mini-vacation hooray!!!

today i work an 8 hour shift at the library which is pooey, but after that, i'm getting picked up by my mum and the boy, and we're driving down to the states to visit my sister and her fam! that in itself would be enough, but my sis and the boys are going to the ncaa games on thursday and saturday, and me and my mum get to babysit the two little kidlets.

fun!!!

then on friday, when there are no games, we're going to hopefully be able to visit my sister at work (i want to see her in action in court) and then go for lunch, go see that movie, 300 and then maybe do some shopping. there's a pair of rocket dog shoes i'm hoping are going to be at DSW - discount shoe warehouse...i swear, shopping in the states is the BEST SHIZ EVER!!! only because the clothes and shoes are made by my poor underpaid, sweatshop compadres in southeast asia, of this i'm well aware. i'm also hoping that we can fit in a stop at tarjay (aka target), also one of my favorite stores in the world. but whatever, just hanging with my family and seeing a movie will be enough.

it's my little brother's birthday, which means my dreams of wegman's crap-cake will be realized beyond my wildest imaginings. wegman's makes a crap-cake that puts all our canadian grocery store counterparts to shame. the key is they have an option for WHIPPED CREAM frosting. oh yes. none of that ceiling plaster, hydrogenated vegetable oil-based, sickly sweet confection that they have up here (although that's also an option). whipped cream frosting is the ultimate companion to spongy, soft, yielding crap-cake. i can already taste it!

and i think we're also going to hit dinosaur bbq for some real, proper bbq. and mac salad. *unbuttons top button of jeans in anticipation* i'll take pictures of dinosaur bbq for those of you who've never had the pleasure (and allow me to say that dipamo's or phil's original bbq in toronto, while okay, if you've never had dinosaur, looks like the pile of untended, dry sawdust it is when you first taste the juicy smokiness of dinosaur ribs). i'm a bit of a rib connoisseur...actually, i think i'm a general connoisseur. i like to endlessly discriminate tastes of all kind: aesthetic, sensual, relationship, etc. i've been accused of being picky, but i think that's a most egregious and inapt assessment. i just think there's a right way and a wrong way, and i attain a particular sense of happiness and well-being when i experience, or can arrange to have things result in the right way. i just put a lot of thought into everything. it's a quality i share with the boy. we're renaissance peeps, he and i.

last night's broccoli and rice casserole turned out amazing. i made a bechamel with sauteed onion, garlic, flour, olive oil and milk. then i added in cheddar and smoked gouda. mixed in the leftover cooked rice, and poured that over the broccoli florets in the baking pan. i mixed some panko crumbs with olive oil and salt and pepper, and sprinkled that on top and baked it in a 450F oven. it was delicious! the smoked gouda really gives it that x factor. you can't really tell it's there, it's not aggressively smoked like other smoked cheeses, where it tastes like you're eating ham, but it adds a subtle depth of flavour that brings everything else up a notch. we ate it with steamed green beans and roasted brussel sprouts. so it was a very healthy meal. i'm packing leftover casserole and a salad for dinner tonight at the library. the family is eating leftovers as well.

fin.

work-a-thon

it's official: i failed my midterm, we got the marks back yesterday. well, technically i passed, just barely...i got 43 out of 80. shazaaam! the professor went over all the midterms and bumped up the marks on individual questions, because t.a.'s are the harshest markers evar! it's because they're so close in age and education to the students, and because they have something to prove (in my opinion). it's like getting marked by an older brother or sister. i averaged out my midterm mark with my mark from the first assignment, and i'm going into the last part of the term with a solid B (75%), with still two assignments to go. so i can conceivably do some proper ass-kicking and still emerge with an A.

today is all work, no play. i've got to finish a paper, start and finish another assignment, and do random assorted stuff. i was supposed to go to a job interview, but i know i'm not going to get the position, so it's probably best if i duck out and i can focus on my real work. i've applied to a few part time jobs for the summer...i hope i get at least something!

short post today...i got stuff to do!

tonight for dinner we're having a veggie rice casserole. broccoli and brussel sprouts baked with rice in a cheese-y sauce (smoked gouda and cheddar), topped with breadcrumbs and baked in the oven.

fin.

i can smell summer!

my family is renting a cottage for a week near huntsville. the name of the person renting us this cottage is JACK MCKAY. that's right. DYLAN MCKAY'S FATHER. from BEYOND THE GRAVE. how awesome is that???

yesterday was amazing because the extra hour of sun made losing that hour of sleep so worthwhile. and i can already smell spring in the air. we have one of those four month washable calendars on our wall, and i took the liberty of erasing january and february and putting up may and june...and just seeing those months, perfectly blank except for concert and birthdays is so relaxing and uplifting.
by comparison, march and april are filled with due dates and other miserableness. it's so hard to stay focused on school when the earth starts to smell wet and soft. i just keep telling myself i have to get through just seven weeks and then i'm free!!! and i have to keep reminding myself that compared to last year, even the endless rounds of school drudgery are worth it.

this summer is going to be so much fun, i can already taste it! cottages, trips, family, friends, eating outside, riding my bike, reading and puttering and doing all the things i love. listening to music...outdoors! parks, and evening strolls with the house-family. frisbee and yoga lessons and gardening and FARMER'S MARKETS! i'm a farmer's market junkie. and this year, hopefully i can work it out so that i can hit riverdale AND dufferin grove. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

so i gotta buckle down. tonight for dinner we're having seafood (tilapia, scallops, canned clams) new england chowder with a tiny dice of sweet potato in there, because i like having bits of texture in my chowder, and some chopped dill. alongside the olive garden salad.

fin.

i love christian bale!

he's the ultimo cerebral hunk. last night we watched "the prestige". it was written by christopher nolan and his brother, and directed by christopher nolan (batman begins, memento). it was pretty slick, although the roomie figured out the fake-twist pretty early on. it was entertaining and well directed, and featured a lovely, ghostly, phantasmorghic scene of a foggy field lit up with light bulbs. that scene alone was almost worth the movie rental. the movie features david bowie in a lovely turn as nicola tesla who was apparently hounded by edison (who knew that thomas edison was biff tannen of the inventor world? certainly not me)

i finished reading a book called "gastronaut" by a british author named stefan gates. i don't know how he got a publishing deal...it was pretty terrible and self-indulgent and a rather flimsy concept. basically, he delves into a random assortment of "out-there" food experiences, centred around his made-up tenets of gastronaut-ness (fairly predictable: you'll try everything once, there's no such thing as a culinary failure, etc) and then rambles on in a twee british way about how to gild sausages with gold leaf, how to organize and execute a pig roast, and eating assorted rarities (boogers, pee, etc). it was obnoxious, mainly because the voice of the author was so annoyingly britishly smug. and the research was haphazard at best.

this morning for breakfast i broke the long-standing, irrational edict against non-swedish pancakes instituted by the boy. for some reason, he ONLY likes swedish pancakes. now, i love them too, but i also have room in my heart for the whole panoply of pancake representation in all its glorious multi-constituencies. but i must admit, i do love swedish pancakes best. i made banana pecan buttermilk pancakes with mennonite sausage, which we had after drinking a carrot-apple-ginger-lime-beet juice.

dinner tonight is a tempura feast! we're dipping and dredging sweet potato, chinese eggplant, zucchini, mushrooms and beans and eating that with tempura dipping sauce and rice. i saw some lovely baby artichokes, so i'm going to fry those up to, and maybe serve those with a lemon aioli. the last of the pouding chomeur with vanilla ice cream for dessert.

fin.

it's the most wonderful time of the year...

no, not xxx-mas, not my birthday...it's HOT DOCS TIME!!! we've already bought our festival passes and my saliva glands are going into overdrive just looking at the pre-program they've posted on the net. what's amazing is that, unlike previous years, where i was working two jobs, and trying to squeeze in documentaries when i could, hot docs conveniently dovetails with the END OF THE SCHOOL YEAR!!! which means that the boy and i have made a pact to take those last weeks of april off and unwind by stuffing our craniums with as much harrowing, depressing, socially-conscience-demoralizing documentaries as we can! there are a minority of documentaries that are of the testament-of-the-human-spirit calibre, but the ratio tends to work out to: 5000 from the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and people (read: the privileged west) are selfish, gluttonous, rapacious fiends to 1 people (read: the underprivileged can be self sacrificing and will find hope in even the darkest of circumstances). i can't wait!! it's going to be such a treat, and the perfect kickoff to the SUMMER OF SLACK!

this is the glorious plate of ethiopian food from last night. dukem was a raging success. the service (even though i was only getting take out) was warm and effusive and generous, and the food was top notch. for $34 we got four different dishes, that all came in those BIG square styrofoam boxes. the only quibble is that maybe they gave us too much food. each dish came wrapped in injera (the sourdough crepe that serves as flatware, utensil, and accompaniment, is the beige stuff in the picture), and then an additional piece of injera was included. we were drowning in injera. starting from the top of the picture is awaze tibs (lamb): cubes of tender lamb marinated and cooked with tomato, jalapeno, garlic and berbere sauce ("A common Ethiopian sauce that is hot and spicy tasting. Made with the seeds of cumin, cardamom, coriander, and fenugreek that are combined with garlic, ground cloves, turmeric, grated gingerroot, black pepper, salt, paprika, cinnamon, and dried red chiles, this sauce provides a distinctive tangy flavor for ethnic foods" - google). clockwise from that we have tikil goman: cabbage, carrots, potatoes, cooked in tumeric sauce. next we have the family's unanimous least favorite, sherro wot: highly-seasoned chick peas in berbere sauce, and finally, the ground meat mixture is dukem kitfo: a popular special kitfo mixed with the right amount of home made cottage cheese, herbal butter, cardamom and mitmita (all descriptions taken from the dukem take out menu). kitfo is actually generally served raw like a tartare, but they can also do it cold. i have no problems eating raw meat, but it's generally something i prefer in the summer, as opposed to winter. mitmita is an ethiopian spice mix, and it definitely lends a fiery glow to the kitfo.

i ate dinner before everyone else got home, and tried to do the traditional thing of just eating with my hands and the injera as my utensil, and consequently made a giant mess of myself. because i'm left-handed i also eat with what's traditionally regarded as the ass-wiping hand. boo the clumsiness of my ass-hand!!

tonight for dinner we're having my first attempt ever at brandade. "The famous brandade de morue of Provence is a pounded mixture of salt COD, olive oil, garlic, milk and cream. This flavorful puree is served with CROÛTES and often garnished with chopped black truffles. Other salted or smoked fish can also be used to make brandade" - from epicurious.com
i'm not serving mine cold...it's a popular atlantic province and quebec tradition i believe to serve the dish as a hot casserole. i've been soaking the salt cod in cold water and changing the water every 8 hours or so for 24 hours. then i'm going to slowly poach it in some milk, flavoured with a pinch of saffron, onions, and garlic. meanwhile, i take some yukon gold potatoes, peel them and boil them, and then pass them through a food mill. into the potato mixture, i'm going to fold the salt-cod poaching milk, and the milled onions and garlic. then i'm going to fold in chunks of the salt cod, spread this mixture into a baking dish, and cover with buttered panko and bake it in the oven until it's hot and crispy on top. i'm serving this with a steamed green bean and grape tomato salad. for dessert, to complete the french-canadian/acadian theme of the menu, we're having pouding chomeur, which translates to "poor man's pudding". it's a dish made out of very humble ingredients, consisting of a cakelike batter that's cooked on top of a brown sugar or maple syrup, and i find it very comforting and warm in its' modest splendour. we're having this with vanilla ice cream.

fin.

traitor!

so we kinda watched an episode of "the search for the next pussycat doll" (the show that bumped veronica mars off the air for 9 weeks or something). the roomie was actively campaigning for it (i guess when you deal with the miracle/disaster of birth on a semi-daily basis, you need to unplug), because she thinks that the show will feature some funny challenges, like how to pole dance or something. the first episode was basically everything you would expect. the "creator" of the pussycat dolls is a heavily botoxed and reconfigured woman who after much obvious plastic surgery, now looks like that uniquely l.a. curious amalgam of the 40 year old/20 year old cross. the girls are also wicked trashy. it also featured such breathy endorsements as: "the pussycat dolls like, defined my generation" now, i'm not 18 anymore (although i was mistaken for a 21 year old by a coworker at a library i was doing extra hours at), but haven't the pussycat dolls been around for like, 3 years? is that what it takes to make a generational imprint nowadays? sadly, postmodernism would indicate, yes.

after the show, i was trying to illustrate that i can't do that stripper-dance body roll (that fluid motion where you stick you butt out and roll it in, while standing...trust me, you know the one). so i tried once. the boy's face drained of colour, mouth gaped open, aghast. "don't ever do that again". then the laughter began. at my expense. the best way to describe what i unveiled is to call it the body-vomit. in my defense! i'm not that bad when it comes to dancing to something with a beat! i'm just not made for stripping, dammit!

i ended up eating dinner at 5pm yesterday, in between my classes, and didn't get home until 9:45 (blast you, night class!!!). i was ravenous. the CLEARLY sensible thing to do was to eat 2 hot dogs and a box of kd and some bbq chips. in bed, watching buffy the vampire slayer, season 6. obvs. i created a highly questionable cooking technique that i'm going to call: boiling-the-hot-dogs-in-the-kd-water. you start the hot dogs first, take them out, and then let the kd cook in the hot dog-sweat infused water. trust me, you'll start seeing it on menus soon 'nuff.

it's a measure of how hungry i was, and the cavernous capaciousness of my stomach at the time, that i didn't wake up with heartburn once. although i did have a dream where i was working in france at some parisian juice store, while waiting to learn enough french so that i could work in a french/english library.

night class was a monster drag. i basically spent the time on msn web messenger and ebay, bemoaning the fact that i totally slept on amy winehouse tickets and now they're all sold out. oh well, she'll be back, and quite frankly, i blame pitchfork for it. you know what we DID get tickets for???? THE POLICE!!! all my siblings and attendant significant others are going. it's going to be so much fun! i'm a "best-of" police fan, and i mean, that's what they're going to play, so it's going to be aces (as if they're going to be unveiling rare b-sides). i've never been to a huge rock show at the acc either. AND the fact that the whole crew of siblings is going is awesome! right down to my 18-year old little brother, who, when i asked him if he had heard ghostface's "more fish" gave me a withering, "that's so old". yikes! we didn't get seats together because ticketmaster is nazi. they only let you get FOUR (4!!!) tickets on one credit card. if you try to get another four on the same credit card, they cancel your first order. i mean, i understand setting a limit...but FOUR?!? it should at least be 8 so that you can organize a group of friends to go together. laame.

tonight is take-out night here at the ranch. we're going to be trying a new place: dukem ethiopian around the corner from our place. review and pictures to follow!

fin.

rip jean baudrillard

jean baudrillard passed away yesterday in france, after a battle with a long illness. however far you want to go with his notion of the simulacra (the idea that we live in a world of continually perpetuating and profuse representations, and that "the real" no longer exists or is relevant), you have to respect the dude for being a righteous badass. i was lucky enough to hear him speak at a conference a few years back. he was sly and clever and well-spoken, if a little abstract. all the hardcores are passing away: derrida, baudrillard. i don't really know who the new theoretical bigwigs are to take their place. slavoj zizek? paul virilio?

i finished my surveillance paper last night. i'm comme ci, comme ca about it. there simply isn't enough space for me to articulate what i want to say. we basically have to condense the most salient parts of a 300 page book AND relate it to this proposal for this technology that's being called "smart campus in your pocket" (teh ghey name, i know). it's basically a pda type of thing, that will be a social networking tool, allow you to access information in one place (tutorial locations, map the campus, etc), a navigational device, allow you to tag locations and personalize your features (so you can be directed to a place that has chinese food, if that's what you're feeling on a particular day), a means of communicating with your peers, and a whole host of other features. i'm on the fence about it. i do think that u of t needs to condense their information in some kind of cohesive and cogent fashion, i just don't know how much use i would get out of something that tells me to go to starbucks when i want something to drink (since i always pack my own food, this isn't the most pertinent example, but you get the drift). it's being co-developed by bell in association with the university, so the economic imperative isn't being veiled very well. i also get ornery about having to carry something fat and bulky around. whatever happened to the days of the syllabus? i'm not the type to get all dystopian anxiety about technology... the fear of being watched and having my motions and data taken and used for marketing purposes. i just don't give a s**t. not in a glib way, more in the sense that i believe in the failure of representation. so the chimera that whatever data-mining company has on me as a subject, will inevitably fall short and fail to account for the complexity of my desires.

today is long day city. i'm packing leftover beef-barley stew and some root veg mash.

fin.

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.