mmm mmm good

last night's dinner. deviated slightly from the posted menu again (i've been doing a lot of improv lately), by switching to poached eggs and adding some rosemary to the creamed favas mixture. i discovered the secret to coaxing deliciousness out of favas is to shell them twice; once out of the pods, then you blanch them, and then you shell them again. definitely labour intensive, but since they're only in season for about a month, and i eat them twice a year, it's worth it! last night's dinnie was fabulous. the strawberry-rhubarb pudding cake was homey and not too sweet.
i'll definitely make it again...it follows the classic pudding cake formula: wet fruit/syrup mixture on the bottom, topped with a slightly thick, dry cake batter. as the cake bakes, the cake absorbs some of the moisture from the fruit mixture and forms two distinct layers.

tonight after work i'm heading up to markham to watch my niece and nephew who are in town while my sis and outlaw bro are at some kind of law enforcement conference (if that doesn't sound fun, i don't know what does). so i'm going to try to coax my niece into eating fruits and veggies. i made my award-winning potato salad (there's lots of minced veggies in there), that bean and grape tomato salad with mustard-dill vinaigrette (not a shot in hells that she's going to eat it), and some knackwurst and a steak for grilling. as well as an organic apple and some strawberries for her dessert.

fin.

fashion tips from karl lagerfeld

for spring 2007: mulch is the new black. yesterday was crazy productive and my garden looks s**t-hot as a result of it. check it out!!! who knew?!? although i do feel pretty bourgeois. i'm pretty much the only person my age i know, who actively maintains a garden...i'm riverdale yuppie scum.

i met the boy at the farmer's market and we picked up some rhubarb (which i can't seem to find in stores) and snacked on a giant flourless "death by chocolate" cookie and some elk pepperettes. we also had to abandon our secondary bike...it's old and is too small for the boy and it popped a tire on the way over to the store. i'm buying the boy a new bike for an early birthday present so soon we'll have two good ones, instead of one crappy one and one good one. hopefully it'll get the boy out riding more. the sucky thing about working 9-5 is that by the time i get to riverdale, it's been picked over, whereas before, me and my friend evan used to be there FIRST THING, waiting for them to ring the bell that signals the start of the market.

we then walked over to bill's and picked up my soft-shell crabs which are only in season for 1 more measly week. we walked up logan and did some grocery shopping, then came home and put together our dinner, with some changes from the posted menu of yesterday. the boy wanted something starchy instead of the slaw so we tried making french fries in the t-fal fryer for the first time. success! i cut up 2 russets fairly thin, then we twice fried them: once at a low temperature for a longer period, and then a final fry at high heat to crisp and brown them. i made a scallion aioli instead of lime (i LOVE scallion aioli!!!), and dredged the soft shell in flour mixed with my cajun spice mix and then pan-fried the pieces in butter and olive oil. i finally finished everything off with a blanched green bean and grape tomato salad mixed with a mustard-dill vinaigrette, which was sweet and tart and fragrant and cut through the flavours of the fried food nicely.

then we weeded and mulched the garden and the days are so long now, that when we were done all that, it was STILL a little light out! we were done everything by 9:30 and could sit down and relax with some "heroes". i watched episode 17 last night, "company man" and bawled my eyes out at the end. i'm such a suck!!! beneath this hardened exterior is the girl who will cry at anything (old people, "stomp the yard", and now, mr. bennett).

tonight for dinner i'm making creamed favas on focaccia with poached eggs and a drizzle of truffle oil, with that side bean and grape tomato salad. i saute some minced shallots and garlic, throw in some shelled and blanched favas and a touch of cream and some chopped parsley and then pile that on toasted focaccia and throw some poached eggs on top. we're basically eating spring food until we max out on it, or until i can't stand the smell of my asparagus pee anymore.
for dessert i'm going to turn that rhubarb into a simple, homey, and country-style, rhubarb pudding cake. just stewed rhubarb topped with a simple and light cake batter, served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

fin.

ahnuld

apparently one of the hidden perks of working in a prominent governmental building is that occasionally, every once in a while, ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER comes to work!!! (as an aside, the on board spell-checker that firefox uses routinely busts and redlines my ass for words like, well, "redline" but SCHWARZENEGGER - and i'm not even sure if i've spelled that right - is all good?!?) people were all atwitter with the news yesterday. to be perfectly honest, me: not so much. first of all, this big showy "signing a clean air commitment" thing with the premier falls short, especially since i know that arnold is prime suspect number 1 in the on-going "who killed the electric car?" investigation. it's no secret that the governor is a fascist (not the real kind, the colloquial kind).

it's week 4 of my job and i still all kinds of really like it. contrast that with my other gig, where i'm starting to loathe it. however, i DID get my way about the scheduling debacle. i dunno if it's a civil servant thing, but i've noticed employees at the public library are kind of passive aggressive. like, no one ever brings up stuff that's bothering them in a really direct way, so when i come barreling in, guns blazing, i tend to get my way, cuz i'm all about clearing the air and HIGHLIGHTING what's bothering me.

you know what does bother me? the musical "grease". i hate it. and yes *nods to roomie* hate IS a strong word, but i really DO hate "grease". it's white supremacist (don't ask me to explain, because what i really mean is that i find it boring) and trite.

the roomie has gone to visit her folks in hippieville, CA. i'd love to go up there to visit with her fam some day soon...her mom is one of my top 5 favorite moms. she's so sweet! one of those people who if she's met you once and you subsequently answer the phone, always gets into a little five minute conversation with you and asks you pointed questions about your life (that shows that she actually cares). i adore her. the boy and i are going on a date to riverdale farmer's market after i'm done work and then to bill's lobster for soft shelled crabs.

tonight for dinner we're having pan fried soft-shelled crabs with a lime aioli, celery root, apple, and carrot slaw, and bean salad in a creamy herb dressing.

fin.

ballbarians

yesterday we played a dodgeball teamed named "the ballbarians". we lost 18-10, but it was probably the funnest, most light-hearted game we've played all season! this team was like our doppelganger, they were just goony, funny, not overly serious or competitive players. it was awesome! plus they had a cute team captain who had a nice smile. what a bonus! we were doing really well and then we kinda meandered from our game plan about halfway through the game.

we also had a mini-rumble with the team we played two weeks ago, who were cheaters, sore losers, wouldn't extend us the same courtesy we extended them (calling their own outs) and then had the gall to award us less than 5 (the default amount) spirit points. making us the ONLY team in the league that doesn't have a perfect spirit point score. so we're contesting it. i spoke to the team captain after the game and he said his co-captain did it, and she had no understanding of how spirit points work. she was the worst though, we all had a big hate-on for her during the game, and now that we know she's the sour grapes, when we meet them in the finals it is SO ON.

post-game wings at duff's were amazing and a good deal as always!

today is a long day with both jobs, so i'm packing that cheddar, focaccia and onion sammy to toast up at library #2.

fin.

the dinner chronicles

wow. last night i ate like a mofo. i cleaned my plate AND ate the two extra spot prawns that the boy and the roomie didn't want AND sucked the brains out of their shrimp heads *shakes head at the squeamishness of white people* IT'S THE BEST PART!!!

yesterday i biked over to bill's lobster on my lunch break from the library, to see if the prawns had come in yet. i was told to return at around 4, so after work, i show up. as i'm peeking my head through the door, bill's wife, judy, the reigning matriarch of bill's lobster (she's an adorable big, round chinese lady with glasses and a booming, piercing voice) espies me and shakes her finger at me, yelling: "ahhhhh ____ (insert real name here, pronounced without the s at the end as some chinese people are won't to do)! we were just talking about you last night! soft shell crabs are in and me and bill knew you'd be in soon!" HOW CUTE IS THAT?!?! okay, in all honesty, nothing makes me feel more embedded in a community or makes me love my neighbourhood more than getting face recognition and being chummy with the merchants. i can fully admit that it's a weird, pastoral, sesame-street-esque fetish of mine. but i FREAKIN LOVE IT!!! the other day, when we were grocery shopping, i was doing my ongoing externalized monologue thing, and rhapsodizing about how awesome the fava beans looked and how i have to start incorporating them onto the menu, when a lady stopped me and asked for advice on how to cook them. i gave her my reply (sauteed and piled on toast with soft-scrambled eggs and truffle oil) and coached her through it, and when i was done, the roomie shook her head and said, "just another day on the danforth with karl lagerfeld" this kind of stuff makes my life.

the sour cream topping on the potatoes (full fat sour cream, mixed with crisped bacon bits and finely minced scallions, seasoned with salt and pepper) was FANTASTIC. holy crap...it was beyond good.

here are some shots of me vamping it up with my beloved weber genesis grill (no boys allowed!!!). usually i'm extraordinarily unphotogenic, but who knew that all it took for me to look semi-okay in pictures was the heady flush brought on by the anticipation of gluttony and proximity to sizzling pieces of meat? look at how big my hair is! i have the biggest hair of any asian woman alive. i used to obsess about wanting that sleek curtain of straight strands a lot of my comrades' sport, but lately, i've been embracing the texture and fullness of my mane. i'm digging the volume!

we watched pan's labyrinth last night. it was much darker than i had thought it was going to be, and while i knew that it interspersed the fantastical elements with scenes of spanish fascism, for some reason, in my conceptualization of the movie, i had seriously watered down what "spanish fascism" entailed. dudes, fascists SUCK. like, actual fascists are so much worse than the people we call fascists nowadays. the movie is visually arresting though, if a little slower-paced than i had anticipated. i like the idea of fantasy for adults.

today for breakkie i'm making a BELTA (bacon, egg, lettuce, tomato and avocado) sammy on kaiser with our juice for kings. i'm going to a yoga class, and cleaning up a bit, then going to dodgeball and having post-game eats at duff's wings on college.

fin.

one of my favorite

smells in the whole world is the smell of lilacs. if i were participating in one of those "if you could only have ___ for the rest of your life, what would it be?" parlour games, i would definitely fill in the blank of "smell" with lilacs. they're so ephemeral and delicate and to me, they whisper of spring and the undiscovered potential of the summer to come, with long dusks stretching into night, days spent lolling in the sun like a cat, and the muggy torpor of late august set to the dissonant, atonal soundtrack of ancient ice cream trucks wending their way through the neighbourhood. heaven!

now if only i could weasel my way out of working so f**king much so i could actually ENJOY my summer. the public library is being a little b***h about my hours and i'm starting to get pissed. it's muy annoying. i'm going to talk to them about it today. if they think they can push karl lagerfeld, esquire around...they've got another think coming!

this is that moroccan egg, potato, onion and pepper sammy. it looks pretty luscious, eh? it was ginormous. i can't tell if my camera is the same as it was before or not...but it's usable...i probably have to clean off the screen and lens a bit. and allow me to reiterate again: i LOVE hard boiled eggs! my mint-chocolate chip ice cream was aces...although a little icy/watery because i used half milk and not all whipping cream. the mint flavour was nice and delicate and chunks of sharffen berger semi sweet would hide a multitude of sins.

tonight is a dinner i'm anticipating like crazy. we're having grilled rib-eye steaks, hasselback potatoes (you'll see...refers to a way of preparing them where you slice them, but not all the way through...so they look like accordions) roasted in foil and then topped with a sour cream, bacon, scallion mix, with grilled asparagus, green bean salad, and grilled b.c. spot prawns. it's a celebration of the season! i LOVE b.c. spot prawns. they taste so sweet and they're one of the few shrimp that are sustainably raised and ethically caught...they pass the monterey bay seafood watch guide, which is available here and tells you what seafood is good to buy and what isn't. for dessert i'm making strawberry shortcakes. i LOVE strawberry shortcake! i hate it when it's made with sponge cake or like angel food cake. but i adore biscuits and scones and quick breads of that nature and to me, there's nothing better than a warm, craggy, slightly sweet biscuit, split open with a pile of strawberries and whipped cream inside. as i like to say, i'm going to eat the S**T out of this meal.

fin.

resurrection

so we dropped our digital camera in a bowl of water. to be perfectly truthful about the matter, the flailing, clumsy, dervish of a cohort (aka the boy) knocked if off of where it was sitting, where it hit the floor, and then bounced into the cat's water dish. we had given it up for dead and were already researching new digital cameras. the thing is: i really like our digital camera...sure it doesn't have the greatest megapixels, but it's really easy to use, and i like how it's still kinda chunky (i don't like super teeny tiny electronic devices...i just don't trust 'em) and the screen is huge. plus the shutter lag isn't that bad for what it is. anyway, if we were going to buy a new one, i think we were going to go for another kodak product. the uplifting, human-interest ending to this particular tale is: we let it dry out and now it works!!! so the moral is: unless you drop your camera in a bowl of syrup and let it SIT there for five minutes, if you let your camera just dry it will come back to life. sweet! i feel like i'm $300 richer!

last night was the premiere of "so you think you can dance". i love this show. the roomie and i are going to take these drop-in hip hop/jazz dance classes together. i'm a little intimidated as i've never done a class before and i'm afraid the teacher is going to yell at me the way mikey minden yelled at the aspiring pussycat dolls on that reality show. it was harsh. but i want to learn some new dance moves and i think it'll be fun to learn choreography, especially if the tunes are hype.

the return of the camera means the beginning of a new project, to be documented on this blog, where i'm going to take a picture of every dinner i prepare and eat at home. i think it'll be an interesting experiment and will hopefully give whatever stalwart readers i have left (thank you for being a friend) some inspiration on what to eat for dinner, or how easy and quick it is to have a wide, varied and healthy diet.

tonight we're having moroccan-style potato, hard-boiled egg, pepper and onion sandwiches. i basically thinly slice potato, peppers and onions and saute them with a bit of garlic with some ground cumin and harissa. then i stuff that in a kaiser with some hard boiled egg that i've cut into quarters. it's fast and delicious. we're having this with a salad. i also made the base of a mint-chocolate chip ice cream, so if that's set up in time, we'll have a scoop of that for dessert. i infused a tonne of mint in some milk and cream, added some sugar and egg yolks, and i'm going to be chopping up chunks of sharffen-berger semi-sweet chocolate and mixing that in at the last second.

fin.

separated at birth

i realized a few weeks ago that lil' wayne and miles davis look EXACTLY alike. i suspect lil' wayne is miles' illegitimate son, sired on one of miles' numerous dalliances with the white lady H. at least now we know that musical ability is genetic!

heroes just keeps getting better and better. i think we must have made it all the way through to sweeps week (when they save the cheerleader) because now we're getting back story (ie. how sylar became sylar, etc). i'm still really digging the show, but i can't imagine having to watch it week to week. that would just be tortuous.

i called in sick to work yesterday...i think i over-gorged on the calamari sandwich goodness (there was a good pile of calamari that wouldn't fit into the sammy, but still made for perfectly satisfying, crunchy eatin') and then i wolfed down breakfast and subsequently felt really nauseous and sick. i was feeling better by late afternoon, so we ate dinner, and then went for a walk and played frisbee in the park. if every day during summer in toronto was exactly like yesterday, i'd never entertain the thought of living anywhere else. it was perfect! there were so many kids in withrow, clambering over the two separate gyms; there were couples walking their babies (in $500 strollers, of course...this IS riverdale after all); and dogs chasing each other through the dog park. we ate dinner outside and played for an hour or so in the park and it was STILL light outside when we got home.

last night's dinner was amazing. i had bought some globe artichokes at the veggie store, so i cleaned them, took out the actual choke, and stuffed them with a mix of sauteed chorizo, shallots, garlic, lemon zest and breadcrumbs. then i sat them in a pan with about a 1/2 " of lemon juice, white wine, and water in the bottom, covered them with foil, and baked them until they were tender, removing the foil for the last 15 minutes or so to allow the breadcrumbs to go golden on top. i roasted some garlic, and sweated some chopped onions in the roasted garlic oil, added chili flakes, lemon zest, parsley, salt and pepper and parmesan and tossed it with some just-cooked capellini pasta and finished the pasta dish with some toasted pine nuts (so buttery, but oh-so-expensive!). the whole dish was delicious.

tonight we're going to have those perogies i had earmarked for last night.

fin.

rip, veronica mars

so they showed the last episode of veronica mars as we know it last night. it was a 2 hour episode so the bastids showed it an hour early. which makes no sense! so we ended up missing an hour and now we have to grab the torrent.

it's the end of an (admittedly short) era. when the show was good, it was really good. but i'm glad it's over now, because as schmee said, i would have kept watching it even as it spiraled further and further into the abyss of shark-jumping.

i'd try to post a youtube clip of epic moments in vmars, but for some reason youtube won't let me. if anyone knows how, holla at me!

tonight for dinner we're having perogies with sour cream, caramelized onions, and a big spinach salad.

fin.

you ain't never seen steppin' like this

"stomp the yard" is pretty much the best movie ever made. it just might be the quintessential dance movie in the teen-idiom. it has everything! there's a socially conscious storyline, the redemption of the main character, an emphasis on character building AND academic achievement, class issues, a romance that builds naturally and seems believable, likable characters, and most importantly, dance sequences that are effin AWESOME. there's like 10 different dance offs. i LOVE dance offs! i also LOVE people dancing in choreographed groups. steppin' is like military-based dance moves that also involve a percussive element. anyway, the next time people accuse me of over-intellectualizing movies and never enjoying fluff, "stomp the yard" is my ace in the hole.

it was also the perfect movie for our day of schluffing, whereupon i subsisted on a diet of cupcakes and pizza and coke and tv or tv-on-dvd. things i realized while watching much more music's "50 greatest guilty pleasures of all time": pop stars of yore were always way uglier (see air supply), way older, and way more normal looking than the pop stars of today; also, bonnie tyler's "total eclipse of the heart" and its accompanying video centre around an older woman's lament about feeling an inappropriate and insurmountable love for a much younger (like, young teenaged) boy. gross!

we also started watching "heroes". it's AWESOME! totally entertaining and it totally sucks you in. it's also much scarier than i had thought it would be.

tonight for dinner we're having those fried calamari sandwiches which had been postponed from a while ago. with sweet potato oven fries and a spinach salad.

fin.

lateisha got egged!

wow. last night couldn't have been more a successful night if we had genetically engineered the best bbq ever. i was a little apprehensive because we had a big mix of people: dr. rei, her roomie, my two brothers, two people from high school, my friend from library school and her boy, then the boy's two friends, and the roomie's midwifery friend (aka new bffffff) dropped in at the last minute. but everyone was awesome! it was the least awkward time ever, people were laughing and talking and arguing and having a great time. i was so happy! i feel like i'm on the right track when you can gather people together who don't know each other and it still goes off swimmingly...it's like there's a consistency and commonality of copacetic goodness. i was so proud of my brothers, who weren't awkward at all and were totally mingling and having fun. i really love my brothers now, as individuals...which is awesome. it's like the older i get, the more and more i like them and want to hang out with them as people, instead of people you have to be with because you're related to them.

anyway, i'm feeling all mushy about how much i love my friends - old ones and new ones. so sure my facebook numbers may be fairly pathetic, but the friends that i do have, are totally awesome and i'm glad they're around. it's a crowd of very strong personalities though...holy crap...it's a tough crowd with everyone having really strong opinions and characters and it was a boombastic, loud, yell-y, shout-y, debate-y time.

the highlight of the evening was the dirty south crunk tune that dr. rei, the boy, and i came up with. based on dr. rei's brother story about this girl named lateisha, who got egged. the boy was SO INSPIRED by the words "lateisha got egged" that he came home after brunch yesterday, and pulled together this fairly sick dirty south track, and we laid down one verse and the chorus. we almost died laughing. it was soo funny we were on the brink of tears and then we unveiled the tune last night for everyone at the bbq. there's no stopping the comedy stylings of the dynamic of m-r-i (me, dr. rei and the boy). hi-larious!

today we're going to clean up a little bit and then spend the rest of the day having a hungover on the couch watching movies and eating pizza day. we haven't had one of those in a looong time so i'm totally excited and really looking forward to it.

fin.

peer pressure

last night had it's dizzying ups, and it's crushing lows. i went to work, came home, and prepped for the bbq like a mofo. then, thanks to the heads-up from my friend the coach, found out that marks for school were available online. i did really well this semester! i got an A- in research methods, and A in online info retrieval, an A in information and its social context and an A+ in surveillance and identity. i'm most proud of my social context and surveillance marks cuz those were the classes i tried in, but the pride i feel is heavily augmented by the fact that i think FIS marks way easy. like, none of the papers i did held a candle to the level of analysis i was doing in undergrad or even my brief stint at york, but i'm not going to say that i didn't feel chuffed seeing a row of A's on my transcript.

to celebrate, the roomie took the whole house family to swiss chalet (one of her clients gave her a $50 gift certificate) and we ate like the kings of the street. we moseyed on over to the boy's parents house to borrow the car for some errands today, where they were watching the movie "big". i've never seen it in its entirety, but i kinda get the feeling that it's not my bag...did you know that the movie "big" features sex between a 35 year old woman and a 13 year old kid (even if he IS inhabiting the body of a grown-up)???? i find it difficult to suspend my disbelief about semi-icky stuff like that. like when patrick swayze jumps into whoopie goldberg's body in "ghost" and starts making out with demi moore, and we're supposed to just forget that it's whoopi goldberg's body. my problems with this have nothing to do with race or gender, for the record, it's whoopi goldberg. another example where there's icky stuff going on that movie-makers just try to gloss right over is when leah thompson has sex with howard the duck. i dunno, call me crazy, but i'm just not okay with it.

so we make our way down to supermarket, go park in our friend's secret spot, and pump some money into the ticket thingie. we put too much money in, so the ticket thingie tells us to take the change and our ticket. the boy grabs the ticket to put it in the car, and i reached into the change slot and pull out TEN DOLLARS IN TWONIES AND LOONIES. i guess no one else had grabbed their change all night. that was probably the best point of the night. you really can't beat free money. supermarket was a GHOST TOWN. there was no one there, and so we collected our group there, and went down to white orchid to see a couple of the djs from the peer pressure crew out of montreal. the cover was $10. that's right, TEN DOLLARS. considering i was silently campaigning to see the clipse at tonic, and tickets for that were probably $30 at the door, forgive me for expecting a little sumpin' sumpin'.

now, i did dance. but the scene just wasn't my scene. the djs, hatchmatik and a-rock were totally high on their own juice, which clearly wasn't the same juice that i, or anyone else in the crowd was on. there wasn't much of a vibe inside the place, and there was way too much irony and people going into the bathroom stalls in pairs, if you know what i mean *taps nose*. the tunes were all rave-esque house-esque 4 on the floor numbers with minimal bass, that they would then slap some 80s sample on (ie. tears for fears) and other wink-wink samples, like the vengabus (!!!!!) interspersed with actual good tunes like technotronic's "pump up the jam". all the songs started to sound the same after a while, and i wasn't really feeling the music. i'm not really into irony as an overall aesthetic, and that's kinda all that place had going. the peeps were ironic, the tunes were ironic, and i'm using the term "sampling" generously. it was more like the puff daddy school of music-making. take a tune that everyone knows and loves, don't change it in any way, and then slap it on generic, of-the-moment beats.

p.s. the dj's couldn't mix a cake. crappy drops, no flow, and boots-in-the-dryer trainwrecks at time. which to me, if you're pulling that steeze and charging 10 at the door, DOES NOT allow you to be dancing around behind the decks, pumping your fists, and acting like you're pwning. cuz really, you should be paying attention to the mix, guy!

we had to break down to the roomie why we didn't like it, because she was thinking that it was just older kids griping about the new ish. which i can concede happens, but she was trying to link what was happening there with the rave scene, and i would definitely disagree. raving wasn't really "cool" in the same way that the scene last night was cool. like, ravers got made fun of, with their fat pants and pacifiers, and all the other silliness...it was a scene for the nerdlingers and dorks coming together under the loving umbrella of ecstasy that kinda became all urban and cool. these dudes were most def the cool kids. with their straight-brim hats all atilt and their freshjive tees and their skinny jeans and vintage nikes. and the music is very different. rave music wasn't made to be disposable, and it sampled and reconfigured, as opposed to just slapping shiz on top of other shiz, a la the mashup thing. that's why i think our top forty night is going to be bodyrock x 10000000000. no attitude, cheap cover, and the vibe that i tend to get at my parties, where no one is posing and everyone's just going buck over the tunes. for that reason alone, i want to throw another party, be it jungle or the top 40 dj fraaaaanche thing, because i haven't been to a local jam with a slammin' vibe in a while, and if there's one thing you can count on splinter for, it was at the very least, that.

today is a fun fun fun day! we're going out for breakkie, then doing some yoga, and then having some peeps over for a bbq. even if no one shows up, then it's still going to be a fun time. both my bros are coming, and some of the boy's friends, and the roomie's friends are stopping by late for drinks. i don't mean to brag, but i'm really the hostest with the mostest. we're having chicken wings, that i've marinated in lemongrass, ginger, garlic, soy, sesame oil, and fish sauce. instead of grilling them i'm going to put them on a foil-lined pan and kinda bake them using the bbq, cuz wings get messy on the grill. then we got burgers. remember that roll of pork fat that was calling to my sacred animal self in the italian grocer a while ago? i had the self-proclaimed brilliant idea to dice some of that finely and add that to my burger mix (just lean ground beef). all you need for a good burger is ground beef, salt and pepper, and now, if my theory plays out, pork fat. i also made my blue ribbon-worthy potato salad. i make the BEST potato salad in the world, if we're talking the quintessential potato salad. i'm also making a baby spinach salad with avocado, grape tomatoes, red onion, toasted salted pumpkin seeds and lemon vinaigrette, and i got some veggie burgers too. for dessert i made lemon chiffon pies in a candied-ginger gingersnap crust. we're also making sangria and mojitos. !!!!! see???? hostests with the mostests!!!

oh, and in other news. i kept getting this announcement when i did my online banking that i was eligible for overdraft protection, and it wasn't letting me complete the sign-up online, so i "popped" over to the bank, and what happens? i walk out with a line of credit, a new credit card that's HALF the interest of my other one, AND overdraft. dudes! raise your arms in the air, my brothers!

fin.

le long weekend de la crunke begins!

booooooooooya! i'm working four hours at the library today, and then i'm OFF! but we're hosting a bbq tomorrow so that actually means i've got a fair bit of prep to do.

then tonight we're going dancing at supermarket with dr. rei! so much fun! i'm so excited and i can't wait to get sweaty and tired!

short post today as i'm running a tad bit late.

tonight for dinner we're having fried calamari sandwiches...fresh calamari, dusted with cajun seasoned flour, then dipped in egg white, then in panko, deep fried, dusted with salt, and piled on a soft kaiser with lime mayo, lettuce, and tomato. and probably a baby spinach salad to go along with it. for dessert, those chocolate-covered peanut butter rice krispie bars. they're like a cross between a reese's peanut butter cup and a nestle crunch. BUT BETTER.

fin.

i loathe pam

from the office. i know i'm the only person in the world who feels this way, and who's not pro the whole jim and pam hookup thing. but i can accept that. she's basically most things i dislike about people, and in female stereotypes. she's passive, passive aggressive, catty, not really funny in her own right but more as a reflection of jim, stuck it out with her loser boyfriend for WAY too long, went BACK to said loser boyfriend, etc. etc. because of my dislike for pam, my ability to appreciate last night's season finale of the office was seriously hampered by the whole pam and jim storyline. i don't know how the show can sustain itself around this premise. since people get tired when couples stay together, the only thing the writers can do is maintain the together/not together roller coaster a la tony micelli/angela bower thing. which gets too contrive and ultimately boring.

i also resent a show that focuses around settling. like, it's okay that pam stays in scranton her whole life? and that jim has all these opportunities but also ends up staying in scranton? it stretches my suspension of disbelief because there doesn't seem to be anything cool about scranton and while the dunder mifflin scranton branch is certainly full of characters, it's not enough to make someone want to stay there, or for me to root for someone to stay there, especially in light of the fact that they really focused on how much jim hated his job in the first season.

laaaame. today i get off work early!!! they do that before long weekends...the staff rotates who is going to stay until regular closing time and the rest get to leave early. this time i'm on leaving early shift! fun! then i'm going to the mall with the roomie to seek out some business casual skirts. i'm REALLY HOPING the roomie doesn't turn it into a two hour mission. *fingers crossed* tonight is pretty low-key...i'm just going to do some prep for the bbq we're hosting on sunday, and maybe start watching "heroes" - we d/led most of the new season.

tonight for dinner i'm making another soba noodle salad, with cucumber, radish and green online julienne, mixed with blanched broccoli and dressed with a spicy-garlic-lemon-soy dressing. we're having this alongside breaded, fried tofu with sweet chili dipping sauce.

YAY LONG WEEKEND!

fin.

choir

the choir last night was something else. they did brahms' "requiem" and were fantastic. there's always something stirring about people doing something in unison (notable exceptions are of course: committing genocide and fascism and hiking the price of oil). overall it was wonderful to hear the swelling sounds of 50+ voices, and the piece was lovely - very sombre and bass-heavy. i'm not sure german is the best vehicle (i know brahms was german) for classical music...the language is so guttural and unwieldy; it seems to lack the flowing vowels and extended consonants of say, italian.

in other news, it's official (well, according to my brother): veronica mars has not been renewed for a third season. it's bittersweet: i'm not sure how they're going to end the series if next week's the last episode...i hope they manage to tie up all the loose ends and end on a high note, but this past seen has been an abject failure. seasons 1 and 2 were so good though, that i guess i'll just have to live off of those for a while.

i finished another sarah dessen book (actually, i've finished 3, but haven't had a chance to review them before this). this one is called "the truth about forever" (the names are soooo cheesy, i know). it wasn't as good as "just listen" but it was still really good, although i didn't fall in love with any of the characters. this one is about a girl whose father passed away suddenly, and who hasn't been able to articulate her grief. her mum is all closed up, and her bf is this "perfect" safe guy, and the book is about one particular summer where she starts to come into her own and be okay with what happened and move through her sadness (and of course, meet a boy). i'd still recommend it, for any of my readers who are furtive young adult fiction fans.

tonight i'm eating dinner solo, so i think i'm going to just keep it simple and make myself a grilled cheese sandwich and a salad or something. i'm supposed to get the recipe for those peanut butter cereal bars, so i'm DEFINITELY making a batch of those.

fin.

revised

yesterday's post was a little (okay, a lot) crotchety, and i'd like to revise my original rant, after i've had a day (and some extra sleep and unwinding time) to think about it.

i should state that high school peeps and the boy's ex are all very nice people, and i'm overstating things completely by saying that i "can't stand" them. i can stand them, in the co-worker/acquaintance kind of way (i can stand a lot of people this way).

the issue for me, is being reminded of high school. not that i had a miserable time in high school, i totally didn't. i just feel like such a better version of myself, now, 10 years later. i'm much more confident in myself, i'm a thousand percent more okay being myself, and i just sit in my own skin better. i think i was the same(ish) personality in high school, but i was a lot more unsure and reticent about revealing who and what i was about back then. it's like comparing the "information superhighway" with the "web 2.0" of today. i'm sure the internet of today wouldn't like to be faced with the internet of yore, or be reminded that that clunky version (although the spirit and intent that formed the core of the information superhighway remains today) was what everyone saw and used. so basically, i'm karl lagerfeld 2.0 now. and this version is MUCH better, and i wish people could get karl lagerfeld superhighway out of their heads.

yesterday we had a "tea and talk" at work...basically we drink tea and eat snacks (this awesome peanut butter/rice krispie/chocolate confection) and hear a mini-talk presented by a coworker, and employees in all the library divisions show up. there was all this talk about "second life" and the next talk is going to focus exclusively on "second life". i kinda don't get what all the buzz is about. it's no different from SIM city or MUDs or MOOs (sp?) as far as i can tell. i don't really have any desire to hang out in a virtual world and go to a virtual library and do virtual shopping. it's not really my thing and i don't really see the attraction.

tonight we're going to see the boy's mum sing in her choir. for dinner we're having vietnamese grilled pork eaten in lettuce cups with a rice noodle salad with cucumber, radish, carrots and green onions, all doused in home-made nuoc cham and sambal.

fin.

awkward *tugs on collar*

last night we went to the dakota tavern to see our friend's band "elvis bossa nova" play. it was pretty hype. they had two drummers who kinda shared a kit, an upright bass, a guitarist (who according to the boy plays EXACTLY like kevin breit - whoever the eff that is -) and a vibraphone player. the dakota tavern has a vibe that's pretty nice and cozy and really suitable for a few beers, very local-watering-hole. it's like a saloon slash tiki room. the music helped too...very vegas, very quentin tarantino-directed soundtrack, very polynesian tiki room, with lots of surf guitar and playful re-working of the elvis oeuvre.

it kinda turned into a weird high school reunion though. we just narrowly missed seeing the boy's ex gf from high school, as she had been hanging with our friend. i was totally bummed about it. whenever we see her, it gives me so much fodder! and i want the roomie to meet her so we can psychoanalyze her. in all honesty, i can't really stand her. she's a total flake-bot who like, over-emotes and over-empathizes. it's like she's one of those people who can't stand being disliked, so when she talks to you, however little she knows you, she goes into these orgiastic excesses of pantomimed sympathy and empathy...over everything, so it comes off being fake, even if she genuinely feels it. it's a very strange manifestation of social anxiety, and it results in some awkward encounters, because i, personally, just don't know how to react when someone starts gesticulating wildly, touching their heart with their hands, their face pulled into over-blown frowns, pursed lips, clown-like smiles. it's like trying to have a conversation about cat food with celine dion when she's in full performance-mode at caesar's palace.

then this other chick from high school showed up, another friend of our friend's and it was totally awkward like crazy. she said hi to our friend, then hi to the boy, then turned to me and was all tentatively squinting, going, "uhhh...is it...mercedes?" (i of course already knew all about her since i had done my homework on facebook through the boy's account...always be prepared, that's my motto!). so i introduce myself. then she says, "i didn't recognize you!" so i go, "yeah, i'm MUCH hotter now" and everyone laughs because, well, i'm a funny mofo (my experience: you can always rescue a potentially awkward social situation by being funny, and specifically through the use of the vehicle of "taking the piss").

THEN she drops this little number, "didn't you used to have braces *gestures around her mouth*???" me: "yeah" me (internal monlogue): "YEAH i had braces, it was HIGH SCHOOL. A LOT OF US HAD BRACES" her: "and didn't you *tentatively, possibly faux-tentative but i'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt* have a thing with a___ b___?" me: "yeah, but i don't like to talk about it cuz i'm totally embarrassed about it". okay, what am i supposed to say?!? like, it's been 10 years! let's live in the now, shall we? when we did the post-game rehash, the roomie was all like, "well, when people haven't seen you in a long time, their image of you is the last one they saw, so it's natural that she would try to make conversation about stuff like that". NUH-UH! i don't buy it! i could've been like, "gee ___, shouldn't you be on acid right now? and where's your hackey sack? and your jerry bear t-shirt? and those floppy woven hats that stunk like nag champa?" but you know what?!? i DIDN'T DO THAT. because i, karl lagerfeld, esquire, ACTUALLY have some social graces and social skills. sheesh! then she was asking what we were up to this coming weekend, and i said we might be going dancing, and she looks at the boy, and goes: "dancing? ___, you're into that?" and i'm like, holy crap lady. does he still look like he's got an undercut and a lank little pony tail, wearing a trenchcoat and rocking out the gee-tar? no. live in the now!

these high school meetups are so love-hate for me. i love them because, well, i AM so much hotter now and most of the other people aren't. i'm also a lot funnier and better socially, so i've got something to show for my 10 years. so they're awesome for the ego-stroking factor (like facebook). however! the catch-up tends to be so awkward! when we went out last friday, it was totally fine and dandy, because the crew we met up with were a) really tight with the boy, and b) the ones that weren't so tight were socially pretty cool and capable...but stuff like last night happens all too often, so it's a total crapshoot.

i'm meeting my da' for lunch today at work. tonight for dinner we're having asparagus, shallot and asiago pasta with a big salad.

fin.

(pbuh)??

i forgot to mention that while we were at the indian (potentially pakistani) sweets shop, we discovered some very low-grade dvds for sale with titles that read: "is jesus (pbuh) really the son of god?" and "is a vegetarian lifestyle really acceptable for muslims: a debate." we don't really get the (pbuh) thing, but it's my designated term for the j.c. now. we also suspect that we're probably funding something nefarious, every time a luscious little pistachio hot dog crosses our lips.

so......WE WON OUR DODGEBALL GAME LAST NIGHT! 10-8!!! and this was despite the fact that once again, the opposing team are cheaters. we allow everyone to call their own outs, but there was this one dude (aka red shorts guy) who was just being all weaselly and insisting that he wasn't out when he was, and kept trying to come back on the court when it wasn't his turn. despite it all, we WON! i was so proud of us. we played smart, and we're all getting so much better, and we're starting to play to our strengths. and wings at duff's were AMAZING! so far, best wings we've had in the city. and they have this sick deal where you get 20 wings, 1 large fries, and a large pitcher of beer for $20, or, 20 wings, 1 large fries, and a large pitcher of pop for $21. sick!!! and the fries are slim and crispy just the way i like 'em. they also have the option of a dill dip, which when combined with the fries (as my buddy aaron ingeniously hepped me to) is dee-lightful.

in other news: m-r-i's (mercy, rei and ian's) top forty night is starting to come together and it's going to be siiiiiiiick. i think we're just going to throw a before school, end of summer party for kicks and make it top forty. we're going to do top forty that spans the ages though. but not the OBVIOUS choices...just everything we want to hear and dance to. it's going to be ridiculous. and so low pressure, cuz we're just inviting all our friends and we're not investing any coin at all into it. we've started the planning and strategizing already, and we're going to be making lists like whoa. the roomie came up with the idea of calling the night "anthems" which i'm kinda digging. either way, the night is going to be featuring the sick'n'slick programming of the mysterious, DJ FRAAAAANCHE. i'm getting amped for it already! the roomie went to a club on saturday that she said played a wicked selection (and by that i mean, akon and rick ross and reggae and old skool hip hop and dancehall), except it was at yonge and sheppard and there was a dress code (read: stilettos, booty shorts, and bikini tops and sunglasses) in effect, and she almost didn't get in. the cover was also FIFTEEN DOLLARS. wack!

instead of going to yoga yesterday, i spent the afternoon on the couch reading, and then went to 7/11 and spent like, 10 dollars on the following: 2 mini bags of chips, a package of twinkies (they come 3 to a package now?!?) and an oreo ice cream sandwich, which i scarfed pre-dodgeball in about oh, 3 minutes. i love how those are my two options: either i go to yoga, or i eat two days' trans-fat allowance in 3 minutes.

today is a loooong day of two-job mayhem, but i think we're going to see our friend bobes play in this band called elvis bossa nova (they do latin-style covers of elvis numbers) at this place called the dakota tavern at dundas and ossington tonight. for dinner i packed that nicoise sandwich i make: ace calabrese bun, blanched beans, roasted red peppers, hard boiled eggs, tomatoes, and olive tapenade, wrapped tight in cling wrap so it mushes together. with a lot of fruit.

fin.

mum's of the world, this day is for YOU!

we're taking the boy's mum out for a mother's day brunch at globe bistro on the danforth...i've been wanting to go there for months so i'm super-stoked. they do a lovely small plates (tapas-style) menu and they've been getting really good reviews, so i'll have to go back there for dinner. brunch is a good way to suss things out; a low-commitment testing ground to see if places merit a return visit.

i think we're going to take my mummy out to dinner at torito (spanish tapas place in kensington) sometime soon as her prezzie. it's also a make-up date for her birthday that we missed when things were going bucwild with school.

last night was fun! i didn't end up going anywhere. we feasted on jean's (i'm always really nervous bringing people to restaurants as i feel really responsible for my recommendations) and then stopped at this place for indian desserts. we got a few of those pistachio hotdogs, something we're calling "hindi shortbread" which was flaky and crunchy and covered with almonds, and this thing we're calling "heavy brick", which was like a cross between gingerbread, sticky toffee pudding, and a cereal bar, was darkly caramel coloured and very dense (hence the moniker bestowed upon it), and was redolent of cinnamon and a melange of other spices, with a faintly sour tang as an aftertaste. me and my male doppelganger liked it, the roomie spat it out, and the boy and doppelganger's ladybird were neutral, bordering on distaste. i really wanted to go to drop the lime, but it seemed far, and it turned out i was pretty tired, as i passed out at midnight.

i'm a little bummed about not being able to go to either amy winehouse show, but that's okay...i've been listening to the album instead. it turns out that the dap-kings make up her touring band, which is good for her, but bad for me hoping that sharon jones and the dap kings might make it through toronto this summer. i LOVE the dap-kings!!!

today after brunch i'm going to do a little gardening, prep my lunch for work tomorrow, then go to a yoga class with that yoga teacher i lurve. then dodgeball, and we're having a post-game dinner at duff's wings on college. last week's wings were VERY unsatisfactory. they were over-fried, dried and stringy. we did a walk-by of duff's on our way to the david lynch movie the other night, so i did some recon. they were fat, juicy, and doused with what appeared to be an appropriate amount of sauce (i like them slick, but not sopping, the sauce should become part of the wing, not sit on top of it like at last sunday's place). what a fun day!

fin.

i wanna dance with somebody

i wanna feel the heat with somebody. last night was a semi-bust, semi-mini-success story. the boy's gig was a total CF and he ended up being done by like, 9:30pm so we didn't even make it. he was really pissed about it, and just about everything that could go wrong, went wrong. one of his close friends from high school (who is dating someone else we went to high school with) is in town for the summer, so we hung out with him and some other high school peeps at sneaky dee's. trying to coordinate my boy, the temporarily-displaced-from-montreal couple and their crew, and me and the roomie was a nightmare. but the hanging out was really fun and sociable and chatty. me and the roomie had gotten ourselves dolled up for dancing (ie. i was wearing eye-liner and lipgloss) so we moseyed on over to the octopus to see what was going down there.

it was HELL. first of all, everyone in there was HELLA old. like, all late 30s early 40s. and dressed like it. i'll admit it, i'm kinda ageist. but it's more of a mental ageism. like, at the sharon jones show and various other concerts, i've danced side by side with people of all stripes and persuasions and it's been beyond fine. however! this wasn't that kind of old. it was like, angela-bower-on-the-prowl kind of old. mom-dancing-in-her-stocking-feet-at-the-wedding kind of old. old trying to be young and hip and failing miserably kind of old. people ridiculously dressed up (dress shirts unbuttoned way too far down on the guys, etc.) kind of old. and while i DO love being the hot young thing in the club, i like it better when the age disparity isn't so grossly apparent and it's not a cougar hang. for example, the dj doing his bumbling job as always (he has NO SKILLZ) played lionel richie's "all night long". in a different setting, the crowd would have gone off because it was kind of fun and ironic and playful. in this case: the crowd went off because THEY LOVED IT THE FIRST TIME AROUND with all sincerity. yikes.

basically the best song i heard all night was when akon's "i wanna f**k you" came on at sneaky dee's of all places and i was dancing standing next to the table. in other news, i'm not condoning akon being a gross pig or anything (he ended up doing the grindy-grind with some girl at a concert who turned out to be 15) but if you saw that girl...THERE'S NO WAY I WOULD HAVE PEGGED HER AT 14/15. at 14 i was wearing extra large like, winnie-the-pooh t-shirts, had a mouthful of braces, and boy's jeans (the concept of flared jeans was still but a distant glimmer to me). i certainly wasn't wearing anything approaching what that girl was wearing. and the club was supposed to be 18+. which still makes akon gross because well, he's no pre-fatty d'angelo, and there's no way in hells i would ever let him touch me, but i think the general reaction is kinda over the top.

basically the point is: it's been too long since i've gotten my proper dance on. breakage was good, and so was amon tobin, but those were spaced months apart. i want to stay out til 5 dancing and wake up the next morning with that sore spot in my back that i get when i go buck for a solid night. this hasn't happened. the more disappointing failed dancing missions we face, the more i really want to start our top forty night. between me, dr. rei, and the dotytron, we have the collective taste to make it a SMASH. maybe i'll turn my considerable promotion skills to that venture.

tonight we're meeting up some friends for dinnie at jean's. then my semi-new bfffff (roomie's midwifery pal) has the weekend off so i might do dancing with her, or maybe go see drop the lime, or maybe just stay home with the boy and watch documentaries. who knows where the night will take me?!?

fin.