check up

according to my doctor, i'm a-ok. blood pressure's normal, i don't feel particularly ill, i eat well, etc. this doesn't stop me from being a hypochondriac. i vociferously campaigned to get her to test my blood cholesterol levels and give me a diabetes test to no avail. my two current concerns are that i have high cholesterol and that i might have diabetes. when i was young (and obviously too impressionable), i read the issue of the "baby sitters club" where stacey finds out that she has diabetes. therefore, my knowledge of diabetes and its symptoms comes from a slim volume of tween-targeted fluff. the symptoms (as my 9 year old brain understood them) are as follows: thirst, having to pee, getting headachey sometimes. THAT'S ME!!! I HAVE ALL THOSE!!! but alas, my physician sagely decided to refrain from squandering taxpayer money on pandering to my neuroses. the nerve!

she even told me i don't need to take multivitamins because i eat so well. this makes me nervous because she has no idea how well i eat, it's only on my authority. how do i know what constitutes eating well? next year, i'm going to bring a couple of weeks of sample meal plans for her to look over. in the interests of advancing biomedical science, you know.

i did get her to write me a prescription for massage therapy. sweet! i can't wait! it's been at least a year or two since i got a massage. my cheapo health plan only subsidizes $25 bones for an hour treatment or something, so i still got to shell out some ducats. i'll save my pennies for it, because it's so worth it.

now i'm scuttling my butt to get a paper done by tomorrow, and another one done by hopefully monday. eek! i also signed up for extra hours, cuz i'm a foolio. my little mini-vacation to rochester will be worth it. i'm hoping we get to go eat at one of the following: red lobster, dinosaur bbq, someplace where i can stuff myself on buffalo wings, or some franchise i've never heard of but that manages to serve surprisingly good food in the craptacular vein (attn: little ze's mama).

last night's dinner deviated from the plan as my greek fishmonger didn't have mackeral. we ended up getting snapper fillets. we don't generally eat snapper, as most of it is on the monterrey bay aquarium's seafood watch list. but i broke down in a moment of guilt (and quite frankly, i'm kind of sick of eating tilapia, its sustainability be damned!). i just checked...some snapper is okay, some isn't, and i'm not too sure which kind i got. it tasted DELICIOUS though! i dredged it in a little seasoned flour and pan-fried it. i took the leftover tzatiki made with the drained fat-free yoghurt, and doctored it into a make-do (albeit very garlicky) tartar sauce, by adding: finely diced capers, gherkins, shallot, dill and the juice of a lemon to loosen it up. we had this with lightly buttered steamed beans and the leftover root mash. root mash might become my go-to mash. it's slightly sweet and very flavourful. we also ended up eating some of that pear-cranberry crisp for dessert with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

tonight for dinner we're having my bastardized pasta carbonara. featuring, whole wheat di cecco penne, tossed with sauteed onion, garlic, mushrooms (bastardization alert!), peas, and 3 or 4 beaten raw eggs, mixed in a measuring cup with parmesan cheese. the raw eggs, when combined with the hot pasta and hot veggies, becomes the "sauce". it's delicious. some people add cream to the egg-mixture, but i consider that to be the ultimo bastardization. if you want to loosen it, i just add a soupcon of the pasta cooking water. we're having this with a baby spinach, red onion, cherry tomato, avocado and toasted salted pumpkin seed salad with lemon vinaigrette.

fin.

words i love to hear:

"stop me if you've heard this one before"

i LOVE having the option. this prevents the most heinous following social situations: a) ones where i have to fake-laugh, b) ones where i have to humour people. i suck at both. definitely not my strong suit.

today i have a physical, where i have to sweet-talk my doctor into giving me a prescription for massage therapy, so i can see my RMT. she PWNS. www.softmechanic.com
my doctor has this really brusque, eastern european receptionist, who tends not to use salutations or pleasantries when you talk to her on the phone. last year, my phone booking ended with her barking into the phone: "your appointment is on thursday at 9:00am. make sure you're not bleeding *click*" i think she meant to make sure that i wasn't on my period. in person though, she's sweetness and honey. very strange.

tonight for dinner, i'm going to pick up some fish, probably some mackeral. then i'm going to glaze it with miso-sake glaze and broil it in the oven. served alongside leftover root vegetable mash and steamed green beans with lemon vinaigrette. mackeral is omega-3 city. plus it's pretty tasty...i love fatty fish.

fin.

iron chef battle: toad-in-the-hole - results!

a sunday morning wikipedia search revealed that what we thought to be "toad-in-the-hole" was actually "eggs-in-a-basket". properly, according to the british (damn you!), toad-in-the-hole is little cocktail sausages plopped into a giant yorkshire pudding baked in a casserole dish. if you ask me, it's a bit of a misnomer. the yorkshire makes more of a basket shape than the toast does, and as you can see, eggs-in-a-basked actually features a something in a hole. very odd. our ruling is as follows: from here on in, flouting the conventions of british colloquialisms, we are going to refer to eggs cooked in the middle of a hole cut out of bread as toad-in-the-hole. one small step for doing away with the monarchy, one giant step for perpetuating trivial inaccuracies.

for food porn purposes, i think you can say my method won. i cooked the bread on one side in the pan, flipped it, cracked an egg into the middle, and then let it cook for a bit, before throwing it into the oven. however, this yielded yolks that were slightly more done than would allow for adequate bread-yolk dipping. the other method, let the bread cook on one side, crack the egg in, carefully flip and let the bread continue cooking, resulted in an over-easy egg, and liquid yolk. that's also a picture of our carrot-apple-ginger-beet-cucumber juice.

we watched a couple more episodes of "lost" season 1. i think we've seen enough evidence to warrant throwing in the towel. again, it's too tv-contrived. and the characters do stupid things that defy any and all logical suspension of disbelief. furthermore, i was told that each episode leaves you hanging on the edge of your seat, panting for more, and in my opinion, this is false. sure, there's some kind cliffhanger at the end of every episode, but i feel no urgency, that demands i want to know more. i don't care about jack's relationship with his dad, i don't care about charlie's heroin addiction, and while i'm on it, what the HECK happened to captain u.s. marshal-shrapnel guy, who woke up, asked about kate (at the end of episode 2) and we haven't seen him since?!? time incongruity galore!

i took the leftover pot roast broth, added a s**tload of sliced mushrooms, and some pot barley, and left the slowcooker on to turn the whole thing into soup/stew. that's for dinner tonight, along with a baby spinach salad with sliced red onions, grape tomatoes, avocadoes, and toasted salted pumpkin seeds in a lemon vinaigrette.

fin.

fake reading week

i realized that i've basically taken the past week as my proper reading week (doing nothing, indulging myself with doing whatever non-school related stuff i want) instead of my real reading week, where i was working on research for the prof, an assignment, and studying. but now it's REALLY time to buckle down.

last night we watched episodes 1 and 2 of season 1 of "lost". we don't like it. to me, it's kind of boring. the characters all seem really one-dimensional and lack nuance, and are very t.v.-popular stock characters. it also features very tv-popular stock dialogue, and what seemed like fake intrigue and fake mystery (ie. stuff that's unnaturally amped up to keep you on the edge of your seats, but is very contrived). personally, i'd rather watch a show about what it IS like to be trapped on a deserted island: how you find food, gather supplies, get water, organize a society. i don't WANT the island to be some kind of metaphoric weirdo bizzareo land with polar bears and the cliff hanger that - gasp! - the woman is the criminal! not el capitano racist hot guy! episode 2 also featured an entirely gratuitous scene of evangeline lily langorously washing her body dressed only in a bra and skimpy bikini briefs, which didn't really make me want to watch more. we gave it a fair chance, but neither episode 1 or episode 2 grabbed us by the balls and made us want to watch more the way battlestar did, or the way season 1 of 24 did. it didn't have the immediate, easy-going likeability of shows like the office and veronica mars.

yesterday i finished reading "curses" by kevin huizenga. it's a collection of comics loosely on the subject of various curses. they feature glenn ganges, a hapless, everyman type of character. there were strong religious-superstitious overtones, and the stories are well crafted to leave a lingering unease in the reader. one of the stories is about the devastation wreaked by starlings (which apparently aren't native to the americas, were introduced in the late 19th century, and have subsequently caused ecological devastation and subsumed native bird populations), and hints at the awful beauty of a starling formation swooping and clustering darkly in the sky. i really enjoyed the drawing style and the execution of the theme.

this morning for breakfast, me and the boy are doing "iron chef, battle: toad-in-the-hole". i had planned a more elaborate breakfast, but the roomie isn't going to be here, and it's not quite worth the effort if the whole family isn't going to be there (then you wind up with odd numbers of sausages being refrozen and the like). i have never had toad-in-the-hole, so the boy was going to cook it up for me, but he's kind of fuzzy on the details, and his method sounds wack, so we're going to battle it out. dinner tonight is a lovely pot roast. i'm seasoning a ginormous hunk of beef, searing it on all sides, and throwing it in the slow cooker with some red wine and beef stock and finely chopped carrot, celery, and onion, alongside parsley, thyme, and rosemary. i'm serving this with a root vegetable (rutabaga, sweet potato, yukon gold potato) mash, steamed beans tossed with lemon-brown butter and toasted almonds, and sauteed mushrooms. i'm basically stealing this menu from the farm weekend we had over the xxx-mas holidays. last night for dessert, i ended up making a pear and cranberry crisp, so we'll have leftovers of that tonight with some vanilla ice cream. or, i've been kicking around the idea of making chocolate souffles with some of the nice bittersweet scharffen berger chocolate my sis buys for me from the states, with a caramel sauce.

fin.

things i'm not good at :

1. dealing with situations where i have no control.

there's a health situation with someone in my family, and it's causing me to act out (ie. be a jerkbot, lash out, stress a little), mainly because i have no control. being a control freak means that you attempt to exert power over the random trials of life through *feeling* like you can control every factor around you, and also by believing that it's possible to be prepared for every eventuality.

not that this needs to be said, but this is not the case.

stripped of my ability to control/prepare, in the immediate moment, i tend to try to express anger and frustration at the impossibility of doing so. eventually, i make peace with the situation, and direct the energy from the anger, into a can-do, results-based realism. i haven't quite reached that stage yet.

*jarring subject change* my shift at the library was quite pleasurable. i ended up getting bumped up to superior duties for a big chunk of time (where i get the same pay rate as the job category i'm covering), as quite a few people called in because of the aftermath from the storm. it's actually not all that much longer than a regular shift. i'm there for 8 hours, but i only technically work 6 1/2, and get paid for 7. there was some creepy snaggletoothed dude who gave me a creepy snaggletooth smile when i was on the desk and asked, "can i help you?" "maybe your name," he replied all creepily and snaggletoothy. then he gave me a "i'll see you tomorrow!" mon dieu!

we've been social almost every weekend since school started up again. so this weekend is just going to be the house-family together, staying in, watching movies, and working on school stuff. tonight for dinner the plan is to have falafels. the key to falafels is to go against every edict in almost every cookbook ever, and NOT used canned chickpeas. canned chickpeas result in you eating deep fried hummous balls: gooey, wet, no texture, and none of that starchy flavour. i soak chickpeas in cold water, then blend them with an egg or two to bind, maybe some chickpea flour (though they often don't need it), some scallions, cumin, parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper. they hold together surprisingly well, and the frying is enough to cook them through, while still leaving lots of crunchy substantiveness. i'm serving them in split pita break whole wheat pitas, with homemade tzatiki (i basically drain some fat free yoghurt through cheesecloth and a strainer to make it thicker, then add some grated garlic, lemon juice, salt and pepper, and grated and squeezed dry cucumber). we also have some avocado, red onion, and tomato to stuff in there. we're having this alongside tabbouleh. i love tabbouleh. just some reconstituted bulghur with lots of finely diced red onion, parsley, grated garlic, and lots of lemon juice and some olive oil and plenty of salt and pepper. maybe some harissa too, to make it 'picy.

i dunno if we're going to have dessert, as i've been feeling virtuous lately (or as near virtuous as i get). probably not...i'll save it for our sunday supper.

fin.

snow day!

when i arrived at school at 1:00pm yesterday, things were a little grey, but kind of warm, and definitely slushy. at around 2pm BLAOW! the windows in the class were suddenly made opaque by the tiny little gritty snowflakes the seething wind had plastered on the glass, the entire campus was suffocating under a thick, wet, woolly blanket of snow, and my night class was canceled! what fun! i haven't had a snow day in forever!!!

i should have used the time to be productive, but ever since i dropped the pen on that midterm on monday, i haven't done a single god-damned thing. the problem is: i can't really let myself slide, as i've got mad s**t to do before i go visit my sis and her family. we're going to the ncaa march madness stuff in buffalo. i keep telling people that i'm going, as it gives me street cred. in reality, everyone else (the boy, my sis, brothers, and bro-in-law) are going and i'm going to be babysitting the kids, as i'm not all that much into bball. the one time me and the boy went to a raptors game, i sat and read vogue and only looked up when i tried to spot this girl we went to high school with (she's like the head choreographer/raptors girl) during the half time show.

i had the house to myself last night...roomie was at a birth, the boy went up to king city or something to celebrate our buddy (the porn king)'s bday. so i started and finished dan savage's book "the kid" about his experience going through an "open adoption" with his boyfriend. an "open adoption" basically means that the adoption records are never sealed, and that there's a pre-agreed upon base level of contact between the birth mother and the adopted parents. the things i liked about "the commitment" i also really liked about this book, i like his writing style, and his political views. he's like a very traditional libertarian, which is kind of what i am. i mean, a lot of my activities are alarmingly domestic - cooking, managing the household, knitting, making preserves for pete's sake. one time my piano teacher, upon arriving at my house to give me a lesson to find that i was fretfully tending to a just-baked cheesecake (they're persnickety!), said the words, "you're so domestic" with what can only be described as a soupcon of disdain. eff that! i OWN that s**t, lady! for a long time, i wasn't into kids at all, but i've come around on it a bit...i want 'em...but i'm not the kind of girl who's HUNGERED for kids all their lives. no way. my motto used to be "have cats, not kids", i've come around because, as my friend h would say, having kids basically means you're building a house filled with only people you like. which is totally up my alley. i mean, i really dislike most people. why not up the odds in my favour? as dan savage writes in his book, "even if all your kids want is for you to drop dead, at least someone is giving a specific sort of s**t about you." which again, is right up my alley. so while i'm fairly dead set against marriage (i find it silly, i hate making a spectacle of myself, and i find it jinxy, etc.), kids are knocking around in the back of my mind somewhere. and i do believe that someone should be home with them, until they hit school age. that someone is NOT me. that someone will probably be the boy. spending all your time with children turns your mind to mush, and there's nothing that can convince me otherwise. people who do spend all their time with children (my sample comes from the women i see at all hours of the day with their $1000 strollers in withrow park) are bats**t insane, plain and simple. and i'm NOT turning out like that. i'm also NOT going to give up caring what i look like, thank you very much.

so i set up a facebook account for snooping purposes. upon discovering that i am pretty much the only person i went to high school with that emerged with a sense of style, i've broken slightly from the covert snooping mode, just long enough to impress on other people i went to high school with that this is the case. it's pretty petty and lame, i know, but i've never claimed to be otherwise. i'm actively campaigning to go back for a high school reunion, if only to further drive the point home (although i suspect that the intricacies involved in constructing the perfect ensemble to do so would probably result in a blown gasket). anyway, i'm going to stay long enough to leave an imprint of my brilliant spectacularness, and then promptly delete my account, leaving only a lingering impression that people can carry with them, always (like the halo that's left after a flashbulb pop, or like kurt cobain or aaliyah). i'm not so much into the "social networking" aspect. the point of facebook is to actually reaffirm how much you love your life, and all it does is give you a basis for comparison. and i really really really do love my life!

today i signed up for an EIGHT HOUR shift at the library, potentially indicating latent bats**t insaneness on my part. i'm packing a dinner of a carmelized onion, mushroom, and thyme tart, with emmental cheese (how alsatian!!!) in my homemade tart crust. i'm also packing the olive garden salad, complete with mini squeeze bottle of my designated olive garden salad dressing. i really really want to go to the alsace region of france, it borders germany and switzerland, and features really hearty, simple, pork/cheese/onion based foods. that's my m.o.!

fin.

weekly book review

i finally slogged my way through "canadians at table: a culinary history of canada". sounds right up my alley, right? WRONG! the writing was terrible, dull, starchy, and uninspired to say the least. there was no over-arching connection, thematic lineage, thesis, or anything to link the sections together. it's like reading a grade 8 history textbook cover to cover, on the subject of food. chapters would frequently include long lists of the contents of "canadians" larders (and make no mistake, the so-called canadians at the table, despite passing references to chinese and acadian immigrants, were mostly of the british ilk). so it would be stuff like, "blah blah blah, pemmican, juniper berries, codfish, cold weather vegetables, bannock, blah blah blah" to make matters worse, the author, who is a noted food historian, would frequently inject long passages of direct quotes from ye olde tyme englishman, describing memorable meals: "we feaste on 20 fleetes of oysters fine, yards and yards of meade and grog, fine wines, a whole roasted oxe" etc. (that was me taking liberties in recall, but you get the point, and while you're reading it, hear it read in the poncey-ist of english accents, a shade removed from chaucer, if you will). here is an example of the author's literary prowess: "here too, the gourmand can sample a new pastry confection called a Beavertail, deep-fried and dusted with sugar, or spread with a favourite preserve" !!!!! how can you possibly make a BEAVERTAIL sound BORING?!? i don't use the words "crime against humanity" lightly, but this writing style, pilfered from the canadian touristry board, is that and more.

i also finished this book, "sorting things out: classification and its consequences" for my surveillance and identity class. it accomplishes the rare feat of being both fascinating and tremendously boring at the same time. the idea of the book is interesting (it's an examination of the profuse and diffuse nature of classification systems, a theoretical situation of what it means to classify, and how classification systems are sites of negotiation and struggle between the bodies they attempt to pin down, and the reified system itself). however, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. there are a lot of long examples, that are kind of left hanging there, and aren't neatly brought in to support or contrast against the thesis. so you suffer through pages and pages, wondering what the point is, and then the point ends up being a thin, poorly worded thread, that just barely links you back to the opening statements. you would think that the use of bolded and italicized headings would help, right? WRONG! the sub-headings give NO INDICATION of the contents of the following paragraphs, and not only that, seem to indicate that the next idea will be something completely different from what it is. very odd.
so in short, i have mixed feelings.

today is my very very long day. i'm packing dinner to eat at school. i am having the rest of the black bean chili, which i'm going to liven up upon its (regrettable) encounter with the school microwave, with some diced avocado i've mixed with lime juice and julienned red onion. i'm also packing one of my sunflower, pumpkin seed, almond, raisin and maple granola bars, an apple, and 3 clementines.

we've made a clementine breakthrough, and my hypothesis is correct. MOROCCAN clementines are the only ones worth buying. they're juicy, plump, sweet, and have the distinctive feature i remember from my youth: that is, that the peels come off easily and smoothly (like a tangerine peel)...almost like there's a space between the peel and the fruit itself. unlike the BAD BAD ISRAELI clementines, which have a thin, leathery peel that sticks to the fruit, tend to be seedy, and are unpleasantly dessicated and sour, in addition to being on the small side. i'm going to add a further level to my hypothesis, and posit that israeli clementines are at their peak during the holiday season, which means that they flood the market at the time traditionally associated with clementine eating. i suggest you withhold that impulse, and wait a month or two, when you can get the moroccan ones.

fin.

yarrrr

regardez-la! my first completed knitting project. technically, i did 2 other prototype versions, but this is the only one i finished...i stopped the other two because they weren't perfect, and i tend to be from the "it's not worth doing if it's not worth doing right" camp (except in school,where i'm from the "it's perfectly acceptable to trade peace of mind for coasting on a minuses" camp). i credit my roomie for getting me back to knitting. when i used to try doing it before, i'd usually find it too laborious and slow-going and give up. having someone else around who knits makes it a pleasurable, social activity, AND it gives me something to do when i'm otherwise not doing anything (although in my universe, "not doing anything" means that i'm only doing ONE thing, instead of five, at a time). i can do this while i'm watching tv, which is nice. so i started up again when the roomie had a month off in december for her break. it's for my niece! i had to learn as i went along, it's a little ambitious doing a hat, on double pointed needles, with a contrasting colour pattern, but i'm nothing if not ambitious.

when my doppelganger was over the other week, she wanted to know why i don't drink, so i explained it to her, and then her boyfriend asked me what i do as a stress reliever, whereupon the boy answered on my behalf: "work MORE" it's kind of true. i don't really experience stress, per se. i get anxiety about stuff, rarely, but i tend to just buckle down and do it, and the anxiety i experience is more because i can't cross whatever it is off my giant list of things to do. but instead of stress, i just putter. take on even more little activities, futz around. i've been told that i have a hard time relaxing, but i don't think that's true. i just have a hard time doing what OTHER people do to relax (ie. lie prone on a couch/bed, slack-jawed at the tv). i'm actually a generally relaxed person. what stresses me out is when things distract me from achieving my goals. which is why i ABHOR it when people send me links via instant messaging, or when people interrupt me to go check out something on youtube, etc. i'm a very goal-oriented internet user, and i hate spam, or links, or the pressure to check that thing out RIGHT AT THAT VERY MOMENT, because it messes with the flow of what i'm doing. weird, eh?

for dinner tonight we're having chicken breasts, cut into 2" chunks, steamed with chinese sausage, and dried shitakes, ginger, and scallions in a sweet soy-sesame oil sauce. alongside some steamed rice, and stir-fried chinese eggplant and fresh shitakes in a chili-black-bean sauce. i love chinese sausage more than anything, but it's also carcinogen city from the amount of nitrites all up in there. it's wicked unfair. but i don't eat chinese sausage all that often, and realistically, all cured meats and sausages have 'em. BOGUS!

fin.

objects in the rear view mirror...

may appear closer than they are. perhaps one of meatloaf's better loquacious song titles? i think so. he certainly doesn't believe in song title brevity, that man, and he's pretty shameless about flagrant abuse of parentheses. note: "i will do anything for love (but i won't do that)".

now that i have some breathing room, i can comment on my weekend. a weekend where precious moments were stolen from me by that pernicious stats midterm. however! ameliorating the horridness of my grade on the midterm, i got an A+ on the paper (19.5 out of 20 to be exact), and the prof made a point of telling me that it was a really excellent paper (i disagree, it was good, but not great). everyone did really well, so i think they're trying to even out the overall class average, in light of the fact that almost everyone claims to have failed. some of my fellow students put my paltry attempts at studying to shame: people said they spent FIFTY hours preparing. i was proud of myself for spending 15! no wonder i failed!

i had a great time on the weekend. it included plenty of face time with my increasingly willful niece and perpetually jolly nephew. look at that outfit! it's a little grunge, a little classic rock. it also included a spirited rendition of the inception of the fourth amendment in the us constitution by my ever-charismatic brother, culminating in the following inscription on the crap-cake i so cravenly hungered for.

i've decided that my new guilty pleasure is the nelly furtado song, "say it right". because it's totally awesome eighties. timbaland did a f**king awesome job on the production, and especially on the processing on nelly's vocal. it's pure new wave-pop madness. i love it! i told the boy that it would make an absolutely PERFECT darkside sample. and he's all like, "you think?" and i said yes! that vocal is straight out of 93 jungle darkside. and he's all like, "but i can just put some reverb on a vocal, and make a new one." me: "but you're no timbaland" him: *look of withering disdain*

we had a buddy over last night to play some tunes with the boy, and the buddy is a fan of pranks. i told him in NO UNCERTAIN terms that i ABHOR pranks. so he replies: "even scary ones? like if i jump out at you and scare you and you get that adrenaline rush? don't you like the adrenaline rush?" me: "i will take that adrenaline and BEAT YOU with it" him: "oooookay. no pranks"

here is some of the food we got at my grandpa's birthday banquet. this year was a little odd, because things came out of the usual sequence. we were all extremely gladdened by the conspicuous absence of the sea cucumber "vegetarian" dish that usually makes an appearance at these things. the first dish is a favorite...it's like crab thermidor. minced up crab and veggies in a lightly curry-spiced sauce, topped with breadcrumbs and baked in the shell. there was also braised dried scallops with sauteed spinach, and stir-fried garlic lobster. the rest of the dishes i forgot to take pictures of, because i was too busy yamming.

this banquet also featured the Tremendously Auspicious Meeting of my new relative Kingsley. he's actually showed up at a few of these things. my grandma holds these banquets on a fairly regular basis...usually around 70-100 people, and we know the routine, we have a regular table we sit at, and regular table-mates, etc. so the past few times, we've noticed this new dude sitting at the table adjacent to ours. after much speculation (growing increasingly ludicrous with each subsequent pass around the siblings), i finally outright asked who he is. he's my grandma's #3 brother's grandson. i don't know what that makes him to us, but he's a pretty good sport. witness the picture. that's my brother to the left of my grandma. she and my grandpa always dust off their circa 1970 finery for these functions. it's kind of cute.

for dinner tonight we're having salmon fillets, seared skin side down to crisp it. then brushed with mustard, and topped with panko that's been mixed with some microplaned ginger, drizzled with olive oil, and then baked in the oven so the panko crisps up. i'm serving this with green beans, blanched, then tossed with some sesame oil and toasted sesame seeds, and sweet potato oven fries served with chili mayo. my roomie brought back some mint chocolate chip ice cream as a post-exam treat for me, so we'll probably have a small scoop of that.

fin.

bizzomb

well...i officially for the first time TANKED an exam in my semi-illustrious academic career ever (and allow me to say that this range goes back all the way to kindergarten, and covers almost 8 years of post secondary education). eek.

i tried, i really did. i studied long and hard, and didn't watch the oscars and didn't do anything fun, and was basically a wet blanket the whole weekend cuz i was mildly stressing about it, and cranked out largetime at the boy. so i can't say that i didn't try, and i'm pretty okay with how i did. the exam was ridiculous. we had to write out 20 randomly assigned definitions from a list of 74 statistical terms. now, that's all fine and good if the the definitions were a line or two long. but they're not...they're about 500 words each. and for full marks on each question you had to prove that you could contextualize the term and had read a minimum of 2 (!!!) additional sources. for 74 TERMS. of which you are going to be tested on 20. re-donkulous!

i have fun pictures to post from the weekend when i get home...in other news: my family has put the wheels in motion to RENT A COTTAGE FOR A WEEK this summer!!!!!!! oh what fun!!!! i'm trying to make sure that i get maximum cottage time this summer...which will basically mean living like a pauper the rest of the time, but well worth it in terms of peace of mind and r&r. and let's be realistic, for me, taking time off this summer means working 35 hours a week and probably taking a summer course...but compared to 70 hour work weeks! it's like 35 hours IS a part time job. ha!

i came back from visiting with the family with some kind of minor sickness, and feeling rotten from all the food we ate. it's bad...too many msgs and such...the food is tasty but sometimes is was quantity over quality. it didn't help that i had an epic craving for crap cake (ie. cheap, grocery store cake with cheap frosting...i LOVE IT!...you know, the slab cakes with the cheap frosting roses in garish colours? loaded with chemicals and stabilizers and the like). so for dinner tonight, it's healthy town all the way. we're having a cream of cauliflower soup with milk instead of cream...really simple. i sweat out a white mirepoix (onions, garlic, celery), add some cauliflower, enough water to just cover it, and let it cook. puree the mass in the blender, and add enough milk to just thin it out, season with salt and pepper. the resulting pablum is silky, rich, and the essence of cauliflower. we're having this with toasted fred's bakery potato bread and butter. and a giant ruby grapefruit for dessert. take THAT, colon!

fin.

r.i.p. sheriff don lamb

in a desperate bid to stave off flagging ratings and the rapidly declining interest of stalwart fans, the piss-poor, sensationalist writers at veronica mars decided to kill off neptune's resident bumbling sheriff, don lamb. r.i.p, don, you'll be missed...ask the wizard for some heart.

veronica mars is pissing me off...and yet, i cannot look away! how is this possible? i'm so trapped in the world, that even as they spiral off into ludicrousness and come up with plot twists that seem DESIGNED to piss off the faithful fan base they've built, i have to watch every week to see JUST HOW FAR DOWN they'll go. it's like watching a car wreck. now they're trying to set up parker and logan?!? so dumb!

sheriff lamb died getting hit in the head with a baseball bat, wielded by none other than a meth-crazed, heavily cosmetically altered, richard grieco himself. what a way to go! lamb's last words on the show were "i smell bread". i found this strange. the roomie explained that it's just a device to show that your neurons are misfiring and sending out wayward signals, like when you have a seizure and smell burnt toast. my question was: "yeah, but why is it always bread? and do indian people smell naan?" which elicited rounds of laughter, and proclamations that you can take the girl out of cultural studies and into library studies, but you can't take the cultural studies out of the girl.

dinnie last night was deliciouso! so filling and tasty and healthy, minus the sour cream (i don't count avocado fat as fat). this is a picture of my recent ebay spoils. how lovely! this summer is all about muumuus, tent dresses, smocking on dresses, trapeze shapes, etc...basically i want to dress like a cross between peter pan, my adorable mum in her late 60s early 70s heyday, and a version of myself at five. i wish my mum had kept all her fab old clothes! i'll post a pic sometime soon...she was beyond hep.

today and tomorrow are being spent with the fam up in markham. FUN! we're celebrating my grandpa's birthday with a big ole banquet...i'll bring the camera to post pictures of all the various rare and exotic animals hong kong chinese people viciously slaughter for the smallest and most arcane parts. ha! tonight we're having dinner at saigon star...an awesome vietnamese place which is to your standard, run-of-the-mill pho joints as a home-grilled ribeye is to the kack at the keg. the standout dish is curry crab. which they serve with crisp baguettes for dipping the sauce, a nod to the french influence in vietnam. so many dishes that you don't find at most of the viet places downtown. i can't wait! i'm fasting all day in anticipation.

fin.

love and marriage

i finished reading dan savage's latest book, "the commitment" last night before bed. i devoured the thing. dan savage writes the weekly sex advice column that's syndicated in most of north america's alternative weeklies, in toronto, you can read it in NOW. for all that he pontificates and offers up sage, considered, and weighted advice on the myriad little depravities that make up the panoply of human sexual proclivities, he's actually a very "traditional" guy: in a mostly monogamous relationship with his partner of 10 years, they have an adopted son, he goes out to earn the money while his partner is a stay at home dad. this book is like a memoir, detailing the year or so when america was whipped into a pre-electiion polarizing froth over the gay-marriage issue, when dan and his partner debated back and forth whether they should take the plunge themselves. beyond that, it's also a bigger rumination on what it means to be married, committed, to build a family with someone, and how one relates to others. it was funny and poignant and fantastically well-written.

in less positive news: my mid-term is a DOOZY. i'm trying to break it down into manageable parts: intensively studying 18 definitions a day, cumulatively day by day. it's just so pointless when i know that i'm only going to be tested on a randomly selected 20 out of the 74. it's even MORE pointless when you factor in that statistical analysis is the ultimate entropic concatenation of bureaucratic noodling. i can sum it up: variables, coefficients, relationships, operationalization, blah blah blah. keeping the "distinct" terms straight in my head is a pain. compounded by the fact that i also have to do my prof's research somewhere in there.

tonight for dinner, i'm making some kind of huevos rancheros variation. i soaked some dried black beans which were subsequently drained, and are now on a low simmer on my stove. i'm going to soak some guajillo and ancho chilis in some boiling water, mixed that with some drained canned tomato and add that to the cooked beans, along with some sweated onion, garlic, and definitely a chili or two. add in the usual chili spices (cumin, coriander, ancho powder, pasilla, mexican oregano, etc), and let them stew a bit. poach/fry some eggs, throw that on top, and serve the resulting yolky slop with a vat of my famous guacamole, some salsa, and full fat sour cream and nacho chips. there's been a lack of food porn up on here of late, so i'll try to remember to take a picture.

the remainder of the tarte tatin for dessert.

now to place my snubbed nose on the proverbial grindstone.

fin.

friends

i've always hated that show, friends. to me, it's like the worst parts about white people, condensed into one highly irritating little half hour. it's just not funny.

yesterday, against the odds, and against all my feeble attempts to elude her, i got to have lunch with my friend h yesterday. it was great! we hadn't hung out in a long time, and i'd just had a murphy's law-fueled morning, culminating in a semi-disastrous meeting with my prof for the r.a. stuff.

i'm kinda feeling meh about that whole situation. i got too much other s**t to do to focus all my energy on someone else's project. i'm too selfish for that ish. you can pay me, and i'll get the work done, but you got to pay me a HELL of a lot more if you want me to CARE. that's just how i roll.

but seeing h was lovely! then my doppelganger and her bf came over for dinner which was also BEYOND lovely. i love it when friends of good friends become friends. it's so nice and chummy. we hatched all kinds of crazy plans (the doppelganger and the roomie are turning 30 this year and want to celebrate in a grand fashion): driving to vancouver in a giant rv, renting a cottage for a week, driving to montreal, going to cuba for an all inclusive vacation. this summer is going to be a BLAST!

tonight for dinner we're having whole wheat fusilli with a broccoli and walnut pesto. and olive garden salad (but of course!). no dessert...i ate entirely too much roast boeuf last night to be good for me (but it was SOOOOOOOO tasty).

fin.

MASCARPWNAGE!

is the most hardcore pwnage that exists. so say we all.

here's a picture of two of my favorite baldies (captain jean luc picard should also be up there, and china mieville), my nephew, being held up by my brand spanking new MICHEL FOUCAULT magnet that my lovely friend t, in vancouver sent to me. so cute!

we watched part of this documentary called "aliens of the deep" last night. james cameron basically takes some of the billions of
dollars he got from making titanic and helped to fund this deep sea exploration. it's crazy down there! and really relaxing to watch these phosphorescent, prehistoric life forms, that somehow manage to survive in the very depths of the ocean. the pressure down there is insane, and there's also all these geothermic vents, so you have the earth's core literally spewing out volcanic matter that instantly hits the icy cold water and forms all kinds of inverted geo-formations, reverse stalactites and stuff. and the life forms are beautiful. when we went to vegas we checked out the underwater exhibit at the mandalay bay hotel and casino...you basically walk through a series of underwater glass tunnels. but they had one giant column in the middle of the floor that contained maybe 5 or 6 jellyfish. the motion of their bodies undulating and rippling is so calming. "aliens of the deep" is pretty good, but we're watching the extended version, which has less time spent just filming the creatures and environment, and a lot of time "getting to know" the crew they assembled. so you have all these nasa-physicists and alien life form experts and marine biologists kind of annoyingly yapping and saying stuff like: "this is so awesome! will you LOOK at that? wow!" which is all very well and good, but i'd kind of like either a) a deeper context for what i'm seeing or b) for them to shut the HELLS up. i don't need someone from nasa telling me that this s**t is awesome.
i recently finished reading another alison bechdel comic collection. this one is called "spawn of dykes to watch out for". this means that i've almost read them all, but out of order, and i'm missing the key one where sparrow shacks up with stuart and gets him to live in her co-op. i DEVOUR these comics. i love the characters and the story is so endearingly, accessibly, palatabley alty-lefty in the way that i can appreciate.

i also read a children's book called "the stone fey" by robin mckinley while i was at the library a few days back. i love her work. she does vaguely fantasy-fairy tale, medieval kind of stuff but her writing is beautiful and evocative and imaginative without being forced. this was about a girl who lives in the scottish highlands, tending sheep, engaged to her beloved, who gets wooed by one of the otherworldly folk that live high in the mountains. it was a lovely read, deeply satisfying in that way that fantasy books for kids can be deeply satisfying.

i have an r.a. meeting with the prof today...and then i'm going to see if i can meet my friend for lunch...hopefully it works out. tonight we're having my doppelganger and her boy over for dinner. he's from england, and i had some prime rib leftover, so i'm going to roast up a three rib prime rib, rubbed with salt and pepper, medium-rare. alongside: roasted garlic mashed potatoes, sauteed mushrooms (in butter, natch), steamed green beans tossed in shallot-mustard-red wine vinaigrette, and for dessert, tarte tatin with almond frangipane between the caramelized apples and the crust. the crust is an oatmeal-based crust which gets extraordinarily flaky, while still sturdy. i'm going to serve it with the last of my bourbon caramel sauce, and some whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. depending on how productive i'm feeling, i may or may not make yorkshire puddings, but that's already a lot of food for just the five of us.

fin.

home run!

these weekends lately have all been resounding home runs. what fun! and it was really sociable...a few of the boys friend's came over for short little visits so it feels like we saw a lot of people on the weekend. there was dancing, there was good food, and there was even a jaunt up to markham to have dinnie with my cute mum.

all you can eat hot pot pwned our asses. i love bringing people for their first hot pot experience... the roomie is BEYOND sold on the concept. plus, everyone was so full that they couldn't finish the complimentary dessert they bring you, which just so happens to be my FAVORITE CHINESE DESSERT EVER! warm, steamed, faintly ginger flavoured egg custard. so i ended up eating about a softball of ginger egg custard. i felt i was going to explode. AND it was chinese new year so we all got lucky money!

there was also fun with our wig on saturday. i think we're going to institute a new policy that any visitor to the house must put on the wig and have their picture taken, so we can have a wall o' wig fun. our eventual plan is to just get a tonne of wigs...you really can't underestimate how much fun a wig can be. for some reason, i end up looking like short-round from indiana jones. actually, basically any minute change i make to my appearance results in me looking like short round. the boy and my friend end up looking like emo-y a**holes, especially when the boy adds one of his signature novelty sunglasses. one of my favorite things to do in the whole world in the summer is to drag the boy to shopper's drug mart and make him try on women's/senior citizen's sunglasses. to say that hilarity ensues would be the understatement of the millenia.

today is all about my r.a. work and writing a paper. it's an itty bitty paper so i'm hoping it doesn't take too much time. tonight for dinner we're having a butternut squash soup that's chock full of textured bitties: corn, kale, red pepper, romano beans. alongside more olive garden salad cuz i just can't get enough. and i think i'll make us some gingersnaps for dessert.

fin.

i needed that

SO MUCH FUN last night! such grimey, sweaty, rudebwoy bruckness. i LOVE it! i love dancing for four solid hours and going buck. i haven't had a night where i feel like i really got the dance out of me in a long, long time. the thing i love about jungle jams is that i rarely get bothered or grinded up on, and am generally left undisturbed to do my thing (act like a ruffneck). i also love the dirty-ness of a proper party. the roomie tried to convince her friend to go, and he's from england, and when other people heard he was going to possibly go to the comfort zone, they basically teased him out of going. EFF THAT! yes, it was dark (like i could only see a foot in front of me dark) and yes it was all ages (but jungle crowds you can never tell how old anyone is, and they're mostly younger anyway), and yes it's grimey (the bathrooms are pretty gross)...but i would never let that stop me from going ANYWHERE is the music is hype. it really IS all about the music and the potential for dancing for me...anything else is very much a tertiary concern.

i LOVE LOVE LOVE jungle. i love dancing to other music, but i've been listening to jungle for 10 years now, and NOTHING does it for me like a wall of drums and sub-bass. it's like i jump out of my skin. i haven't been to a party in a while, and i guess i needed to be reminded how, when the jungle is proper (crashing, cacophony of drums, sinewaves, bass i can feel in my chestplate), there's nothing better. i live for 170-180 bpm. i would say that part of the credit goes to dj c64, my bff, and growing up in electronic music with him, but the harder, the louder, the ruder, the better! crunchy, abrasive, bass-heavy = karl lagerfeld goes OFF. it's one of the things that i can be counted on...i never stop moving at a party. and i don't really socialize either. love!!! i also love the crowds at jungle parties. i love the sketchiness, the skeezy kids, the fact that it's about 1 girl for every 100000 boys, but it's not really a sexual vibe at all, everyone is focused on the music. i love breakbeats! four-on-the-floor has never, and will never really do it for me.

breakage started off with some of the slow, minimal, sparse dubby stuff, then he kind of went a little early virus, wobbly, not as much bass for my liking (but people seemed to really dig it), then he went wall of drums mashup science business, then brought it back down again with the deep, choppy, slicey, but bass-heavy, minimal, sebadox-esque stuff. the mc was wack! i think it was dsypha's dad. probably the whitest sounding mc i've ever heard in my LIFE: "is everyone having a good time tonight? please. welcome. the. fine. dj. breakage" wackness!

it was fun though...and i went with an awesome crew. i'm glad the roomie came. things were looking a little bleak for a bit, as she was mad hungover...but she was a trooper...and i love partying with my markham buddy. he pwns! and seeing how happy the boy is in a rave-like setting also makes things very amusing.

we ended up at the silver dollar room for a bit...there was a local band, called methodology playing. they blow. they kind of do like a remy shand, very can-con version of soul/rnb revival MINUS the funk and MINUS the factors that make soul, rnb good (ie. soul, rhythm, blues). it's like buddies: jamiroquai called, and he wants his sound back, and furthermore, stevie wonder just called jamiroquai, and he wanted HIS sound back. i hate it when people don't DO their thing, but project what they THINK the thing is. a lot of popular music is like that or if you ever watch people singing on american idol, it's totally like that. they think that just because they can make the right sounds come out, it's acceptable to pantomime love lost, or soul, or that fire you get from proper singers.

today i'm skipping out on library sunday work, to work on my assignment some more, and otherwise be hungover and schluffy. it's also CHINESE NEW YEAR! for breakkie we're having steel cut oatmeal, and a carrot, apple, beet, cucumber juice. for dinner we're going for ALL YOU CAN EAT HOTPOT in markham! chinese hot pot is the shiznizzle. there's an element built into the table, and they bring out cauldrons of flavoured broth, and platters of meat, veggies, tofu, noodles, and you just cook your own. finished off with a steamed ginger milk pudding. my favorite chinese dessert! (or one of them). then battlestar when we get home! chinese new year/reading week rocks! depending on how gluttonous we're feeling...i might make us a batch of cookies to hunker down with.

fin.

against the odds

yesterday was a whirlwind. so my roomie tells me yesterday that the girl who rents the apt. upstairs told her that her friends were opening a restaurant in yorkville and were doing a trial run of the restaurant thursday, friday and saturday, and that they needed people to come in and review the food and in return they get a free meal. so me and the roomie are all excited, and we call the doppelganger and her bf and get ourselves a nice, happy little foursome going. then the roomie calls the upstairs girl back and finds out that she had got yorkville and YORKDALE confused. we were O.U.T.! yorkdale is hella far, and the resto was actually IN the mall, and that means the food is going to be of highly questionable integrity.

so we revamped the plan so that me and the roomie would eat dinner here and then go to the doppelganger's place for dessert (carrot cake!). then, against ALL odds, i did the reasonable thing: i stayed home, on the first friday of reading week, to work on the assignment i have due on monday. it was probably one of the hardest choices ever. i was so torn! socializing! CARROT CAKE! but no, i made the right call, because i ended up getting a good chunk of it done...which is what i really needed.

but that's okay...because today my little bro is going to try to get all the siblings and auxiliary significant others tickets to see THE POLICE at the ACC! wooooooooooo!!! what hilarious-fun THAT will be! also...tonight i'm getting CRUNKED, guy! i'm going to see this dj/producer i lurve named breakage at the comfort zone of all places (all ages too, eek! someone better not get bottled/shanked/shot while i'm there). his full-length album "this too shall pass" was wicked and really pushed the genre forward. tonight is going to be pure rudebwoy murderation mayhem, BOOOOOOOOOOYA! i'm so pumped! even if the music sucks (which it probably won't, at least not during his set), it'll be fun to be out and about as i haven't been to a jungle party in ages. AND, the roomie is off-call which means i get to go raving with her! what fun!

tonight i'm having my friend over for dinner and we're having braised lamb shanks in shiraz with mascarpone long-cooked polenta, pan roasted brussel sprouts, and green beans steamed and tossed in a red wine vinaigrette. for dessert, i made creme caramel (or flan). i haven't made it in years and years and years, it was actually one of the first desserts i ever tried to make when i was 14 or so...which is actually pretty ambitious for a first timer...as it involves making a caramel, and a custard, and cooking the whole in the bain marie. i wanted something that was light and cool after the heavy, round, wintery flavours of the dinner.

fin.

romance!

other romantic things: 2 christmases ago, the boy's mom got the boy this pack of socks featuring "arch support" (it's a thick band of elasticization around the "arch" part of the foot). it doesn't actually support your arches, but the socks are made of super-plush, thick, soft cotton...it's like walking on jesus himself. anyway, i've taken such a liking to the socks that i often wear them for days at a time (a gross admission i know, but i rarely sweat...so if my socks aren't sweaty...i figure they're good to go for another round or so? or, i walk around barefoot at home...so they're only on my feet for a few hours each day? maybe? i've totally lost you and you're looking at me with palpable disgust, i know). anyhoo, usually i do the washing and the drying of laundry and the boy does the folding. what do i find oh-so-cavalierly placed in my bounteous sock drawer? only the socks that i love and covet so dearly. romance!

in other news of saccharine delights, my alcoholic neighbour dimitri SHOVELLED our walkway for us. the whole driveway leading up to our entrance! i was planning on doing it all day, went to work, met the boy, did grocery shopping, and when we had come back, bleary-eyed dimitri had done it. how sweet! i don't know how to repay him...maybe he'll be the new recipient of leftover food, as the previous recipient has disembarked to scotland for god knows how long (come back, dj c64!). another funny thing about dimitri (stop me if you've heard this one before) is that in the summertime, he starts his bbq with a flamethrower. no joke. we were inside last summer and all we could hear was that blowtorchy-jet sound coming from outside, so we're all like, "wtf?!?" this is what dimitri does: he throws some coals in his little bbq (and i mean LITTLE bbq, the thing is like the size of a pan of lasagne, and about 1 foot off the ground), then he hooks up this giant blowtorch attachment to a propane tank, lets 'er rip and SHOOTS it at the pile of charcoal until it catches. it's actually about a billion different kinds of awesome. also, sometimes he gets so drunk he passes out on the picnic table outside, next to a little tv he has rigged up out there. it's quite endearing.

READING WEEK HAS BEGUN! YAY (BUT BOO!) i have a CRAPLOAD of work to do, especially now that i've taken on this r.a. work for the prof (i'm thinking it'll keep me in ebay muumuus though, so that's why i'm doing it...and the prof and i have similar research interests). tonight is probably going to be spent doing a good chunk of work, and then celebrating with the roomie who is off-call and is currently writing a murderous midterm exam...plus my doppelganger and her boyfriend have moved into the neighbourhood for the month, house-sitting her parents house, so we might go visit with them.

tonight for dinner is that stuffed eggplant from a few days back and olive garden salad. yum!

fin.

i totally gapped about yesterday being valentine's day. ah zoot. it doesn't really mean much around these parts anyway. usually, somewhere near the general vicinity of that day of waxy cheap chocolate and ritualistic spectacle of pre-fab excess, we find someplace to go eat a nice dinner, more of an excuse to go out than anything else.

when i was working my shift this regular came up to me while i was in the stacks shelving, and gave me that picture he had drawn on the back of an old library receipt, with the words, "i couldn't get you a real one so this will have to do." it was pretty nice (albeit creepy...is there ANY form of public library engagement that ISN'T creepy? or has my already-cynical and world-weary heart been hardened against any and all sentimental connections in a public library setting?). i thanked him and he made this self-effacing comment about the cross-hatchings being subpar. it was actually a pretty sweet gesture...but it still makes me feel icky.

i'm not hardwired for those kinds of things...flowers, crappy chocolate, and the rest of what constitutes romance (conflict diamonds, moonlit serenades, limousine rides, a weekend in niagara). this is romance to me: coming home from a long double day, dumping my crap upstairs, walking downstairs to change into my pjs, to be greeted by the following words from the boy: "hey. so, do you consider what happened to the indigenous people of canada to be a genocide?" and then getting into a 20 minute discussion about what constitutes genocide and looking up the u.n. definition and contextualizing the political motivations for designating one thing a genocide, and another not. be still my heart! other things that mean romance: pepperoni sticks from alex farm's cheese store, one for everyone in the house; doubles carted all the way from outer-etobicoke, one for everyone in the house; and finally, being able to use the line from willow to madmortigan in the movie "willow" that goes, "you are great" and have my partner understand the reference. that's love, right there folks. the other stuff is just hackneyed crap for noobs, imo.

today is a long day...but i'm going in with my friend to talk to the prof about the r.a. stuff, which should be interesting...i'm semi-nervous. for dinner i'm packing leftover gumbo, which turned out ULTRA-FANTASTIC! we cooked the roux out until it got all toasty and popcorny smelling and turned a leathery brown colour. we used my chicken stock and shrimp and tilapia chunks alongside some spicy sausage, and i threw in brown rice, which was a good call because it maintains it's chewiness through the long cooking process. i'm also packing one of my homemade granola bars...which, despite the inclusion of raisins, are surprisingly good, and a fairly healthy snack.

fin.

saved?

do i look like i'm in dire need of saving? do i wear the look of someone who is doomed for an eternity of hellfire and damnation? what is WITH me attracting all these religious peeps trying to convert me?

you've got the baptist mack, who after i've turned him down, makes a big show of IGNORING ME at the library. i told him i wasn't comfortable meeting people at my place of work, and that i like to keep work and play separate. so the next time i see him, i said "hi", and he gives me the big ROLLEYES look-away. as IF, buddy! that's teh lame0rz.

i'm sitting on the subway going home from work yesterday, reading a book, when an older asian woman gets up and sits next to me and says: "hi, do you speak chinese?" thinking that she needed help translating something, i tell her that yes i do speak chinese. then she asks me if i'm from china, and i say that no, my parents were born in hong kong but i was born here in canada. then she starts blabbing on about how she was born in china, and how JESUS helped her when she came to this country. then i look down at her lapel and see the "jesus christ of latter day saints" pin. at this point, i want to get back to my book so i politely interrupt her and say, "thank you, but i'm NOT interested in jesus". so she goes, "oh, you're not interested in jesus? what ARE you interested in?" what do you think i answered? what, in the entire pantheon of my interests do you think popped into my head and was blurted out of my mouth? oh, the entirely ingenious answer..."pop culture". she's all like, "wha?!?" and i'm like, "look, i'm just not interested in jesus." then she tries to tie it back into our shared chinese heritage or something. and i go, "if you're so big on being chinese, why aren't you interested in buddha, or some religion that has some roots in our culture, as opposed to something that was brought over by colonialists?" and she's all like, "wha?!?" so i gave up, thanked her, and got off the subway.

why do those peeps travel in packs? and why do they prey on the lonely, confused, recently arrived immigrant peoples? and more importantly, why am **I** being lumped in with that sad-sack lot?!?

yesterday dinner was derailed. we visited my boy's da' in the hospital (he's doing very well), then the boy's mum, his sister, the boy and i ate dinner at sakawaya. i was famished and it was late so we all went. we had kabocha pumpkin tempura (yummy!). they do this thing called kushiyaki there, which is stuff grilled on skewers and then either glazed with yakitori sauce or sprinkled with salt. i had a skewer of chicken livers with salt, and a skewer of chicken skin (!!!!!!!) with salt. divine! then i had my usual, which is the spicy beef kimchi tofu pot, and i get them to add udon noodles to it. the boy had the chicken donburi bowl, which is a breaded chicken cutlet, on rice, flavoured with a sweet soy sauce, and baked with an egg on top. tasty! then i came home and made peanut butter cookies, as we had decided that the night was a writeoff and we were bunkering down for the perfect storm.

i LOVE storms! i love seeing the city slowed to a crawl. i love seeing people hunkered down and gathered together around warmth...like in our primordial past. winter's the best! because of all the pork fat i consume, i've convinced myself that the reason why i never feel debilitatingly cold is because i'm sheathed in lard. it's warm in here, lemme tells ya! but i love winter because in climates like ours, it's the time of rest, and gathering around food, and convivial company. that's my kind of ish! i love having reasons to hunker-bunker down.

tonight for dinner we're having a seafood gumbo. i make a very dark brown roux, then sweat out the cajun mirepoix (which is onions, garlic, peppers) in it, then add some chopped tomatoes, a mixture of clam broth and water, and some chopped okra. i'm going to let that stew, and then add some brown rice. let that cook out, then i'm going to add some salmon/firm white fish chunks, shrimp, and scallops. and we're going to eat this with some olive garden salad.

fin.