Ugh.

Ugh ugh ugh. It's been a trying week.  A lot of instability at work that I can't really talk about, save to say that my work is not immune to the public sector constrictions that are happening everywhere as a result of the global economic crisis.  Any way you slice it, it's bad for morale.

It's not helping that my mum and Big D are continuing to use me as their filial whipping boy.  I would have thought that having spent the majority of her years in North America, that my mum would be able to resist the sexism of Chinese culture, but no.  The boys will always get a free pass.  My sister will always be the "good" child, which leaves me as the repository for all their frustrations.  I don't "behave" properly.  I'm not "obedient" or "accommodating" enough.  It gets incredibly frustrating and demoralizing.  Emails are flying back and forth with this weird blanket caveat "we're not showing favoritism" but then my name gets flung in there and weird comments get made about how my proclivity for prioritizing my friends over my family has been noted, purportedly without prejudice.  The expectations of me are so much more and it's annoying that my brothers get a free pass.  They basically get to flit in and out and do as they please, without being held accountable for how they're not being "accommodating" or "helpful" enough.

I get that kids are going to get treated differently.  I do.  But what I do resent is being the ONLY kid who gets consistently s**t on and being held to a different standard than my equally capable siblings.

One of the big issues is scheduling.  We can't see eye to eye on this matter at all.  My parents insist that I try to have things done according to "my" schedule and refuse to be accommodating to their scheduling needs and only try to arrange things when it's convenient for me.  The big, gaping lacuna in their logic is that EVERYONE IS TRYING TO WORK THEIR SCHEDULES OUT SO THAT IT'S CONVENIENT FOR THEIR OWN, EQUALLY BUSY, LIVES.  So, when my sister said that it would work better for her and Uncle Rico to have my grandma's birthday dinner on a Saturday instead of Sunday, presto changeo! Dinner is on Saturday without comment.  When I send an email stating what blocks of time we have free to do something, then suddenly it becomes that I'm making demands, and not requests.  It's completely illogical and irrational.

It's like trying to set up a meeting request in Outlook and then flipping out when you want to have a meeting on Monday at 2pm and two of the attendees have something from 2-2:30pm and that time is blocked off.

Blargh.  That's just the tip of the iceberg.  I'm also my own worst enemy, because I have somehow sublimated some of that Confucian filial piety thing so that I still feel guilty.  Which is my own problem.  I gotta accept it and move on.  My new mission is to ignore and play the part of Bruce Wayne.  Do what I like when I like, don't try to organize things in advance, and let them howl.

There is also a valuable takeaway here, and it involves parenting and like, NOT PLAYING FAVORITES.  Haha. No really; I'm currently reading Alison Bechdel's new comic memoir (ie. it's not a comedy, but it's a memoir presented in comic form), Are You My Mother? and it's got a bunch of psychoanalysis type stuff based on her own therapy sessions, her readings of Virginia Woolf and most of the major psychoanalysts (Freud, Jung, etc.), and based mostly on this dude Donald Winnicott's theories on the transitional object and more importantly, the true self and the false self.  Basically, the true self is the confident, self-actualized, creative you.  Living your true self is awesome.  The false self is when you internalize or subsume your true self and model the behaviour that's expected of you, so that you become more like your mother, father, caregiver, etc.  It's an unconscious process, and you can trick others and even yourself into thinking that the false self is who you really are.  But what ends up happening is that even if you're successful with your false self, you feel kind of sad and empty and lonely (obvi!)

If I were to armchair psychoanalyze myself, I would say that Mom and Big D have problems dealing with my true self and want me to be more of a false self.  The problem is, I can probably say that from, say, BIRTH, I've never been a false self kind of person.  This is a positive in some respects (I tend to be very happy/content and confident and creative) and negative in others (I can be tactless and have problems seeing things from other people's perspectives).  Mom and Big D just can't handle my true self.  Does this mean that I'm off the hook from humoring them?  No.  I'm not so unreflexive as to think that.  But at the same time, our clashes seem to always come down to the fact that I don't behave the way they want me to.  Am I doing something horrible?  No.  I just have my own way of scheduling the life of myself, my partner, and our young son.  Because it's such a minor thing, I don't really think it requires changing, especially since every OTHER aspect of my life is helped along by this one tendency (ie. my tendency to be organized and be a planner).

Ultimately, we both have to love each other for who we are, not for who we want the other person to be.  I think I can safely say that I don't really expect or want anything from my parents on the regular.  I don't want or need them to change in some fundamental way in order for our relationship to change.  I just get irritated when they call me out and single me out for rando s**t.  But whatever.  As the Dotytron is fond of saying, HATERZ GON' HATE.

Tonight is softball and it is very close to our house and I am very excited about that.  Last night I went home and we had clam pizza for dinner and a lovely beet salad over arugala and CSA greens with goat's cheese and candied pecans.  Momma D came over for dinner and a visit.  It was yum.  And I treated myself to a decompressing-from-stress fudgesicle.  The kids went out and put on their boots and splashed in the post-rain puddles.  If that pic above isn't one of the cutest things you've ever seen, then you must be living in Sanrio World in Japan.

Tonight we had pimento cheese, mortadella, and pickle paninis with chips.

And I made a key lime pie ice cream base which I churned this morning so it will be ready to be my post-softball treat.

There is something magical that happens when you mix eggs, condensed milk, and lime juice.  It thickens up so nicely on its own.  I've posted my recipe below for any and all of you who have an ice cream maker, along with Christina Tosi's graham crust, which I baked off and chunked into the ice cream to give it that real, key lime pie flavour.

Fin.

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Key Lime Pie Ice Cream


1 1/2 c. whipping cream (you could probably use coffee cream)
1 1/2 c. milk (I used 2%)
1 can of condensed milk
4 egg yolks
1/2 c. lime juice
zest of two limes

- heat the milk and cream in a saucepot over medium heat until the mixture comes to just under a simmer.
- add the lime zest and let this steep
- whisk together the condensed milk and the egg yolks and the lime juice
- slowly temper this mixture with the hot milk-cream
- pout the tempered eggs back into the pot and cook over low heat, stirring/whisking constantly, until the mixture just comes to a bare, bare simmer and thickens
- cool the mixture overnight and churn as per your ice cream maker's directions.

Momofuku Milk Bar's Graham Crust
tweaked with my minor, minor adaptations


1 1/2 c. graham crumbs
1/2 c. powdered milk
2 T. sugar
1 t. salt
4 T. unsalted butter, melted
1/4 c. whipping cream

- preheat the oven to 250F
- in a bowl, toss together the dried ingredients until evenly combined.  Add the liquid ingredients and stir until wet, sandy "clumps" form.
- dump these clumps onto a silpat  or parchment-lined baking tray and bake for about 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes or until the clumps are toasted and feel dry.
- break the clumps into smaller pieces and fold half this amount into your churned ice cream before you freeze.

Mia Familia

I know EVERYONE'S family is super annoying and f**ked up but I feel like my family is particularly annoying and f**ked up and I need to vent.

I have no problems with my siblings, but my mum (the Teenaged Drama Queen) and Big D are driving me crazy.  My bio-dad has basically excised himself out of my life and I don't feel either here or there about that, so obviously it's no biggie.

I know other people who have weird family members so I get it.  I just kind of wish that you could be more open about how messed up your parents are, so that there's no veil of secrecy around things.  The thing is, when you're raised on a diet of The Cosby Show or ALF or even Beverly Hills, 90210 and you see like, stereotypical parents who like hanging out with their kids and grandchildren and know how to dispense advice and be supportive, it totally warps your expectations (FTR: I'm obviously only talking about Jim and Cindy on 90210 - the other parents on that show were wacksauce - especially you, Jackie Taylor, and to a certain extent, you, Scott Scanlon's mom).

Anyway, I feel a weird sort of loyalty to my family (I guess it's not that weird, seeing as how they raised me and all) and so I don't spend that much time dishing about their weirdness, but I wish everyone was more open about how weird their parents are so I could have a better sense of what's an acceptable level of infuriating behavior and what isn't.

Unrelated, and on a happier note: watching the Dotytron watching old episodes of Beverly Hills, 90210 is seriously the best.  Like, I'll be sitting on the couch reading a book and he's sitting next to me, firing up some 90210 on Netflix and Brenda will be flipping out at Dylan buying a frozen burrito for dinner and forgetting laundry detergent when she's moved in with him because Jim and Cindy won't accept their relationship, and I'll look up at him and he'll be LAAAAUGHING to himself like it's the funniest thing ever.  Which, in turn, becomes the funniest thing ever, to me.  The Dotytron and his sister have an unparalleled capacity to watch old episodes of 90210.  It's a strange, strange gift.

Fin.

Epic funtimes

Big epic fun-times this weekend.  A *little* too much driving around doing ghey errands (why, Costco, why?) but other than that, it was really nice.


I had the morning with the Big Yam on Friday and we hung out and chilled and then met up with J and the Big Yam's homies at the park.  I had a massage.  I skipped out on softball to be in solidarity with the Dotytron who was helping our neighbour that we've hired to build a fence (in exchange for a break on our share of the cost), tear up the existing chain link fence.  It's a good thing, because apparently the team we played on Friday was big on the smack talk and fisticuffs almost broke out.  Rude fact: in any competitive sport situation in which trash talk might lead to a physical altercation - it's best if I'm not around, as I am more help (in terms of fanning the aggro flames) than hindrance. 

I wait all year long for Ontario strawberries to be in season to make this fresh strawberry pie.  It's divine.  Recipes like this are one of the reasons I lament the ending of Gourmet magazine. So good.  I brought this to a park picnic I had with my friend E last Thursday night.

Friday night's dinner was salmon burgers with tzatiki, lettuce and tomato. Tasty! We had a salad alongside.

Saturday was a fun, fun day.


#1 I made us an awesome breakfast.  We got chanterelles from our CSA so I sautéed them in butter and thinly sliced CSA spring onions and we served them over scrambled eggs with breakfast sausage, toast, and an arugala salad.

#2 PINGY IS IN TOWN!!!  So she came over and I loaned her a pretty slamming outfit to wear to a wedding she was going to and then we went and visited the Roomie and L'Armi and the wee babe who has a provisional first name (FINALLY) but they're still waffling on the middle name.  I love me some Ping.


#3 Badminton & splash pad!  SMckay and the FroYo Baron came by and brought their badminton set and we took the Big Yam to the splash pad.  The Dotytron had spent all day tearing up fence posts and doing hard labour and was covered in dust and dirt and so he came with us to the park to cool down.  Then he kind of went all foul owl on us, which was kind of funny, because it's the first time SMckay has seen the Dotytron in one of his "moods."  Dr. Rei is well familiar with how awful it is when the Dotytron flips the switch and turns all foul owl.  Basically, it's like the entire sky darkens and there's no light in the world and your ONLY GOAL becomes making the Dotytron go back to being Captain Funtimes Easy-go again and it's like the hardest and most demoralizing thing ever because he gets STUCK in his foul owl-ness pretty hardcore.  Luckily, taking a shower at the splash pad helped.


#4 Lolly came over!  She was at our place before we got back from the splash pad and was all like, "Sooo, I let myself in and the Dotytron said, 'I'm just getting out of the shower!' and then he put jazz on and I didn't know if that was an invitation or not."  LOL x 1000000000000000!  So funny.  We got Burger's Priest and manged that and then went to see Snow White and the Huntsman but not before,


#5 SMckay gave the Big Yam a very Friar Tuck haircut.  Which ended up being topical because now the Big Yam looked like one of the baddies in the movie:

This was also topical because SMckay gave me the gears when I accidentally cut the Boobla's hair too short and made him look all dumb & dumber:

Really though, I don't think there's anything you can do about the Boobla looking like a monk when you trim his bangs.  It's just the nature of his head shape.  He does still look awfully cute though:

#6 The trailer for the Les Miserables movie was one of our previews and at the opening notes of the music I raised my fist in the air and looked around...to find a completely indifferent theatre.  That didn't stop Lolly, Steph and I from holding hands for the duration of the preview.

#7 The movie.  This movie has been getting middling reviews, and yet I found it pretty entertaining in a high-gloss, low-narrative consistency kind of way.  It's over-the-top like a slick music video and some of the imagery is fantastic.  It's also got this feminist narrative (ie. what makes Charlize Theron's deliciously campy Queen Ravenna so vicious is because she was taught that men only give power to beautiful women and she learned to use their sexism against them) and Snow White isn't some maiden to be rescued, she leads the army in the charge to take the castle back.  But: does it make me a bad feminist that even though I intellectually appreciated all that, I wanted a big, juicy, make out scene between Snow and her hottie huntsman, Chris Hemsworth?  Chris Hemsworth is definitely the hotter of the Hemsworth bros.  I'm awarding him the title because he also had the good sense to NOT propose to a 19 year old Miley Cyrus.  What the heck are you thinking, Liam Hemsworth?!?  Jeez.  Anyway, elder Hemsworth is super-hot and buff and alpha male.  He's also wicked as Thor.  So, done and done.  The movie plays around with the outlines of the Snow White story and comes up with something that has some of the same tell-tale elements (dwarves, apple) but makes them a little more contemporary and inserts a political point about womyn, that in the process robs audiences of the making out scene they so desperately want AND garbles some of the story elements (ie. why does Snow need the Huntsman to kiss her awake? Why does the Wicken Queen have to be the fairest? We dun know.)  Anyway, this was a fun enough disposable viewing, although not something for the ages.

Sunday was Father's Day.  We slept in, schlepped up to Markham to have breakfast with Big D and company and then went to Costco and dim sum.  Then we came home, I finished a quilt top while the Dotytron and the Boobla napped and then we went to J & S's house for dinner with the Discerning Coyote and his gf.  It was a delicious meal.  I made us pimento cheese spread which we ate with pita chips.  The Discerning Coyote made a lovely, light potato salad.  J & S made ribs and baked beans and a roasted beet and goat's cheese salad and biscuits.  I made that toasted almond, lemon curd semifreddo and J made cheesecake with rhubarb sauce.  I was full to bursting and we had a great time eating and hanging with their kids, who are adorable, punchy, smart little tykes.  


The little Boobla might be teething.  He's been a fussy fussbudget mini-St. Bernard drool monster lately and he woke up crying at an ungodly hour Sunday morning so I hustled him into bed with us and he slept there. On my arm. Which was awkwardly trapped in a weird twisted position under his giant head.  And yet. And yet having him in bed with us is one of my greatest, secret pleasures and I will take my sore arm as payment gladly.

Pingy came over for dinner tonight.  I made us that torched spicy salmon rice bowl thing that I like to make.  It was delicious.  We chased it with cheesecake and my homemade mint crackle ice cream, which is divine.

I've been going a little crazy with the chilled desserts action.  This is a fresh mint bittersweet chocolate crackle ice cream I made.  It's soooo good and minty!  If I had had US-style Girl Guide Thin Mint cookies (the kind without the mint goo) I would have folded some up in there for some more texture.

Fin. 

A perfect night

Sometimes, everything comes together and you have a perfect night.


It's just shy of 9pm, so maybe some people will say it's too early to call it, but since I'm going to bed in about T-minus 10 seconds, I think it's safe to say: tonight was a perfect night.


Even though I woke up at 5:45am.  Even though I ran 5 km this morning and didn't shower and thus couldn't have looked more like hell at work if I tried.  Even though I spent all day in a "Presenting with Confidence" workshop (that was actually surprisingly good!), everything came together and it was a great evening.

We had a mezes meal picnic outside.  Hummous, olives, tzatiki, fried haloumi, tomato-cucumber-mint salad, whole wheat pitas.  


The Big Yam was being the best.  He was in one of his funny, jokey, good-natured, listening, helpful zones (all those factors coming together is rare) and we didn't have a single hiccup.  He learned a new word "lemon!" and put together a new sentence "go again!" and he was a treat and a joy to be around.  Just a good little buddy to be hanging with and I didn't notice or miss the absence of adult company.

We went to the park.  And this happened.  And I caught video footage of the Big Yam going down the big slide.  His signature move is sitting down on his bum-bum like, 5 feet away from the edge of the slide and taking 10 minutes to creep his way forward.  It's pretty cute (although frustrating for other kids waiting to get on).

And we also played this fun game with a squirt bottle where I basically sprayed water directly into his mouth and he thought it was a riot.  We came home and had bath and stories and I did his flash cards and he surprised me by shouting out almost all the numbers from 1-10 in Cantonese.  Smart little Boobla.


I've said it before and I'll say it again, sometimes I'm a lucky, lucky button.  *Knocks on a million pieces of wood*


Fin.

OMG OMG OMG

So, the Roomie and L'Armi MADE THE CUTEST BABY EVER!!!  She's so new!  We were granted visiting privileges on Saturday afternoon and I got "the call" while grocery shopping with the Big Yam and then basically became frantic with the NEED TO SEE THIS BABY and I was whipping around the Danforth with the Big Yam in his stroller like a madwoman, shoving people out of my way.  And when we saw her!  She is absolutely precious.  I was totally tearing up - the Roomie is one of my oldest friends and has been with us through most of our big life upheaval stuff.  We've born witness to her relationship with L'Armi since they became romantically tied and now to see them becoming a family together...it was just extra, extra special.

We had a pretty busy weekend, but it was SO MUCH FUN!  Our softball team SPANKED our opposition on Friday night.  We won like, 31 to 15 or something.  So, so, so good.  I freakin' love Friday night softball so much.  I just love competitive sports.  The dark side of this was exhibited during the badminton tourney/bbq at Lolly's house when I turned into a crazy angry-dad, psycho weirdo.  Poor Uncle Jesse (my partner).  He was being SO GOOD about it!  Like being such a good dad to me.  While I was total Select Hockey in North Bay Angry Dad to the max.  What is WRONG with me?

Speaking of being an angry dad.  I read (skimmed, it wasn't a book you had to read line by line) this book lately that made a big impression on me.  It's called Simplicity Parenting.  It's kind of Waldorf-y and hippie, but if you know anything about me and the Dotytron, it's that we kind of lean that way, anyway.  Basically, the idea is that we overstimulate and over-schedule kids and it creates anxieties for parents and kids and families.  One of the biggest things the author advocates is reducing visual clutter in the home and particularly in your kid's room, by getting rid of toys and books.  He says that you should halve your kid's toys, halve them again, and then halve them again.  The Waldorf-y stuff is the emphasis on on wooden, "natural" toys (ie. non-branded, less plastic crap).  Toys should be grouped into two categories: active toys (toys you use to construct/build/create with - blocks, play dough, etc.) and receptive toys (toys whose only function is to receive imaginative play - like dolls, stuffies, etc.)   This way, it allows your kid to play deeply and nurture their imagination.  The author also thinks it's okay for kids to be bored and that the silence that boredom allows is an opportunity that pushes children to listen to what's going on in their own heads once the clutter is gone and also allows spaces for creativity.  Reducing the books is counter-intuitive (for me anyway), but again, it picks up on the natural tendency of children to want to deeply explore ONE thing (the same impulse that makes kids want to read the same story or do the same thing, again and again and again). Each repetition the kid is exploring more deeply, becoming attuned to nuances, subtle differences, etc.

Another thing was to build in repetition and rhythms into your family life cycle.  Dinner at the same time, breakfast at the same time, we do this at this time, etc.  Another thing was letting your kid decompress at the end of a day by having a conversation that's structured so that the kids' fears/anxieties/troubles are "sandwiched" by good stuff (so you begin and end with highs/positive reinforcement).

In a way, this book validated our personal parenting style - most of the points were things/beliefs that we already were doing or subscribed to.  One of  the big takeaways for me was the over-scheduling thing.  Reading the author's perspective made me realize why the Dotytron puts up so many objections when I do try to commit us to too much.  The Dotytron is generally much more attuned to the understanding that moments of quietness and stillness and rests and pauses are restorative and necessary, for imaginative, creative, intellectual and emotional growth.  I'm going to try to be more mindful of that in the future.

The Dotytron's Nany's 90th birthday party was on Sunday.  It was great seeing all the extended Doty clan and cousins and kids of cousins.  The oldest (second?) cousin in the Big Yam's generation, who is 3, took the Big Yam under her wing.  She called him "Chico" which was hilarious. I think we missed an opportunity there.

I applied to graduate today.  Kind of a big deal.  2 years devoted to this degree and it's only like, 5 weeks away from being over!  I can't believe it.

Tonight's dinner was pesto, spicy calabrese, spicy genoa and provolone stromboli.  With coleslaw. 

My tranny kitchen helper - making coleslaw.

Fin.

Fun on deck

THE BABY STILL DOESN'T HAVE A NAME.  


I was talking to my friend K yesterday and she made a good point: the longer the baby goes unnamed the harder it is to name it.  I agree!  It's like guys, stop being such hippies, man up, and name your kid!  There's a part-time kid at the Big Yam's daycare who just showed up and has hippie parents who named their girls "Blue" and "Ocean" - I feel like this is what happens when you don't name your kid for a week.  I've only seen her once and it was classic, "parent can't discipline their kid" styles.  She's almost four and still uses a pacifier and isn't used to being told that her every whim isn't okay.  The Dotytron says she's practically feral.  LOL!  


I've kind of changed tacks - I don't think the roomie and L'Armi are going to be incapable of discipline (I hope not).  But man, parents who can't say no to their kids befuddle me.  They're always the ones whose lives are like, hell.  That being said, yesterday Bruce Wayne picked up the Big Yam from daycare and then Nana showed up for a visit and the Boobla lost his s**t.  He was bawling his eyes out and clinging to me and freaking out bigtime.  He basically thought that I was going to go away and leave him with Momma D and Bruce Wayne.  I think as he's starting to become more aware of his surroundings, he's more aware of routine.  When I rolled up, he and Bruce Wayne were having a grand time.  I think it was seeing me that set him off.  If I hadn't have come home he would have just dealt with it.  


Although lately he's started doing this really adorable thing where he plaintively cries out, "Maaamaaa!  Baaabaaa!" if he doesn't see us and I swear, the sound of him saying that in the tone that he says it has opened up a special place in my heart that I didn't even know existed.  


In other Big Yam news, our daycare provider sends me photos during the day of him doing stuff, which is cute, because it's nice to think of him having this whole day without us with his own crew.  I just love the thought of him having his own stuff going on, his own office drama, his own collection of independent experiences, ya know?  I go to work, the Dotytron goes to work, the Big Yam goes to work.  Anyway, J always sends me the photos accompanied by a caption that's written in the first person from the perspective of the Big Yam.  It cracks me up.  "Hi Mommy."  "Mommy. I love sand."  LOL!  


Unrelated:  this is why I love the Go Fug Yourself girls (besides many other reasons, not the least of it being their appreciation for the scandalously sexy glamorous oeuvre of Judith Krantz).  In talking about the decoration on some starlet's dress, they likened it to: "those froofy headbands paranoid parents stick on their baby girls' heads so that strangers don't coo, 'What a handsome boy.'"  I have it out for those things.  I just think they look so constricting on a wee bald baby's head.  And I also think it's weirdly paranoid of parents to care that people think their girl baby is a boy.  Who cares?  Why you gotta make such a big deal about it?


This weekend is gonna be fun!  Tonight we have softball at Withrow Park (so close!) and I've packed us an awesome picnic dinner of egg salad sandwiches and salad and fruit.  Then we can come home and have a slice of the rhubarb custard pie I baked up to cheer up Momma D yesterday (it was her and Poppa D's wedding anniversary and she was bummed).  


Tomorrow we're going to check out more hardwood flooring and then have a fun afternoon of games and pot luck at Lolly's new digs.  


Sunday we're going to Nany's 90th birthday party which is kind of a big deal.  It's being held at a golf course up in the middle of nowhere and it's a 5 hour extravaganza.  I personally think that's a little long for an old person party (or any person party, really).  Old people get tired!  The Dotytron's aunt is putting the party together and is going a little nuts in the process.  There's a colour scheme and we're all supposed to dress in the colour scheme and there was all this drama between me and her about these cupcakes that she wanted me to make that resulted in lots of emails and now I think she's mad at me!  LOL!  It's cray-cray.  


I feel like I totally missed my calling as a general contractor.  I've been meeting with contractors to do some work at Lil' Ugmo and it's been such an ordeal.  I'm playing hardball, wanting them to separate out in the quotes the cost for materials (which are fixed costs and common across the board) and the costs for labour.  Some of them are balking and then treating me like I'm an idiot and don't know what I'm talking about and trying to pull a Holmes-on-Holmes fear-mongering job on me to manipulated me into thinking that what they're doing is terribly complicated and beyond me.  WELL GUESS WHAT, CONTRACTORS?!?  IT'S NOT!  


My basic approach is always as follows:  Just about every damned house in Leslieville is exactly the same as ours (more or less).  Ergo, I refuse to believe that our house is a special case.  Ergo, don't try to tell me what can or can't be done by preying on fears of mine that don't exist.  There are people who are SO SCARED of everything and it boggles my mind.  I get that contractors are used to dealing with them and therefore can charge a premium based on their hand-holding of the situation, but I don't need that.  What I really want is a middle ground between the over-charging, gougey super-professional slick dudes, and the alternative, which are uber-cheap Chinamen (I generalize, but a lot of them are) who don't speak much English, make a mess, and flick cigarette butts on your floor.  I don't mind paying a bit more for some rudimentary customer service, but I don't want to them to take the farm.  


The thing is: I LOVE DOING THIS.  I love project managing the job and making a million calls and doing research and then pitting them against each other.  It's kind of the best.  I'm a born project manager and project managing your own home is the most validating work of all.  I think that's going to be my retirement profession.  


Also: everyone has got to sekkle down on their horny for pot lights.  I can't think of harsher, more unflattering lighting than pot lights (well, office fluoros, but that's a given).  Also: shopping for light fixtures is unimaginably fun from a design standpoint - why would you want to take that away?  Lamps 4-life!!!

Rhubarb custard pie.  I cut down the sugar in the recipe A LOT to preserve the tartness of the rhubarb.  It's all bound in a silky, slightly sweet custard in my patented earth-shatteringly flaky pie crust.  So good.  I gotta give some to the neighbs to get it outta my house.

Fin.

She who shall not be named...

AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!  The roomie had her baby!  A girl!  At home (lucky!)  The baby was born on Monday morning.  The roomie is pretty particular about things so she's put a moratorium on visitors...it's probably for the best because I'm starting to get a bit baby-crazy and I'm starting to develop a reputation as a giant baby hog.  Whenever I can get my hands on our neighbour's baby, the Zen Potato, I do and I don't give her up if I don't have to.


Anyway, from L'Armi's announcements on FB, it *seems* like the baby might not have a name yet...which I find weird [edit: textual communication with the roomie confirms the baby has not been named].  The roomie and L'Armi were having a hard time with names from the get-go.  I was talking about with the Dotytron last night and my position is that it's weird when people don't name their baby for days after the baby is born.  I feel like it's a sorting hat type scenario.  Even if you were on the fence about names, it should come to you in the moments (I'll give you a few hours) immediately following the birth.  You should have a sense of the overwhelming rightness of it all.  As I said to the Dotytron last night, if the name doesn't come to you, then you might end up with a Slytherin.


Are you guys tired of hearing about how much I love my street?  We went outside after dinner and EVERYONE was out and freezies were being dispensed and the kids were running amok and then we saw our neighbour striding out with this duct-tape-and-box contraption that he had stuck a home made pinhole camera attached to it that he had rigged up to watch the transit of Venus or whatever it was called.  So we all clustered around and tried to see and it was so cute - kids out in their pajamas after bedtime, everyone running around with sticky hands, the neighbours talking and chatting. It was so cute.  A bunch of the neighbours are all going camping together in late August, too.  We'd totally would have gone, but we're going to be at our friends, B & G's wedding.  I'm sad to miss the camping fun but so pumped to go to the wedding!  I think we're going to get the Dotytron a new suit for the occasion, which he can use for Lolly's wedding in the fall.  The Dotytron gets to go on this canoe/camping trip with B and his high school crew as B's "shower" type thing.

Last night's dinner was solid.  A shrimp po'boy with remoulade sided with slaw, on a super-soft Strickland's butchers bun.  ARGHHHHH.  I would happily eat cornmeal & flour coated fried seafood iterations piled on a bun with remoulade for weeks on end.  It's so good!!!

Tonight's dinner was homemade cheeseburger casserole.  Like Hamburger Helper but homemade.  I would also happily eat sautéed ground beef with onions and garlic on starch (one of my favorite Chinese dishes that I never get to have is "minced beef on rice" which is basically the above served on steamed rice - it's DELICIOUS).  I've posted the recipe below.  You basically sauté up your ground beef with onions and garlic and then add seasonings, broth, ketchup, and cook the macaroni in the mixture and stir in grated cheddar cheese at the end.  It was so, so, good.  I served it with a cucumber, celery, and red pepper salad with a cumin mint dressing.  No surprise: big hit with our little Tamil Tiger, who basically likes to eat either the most cracker-jack mangia cake food, OR the spiciest string hoppers this side of Ceylon.  He kept going, "mmm, mmm, mmm! yum!" all of his own accord. It was pretty high praise.


I'm home alone tonight - the Dotytron's music night.  I'm hoping the power doesn't go out as I have a long night of curling up with my books ahead of me.  I'm currently alternating between Kristin Cashore's latest, Bitterblue (YA fantasy type stuff), and Joe Sacco's Footnotes in Gaza (a crash course in Israeli-Palestinian history).


Fin.


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Cheeseburger Casserole
serves 4-6, generously


2lbs ground beef
1 large onion, chopped
6 garlic cloves, chopped 
2 T. dijon mustard
1 1/2 c. ketchup (I told you it was kind of trashy!)
4 c. beef broth (approximately, you might have to add more)
1 500g. box of elbow macaroni
2 c. of grated cheddar cheese
salt and pepper to taste


- sauté up the onions and garlic in some olive oil in a large, wide, shallowish pan (I use this Jamie Oliver chicken fryer pan, that's about I dunno...14" across and 3" deep?) 
- add the ground beef and cook until browned over medium-high heat
- stir together the mustard, ketchup and broth, pour into the pan
- stir in the macaroni, bring to a boil, and then cover and lower the heat, stirring occasionally until the macaroni is cooked through.  You might have to add some water if the macaroni absorbs all the liquid before it's cooked.
- when the macaroni is cooked through, turn the heat off, and stir in the cheddar cheese.
- season to taste with salt and pepper (it shouldn't need much in the way of salt with the cheddar and ketchup).
- serve and be ready for mad kid accolades.

The weekend damn near killed me...

but it was a near-death from love.  Overall, the verdict was yay! on all fronts.  The Dotytron was a tougher sell and he was definitely way more foul owl about it than I would have liked, but in the end, we survived and had a tonne of good times with our friends, too.

We got a reprieve because softball was cancelled on Friday, but we both passed out at like, 9pm.  Straight exhausted.  Then there was the usual Saturday morning trying-to-make-it-to-swimming-before-parent-and-tot-is-over mad dash.  Taking a child under the age of 4 swimming is a colossal ordeal.  We seriously end up packing like we're going for a week at the cottage - for 30 minutes in the pool!  It's nuts.  I do love the community centre though - it's got this soaring ceiling and looks all mid-century with these lovely exposed beams...it's just gorgeous.  Lunch was good.  We went to this restaurant called Ming Lou that specializes in Chiu Chow cuisine.  It was good.  Decent, kind of unmemorable...I'm not sure why my mum likes it so much, but it's the only time we ever get Chiu Chow food, so I was down.

Hardwood flooring shopping was okay.  There's like, a million stores in the Victoria Park and Steeles area so we went to the super-reputable one and then walked around and pitted the other ones against each other.  I'm a fan of any place that won't charge us tax if we pay cash, and there were plenty of options for that.  So we were going to end up at R & R's mega early so we started driving around Markham, checking out the 'hood where the Dotytron grew up and our old high school, which has since been demolished and rebuilt so we drove by it.  We were trying to kill time and get the Big Yam to fall asleep, so the Dotytron took me on a guided tour of so-called "notable" houses (read: random friends of his from high school.)  It was kind of hilarious: "there's Kevin ___'s house, and look! That's Mrs. ___, and Mr. ____, still playing golf I see."  I think seeing Mr. and Mrs. ____ unloading their car right when we happened to be driving by, made his day.

R & R was fun times as usual.  Can't go wrong with that crew.  Our afternoon basically consisted of forcing them to play Settlers, then abandoning the game midway through, the Dotytron giving R a guitar lesson, me and R taking the Big Yam to the park, and them making us a delicious dinner that I inadvertently insulted.  Aces.  They put out this awesome platter of proscuitto, burrata, tomatoes, and toast for snacking on while playing Settlers.  I'm going to let that sink in a bit.  WHEN YOU COME TO OUR HOUSE YOU GET CHIPS AND COKE ZERO.  'Nuff said.  Then they served us pasta puttanesca and this delicious radicchio salad with crispy pancetta.  So R made a joke about "you don't make friends with salad" and I go, "I also don't think you make friends serving a vegetarian entrée" because I was thinking about this meal we were served ages ago by someone and it was eggplant steaks and I was PISSED.  But of course, I stuck my foot about 10 feet down my mouth because I didn't realize PASTA PUTTANESCA IS A VEGETARIAN ENTREE.  Rude fact.  So basically I got all flustered and hated myself and everyone took turns giving me the gears.  Then we came home and I was making semifreddo at like, 10pm.  Crazy go nuts.

Ladies dim sum brunch was fun.  We got there before 11am so it was half priced dim sum...super cheap and tasty and filled with neighbourhood gossip.  The baby shower was lovely - nice to catch up with peeps and of course eat a million pounds of cake.  The Big Yam had a bit of a hard time.  This little girl who was about 3 months older than him was terrorizing the poor lad.  She was a crazy b***h!  She kept pinching his cheeks and grabbing fistfuls of his shirt and then pushing him and pinching his arm.  It's the first time I've ever seen the Boobla try to push another kid away from him.  Seriously.  He's notorious for being so chill and laid back.  When he was just learning to sit up one of the little girls in the neighbourhood pushed him over and he fell back on his back and he just lay there, unfazed.  He took the abuse well, though...it's tough to watch.  I don't like to be a super-protective high strung parent and I want him to figure out his own problems, and the parent of the crazy b was putting her daughter in time out and stuff...but she was still all up in his grill.  He would just keep trying to take shelter behind me or the Dotytron and would kind of stoically hold her at arm's length.  Good little guy.

Then we had dinner at B & G's house, which was absolutely lovely.  We had a mezes style Mediterranean meal of kebabs and pita and hummous and olives outside on their deck and we had my semifreddo for dessert.  I nailed the semifreddo.  It was layers of toasted almond meringue with lemon curd and vanilla semifreddo.  I'm definitely going to make it again...it was sooo good!

So we were exhausted when we came home and I don't think I'll do this much scheduling again on a weekend, but we survived and we're ultimately lucky we have so much love and good people in our lives.

 The semifreddo - looks at how nice and refreshing that looks!

Tonight's dinner of whole wheat fusilli, shrimp, and rapini in a "sauce" of olive oil, lots of garlic, and chili flakes.  Shouts to Dr. Rei for the inspiration for this one!

Fin.

Guess how I felt about Kinton Ramen.

Just guess.  I LOVED IT.  Quelle surprise.  The space is beautiful - a long, skinny, wood infused room with a long standing bar (with bar stools), a long counter, a teeny tiny table at the back.  All the tables are VERY communal.  I think the Guu crew design their furniture for sylph-like Asians and not burly North Americans.

When I arrived at the restaurant just after 6pm, the Dotytron was parking the car and luckily the hostess deigned to seat me at the last remaining two spots at the standing bar.  The Dotytron arrived within 4 minutes so it was okay.  By 6:15pm, there was a whole restaurant's worth of people waiting in line.  Another good sign?  Not a single Caucasian in sight.  It was all Asian people as far as the eye could see.  I really, truly believe that only Asians know how to really eat, in an omnivorous way.  Other cultures also privilege food, but Asians eat widely without fear or prejudice and that's the hallmark of a good eater.

Now let's get down to brass tacks.  We ordered the gyoza, which were delicate, small, and a bit of a gouge at $4 for the portion.  We had the karaage (fried chicken), spicy, which was light and crunch in the Korean fried chicken style.  Did I tell you that I recently tried Korean chicken by way of Home of Hot Taste?  We had the original and the spicy.  Here's what differentiates Korean fried chicken from your more readily available, Western iterations: the entire chicken is cut up into smaller pieces (so you don't get a breast piece, it's all roughly 2" pieces of chicken), it is coated in some kind of light (rice?) flour which results in a very thin, crispy coating.  The chicken is way less greasy and it's often tossed with spices/sauce afterwards.  It's kind of like a bar food.  At Home of Hot Taste the spicy had KICK!  It was a sweet-spicy type of tacky sauce.  It was good.  The standard-bearer of Korean fried chicken is the Bonchon chain.  I'm trying to convince SMckay's FroYo King to go in on a franchise.  It would be murderation.  Maybe I can talk to MHui's hubby?

The Dotytron ordered the spicy garlic ramen with pork shoulder and I had the Kinton ramen, shio style, with extra pork (I chose belly).  You choose your broth type (miso, shio [sea salt], shoyu [soy]) then you decide whether you want your broth regular (where they thwack pork back fat through a sieve onto the broth) or light (sans pork back fat thwack) and then you pick whether you want kinton pork shoulder or kinton pork belly.  Simple.  The broth is full-flavoured and the ramen is exemplary.  Unlike Kenzo, here the ramen is thick, chewy, al dente.  Very satisfying mouth feel.  It comes with the de rigeur runny boiled egg.  It is delicious.  The broth was a touch salty for my liking, but it's a small quibble (find me a ramen place where the broth isn't salty!).  I would definitely go back.

In fact, when my Discerning Coyote friend bailed on me for lunch today, I DID go back with MHui.  This time I tried the shoyu ramen and we had the tofufurai, which are little tofu nuggets served with a sweet-spicy-mayo sauce.  Delicious!  So I was basically there twice in less than 24 hours, which means I should have just slept there.

We were going to see Jiro Dreams of Sushi but then we realized that a quiet little documentary about a monastic sushi-maker would play just as well on our small screen and that we'd get a better ROI with a big screen rock'em sock'em summer tent pole feature.  Now, as you may or may not be aware, I grew up in a pop culture obsessed family (my siblings).  From a very young age, when I was dragged to see Ishtar in the theatre, movies have been near and dear to my heart.  So while I enjoy the highbrow as much as the next person, summer for me is always about the blockbuster summer tent pole movie.  As one of those, The Avengers doesn't disappoint.  As a child weaned on Voltron, G.I. Joe, Thundercats and the like, I, like many of my generation (and anyone with a beating heart, really), love a good story about ragtag misfits banding together against a common good.  My favorite kind of movie montage?  When a ragtag group of underdogs start preparing for a siege (see: montage in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves).  The Avengers brings together a bunch of Marvel superheroes to fight against Thor's bro, Loki, who is in possession of this glowing cube thing that is a crazy source of power (see: Transformers).  Anyway, the main point of this film is that it is written and directed by Joss Whedon and you are either one of the members of the smart-geek crew who deify Whedon as a god, or you're not.  If you're not, then I feel sorry for you, because Whedon is a genius.  The movie was funny, hit all the right marks, and gave us an awesome Hulk (finally!).  The movie is a touch long, but when you're bringing together 6 heroes under one umbrella, it's gonna be hard to do quickly.  A full half of the movie is spent bringing everyone together and getting them up to speed.  I wasn't a fan of the use of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Phil as a major plot device, and I thought Cobie Smulder's acting was off and her role was dumb.  Otherwise, it had classic Whedon moments of levity.  He's a master of tone, that one.  Go see this!

No sooner had I vowed that my summer wardrobe was done then I was notified that a dress I had fallen in love with on Modcloth was back in stock.  So I bought it.  It was pretty inexpensive ($50?) and it came quickly and I didn't get ganked on customs, which was nice.

Here's the thing though - LOOK AT THAT DRESS!  It's perfect!  It's so flattering - the included belt makes everyone look skinny and the shape up top hides all the stuff you want to hide but accentuates the stuff you want to accentuate.  I love the ikat pattern and it's good for work or paired with skinny jeans and flats or a jean jacket for after work.  It's ladylike but still fresh.  Love it!!!

Softball got cancelled tonight, which is a blessing in disguise.  We had hotdogs and KD for dinner.  I fully intend to be sleeping by like, 9:00pm tonight and I'm near giddy with excitement at the prospect.

I've attached the recipe for the slow-cooker Thai coconut curry soup because it was so darn good.

Fin.

------------------------------------------------------
Thai Coconut Curry Soup
serves 4-6


2 cans coconut milk
1 L. chicken stock
2 large boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 package (or 2 T) Thai yellow coconut curry paste (the one I bought came in a little foil packet like what powdered Swiss Chalet gravy comes in and we bought it at T&T.  It was a single-use portion to make enough curry for 4 people)
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, peeled and cut into slices
2 stalks of lemongrass, bashed and bruised with a knife
4-5 cloves of garlic, sliced
10 lime leaves, torn into pieces
4 carrots, peeled and cut into 1" pieces
2 c. of bean sprouts, washed
1/2 package of rice stick noodles, the thin kind
1 red pepper, cut into 1" pieces

- put everything up until the rice noodles into a slow cooker, put the lid on, and simmer on low all day while you're at work.
- when you get home, crank the heat to high and put in the bean sprouts, the rice noodles, and the red pepper and stir it around.  Put the lid back on and cook for an additional 30 minutes or until the rice noodles are cooked through.
- season to taste with salt and pepper and serve.  You can loosen with additional chicken broth or water, if you like.

A quickie

There are reasons why Bill Murray is revered as a demi-god, and it's not just because he appears as moving set decoration in hipster-baiting Wes Anderson films.  


Here are his words on parenthood (he is the father to six sons):


"If you bite on everything they throw at you, they will grind you down. You have to ignore a certain amount of stuff. The thing I keep saying to them lately is: "I have to love you, and I have the right to ignore you." When my kids ask what I want for my birthday or Christmas or whatever, I use the same answer my father did: "Peace and quiet." That was never a satisfactory answer to me as a kid — I wanted an answer like "A pipe." But now I see the wisdom of it: All I want is you at your best — you making this an easier home to live in, you thinking of others." (from this article).  


Fin.

My last night of relative calm...

before we embark on the craziest weekend in all of crazytown.


This is my schedule until next Monday:


Thursday night: Kinton Ramen (new ramen placed opened by the Guu crew. yay!) with the Dotytron, followed by a viewing of The Avengers (yay!)


Friday night: softball at Withrow Park (so close! yay!)


Saturday: take the Big Yam swimming in Markham (yay!), then Costco (boo!), then visit with Poh Poh and my mum and lunch with my deadbeat dad's sister (yay? verdict is still out on this one), then checking out hardwood flooring (zzz!), then hanging with R & R (yay!)


Sunday: Ladies of my street dim sum lunch (yay!), friend's baby shower (yay! but exhausting!), then dinner at B & G's house (yay!)


Final (prediction) tally:
7 full-strength yays
1 medium-strength yay (cuz baby showers are EXHAUSTING. Plus, a lot of people we don't know, PLUS my ex-bf who I practically don't know now)
1 TBD
1 zzz
1 boo


I'll do a final-final tally post-weekend.  We'll see how things compared.


What I really want to be doing is building this kid misty-tent sprayer thing this weekend:

So bada**!  The tutorial is here.  It's just PVC pipe that you hook your hose up to.  If it turns out, I'm basically going to want to live under that this summer.  It's like the Coke tent at Wonderland/every summer rave I've ever been to, but ALL THE TIME!  Although now I'm reading that maybe we should try a PVC-free alternative...maybe PEX.  It's not supposed to be that hot this weekend, so I can hold off.


Another thing I want to get: SKY LANTERNS.  So much fun!  Look:

I think it'd be fun to get them for the neighbourhood kids and adults for Canada Day or something.  I know I keep saying it, but: I LOVE MY 'HOOD!  We missed it this year because we were in Geneseo, but all the adults pooled their money and bought fireworks and went to the park and lit them.  So much fun!  So cute!


In other news, look at my peony!

My garden is killin' it this year.  Here's a sideways picture to prove it:

And here's a random photo from last Friday of the roomie, ready to pop, and the Big Yam:

So, so cute!


I've been reading a tonne lately.  Here are some book reviews:

Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon are brother comic authors from Brazil.  Daytripper si about a man who writes newspaper obituaries for other people, reflecting on his own life.  It is dreamlike and ruminative - the story asks you to wonder what events, memories, actions, make you you.  It asks you to think about the act of taking stock and tallying up what makes a life a life.  I loved it.  It's beautiful and the pictures are simultaneously sharp and hazy, alive and slithering with the energy of Brazil.  

Well, as you can see from the cover, Vera Brosgol's Anya's Ghost is heralded as a masterpiece by none other than Neil Gaiman.  I for one, am not a Neil Gaiman fan.  Just not my steeze.  This is a gothic horror comic set in contemporary times which follows a teenaged Eastern European girl who comes across a ghost who may not be all that she claims.  I liked the pictures, but the story felt slight to me.

Daniel Clowes (of Ghost World fame) wrote and illustrated Mister Wonderful which is touted as "a love story" but which is a modern, complicated version of that well-trod trope.  It's about a man who's long divorced and is dating - basically, about a schlub (a well-trodden Clowes trope), who is neurotic and self-loathing trying to find middle-aged love.  It was pretty cute and okay.  I really love Clowes' illustration style.  It's so iconic.  

This.  This is staggeringly good.  This is bring-you-to-your-knees good.  This is highlight-every-passage good writing.  Jeannette Winterson is a well-known British lesbian feminist author (I mention all those subject identities because they inform their work, not to be salacious).  I've read a couple of her books.  Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is her memoir, an account of what it was like growing up adopted by an ultra-religious depressive parent in working-class northern England.  It is also about Winterson's struggles to carve a place for herself amidst the tabula rasa of her own adoption, of the events that made her the author she is today (many, many hours spent reading "English Literature from A-Z" in the public library).  She is an erudite, evocative, gifted writer who is at once funny, wry, warm, open, and reflexive.  It's everything you want a memoir to be.  She wrote it in real time, in the sense that as the memories came back she recorded them and the events of the present - in this way, you journey along with her as she goes through her spells of depression/madness and comes out the other side.  It is funny and smart and moving.  I can't recommend this enough.  If you're into memoirs.  My Academic Book Club chose this (at my suggestion - someone wanted a memoir) and we're meant to read it alongside Alison Bechdel's Fun Home (which I had read when it first came out), which is her comic memoir of growing up in a funeral home and coming to terms with her closeted homosexual father's untimely death (likely a suicide.)  Bechdel recently released a new memoir, Are You My Mother?, which talks about her relationship with her mother and is receiving rapturously good reviews from the NYTimes, etc.  I'm chomping at the bit to get my hands on it, but for some reason, TPL is dragging it's feet.

Monday night's dinner of slow cooker thai coconut curry soup with rice noodles.  Easy!  I'll post the recipe tomorrow.

A flash of inspiration had me create this dish - a riff on all the Asian mashup cuisine that's so popular nowadays.  These are pork and beef kalbi burgers with pickled cucumber (rice vinegar, sugar, sliced red onion and togarashi) and kimchi mayonnaise.  It was a good first try, but all the flavours could be pumped up a bit.  We ate it with grill-roasted asparagus.

Wish us luck getting into Kinton tomorrow night so I can post a full review!!!

Fin.