Momofuku Noodle Bar / Is You Tweaking?

This is a summary of my post-work/weekend activities for the upcoming week:

Monday - meeting with the Friends of Greenwood Park (FROG) to plan the upcoming Fall Festival
Tuesday - rehearsal for Lolly's wedding
Wednesday - dodgeball (but we will likely skip)
Thursday - our friend A is visiting from NYC and coming over for dinner and hangs
Friday - dinner at B & G's house, their thank you for all the peeps who helped with their wedding
Saturday - Mandarin school and then a birthday party in Whitby and then one of us (only the Dotytron, probably) going to see A's show at the Rex
Sunday - hosting the Dotytron's former colleague K and her partner G for brunch followed by an afternoon Halloween party at a neighbour's house

FML FML FML FML FML FML FML FML FML FML.

The Dotytron added the brunch in yesterday and I was like, this is NOT a good idea but he heeded me not.  He says he's going to do all the work.  OMG - I'm SO TIRED just looking at that schedule of events!

This weekend was jam-packed but fun.

Friday night we went to Lolly's colleague's house and she bought us dinner and we listened to the Dotytron and her colleague run through the wedding music.  Lolly's colleague's wife also proceeded to TERRIFY the Big Yam with a series of activities/toys that I think she thought were going to be kid-friendly but really just ended up reducing him to tears (this included: a monkey mask, a toy rat that looked like Nicodemus from The Secrets of Nimh, and a wizard puppet).

Saturday I stayed home and prepped the house while the Dotytron took on Mandarin school duty with the Big Yam.  Who ran into the ping pong table and cut his lip and bled all over the place.  Running into the ping pong table at Chinese school is beyond perfect.  The only thing better would have been if he had tripped over a panda.

Then SMckay came over and I got to witness her and the the Dotytron doing individual fake slow-dancing in my living room as they figured out the tempo of a song.  I love that girl.  She is such a good friend and so positive and funny and warm.  

My youngest bro came over for dinner with his new girlfriend and told us tales from dental school which scared us STRAIGHT.  If you don't brush your teeth every 12 hours there's an impenetrable wall of bacteria that gets built up on your teeth.  And the school is INTENSE.  It's like four years of 12 classes each term or some craziness.  And he went through hell to get there.  But once you're in, they give you lots of chances - you can re-take exams and tests twice or something.  He told us his professor said the following, in response to some of the student's qualms about the heavy workload, "Do you know what they call the person with the worst grades in dental school?  Doctor."  BA-DUM, CHING!

 Saturday breakfast: English bacon, avocado, tomato, and egg sandwich (totally off the record)

I made us honey glazed ribs (that were marinated in a hoisin-sriracha-honey-ginger sauce), baked squash, brussels sprouts, and potatoes with sour cream and chives.  Pumpkin pie with whipped cream for dessert.

I also whipped up the Big Yam's Halloween costume which is looking more and more hilarious by the second.  I basically sewed up a nehru jacket, guys.  No big deal.  It was my first time sewing something from a pattern and it was pretty doable!  I think all-told with the cutting and sewing, it took me about 3 hours to do?  That's not too shabby!

Sunday morning the Dotytron whipped up a batch of his signature waffles and we ate that with sausage from our CSA.

Then we did backyard-y type chores at our house and at Momma D's house.

Then we met our friends MHui and her hubby for dinner at the Momofuku Noodle Bar.  We ordered almost the whole menu (I think we skipped 3 items) and the bill came to $148 (including tax, without tip).  Overall, I'd say the food was good, but not great (individual comments will follow the pictures of the dishes below).  I think David Chang is suffering from being over-hyped (not his fault) and that the concept has to be situated in a particular time and place.  When we first went to Momofuku Noodle bar, 8 or 9 years ago, ramen restaurants weren't as ubiquitous as they are now.  This was a time pre-Ippudo, in NYC.  No one was really taking Asian foods and making them with Berkshire pork or serving it in a no-reservations place in the East Village.  No one was doing updated, re-imagined Asian street food and serving it up all low-key styles.  At the time, what Chang was doing was revolutionary.

The problem is that this is TORONTO.  We have Banh Mi Boys (who are admittedly, in the debt of Chang for blazing a trail for them to follow), we have amazing regional Chinese, Japanese, all kinds of Asian cuisine, a billion ramen joints on every block.  So for Momofuku to touch down now, so long after the seismic shift, there's no way it's not going to feel like a bit anti-climactic.  The food was good, the service was poor (diffident, bordering on rude), but I'm not in a rush to go back.  It was aight, but at that price, and with that limited selection, (wait for it) (you know where I'm going to go with this)...I'd rather go to Guu.

 Momofuku rice cakes.  These were fat, dense, rice-flour gnocchi-like dumplings, which were very chewy.  The sauce coating them was nice, sweet and mildly spicy, but the sauce didn't penetrate the "cake" and so you got a thin coating of flavour and then a rubbery, bland rice flavour underneath.

 The famous bao.  Rice flour bread around pork belly with cucumber and hoisin.  Delicious.

 Chicken wings: lightly smoked, meaty, very tasty, in another sweet-spicy sauce.

 Chicken and egg - sticky rice with more thinly sliced pickled cucumber, crisp-skinned roasted chicken and the famous Momofuku soft-poached egg.

 A cold vegetarian rice noodle dish.

 Chilled spicy noodles with crispy-sugared cashews, pork sausage, baby spinach, with a spicy sauce that you tossed together with the noodles.  This was probably my favorite dish.

The ramen.  Somewhat anti-climatic.  The broth was very mild, but not too salty, which is nice.  The noodles were overcooked.  The egg runny - I doubt they make the fish cake in-house.  Good but not great.  I like it less than Kinton's.  

I will say that this was the PERFECT Sunday night night out.  We left the house around 4pm, finished dinner by 6pm, stopped by Baker Bots for ice cream sandwich desserts and we were home by 8pm, in time to put the Big Yam to bed and watch a few episodes of Sons of Anarchy.  SO GOOD!  That's exactly what I want out of a Sunday evening, nowadays.

This is the Big Yam's new favorite show that he gets to watch at J's.  It's called "My Big Big Friend."  I've never watched an episode, but the Big Yam started singing the theme and now it's in my head all the time.  I discovered that it's actually from Brazil, so the new rule is, if we let him watch an episode, it's got to be in Portuguese.  Ha!  Are there no ends to my diabolical attempts to ruin his childhood?  

Fin.

Bleach bath

Last night I had a date to go see this documentary, Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present.  I am lucky enough to live very very close to an uber-indie theatre that specializes in shlock, horror, indie cinema.  It's great.  They took over an old, underused Indian theatre in the hood and started showing great documentaries and other features that are cult, fringe, and mostly of interest to a cinephile market.  This would have been the first time for me to visit the theatre.  My friend S and I show up, and we're told that unfortunately, the copy of the movie the theatre has is all scratched up.  But their newly opened sister theatre, at Bloor and Christie, is going to show the doc in 30 minutes and we have enough time to make it there.

I was a little skeptical because the only theatre I know of in the Bloor and Christie area shows porn.  It's the Metro (pictured below).  The dude we spoke to at the Projection Booth East (my location) was like, "We're still fine-tuning the details - the sound and picture aren't quite where I want it" at the Metro, but I was like, okay, we might as well go.  I assumed that they weren't still showing porn and the theatre was in transition.

I was wrong.  ICKY ICKY ICKY!!!  The place was like something out of David Lynch.  You walked in, there was a fat, stinky guy sitting in a CAGED booth who was the projectionist (I think).  He told us that the theatre was being "cleaned" and to wait.  We waited and finally he told us we could go into the theatre (the person allegedly cleaning the theatre never came out).  Inside was huge, with plastic seats (original - they hadn't changed them!!!), smelling of second hand smoke, basement, and other grossness.  The place was eerily lit with gaudy gilt chandeliers and blue lighting, interspersed with random flashes from a strobe light.  I was VERY uncomfortable.  The whole movie I basically sat stiff on the edge of my seat, clenching all my extremities in towards my torso and trying to avoid touching anything.

The documentary itself though, was extraordinary.  Mainly because Abramovic herself is so interesting and compelling.  She calls herself the "Grandmother of Performance Art" and her body of work is extraordinary.  To go with a major retrospective of her work at the MOMA in 2010, called The Artist is Present, she came up with a performance piece.  For the duration of the retrospective, from the time the Museum opened til it closed, she would sit in a chair and be present.  Museum goers could sit in a chair opposite her.  In between participants, she closes her eyes and lowers them, essentially "re-setting" the piece.  The she lifts her head and gazes at the participant.  For like, 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, for 3 months.  Just sitting.  It is a phenomenally complicated, challenging, thought-provoking piece that calls into question so many elements.  

The idea of the artist being present is so conceptually deep.  The participant is at once caught in "the gaze" of the artist (which never happens) in a reversal of traditional engagement with art.  At the same time, the museum goer is an active participant in the piece, so not just a passive receiver of the gaze - they are also gazing in turn.  The question becomes: who is the artist?  It also challenges the idea of museums at places where art "happens" and the codification of behaviours of artistic reception and meaning-making.  By asking the museum-goer to be such an active (and yet passive) participant, the entire system and structure of art is called into question.  What goes through the heads of the participants?  How conscious must they be of the arrangement of their own features, of how they are to mediate their experience, of the work and artifice and conditioning that goes into being a "person in a museum looking at a piece of art?"  I could go on and on.  

The documentary focuses on this piece and the months leading up to the staging of the retrospective (Abramovic hired some 30 odd up and coming artists to stand in for her in re-creating 5 famous performance art pieces from her past).  There is a reconnection with Abramovic's partner, the performance artist Ulay - they have long since separated.  Ulay goes to MOMA and Abramovic breaks down and reaches across the table to hold his hands.  Everything is so calculated with her - that moment rang false.  As S said, she's a total ham.  That's one of the threads drawn from the documentary - how to separate Abramovic as a person from Abramovic the performer (if such a thing is possible - which it doesn't seem to be).  I loved this film and I loved the piece.  It was inspiring and invigorating.

I will say this for watching it in an adult movie theatre - I could totally relate.  The stiffness in my body from trying to minimize touching ANYTHING definitely gave me an inkling (however small - the doc is only 90 minutes long and Abramovic did the the piece for a total of almost 800 hours) of her strength and forbearance.  It was also so interesting to watch the reactions of the participants.  The emotions in their faces, their reactions.  It was great.  Highly recommended.

Wednesday night's dinner: the Irie Pumpkin Stew (made with Kabocha squash this time, and scotch bonnets), served with coconut brown rice and beet greens.

Last night's dinner: whole wheat penne with kale and Italian sausage in a pesto cream sauce.

Tonight we're going to Lolly's colleague's house to preview the tunes for her wedding.  I had the day off today, but I was busy.  Grocery shopping, kept the Big Yam home for a bit, etc.

Fin.

NEVER...

...take a baby/toddler to a wedding.

I know you were thinking that I was going to end that with..."fall in love" *cue Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You* but no.  Never fall in love is TOTALLY a rule for bodyguards, don't get me wrong, I'm not asking you to take that proscription lightly.  But for any parents and prospective parents out there, even if your baby/toddler is invited to the wedding, don't take them.  Seriously.  It's the worst.  It just ruins your time.  They're not having fun, because there aren't any other kids there and it's a late night, and you don't have any fun, because you're worried about them or trying to eat roast beef one handed with a giant 30 pound sack of potatoes out cold over your shoulder.  It's a giant fun-suck.

We went to the Dotytron's uncle's wedding last night.  In Ancaster.  ON A SUNDAY NIGHT.  I don't know what I was expecting - I figured a Sunday night wedding would be a quickie civil ceremony followed by a quick dinner - I figured I'd be home by 9:30-10, at the latest.  I didn't factor on a hour plus long cocktail reception and a 45 minute ceremony and the full slate of speeches.  I just didn't.  It's my fault.  We also made the monumentally horrible decision to carpool with Momma D...so we couldn't leave.  NEVER EVER EVER NOT TAKE YOUR OWN CAR, PEOPLE!  Be you not so foolish as I-and-I (we)!  All we wanted was to be able to hop in the car, grab some McDonald's and head home.  But we were trapped!  The poor little Bubba was a good sport, he really was.  He didn't cry or complain, but he got really tired and overwhelmed by a million old white people.  I don't blame him, really.  Also the Ancaster Old Mill, while a gorgeous spot for a wedding, is weirdly committed to stupid details like NOT HAVING PROPER HIGH CHAIRS.  Instead, what they have is these weird wooden things with this cloth crotch-strap that you tie around your kid.  Even CRACKER BARREL, which is FULLY committed to being period-correct, has a decent (wooden) high chair that you can strap your kid into.

Anyway, that's my advice for you.  You want to drink and have a good time and not have your genuine happiness for the couple getting hitched to be marred by your own seething resentment at your own stupidity for not seeing clearly how your evening would go down with a toddler in tow.

The pluses: the Dotytron's new suit looks banging.  We got him a new charcoal suit and tie and it's a much more modern cut than he's used to.  He's spent the ENTIRE time since picking up the suit complaining about how he "hates his new suit" and how the pants are "skin tight" but when he put the suit on, he looked like a stone fox.  You don't put someone who is 6'4" and naturally slender in a boxy suit.

I wore this vintage, dusty rose dress I bought years ago.  It's really quite flattering and I wore my platform Seychelles and looked pretty hotsy if I do say so myself.  That's me and the Big Yam up there - the Big Yam already looked a little peaked.

It didn't help that the wedding followed the Big Yam's birthday lunch - AYCE Indian food.  My family came and Dr. Rei and Hanbo and Momma D and Ehmdo.  It was fun!  Big D came and it was the best.  He totally turns it on when he's out and it's so cute.  I love it when Big D turns it on.  It's the BEST.  You're always like, "uhh, who IS that guy!?!" cracking jokes and yukking it up and pestering my brother on cell phone plan details.  

It didn't help that the night before, I was up til midnight putting together the Big Yam's play kitchen.  Imagine putting together an Ikea fridge, stove, counter, oven, microwave, cabinets, sink and phone...BUT MINI:

There is only one word for it: hell.  It took me just over 2 hours and I almost stripped a few screws AND all the skin off my thumb in the process.

It didn't help that we had spent that afternoon at my friend P's Annual Competition Backyard BBQ, which raises funds for Common Ground Co-Operative.  P is a maniac.  He turns his backyard (which is giant) into a hay-strewn, tent-bedecked mini Toronto Underground Market.  AND he enters like 3 different categories and cooks up a brisket that is tasty enough to make you cry tears of joy.  He is an inspiration to us all.  

TOO MANY THINGS this past weekend!  TOO MANY THINGS.  

In other news, today I found out that the job interview I had been preparing for, for the past two weeks, has been cancelled and they decided to not post the position after all.  This was of course, EXTREMELY DEMORALIZING.  I was primed!  I was ready!  I really really really wanted the opportunity to do this job!      At the very least, I really really really wanted the opportunity to INTERVIEW for this job!  

On Friday night we had burgers & sweet potato fries.  

I love me a good old fashioned homemade burger.

Saturday's post Mandarin school homemade sausage and egg McMuffins.

On Saturday night we had that Thai coconut curry soup with rice noodles.

Last night we had grilled cheese sandwiches with freezer minestrone/wedding soup reheated together.  Then I chased that with a billion pounds of wedding-favour shortbread and the Big Yam's portion of prime rib (which was HUGE) from the wedding.  THIS IS OFF THE RECORD, MY FITNESS PAL!  Snitches get stitches!  I'm clearly stress eating my face off.

Tonight we had "sorry they decided to cancel the interview" takeout fried chicken and butter tarts and a million shortbread cookies.  THIS IS OFF THE RECORD, MY FITNESS PAL!

Fin.

In praise of FLOR

We agonized over whether or not to cover up our beautiful new bamboo floors with a rug in the living room. It was a tough decision but all it took was one look at a teensy tiny baby scratch from one of the Big Yam's toys (really, it might have just been a hair or a large speck of dust - but who knows?) for the Dotytron to be firmly TEAM RUG.  So I looked and looked and pinned and dog-eared and we couldn't find anything that was quite right.  Either the size wasn't right or it was too plush or too light or really, just too expensive (that happens a lot with rugs, you'll find).

We have a little mat at the front door that's made up with two oatmeal coloured FLOR carpet tiles that I bought on a whim at CB2 but generally, a whole 16 square FLOR rug costs as much, if not more, than a rug that you don't have to put together yourself.  Then I saw that they were having a sale.  So we snapped up 16 of the Petal Pusher design in Poppy:

The pattern is kinda cray, but I like the pops of color and the yellow picks up on our accent colour.  I didn't want anything particularly neutral because of cat  vomit and general living concerns (read: having to listen to the Dotytron talk about stains and how we need to buy a special carpet cleaner solvent blah blah blah).  I also like the fact that it was a cheap investment and that if something goes wrong with one tile, you can just swap it out.  It's a bit loud, but you can't see it unless you're sitting in the room, so it's not terribly distracting, plus, I think it gives us a good base now for this teak mid-century coffee table we got for a song but don't generally put out because it's too big.  The block of colour from the teak will break up the colour.  Most importantly, it's a soft, sustainable, ecologically sound surface for our butts and for the Big Yam to play on.  

Here's the thing with FLOR carpet tiles, though.  FLOR is always like, "we can't guarantee that the pattern will line up" (the tiles have a rubber backing that makes them non-stick so basically you just stick them to each other with what amounts to glorified round address labels)...but I'm like, "Uhhh...why not?"  Seriously!  We would have a perfectly lovely looking carpet if they had just sent us 2 more of one variation of the pattern instead of the one they did send.  How hard would that be to execute?  Not very.  It does make for some visual interest but at the same time I'm like, this makes no G-D sense.  There's no good reason other than laziness!!!

Overall, I'm very happy with the carpet.  It's already made floor chilling way more enjoyable.  

A Very Bubby Birthday

In case you're keeping count, this is the second celebration of the Bubby's birthday.  I took the day off yesterday to spend time with him.  I kept it pretty low-concept.  We went for a walk, did some grocery shopping, he got to put stuff in the cart, we hung out with the Roomie and T, then we baked his cake, and his Nana, Auntie Ehmdo, and R from R&R Acres, and Nana's sister came over and we had dinner and opened presents and ate cake.

It was just the right amount of fun!

People got him the perfect gifts too.  A good mix of books and the kind of small-ish educational, wooden items that I encourage.  Momma D got him a play kitchen that we still have to set up, but it wasn't mountains of plastic, noise-making eyesores, which my sanity and sense of aesthetics definitely appreciates!

Auntie Tiff et Family got him a puzzle and this wooden fruit chopping set that he LOVES.

The Most Hilarious/Awesome present award goes to Auntie Ehmdo, who gave him a personalized pillow with Instagram photos from his life on it.  SO GOOD.  

No shots of his birthday dinner or cake.  I kept is simple.  He likes meat and cake (real, and stuff he mistakes for cake), so I seared flank steaks and served them with smashed CSA potatoes with a bacon-chive sour cream, sautéed mushrooms, and roasted beets.  For his cake we had a very simple banana cake barely frosted with a thin layer of cream cheese frosting.  He's going to be getting more cake at his birthday lunch on Sunday (we're having AYCE Indian buffet in recognition of his most favourite of cuisines), so I wanted to keep this one basic.  We're also going to a wedding Sunday night which will mean MORE cake.  So he's definitely covered in the sweets department for the forseeable future.  

I can't believe he's two!  He really is a swell kid.  I don't know what else to say.  He brings us a lot of happiness.  

This is the little guy all tuckered out in his bed with his two buddies: Dom (the bear) and Tabby (the baby doll - he named her after the Roomie's baby).  We named the bear Dominik in reference to a certain happy hardcore DJ from Toronto.  Dom (the bear) makes a squeaky noise and he also has a touch of the crazy E'd out eyes, and we used to prop a shaker in his arm and then bounce him up and down so he was totally raved out.  The Big Yam shortened it to Dom on his own.  

Fin.

Best & Wurst

Blargh.  Under a lot of stress right now.  I'm feeling a lot of transposed stress from what my Outlaw Bro and Sis are going through right now - in the thick of the campaign with less than a month to go.  I just wish I could do more to help them out and it's killing me watching them have to slog through the muck and mire.

My sister and I are also polar opposites in a lot of respects.  When it comes to stuff like organization or tidiness we're like two positively charged ions.  She hasn't converted to the gospel of organization or being a type A micromanager the way I have.  BUT DON'T YOU SEE HOW MUCH EASIER IT MAKES YOUR LIFE?!??!!!  She says, to everyone else in the whole world.

This weekend was jam-packed.  It started with EPIC ARMAGEDDON between me and the Dotytron that was forged in the flames of: travelling, long-weekend traffic, the Dotytron being responsible for packing the car, and a failure to return cell phone calls.  Any one of those things will turn me into a mad dog on a good day.  Combine them all?!  It was the worst and I basically turned into this guy:

Note: I've actually never seen Yellow Submarine because I only semi-care about the Beatles.  

The point is: it got uuugggglllly.  Then in classic me armageddon-quickly-flaming-out-to-a-bed-of-cold-coals fashion, I was like, "I'm done with being an a**hole! Let's start over!"  Hahaha.  I'm a jerk of the highest order.  Anyway, we ended up at WVRST for dinner and a combination of sausages, duck-fat fried fries and a substantial list of interesting beers went a long way to tempering the Dotytron's ire.  

The concept is similar to that place in Cleveland that we LOVE, Happy Dog.  You order either a basic ($6) or gourmet (think kangaroo and duck - $9) sausage either on a bun or served currywurst style with a curried ketchup dipping sauce, you add on your choice of 2 of 4 toppings, decide if you want fries and with your fries you get a choice of 2 of many dipping sauces.  The Dotytron had the boerewors and an oktoberfest sausage, I had a brat and their calabrese.  The duck fat fries were really good - salty and crispy and improbably soft on the inside...though not necessarily worth the extra money...given that you're dunking the fries in sauce anyway.  The sausages were all uniformly good - except the Dotytron didn't like his boerewors.    The toppings are kind of uninspired - onions, under-cooked peppers, sauerkraut and hot peppers don't really add to the taste experience much.  Overall, this is a good place to go with a group of people, since splitting the bill is easy and they're all big long communal tables.  It would actually be a pretty good place to bring kids, if they weren't being such giant King West jerks about it (i.e. it's super loud in there and they turn down the lights at like, 7pm and it's full of King West bros).  The beers were expensive but the list is interesting (according to my dining companion).  I liked it but I'm not in a hurry to go back.  It's a good, quick, decently priced option though.

Saturday morning we did a 5km run (me and the Dotytron) and the rest of the family did a walk in support of this organization that helps victims of domestic abuse.  It was my first official 5km (like, I got a number and everything!) and I haven't been running in forever.  I'm not exactly sure of my overall time, BECAUSE I MISSED THE TURN TO THE FINISH POINT AND OVERRAN.  Also, trying to stay with the Dotytron slowed me down.  I was ahead of the Dotytron and he finished around 29 minutes, so I'm saying my time was 29 minutes.  I'm pretty proud of myself!  Mostly for beating the Dotytron and for not having practised at all.  As the Dotytron said, "I'm proud of you, and you're proud of you, but you're not as proud of me as I am of you, so basically, you're DOUBLY proud of yourself, but I get the shaft."  LOL!  So true!  Haha.

The rest of the day was pretty low-key.  The Dotytron and I stayed and watched the babies while the rest of the family was out stumping/doing family stuff.

This happened.  I cannot describe to you how thoroughly DISGUSTED Little Big Cuz looked when the Big Yam hopped on this little car buck-naked.  Little Big Cuz kept giving me the look like, "Uhhh...can you do something about this?" and was definitely not okay with how okay the Big Yam is with being naked.

The Big Yam LOVES his cousins.  Loves them!  It's so cute.  He's so blasé about other kids normally but he was just beaming being around them and spent time actually playing WITH Little Big Cuz instead of playing individually alongside him.  It was cute.  When the two woke up from their nap, I offered them a snack and Little Big Cuz (LBC) started chirping "snack! snack!" and led me to the snack counter at my sister's which is an impressive mountain of every name brand snack you could possible want or desire.  As we all know, I'm super-mean about sugar/salt consumption so I grabbed the healthiest option (graham crackers, which to me are the cookie equivalent of Proustian madeleines) and doled them out.  The Big Yam, who is routinely denied sweets was in the throes of ecstasy.  LBC?  Not so much.  He held the cracker in a limp, disdaining wrist and gave me the most, "b***h, PLEASE." look and then ground the cracker to crumbs on my sister's couch.  Crumbs that the Big Yam then spent 10 minutes LICKING UP.  Those two!

Sunday morning we went to an AYCE breakfast at a Veteran's Hall.  Ummmm...these oldies are NOT kidding around!  Scrambled eggs, sausage links, toast, home fries, pancakes, french toast, biscuits, sausage gravy, orange juice.  ALL YOU CAN EAT.  FOR FIVE DOLLARS A PERSON.  Like banh mi, this breakfast operates outside the laws of macro and microeconomics.  I ended up donating more because a) they're old people and b) that was one of the finest sausage gravies I've ever had in my LIFE.  So good!

Then we went to this place Stokoe Farms, which is a pumpkin patch, petting zoo type thing.  The Big Yam had his mind blown going on a tractor ride.  We launched pumpkins and climbed a giant mountain of hay bales and launched mini pumpkins at a broken down van in a field (BEST!).  There was also some ziplinining happening - check out the Dotytron's form:

In a corn maze.  What I learned: my upper limit for a corn maze participation is about 10 seconds.  Then I need to get OUT, like yesterday.

For dinner we got dinner from the hilariously named Questa Lasagna, which actually does a really, really good lasagna.  Think: heavy on the mozzarella top layer so you get a 1 cm thick gooey, burnished layer of cheese with some crispy edge bits.  Good stuff.  We also did a cake and did an early birthday celebration for the Big Yam.

Monday we headed home in the afternoon.  We took the route that takes us along side roads and through these cute towns.  We stopped at the Pok-A-Dot, which is the cutest thing I've ever seen:

The Pok-A-Dot is known for their beef on weck, which is a Western New York thing - shaved sliced roast beef served on a salt bun with optional horseradish.  The bun is what makes this dish truly special - it's flecked with caraway, which I don't usually like as a flavouring, but I think the top of the bun is brushed with salt water, so you get a nice salty kick before biting through the yielding bun into the relatively moist, unseasoned meat below.  Good stuff.

That was my weekend!  

Last night we had the Roomie and T over for dinner.  We had cheddar broccoli soup and grilled fresh mozzarella, onion, and tomato jam sammies for dinner.

LOOK AT THAT BABY!  The cutest!!!

Last week's dinner of steamed brown rice w/ Chinese sausage & Chinese stir-fry greens from my CSA, with braised pork belly 

Tonight's dinner of baked eggplant parmesan on my new Modern Twist Kyoto placemats!

I was really mad on Friday before leaving town and what turned me around was opening the trunk of the car and seeing this craft the Big Yam had made at daycare.  So freakin' cute.

Fin.

Thanksgiving weekend!

It's my favorite holiday of the year!  This year is a little different - instead of doing the big turkey and all the fixins, we're decamping to Western New York to visit my sis and family.  Bruce Wayne is coming, too!  

So yes, I'm going to be missing out on turkey, but I can cook a turkey any old time (see: 2007 when I randomly would roast a goose or do a giant glazed ham for no particular reason).  I'm going to be loading up on Aunt Cookie's subs, Cracker Barrel breakfasts, Cheesecake Factory cheesecakes, Nick Tahou's garbage plates...and because my outlaw bro is on the campaign trail and has to kiss every baby and show up at every church fundraiser in town, I think there will be a lot of community pot roasts and chicken and biscuit dinners, and apparently an all-you-can-eat breakfast fundraiser in my future.

HOWEVER.  I downloaded this app that my friend told me about called "My Fitness Pal" which is basically a calorie counter and helps you lose weight.  I input my goal weight (which is about 7 pounds less than where I'm at now) and said that I wanted to lose about 1 lb a week...AND IT GAVE ME A LIMIT OF 1200 CALORIES A DAY.  Buhhhhhhhhhhh.  THAT'S NEGATIVE FOOD!  I put in a banana and an apple and that's like, 300 calories.  WTF?!?  You can "earn" more calories by doing exercise and my average day consists of at least 40 minutes of biking and an hour+ of walking, but still!  1200 calories?!????  Get outta here!  I haven't been running lately because the string of sexual assaults has me wigged...I run in the early early morning and I've just been avoiding it.  I've also been feeling lazy.  I'm going to do a 5km run for victims of domestic assault in my sis' town though.  Nothing like a cold 5km!  HOLD THE PHONE.  Avoiding running because of sexual assaults and then doing a run to benefit domestic assaults = my run is mad topical, yo.  

Last night was crazy productive.  I finished my Halloween wreath:

This was a super-easy project that my friend G hipped me to.  I bought pipe-insulation from Home Depot (flexible foamy stuff) for about $3.75 (you definitely don't need all of it!)  I cut off about a 16-18" length and taped it into a tube.  This will look like a small circumference for a wreath but keep in mind, the wreath gets HUGE with the tulle sticking out. Then, I cut a tonne of approximately 12" lengths of orange and black tulle and using 3 at a time, double-knotted them around the foam tube until I was done. I was too excited to put it on the door (with Halloween decor, you only get a month and I'm already 5 days in!) to properly fluff it, but you get the drift.  If you used red, white, and green tulle you could do a Holiday wreath (or an Italian one?)  I've also put out my Halloween bunting garland and I'm going to turn some of my shrubs and tomato cages into ghosts (see Pinterest inspiration below):

I also finished the two birthday crowns for the Little Big Cuz and Big Big Cuz.  I'm going to do photos when we get down there.  I also packed and did some tidying so I felt really good about myself.  My friend G at work heard about my last weekend (when I made the drapes and planted bulbs) and was like, "Do you have Redbull running through your veins?!"  I'm high on life!  I can't help it!  I also found my US sim card which made me very happy.

Have a very very very happy Thanksgiving, you beautiful turkeys!

Fin.

NBD

...just the Big Yam, counting in Spanish.  Being all quad-lingual and shiz.  LOL!  Cutest video ever!  I called J yesterday and she was like, "did you see the video?" and I said, "Yes! It's the cutest thing I've ever seen!" and she said, "NO. There are no words.  I can't even tell you.  Your son, he is...amazing."  LOL!  

Needless to say, she's a big Big Yam fan.  She likes that you only have to show him something once and he gets it.  He's a pretty controlled kid.  I trained him to walk beside the stroller holding onto the side when he got the point where he could walk a distance and he just like, does it.  He doesn't try to run ahead, he doesn't try to get in the way of the stroller, he just walks beside carefully, holding the handle.  I dunno where he gets it from.  

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

Fin.

On Treme

Things that burn me:

1) Getting mail addressed to "Mr. and Mrs. I. Dotytron."  I literally SEETHE.  I'm sorry, I don't have a name or identity any more?!  WTF?  The surest way to get me to irrationally dislike whatever missive you've sent me via post is to address it like that.

2) The fact that no one watches Treme.  I've made no bones about the fact that we are die-hard Treme fans in this house.  Really, if The Wire wasn't such a huge thing I wouldn't even care that people pass by Treme.  It's the fact that there are legions of rabid Wire fans and no one knows Treme that gets me.  I think it has a lot to do with the subject matter - studying post-Katrina New Orleans is not as "cool" as studying drug dealers.  The subculture down there isn't as tied into popular culture's fetishization of urban, ghettoized black masculinity.

Here's the thing: it's easy to love The Wire.  The packaging is all set up for you!  And the civics/socio-economic lessons in The Wire, while perhaps ground-breaking at the time, in contrast to the nuance of Treme are incredibly pat.  The observations are nowhere near as keen (case in point: the youth drug-dealers using chess as a metaphor for how they're "pawns" in the towers drug trade is incredibly trite and to me, is sloppy writing).  Treme is even MORE David Simon than The Wire.  Instead of the narrative device of each season exploring a different societal aspect, what you have is incredibly deep, rich, layered characters living their lives in a town that is emblematic of all that is beautiful and deplorable in America.  Because of this, you really get to inhabit the world of Treme, in a much deeper way than you were allowed to in The Wire.  So yeah, it's not "cool" in the same way to be following New Orleans public defense lawyers and bar owners and councillors, chefs, and musicians, but the social commentary is no less incisive for it.  Every time we watch an episode, we turn to each other and say, "I love this show."

So yeah, of course, all the chef-insider business and all the musician insider business is tailor-made for me and the Dotytron and our respective interests, but I defy you to watch the recreation of a second-line tribute to a fallen musician with the sounds of the Rebirth Brass Band swelling in the background and not be moved.    What's not to love about a culture with a second-line?!  A culture with jazz funerals?!  It's a beautiful thing and y'all are missing out big-time.  Don't even get me started on the women of Treme.  Fierce, strong, stalwart, steely.

3) How busy I am right now.

Fin.

I need another weekend

I had Friday off so technically a 3 day weekend, but I'm STRESSED, sons.  I'm hustling as hard, if not harder, than Rick Ross - work is crazy.  I'm prepping for an interview I may or may not get.  Life is crazy!  And despite my best efforts to keep things calm and sane and lo-pro, it just ain't working.  I decided to keep the Big Yam home with me on Friday. We went for a walk with my friend M and her baby P.  Then we hopped on the streetcar (which was absolutely thrilling for the little guy - see below) and met up with Ehmdo who treated me to a birthday lunch.  

Ehmdo and I stumbled on a Maynard's candy ad shooting in Trinity Bellwoods.  They had a giant swedish berry, a giant fuzzy peach, and a giant whatever the apple candy is being chased by the mouth over there.

We went for lunch at County General, which is a vaguely southern themed restaurant in the Queen West strip.  It's a small, narrow room.  They don't have high chairs (of course) so we ate on the patio with the Big Yam on my lap.  They have a very small menu.  We both got the fried chicken thigh sandwich - which is two lightly floured, deep-fried thighs stacked on a wee little 3.5" bun with some avocado salsa and pickled onions.  It comes with very crunchy (though slightly over salted) fries or salad.  This was really tasty and satisfying, although for the price ($14), I kinda wanted two sandwiches?!?  Is that wrong?  It was really good, but not necessarily worth crossing town for.  I just picked up some Costco-sized packs of chicken thighs so I'm going to try to recreate it at home.  

After lunch with Ehmdo, I took the Big Yam on an epic walk through Parkdale picking up stuff for various craft/Halloween projects I've got on the go.  We stopped in at Glory Hole Donuts, which I find has an absolutely disgusting, repulsive name.  It's not cute, guys.  I got a four pack to go: pistachio, cookies'n'cream, buttered toast, and pretzel.  I thought these were kind of disappointing.  Like Paulette's, it's the same doughnut base (in this case, a yeasted doughnut to Paulette's cake variety), with different toppings.  The glazes and toppings were very ho-hum.  The yeasted doughnut was okay, but the fryer oil must not have been switched recently because it imparted a stale, old oil taste which was unpleasant.  Texturally the doughnuts had a nice chew, but nothing outstanding.  The glazes weren't overpoweringly sweet but they were just middling.  Not a lot of the promised flavour.  The best one by far was the buttered toast, which had originality and faithfulness going for it.  I hate to compare again to Doughnut Plant but I can't help it.  Once you've had a Doughnut Plant doughnut it's REEAAAALLLLY hard to taste something else and think they measure up.  Doughnut Plant has this place beat in terms of size, value for money, flavours, and execution.  I think the Doughnut Plant doughnuts are at least double the size.

I picked up Mother India rotis for Friday night takeout night.  I had the malai kofta.  The Dotytron had the chicken tikka masala.  The Big Yam had lamb curry and ate like, half a roti.  

Saturday we had Mandarin school and then I was on my own with the Big Yam because the Dotytron was at this Ontario Band Association workshop.  It was cute seeing how fired up he was after coming home from it.  I dragged the Big Yam around with me all over the place.  We went to St. Lawrence Market and picked up andouille sausage and had a breakfast sandwich.  Then we went to get gas at the cheap place.  I'm physically incapable of paying more for gas if I know there's a cheaper option, even if it means doubling back and going out of my way to save 3 cents on the litre.  Then we went out to Scarborough to go to Diana's seafood to pick up dinner supplies, then we went grocery shopping on the Danforth, and then I finally let us come home.  It was epic.  But it made it worth it when he pointed at the lobsters in the tank at Diana's and yelled, "snakes!"  

Our dinner guests ended up cancelling on us so I did a variation of what I was going to serve.  This meant that the Dotytron and I had the enviable task of taking down a dozen oysters and a dozen clams casino each.  We had French Kiss and Lucky Lime oysters and I almost killed myself shucking the clams.  I also made a caprese salad and corn on the cob and garlic bread.  It was really, really tasty.

The Big Yam and I made these butterscotch cookies with white chocolate.

There was a Nuit Blanche thingy happening around the corner from us so we went and checked that out as well.  There was some kind of interactive video installation as well as a participatory event where you could contribute to this mural that local artists are painting along the side of this revitalized building.  Pretty cool.  I didn't have to deal with all the amateur hour drunks and crowds that otherwise make Nuit Blanche so disgusting and off-putting.  I just had to deal with this lady who named her kids Trenton and Camden.  Ugh.  Why not Uxbridge?  Or Peterborough?  

Sunday was bucktown.  We went swimming super-early in the morning, which elicited mad grumbles from the Dotytron, but it was worth it because we had some major bubble blowing, kicking-on-your-back breakthroughs with the Big Yam.  Then we picked up my Poh Poh and took her with us to Costco and then lunch.  Then we came home, the Dotytron went to rehearsal and I ended up planting a million bulbs and tearing out to shrubs I wasn't happy with and transplanting our sickly peony.  As the Dotytron said when I asked him for some extra leverage help when he was on his way out the door, "Sometimes, I wish you weren't so you," meaning, that he wished for some reason that I didn't go so hard all the time.

I also made our drapes this weekend:

So easy!  The annoying thing was pinning, ironing, and measuring so much fabric.  Otherwise, it was a cinch. I used plastic snap-on grommets.  The fabric is Small Talk - blackbird by Waverly.  Here's a detail:

I also finished a chunky, teal, knotted infinity scarf:

And I'm almost finished making these two birthday crowns - one for the Big Yam and the other one for Little Big Cuz:

The finished product doesn't look as nice as the unsewn pieces up there...mainly because I'm not good with free-hand machine stitching.  This will mean nothing to most of you, but it's hard doing curved lines!  And it's hard controlling the fabric when you've lowered the feed dogs.  Ah well, it's the thought that counts, right?  I'm putting an elastic band on the back so that I don't have to do a new one every year.  

And that, was my weekend.  Too much!  

This weekend we're going to Western New York to visit my sis and family.  They've been put through the ringer with the most INSANE COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY CAMPAIGN in like, ever.  In between stuffing my face on Aunt Cookies subs I plan on spending a lot of time relaxing on one of their million overstuffed couches and prepping for my interview.

Tonight for dinner we had braised pork chops and apples with mashed sweet potato and maple syrup glazed carrots.

Fin.

Wait - who loves you?

It kind of blows my mind that when kids hit a certain age they go through a phase of getting night terrors or nightmares.  On Monday night, the Big Yam woke up screaming and crying at 3am and it was tragic. He was saying stuff like, "Baba...light!" and "Mama, help me!" (Seriously, is your heart breaking?  Mine did.)  When he's gotten upset in the past, I generally just give him squishes and then run through the list of people who love him, "Mama loves you, Baba loves you, Nana loves you, Poh Poh loves you," etc.  Recently he's started doing it himself, except it sounds like "Mama lalloo, Baba lalloo...." Super-cute, right?  Well I noticed that not too long ago he started adding his own peeps in to the mix:

That's right.  Dora loves you.  Boots loves you.  

He sometimes includes Map and Backpack too.  Man, the allure of that little Latina is impossible to resist!  Every kid goes down the Dora the Explorer rabbit hole.  I know that J sometimes lets the kids watch a bit of TV while she's getting lunch ready but I'm not fussed about it.  He doesn't get it at home and the lady has to get lunch ready!  I'm glad he's getting his popular culture there and not asking for it with us.  The other night the Dotytron was watching old Buster Keaton movies with the Big Yam and they were having a blast.  

Tuesday night's dinner of braised tilapia with chorizo (which actually wasn't chorizo), arugala, and tiny gem tomatoes from my CSA with orzo.  So good!  

Tonight is Academic Book Club.  We read Richard Ford's Canada.  This book was THE WORST!  I was literally angry loud-flipping through pages on the TTC and doing a dramatic sigh as I speed-skimmed the whole thing because I was so mad that I was wasting valuable reading time with this dreck.  You will find that my opinion is not shared.  Jane Urquhart wrote a glowing review of this for The Globe and Mail (assuming you put any credence in The Globe and Mail's culture reviews - I do not), and The New York Times was similarly favorable.  They were taken with the writing style and the richness of the language and the voice of the protagonist - all of which were things I abhorred.  The story is told from the point of view of 15 year old Dell Parsons, who recounts how his parents' decision to rob a bank irrevocably set in motion a series of events that altered his life and the life of his twin sister, Berner.  The book opens with this line:  “First I’ll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later.”  Which is admittedly a cracker of a way to start a book.  TOO BAD IT TAKES LIKE 300 PAGES TO EVEN GET TO THE BANK ROBBERY.  So much set up!  So much exposition!  So much telling instead of showing!  Unlike other reviewers, I didn't think that the author inhabited the mind of a 15 year old boy at all.  I thought as a reader, the characters' motivations and interior selves was maddeningly opaque. You'd get sentences like (and I'm paraphrasing here), "He always refused to believe that other people could think differently from him," or "As was in keeping with his tendency to blah blah blah," and I hated it.  I hated being forced to rely on the observations of this (too-reliable?) narrator.  You never question people's motivations because the protagonist tells you what to think and what they're thinking and there was no room for my imagination to fill in the gaps.  I can't tell you how much I didn't want to or didn't enjoy reading this book.  It was epically bad.  

We're doing a Canada-themed party for one of our members who recently became a Canadian citizen - so I made butter tarts.  I'm also meeting up with Dr. Rei beforehand for a nice little ramen & bootie-shopping session.  So excited about that.  

While I'm waiting for Laini Taylor's next instalment in the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy to be released (November 2nd! Can't wait!), I've got the following in my queue: the new Jonathan Tropper, The Book Thief, and Beautiful Ruins.  

Day off tomorrow!  Woot.

Fin.