Chinese New Year!

ZOMG - we had a crazy freakin' weekend.  It was fun and very sociable, but exhausting.  

Friday night was chill, but the hectic nature of the day and the week preceding it meant that the Dotytron and I passed out at like, 9pm in pools of our own drool, laid out on our respective couches of choice.  It was pathetic.

Saturday we spent going buck, cleaning up a storm to get the house ready for Chinese New Year, which is technically just the lunar new year, celebrated by a lot of East Asians, not just Chinese people, even though we like to think we have exclusive purview over it.  False!  

We did get to start Saturday off with cheese blintzes with blueberry sauce and bacon though.  Which the Big Yam turned his nose up at, because he's a weirdo.

Then we went and grabbed our friends Paul & Sandra to take them to Paul and Sandy's Real BBQ out in the wilds of Etobicoke.  Just take a minute to appreciate that thematic unity.  We ate with a Paul and Sandra at Paul & Sandy's.  BEST.  We really like the food there.  The Dotytron and I split ribs, chicken, brisket and meatloaf.  The brisket at Paul & Sandy's is some of the best I've ever had.  So juicy and tender and flavourful - falling apart but with a nice, robust, even layer of fat melting across the top.  So freakin' good.  The Big Yam ate like a pig, because when it comes to barbecue - he's not a weirdo.

I had spent considerable effort procuring supplies to make the Momofuku Milk Bar Birthday Cake for our dessert, but then was a total loser and forgot it at home.  Luckily for us, but unluckily for P & S, we got to have a slice.  They missed out.  The Momofuku cakes are frustrating and labour intensive, because they're all build in a 6" round cake mould.  So you make all the composite elements (in the case of the cake below, that's 4 - the cake itself, the birthday cake "crumb" - little crunchy bits of salty, sandy goodness, the frosting, and the milk soak), then stamp out the cake layers out of the sheet you've baked and layer it all together.  It's nuts.  Not only that, but of COURSE you have to go out and buy sheets of acetate to line your cake mould and so that you have something to support the finished height of the cake.  Then, you also have to go and buy speciality ingredients like glucose and 

citric acid.  Yes, that's right.  Glucose and CITRIC ACID (which you use like, a pinch of in the cake).  It's bonkers.  Needless to say, the Big Yam was over the moon happy about all the Kitchen Aid mixer use in the service of the Birthday Cake.

At the end of it though, I can safely say that this cake is FREAKIN' delicious.  It's mean to invoke the spirit of boxed cake mix (the funfetti variety, specifically) but it's a particularly delectable iteration.  The genius thing about Christina Tosi (the pastry chef at Milk Bar) is that she has one of those born and bred understandings of texture and flavour balance in a dessert.  The crunch of the crumbs against the tender cake, the tang of the frosting ameliorating the sweetness, the punch of salt crystals, they all work together to invoke and play to the elemental cravings of a person.  It's all about balance to the excess.  It's all about understanding the best part of a something - be it the awesomeness of the graham cracker crust, or doing a dessert shout out to those people who love the nutty, crumbly bits of crunchy streusel on top of a fruit crisp - the people who will eat the crisp and leave the fruit, or the ones who love the buttery, toasty taste of unadorned pie crust (she has a pie crust frosting that is mind-blowing).  It's clever, but also grounded in giving people what they want and not over-intellectualizing things.  It's pleasurable AND smart food.  This cake is divine:

Sunday was the most buck.  Big Yam slept in until 7pm (that's good!) - but that meant it was a MAD scramble to get out the door and up to the burbs to make parent & tot hours at our preferred pool (that's bad).  Do you have ANY idea how much we have to pack to go swimming in the burbs?  It's insane.  The prep to swimming time ratio is like, 95:1.  Then we went to T & T and Costco.  Then it was home, to sew my Poh Poh's pants (my mum made me), then taking Poh Poh out to lunch (at Phoenix, yum!), then it was back home to hang out with my mom and Poh Poh some more, then over to R & R's house so that the Dotytron could give R a guitar lesson, then picking up takeout and then home.  It was EXHAUSTING.  Also, our car almost exploded from all the crap we were carting around by the end of it.  It was also the best guitar lesson of the Dotytron's life, because R & R gave him beer, bought Babu samosas and mutton patties, made chocolate chip cookies, AND R gave me a pair of jeggings that didn't fit her (!!!!!!!!!!!!)  You know what I did?  Brought over HALF OF A CAKE (the cake pictured above, actually).  WHAT THE HECK?!?  So imbalanced an exchange!  


Yesterday I took a 1/2 day off work (even though I really should not have because of the volume of work I have to do) to attend to final preparations for our Chinese dinner.  We had Momma D and her friend/roomie R over for dinner.   Even though about half the dishes were bought from T & T - it ended up being a bit of work.  The dishes I was making aren't the kind you make in advance - you can't steam a fish in advance of boil dumplings in advance.  We had 8 dishes: fried turnip cake, steamed rice with Chinese sausage, Buddha's delight (vegetarian dish), steamed green bass, roasted pork & bbq duck, oyster omelet, and pork & chive dumplings.  I also got this coconut & red bean pudding that we ate cold slices of for dessert.  I obviously made a TONNE of food and now we have leftovers for days.

Warning: don't look at the photos below if you have issues with toddlers wearing hilarious (and possibly racist?!) cultural attire.  We bought the Big Yam this outfit at Pac Mall two weekends ago and I dressed him in it for dinner last night.  It was AMAZING.  He was so cute in it that we could barely stand it.  He was also very slippery because of the silk/polyester.  LOL!  Seriously, we could barely get a grip on him.  I keep looking at these photos because he's just so adorbs that it makes me happy.  We'll definitely have him sporting these threads more often.  

Fin.

Potpourri

This is going to be another random grab-bag of a post.  I'm not quite ready to sit down and tell you all in excruciating detail why I loved The Fault in Our Stars and why you should all read it.  We just watched 50/50 last night (who knew that the theme of my cultural consumption for the week was going to be "cancer"?) so I'll probably review them both at the same time.

Today was my day off.  I had a massage and then grocery shopped and prepped dinner and cleaned the house in preparation for Chinese New Year, which we're not really allowed to observe this year - we're supposed to wait until 1 year after the anniversary of Kung Kung (and also, Poppa D's) passing(s).  We're not supposed to give out lucky money, because that would be like "giving out death."  We're having the Dotytron's family over for dinner on Monday - it's going to be a Chinese food dinner, but it's not going to be "Chinese New Year" dinner, per se, in order to get around the whole Chinese juju aspect.

I picked up the Big Yam from daycare early and we're hanging out.  I'm hoping we get a lot of snow soon because I want to take him sledding again.   I can't believe he's like, a semi-sentient being.  He has a favorite book.  It's a pretty hackneyed selection from his library, in my opinion, but he loves it.  When I say the word "story" he walks over on his cabbage roll feet and grabs it and then crawls all over me or the Dotytron trying to get into his "story" position.  I can't believe he's showing a preference for a cultural artifact.  It's kind of blowing my mind.  BTW, his favorite story of the moment is I Love You Through and Through.  On Tuesday night, when I got home from class, I asked the Dotytron for a debrief.  "Oh he was fine," he filled me in, "we were cracking up during dinner."  The idea of the two of them cracking each other up is so cute and mind-blowing at the same time.  Like, the fact that the Boobla is starting to have a sense of humour?!?  And he started off as a cell in my lady parts?!?  WTF?!?

So yeah, I'm guilty of being able to have my mind blown by the miracle of life.  That doesn't mean that I don't find Jay-Z going buck over Blue Ivy to be super-annoying.  He wrote this ghey song for her, featuring her, called Glory, and it's seriously the weakest, lamest, most hackneyed attempt at expressing the wonders of creation, like, ever.  I get it, I do.  But that doesn't mean that Beyoncé is like, special in any way for being able to squirt out a brat.  It also doesn't mean that you get to "dear diary" a rap tune.  Also in Jigga Man annoying news: he's said he's not going to use the word "b***h" anymore on account of his baby girl.  FRAB!  So weak!  I'm sure pro-lifers and pro-choicers are interested in knowing at precisely what point in Blue's gestation did she become a "girl" enough for him to lay off calling people b***hes?  As my FB friend said, why not swear off on account of his wife, mom, or any of the other remarkable women in his life?  It's just so...typical Jigga.  Thinking that he's so G-D special or something that anyone CARES that you've been "reformed."  Double FRAB.

In other news, we received our first gift subscription (from the Dotytron's Uncle Mert) issue of Reader's Digest this week.  I haven't cracked it open yet.  Am I wrong in thinking that Reader's Digest is a magazine with religious undertones?  Am I making this up?  I feel like I always see headlines like, "The Christian side of Islam" out of the corner of my eye at the grocery check out.  

Finally, to round out the "am I right or am I right?" observational stand-up comedy stylings of this post, it kind of infuriates me when I see recipes for "lightened up fettucini alfredo" in my food blogs.  I feel like if you want fettucini alfredo, you should just eat the G-D fettucini alfredo!  Lightening it up is like, the worst.  It does a disservice to the dish and to you, cuz you're not even going to get what you want.  It's just like, why you guys gotta lighten everything up?  Just let it BE!  If you want a chocolate chip cookie, eat it.  But if you're a chunky wunky who can't handle chocolate chip cookies with butter, rather than trying to "lighten up" a million 1000 calorie meals, just EAT SOMETHING ELSE THAT'S HEALTHY AND ALREADY DELICIOUS.  Lightened up fettucini alfredo isn't going to help you.  

That's actually a good segue into the non-cancer book I read recently.  Born Round is a memoir by Frank Bruni, former restaurant reviewer for the New York Times.  It chronicles his unlikely journey from the over-fed, well-loved, son of an Italian-American family (with the stereotypical, Italian Nonna, always pushing food on him), to the restaurant reviewing post at the Times, an unlikely position for someone who battled an eating-disorder and an unhealthy relationship with food and his own body, for much of his life.  Bruni is an excellent writer - funny, observant, capable of bringing his beloved mother and his nonna to life, all the while peppering the recollections with the kinds of salivation-inducing descriptions of food that only a true-blue eater can conjure.  Bruni is someone who loves food, who loves eating, who loves the whole gamut of tastes, textures, and memories that food can evoke.  He can rhapsodize equally over his Nonna's frits (fried dough, either dragged through sugar, or stuffed with mozzarella and tomato sauce) as his first experience eating cold sesame noodles.  Amidst all the eating, Born Round documents Bruni's struggle with his weight, his unhealthy tendency to gorge and overeat, and his failed attempts at achieving slenderness (and peace with himself) through shortcuts like occasional flirtations with bulimia, laxatives, and fad diets.  He also documents his journey through the world of journalism, which in itself is kind of fascinating - how he went from the Detroit Free Press to the Times, moving from section to section - covering Washington D.C. with no political reporting experience, then becoming the Rome correspondent, before finally landing as the Chief Restaurant Critic.  

I really enjoyed reading this book.  Bruni is a likeable person, and his writing is open and honest, drawing you in.  I don't usually love all memoirs, but either because the subject matter was near and dear to my heart, or through the strength of the writing and story alone, I really liked this.

On Wednesday night, we had whole wheat farfalle with broccoli pesto.  An oldie but a (healthy), goodie.  

Last night we had the roomie over for leftovers and bean salad (made by her - delicious).  Feeling bad about serving a guest (insofar as the roomie constitutes a guest in our home) leftovers, I whipped up a batch of the Milk bar chocolate-chocolate cookies.  The above video shows the Big Yam in action whenever the mixer gets whipped out.  He loves it more than anything.

Tonight we had shrimp and cheddar grits.  The grits were made in the slow cooker - simmered all day in a mixture of milk and water, with a touch of cream.  They were sooooo creamy and delicious.  

Fin.

Jason Wu for Target

Bonus Jonas post on account of the fact that I have to kill time before I go to school!  Besides, I know that when I finally get down to writing a review of The Fault in Our Stars it's going to be pretty bleak and sad and it wouldn't be tonally correct to tack on a screechy style segment to the end of it.  

The look book for Jason Wu's collaboration with Target was released recently.  It's quite divine, if you like looking like a lady (and lately, I doooo).  Here are the things I'm coveting/considering buying:

This gold top and this pleated black skirt are great basics.  You can always use a fantastic shell and a black swingy skirt.

Love the colour and cut and weight of this cardigan.  It will be nice over sleeveless summer dresses at work.

This skirt is what sold me on the collection.  It's PERFECT.  Look at it!  Love the colours, love the cut, love the preppy nostalgia.  Also love the ribbon necked blouse.  Want them both.

Also love this blouse, but I have a lot of long-sleeved shirts already.  I would buy the skirt though.  Again, a great basic that can be paired with a simple shirtwaist or pintucked top for a really smart, professional look.

I like this sweater, but if budgeting gets tight, it might go.  Although this would look smashing with my wide-leg navy pants.

If I stick to a budget, this will probably get axed.  It's jersey, which means it'll be comfy, but jersey can also be super-clingy.  And I don't know if it'll be tailored enough to stand up to work.

Love this.  Already bought it (j/k, but I might as well have).

Love this outfit.  Want both pieces (already talked about them separately above...but look at them together!)

This purse is okay.  It's a little too lady for me.  Like, the purse with the outfit directly above it is too old lady slash Alexa Chung.  I don't consider Alexa Chung fashionable.  

So I've been on the hunt for a nice, cross body, grown-up lady purse/satchel lately.  It's been tough.  Everything has either been too expensive or not precisely what I want and not enough selection, etc.  So I finally went back to my old stomping grounds, Ebay, and came up with LOADS OF CHOICES!  All you have to type in are like, "Gossip Girl" and "satchel" and billions of stuff comes up, most of them priced to sell at like, $30.  Thank you, Chinaaaaa!  I want one (or two) summer ones and 1 winter one.  This is my short list:

1) 

2) 

3) 

4) 

5) 

6) 

I think #1, 2, 4, and 6 are going to make the cut.  

That's all, folks!

Fin.

Grunge lives!

...kinda.  The Big Yam admittedly looks odd here - his mouth is hanging open, his weird faux-hawk hair is in full effect, he's just not as his best.  But!  Behold the wonders of a plaid shirt and jeans on a petit bébé!  It's his grunge look - we tried to get a shot of him with the sleeves of the shirt tied around his waist, but he is still of the age when his arm length does not appreciably exceed his girth, and so the sleeves were too short.  He's also wearing his "A Minor" xmas prezzie onesie, which was really, a prezzie for the Dotytron as much as a prezzie for the Big Yam.

This is the Mexican tortilla soup I made last night.  Look up recipes for a similar soup on Epicurious or similar sites and you'll find that many of them would have you frying flour or corn tortillas to make the topping.  THAT IS RIDICULOUS.  Ridiculously unnecessary!  We just topped ours with sour cream and crunched up tortilla chips and diced avocado.  This soup was lovely last night - on a blustery and cold day.  Bonus points for the fact that it required no pre-cooking prep and I just left it to simmer in the slow cooker.  Meals that are done in the slow cooker so that you arrive home and - PRESTO! - dinner is ready to go are like magic, aren't they?  It was soul satisfying and warming in flavour and spirit.  It reconstituted a sad and dejected me who finished reading John Green's latest, The Fault in Our Stars and arrived home sobbing, after not-so-discreetly weeping openly on the TTC.  I was felled see, but it's Big Questions About Existential Dilemmas and it's story about two kids with terminal cancer who fall in love.  I will post a review tomorrow (or shortly), but be forewarned: I AM A JOHN GREEN DEVOTEE and this might be his best work yet, and I will proselytize to you in person and on this forum ad nauseum about how genius this book is and how you should read it RIGHT NOW. 

In the meantime, tonight I will miss seeing my little Sweetest Pancake pictured above and I will attempt to sit through my entire Tuesday night class (a feat I haven't accomplished since September, which could account for my 60% participation mark in my first term class).  

Here is the recipe for the soup.  I still owe you a salted caramel chocolate mousse recipe.  That will come this week, promise.

Fin.

----------------------------------------------------

Mexican Tortilla Soup

Serves 6 as a main dish easily, or 2 adults and a baby with plenty to spare (and freeze)

3 dried chilies (guajillo, ancho, pasilla – your choice) 

2 chipotles in adobo sauce (from a can) 

1-2 white onions, diced 

4 garlic cloves, minced 

1 28oz can of diced tomatoes 

1-2 potatoes, chopped in 1/2" chunks 

1-2 sweet potatoes, peeled & chopped in ½” chunks 

1 can of black beans, drained and rinsed (I used 1 c. of dried black beans, soaked overnight)

8 cups of water

2-3 boneless skinless chicken breasts (or chicken legs, with the skin removed, bone-in, as long as you don't mind fishing out bones later)

2 cups of frozen corn 

Salt and pepper to taste 

- put the dried chilies in a bowl and pour 2 cups of boiling water over, let them reconstitute for 10 minutes, and then puree with the chipotles in adobo sauce. 

- put everything else except for the corn in the slow cooker, cook on low for the duration of the work day.  

- When you get home, check the liquid of the soup and add more water depending on how brothy you want the soup to be.  Stir in the corn.  Taste for seasoning, season with salt and pepper and serve. 

To serve (all optional): 

Diced avocadoes 

Chopped green onions 

Sour cream 

Crushed tortilla chips 

Cilantro

The weekend

This weekend, I almost made the Dotytron divorce me on account of how infuriatingly indecisive I was being about Friday Night Takeout Night.  I spent an unconscionable amount of time on Friday (considering people have like, real problems in this world of ours), waffling back and forth on what we were going to eat and whether to go out or bring it back and how the logistics would work if it was pick-up and blah blah blah.  I called the Dotytron no less than 8 times.  EIGHT TIMES!  I was being the worst about it.  In the end, we got Chinese BBQ takeout and I ended up having heart burn, so it served me right.  

Truth be told, I wouldn't mind getting a divorce.  One, because being a divorcée is dead sexy (in my books).  Two, because I kinda hate being married.  Just being part of an institution that I don't believe in makes me mad.  I hate that like, people can't just be common law or live together in a relationship forever nowadays.  Like, you still have to be MARRIED for your relationship to be considered legitimate.  It's annoying.  I hate that since getting hitched I get mail addressed to "Mr. and Mrs. I Dotytron."  It makes me SO MAD!  I hate how it's assumed that I lost my identity or autonomy upon getting married.  I gotta say, peeps can do what they want, but I'm not a fan of a woman changing her last name.  It's so wrapped up in patriarchy for me.  It's so outmoded and retrograde.  It would be one thing if the decision to take a last name was negotiated between the individuals...but it's not.  It's the woman taking the man's name and I think that's bulls**t.  I think our next kid is going to bear my last name.  Just to make a point about it.

Anyway, that proto-feminist rant aside, here is the obligatory, kid-in-pjs-under-the-tree shot, featuring the Boobla in his musical instrument jim jams that he's already outgrown (he outgrew them as soon as I bought them, actually):

And here are some bundled-up-for-the-outdoors shots.  Kids who are wearing a million layers that turn them into stocky, chunky tree trunk starfishes are so cute.  I love it.  We basically robbed him of the use of his joints by stuffing him into 4 layers of clothes to brave the cold yesterday.  He could take a few stiff-limbed steps and then he would face plant or fall back.  It was hilarious.

Why I love my street, part #996848481.  They opened up a Toys R Us Express at the mini-mall near our place and I was there on another mission and saw these little blue sleds on sale.  So I bought it.  I was carrying it back to our house when my neighbour said, "You didn't just buy that did you?" and then went back to his shed and got his old one and gave it to us.  So best.  So good to re-use and not just contribute to the garbage piling up in developing nations.  I love my street and hood so bad.  Here is us taking the sled out for a spin - it's pretty grainy - probably something with our camera settings.  One day we'll invest in an HD camera.

Last night's dinner - mushroom barley risotto and pan-fried lamb sausage

C-Hova came over last night to learn how to make beats from the Dotytron.  D'awwwww...he also wants to start DJing and throwing small parties, so I finally have knowledge that will be useful to him.  It's about time!  

I also made a recipe from the Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook last night.  Christina Tosi (the pastry chef) is my hero but she's buck.  For a chocolate cookie recipe, I had to make a chocolate crumb component first before then incorporating that into the cookie dough.  Each cake recipe consists of at least 4 individual components.  I had to buy citric acid and glucose and acetate and a 6" round cake ring for the cakes I'm planning on tackling from the book, and I've devised a plan of attack that consists of making a component a night leading up to the assembly, which has to take place 24 hours before I'm planning to serve, because all the cakes get frozen and then defrosted.  It's bucktown.  But I'm totally inspired.  The chocolate-chocolate cookies pictured above are heavenly.  They're like a giant, cookie-r version of an Oreo cookie, salty, deep, dark, chocolatey, with a crisp-chewy texture that's to die for.  These would make amazing ice cream sandwich cookies, or a nice cookie to crumble down to mix with whipped cream or turn into a crust.  I happen to be doing a fine job eating them as-is, though.

Our Cleveland friends bailed so today we went with Momma D to Pacific Mall to pick up Chinese New Year swag and to buy an outfit for the Big Yam.  Spoiler alert: his outfit is awesomeness.  For breakfast I made us this outrageously rich eggs benny: poached eggs on oven-crisped proscuitto, on top of sliced avocado, on top of tater tots.  With hollandaise!!! Insane!

For dinner I roasted us a duck and roasted some potatoes in duck fat.  We also had brussels sprouts and sautéed rapini.

Fin.

I saw the sign

and it opened up my eyes, I saw the sign (life is demanding, without understanding)"


I was randomly singing those lyrics tonight during dinner and the Dotytron was all like, "What does that even mean (specifically referring to the 'life is demanding/without understanding' part)?" and then I started futzing on my computer and tuned him out while he was pondering out loud, only to tune back in to catch the phrase, "a really capitalist perspective."  So then I go, "I have no idea what you're talking about" to which he replied, testily, "I'M TALKING ABOUT THE ACE OF BASE. YOU KNOW GODDAMNED WELL WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT."  At which point, I DIED LAUGHING.  LOL!!!!!!!!  HOWLZORZ!!!  "The" Ace of Base is the best 4-word combination I've heard in recent memory.


So, I have an important fashion tip update.  The other day I rocked a pretty slamming outfit at work - my shrunken (kid's bat mitzah Value Village) blazer, my real skinnies from the Gap, and this orange patterned sleeveless blouse with this touch of black net overlay around the neck.  POP POP!  Plus I got my hair thinned by SMckay when she came over for movie night with Lolly the last Thursday before vacation ended and I had put the effort in to straighten it so I looked pretty boss.  Benetint on the cheeks + straight hair (so much easier to straighten when I have 50% less of it on mi head!) = fly.  ANYWAY, MHui gave me a good tip: ladies, don't wear your shrunken blazer with capris, otherwise you look like your clothes got sent through the dryer by accident.  It's a little too Pee Wee Herman, naw mean?  Okay good, carry on.


Speaking of the opposite of shrunken, while in the States, I went to Stride Rite to stock up on real shoes for the Big Yam, seeing as how he's walking around now and I don't want his indoor slippers getting all jacked up on concrete and whatnot (my views on indoor/outdoor shoes never the twain shall meet-ing are well known round here).  Turns out, my kid needs DOUBLE EXTRA WIDE shoes.  I liken it to stuffing a cabbage roll inside a teeny tiny miniature sneaker.  His feet are as like, as tall and wide as they are long. Not quite, but it's kind of cute...the little fat footed f**ker.


Ehmdo has some new chunes a gwanning.  She sang on this Canadian country dude, Josh Macumber's song, Tomorrow and got to be in a big, fancy video:




I kinda find that Josh guy to be...uh...not a looker, per se, but the song is catchy in a red-state kinda way and Ehmdo looks really pretty in it.  All that glamming up makes her look older than her years, though, which makes sense because they probably don't want Josh perving on some young 'un.  When I watch the video, I keep thinking to myself, "JUST COMPLETE THE PHONE CALL!" cuz the phone gets hung up so many times.  LOL!  

This is the video for the first single off her coming album (one of my favorite songs on the album):




Oh you fancy, huh?  So fancy!  I'm so proud of her.  


I took today off of work to take the Big Yam to get his 15 month shots.  He was such a trooper and we had a really nice day together.  I normally try to ditch him with his daycare provider on my days off so I can do stuff unencumbered.  Stuff like: groceries, banking, cleaning the house, etc.  But I was talking to my friend G at work and she was saying that she keeps her kids home with her on her days off, because soon they're going to be in kindergarten and she won't even have the option of taking them out to stay home and I got all guilty and totally changed my attack.  She speaks the truth!  I should cherish these days I get to spend with him...why else do I work so hard?  QT with my fam-bam and friends, that's why.  So we hung out with the roomie as well and I took him to his appointment, and we played and read books and sang songs.  It was super-cute and fun.

For dinner I made us pizzas.  Three different kinds because I'm crazy like that.  A potato, rosemary, roasted garlic oil and gorgonzola one, a proscuitto, grated parm, garlic and baby arugala one (mimicking my favorite pizza from the Magic Oven, a chain I refuse to patron because their pizza is so overpriced), and our favorite, a "spicy pig" sausage from the Sausage Partners, fresh mozzarella, roasted garlic, and caramelized onion one.  Woooeee, that last one was delicious.




So excited that tomorrow is Friday!  We thought our Cleveland friends were going to be coming into town and cleared our calendar.  As it turns out, they can't make it.  So we have an entirely free weekend, which is nice.  And as an added bonus, we can delay our top-to-bottom Chinese New Year house clean for a bit.  


Bonus shot of the Boobla rocking what we call, "The Rooster" all day:

Fin.

Deep thoughts

Here are some deep thoughts from me:


1) Remember bruschetta?  Remember how bruschetta used to be like, a thing?  Like, any restaurant you would go to, regardless of type of cuisine would have bruschetta and people saying, "I loooove bruschetta" and getting all weirdly faux-Italian with the pronunciation was a regular occurrence ("BROOOOSCHKKKETTTA")  I don't know why this came up recently, but I've been weirdly fixated on it.  Like, it was SO ubiquitous, guys!  As if chopped tomatoes with some basil on garlic on bread was the be-all and end-all.  You couldn't show up to a graduation party without it appearing.  I love it as much as the next person (in season), but I feel that the benefit of distance allows me to say that bruschetta is a b***h to eat in public.  The tomatoes get everywhere!


2) Last week we walked into Kernals to pick up some supplies for our planned Settlers of Cattan date with Dr. Rei and Hanbo.  While we were there, we met this guy who was basically the Kernals-version of Randal Graves.  Anyway, we were riffing with the guy about his job and then the Dotytron said something like, "yeah, and then 8 years later, you're still here" at which point I proceeded to die inside while the guy said, "8 years? Dude, I've only been here for 6 months."  When we left the store I was like, way to make that dude feel like he's doing a go-nowhere job for the rest of his life and he has no future.  LOL!  The Dotytron is all like, "what? Noooo...he got that it was a joke, right?" And then when the ramifications of what he had said sunk in, proceeded to feel really bad.  We realized that he picked a number that was all-too-feasible for a Kernals front-line employee.  It's really easy to meet the 8 year mark doing a gig like that.  The Dotytron should have picked like, 80 years or something to drive the joke point home.


3)  During what was a generally hilarious conversation later that same evening, the topic of the "2nd earth" (aka the Christmas Planet - worst name, EVER!  Why not just call it "unobtanium"?!?)   that had been dominating the news over the holidays came up.  Hanbo, ever the sensible one, asked, "How do they know the planet is so earth-like?" To which Dr. Rei and I, already on a spinning-each-other-up tear, responded at the same time (respectively): "They just do!" "They can see it........trails off uncomfortably"  LOL!!!  So typical us.


4) So, as some of you may know, the Dotytron and I availed ourselves of a 50% Porter seat sale to book ourselves a little 10th anniversary trip to NYC.  The big question mark was what to do with the Boobla.  My mum said no, it's a lot to ask of Momma D, and we weren't sure if we wanted to part with him anyway.  The interim solution (which allowed for maximum unfettered restauranting on my part) was going to be dropping him off with my sister so that she would take him into the daycare Little Big Cuz goes to and then picking him up.  Not bad all around (even if my heart did falter at the thought of him eating US institutional daycare food for 3 days).  Anyway, we were still up in the air about what we're going to do, until Momma D came up with the brilliant plan to come with us to NYC.  That way, she could watch the Big Yam at night while we did our own thing and all was right in the world.  So cute!  


...


Until I started getting the odd email with a food/restaurant suggestion (full disclosure: there have been 2 emails, and 1 of the restos was already on my spreadsheet).  I am such a control freak that it had never crossed my mind that in travelling with other people, THEY MIGHT NOT CEDE GASTRONOMIC CONTROL TO ME.  LOL!  Like, my family generally lets me do the meal planning, if something like that is available.  When I've traveled with other friends, it hasn't been an issue.  Either they're eaters like me that I trust implicitly, or, they're willing to cede control to me and eat weird random sandwiches on their own time (see: Dr. Rei and the Dotytron in Florence & Rome.  See: what a hard time they gave me when I refused to eat anything that wasn't on "the list").  Anyway, Momma D has been lovely about it and has as much as said that I can meal plan the entire trip but even the odd innocuous email suggestion stresses me out.  Because I'm a psycho.  LOL!  We're having to adjust our eating plans anyway to accommodate the presence of the Big Yam.   


It just goes to show you that in all things Lagerfeld, it's Lagerfeld's way or the highway.

  

Tonight for dinner we had braised squid and chickpeas with whole wheat couscous and light, simple, mixed green salad.  The braised squid was pretty terrible, I don't think I'll be making that again.


Fin.

High-low dialectic

First, I'm going to get all high culture on you and talk about the two last books I read.  Commencing forthwith.

Téa Obreht is a 20-nothing writing juggernaut who makes me green with envy.  She's like this decade's Zadie Smith, though less funny and more sombre and lyrical.  Either way, it's maddening.  When I asked my friend K if she was planning to read The Tiger's Wife, Obreht's debut novel, she responded, "No. I'm not a fan of phenoms."  LOL!  The publication of this book was a bit of a literary event and it's received overwhelmingly positive reviews.  The story follows a female doctor in an unnamed Balkan country, newly emerging from the fog of war (it's widely considered to be about Yugoslavia/Serbia).  Upon learning of the death of her grandfather and after traveling across a newly established border to delivery inoculations at an orphanage, stories of her grandfather's youth mix and mingle with myths and lore to weave a textured tapestry of history, mortality, nationalism, war, kith and kin.  Was I smug about how her editor didn't correct Obreht for using the word "shivering" no less than THREE times in the first 25 pages as an adjective describing the motions of plants?  Of course I was!  "Some phenom!" I scoffed, with the over-sized scorn of the bitterly and enviously untalented.  She is a gifted writer though her writing isn't necessarily to my current taste.  It's a little too mannered in a stereotypical "literary" fashion for my taste.  And I thought certain chapters dragged.  The chapters narrated by the grandfather figure resonated the most.  I would certainly recommend this title, but I wasn't head over heels about it.

Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke & Bone came to my attention when it received an A- grade in Entertainment Weekly (my pop culture bible).  Subsequent breathless glowing reports from my sister confirmed that this had all the makings of being able to fill the void left by The Hunger Games in my YA reading life (my sis also introduced me to The Hunger Games, about a billion years before it became zeitgeisty).  This is fantasy-driven YA about a human girl, Karou, who is an art student in Prague, raised by demon-like "chimaera" with no knowledge of her past or of how she came to have this strange family.  Mysterious things start to happen that kick-starts a breach between Elsewhere and the human world that you and I occupy.  Elsewhere plays home to a centuries-long war between seraphim (angels) and the chimaera (demons) and the events of the book follow Karou as she discovers who she is and her role in the battle for this other world.  It is GOOOOOOOOOD, folks.  Like, I read 2 pages and was INSTANTLY hooked.  Like, I read it in 2 days good.  It's got everything - forbidden love, sex, demons, angels, a strong female protagonist, Prague as a backdrop, good, evil, war...all the awesome stuff you want.  I can't recommend this enough.  If you're not susceptible to fantasy then you might be turned off, but all I can say if that is the case is that you're letting irrational discrimination keep you from an excellent yarn.  AND IT'S A SERIES!  I don't really know how I'm supposed to wait until the next installment gets released in 2012...but it's going to be freakin' tough.

I recommended it to my friend, Montréal I, who is the person in my life MOST likely to love it.  We saw her over the holidays and she was lamenting her current single state (she's been single for a while now) and how she's on the lookout for a warrior with the soul of a poet.  It's really funny if you actually know Montréal I, how much that archetype is PRECISELY who she's on the lookout for.  However, as we were trying to think of people (fictional and otherwise) who embodied this - it became pretty tough.  Aragorn from Lord of the Rings is pretty much the standard-bearer and then it becomes pretty slim pickings after that.  Once you get into real people, forget it.  We couldn't think of a single person who personified warrior-with-the-soul-of-a-poet.  

The low culture part of my post comes when I start talking about style.  Here is my newest style tip for you ladies who have to dress business-casual.  When you wear a sweater/cardigan type thing over your blouse and you are concerned about looking mumsy (which this look can very often devolve into) - my tip is: roll up the sleeves of your sweater so that they're 3/4 length.  This very simple trick takes a mumsy-looking layer and turns it into something a little more fashion forward and sharp.  Trust me.  

So, my updated spring/summer work wardrobe is in need of some killer footwear to polish it off (that and the ultimate satchel/purse...but that's proving to be a difficult fight).  Here are some contenders:

SM Reilly Sandal is a more casual entry - not exactly what I'm looking for, this would be more suitable for casual, weeknight/weekending than my every day shoe at work.

Ted Baker's Denoo sandal is almost exactly what I'm looking for.  One of the looks I'm trying to get going is a slouchy, trouser-y khaki pant, rolled at the cuffs with a blouse, a shrunken blazer, and shoes like these to give the outfit some lift.  These are a perfect shoe to elevate a more casual outfit and ground a flirty, flimsy summer dress.  At $119 though, it's a little more than I'm looking to spend on one shoe.

The Adrienne Vittadini Aspen sandal is a more neutral, classy, understated version of the summer shoe I'm looking for.  This would be a more versatile shoe that can support a more dressed up look (ie. a summer wedding - if one was actually happening - or, the favorite fashion magazine event that never happens in real life - the garden party).

You can't go wrong with a patent flat in a neutral colour.  This will be a summer time workhorse when I'm tired of wearing heels (so like, everyday).  These are SM (I think that's what Steve Madden is called now) Gypsi flats in camel.

Finally, Jellypop's Garlie sandal is like a low rent version of the Ted Baker ones above.  Priced to move at $25 - these will be a good substitute for me to try this look instead of committing to the price of a multiple-season shoe.  They're a little clunkier and a little more cheap looking, but at my work, no one really notices these details except for me.

Decisions, decisions!  I probably have it in my budget to get 2 new pairs of shoes...we'll see which ones I end up with.  

For dinner tonight we had cheddar broccoli soup and Ace Bakery olive boule with butter:

Fin.

Culture Club

Watched a lot of movies and have read quite a few books over the break.  I'm a little sad about going back to work tomorrow, especially since I seem to have contracted a mild form of stomach flu.  The plus side is, all this pooping is going to help me lose some of the holiday weight I gained.  J/K!  I kid, I kid (not about gaining the weight, but about being glad about having a case of the scoots to lose it).  I am NOT endorsing this type of behaviour, impressionable readers.

I will be glad to get my body back on track though.  My sis and I hit up the outlet malls near her place so I could bump up my spring/summer work wardrobe.  Alls I gotta say is: J Crew outlet.  YES!  Mad fist pumps!  I loves me some J Crew - got me a simple black pencil skirt, a few Jackie O cardigans, two button down shirts, a patterned pencil skirt from their resort line (pictured below) which looks a little matronly but which I think I can sass up with some cork heeled open toed shoes and the right bag/tops (also, the photo below is grabbed from the interwebs...I would NEVER try on a skirt with socks - that's a recipe for dressing room failure.  Seriously.  Just take your damn socks off and see how the outfit looks with ankles!  It's worth whatever phantom case of athlete's foot you're worried you might contract at J Crew.)  I also got this pleated, tulip shaped skirt in a neutral, dark khaki griege (that's the new design blog shorthand for grey and beige, yo!) 

I also went a bit buck at Banana - got a few blouses and $20 pants.  I spent quite a bit, but now I'm  pretty much done building my spring/summer work wardrobe and can kick back on that score.  I'm a very focused shopper - I know how I want to look, I make a list of the pieces I need, and then I go out and bang it out.  If I can't get it online and I have to go to stores, this is a lifesaver for me - it's so efficient.  I don't super love aimlessly shopping any more - it's just not my style.  That's what the interwebs is for, sons.

I can't believe what a Banana/J Crew slut I am.  This is the way it is for the working woman though.  I also can't believe how I can pull together a work wardrobe, but like, Zooey Deschanel can still get away with acting like a twee girl-child and people find it adorable.  

Shortly before New Year, the video above made the rounds.  Dr. Rei and I have already debriefed about this, but we both find this video HELLA ANNOYING!!!  I'm just like, YOU'RE 31!!!  How come I had to to progress my style and you're wearing a tiara?!!???  GET OUT!  What the heck?  Are you going to be wearing mary janes and tights and too-short dresses and tiaras when you're 37?  NOT APPROPRIATE!!!  There's nothing wrong with being a GROWN-UP.  Being all girlish and coy and precocious and cutesy is SO not my bag anymore.  I mean, all my friends are adorable in their own way.  But it seems like such a put-on.  I find it annoying the same way I find the Olivia years on the Cosby Show and Elmo annoying.  Don't try to be cute.  Just be who you are.  And maybe that's who Zooey is.  I don't know her life.  Alls I knows is: it seems like a put-on.

By comparison, I feel like Tavi Gevinson is someone who is moving through adolescence into womanhood in the public eye in such a real, accessible, relatable way that I want to vomit.  She's put together this online magazine called Rookie and it's the best.  Seriously, check it out.  This is the kind of magazine that 14 year old me in high school could have really used to help navigate being a weird duck and that 32 year old me now enjoys reading as a window into how 14 year old me could have been.  Originally, I thought I was going to be all over Zooey's venture (with Sophia Rossi and Molly McAleer) Hello Giggles, but it's just not for me.  I still find Molly McAleer's blog pretty funny, but at the same time, I realized that these women are way too into Beyoncé for me.  I don't love Bey.  I just don't.  And I also don't love 2 Broke Girls (after making the criminal mistaking of making a decision after the first episode and tweeting about it).  It's kind of racist and the writing is poor.  They also all love Drake and Lil' Wayne and I'm sorry, I can't go down that nasal alley with them.  Sorry.

Auto correct always fixes "relatable" but I'm convinced that it's a word and I can't be bothered to figure out how to spell it.

Anyway...here are some reviews of movies I have seen (in the order that we watched them):

I watched Country Strong on my own waiting for the Dotytron to come back from his last winter concert before the break.  I had been hankering to see it for a while.  As some of you know, I am a frequent collaborator in the common fixation-hate for Gwyneth Paltrow that is shared by many women in North America.  It's like, she's just TOO MUCH.  With her patrician features and always going on about being macrobiotic and then flipping the switch and pretending to love eating fried chicken and being a regular gal who also wears Stella McCartney and Balenciaga and can sing and dance and act and "cook" has Senor Spielbergo for a godfather.  SHUT IT!  Anyway, I wanted to watch this movie, which is ridiculous, because it shows her as a not-so-recovering alcoholic who does self-destructive shiz like try to have sex with disgusting, bloaty guys, and scream, "GIMME THAT BOTTLE!!" while lunging for said bottle across an unmade bed in a designer bra.  It was laughable and super-melodramatic, but not without its entertainment value.  

So...y'all know that I'm a rabid hypochondriac, right?  THIS IS THE WORST POSSIBLE MOVIE FOR ME.  It was super-freaky and super-real and you get to watch GWYNETH PALTROW DIE OF A SEIZURE.  Which is kind of the best (see above).  Like, she's not wearing any makeup and she looks RUGGED and then she foams at the mouth.  Amaze.  For people who harbour apocalyptic-preparedness delusions (ie. me and most people I consider deep kindred spirits), then this movie is the exact combination of reality-fear to whip us into a state of taser/cross-bow/semi automatic arsenal gathering.  It has the following hallmarks:

1) illustrating the thin line separating civilization from anarchy

2) illustrating how ill-prepared the government is to handle a crisis

3) how quickly disease can spread

Brutal.  It also didn't help that my sis was like, "the Centre for Disease Control is one of the most consistently under-funded agencies."  AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!  We don't even need a zombie apocalypse...we're like one Spanish flu away from total chaos.  Which is all to say: this movie is pretty good.

I had super-high hopes for this movie that were quickly dashed.  This won the grand jury prize at Sundance last year.  Promising, right?  It's about these two young uns who meet in America but she overstays her visa and then gets shipped back to the UK and they can't be together and it's hard because they're in lurve.  The actress, Felicity something or other, also won the acting prize.  The film is beautiful in that hazy, Instagram-y way that shows young lovers in the best light and to which my generation is extremely susceptible.  The acting is very natural, with a lot of the dialogue improvised by the actors.  We just couldn't get into it. I was like, YEAH DUMMY, YOU OVERSTAYED YOUR VISA SO OF COURSE YOU GOT THE BOOT.  WHY DIDN'T YOU FOLLOW THE RULES?!?  And then it goes on for too long and ends like, 3 scenes after it should have ended and is kind of silly.  The Dotytron's theory is that you either have to be the age of the characters in the movie to appreciate it, or like, 60 years old and nostalgic for the thrill of young love.  Anyone in between is gonna think these guys are just janky losers with first world problems.

We followed that up with Pearl Jam 20, which is a Cameron Crowe directed documentary about Pearl Jam.  Cameron Crowe has deep roots in that scene and the footage was extraordinary.  It's a really engaging, entertaining documentary, that has appeal for anyone who likes Pearl Jam, even superficially, or who grew up in the 90s.  It just makes you realize how s**ty music is nowadays and how superficial and how no one sings and how artificial it all is at this point in time (I recognize that things go in waves).  I think we're about due.  Anyway, grunge was the best.  Being in high school at a time when that was the alternative to aspire to was really special and we were lucky that the uniform was oversized t-shirts, ripped jeans, flannel on flannel, and in the Dotytron's case, 3 hole Doc Marten's (aka business shoes...LOL!)  The story of how the Dotytron always wanted Docs and then his parents got him 3 holes is legendary around here.  

Midnight in Paris is one of the more commercially successful Woody Allen films in recent history.  I found it meh.  I think you either have to like Woody Allen or you don't and I don't think I do.  I get that at the time when he first started, his style was pretty revolutionary - but now, I'm always left at the end of his films being, "is that it?"  The same with this one.  It was kind of fun to meet that Lost Generation of artists, writers, and intellectuals in Paris (Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, Dali, Gertrude Stein et al), but the story around it was so flimsy and the present-day relationship between Owen Wilson's character and Rachel McAdam's character was so unbelievable.  I also discovered I have a new pet peeve: when people time travel in movies and the movie spends too much time with the time travelling character being all like, "whaaa?"  "where am I?" "Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda...hmmm...this must be some kind of elaborate joke."  I'm like: WE GET IT.  YOU TIME TRAVELED.  MOVE ALONG.  It's such a waste of the audience's time.

The Adjustment Bureau is based on a Philip K. Dick story - which I've come to realize make better stories than they do films.  They are at once too slight for a film treatment and too sophisticated for a film treatment.  There's no room for the importance of Dick's investigation into the nature of control and free will to really sink in - the story gets turned into this action-adventure lots-of-people-running thing that just doesn't do the material justice.

I'll do a literature round-up tomorrow.

Fin.