kelly clarson represents the collective unconscious

this is a new theory i'm going with. based on the fact that almonst everyone i know, will at one point or another (usually inebriated) confess that kelly clarkson is their deepest, darkest guilty secret. girl can sing and she's got catchy-as-f**k production. i'm not a fan of the slow jams...but C'MON. as if when you hear "since you've been gone" it doesn't make you all hyper and giddy in your secret area.

that game song featuring junior reid would be way better if it was all just junior reid. was it dr. rei who told me that the game was on BLIND DATE?!? what guy!? also, i don't think i'm a fan of lady sovereign...i'm actually not that big a fan of pikey brits swaggering their way through pseudo-hip hop that's not all that funny or catchy. i'm OUT. the new nelly furtado single is aight...i like the backtrack...but i keep thinking that it's a remix of some 80s tune that i can't put a finger on...or at the very least it heavily samples it. p.s. nelly: LOSE THE NELLY FURTADO HIPPITY DIPPITY BLIND-MELONY FONT FOR YOUR NAME. it doesn't go with this new skanktronic thing you got going on. and that font is just plain buggin'. also, jay-z. please retire. and make your girlfriend sing catchy songs again, or at the very least, hook up with those destiny's child bitches and start doing it proper. her solo ish is wack. and while you're at it, just bring back en vogue to make me happy. would that be so hard?

i hate it when people make a BIG STINK about "retiring" and then they come back. it happens ALL THE TIME in the toronto jungle scene. so-and-so is "quitting" the scene so they post about it on a messageboard and everyone boohoos, but they come crawling back into that cesspool of ignominy.

finally, lately i've been d/ling some jason forrest stuff. jason forrest used to record and perform as "donna summer" (which is hilarious) but then he had to stop cuz i guess people were getting confused (equally hilarious). i've also been listening to the band, who make earthy white guy music that i can dig. i've also re-discovered my love for rick rubin. dude is awesome on so many levels. how does one man get to be so cool?

tonight for dinner the plan is to roast some asparagus in the oven. roasted asparagus is probably my favorite way of cooking it...the high heat caramelizes the sugars and concentrates the flavours like you wouldn't believe. so i cut the woody part of (usually a third of the way up from the base end), then toss the spears with some olive oil, salt and pepper and roast them in a 450F oven until they're cooked through and bright green (tasting one is the best way to tell...usually about 10-15 minutes). then i'm going to grill some bread on my panini press, lay some proscuitto on top, put the asparagus on top of that, and put a poached egg on top of that, to make an open faced sandwich. i'm going to drizzle it with bagna cauda, which is an italian sauce meaning "warm bath". it was my condiment of 2004, and i still love it (2005 was sweet chili dipping sauce, in case anyone's wondering, and i think 2006 was la bomba). it's butter and olive oil, in which you simmer a s**tload of garlic and chopped anchovies. when it's all warmed through, you add the zest of some lemons, and the juice of a lemon (depending on the quantity of butter and olive oil you started off with) and salt and pepper. it's warm and briny and rich and garlicky. it's the boom boom.

fin.

baptist getting his mack on

yesterday was fun, if not overly productive. i worked at the library, where i was hit on (or being recruited by...hard to tell sometimes) this baptist pastor-in-training. note: if you're ever feeling a lack of love in your life...GO TO THE LIBRARY! i've never been hit on more than in my years there. and you get the whole gamut of prospective suitors. so me and the baptist had a friendly (but guarded, on my side at least) conversation, where i unleashed this little sparkling gem on him:
me: "see, i'm pretty ignorant about religion, so it must be difficult for people who belong to a specific denomination, dealing with people like me, who only know the media representations of a particular religion, and don't know the nuances of the sub-sects"
him: "i'm not sure what you mean"
me: "well, like i'm sure muslims frequently get stereotyped based on the ignorance of the public and the depiction of the media"
him: (thoughtful pause) "hmmmm...i'm trying to think of how baptists are portrayed in the media, in the context of your muslim example"
me: "well...uh...aren't you guys...like...not allowed to listen to rock'n'roll?"

the above exchange is interesting for a few reasons. a) i sound like a bumbling idiot b) apparently i've conflated "media" with a hazy recollection of the movie footloose. c) my frame of reference when talking to a baptist...IS FROM THE MOVIE FOOTLOOSE. ha!!!

then i got to work with a girl who is now my second-favorite library co-worker ever. she's getting a degree in physics at u of t. her focus is on non-linear physics, and specifically patterns. so cool! it was so interesting talking to her, and having her explain the big bang, and string theory, and convection, and sub-atomic particles, and quarks. i work with her again on wednesday and i'm totally excited...she's really into talking about it, and i'm really into talking to people who are really into talking about whatever they're into. she's one of those curious-about-the-world people. so in exchange i told her to rent the derrida dvd that my library has (which is a pretty stellar movie, btw...go get it!) as she was asking what i was into and what i studied in school.

i finished "chicken with plums" yesterday. it's quite a sad little story...i liked it better than satrapi's "embroideries". i like how she collapses quite rich, nuanced and deep narratives and seemingly simplifies them through the starkness of her imagery. so much is implied through the childish naivete of her aesthetic style, and it's a very effective vehicle for her particular brand of story-telling.

tonight for dinner we're eating my cancer-fighting borscht. i made a vat of it, so if anyone likes borscht, holla at me. it's filled with red cabbage and grated beets and it's magenta coloured. we eat it with a plop of full fat sour cream and dill snipped in, and with some cheddar-sage biscuits.

fin.

irresponsibility mode

continued steadfastedly and unrepentantly unabated last night...we ordered mama's pizza for dinner. i LOVE mama's pizza...probably the best delivery chain pizza available. procrastination + pms = me being admiral pigface. i stuffed myself yesterday. then i was late for work because of the santa claus parade and all the streetcars being re-routed. the santa claus parade looks pretty seedy to me. it looks seedy on television, and it looks even seedier in real life. i don't think i have it in me to sit my butt in the cold november rain (ha!) in some crappy lawn chair with my snivelling kids, for this second-rate parade business. i'd much rather drag 'em down to disneyworld...now THAT'S how it's done. if you're going to do something, do it right!

i grabbed chester brown's "i never liked you" comic at the library yesterday and finished reading it last night. it's quite good...a memoir-y look at the confusing rumpus that is teenaged "love". chester brown is also the guy who did "louis riel" which is a great comic. my enjoyment for "i never liked you" was severely compromised by the fact that he DEDICATES THE BOOK TO SOOK YIN LEE. they DATED. FOR FOUR YEARS. i have an immediate and visceral reaction to the name sook yin lee. sook yin lee's PICTURE or - heaven forbid - her face, ratchets up the vomitous urgings beyond quantifiable units. she's so gross! she's such a gutter rat! ugh. so that basically means that i can only semi-like (and on the low end of semi-like) this book. a great comic about love and loss is craig thompson's "good bye chunky rice"...it's very sweet and poignant. i like his work in general, so "carnet de voyage" and "blankets" are also fantastic...i really like his drawing style. i also picked up marjane satrapi's new book "chicken with plums" which i plan on finishing today, before getting down to work in earnest. i'll post a little review tomorrow.

tonight we're FINALLY having that beef rendang, with steamed rice, chili-black bean sauteed eggplant and napa cabbage, and some rotis. fruit smoothie for dessert.

fin.

the end of an era

well...we finished season 2 of battlestar last night. it was a little sad. i guess this means i have to start doing work now. i keep running diagnostic checks on myself to see if i'm feeling stressed about having done no research/writing for my 10 page paper due on thursday. the results? no stress at all. ha! i have the confidence of the damned.

this utaps money is going to my head. utaps is a government grant to supplement your osap, when the government decides that the gap between your expenses, and what osap gave you is too large (mostly for deregulated programs...ie. if your tuitions is more than $4500 a year). it's a GRANT. which means that I DON'T HAVE TO PAY IT BACK. also...it's UNEXPECTED MONEY. which means that my careful fiscal planning had already accounted for every penny to carry me through to september 2007...so this is a huge windfall. it means that i bought myself a bag and some underwear this week. yay!!! and it means that we were irresponsible, so instead of making the beef rendang, my friend and my roomies and i went to swiss chalet where we double-sauced and festive-specialed it up, largetime. the stuffing on the festive special tastes like breadcrumbs mixed with powdered bouillon cubes. and the boy is convinced that it expands to 10 times its size in your stomach (like those little dinosaur sponges that grow when you pour water on 'em).

this morning breakfast is the last of "frivolous spending 2006"...we're going to go to insomnia on bloor. where i'm going to have one of their many delightful versions of eggs benny, and a side sausage. their homefries are da lick because even though they're just little cubes of potato, deep fried (instead of the more preferable "hashed" on a flat-top), they toss them in bbq sauce after. tonight we're having the beef rendang with rice and the eggplant and some rotis. no dessert!!! or, if we do have dessert, it'll be chipping away at the 15lb bag of kernals "double butter" popcorn i brought home yesterday. it's like a baby. a giant, lumpy popcorn baby that you devour by the handful.

fin.

what a difference

a year makes. this time last year, i was facing down fourth quarter madness (it is IMPOSSIBLE to describe HOW happy i am that my employment is no longer subjected to the whims and vagaries of Q4 earnings). this meant that i was waking up at 6:30 every morning, so that i could get to work an hour early and make sure that i wasn't quite so much in the s**ts when service came 'round (this hour was of course, unpaid). i was still prepping while the orders were coming in, and i was getting completely and utterly F**KED every service as we started doing 200ppl and functions in the space of an hour and a half. i was sprinting into the walk-in and screaming (the walk-in is relatively soundproof) "I F**KING HATE THIS F**KING PLACE!!!!!!" at the top of my lungs while grabbing lobster and lemons to make a stupid OFF THE MENU pasta for some bitch who doesn't think the menu at canoe is good enough for her, thankyouverymuch. i was getting reamed each and every day by the chef de cuisine, in front of everyone, because i received a total of 1 day's training on one of the busiest stations in the restaurant, and i hadn't worked the hot line in 6 months, having been plunked on garde-manger when i started there. i was being told that i had "no passion for cooking" whereupon i would bite my lip, and run to the bathroom as fast as i could so no one would see me bawling my eyes out for one heaving minute, and ii would then have to clean myself up as fast as i could, and get back to work so i didn't fall further behind. i was also working another job in addition to the restaurant one, which is kind of crazy in and of itself, and pulling 60+ hour workweeks...and yet...i still do miss it a teeny tiny little bit.

we made a little side trip to soma in the distillery district thursday night when we had time to kill before kaji. we had borrowed the boy's parents' car, and the distillery is such a pain to get to via ttc so i figured it'd be worthwhile. a friend of mine works there part-time...and seeing them hand-dipping the chocolates, the machinery to grind the chocolate made me itch to be in a kitchen again. my plan is to save my osap pennies very, very carefully so that in the summer, i can work part-time for the library and pick up some cooking work with a chef i really admire, and set my own schedule...like do a low-paid apprenticeship kind of thing. i really want to do some bread-baking, or chocolate making, or possibly get back onto the line again.

the plan tonight is veering in two different directions. either we're going to go see prince paul at gypsy, and get crunked to old skool hip hop...or we're going to eat kernals double double popcorn on the couch and rinse out the rest of battlestar and top chef. the odds are 50/50 right now...we'll see how the day progresses. i'm also doing some window shopping with a friend today...and my favorite vintage store in the universe is having a sale that i might have to check out. tonight for dinner i'm trying to make malaysian food. we're having beef rendang which is beef marinated in a thick pastey marinade of shrimp paste, lemongrass, ginger garlic shallots and dried chilies, and then stir fried with toasted coconut and some other stuff to make a thick curry. we're having it with indonesian yellow rice and rotis, and chili black bean eggplant.

fin.

sushi kaji review

i'm not sure a review is even necessary...it blew my mind. one of my top five eating experiences. the space is warm and friendly, kaji-san is really punchy and cute and spunky and lively. everything is prepared at the moment, the balance of flavours and textures and attention to detail is exquisite. the service is attentive without being intrusive, and they were really respectful to us, which is something i pay attention to...the boy and i have a tendency to underdress for fine dining experiences, add to that the fact that we're both a little babyface and we tend to get treated like kids sometimes, so i make a point of noticing when the service we get matches the other people dining around us. we each got separate omakases, the boy had slightly less than i did, as he wanted to drink some sake with his meal (not drinking really makes eating out a bargain for me). i think the best thing that can be said about it, was that watching kaji-san and his chefs worked was so inspiring...i basically wanted to run right home and start sharpening my knives and working on my knife skills.


my first course was two preparations of fluke, on top of a sliver of daikon and topped with some rapini. on the right it's served with an egg yolk sauce, on the left it's served with a plum sauce.

he had a chicken consomme with a keffir lime leaf infusing the soup, each sip resulted in a slightly more pronounced keffir lime fragrance

my next course was a piece of steamed abalone, that was then tempura-battered and fried, sitting atop a little fried taro cake, with soybeans and a crunchy lotus garnish.

he had fluke carpaccio with corn greens and frisee.

next i had chicken three ways. the left was wrapped around a little japanese pepper (not that spicy, like a cross between a jalapeno and a green pepper...a grassy brash flavour), the middle was wrapped around onion and had some wasabi, the right was wrapped around what was described to me as a "japanese vegetable"

then we both had lobster sashimi. this was when we got the try to the fresh wasabi (so nose-searingly hot! but the heat dissipates almost immediately) and his homemade soy, which is thicker, and slightly sweeter than commercial soy. the last time i had lobster sashimi was ages ago when i was in japan with my family, at the time i didn't remember liking it (i thought the texture was floury...like it tasted pasty, like a poorly cooked out roux)...but this was fantastic! it tasted like lobster-lite...sweet and crisp.

next we both got sashimi plates, which consisted of (clockwise from the top): toro, fatty tuna belly, which again i haven't had since japan, it's one of my top ten flavour/taste/texture sensations. it was so well marbled, so fatty, so chewy, but as soon as you started masticating it, it kind of dissolved, leaving an intensely satiating coating of meaty unctuousness coating your mouth. the flavour lingers long after you swallow. (it's alarming just how many of my top taste sensations involve fat coating my mouth...but it's best not to think too closely about such things). next is ocean salmon, then sea bream (with some grated yuzu zest on top) and then amberjack (in the yellowtail family).

my following course was a little puck of deep-fried tofu stuffed with duck, with an egg yolk sauce. it was creamy and custardy and so warmingly apt for winter.

the boy had a sauteed scallop, sitting on top of a mushroom risotto, topped with a seared prawn and served with a sea bream sauce.

then i got steamed sea bream (it must be in season now) with chestnut and uni. BEST UNI EVER. none of that usual muddy/earthiness...it was beyond creamy, with just the lightest hint of earth at the end.

the boy then got fried black cod with lobster sauce. the green leaf was hiding two little nuggets of bamboo, coated in shrimp paste, then tempura battered and fried. there was also a little tiny baby gem of an eggplant, skinned, stuffed, and then sauteed.

i had this study in king crab. there was a fried scallop wrapped in shiso leaf, a mini king crab roll (the "nori" was a paper-thin piece of parsnip) and in the top right, were two slivers of fried pork belly (!!!!!!! my dove!!!!) lacquered with a sweet, yakitori-esque barbecue sauce.

sushi time! uni

left to right: seared toro with barbecue sauce and ginger sauce, smoked amberjack with keffir lime zest brunoise, toro


king crab, seared scallop

seared seawater eel fresh from tokyo bay (again, unlike other eel i've eaten before, this was fresh and clean and saline tasting, with just a slight undernote of earth)
then kaji san made us a special eel preparation, taking raw fillets and moulding them in a box with sushi rice and yuzu zest...what came out was a little eel brick that he then brushed with bbq sauce.

dessert! and for once, it wasn't an afterthought (green tea ice cream, i'm looking in your direction here). i had a sesame blanc mange...mousse-like, airy, yet thickly creamily substantial and tasting of toasted sesame seeds, with some evaporated milk on top, and a little cluster of fruit, also lightly sauced with evaporated milk

the boy got a lemon mousse in a strawberry sauce, with some more cut fruit. both desserts were light and cleansing, and not sickly sweet.
this is kaji-san (shitty picture...boo)...so cute!

this is a gentleman who helps kaji-san at the sushi bar with the preparation.
this gentleman came out at the end...he's responsible for the hot food from the kitchen. here's he's busy shaving daikon (with a KNIFE) peel and turning it into a parting gift for me. he was so sweet! he insisted that i stay after i told kaji-san that i worked with chef scot woods (who used to volunteer his sunday time to work with kaji and learn) at canoe. he then presented me with these beautiful carrot and daikon flowers. watching him shave the daikon and produce a thin, continuous, even peel with which to craft the flower...i was in awe. it made me ashamed to be a cook...i'm so not even in that calibre. CURSE MY WESTERN-SULLIED HANDS!!!

the parting gift.

so usually, i'm pretty conscientious about the seafood i eat...i've bookmarked the list of endangered seafood and i make a conscious decision to only buy stuff that's been given the greenlight by the environmental agencies (which means a lot of tilapia, sigh). but at times like this...i really don't give a flying f**k. which probably means i'm a selfish lout or a hedonist, or both. but still! in the moment when i'm biting into some toro or uni or freshwater eel, i'm entirely willing to make a deal with satan that in exchange for this moment of bliss, my progeny will never know the pleasure a fatty piece of tuna belly can give. it's not like i hold it against my greatgrandparents that i never tasted a dodo egg, right? it's not like i know what i'm missing...right?

this is a monster of a post, i know...but i know that my food-obsessed friends and family would want to see it.

today is a fun day...i'm working at a library i like, then going to school to do a wee dram of homework, then going shopping with my friend (i'm one of those freaks who tries to get their holiday shopping out of the way by the end of november), culminating in dinner at ghandi's rotis...where i'll be consuming my beloved malak kofta roti. fun fun fun fun fun!

fin.

fetishizing librarians

okay, so maybe it's because i kind of fell into pursuing this profession as a default thing (ie. i was sick and tired of getting varicose veins and making 10 rubles a day working as a professional cook...and i couldn't stomach jumping through the hoops of academia to get my phd)...but now that i'm in library school, i'm finding the fetishizing of the iconography of the "librarian" to be a very odd and unsettling phenomena. it's like this thing that's been taken up by magazines like "bitch" and "bust" and there's action figures, and there's a certain checklist of "must-haves" in order for one to qualify (ie. you must love party girl, you must be of a certain age group and class and apparel) in this weird subsect of women. it's like an offshoot of the whole 50s revival, d.i.y./olympia, recuperation of knitting, indie rock zeitgeist thing.

which i guess individually, are all things i kinda like and have no beef with (except for indie rock...and knitting is too slow for me...but i really do love mid-century modern furniture and design)...it's just the way that they're being taken up that's giving me the heebie jeebies. there's definitely some class/race/privilege issues there, and it's also a terribly convenient image for one aspect of popular feminism to rally around. i mean, no one's making migrant farm worker action figures, or midwife action figures, or federal prosecutor action figures. there's also a lot of issues surrounding library outreach and library relevance that i find questionable. anyway, the point is...i find it kind of icky...the same way i find most cliched things kind of icky...the same way i dislike it when i can look at someone and pretty much figure out their interests...it's the same reason why i despise myspace. it reduces people to lists of interests, and presumes a connectivity...that you are what you consume.

the high point of my library experience yesterday was being able to go up to a group of teenagers using the computers and say: "i don't know WHO is listening to rick ross, but you gotta turn the volume down, or get headphones"
the low point was the response: "i'm already turning it down, girlfriend" !!!!! which was kind of funny, but still.

tonight for dinner is sushi kaji!!! we got seats right at the sushi bar...i'm definitely going to be taking pictures of each course...chef kaji grates fresh wasabi and makes his own soy. BOOYASHAKA *gunshots* *lickshots* *airhorn*

last night i also made this dessert consisting of caramelized apples and walnuts, on top of (but baked on the bottom and subsequently inverted onto) a cornmeal cake thing. it was only lightly sweet, which was very nice. we had it with ice cream and battlestar...i think we've hit the slow part of battlestar...three epsisodes in a row last night where very little plot development happened...lots of love stuff and extraneous side stories.

fin.

penny dreadful

is a lovely term i heard for the first time yesterday in one of my classes. it is the term used in england for dime novels. for some reason it really appeals to me...it's such an anachronistic euphemism.

last night's episode of veronica mars rocked! i won't bore non-vm fans with the details, but suffice to say that it totally delivered. there's a veronica mars fansite with a messageboard and i'm totally thinking of joining...which means i'm teetering on the brink of total nard-facedness. i can't help it! *edit* OKAY FINE. I JOINED THE STUPID MESSAGEBOARD FOR FANGIRLS. eek!!!!! this means i've totally gone OVER THE LINE that separated me from semi-normal people and obsessive fans. i HAD to! they kept talking about stupid stuff! and being all moral majority!!! anyway, something about the relationship between ronnie and her love interest makes me get all squirmy pubescent brace-face teenage girl squad...to the point where i scream into pillows with excitement. and i do a dance when the theme song starts to roll. it's definitely for the best that i watch the show in the privacy of my own home.

the plan for today is to do some serious research on a paper i have due next week. in between and amongst working two separate shifts and two separate libraries. which means that school (in the sense of actually attending class) is on the backburner at the mo'

tonight for dinner we're having a caramelized onion, mushroom and white cheddar tart. i've been accused of having an unseemly love of piecrust by the roomie. well...if that's the worst that can be said about me...i guess i'm doing okay.

fin.

how do people do it?

there are NOT enough hours in the day for me. by the time i wake up, work 4 hours at my part-time job, deliver my baked goods, make dinner, do yoga, and do small organizational things, run some errands, photocopy some readings...the day is OVER. and i haven't done any actual schoolwork. do people not make dinner? do they not do grocery shopping? or laundry? i seriously don't get how everyone in the world seems to have more time at being academically productive than i.

however, on the plus side, my increasingly insouciant and cavalier attitude towards school is resulting in the best marks ever!!! thereby providing little incentive for me to change my errant ways. will i EVER learn?!? there seems to be an inverse relationship between the amount of time i put into the work and the mark that i get. the gods have spoken. thy will be done.

so, the startling revelation of the night last night was that i apparently have NO IDEA how "the clapper" works. i just kind of thought that it WORKED, whereas i've been informed that it has to be plugged in to switch the electrical current off. i figured you could have battery operated "the clapper"s or something...the miracles that surround us!

also, the candidate on whose campaign i was working lost by a measly 200-something votes. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. but i'm glad i didn't go to the campaign office on election day...it would have been muy depressing.

the soup last night turned out amazing...although all those grains keep absorbing liquid and turn it into a grain-stew puck, as opposed to soup. we're going to thin it down tonight and have it with panini consisting of: fontina, roasted yellow peppers, and artichoke hearts.

fin.

interlude (aka my conclusion to the last assignment)

Koha offers significant benefits to a small-scale public library system like Chamillionaire Public Library. The major factor is the cost, and the freedom of our Library to be free from being locked into a vendor relationship, and reliance on one vendor for services and support. The comprehensiveness of the design and constant reevaluation and figuration of the Koha platform means that it will stay viable and relevant and respond quickly to changes in the industry and demands from users. The openness of the format means that with the proper training, Chamillionaire Public Library can tailor the needs of Koha to suit our specific community, and the savings from using an OSS will mean that we can re-allocate funds to continue to increase the visibility and relevance of library services. While there will be a significant period of adjustment, and some funds will have to be re-directed for staff training and switching over to a new system, the features offered by Koha and its ability to provide a comprehensive ILS with a detailed OPAC, equal to, if not better than our current platform, and the history of Koha as the founding leader of OSS ILS applications mean that it will be financially responsible, high-return resource for the Library.

happy feet

well, i got to say, that when i first embarked on this epic weekend that just passed, i had NO IDEA that it would culminate in me having a photo-op with a giant penguin at the mall. imagine my elation!




this weekend was all kinds of awesome. my brothers bought this PS2 game called "guitar hero" (and as i type this, i'm FULLY aware that i may be about 10 years behind the times, but whatever). it's THE BEST VIDEO GAME EVER!!! i don't even KNOW if people still call them "video games", but it's the BEST! it comes with a guitar that you hook up to the console with five different coloured buttons on the fret, and a little bar that you strum. you basically have to match what's going on on the screen, and you can battle, play solo, or play with another guitarist/bassist. the songs are all kinds of new and classic rock/metal anthems. including one of my new favorite songs "woman" by wolfmother. wolfmother is the BEST NAME EVER! i'm going to name my kid wolfmother. anyway, it's unbelievable how much fun it is, pretending to shred. it's like a cross between DDR, simon, and every teenage boy's bedroom when they're 12. i've always secretly wanted to shred...like my idol, buckethead.

it was also a riot seeing my mom challenge my brother to a rock-paper-scissors deathmatch. we ate like pigs...and i got my fill of amazing chinese food...i didn't eat a vegetable all weekend. it was all various manifestations of pork and dumplings and rice, with a brief respite provided by an excursion to boston pizza. boston pizza kind of blows...but it was aight at the time.


we saw two movies, babel and borat. babel is directed by Alejandro Gonzalez, who is the same dude who directed "amores perros" and "21 grams". i saw 21 grams and it was mucho depressing and featured all these interconnected stories and the end result was kind of blah. pretty much the same can be said for babel. and the whole interconnected/interweaving story thing is starting to really bug me. it's so contrived!!! it was really paul haggis-y (director of "crash"...a movie i hated for being maudlin and contrived and well, stupid)
it's like the west (in the edward said sense) trying to NOT be the west, or like, overcompensate for being the west, by creating these stupid movies that show how AWARE we are of our western-crappiness and end up still enforcing stereotypes and coming off (to me, at any rate) vaguely racist. if anything, it's insulting to other cultures that we churn out this kind of self-congratulatory, self-important, oscar-pandering pap. i just don't get the POINT of this flick. yes, yes, we don't understand each other. and? it's like the director has nothing to say about the subject other than to illustrate how we don't understand each other. if you ask me, borat did a MUCH better job of illustrating the breakdown of communication and the impossibility of translating across cultural divides. and it was funny.

tonight for dinner, i'm trying to cleanse my and the boy's system from the gluttony we subjected our poor internal organs to this weekend. we're having a three grain soup (brown rice, bulghur and barley) with zucchini, black beans, and sliced shitakes in addition to the usual mirepoix, swimming in an ancho-chile/tomato broth. with it, we're having cheddar and scallion quesadillas
with sour cream and salsa and guacamole (i make a KILLER guacamole).

fin.

cinqo

back in the day...when the boy used to smoke and i used to walk around wearing an absurdly large chef's toque. le sigh...we were so young and naive then.

this weekend is going to be ACES!!! i'm working today but sneaking off to have lunch with a friend, then going up to markham to visit the family for the weekend, including my sister and bro in law and their two chillun. my grandma called and promised me peking duck tonight, along with assorted other chinese food delicacies that taste the best in markham, outside of hong kong. i can't wait! peking duck with my family has come to stress me out, slightly. i come from a fairly large family, by today's standards. 3 siblings, two parents, my grandparents, and now, the addition of the white people contingent: namely the boy and the bro-in-law. which means that 1 peking duck is only enough to give you a tantalizing taste of the crispy skin and ducky fat and sliver of meat, all wrapped up in a thin flour pancake. we also used to go all out and ask them to cave up the whole duck but the drumsticks, and then we'd get to eat an entire peking duck drumstick. heavenly! but i think now there's too many people to do that. the weak point in most chinese meals tends to be the desesrts, as for some inexplicable reason, my people really, really like to stew up some legumes and call that "dessert". it's like porridge for dessert, more often than not.

we finished at a critical junction of battlestar...right at the end of season 2.0, before season 2.5 starts...we were in shock when we realized the dvd was only 2 episodes long, and we didn't have the followup. it's getting to the point where i don't really know what we did before battlestar, it's become the defining event of the day, the thing that i look forward to the most, the thing that gives my day meaning. sad, you might say? well, you can all go and eff yourself. you're either on board the battlestar or you can get the hells off my blog. word.


fin.

never underestimate the following

a) what an extremely edifying experience it is, to work at a place where a regular is known as the "poo lady", and that the nomenclature is actually recognized and acknowledged pretty much system-wide.

b) receiving a paper back from a professor with the comments: "you should use shorter words and try to use simpler sentences". it really does wonders to make you feel once again, like the chinese version of lisa simpson (in the episode where principal skinner has to push the "independent thought" alarm, or the one where she has to placate herself by playing "fur elise" in her head).

c) coming home from a 13 hour day to find your two roomies waiting for you to watch battlestar, being warmly greeted with a "hi, family!" when you walk in the door, and a well-prepared and nourishing dinner waiting for you.

d) the extent of the apoplectic state i enter when i see a premature (to me, at any rate) christmas commerical on tv, featuring some ugly (to me, at any rate) kid that they're trying to cute up by making her mispronounce words in what's supposed to be a charmingly precocious fashion. it drives me bonkers! christmas just stresses me the f**k out.

i just finished reading alison bechdel's "hot, throbbing dykes to watch out for". i've been systematically (though not chronologically) going through all the DTWOF compilations, and i recently finished her graphic novel memoire "fun home". i really really love her work, it's nice to see my kind of politics represented in a serial comic strip form, and nothing makes me happier than seeing the phrase "libidinal subversion" used along with pictures!

i also made the mistake of haphazardly grabbing this book last week, when i knew i was going to be taking public transportation and didn't bring anything to read with me. i find it really difficult to read anything of weight or substance on the subway, so this seemed like the perfect choice, but i've gotten inexplicably sucked in, which is the annoying thing, as it's a pretty flimsy, even for *my* definitions of flimsy subway reading. it's about some 30-something year old woman, who decided to undertake this project of cooking every recipe in julia child's "mastering the art of french cooking" and then blogged about it, and then subsequently got a book deal out of it. the writing is okay enough, and it's easy enough to get through...i just don't really get the point, and yet, because of my stupidly engrained work ethic and my stupidly engrained habit of always finishing what i've started, i can't put it down.

i also recently finished calvin trillin's "the tummy trilogy" which is a collection of three of his previously published works. he was the food writer for the new yorker for a good long time, and deservedly so. i feel much closer to his writing than the julie/julia broad. he basically travels around new york city and the nooks and crannie of the great united states, looking for the arcane, the local, the regional in terms of food. and he eats it. and talks about eating it in a way that makes ME want to eat it. we're talking buffalo chicken wings, bbq'd mutton, catfish festivals, state fairs, italian sausage sammiches sold during some annual street party in new york's little italy...in my mind, the stuff that dreams are made of.

tonight for dinner the plan is to cube up some butternut squash, and this little nub of sweet potato i have left over from making something else. toss with olive oil and salt and pepper and roast the cubes in an oven for a while. meanwhile, boil some penne pasta. i'm going to brown a little bit of butter, and fry some sage in the browned butter, then toss the pasta, roasted squash cubes and brown butter-fried sage mixture together with some of hte pasta cooking water to lube it up, and serve, along with a side salad.

fin.

working the phone banks

last night i was rudely wrenched from the relative security of phoning fellow union members, and thrown to the wilds of phoning random peeps in ward 17. a very interesting exercise in human psychology. you get the whole panoply of tics and foibles. you have the yellers, the people who scream at you, insisting that asking who they might be thinking of voting for is tantamount to asking if they just jerked off, you get the people who decide that YOU are the representative of the government, and try to find out if you can arrange school bus transportation for their kid, because the ministry in its infinite wisdom has decided that a kid who lives four blocks from the school, should by all rights be able to walk there. you get the downer crew, who mumble and bemoan the "crooks" and "broken promises" and give that reason for not voting (even though i suspect those people have NEVER voted, ever!), and every once in a while, you get the gems of the bunch - polite, well-spoken people who have good social skills.

i still really like doing it though. i think everyone should have to do a few hours of volunteer work at some kind of election campaign, regardless of party or level. it really makes you engaged...i don't live anywhere NEAR ward 17, but i'm totally committed and excited about the results.

*spoiler alert*

last's night's veronica mars episode was okay, although i had just been rejoicing in the fact that they hadn't been shoving piz down my throat lately, when he appeared and started making moonie eyes at ronnie again. maximum BOGUS. also, keith mars, engaged in some extra-marital business...which was problematic for me, because he's the moral barometer of the show...and i guess i wanted him to always be above reproach. then we watched another episode of battlestar. there are people (*cough* my sister *cough*) who made all kinds of claims that battlestar season 2 starts off weird and weak and it's going to be trying getting through it...but i completely disagree!!! sharon's character is so interesting, and i really love the ethical, moral, psychological dimensions of the show. it makes me remember what makes good speculative/science fiction so good.

i've been starting off my days with a big ol' bowl of steel cut oats lately. i LOVE steel cut oats, mainly because they're the whole oat groat, just minced up, but they're really nutty and retain some texture when they're cooked down...they still have a certain earthy chewiness, as opposed to the regular oatmeal pablum you get, which tastes like it's already been digested once. tonight for dinner we're having a cauliflower soup, cooked with leeks and garlic and celery and water, and then pureed and thinned with milk. this soup is the essence of cauliflower, the distillation of what a cauliflower can be. we're eating it with panini consisting of: chorizo, monterrey jack, avocado, and tomato.

fin.

hobo junction

as i ever so fondly refer to my home library branch was surprisingly easy goings last night. my fellow page and i ended up talking with one of the librarians about the future of libraries for a good amount of time. it's nice to know that the usual crap and anxieties (is library school a load of hooey? how are libraries going to remain relevant? how do you measure the value of a cultural institution?) have been ongoing since she was in library school.

tonight i'm manning the phone banks again for alejandra bravo in ward 17. election day is monday!!!

we're having twice baked potatoes for dinner. i bake and scoop out the shells, and mash up the innards with sour cream, a little milk and salt and pepper, and grated cheddar cheese. i then fold in some sauteed leeks and garlic, and blanched broccoli florets, mound the whole mxiture back into the potato skins and top with more cheddar cheese. with this, we're having green beans blanched and sauteed with shallots and garlic in a mustardy-red wine vinaigrette.

fin.

being subsumed by battlestar gallactica

it's a very strange phenomena. my will has been consumed by battlestar and battlestar-related ephemera. in a fit of desperation on saturday, rousing ourselves with a mighty show of effort and battling the soporific effects of too much rouille and brownie sundae madness, we trooped to blockbuster and tried to rent battlestar season 2.0 the dude at blockbuster is very interesting. he has freakishly LONG nails. on BOTH hands. we can't for the life of us figure out what it's about, or whyfor. it makes for a slightly grotesque/sublime renting experience though, as i can't help but stare transfixed. anyway, it was a bust. so we then had to walk the extra block to rogers video, where we emerged triumphant (need i say that we were all wearing our pajamas, and i was wearing a baliklava and that we looked like a travelling geriatric and clearly deranged production of bedknobs and broomsticks).

on an unrelated note, i have the potential opportunity to spend 6 weeks of my summer making an ungodly amount of money working with the boy at a jewish summer camp. this has pros and cons. pros: making an ungodly amount of money in an unseemly amount of time, a feat that i would only otherwise be able to accomplish if i harnessed my inner private-dancer. pros: being up in cottage country for 6 weeks in the summer. pros: being able to undertake this "adventure" with the boy. cons: i hate children (caveat: children not related to me by blood or friendship). cons: i don't like socializing with other counsellors/counsellor type people and singing tragically hip tunes around a campfire (yes i KNOW that i can't be sure that that's what's going to happen...but i sense it in my bones). cons: the food is crap, and i've been told the only palatable, marginally edible sustenance are "pizza bagels". you like, LIVE for the pizza bagels. although, there's a side of me, that's just perverse enough to glory in this kind of mass produced beaver/serca-delivered crap from a can...on occasion. ie. i LOVED university cafeteria food. plus, my university was very obliging to my freshman 60 billion by being ALL YOU CAN EAT. my favorite words!!!

tonight for dinner we're having tourtiere. the weather is kind of starting to piss me off. the weather for tourtiere is supposed to be frosty, cold, red-tipped nose, heaps of leaves piled dramatically at the foot of grand maples, mittens and scarves and watery morning eyes, fall style. instead, we have the second coming of spring. tant pis. so i made a wonderfully flaky double crust pie, stuffed with sauteed leeks, celery, carrots, par-boiled cubed potato, ground pork and loads of fresh thyme. to be eaten with a large salad, and my cranberry pear and apple relish. i LOVE relishes with meat pies. no dessert...i did my part and bought something from the ACA (i have no idea what in the hells that stands for...let it be known that library and information studies is positively RIFE with acronyms) bake sale. a little sugar pie. it was aight. but it cost $1 and the crust was store-bought.

fin.

fattin' it up

last night i capped off dinner with a GINORMOUS brownie sundae, featuring: a giant hunk of that fudgy brownie i made a few days back, vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, and bourbon caramel sauce. i don't know what it is, but my metabolism is insane - bordering on the embarassing. it was like a pound and a half of dessert. i think it's because i eat a lot of homecooked, unprocessed food, and that i'm rarely sitting still...i'm always kind of buzzing around, being an over-extended freak must burn a lot of calories. one day, this might catch up with me, and i'll be one of those people riding one of those motorized scooters in the bike lane.

this morning i'm making a special sunday breakkie, cuz we haven't had one in a while. we're having eggs benny, with peameal layered on a sweet potato-yukon latke instead of an english muffin, slices of avocado, and dilled hollandaise. mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

tonight for dinner we're having red-cooked pork belly. i braise the pork belly in water, shaoxing, ginger, star anise, soy and yellow rock sugar for about 3 1/2 hours or so. then i take the pork out and sear it in a hot pan to crisp up the skin, and reduce hte braising liquid to make a thick glaze. i'm serving it with chili-black bean fried eggplant and steamed rice. i'm making a dessert, but it's a healthy(ish) one, and very traditional chinese: steamed ginger milk pudding. it's one of my favorite things in the whole world...it's the lightest of custards (mostly milk), infused with ginger, and silky smooth, like biting into ephemeral gingery pillows from heaven.

fin.

last night's party

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uneven distribution of sugar...

on cinnamon toast will be the ruination of me. you really have to strike the perfect balance between darkly toasted, heavily buttered bread, a frosting of sugar, and only the lightest dusting of cinnamon possible. today my ratio was way off, making for a very unpleasant eating experience. which sucks because i go to bed anticipating my breakfast the next morning. actually, truth be told, i spend an ungodly amount of time thinking about/living in breathless anticipation of my next meal. which probably accounts for why i spend so much time procrastinating.

yesterday, despite my best efforts at doing some reading during reading week, i made an important discovery: trying to read in my family room with the cats piled on me results in all three of us falling into a deep and heavy sleep, rivalled only by the deep and heavy sleep that's induced on me as soon as i watch any one of the the godfather movies.

today i'm working at a library that i really like...it's an 8 hour shift, which really means that i work 6 1/2 hours and get paid for 7. yay local 416!!! then i'm meeting some friends and eating dinner at bacchus roti. it will only be my second visit ever to that joint because it's way on the west end, but last time i was there i enjoyed it enormously. i'm hoping i can coerce someone into going halfsies on a jerk chicken roti and a spinach, chickpea and sweet potato roti. washed down with some grace ginger beer (so 'picy!) and that's a good time. if i'm super hungry...i might get some of the sweet potato fries too.

then we're going out dancing at sneaky dee's. we're going to see dj rupture
at a mathhooker party, thrown by my lil' buddy knifehandchop . dj rupture is a dude who came to fame making these insane mixes "gold teeth thief" and "minesweeper suite", which feature a mixed bag of tunes from all over seamlessly mixed with superfast cuts. last time i saw him live was at lee's palace...and i was a leetle disappointed because there had been rumours of his djing dexterity and how he murders it on three turntables...but he never had three tunes in the mix...it turned out to be a superfluous third deck that just cued up the next track. there's another dj, fishead, from montreal, who freakin' DELIVERS. crazy mashups, and the last time i saw him, he played "love is a battlefield" which is one of my favorite all time songs of all time. plus, i happen to be BFF with one of the best djs in the world for breakcore, c64, so to see rupture getting all these daps when he couldn't bring it live, was a little bogus. either way, i'm sure the show will be fun at the very least, his mixing prowess aside.

fin.

cold nights + flannel + warm brownies + cold milk = love

not much to report, folks. considering that my daily routine as i enter day four of reading week consists of lolling around my house in a flannel-sheathed torpor, i'm surprised i even have the gusto to keep up my regular posting. i'm vascillating between heart-pounding stress by the thought of my assignments due next week, and total, complete, and tv-on-dvd fueled denial.

speaking of which, last night's episode of veronica mars was good! nice case, a richard grieco appearance, the re-emergence of wallace and weevil, and no piz in sight. sweet!

tonight, the plan is, if i'm really really good, i'm going to the trane studio in toronto to hear my friend's band AV6 play...but if i stay true to form, i'll more likely be found eating brownies and cold milk on my couch, in flannel pajamas with my house-family.

for dinner i'm making bouillabaise with rouille-topped croutons. for the bouillabaise, i sweat out leeks, garlic, and half a thinly sliced fennel bulb, then add in saffron, thyme, fennel seeds, a couple of halved tomatoes, and some tomato paste, deglaze with white wine, and then add fish stock i made with halibut bones, the green parts of the leek, and celery and onion. i puree the soup, pass it through a chinoise, and then add in chunks of halibut, shrimp, scallops and mussels.

a rouille is the traditional accompaniment to bouillabaise, and is similar to a spanish sauce called romesco (except romesco has almonds instead of breadcrumbs). it consists of roasted bell pepper, chili, breadcrumbs and garlic, emulsified with olive oil, and combined with the flavours of bouillabaise it's one of the perfect flavour pairings of all time...one of the matches that go so well together it's like a no-brainer, the most self-evident, spice girls-esque "2 become 1" amalgamations of taste and texture in the history of food as aesthetic. with this, i'm staying with the french theme, and making a bacon, wild mushroom and frisee warm salad. i cut thick lardons out of the bacon, and crisp them up in a pan, then set them aside to drain. in the fat in the pan, i saute and brown a ton of "wild" mushrooms (creminis, oysters, shitakes) until cooked through, i then hit the pan with some grainy dijon mustard and red wine or sherry vinegar, and toss the hot mushroom mixture with the bacon, onto some cleaned chopped frisee lettuce.

finally, to rescue this entry from complete boringness...here is my nephew dressed up as darth vader for halloween...although the effect is more spaceballs:

and here's him doing justin timberlake impression (when justin wears his "nosey hedgehog" tshirt):



fin.