Quickly...

Trying to get my portion of the group research paper done during nap intervals. This post is going to be mostly photos. We're heading out to hang out with Hanbo today and do a west-end/Ronceys stroll...weeee!

Here's a photo of the Big Yam reppin' Toronto and the Cadillac Lounge, looking like a big boy:

Monday night's dinner. A kind of deconstructed carbonara - bacon crisped in a pan and set aside to drain. Tagliatelle cooked in salted water, drained in a colander with the baby spinach and baby arugala inside already (so that they wilt a bit), everything tossed with a heap of grated parm and topped with a poached egg and salt and pepper:

Last night I made us a yellow/green bean salad, topped with sliced cherry tomatoes, chickpeas, crumbled Bulgarian feta, and the roasted garlic-dijon vinaigrette from last week, loosened up with a lemon's worth of juice. Sided with warmed pita and more pan-fried haloumi - because we're haloumi obsessed currently:

I also took advantage of the last day of the cold front to crank the oven and make a strawberry rhubarb pie. I was worried it wouldn't thicken enough, but it looks pretty good! I've wrapped it and frozen it until Saturday, when I hope to cut into it with Dr. Rei and Co.:

Last dodgeball game until the fall tonight! We're hoping to bike there and back as part of our "Boot Camp"

Fin.

Roll out those...

lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer indeed. Once again, my heart is full to bursting after all the lovely time spent this past weekend.

As it turns out - I'm NOT the worst player on our softball team! Wahoo!!! I caught a pop fly and felt really good about it...but my problem is I have to remember that unlike dodgeball, where a certain degree of showboating is forgivable (or so I like to think), in softball, hooting and hollering when you catch a pop fly isn't the best strategy, because as my teammate said, your opponents "keep running." So I got to check that impulse and instead complete the play. In this case, it was fine, but for future reference, don't ya know. I also took a line drive to the shin and was a total tough guy about it, but it hurt like a mother. I was playing second and the Dotytron, who was on third, was laughing later about how when it happened, he saw the ball smack dead onto the bone of my shin, saw me grimace for a second with an "oh that smarts" expression on my face (somewhat akin to Sideshow Bob's expression getting hit in the face with a rake in the "Cape Feare" episode of the Simpsons), take a deep breath, and then pick up the offending ball resignedly and complete the play. LOL! I'm still laughing about how it must have looked from the outside because it was a bit of a doozy.

I kind of feel sorry for people who don't use fans to cool their house. I find something so soothing about the rhythmic whirring of an oscillating fan. On Friday, the Big Yam was being a bit of a fuss in the afternoon so I took him up to our room and nursed him while I read on my Kindle. Our room gets beautiful light during the day, diffused slightly by our sheer curtains, and with the sound of the fan the only other noise punctuating his contented nursing at my boob, it was perhaps 20 of the most relaxing, perfectly content minutes of my life. Especially when it was punctuated with the Big Yam detaching himself with a breathy sigh and falling asleep looking like this:

That face!!! I love his face in repose. I love his little hand on his stomach all happy and relaxed. I love thinking about what happy dreams he's having, lulled by the sun, a belly full of milk, and the metronomic regularity of the fan.

Friday night I made us a white pizza on homemade pizza dough of ricotta, mozzarella, baby arugala, and proscuitto:

Saturday morning we took my mum and Poh Poh out to lunch at Phoenix. I ordered the ox tongue on fried rice with cream sauce and black pepper sauce:

We also had the spicy ground pork Korean rice bowl:

Saturday I handed over the Big Yam to the Dotytron so I could finish my assignment for school, which I managed to do! And I submitted it 3 days early! Yay! Then we met up with R & R at the Ceili Cottage for cask-conditioned ales and oysters and kettle chips and mac'n'cheese and a whinging, whiny, yelly Big Yam disturbing the dining experiences of an entire patio. Ugh. Some madness compelled me to invite R & R over to our (uncleaned!) house and give them a tour of what $350,000 will buy you in Leslieville (which I think effectively scared them off from ever moving - the piles of dirty laundry are an effective deterrent). On the bike ride home I was frantically shouting instructions to the Dotytron: "Okay, when you get home. Put the Big Yam to bed and then rip the Slanket off the couch!!! Wipe off the coffee table!!! Sweep and vacuum the floor!!!" and then I realized the madness of trying to accomplish any of that (did I mention that R & R were driving from Ceili Cottage?) and said, "You know what? This is stupid. We like these guys. They're just going to have to see us warts and all." So instead we plied them with scotch until (hopefully) the state of lil' ugmo blurred into the edges of a warm, fuzzy, single-malt buzz.

Sunday we hit the newly launched Leslieville Farmer's Market (upwardly mobile urban parent check 1!), after grabbing the Dotytron a coffee from the best coffee shop in town, Voulez-Vous Café (upwardly mobile urban parent check 2!), which was deemed thus by our rabidly coffee obsessed/food snob neighbour. Then we came home, set up our window unit a/c (which works so unbelievably well that I am not even batting an eye at the projected heat wave to come mid-week. Seriously. We closed the door and turned it on for 15 minutes and when we went in, the room was a meat locker), cleaned the house, and took the Big Yam to Withrow Park for some catch and swings.

In case you were wondering if the Big Yam looks ADORABLE in his helmet riding in the Chariot, I'll let you decide for yourself with the following photographic evidence:

The kid loves a good swing more than anything. He's always found the near/far thing hilarious, so whenever you put him in a swing, you get the following reaction:

He's also recently discovered his tongue and is always sticking it out/touching the tip of his tongue to his upper lip which is freaking hilarious (and a precursor to being able to make "l" sounds, methinks?) He's been a bit of a mega fuss lately and he's been gnawing on anything in sight, so I think more teeth are imminent. I'm going to miss the just-the-bottom-two action because it's so freakin' cute...but I suppose I can't relegate my child to a life of gumming food for my personal amusement. Besides, what's cute in childhood is faces-of-meth in adulthood.

Sunday was a perfect day. It was the first day in a loooooooooooong time (maybe all year) when we could set our own schedule, do things on our own time, where we didn't have school/work-related stuff that we HAD to do occupying our time. And it was STILL productive! (C'mon, you didn't really think there could be a perfect day without SOME productivity, do you?) We still cleaned the house and got dinner ready and set up the a/c - but it was our choice when/how these things were accomplished. And it was interspersed with big stretches of being together and enjoying ourselves and leisure. The perfect balance, seriously. I don't really get how people who DON'T have work they bring home or who AREN'T doing a Master's degree on their maternity leave have any excuses not to get shiz done.

We had Lolly over for dinner and I made us a mezes meal of: fattoush salad, baba ghanouj, fried haloumi, charmoula-spiced beef strips, warmed pitas, and purchased crab, asiago & wasabi dip from Leslieville Cheese Market. Delicious!

For dessert I made us a coconut-lime semifreddo, which was easy and delicious (I'll post the recipe at the end). So good! My only quibble is that I found it a little too sweet, so I might reduce the condensed milk by half. I'll reproduce the recipe as I found it - since I haven't tried reducing the condensed milk and can't vouch for how that might affect the texture - it was cool, creamy, spiked with lime's brightness with chewy bites of toasted coconut for texture. Soooo good:

Today the plan is to take the Big Yam to the drop-in centre, get some school work done, and make us a tasty dinner. I went for a run this morning and I'm going to follow it up with yoga in the afternoon and maybe some catch tonight in the dusk. The Dotytron and I have a new plan to keep us on track, fitness wise...we're fake boot camping. We're basically going to put the money we would have spent on boot camp in a pot and just make sure we work out for the same amount of time (3 hours/week) pushing ourselves but doing our own activities (ie. I'm not into circuit training, so I'm going to do a mix of cardio and yoga), and if we keep it up all summer we're going to spend that money on something we want. We'll see how this goes!

Fin.

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

Coconut Lime Semifreddo

adapted from Martha Stewart's Everyday Food Magazine

serves around 8-10

1 can of coconut milk

1 can of condensed milk

zest of 2 limes

1/2 t. salt

1 1/2 c. of cold whipping cream

1 c. of unsweetened, shredded coconut

- line a loaf pan with plastic wrap, making sure there is overhang on all sides

- toast the coconut in a 375F degree oven for 10 minutes, or until evenly golden brown, stirring every 3 minutes or so to make sure it toasts evenly

- heat the coconut milk and condensed milk in a pot over medium heat until it comes to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer for about 10 minutes or until thickened

- remove the milk mixture, stir in the lime zest, and about 1/2 c. of the toasted coconut, and set aside until cool and no longer warm to the touch (you can stick it in the fridge)

- whip the whipping cream until stiff peaks form, and then fold in the cooled coconut mixture until pretty evenly mixed

- pour the mixture into the prepared loaf pan, sprinkle the top with the remaining 1/2 c. of toasted coconut and wrap the top with plastic wrap.

- freeze for 6 hours or overnight until firm.

- before serving, take it out to room temperature for 20 minutes, unmold onto a platter, slice and serve

Cold front moving in

...and we couldn't be more thankful in the un-central a/c confines of one lil' ugmo. We keep holding off on installing central because these old, 100 year old houses have awful duct work and everyone on our street says that it doesn't get up to the second floor, which is where you need it anyway. The bottom floor of the house stays nice and cool, due in part to the long, narrow shape of the floor plan, which prevents a lot of natural light coming in. To counteract the ducting inefficiencies, people either spend a fortune upgrading their duct work or buy MONSTROUS a/c units that are actually much bigger (not to mention freakin' ugly) than their actual square footage requires. It kind of hurts the environmentalist in me.

Our solution is going to be window units, which are admittedly also ugly, but aren't a permanent fixture. One in the master, one in the Big Yam's room that we'll turn on an hour before we go to bed and then turn off in the morning, supplemented with some fan action to circulate the air. I just don't think it's worth it right now to go central, especially when you only need it for like, what...20 days the whole summer? Considering we're going to be away from home for 24 days out of 90, and it's already mid-June and there have only been maybe 4 days so far where it was really necessary, I feel it fails the cost-benefit analysis. Besides, I've already shown what an Omega woman I can be buy toughing it out last summer while knocked up. This summer is gonna be cinchy.

I am grateful that there's a blissful cold front that's moved in that's whisked away the humidity and knocked the temperature down by 10 degrees. Love it! We've got the windows open and the house smells fresh and clean with the freshly cut grass from next door wafting in.

We've also been reduced to doing this to the poor Big Yam in lieu of a/c. I say "reduced" but it's hardly like I'm being forced to, because I personally think he looks hilarious in his owl of Ga'hoole/wet do-rag/Scarborough a/c look:

I'm going to take a fairly controversial position here and say that the David Simon-helmed Treme, about post-Katrina New Orleans (in the 9th ward and beyond) is a finer, more compelling show than The Wire. I think overall, it's more sophisticated, nuanced, and better written. Which is not to say that I do not still love The Wire - when you're talking about David Simon television, it's really splitting hairs - like comparing Five Guys Burgers and The Burger's Priest - two equally fantastic options.

It's easy for people to talk about and laud The Wire, which trades on familiar tropes - cops, drugs, the cultural capital of a certain depiction of black masculinity against an urban backdrop - this all contributes to the "cool" factor of The Wire. Gangs, shootings, the crumbling American public school system, the corruption of politics and mainstream media and the dereliction of duty by those in power to the underclass are all the stuff of life, yes, but also lurid parts of the contemporary, urban, left-leaning narrative and subject to romanticisation because of their omni-presence. While David Simon and the writers on The Wire are adept at side-stepping clichés and subverting traditional expectations of racial/sociological/economic interactions, I still think that they were guilty of this to some extent in The Wire. There were still some "stock" characters in the show and stock situations and c'mon - that final fifth season really left a sour taste in my mouth. I think it will always be easier for leftist non-black urbanites to fetishize black urban culture.

This brings me to Treme which situates the view in a scenario - New Orleans post-Katrina (the first season takes place approximately 6 months after, the 2nd season about 14 months after) and then gets down to the truly knitty-gritty of life across a wide cross-section of society with a sprawling, loosely interconnected cast of fully realized characters. The politicization is much subtler in Treme - this isn't a sociology 101 primer about the continued subjugation of the black underclass in America. The scope is much wider, too. The format of The Wire, with each season focusing on a different area - resulted in a much more high-level examination of the big issues - whereas Treme is about the living, the loving, the losing, against the backdrop of this rich, teeming, city - laden with history, culture, and the intersection and mixing of all that.

It's also about the creative process - the music of New Orleans and the traditions of swing and the high culture/low culture dialectic are fleshed out in the messy, complicated way that conversations about cultural appropriation and the native insider (who is allowed to criticize? Music critics in NYC, or the native son?) inevitably go. The Dotytron and I are suckers for the show - how can we not be? The music in Treme is outstanding and there's a big food element as well, through the vehicle of a New Orleans chef that is now trying to make her way in the NYC restaurant scene. Maybe it's my ignorance - I never knew about the "second line" - but what a tradition!

ANYWAY, in my humble opinion, Treme is better than The Wire and people should be flapping their gums about it more.

Tonight I'm making a "white" pizza of proscuitto, arugala mozzarella and ricotta as a pre-game meal. So pumped for softball!!!

Fin.

Ahhhhhhhh summer

Is there anything better? I'm looking at our calendar and so thrilled with upcoming events/hangs/activities that I feel like I'm going to burst into a million rainbows.

I'm full to bursting! Not much time to post much detail, but I had a lovely visit with my friend D today (where she was a trooper and drove in from Oakville to visit with me and then because the Big Yam was napping I made her help me with such fascinating, urban tasks as pumping up the tires on my Chariot) and now we're off to Markham to celebrate Poh Poh's birthday.

The Chariot is pretty slick. I am EXTREMELY grateful for my enclosed porch though...that thing is a bit of a beast. We took it for a test run to our local library and back and it's fantastic - I'm not going to say that I didn't notice the extra weight when I was going uphill, but it's a well designed, well engineered machine.

This is Tuesday night's dinner of a veggie coconut curry (I cheated and used purchased curry powder) with a billion bamboo shoots over brown rice:

This is a quinoa salad I made. It's quinoa, tossed with roasted asparagus spears cut into 1" pieces, chunks of medium-boiled egg, some avocado, and all bound together with a scallion-roasted garlic mayonnaise I whipped together with my immersion blender. I over seasoned it a bit so it was salty on its own, but then I mixed it with leftover brown rice which cut down the salinity AND made it a healthier, more complete meal. It made for perfect, make-ahead, hot weather sustenance:

Anyway, Bruce Wayne is here, I gotta flash!

Fin.

X-Men: I *heart* Michael Fassbender

As my sister so dutifully noted, I neglected to review X-Men: First Class yesterday. We watched it on Saturday at the local Geneseo theatre. My capsule review: I love Michael Fassbender. And that's enough for me. Look, we're in summer movie mode, the time for heavy thinking is not upon us. Now is the time to watch things explode and see awesome CGI and weep a million tears for one Severus Snape. I had minor quibbles with the film (namely, that some of the mutants had weak-a** powers, like Zoe Kravitz's "Angel" whose mutant power was to be a sexy flying stripper that spits venom), but as an origin story reboot, it was entertaining. McAvoy and Fassbender make for a convincing Xavier and Magneto respectively, although I find Fassbender so compelling I would watch him gazing stonily at a wall for the better part of 2 hours. And he's a blondie! So uncharacteristic. Now, if only he could find himself cast in the Hunger Games movie, my life would be complete.

This is what's amazing about having crew in Hong Kong. Big D's sister, Auntie Mimi got the Big Yam a carved jade (or something) stamp with his Chinese name on it!!! Best. Present. Ever. Behold:

So freakin' bada**! Other good things about Hong Kong crew (and the fact that my mum and Big D just came back from there): hilarious FOB gear. Pictured below, a series of smock/bibs with hilarious "English" like "camot" for "carrot" (courtesy of Favorite Food, top left) and "You Haile Make Me Happy!!!" (bottom left). Not pictured: "I *heart* Sweet Cakes" (with pictures of various sweet cakes) and this other one that has a bunch of burgers and hot dogs smilingly looking out at you. Best! The other best thing is that the Dotytron fully supports dressing the Big Yam like a giant FOB. Whatta guy!

Our goal is to craft the Boobla in the image of our favorite street kid (not a homeless kid, a kid on our street), George. Who is the happiest littlest ESL gaffer you've ever met. He's got a shock of that super-straight, Sonic the Hedgehog jet black hair and is tended to by his grandma and is always just bopping around like he doesn't have a care in the world, wearing monochromatic sweat suits festooned with cutsey animals with astigmatism. We don't get to see him very much, but when we do, the Dotytron and I are always super-happy. It's the sign of a lucky day.

Soooo...plans are afoot for the second annual Street Party and I'm determined not to miss it this year, come hell or high water. Here's the rub: it is tentatively scheduled for the same day as our Supper Club friend's kid's 1 year birthday. Is it bad that I want to skip it and send a nice present and card in our stead? I don't wanna miss the Street Party two years in a row!!! Not when there's an opportunity to show my pot luck supremacy and for the Dotytron to set up a djing rig and rent music gear! There's going to be bbqing and salads and desserts and sprinklers and arts and crafts and other fun times things that I want to be around for. Please tell me I can skip the 1 year old birthday party!!!!!! Pleeeeease???

I personally find it a little buck to go over the top for a 1 year old. They don't remember shiaat! This is probably exacerbated by the fact that we don't have the space to host people for a big to-do and planning an excursion-type birthday party is the pits. Realistically, for the Big Yam, we'll probably just book the private room at Asian Legend and just have immediate family and his guardians...I'm not looking for presents for the little guy, so I'm fine with doing a low key something this year. Although, we did notice while visiting with my sister and the relative toy-riches enjoyed by Little Big Cuz that the Big Yam is being deprived in the playthings department. Like, he doesn't even have a ball. I'm going to fix that shortly.

Last night's dinner, was whole wheat macaroni with peas, lemon, mint, and crème fraiche, alongside a salad of roasted Ontario asparagus atop mixed greens with a roasted garlic-mustard vinaigrette:

Tonight I'm skipping class in favour of spending my time more productively (setting up my bike trailer! Oh...and doing legitimate school work from home. Oh...and watching Game of Thrones) and we're eating a vegetable coconut curry with steamed brown rice (pics to follow).

Fin.

Early Retirement

We figured out why we love Geneseo so much...it's like a window into our retired life. Waking up early, eating breakfast with all the other grey hairs, tooting around with no fixed agenda, going to little league games, playing early rounds of golf. Sounds enticing, doesn't it?

Our weekend started on Wednesday evening with a grueling rush hour ride (seriously, how does leaving the city at four still guarantee rush hour???) and a Big Yam who was living up to his innate Zen baby attributes (seriously, how is this kid so chill and relaxed, considering how highly strung I am? Further proof that they swapped babies on us) and being very cool with sitting in a sweltering car with the sun beating down on his chubby arm in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the QEW. We stopped en route for a dinner at Bob Evans. I've eaten at Jimmy Dean's and Friendly's, but never at Bob Evans. Guys, it was THE BOMB. I got the country fried steak dinner which came with massive biscuits (which were a hit with the Boobla, considering this is the biggest, most concentrated hit of refined flour he's ever experienced in his life) and two sides of my choosing. The mac'n'cheese was topped with garlicky breadcrumbs for crunch and the celery and onion stuffing was as good as any I've ever had on Thanksgiving. I love restaurants like these because you can stuffing as a side all year round. Which is 2 legit.

Thursday we bummed around hung out and then got takeout from Questa Lasagna for dinner...a restaurant from a CIA (Culinary Institute of America) grad that focuses on lasagnas, a few pastas, a few paninis, and big salads. We got a sampling of the beef, chicken alfredo, Greek, and seafood lasagna. They were all delicious. I got us a chocolate pudding pie from Wegman's for dessert:

Friday morning we played the front 9 at our favorite golf course, the Old Hickory in Livonia, where 2 people golfing with a cart and club rentals costs $40. You read that right: $40. They were also the nicest golf clubs the Dotytron has ever played with. LOL! We only made it 8 holes because we got hungry, the Big Yam was getting a little fidgety from being in his carseat on the floor of a golf cart for 2+ hours, and we had already lost 5 balls hacking away (in our defense, this was our first game after an almost 2 year hiatus)...so we went to Brian's USA Diner and filled up on the Belt Buster breakfast:

That night we went to watch Miss Ramona's little league game and ate subs from Aunt Cookie's Sub Shoppe:

Saturday we loafed around some more and watched Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, which is based on a super-popular Scholastic book series. The trailer for this film was a source of much hilarity for the Goosetang Clan when it came out, propelled by the super-dramatic shots of owls endlessly fretting about the "guardians" to an over-dramatic 30 Seconds to Mars soundtrack. I'm going to try to be fair. Pros: the computer animation of the owls is really top-notch. Cons (this list is going to be long, so maybe I'm not being fair):

1) They try to make this an underdog/quest movie, but moments of dramatic tension are cut short so you never feel that the hero struggles. One minute the owl crew is being told that "when you've flown as far as you can, you're halfway there!" and then literally in the next instant, they've arrived at Ga'Hoole-dom. Any proper quest story spends a lot of time on the actual JOURNEY to the destination, where the rag-tag crew is tested to the point of fracturing, only to be rewarded with what they seek when they come together again. This didn't happen, which made the search lose a lot of its potency.

2) Major con: the owls all speak with British/Aussie accents, and well - we know how I feel about the British and Australians

3) There's a lot of owl-specific humour that is lost on a non-owl audience.

This is the Big Yam as an an owl of Ga'Hoole, by way of his cousin, Miss Ramona:

FYI: the real owls of Ga'Hoole are way angstier than that.

On Sunday we went to a pancake breakfast to benefit the Historical Aircraft Group Museum in the county. For $6, we got pancakes, eggs, sausage, juice. FOR SIX DOLLARS. IT WAS ALL YOU CAN EAT. THIS WAS A FUNDRAISING VENTURE. WTF?!??? America, you are beautiful indeed.

This old guy broke my heart. I first saw him two years ago at the mall in Geneseo, sitting at a table, selling his self-published memoir, One Foot on the Ground: A Pilot's Memoirs of Aviators and Aviation. It broke my heart and I talked to him for a bit. I saw him set up at the Museum and I declared, "if the book is less than $20, I'm buying it" and I went up and struck up conversation with him and he was so freakin' cute that even if the book had cost FORTY dollars I probably would have bought it...because I felt so bad for his little self-published book and him sitting alone at the table with his little ghetto blaster playing old wartime tunes and half falling asleep. I talked to him for a bit and bought a book (only $18!) and he signed it for me and I had my sister take this photo and he kissed my hand (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and I almost broke down into tears but managed to hold it together. He's NINETY FOUR YEARS OLD! I know I say it all the time, but I love old people:

We played catch in the backyard and lay out under their tree and then we ate an early dinner at Five Guys and came home.

Sigh...I love Geneseo. I love my family there.

Fin.

Summertime

...and the living is easy (not that easy, but pretty easy).

How is it the first day of June already? This summer is already ram-jammed. It's gotten to the point where I can almost hear the ominous sound of my over-commiting us. As of right now - last weekend of July (Canada Day weekend) we're hanging in Markham, 3rd weekend in July we're heading to Cleveland, first two weeks of August we're cottaging, and then the weekend after that we're heading to R&R Acres. Phew! Add to that: Tuesday night class for the rest of the month, Wednesday night dodgeball for the next 3 weeks, Friday night softball for the rest of the summer and I don't know how we'll have time to do stuff like go to the Farmer's Market, go to the splash pad, picnic, play bocce and frisbee and all the other fun fun summertime things we love to do. So...I just did a count - that only leaves us with SEVEN free weekends this summer. OY!!!

We're headed off to Geneseo for an extra-extra long weekend. Wahoo! We're picking up our Chariot and also visiting with the best people in the whole U.S.of A. So excited!

I applied for another job yesterday. One for which I am grossly unqualified, but it'd be interesting to just check the place out if I get an interview (which I won't, because of the aforementioned gross underqualification.)

Here are the last two night's of dinners. The oyako don (2nd photo) was sooooooo good! I'll post the recipe upon my return...can't say enough good things about it - so simple and dusted with togarashi to kick it up, it's the bomb.

Expect a slew of photos of babies, golfing, the drive-in, food, and happiness upon my return!

Fin.

Grateful pig

Daily family/friend/weekend/life love affirmation time. Not in the tempting-the-fates way, more in the "Dear Fates, I truly savour every moment because I realize how lucky I am and how tenuous and fleeting life is and I want you to know I'm filled with gratitude for my countless wonders" way.

What a weekend! It started with dinner with the Friday Night Dinner crew (me, Dr. Rei, Hanbo, the Dotytron, Big Yam, Dr. Rei's broski) at Udupi Palace, a vegetarian Indian place in Little India, around the corner from us. Some things were really exquisite, some were not. The appetizer platter was kind of hit or miss - the breading on some of the fried things was a little dense and lacking in seasoning - I'm not sure if they purposefully underseason so that you can then adjust with the chutneys, but it wasn't all working for me.




The best stuff on the menu were the dosas. We had a potato masala dosa that was spicy and a masala paneer dosa that was INSANELY good - I could eat those all day, every day. I accidentally gave the Big Yam some of the potato dosa without tasting it and it was spicy and he started crying and I felt like a bad, bad, mum.

Then we went up to Markham and spent the weekend with the fam-bam. We ate out, hung out, went swimming with the kids (which almost broke us), and saw a movie. When you're dealing with infants, the optimal adult-to-infant swimming happiness and maneuverability ratio is 2:1. We had 3 adults, 2 babies, and 2 kids (the kids are self sufficient) and it was a slippery octopus, chlorine, showering, family-change room gong show. Not recommended...but still, Little Big Cuz and the Big Yam had so much fun. The Big Yam is a pretty joyful being - one day, I'll take a video of his little "joy-gasms" and post it on here, it makes my insides shut down. Little Big Cuz likes to make eyes at you, smile, can army crawl across the floor, and screams like a woman when his mama isn't in sight, which also makes my insides shut down, but in a slightly different way.




I have an epic video of the two cousins babbling at each other, which is pretty crazy, considering that babies don't generally recognize each other or engage with other babies. Check out the Big Yam's awesome lotus pose up there - would that we were all still so flexible.


My sister and I went to see Bridesmaids while the boys went to see The Hangover Part 2(which they said was horrible, which I don't find surprising in the least, since the original Hangover was a textbook case of a movie that stupid people who laugh at dumb trailers in theatres go buck over.) Bridesmaids was decent, although I'm not a fan of gross-out humour. I'm also not a fan of using fat people to be the vehicles of gross-out humour, which this movie is a little guilty of. I also thought the movie dragged a bit (I can't remember a recent comedy that wasn't a little uneven) and some of the relationships (particularly between best friends Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig) strained credulity. That being said, Kristen Wiig is quite funny and winning through a lot of the movie and some of her freakouts are hilarious, as was her impression of a penis in the face.

Obligatory "I love my hood!" interjection. I LOVE MY HOOD! I love it love it love it love it love it. Yesterday we spent the better part of the late afternoon outside on our neighbour's lawn and hung out with some of the bigger kids who were coming back from the splash pad at the bottom of the street. Then my neighbour's mom offered to watch the Big Yam while I got dinner on, which was so nice of her! Then we all went out back and watched the commotion with some baby raccoons in the big tree and bounced around some ideas about renting a bin with the neighbs and doing some demo work. Then after dinner we went outside again for the post-dinner hangs. I don't want anyone to move...I'm so scared that people are going to leave the street and change the dynamic. Everyone on the street refers to the Big Yam as "baby Theo" (as in: "baby Theo is here!" "look at what baby Theo is doing!") and there's always sidewalk chalk and skipping and a million shared tricycles, plastic cars, and balls going on.

This weekend wasn't without it's minor wrinkles. I picked a fight with the Dotytron that was pretty hilarious. On Saturday afternoon he went with Bruce Wayne and Uncle Rico to take Little Ze and Miss E out to see Kung Fu Panda 2. As we were tucking into bed that night, the Dotytron was exhausted but I wasn't read to sleep so I wanted to talk and he was all rolling over and giving me the back so I started making outrageous claims like, "you never spend time with me!!!" and "there are only 2 days on the weekend when you can hang out with the Big Yam, and instead you chose to see Kung Fu Panda" and all sorts of unreasonable, petulant, mis-directed (really, I was just awake and wanted to talk more and missed spending one-on-one time with him and was probably a little pms-y) immaturity. I was also beyond reason and wouldn't let it go, which culminated in this line from the Dotytron: "Look, I can't talk to you when you're like this, I'm going to sleep. It's over. It happened, okay? Kung Fu Panda happened." LOL x a billion. "Kung Fu Panda HAPPENED" should be on a flash card so that it can be thrown up in front of my face the next time (and these kinds of minor moments of insanity are inevitable) this happens.

Last night for dinner I made us a nice, simple, quick supper of roasted Ontario asparagus, topped with roasted garlic oil croutons, and poached eggs. I love this meal. I'll post a photo tomorrow.

Tonight we're having chicken donburi with miso glazed eggplant...provided of course, that I manage to get home from my work bocce tournament (you read that right) in time to actually cook something.

Fin.

This post is going to be kinda girly...

inspired by the fact that I read the published excerpt from Mindy Kaling's upcoming book (available here) yesterday. I freakin' love Mindy Kaling...I think she's so funny and totally owns it and I find her way more easy to relate to than say, Tina Fey, who is the heroine for liberal, smart, professional moms. Mindy Kaling is the heroine for liberal, smart, pop culture obsessed working girls in L.A., and let's face it - even I, the girl who's more of a man (according to my husband), who wears her hair in a pony EVERY. SINGLE. GODDAMNED. DAY., who is way too wicked practical to wear anything but Birkenstocks in the summer, and who couldn't give a fig about 3/4 of the designers available at Opening Ceremony...even I have a little bit of that L.A. girl in me.

Reading Mindy's excerpt lead me to her twitter, which lead me to this new site, Hello Giggles that's run by Zooey Deschanel (whom I'm kinda over...just a little bit - possibly because I saw a photo of her looking HELLA old and I was like, girl, you can't be rocking that twee, tights-and-mary-janes look forever! What happens when you turn FORTY?!?), Sophia Rossi (links to their tumblr pages) and Molly McCaleer. Molly McAleer is new to me, but Sofia Rossi isn't. I mean, how awesomely hilarious she is is new to me, but ever since I've been on Twitter I made a point of following Samantha Ronson (this was when she was deep in the throes of mad lesbian dramas with Lindsay Lohan, and I couldn't resist getting an inside look. WHAT. I'M ONLY HUMAN!!!), and Mindy Kaling and Nicole Ritchie, who were always shouting out their friend Sofifi on Twitter. I feel like if I was anyone in Hollywood I'd probably be Nicole Richie (once she lost all the weight - ie. post drugs/Paris Hilton association.) I identify with her style (maxi dresses & vintage say what!) and she's a mom of two oddly named kids and she's shacked up with a musician (kinda sorta...I wouldn't trade the Dotytron for a pasty-faced Madden bro for all the world) and her version of the L.A., pop culture obsessed, TV watching, regular gal-about-town makes her seem pretty down to earth and like we could be compadres (unlike, say, the L.A. girls of the Hills.)

All this is to say that if you read Molls & Sofifi's blogs, they're FREAKIN' hilarious and I will definitely be cribbing some of their material. Sample Molls post:

If you title your YouTube video “Crackhead Crying About How Much He Loves Pizza” and then I click on that video and that’s not exactly what I get, I’m calling the police.

LOL! See? So funnay. Hello Giggles is a pretty cute site filled with fluffy goodness like, "Which Baby-sitter's Club member are you?" It just speaks to my adolescent/teen experience and part of the adult lady I am now.

Anyway, I know like, the Huffington Post Canada launched today, but I'd seriously rather spend time thinking about which Baby-sitter's Club Member I am (probably Kristy) and pretending I'd be the kind of girl to do DIY leopard spot nails. I guess I could be working on my homework or paper that was due in DECEMBER, or reading up on world events but let's face it: I gotta play to my strengths.



Like I said, I recently read Tina Fey's Bossypants, which I thought was kinda meh. I'm not one to go buck for Tina Fey. I can totally appreciate that she's a funny woman who has made great strides and is a feminist out there in network television holding her own in and amongst the guys...but like, she's not the reason I find (found) 30 Rock funny. Tracy Morgan is. I also didn't love her as Sarah Palin, etc...but I know she's pretty funny and it's awesome to see her at the helm of a female centred network television show that's not about forensics or being a real housewife or sister wife or any other kind of wife. I found the book kind of slim on the humour and she's also super-guarded, so you don't get a lot of juice...everything just felt really removed and detached and you never got too close to what makes her tick or her motivations, so it fell kind of flat for me. Not a lot of reflection and I wasn't able to feel like we could be girlfriends, ya know?



I spent most of the Boston trip plowing through Sarah Dessen's latest, What Happened to Goodbye. At this point in my Sarah Dessen career, she and I have a finely-tuned, well-oiled system going. Her books are kind of formulaic but soothing pablum nonetheless. Same old, same old. Tall, slender, pretty teenage girl with minor baggage stumbling through a year "figuring it out" with the help of a slightly left-of-centre guy. I enjoyed this better than Lock and Key and Along for the Ride, but it still ranked below my all-time favorites, This Lullaby and Just Listen.

In other news, since last night I've had these weird stomach pains that feel like moments of random, clenchy discomfort. It happens when I either sit up or lie on my side or change position but will also happen when I'm going about my business. It doesn't hurt enough to make me feel like I can't do stuff, or that I should go to the hospital, but it is weird. If anything, it kinda feels like I have something flipping around and moving in there...which has obviously made me think that I either have worms, or one of those TLC medical-freak-show ailments like a baby growing in my stomach. Strangely, when I consider these possibilities, I'm not scared so much as embarrassed at being a medical oddity.


Last night's dinner was steamed chicken breast, lap cheong, and mushrooms over baby shanghai choy on steamed brown rice, in a sweet soy sauce. LISTEN UP PEOPLE: IT'S SOY SAUCE, NOT SOYA.

Now I gots to go finish mending my mom's dress because she's starting to get antsy about the fact that I've had it for 7 months (she brought it over the first week I was home with new baby Big Yam.) My mom loves treating me like a seamstress. This is kind of galling because I vividly remember a time, like, 7 or 8 years ago, when we ended up at Caffé Demetre on the Danforth with Bruce Wayne and my sister and the Dotytron and she was all in a snit because I had borrowed her sewing machine and she wanted it back "to do some sewing" (I don't think my mom has applied herself to any handiwork since 1974) and I said I wasn't going to return it because I knew she wasn't going to use it and she got all teenaged drama queen about it and pouty and almost ruined our time eating our stupidly named desserts, until I agreed to return it to her and it's been SITTING IN THE EXACT SAME PLACE IN MARKHAM GATHERING DUST EVER SINCE. But it's okay, I'll get over and mend her dress.

Tonight we're doing dinner with our Friday night dinner gang - Dr. Rei, Hanbo, Dr. Rei's little bro, and us. We're going to Udupi Palace (which you might know as "Arupi"). Hopefully my tum tums holds up! Then we're heading up to Markham to spend the weekend with my fam-bam because my sister and outlaw bro are coming up! Wahoooooooooo! I think we're going to see Bridesmaids while the boys go see The Hangover Part 2. I'm REALLY looking forward to X-Men: First Class because I love 2 things: X-Men AND la Fassbender.

Deuces!

Fin.

Of Nigerian Princes...

One of the unintended side benefits of being on maternity leave and home a lot, is that you’re privy to the endless onslaught of telemarketers, scammers, and automated phone spammers that assault your home phone (that is, if you are so charmingly anachronistic as we are to still have a home phone line). Think about THAT the next time you’re chafing at the yoke of capitalism whilst sitting at your office desk! You could be fielding any number of calls from the Toronto Star (or your local newspaper – another anachronism!) the Symphony Orchestra, or your local MPP while trying to go about your daily business. Recently, I’ve been the not-quite-victim of a phone scam that clearly preys on the old and feeble and computer-ignorant.

Phone rings. Call display shows “Private name, private number.” I pick up. A gentleman of East Indian (not to be racist – is that racist?) descent tells me in heavily accented English that his name is Jasper or Reginald and that he’s calling from Microsoft because they’ve been receiving repeated alerts from my computer that I HAVE A VIRUS! Dun dun duuuuuuuuuun. Because, you know, the Microsoft corp has infinite time and energy on their hands to respond to EVERY PERSON who has an error message from running Windows. The first time they called, I just hung up and told the Dotytron that I suspected it was a scam. The second time they called, I started getting aggressive and asked: "What's your business registration number?" and then - click! - they hung up on me, pretty much cementing their scammer status. P.S. I don't even know what a business registration number is, or how official it is. Then I told the ex-roomie about it and she said she had heard about this scam on the CBC - they basically get you to download some kind of shadowing software that allows them to record keystrokes and get your banking info and stuff. EEEEVIL! Anyway, you'd think that after asking for the business registration number and thereby proving that I am no rube, they would delete me from their "n00bs to call" list. But no! On Monday, they called BACK! So this time, I strung them along for a bit. I asked "Jasper" for his employee number, the company's name ("I thought you said you were calling from Microsoft?" "Ma'am, Microsoft licenses us to respond to these error messages for them"), and when I started asking for phone number and address, I got, "Ma'am, why do you need to know this information?" "Uhhhh...YOU CALLED ME!" - click! -

In retrospect, I should have strung them along some more and then totally Matlock'd them (mostly for my own amusement)...I'm more interested to see what they're after, so next time I'll play it up some more, "Oh dear, a TROJAN?!? Hold on, I think I'm going to need my smelling salts..."

Here's one for the awful parenting notebooks. Monday morning, our last day in Boston, the Dotytron and I are lying in the gloriously fluffy and plush king-sized bed with the Big Yam sitting in front of us, facing the TV, watching something completely age-inappropriate like The X-Files Movie, eating a breakfast of leftover pizza crust from the night before because I had run out of packed baby cereal for him (left out at room temperature overnight), continually turning around and giving us his stupid-cute, "hey guys, what's going on back there?" look, replete with big eyes, mouth hanging quizzically agape, while the Dotytron and I tried to capitalize on the romance of a weekend away by doing some heavy petting. IMPOSSIBLE! Word to the wise: nothing ruins the mood more than your 7 month old kid, gnawing on a nutritionally devoid breakfast more suited to a frat house keg-party morning-after, looking over his shoulder and up at you. Ah well, chalk one down for trying to not live the life of brother and sister eunuchs.

This is Tuesday night's dinner - which the Big Yam is enjoying immensely in leftover form for his lunches/dinner:

Last night I tried a new recipe that I saw on Saveur magazine - shakshuka eggs (eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce). I'll post the recipe below...it's DELICIOUS! One of those quick and easy meals that comes together in about 30 minutes, is vegetarian and healthy, and can be made with pantry ingredients. I had bought some hot house cherry tomatoes from the Mennonites last week (and spent a pretty penny, let me tell you!) so I turned leftover crisped pita into a fattoush salad (I do love me a bread salad!)



Last night the ex-roomie came over and baby sat the Big Yam while we went to our dodgeball game. We are the luckiest people in the world to have such a wide network (village) of people loving up on our little guy and willing to help us out so that we can continue to lead fulsome lives.


Fin.


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

Shakshuka Eggs
serves 4 people, from Saveur Magazine

1/4 c. olive oil
1 yellow onion, finely diced
3 jalepenos, finely diced (I seeded them because I was making this for the Big Yam, but if you leave the seeds in, it will have a nice amount of kick)
lots of minced garlic
1 T. paprika
1 t. cumin
1 28oz can of whole tomatoes
kosher salt & pepper to taste
8 eggs
150 g. of feta (I prefer Bulgarian)
chopped parsley
toasted pita

- in a large (12") deep saucepan, sauté the onion, jalepenos and garlic in the olive oil over medium heat until lightly golden
- add the paprika and cumin and cook out for about 2-3 minutes more
- take the can of tomatoes (don't drain the juices) and crush the tomatoes with your hand, add the crushed tomatoes and the juice from the can to the pan, reduce the heat to medium low, and simmer for about 20 minutes.
- season to taste with salt and pepper
- crack the eggs (I find it easiest to try to position them like the numbers on a clock) into the tomato mixture, and cover the pan. Cook until the egg whites are set and the yolks are still runny (about 5 minutes with the lid on)
- take off the heat, serve topped with crumbled feta, chopped parsley, and with toasted pita for dipping.

B-b-b-back!

My thoughts on the past 4 days can basically be summed up thus:

Family vacations are fun.

...for the most part. I love that we three are a family now - mama bear, baba bear, and baby bear all travelling together and experiencing a new place together and exploring together, being present together. The flip side of this is that you find yourself sprinting through the Island airport because SOMEBODY didn't put in baby bear's full, unwieldy middle name into the booking information and fixing that in the system takes about 45 minutes and then you are the last people to board the plane but OF COURSE you get randomly selected to have your hands wanded by security for mysterious substances unknown (aside: seeing them wand the Boobla's chubby mitt was kind of the cutest, even as we were trying to juggle purse, diaper bag, Big Yam, shoes, stroller, luggage, Dotytron's guitar, knapsack) and then you arrive breathless on the plane with a flustered and unsettled baby who's been up for the past 3 hours only to find your departure delayed by 45 minutes because of "refueling issues" (aside: I kind of hate it when the captain gives too much detail - I don't need to know if we're having refueling issues!! That sounds scary!) Oy.

Travelling with kids is hard. I can see why people go to all inclusive resorts and Disney World. You have to pack a lot of stuff (and keep in mind, we were still on the same continent!) and you have to factor in nap times and feeding times and diaper changing scenarios and pack food and breast milk and eating/crapping/sleeping supplies and you can't eat in the same restaurants you're used to eating in (next time, Menton! Next time, Clio!) No more 30 seat restaurants that don't take reservations, no more 4 hour tasting menus.

That being said - I wouldn't have left the Big Yam at home for anything. It was so relaxing being there as a family away from all the usual day-to-day push and pull - I loved this concentrated time away with them. I can definitely see why parents leave the kids at home to reconnect with their significant others, but I come from a family where vacationing was almost exclusively a FAMILY pursuit - so I don't really get families where the parents always travel separately from their kids. Yes, it gets expensive (once the kid requires their own plane seat) and the logistics are tough, and you can't necessarily go to the same places you used to - but at the same time, I think it's so important for building an understanding of family to be going through the same travel experience together. To be the outsiders together and to navigate through the stresses as a family unit. My favorite night was Sunday, when we gave up on the Freedom Trail (more on that later) in the early afternoon and came back to the hotel and ordered pizza and ate takeout and watched Game of Thrones (in real time!) on the big flat screen tv all smushed together in the king sized bed with the fluffy sheets and giant-a** pillows.

It also helps to have a baby that EVERYONE FALLS IN LOVE WITH. It's kind of uncanny that misanthrope me produced a kid that randomoniums lurve. So many times when we were walking, I'd catch someone looking at the stroller and then smiling and I'd catch their eye and get the residual, Big Yam-adoration afterglow washing over me. The Dotytron observed it a few times too and finally said, "People love their Thelonious Doty." So true! We'd either get that kind of passive exchange or a more direct, outright, "you baby is so cute" action. Now, it could be that those people are just general baby-lovers. I'm NOT a general baby-lover so I don't know. I know that I do find a lot of kids I don't know either completely uninteresting or downright repulsive (especially if they're precocious)...regardless of the roots behind people's Big Yam-goodwill, it certainly helps to soften the rough edges of travel.

Boston is generally a pretty kid-friendly town. There's an awesome aquarium (which we went to, see above), a children's museum (when he's older), a science museum (ditto), and a bunch of good, family-friendly places to eat (Mr. Bartley's Burger Cottage, Jasper White's Summer Shack) that still satisfy my chowhound palates AND allow you to make a mess (Summer Shack serves complimentary baskets of soft rolls and cornbread and we sat the Big Yam down in a high chair and gave him chunks of cornbread to feed himself. 20 minutes later, after noticing that he was BLOWING through the cornbread, I finally turned to the Dotytron and said, "I can't BELIEVE how much cornbread this dude is eating!" and then happened to glance down at the floor which I actually couldn't see because it was COMPLETELY OBSCURED by a dense, cornbread-spit-crumb shag carpet fabricated by Big Yam design corp, and when I apologized profusely to the servers they were beyond gracious about it), and it's walkable and the transit system makes a lot of sense and covers a lot of ground.

A transit SNAFU perpetrated by the combined navigationally challenged forces of the Dotytron and myself resulted in one of the best moments of the trip. It was late in the day on Friday after we had taken about a billion transfers to get to our stop only to find that we exited at the wrong end of the subway platform. As we doubled back around, we were flustered but determined to make the best of things and we both said out loud, "It's aight, it's aight" and then this old homeless-y looking guy, turned around, as if he had heard us, and threw a reassuring nod in our direction. It was THE BEST! Like, the timing couldn't have been more perfect for a reassuring, random, assurance in the "don't worry be happy" vein from a probable derelict. Best!

There's a lot of historical stuff in Boston as well, which is, quite frankly, if you travel the way the Dotytron and I do (which is: don't read up on anything about the place you're going to before you go, unless it's food related), the boringest. There's the Freedom Trail which sounds kind of exciting in a Michael Bay movie kind of a way, but is basically a series of ye olde tyme-y brick buildings filled with colonial-era furniture and sometimes a Benjamin Franklin impersonator or two talking about printing presses and how the British suck. Okay fine. To be honest, we have no idea what goes on INSIDE the buildings because we walked the trail for like, 2 seconds and saw 2 buildings of historical renown before deciding that this was the most heinous stuff ever. Sooo snoozy! I think my history-comes-alive hierarchy of preference goes something like, 1) animatronics, 2) movies, 3) people in costumes (not talking), 4) people in costumes (talking), 5) war reenactments (for like, 2 seconds), 6) buildings of historical significance with wordy placards.

We did a LOT of walking and eating and sightseeing and figured out what neighbourhood we would live in if we were to move there (in Cambridge, close to the river). We really loved the town, over all. It's a good mix of city pleasures and neighbourhoods to explore and fun things to do without being too NYC hectic. Heck, I'd move there to have ready access to Flour Bakery and Cafe alone - I could eat there for breakfast every day of the year. The Dotytron loved the fact that Berklee school of music means that every busker you hear is a highly accomplished jazz musician.

Here's a publicly accessible link to my Facebook album of the trip...to save me the trouble of uploading a million shots: Bostonia

The night before we left I made chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, and a cool cucumber and tomato salad with ranch dressing:

Last night for dinner I made us those potato, egg, and pepper harissa Moroccan sandwiches:

Tonight I'm making a tofu and vegetable chow mein stir fry - to try to counteract the pounds and pounds of seafood I ate all weekend.

Bonus shot of the Big Yam playing in our freshly made bed last night:

Can you believe it's nearly June? Argh!!! Summer is almost over! We're already booking into the third weekend of June at this point...

Fin.

B-b-b-beantown!

Sorry I've been incommunicado lately - scrambling to get a million things done...off to Boston tomorrow morning (although I'm a little nervous about being in Massachusetts when the apocalypse starts on Saturday)...expect a tonne of photos upon my return!

Have a happy long weekend, my faithful (and neglected) readers!

Fin.