycler and reducer before, i'm tenfold that now.
i'm excited for makkah for dinner. we haven't had it in ages.
--------------
*edit*
makkah was the lick. we also stopped off at our favorite tailor/menswear retailers on the danny and picked up some sweet work clothes for the dotytron. ikea mission was a semi-success...we spent a lot on some increased lighting for the downstairs but they only had ONE (!) of the little converter thingies that turn the boxes of our record holding shelf/room divider into either drawers or a cupboard. boooooo...that means we have to go BACK. the best part was we ran into our buddy rumbleton and his brother, C. yay! i love that guy. seriously...he's a real mensch.
fin.
i know. i know. it sucks that EVERYONE in a certain age group and bracket has an apartment with the same cooly modern looking doo-dads and gee-gaws and furnishings and accessories. but what is a cash-strapped apartment dweller/home owner to do? really? i've reconciled myself to the fact that i'm a not-so-special star in a universe of not-so-special, not-so-unique stars. for people with limited wherewithal and limited time and home decor vision, than ikea is IT. what would you have me do? spend precious minutes away from my billions of other interests to go traipsing around toronto for the latest new, mid-century modern thing? eff that! and i EFFING LOVE mid-century modern furniture! do you know how much it pains me to see privileged urbanite jerkwads the world over crawling over sectional sofas and turquoise and chocolate brown colour schemes and sagey greens and neutral taupes and teak everything that i know i'll never be able to afford or justify in my ever-practical soul, in which children and their inevitable trail of destruction loom in the not-so-distant future?
whatever...ikea (swedish for "path of least resistance" and "reasonably well made and durable") it is. the dotytron loathes ikea like you wouldn't believe. he hates how you have to walk through the ENTIRE store to pick up the stuff you need at the very end in the big warehouse space that's inaccessible by any other means. he thinks he's being fiendishly clever by suggesting we somehow finangle our way directly into the warehouse area, pull a blitzkreig, and run. unfortunately, the stuff we're after today (lamps, curtain stuff, small storage) isn't IN the big warehouse part (which is mostly for big furniture)...it's in the regular store part (i'm almost 100% certain of this) so we're screwed. i'm hoping a fattened belly and a more considerate than usual me will allow us to navigate this trying situation with grace, aplomb, and a minimum of screaming meltdowns.
once we're done though...we'll be done with house stuff for a while. i mean, aside from needing a bed frame, new boxspring and mattress (or a tempurepedic one!), new couch, side tables, toaster, etc. you know.
i have to say though, a trip to the municipal dump while at the cottage had a sobering impact on my consumerist ways. it was DISGUSTING and i think should be required field trip material for every grade school kid at some point in their lives. piles upon piles of crap lying in a fetid, stinking, rotting depression in the ground, sunlight reflecting off the mountains of plastic bottles and blinding you even while your nose is being assaulted with that wet-garbage/hot day smell and you're being accosted by screaming gulls. it was like a scene out of mad max, replete with a smoldering tire fire blazing in the distance. ughhhh...if i was a rabid garbage sorter and recycler and reducer before, i'm tenfold that now.
i'm excited for makkah for dinner. we haven't had it in ages.
--------------
*edit*
makkah was the lick. we also stopped off at our favorite tailor/menswear retailers on the danny and picked up some sweet work clothes for the dotytron. ikea mission was a semi-success...we spent a lot on some increased lighting for the downstairs but they only had ONE (!) of the little converter thingies that turn the boxes of our record holding shelf/room divider into either drawers or a cupboard. boooooo...that means we have to go BACK. the best part was we ran into our buddy rumbleton and his brother, C. yay! i love that guy. seriously...he's a real mensch.
fin.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
restaurant reviews
on friday night i went to dinner with my mum, my mum's friends visiting from HK, their son (who is starting at ryerson this year) and my bro. we went to table 17 in leslieville. i had heard mixed reviews about their service but overall good reviews about their food, so i figured we'd give it a go.
the room is actually two, bifurcated by a wall with a spacious doorway opening between them. the first room holds only a small handful of tables and contains the bar and the second room has more tables and a big, rugged, rough-hewn wooden table that serves as an open bussers-station, where they can slice bread for tables, etc.
nice dim lighting, comfortable bench seating (almost too comfortable...the pillows on the seat are so plush it leads to some awkward maneuvering on the way out), doesn't get too noisy. the service was a little on the under-attentive side but the food is quite good and the prices are solid.
we ordered a few apps to share to start.
we got 2 orders of the diver scallops, which were seared and served with a thick spear of guanciale, thick bearnaise, and sweet peas. this dish was pretty damn delicious... the elements are all a no-brainer. it could have gone out to the table a little hotter and the bearnaise could have been a touch looser (probably seized up a bit as it cooled down).
the charcuterie platter was fairly generous though slightly uneventful and boring. the best thing on the board was the head cheese...otherwise the other elements were a little standard, though still tasty. it came with some sliced bread that was a little too thick to match the ultra-thin slices and a little too soft. i prefer toasted bread or something sturdier with my charcuterie plates.
then we got 2 each of their "hot balls" appetizer. there are three different kinds: aranicini with gorgonzola and a marinara dipping sauce, goat cheese croquettes with honey, and bachalau balls with potato and a basil dipping sauce. the goat cheese was probably my favorite...the bachalau was heavy on the potato, light on the salt cod, the arancini were serviceable.
we also shared the signature chili beef ribs, which the owners carried onto the menu (apparently by popular demand) from their previous venture, izakaya. they're not worth writing home about...i mean, **i** wouldn't have kept them on the menu. especially when they come to the table slightly dried out around the edges and barely lukewarm, with nary a chili flavour to be found in the sweet sauce coating the meat-thin beef ribs. there's some spice in the loose kimchi accompaniment but overall the dish was ho-hum.
for my main i got a braised rabbit with house made pappardelle (not pictured) olives and lemons. the rabbit leg was pretty tender, a touch dry, and overly salty but the pasta had a nice chew. tone down the heavy handed with the brine/salt elements and you'd have a comforting dish.
my bro had the steak frites...the frites there are just the way i like them...slender and crisp. my mom had the black cod which had a crispy skin and was sitting in a light broth with some shitake mushrooms and green stuff. she said she liked it (i didn't try it).
we shared three desserts. we got the chai spiced pudding. the texture of the pudding was nice, thick and creamy with only faint chai flavours (more ginger and spices and less tea). it was covered with a some kind of indeterminate cookie dust which added an unpleasant pastiness and was unnecessary, especially considering it had no discernible flavour. we all would have liked the pudding sans dust.
the chocolate veloute (pudding again, to you or i) was thick and bittersweet but again marred by an incongruous topping of conventional blueberries.
the lemon tart was meh. the crust was thick and a little leaden...lemon curd was standard but couldn't hold its' own against the crust.
overall, it's a decent neighbourhood joint with very gentle prices (5 apps, 6 mains, 3 desserts, flat and sparkling water, no booze = $260 pre tip) and worth a revisit. it still needs to iron out some kinks in the kitchen, but the steady stream of slavering leslievillians i watched in and out the door seems to suggest that the audience is there even if they don't tighten up the screws.
on sunday, we had dinner with the same crew at via allegro, which gets consistently high marks for italian food in the city from word-on-the-street AND published sources. it was pretty meh. definitely NOT worth the drive to the farthest reaches of etobicoke, NOT worth the exorbitant prices, NOT worth the half-assed service, and NOT worth the laughable, disney-fied decor.
i mean, i guess this is "italian" food in the late 80s, southern california sense, but nothing anywhere near like my understanding of italian food. huge chops, giant plates, creme brulee desserts...it's stuck in a bad hotel time warp. the prices are redonkulous and the food is only decent.
we shared a fried calamari appetizer that was pretty good.
we got the "three kings" platter. you pay a set price for person. the "three kings" are supposed to represent the three signposts of italian (tuscan?) cuisine. so for the princely sum of almost $30/person, you get 2 paper-thin slices of proscuitto each, a pillow of arugala, a couple of fat shards of parmesan, and a drizzle of balsamic, with a puck of pear puree. the pear was probably the best part of it. the rest of the components were okay, but certainly did not live up to the hype.
another app that was a huge disappointment was the pizza from the wood-burning oven. how a wood-burning oven managed to produce such an anemic, flabby, insipid excuse for a pizza is beyond me. it's appalling.
then we got a foie appetizer which was ho-hum. seared foie, brioche, a sweet element...came to the table cool and was therefore pretty unappetizing.
for my main, i got the duet of lamb. a crusted lamb rack with a pot pie of shank with some broccoli rabe scattered with goat's cheese. again, decently prepared, but done to death.
the dotytron got one of their signature meat cuts, a 16oz veal chop. it wasn't as tender as veal chops should be and was sided with a tired galette and some kind of spinach flan with a requisite pool of hotel-issue demi.
one of our table mates ordered the "award winning" risotto with duck confit, foie, and 25 year old balsamic (this dish cost $50!!!!). the risotto was cooked correctly but the flavour of the dish was a hot mess. sweet, cloying...it tasted like a mound of runny unagi rice (that's how saccharine it was!).
we finished the meal with ho-hum, exorbitantly priced and unimaginative desserts (creme brule, tiramisu, etc). i mean, i like that stuff as much as the next person...but i don't go about creating a temple of italian cuisine that looks like it was ripped out of "the bonfire of the vanities"-era cooking.
i was kind of embarrassed. my mum's friends had requested italian and i had gone with what people had said about the place and what toronto life had given as a review. I HATE YOU, JAMES CHATTO. i should have just stuck with my guns and picked l'unita or lil' baci. it was really pricey too and so not worth it. the closest example i can come up with is that it's like a yorkville style italian place. you know what i mean.
ugh.
---------------------
tonight for dinner i grilled some steaks and finished them with a gloss of roasted garlic butter. crisped up some diced pancetta and sauteed sweet corn kernals in the pork fat and served sauteed peppers and onions on the side.
fin.
the room is actually two, bifurcated by a wall with a spacious doorway opening between them. the first room holds only a small handful of tables and contains the bar and the second room has more tables and a big, rugged, rough-hewn wooden table that serves as an open bussers-station, where they can slice bread for tables, etc.
nice dim lighting, comfortable bench seating (almost too comfortable...the pillows on the seat are so plush it leads to some awkward maneuvering on the way out), doesn't get too noisy. the service was a little on the under-attentive side but the food is quite good and the prices are solid.
we ordered a few apps to share to start.
we got 2 orders of the diver scallops, which were seared and served with a thick spear of guanciale, thick bearnaise, and sweet peas. this dish was pretty damn delicious... the elements are all a no-brainer. it could have gone out to the table a little hotter and the bearnaise could have been a touch looser (probably seized up a bit as it cooled down).
the charcuterie platter was fairly generous though slightly uneventful and boring. the best thing on the board was the head cheese...otherwise the other elements were a little standard, though still tasty. it came with some sliced bread that was a little too thick to match the ultra-thin slices and a little too soft. i prefer toasted bread or something sturdier with my charcuterie plates.
then we got 2 each of their "hot balls" appetizer. there are three different kinds: aranicini with gorgonzola and a marinara dipping sauce, goat cheese croquettes with honey, and bachalau balls with potato and a basil dipping sauce. the goat cheese was probably my favorite...the bachalau was heavy on the potato, light on the salt cod, the arancini were serviceable.
we also shared the signature chili beef ribs, which the owners carried onto the menu (apparently by popular demand) from their previous venture, izakaya. they're not worth writing home about...i mean, **i** wouldn't have kept them on the menu. especially when they come to the table slightly dried out around the edges and barely lukewarm, with nary a chili flavour to be found in the sweet sauce coating the meat-thin beef ribs. there's some spice in the loose kimchi accompaniment but overall the dish was ho-hum.
for my main i got a braised rabbit with house made pappardelle (not pictured) olives and lemons. the rabbit leg was pretty tender, a touch dry, and overly salty but the pasta had a nice chew. tone down the heavy handed with the brine/salt elements and you'd have a comforting dish.
my bro had the steak frites...the frites there are just the way i like them...slender and crisp. my mom had the black cod which had a crispy skin and was sitting in a light broth with some shitake mushrooms and green stuff. she said she liked it (i didn't try it).
we shared three desserts. we got the chai spiced pudding. the texture of the pudding was nice, thick and creamy with only faint chai flavours (more ginger and spices and less tea). it was covered with a some kind of indeterminate cookie dust which added an unpleasant pastiness and was unnecessary, especially considering it had no discernible flavour. we all would have liked the pudding sans dust.
the chocolate veloute (pudding again, to you or i) was thick and bittersweet but again marred by an incongruous topping of conventional blueberries.
the lemon tart was meh. the crust was thick and a little leaden...lemon curd was standard but couldn't hold its' own against the crust.
overall, it's a decent neighbourhood joint with very gentle prices (5 apps, 6 mains, 3 desserts, flat and sparkling water, no booze = $260 pre tip) and worth a revisit. it still needs to iron out some kinks in the kitchen, but the steady stream of slavering leslievillians i watched in and out the door seems to suggest that the audience is there even if they don't tighten up the screws.
on sunday, we had dinner with the same crew at via allegro, which gets consistently high marks for italian food in the city from word-on-the-street AND published sources. it was pretty meh. definitely NOT worth the drive to the farthest reaches of etobicoke, NOT worth the exorbitant prices, NOT worth the half-assed service, and NOT worth the laughable, disney-fied decor.
i mean, i guess this is "italian" food in the late 80s, southern california sense, but nothing anywhere near like my understanding of italian food. huge chops, giant plates, creme brulee desserts...it's stuck in a bad hotel time warp. the prices are redonkulous and the food is only decent.
we shared a fried calamari appetizer that was pretty good.
we got the "three kings" platter. you pay a set price for person. the "three kings" are supposed to represent the three signposts of italian (tuscan?) cuisine. so for the princely sum of almost $30/person, you get 2 paper-thin slices of proscuitto each, a pillow of arugala, a couple of fat shards of parmesan, and a drizzle of balsamic, with a puck of pear puree. the pear was probably the best part of it. the rest of the components were okay, but certainly did not live up to the hype.
another app that was a huge disappointment was the pizza from the wood-burning oven. how a wood-burning oven managed to produce such an anemic, flabby, insipid excuse for a pizza is beyond me. it's appalling.
then we got a foie appetizer which was ho-hum. seared foie, brioche, a sweet element...came to the table cool and was therefore pretty unappetizing.
for my main, i got the duet of lamb. a crusted lamb rack with a pot pie of shank with some broccoli rabe scattered with goat's cheese. again, decently prepared, but done to death.
the dotytron got one of their signature meat cuts, a 16oz veal chop. it wasn't as tender as veal chops should be and was sided with a tired galette and some kind of spinach flan with a requisite pool of hotel-issue demi.
one of our table mates ordered the "award winning" risotto with duck confit, foie, and 25 year old balsamic (this dish cost $50!!!!). the risotto was cooked correctly but the flavour of the dish was a hot mess. sweet, cloying...it tasted like a mound of runny unagi rice (that's how saccharine it was!).
we finished the meal with ho-hum, exorbitantly priced and unimaginative desserts (creme brule, tiramisu, etc). i mean, i like that stuff as much as the next person...but i don't go about creating a temple of italian cuisine that looks like it was ripped out of "the bonfire of the vanities"-era cooking.
i was kind of embarrassed. my mum's friends had requested italian and i had gone with what people had said about the place and what toronto life had given as a review. I HATE YOU, JAMES CHATTO. i should have just stuck with my guns and picked l'unita or lil' baci. it was really pricey too and so not worth it. the closest example i can come up with is that it's like a yorkville style italian place. you know what i mean.
ugh.
---------------------
tonight for dinner i grilled some steaks and finished them with a gloss of roasted garlic butter. crisped up some diced pancetta and sauteed sweet corn kernals in the pork fat and served sauteed peppers and onions on the side.
fin.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
movie roundup
whew...what a crazy busy weekend. because i'm entirely too susceptible to suggestion (especially when said suggestion is imparted from a source i trust), i spent a good chunk of labour day monday, one of the hottest, most sweltering days we've had in what has otherwise been an abysmal, rainy, cool, and uncharacteristic toronto summer, up to my neck in wet wool sweaters, winter weight pants, and the like.
yes indeed. i fell prey to the fear mongering and type A tendencies of my old supervisor T, who informed me on friday that she was going to be switching her summer and winter clothes this past weekend. of course i uttered the natural response, "so soon?" to which she replied to the effect that one never knows and winter in toronto can drop on a dime and then i'll be left scrambling. T shares with me an industrious, cub scouts-motto, type A personality and so i set about washing and drying all my winter wear, only to be faced with a scorching, searing weather prediction for a proper indian summer in the weeks to come with my arms full of heavy, pelt-like clothing.
ah well. at least it's all clean now and ready to go, for when the weather really, truly, does drop on a dime.
i was kind of thinking that once september came around, life would settle into the hibernatory rhythms of winter. boy was i wrong. i've got something going on almost every weekend and i'm valiantly trying to fit everyone/thing into my increasingly packed google calendar.
no time like the present to do a movie rundown...
we rented the movie "21" ages ago (near mid july i think). it's terrible...not really worth mentioning. contrived, boring, and just plain silly. apparently it comes on the heels of the exact same movie having been made by canadian hands, which the dotytron has seen and seems to prefer. it tells the tale of a bunch of MIT math impressarios who pick up a system of counting cards and take it to vegas and fleece the casinos. in the glossy, hollywood version, the real-life nebbishy asians are replaced by slick, baby-faced kate bosworth and the two real asian actors are relegated to side roles. i can't really reiterate what a redonkulous movie this is, except to say that it sacrifices plot and plausibility in favour of slow-mo, hyper-close-up shotos of stacks of casino chips tumbling and cards skittering across the green felt of the table (accompanied, of course, by thx-amped versions of the sound effects of such occurences...from an ant's perspective - all giant BOOMS! and such).
well...i'm as vociferous and ardent a fan of "parenthood" that walks this earth, so not much needs to be said here. if you've never seen it or it have relegated it to the dusty recesses of your memory, indistinguishable from other films that share ensemble casts and 80s aesthetics and are helmed by ron howard, i heartily endorse a revisit. it's great. i effin' love it. it's heartfelt and warm and funny and bittersweet in a way that just doesn't fly nowadays with our preternatural, canny, media-saturated ennui. it was a simpler time.
okay...now onto the new stuff. "pineapple express" is aight. the trailers have definitely done the stupid-trailer thing of showing you too much/all the funny parts (why do they SHOW YOU THE WHOLE MOVIE?!?) so there's not a lot left...it's pretty low-concept as far as flicks go. seth rogan isn't nearly as charming a schlub as his box office drawing power would have you believe...he's a little too precocious of a schlub (unlike say, fred flinstone or john goodman), a little too self-aware that he's going to get hot babes with his flabby, geek-bespectacled look. james franco, on the other hands, saves the movie, as sweet, simple, impressively articulate saul. the movie tries to blend stoner humour with pulp-fiction type violence and the two don't make a happy fit...overall it's jarring and the movie is kind of one-note and that note is pretty boring once you get it. i will say that franco has a great line about his favorite civil engineers which got the longest and most sustained laughs from karl lagerfeld.
"tropic thunder" kills "pineapple express" in the funny department. maybe it's more my kind of humour...it's a really ruthless, satire of hollywood politics and movie studios and actors. it keeps a hairsbreadth on the side of good taste, but could easily be misinterpreted if you're overly sensitive to imagined political incorrectness and lack an understanding of irony, sarcasm, and nuance. i found it consistently guffaw-inducing and i highly recommend you check it, if only for the faux movie trailers that preface the film alone. i love regular movie trailers so much that FAUX movie trailers triple make my day. there's some fantastic cameos and bit parts and robert downey jr. is incredible. go check it out!
tonight i'm going to a crafting ladies night hosted by my friend L. H and baby D are coming and M might show up too. should be fun. i'm working on another lace project...i effin' love knitting lace. it's like magic! i'm on a deadline with this one...i gotta crank it out. i made a banana cake with cream cheese frosting as my contribution to the informal potluck.
fin.
yes indeed. i fell prey to the fear mongering and type A tendencies of my old supervisor T, who informed me on friday that she was going to be switching her summer and winter clothes this past weekend. of course i uttered the natural response, "so soon?" to which she replied to the effect that one never knows and winter in toronto can drop on a dime and then i'll be left scrambling. T shares with me an industrious, cub scouts-motto, type A personality and so i set about washing and drying all my winter wear, only to be faced with a scorching, searing weather prediction for a proper indian summer in the weeks to come with my arms full of heavy, pelt-like clothing.
ah well. at least it's all clean now and ready to go, for when the weather really, truly, does drop on a dime.
i was kind of thinking that once september came around, life would settle into the hibernatory rhythms of winter. boy was i wrong. i've got something going on almost every weekend and i'm valiantly trying to fit everyone/thing into my increasingly packed google calendar.
no time like the present to do a movie rundown...
we rented the movie "21" ages ago (near mid july i think). it's terrible...not really worth mentioning. contrived, boring, and just plain silly. apparently it comes on the heels of the exact same movie having been made by canadian hands, which the dotytron has seen and seems to prefer. it tells the tale of a bunch of MIT math impressarios who pick up a system of counting cards and take it to vegas and fleece the casinos. in the glossy, hollywood version, the real-life nebbishy asians are replaced by slick, baby-faced kate bosworth and the two real asian actors are relegated to side roles. i can't really reiterate what a redonkulous movie this is, except to say that it sacrifices plot and plausibility in favour of slow-mo, hyper-close-up shotos of stacks of casino chips tumbling and cards skittering across the green felt of the table (accompanied, of course, by thx-amped versions of the sound effects of such occurences...from an ant's perspective - all giant BOOMS! and such).
well...i'm as vociferous and ardent a fan of "parenthood" that walks this earth, so not much needs to be said here. if you've never seen it or it have relegated it to the dusty recesses of your memory, indistinguishable from other films that share ensemble casts and 80s aesthetics and are helmed by ron howard, i heartily endorse a revisit. it's great. i effin' love it. it's heartfelt and warm and funny and bittersweet in a way that just doesn't fly nowadays with our preternatural, canny, media-saturated ennui. it was a simpler time. 
okay...now onto the new stuff. "pineapple express" is aight. the trailers have definitely done the stupid-trailer thing of showing you too much/all the funny parts (why do they SHOW YOU THE WHOLE MOVIE?!?) so there's not a lot left...it's pretty low-concept as far as flicks go. seth rogan isn't nearly as charming a schlub as his box office drawing power would have you believe...he's a little too precocious of a schlub (unlike say, fred flinstone or john goodman), a little too self-aware that he's going to get hot babes with his flabby, geek-bespectacled look. james franco, on the other hands, saves the movie, as sweet, simple, impressively articulate saul. the movie tries to blend stoner humour with pulp-fiction type violence and the two don't make a happy fit...overall it's jarring and the movie is kind of one-note and that note is pretty boring once you get it. i will say that franco has a great line about his favorite civil engineers which got the longest and most sustained laughs from karl lagerfeld.
"tropic thunder" kills "pineapple express" in the funny department. maybe it's more my kind of humour...it's a really ruthless, satire of hollywood politics and movie studios and actors. it keeps a hairsbreadth on the side of good taste, but could easily be misinterpreted if you're overly sensitive to imagined political incorrectness and lack an understanding of irony, sarcasm, and nuance. i found it consistently guffaw-inducing and i highly recommend you check it, if only for the faux movie trailers that preface the film alone. i love regular movie trailers so much that FAUX movie trailers triple make my day. there's some fantastic cameos and bit parts and robert downey jr. is incredible. go check it out! tonight i'm going to a crafting ladies night hosted by my friend L. H and baby D are coming and M might show up too. should be fun. i'm working on another lace project...i effin' love knitting lace. it's like magic! i'm on a deadline with this one...i gotta crank it out. i made a banana cake with cream cheese frosting as my contribution to the informal potluck.
fin.
Monday, September 01, 2008
grief...
we went to our friend's mum's funeral service yesterday. it was sad and strange...so many people we should be seeing more of and it sucks that it always happens at occasions like this (but also, on the brighter side, at weddings and baby-type stuff...big life stuff). i had never been to a jewish service before. the rabbi's cell phone went off! he was pretty embarrassed about it. it was actually really shocking...you could hear the ripples of displeasure murmuring up around the synagogue.
the actual service is quite short, but there was a few speeches from family and close friends. the service is really beautiful, bookended by a gentleman singing in hebrew. the melody sounds very, very old (to my neophyte ears) and it rises and falls in ancient cadences that reverberate with generations of belief. i like the traditions...although sitting shivah for the whole seven days seems epic. on the one hand, having an allocated, commonly accepted space of time in which you don't work and can focus on your grief and people can visit you seems like a good thing. on the other hand, according to our jewish friends, by the seventh day you're going a little stir-crazy.
it was a very, very sad day...made all the stranger because we didn't know the customs. death always makes a farce out of life and you're always grasping at the phantoms of social convention, as if knowing them and facility in them will somehow tether you to something solid. "what do i do?" "what do i say?" "is this appropriate to wear?" i don't know what it means when we turn to the banal as guideposts through life-changing events.
fin.
the actual service is quite short, but there was a few speeches from family and close friends. the service is really beautiful, bookended by a gentleman singing in hebrew. the melody sounds very, very old (to my neophyte ears) and it rises and falls in ancient cadences that reverberate with generations of belief. i like the traditions...although sitting shivah for the whole seven days seems epic. on the one hand, having an allocated, commonly accepted space of time in which you don't work and can focus on your grief and people can visit you seems like a good thing. on the other hand, according to our jewish friends, by the seventh day you're going a little stir-crazy.
it was a very, very sad day...made all the stranger because we didn't know the customs. death always makes a farce out of life and you're always grasping at the phantoms of social convention, as if knowing them and facility in them will somehow tether you to something solid. "what do i do?" "what do i say?" "is this appropriate to wear?" i don't know what it means when we turn to the banal as guideposts through life-changing events.
fin.
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