addendum

it should be noted, in the interests of posterity and accuracy, that in the rundown of my three (THREE!) parental figures' (i don't count the woman my dad married because i refuse to acknowledge that alcoholic harridan as family) lists of "favorite children in decreasing order of favoriteness" i came in the BOTTOM of ALL THREE. i would be upset about it but i've been middle-child resolved that that's my lot in life since i was a kid. before you get all child-services outraged, my mom admitted that it's not so much "favorite" as "children i see eye-to-eye with." basically, being the independent, headstrong, stubborn, smart, and hyper-self-reliant kid means that your parents don't cozy up to you as much as they would if you showed a little vulnerability now and again. parents like to be able to parent, i guess, as opposed to being told "i don't care what you think" and then going quietly and resolvedly about your business.  

given that i've been sneezing my signature, forceful, irrepressible sneezes since about 10am this morning, spraying my keyboard with a fine mist of virus-impregnated spittle and given the heavy, throbbing, tenderness of my sinuses, all signs point to me coming down with a cold. BLAST. the last thing i need.

so i set to work combating the sickness the only way i know how: with an arsenal of global grandma folk wisdom.  in other words, i channeled my inner bubby and turned 2L of my 9L yield of turkey stock into matzoh ball soup.   i love me some jewish penicillin, hard.  so i took the turkey stock and heated it up with some sliced carrots, diced sweet potato, sliced celery, and chopped leftover turkey.  when the veggies were tender, i turned the heat to low, seasoned generously with salt and pepper and threw in sliced scallions, and chopped parsley, dill, and thyme.  

meanwhile, i made the matzoh balls and boiled those off.  to make matzoh balls you stir everything together, let it chill for an hour or overnight (i fast-chill it by sticking the stainless steel bowl in the freezer for 1/2 an hour) scoop them into balls (i use a 1.5" ice cream scoop)  and drop them into a pot of salted, boiling water.  i cook them until they're swollen and puffy (30-45minutes) at a steady simmer.  you can test one by pulling it out and slicing it in half.  the matzoh ball should be the same colour and consistency throughout...if the centre is still kind of dense and dark, then throw it back in.  then i put a couple of matzoh balls in a bowl and ladle the soup on top.  

easy!  delicious!  yields lots of leftovers!  good and good for you!  

so the peeps delivered the bed frame tonight.  i found out that the reason it was so cheap is because it's a teak veneer.  ah well, serves me right for thinking i had found the steal of the century.  still, it's easy to put together, sturdy, and was a decent price for our soon to be spare bed in our soon to be (?????) home when we upgrade to our queen (??????).  it lends a dignified air to our room and i really do love the built-in side tables.  look!  (disregard the reclining dotytron) and the el stupido cat:

it feels nice to be elevated off the ground...i'm sure i'm in for a rude awakening when i fumble for the now-farther floor during my middle-of-the-night pee run.

okay...i'm trundling off to bed with some "watchmen" and the photo issue of "entertainment weekly" to lull me to sleep, in the hopes that i awake tomorrow in a better state (not likely - i feel like my sinuses have more to give, yet).

fin.

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matzoh balls

4 T. chicken fat (or neutral oil - i use canola, because i tend not to have a tonne of chicken fat lying around...much to my eternal disappointment)
2 T. seltzer or club soda
4 eggs
1 T. sugar
1 1/2 t. salt
pepper to taste
1 c. matzoh meal

- stir everything together until well mixed....you can add thinly sliced scallions, chopped dill or parsley or thyme if you like.
- wrap bowl with plastic wrap and store in fridge for at least 1 hour or overnight. - cook as directed above

thanksgiving and oktoberfest, lagerfeld styleeee

this entry will mostly consist of gratuitous pictures of food and my impossibly juicy turkey of which i am inordinately (and justifiably) proud.  behold!!!  

the convection oven at my parentals place always messes me up...that sucker (18lbs, stuffed) was done in 3 hours!!!!! i also pull my turkey out of the fridge a few hours before i want to start it in the oven, so that there isn't the catch up time. health canada would probably tell you that this is terribly dangerous and a breeding ground for salmonellla, but i would beg to differ. i don't recommend it if you have people in your party who are immune compromised or leery of food-borne illness, because those are the ones that will get sick and ruin a good thing (ie. raw milk cheese, jack-in-the-box hamburgers) with their delicate gastrointestinal systems. i figure if you're taking the turkey up to an internal and external temp that will kill the bacteria, then not having it be straight-from-the-fridge icy does no harm in the long run.

i grease up the bird with butter and season liberally with salt and pepper. then i take cheesecloth and soak it in a mixture of white wine and melted butter and drape that over the breast. when we're nearing completion (i use a digital probe thermometre, set to go off at 170F) i take the cheesecloth off and let the breast brown. i also baste with this mixture, which makes for really tasty and rich pan juices.

i ended up letting the turkey rest out for nearly an hour which resulted in very juicy, tender, and still-piping hot meat, the best of all worlds. my sister paid me the ultimate compliment by saying that my turkey is the only one she looks forward to. i don't know what it is about w.p's...but they like to roast that bird into dry, desiccated submission, and often commit the more egregious offense of THROWING AWAY THE SKIN! the SKIN!!!!!!!! the best part of the bird, bar none! in some misguided attempt to CUT FAT! even whilst they're glomming candied sweet potatoes and green bean casserole held together with great glops of campbell's cream of mushroom soup! it's such a tragedy.

clockwise from the top right, we have: dark meat, white meat, roasted garlic mashed potatoes (passed through a food mill...no lumps here!), stuffing baked in a casserole, my sister's zucchini casserole topped with crushed ritz crackers and bound with an unholy amount of cheese, stuffing from inside the bird, and brussels sprouts and carrot casserole with horseradish mayo.


here's a shot of the plate, featuring all of the above and a healthy slurp of gravy and my family's beloved pillsbury crescent rolls. we loves us some crescent rolls.

pumpkin pie for dessert, with a healthy slump of whipped cream. i love my pumpkin pie but lately i've found it a bit tiresome. i think i've grown so fond of the sweet potato pecan pie that plain ol' pumpkin just doesn't get the gears cranking anymore.

i passed out by 10am...ridiculously early, drained by a day of cooking, a night of eating, and the airing of grievances at the family thanksgiving table. if there's one thing you can say about my family, we're certainly not repressed. we know EVERYTHING about each other and we can converse with a level of honesty and raw, open, communication that i've yet to see in other familial settings. not for us the stoic silence and stilted politeness...oh no. thanksgiving with the lagerfeld's features off-colour jokes, a numerical listing of my mater's favorite children, getting dressed down by an ever curmudgeonly big d, and equal parts laughter and cathartic tears. it's kind of awesome. i wouldn't have it any other way.

the next morning we made a breakfast of huevos rancheros, with scrambled eggs instead of the fried to make things easier.

we also had monkey bread. i effin LOVE monkey bread. we don't have a bundt pan at the familial estate so we split the recipe into two disposable foil pans. i could eat POUNDS AND POUNDS of monkey bread...especially the crispy outer bits. the good thing about baking it in shallow pans is that there's WAY MORE crispy, sugared, caramelized outside bits and less of the doughy innies.

it wasn't all eating though. we re-watched "iron man" watched episodes of "30 rock: season 2" and played touch football. which once again reiterated to me that i'm NOT a football tactician. i can't handle the strategizing. we also went to a park and threw a frisbee around and played nintendo wii until our forearms hurt. i was also completely charmed by little ze's renditions of "piggy noises" and his lisping along to the sesame street theme.

this little gem was awesome too (relayed by my sis): my sis was watching "sleeping beauty" (disney version) with my niece and my niece was asking why the king was destroying all the spinning wheels. and my sis replied that it was to prevent aurora from pricking her finger and falling under the queen's evil spell. to which my niece replied, matter-of-factly and offhandedly, "yeah, well everyone knows that doesn't happen because in real life spinning wheels are for turning hay into gold, and wool into yarn..." and my sister had the funny job of explaining that the events of rumpelstiltskin are not to be taken for real life occurrences.

then we did the big oktoberfest dinner for my outlaw bro.  clockwise from the top, we have: bratwurst, oktoberfest sausage, warm german potato salad, braised cabbage and apples, and pork schnitzel.  the finale was the cake i had been labouring over, the inside-out german chocolate cake with a semi-sweet chocolate buttercream.


devil's food cake layers with a dulce de leche, toasted coconut and pecan filling, and the light, sweet, buttercream slathered all over. it was hella tasty.

we drove back downtown this morning so that i could prep for my friends G & M's shower at work. i made deviled eggs and cheesecake brownies, and raspberry almond bars and i'll be making chicken salad tea sandwiches and smoked salmon and dilled cream cheese tea sandwiches tomorrow.

phew. we're doing thanksgiving with the dotytron's family tonight. we're going for indian food as a nice turkey and kraut respite. my broski also loaded me up with comics...i can't STOP reading comics. i effin' love them. they're so much more engaging than...books!!! and all you literary snobs can go eff yourselves..."the watchmen" is as dark and dense a dystopia as one could ever hope for.

fin.

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

karl lagerfeld's definitive pumpkin pie
(makes 1 9" deep pie)

1 1/2 c. heavy cream (18%)
2 eggs
1 c. brown sugar
1/2 can 28oz pumpkin puree (if you want to use the whole can, just double everything to make 2 pies...they freeze really well)
1/4 t. salt
2 t. cinnamon
1 t. ground ginger
1/4 t. cloves
1/4 t. cardamom
1 unbaked 9" deep dish pie shell

mix all the ingredients together with a whisk, pour into pie shell, bake at 375F for 40-50 minutes until the pie is set and lightly puffed and pastry is golden.

in which

it is confirmed that most knitters are b***hes. so i went to lettuce knit yesterday on my lunch as i happened to be in kensington buying chorizo.  i ran into the girl who writes this blog that i have in my rss feeds.  as i was paying for my purchases, i said, "i think i read your knitting blog" and you know what she replies?  completely awkwardly and disinterestedly, "oh yeah?"  WHAT. THE. F**K.  way to have no social skills.  i'm sorry i don't look like a bedraggled women studies major in a uniform of little girl mary janes and knee skirts and dripping in homespun wool with my parkdale librarian glasses and shirts with silkscreened bird prints on them.  jeez.  who does that? when people say they read my blog i can usually have a normal conversation about it (probably because my readership consists of my family and 3 friends...but still!)  i can definitely offer something better than, "oh yeah?"  what the hell does that even mean???

i'm kind of sick of going to that store and getting s****y service.  i'm a repeat customer! everyone EXCEPT for this girl who's name starts with an A always gives me wary-eyes and is the DIRECT opposite of warm and friendly.  and seriously, what gives them the right?  you know what?  your roving is ugly and THAT'S why i didn't buy any.  

sigh.  now i feel bad.  fine...maybe she was having a bad day.  it's just i find it hard reconciling how knitters are all like, "we belong to a community!" "go knitters go!" and can have conferences and yarn tattoos but for the most part, are generally unfriendly.  

by comparison...the people at the purple purl have never been ANYTHING but nice and helpful and the right amount of chatty.  lettuce knit is totally representative of kensington market and its' pseudo warm and welcoming but really elitist and cliquey vibe.  it's like you don't get good service unless you really look like you're a squeedgee or bob marley tshirt away from being destitute.  

so that's my rant for the day.  lettuce knit is full of fascists who are probably stoned from a lack of gluten in their diet and too much earnestness and solstice-loving.  

in other news...i'm excited for tonight!!!  tonight is the start of thanksgiving weekend with my family.  .first i have to go to the library and get my holds and pick up my pants from my tailors and stop off at home and re-measure my boxspring one more time to see if i can buy this mid-century modern teak frame from these vintage dealers down the street from me.  it's a love bedframe with built-in drawers and a HEADBORD!!! how glam!!!  and it's made of teak!  i LOVE teak!!!  i think the price is prett solid ($300) for a bed frame and even though i don't plan on sharing a double with the dotytron forever, for the forseeable future that's going to be the case (and if we buy a house in the east end of toronto, bedroom sizes just might preclude us from trading up)...it'll be nice to have a little bit of elevation going on.  

then i'm going to the purple purl to pick up more roving for my thrummed mittens which are turning into the FATTEST MITTENS OF ALL TIME.  K at work made a joke about trying to handle change (or anything requiring a modicum of manual dexterity and opposable digits) with them on.  it doesn't appear likely.  you'll have a better idea once i post a picture.  i think they'll be really warm but it's basically like walking around with your hand stuffed in a loaf of bread made of wool.  apparently the roving starts to felt and get matted down with use...but holy criminey...they's be some chubby mitts.

we're going out for dinner tonight with the grandparentals up in markham.  no word yet on if we're eating at pak fook (the grandparentals favoured place) or asian legend (the younger generation's favoured place).  

fin.

dump and run!

this will by necessity be a quickie as i'm STILL PREPPING FOR THANKSGIVING.

you know what though??? I DON'T CARE BECAUSE THANKSGIVING IS THE GREATEST OF HOLIDAYS. bar none. even if it means i have to play "hide the giblets" with a pasty, goosepimpled turkey on saturday and lube up its nooks and crannies and unmentionable bits with gobs of butter. even if it means you spend ALL DAY cooking for a meal that gets demolished in about 10 minutes. it is worth it because giving thanks is a magical, wonderful, soul-enriching thing that makes us better people. and to do it around a table groaning under the benevolence with which we north americans are (by and large) graced is a humbling experience that brings to the fore the elusive sublime that is our own humanity.

okay...this is what i made for dinner tonight. we had seared halibut with chimichurri. chimichurri is a sauce/marinade used for grilled meat that originated in argentina. alongside i fried up par-boiled yukon potato chunks with bits of spanish cured chorizo and fennel.


the salad tonight was a bag of mixed, wintery, bitter greens from the sorauren farmer's market with eggplant (also from the farmer's market) cubes fried in roasted garlic oil, toasted pine nuts, shallots, and goat's cheese in a red wine vinaigrette.



now i have to finish slathering the german chocolate cake with buttercream.

fin.

hellboy baby sweater

well, i finally sewed the buttons on my rendition of elizabeth zimmerman's february baby sweater.  it's kind of famous in the knitting world.  the good points are that it's a top-down sweater - you start knitting the collar and work your way down, increasing and decreasing as necessary, and put the "live" sleeve stitches on a holder so that you can pick them up and continue the sleeves. that's good cuz sewing knit pieces together is painstaking, unforgiving, tedious and tiresome work.  the bad thing is that elizabeth zimmerman is notoriously sketchy on the details...her patterns are more like base recipes.  i'm pretty good at intuiting and figuring stuff out, but in this case, i wanted to make a sweater for a 12-18 month old baby and her sweater pattern only went up to 1 year so i had to do a lot of maths and i screwed stuff up and got frustrated but not so frustrated that i would rip it back and start all over and the end result is a pretty cute sweater with a GINORMOUS right sleeve (when you're looking at the sweater).  so i'm calling it the hellboy sweater because hellboy has that giant arm of his.  


it's kind of ugmo and gross and definitely not my standard meticulous work but i really wanted to start working on the thrummed mittens so i finished it, even though it wasn't perfect because my drive to finish one project before starting a new one outweighs my drive for perfection when i've already given up.  in my heart of hearts though, i still think it's kind of cute and i figure once a baby is wearing it, you won't be able to tell the difference!  in fact, i think i'm going to make a big version for myself...and this time, i'll do it right.   the original recipient was my prof's new baby but i've come to my senses and i'm trying to cut down on the whole "knitting for strangers" tip. so i'll save it until i find a baby i really want to give it to or maybe i'll keep it for my own future (theoretical) baby(ies).

as we all know, my FAVORITE HOLIDAY OF THE YEAR is fast approaching and tonight i prepped in earnest.  i made the stuffing (sage, bob evans sausage) and the carrot and brussels sprouts horseradish mayo casserole and i'm pretty much done for that meal.  we're ALSO doing an oktoberfest meal to honour my outlaw bro's kraut heritage (and as an excuse to eat german potato salad and schnitzel and wurst) so i made the filling and cake layers for a inside-out german chocolate cake.  instead of using the cake recipe provided, i'm using my go-to devil's food cake recipe, which makes 8" layers, which will mean a thicker layer of caramelized condensed milk-pecan-coconut filling (that's good!).  cakes enrobed with chocolate ganache are a bit of a pain in the bum but whatevs...it's a special occassion and i rarely make cakes for my family.  


i ALSO found time to make the flammekeuche we were supposed to have a few nights back. other recipes suggest you just dump bacon bits and thinly sliced, raw onion on top of the creme fraiche layer.  i wasn't too keen on that so i cooked off the lardons first and then caramelized the onion in the bacon fat and added chopped thyme.  



alongside i made a romaine salad with caramelized pears, goat's cheese, pine nuts, shallot, and red wine vinaigrette for a crispy, wintery, veggie side.



fin.

polski ogorki

cafe polonez is AMAZING. huge, plentiful portions that focus on starches and meat crammed cheek-by-jowl on enormous plates. i went splitsies with my teammate C on a bowl of tripe soup (not his idea) and the schnitzel polonez (topped with sauteed mushrooms). the tripe soup featured tender tripe in a rich, stewy, thick liquid with lots of cracked black pepper and some bits of carrot ($5.50). i dunked heavily buttered slices of rye bread in the bowl and was hand-clappingly happy. the schnitzel was crispy, lightly breaded, tender and came sided with a pile of boiled potatoes with dill, sauerkraut, grated beets, and coleslaw ($14.50). it was good, basic, hearty, eastern european grub. i also tried some of E's perogies...the meat ones were stuffed with an indeterminate meat mixture that tasted like beef/pork but had the stringy texture of chicken. very good. the potato ones were delicious, especially coated in a thick spackling of full fat sour cream. i would definitely go back.

i also took a tip from my boyfriend and stopped in at the sorauren park farmer's market...not too shabby! not all organic and of course it featured the de rigeur farmer's market entertainment of a past-the-sell-by-date hippie in rugged woolen and handtooled suede attire, enthusiastically and doggedly plunking away at a guitar and singing "folk" songs. yikes. so earnest! i picked up some lovely striped eggplant that i might stuff next week as well as some mixed greens and a fantastico cheese from montforte dairy, called (stupidly, imo) "l'indiscretion" (seriously. so ghey) which is a goat's milk cheese with a grappa-washed rind. it was deliciously chalky and goaty without being too redolent of the barn. then i tooled around roncesvalles for a bit and eyed some polish sweets and nearly fainted from the smell of kolbassa and other rustic, country sausages at a store before deciding that i needed to have more time to make considered, measured purchases and not let my perpetually gluttonous stomach do the dictating.

so my dball team (most of whom know each other) were talking about someone they knew...a girl who sold her virginity back to god. what the-?!? so i asked what you get for it. my boyfriend replied "a toaster" and i asked the natural follow up question, "2 slots or 4?" according to my boyfriend, it's a 4-slotter...which definitely makes it a much more enticing transaction...in that situation, if god really wants my damaged v-card in exchange for a 4-slot toaster...i'll totally give it to ol' yaweh! if we're following the logic of the metaphor through though...your virginity is technically "taken" by whichever random skidball you were in love with in highschool, so i don't really have MY virginity to sell back...i have my then boyfriend's. tricksy. i wonder if god knows the difference? seriously. apparently the other thing about this virgin-re-seller is that she loves bono and bono's charity work (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) wow. that kind of makes her like a unicorn. admittedly, my list of deal breakers is long and idiomatic...but being a fan of bono's charity work would probably put you smack dab in the middle of the "do not touch or entertain the thought of touching" hinterlands.

i got a massage tonight and now i'm gearing up for a dessert of super-hot epsom salt bath with ever-reliable entertainment weekly. i have to say, the cover with jon stewart and stephen colbert skewering the new yorker obama cover was HI-LARIOUS...if only for colbert's expression!!! he really nailed the flirtatious coy/smug look of the drawing.

for dinner i took the leftover meatballs and tomato sauce that i froze a couple of weekends back and heated them up. i served them on toasted, sliced, ace burger buns to make little meat ball sammies, topped with mozzarella cheese and served with a caesar salad. so tasty...i wish i always had the foresight to have meatballs and tomato sauce lying around in the freezer.

fin.

cupcake overload

food bloggers the world over would have you believe that the heydey of the cupcake is drawing to a close. anticipation is rampant over what will be the next homespun baked treat to sweep the zeitgeist (brownies seem to be the front runner). well, you wouldn't have known that after spending the weekend at casa lagerfeld and dotytron.

after dodgeball, a hot tip from my boyfriend sent us to madeleine's on bathurst (@ dupont). i fell IN LOVE. they sold a dazzling array of confections stacked in apothecary jars (french macaroons, brownies, cookies) as well as homespun pies and a refrigerator case stocked full of other delectables like coconut cream pies and these cheesecake things that my boyfriend specially recommended. i bought three mini cupcakes (vanilla with chocolate buttercream) and a cheesecake thing (a little round of chocolate and vanilla cheesecake on a chocolate cookie crust, enrobed in chocolate) and we ate those AFTER dinner at the momma and poppa d's. the cupcakes were DIVINE! moist, sturdy cake with a medium crumb that tasted like home-baked golden cake and a soft, light, incredibly luscious and cloud-like topping of chocolate buttercream that was sweet and rich with cooked buttercream essence. i adored them. the cheesecake was also delicious but a trifle rich for my liking.

this is AFTER we had a delcious chicken/mushroom/broccoli crepe dinner AND had my hazelnut brown butter cake (the dotytron forgot the camera so i didn't get any pictures). i LOVE the hazelnut brown butter cake. the recipe is from smitten kitchen by way of suzanne goin's book "sunday supper at lucques" which i promptly ordered from amazon (after coveting it for many years and unsuccessfully hoping that the public library would grab it)...this AFTER i had pretty much vowed to never buy another cookbook again what with the glut of recipes available on the interweb and torn from my multiple magazine subscriptions (soon to be shorter: "bon appetit" has jumped the shark bigtime and is getting axed from the roster).  hazlenut brown butter cake is light, redolent with toasty hazelnut flavour and the warm caramel undertones of browned butter and vanilla bean.  i slicked the top with a simple bittersweet chocolate ganache resulting in a low, simple, rustic looking cake that was barely sweet, with roasted, round, bitter flavours. really sophisticated...it's going on the wedding cake shortlist.  

this is what i envision at the performance - a table with all kinds of vintage and simple cake stands piled with some of my favorite cakes and sweets...hazelnut brown butter cake, the devil's food cake with brown sugar buttercream, something with cream cheese frosting (carrot cake or banana cupcakes), maybe sweet potato pecan pie with whipped cream (more likely i'll keep it all cakes) and people can just carve off a slice or two or three...hopefully they'll all made by me. the table will be decorated with figs and some sunflowers and that's it.  simple simple simple.  

so now the dotytron and i have to drag our asses out to various parks around toronto to see what's suitable for the big to-do.  the toronto music garden was our fist pick (and by "our" i mean "mine" since the dotytron isn't really interested in those kinds of details) but they don't allow amplification and we kind of need an electric guitar (or we can rejig things to do without).  the big thing is that they only allow room for 40 people or something...but the way i figure it is...it's a public park, right?  so we could have 40 people of family and then have our friends "happen" to be wandering through the park and showing up and watching the to-do...all guerilla/d.i.y. style.  

also...the house of our dreams is still VASTLY over-priced for what you get.  it's quite small.  my dad dug it, but said he would only pay $300 000 for it.  we had to tell our dad that $300 000 DOESN'T HAPPEN in toronto unless it's a hovel.  they had it staged so that when you walked in there was a fire ripping in the fire place and the smell of pumpkin pie...kinda ghey.  it would need some work...anyway...we're just going to keep doggedly hitting open houses until we've seen 50, at which point my dad says we'll be "educated" enough (he has this weird school-based analogy so right now we're in "kindergarten" and after 50 houses we'll be in "college") and hopefully the market conditions will be such that we can swoop in for the kill.  

in summation, i loved madeleine's and hazelnut brown butter cake and planning a wedding type deal just feels like SOMUCHWORK that you kind of don't get super-motivated to do it.

tonight is dodgeball and then dinner with the team...we're going to cafe polonez on roncesvalles for some polski ogorki food (tripe soup [i'll probably be the only one eating that]), perogies, breaded meats, cabbage rolls and the like.  bliss!!!!!!!  maybe some paczki?!????  

fin.

rested

i slept ALMOST ELEVEN HOURS LAST NIGHT. that's HUGE! i never ever sleep so much! i feel like a zillion dollars! though, i have to admit, i feel a little lost that i haven't already prepped/baked/done a billion things by this point. i'm feeling like the day has run away from me a bit. but i can also simultaneously acknowledge that that's borderline psychotic so i'm not going to give into it.

yesterday futronic came over and with another round of cupcakes from flourgirls out in milton. this time there were TWO (!) RED VELVET cupcakes in the batch. now, we all know how i love me some red velvet cupcakes. before i give my review, allow me to interject for a moment on how i have my finger on the pulse of the nation.

case numero uno: the adoption of the karl lagerfeld persona FAR PREDATES the reinsertion of karl lagerfeld into mainstream, popular, young awareness. it predates the lagerfeld collection at h&m (the one that barely sold in canada...nowhere near the lineups and slavering anticipation that met subsequent designer ventures by the clothing line). it predates lagerfeld confidential, the lengthy article that appeared either in the new york times or the new yorker (which revealed that la lagerfeld is kind of bats**t insane, but in an endearingly old world auteur kind of way), and his alignment and subsequent distancing himself from lilo (lindsay lohan) which in turn predates her now seemingly ancient lesbianism.

case numero dos: the red velvet cupcake thing. i was THERE people, shouting it from the rooftops well before foodgawker and taste were flooded with pics from food bloggers the world over (read: north america) with their versions of the southern treat.

case numero tres: the tent dress/muumuu phenomena.

so, while idiots the world over are chasing after (inexplicably) the agness deyns of le demi-monde, allow me to pause for a moment to toot my own kazoo. and seriously, agness deyn?!? as if LONDON is generating culture worth talking about right now?!? blech. snooze. she's marrying one of the dudes from the strokes. nuff said. remember them? i sure as hell don't.

clockwise from top: red velvet, chocolate raspberry, red velvet again, lemon. anyway, the red velvet cupcakes from flourgirls gave my beloved babycakes a run for their money, although i'd probably have to do a side by side comparison as it's been a while since i've had a babycake (you know, them being prohibitively expensive and all). the cream cheese frosting was light and tangy without the telltale cloying tackiness of an unbalanced cream cheese to sugar ratio. the cake was a startling crimson, whereas the babycake is more of a cocoa derived earthy rust. the cake was moist with a nice light crumb. very tasty, indeed.

it has come to my attention (based on the revelation from mr. futronic that the proprietor of flourgirls reads this very blog!) that my readership is actually wider than i generally suspect. this kind of warms the cockles of my cold, black heart. it's nice to know that people are reading and appreciating my petty attempts to amuse and self-aggrandize.

today for sunday breakkie we had dippy eggs and toast.



the rest of the day (what little is left of it!) will be spent as follows:

- my dad is arriving in half an hour to accompany me and the dotytron on the open house of my house of dreams

- then dodgeball

- then dinner at momma and poppa d's for poppa d's birthday...i think nany and poppa (real poppa) are coming too!

- then home for knitting. my thrummed mitten is coming along swimmingly! regardez-la:



fin.

thus far

well, i woke up uber-early and made two pumpkin pies (thanksgiving preparation) and a browned butter hazelnut cake for the dotytron's da's birthday dinner tomorrow. i also made a batch of bran muffins and ate a bowl of steel cut oats with the dotytron before he left me to go to work.

then i waited for the neighbour (shortround) to move his stupid car out of the driveway so that i could get my bike past it. he moved the car in last night so that the dotytron could park the borrowed parental mobile behind it, which was nice of him, but he also promised to move it out early so that i wouldn't be trapped inside the house. i even went so far as to go over there and bang on the door repeatedly to no avail. he's probably passed out in an alcoholic stupor.

so, finally i got all pissed off at being kept a prisoner in my own home and reefed my bike and myself through the space. i may or may not have scratched his car. i'm going to fess up though, but really, it's his fault. and before you, my dear readership, get all moral majority on me, the car is plenty scratched up already and is missing both a side mirror, a side window, and has a perpetual flat back tire.

thus liberated, i went to st. lawrence to pick up oktoberfest provisions for next weekend and then stopped at the mall to get little ze some belated birthday presents (my sister requested fall clothes, so i had to wait until fall rolled around), then i tried on some stuff in the change room at h&m and emerged HORRIFIED at the state of my upper arms. so now i'm frantically researching upper arm exercises on the internet. getting older is pretty good in the sense that you become more and more confident but also simultaneously (and contradictorily) kind of awful in that time ravages your once youthful looks and you're not SO FAR GONE that you can't remember how nubile you used to be. i'm starting to feel like no-makeup is no longer an option. i look HAGGARD! i'm hoping against hope that it's the harsh change room lighting. *crosses fingers that i'm not slowly morphing into elizabeth may*

tonight we're having dinner at dr. rei and hanbo's. it's a late dinner as the dotytron is getting muscled into going on a group "nuit blanche" thing for school. so stupid. i told him that when it comes to situations like that (ie. group work during leisure time) you have to PUT YOUR FOOT DOWN. left to their own devices, most people dither and waste time and waste YOUR time because they're worried about not getting A's. you really have to take charge before your whole night has been eaten up with dingbats you don't care about.

tomorrow we're going to see the house i'm lusting after. we roped my dad into going with us. mostly because he's retired and has nothing better to do. but he's already informed me that i'm committing the cardinal sin of being too emotional. he's right. that's why i'm not holding my breath. i also know that realistically, now is not the time for us to be buying, what with the dotytron being a student and all. i'm kind of muddling along just hoping that the gods will look kindly upon me and somehow the stars will align and the chorus of angels will see fit to give me the house that i'm emotionally and irrationally attached to.

fin.

debate fever!

here is a random loot bag of my opinions on the great debate-fest of aught 8. we watched the U.S. veep ones until the end and then switched over to catch the tail end of the canadian ones.

- gilles duceppe =

seriously. SEPARATED AT BIRTH.

- why was the canadian set anchored by a table shaped like a TOILET with a maple-leaf poo floating in the bowl?

- why was the canadian set so damn cheap?

- why was the canadian moderator allowed to rephrase, interrupt with his own questions, and put HIS words in the mouths of the candidates?

- why is jack layton such an opportunistic freak?

- biden DESTROYED palin. obliterated her. i was a little worried at first that he was going to alienate people by seeming overly intellectual (especially when palin kept appealing to soccer moms and main street americans) but for the most part his points were succinct, he remained on target and pointedly called her out on erroneous facts she spouted. i also liked how he numbered his points. plus his closing was SICK! there was a "god willing"! and tears welling! plus it was a hella catchy closer. he was pretty skillful at working in his own "middle american" background and drawing on his experience and kept his answers topical. overall, well played, biden, well played.

- palin answers questions like a pageant queen. she's semi-poised but totally glossy and vapid - it's a lot of words, no substance.

- the moderator in the u.s. debates was a PRO-star.

tonight for dinner i was supposed to be making an alsatian "pizza" (flammekueche). alsace is a region in france that borders germany and has its own kind of unique little culinary sub culture going on. it's basically pizza dough that you roll out really thin and top with a layer of creme fraiche mixed with a little tiny bit of ricotta (or quark or fromage frais) and top with bacon lardons, caramelized onion, and thyme. sounds tasty, right?

instead, heady with the knowledge that the house that i so desperately covet has dropped TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS in price and armed with a trusty newsfeed line that the housing market in toronto slowed 6% over last year, i made the counter-intuitive call that we go out for dinner, instead of taking the logical path, which would be that impending home ownership, however theoretical, should generally serve as an impetus for one's fiscal belt tightening.

in my defense, i received my gst rebate yesterday. AND i got a happy email from hr assuring me that the incremental climb i'd seen in my paycheques over the last 4 pay periods is legit. this was in response to a wary email i sent filled with trepidation that the $400 more a month i had been making was some horrible, cruel, payroll mistake that i would get dinged for in one grand lump sum. it turns out i reached my cpp and ei maximums and now it's more in my pocket and my ing savings account. ta-da!

anyway, a couple of months ago, a shoddy thai restaurant on the danforth, mong kut thai opened an outpost near logan with the tell-tale table-top grills that bespeak korean bbq all you can eat. this was going to be a thai iteration of the formula. pretty intriguing, right? how can you go wrong with piles of meat, right? WRONG! we sat down and were presented with plates of poorly cut, gristle-flecked, UNMARINATED (!!!!!) meat served in the de rigeur little plastic dishes but without the usual all-you-can-eat (ayce) exuberance. instead, 4 little forlorn, sinewy and canada grade b pieces crowded together on the plates with more negative space than modern typographic design. ai. the unmarinated part made it even worse. eating cheap meat without the benefit of ANY flavouring (salt! pepper! soy! MSG!!!) is unforgivable and makes you feel bad about yourself. so we asked for our bill and left, still hungry. but i wasn't about to sit through an irredeemable meal.

so we ended up at dangerous dan's (where we should have gone in the first place). ran into frankie gunns. came home, i started working on my new knitting project (thrummed mittens - inspired by the combined pull of the following: desire to learn a new skill [thrumming, mitten knitting]; to make something quick; to make something for MYSELF for a change; and to have warm toasty fingies after the biting chill of today's walk to the subway), and we watched the new food network show by the au pied du cochon chef and caught up on "gossip girl." bliss.

fin.

obligatory post extolling the virtues of fall

has anyone ever in the world loved fall as much as i? well, maybe dr. rei and the dotytron. i adore it. last night i pulled out our sheepskin slippers with no small amount of glee at the promise of toasty toesies...these are the things i'm loving/obsessed with at the moment:

- 100% cotton tights in jewel tones. i bought two pairs and they cost me a pretty penny (they were almost $30 a pair) but i'm wearing my purple ones today and have already received multiple compliments. they're super warm and soft and smooth and not fake-feeling. it's like wearing a full length pair of thin, comfy socks. love 'em. i also love that they have a very gentle waistband, unlikes most of my other tights which require very unsexy contortions to wriggle into and create bumps and bulges where bumps and bulges are neither invited nor welcome.

- the following colours: forest green, emerald green, teal, mustard yellow, orange, and purple purple purple! i covet an armada of professorial cardigans and thin layering pieces (tops and bottoms) in all those colours to break up the de facto black, greys, and browns of my winter work wardrobe.

- cotton jersey sheets, flannel pjs, sheepskin slippers

- fall food. rushing home in the biting cold to fill my belly with warm, stewy, carby, meaty goodness and the promise of a warm and sweet tidbit washed down with a minimug of cold milk before bed.

i'm one of the few people in the world who loves it when it gets dark early and i can traipse around my dimly lit (no bulb over 40 watts or whatever the new-compact fluoro equivalent is now) apartment, stumbling over things and tripping in the murky, wan, tobacco-stained atmosphere that is the byproduct of equal parts energy consciousness/environmental conscience and desire for ambiance.

i was looking over the summer list...and i didn't do too well. i have to start doing the maths to make my quilt happen and start cutting my delicious and adorable fabric. i have to get a leg up on holiday knitting, but to spare my fingers and inflamed tendons i think i'm going to stick to fat and chunky knitting for the next little while. i didn't get my driver's license OR get a first aid certificate. but there's still time for both. i have to make drapes. i have to get all my thanksgiving gear ready and prepare for a party at work.

now that the secret knitting has been gifted to the intended recipients, i can finally show it off!

for my pregnant co-worker, i turned the fir cone wrap into a fir cone baby blanket by casting on the same amount of stitches and beginning the garter stitch finishing band when it was roughly square. it's knit with estelle cloud cotton in a lovely caribbean ocean blue colour. the cloud cotton is very, very soft, and machine washable (kind of important for baby stuff) but a little hard on the hands (cotton doesn't stretch). the pattern was easy to memorize and it was a great first-timer project for my first real foray into using-a-chart lace patterns.

it was easy to figure out where i went wrong and using stitch markers between the pattern repeats saved my life once i figured out that was the way to go (3/4 through the final product and after ripping it up and starting over more times than i care to count). this took me about a month from start to finish (with long of non-knitting in between and lots of do-overs).

i also turned the kimono shawl from cheryl oberle's "folk shawls" into another baby blanket for my other pregnant co-worker (two co-workers, good friends, due within weeks of each other, married within months of each other), in the same yarn, but a suitably gender-neutral (i hope) pistachio colour for her baby.

i made my own chart for this pattern, as i've found that i like reading charts when doing lace better than following directions like "*k2, yo, ssk, yo*, repeat from * k3" i get easily confused with written directions and lose my place. this also took me a month from start to finish, with technically 2 weeks of actual active knitting time. the rest of the time i was giving my inflamed tendons a break from gripping slippery yarn and needles.

i'm really happy with both of them and i hope G and M like them and their babies love snuggling up in 'em.

tonight i went to terroni for a work-crew dinner in honour of the two mums-to-be. then i came home and watched the u.s. v.p. debates and taped the canadian debates to be watched later.

friday cannot come soon enough! if at all possible, i'm going to try to keep fridays for me and the dotytron or just do low-key things in the future and only make exceptions for grand, fun, nights, as generally, by the time friday rolls around, i'm DONE for. wiped out. exhausted. besides...another thing i adore about fall and winter is that it's for cozying up on the couch and watching movies and eating. nothing more elaborate or satisfying than that.

fin.

an elegy for rigor

remember when people used to do PROPER RESEARCH?!? and remember when people actually were INTELLIGENT with sophisticated VOCABULARIES and CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS and knew that in order to understand something, you generally required CONTEXT?!? i lament those days.

i am NOT a luddite. i love technology. i love the ability to download free episodes of gossip girl on rapidshare super-quick and watch them on my flatscreen monitor. i have a blog roll that's fairly epic (though skewed to craft/design/entertainment) and know how to set up rss feeds with my eyes closed. i know what twitter is, i've assessed it and find it stupid. i like facebook NOT for networking, but because it panders to my voyeuristic tendencies. i'm a dogged blogger and i'm fairly up to date on large-scale trends.

i feel like in the librarian community, we're so desperately afraid of being rendered obsolete that we're willing to throw our lot in with any new "web 2.0" doodad that crosses our path, just to show how "with it" we are and how "reactive" to the needs of our clients.

not to burst anyone's bubble...but i have yet to come across a research question in my 10 months of working professionally that could have been answered with a blog...ANY blog. however, the issue gets dichotomized and polarized, to the point where i don't feel like we can really voice our (valid) criticisms of relying on this technology without being accused of having some kind of retrograde attachment to paper and ink...of not being in tune with the "24/7" needs of the "crackberry" community. ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?

i like to fancy myself that i'm pretty hip. granted, i'm not on second life, but equally granted, second life is for losers (this is understood). the information profession is basically full of people who think that you "should" be on second life or are frantically signing up for myspace without realizing that myspace is for kids AND dead (in equal measure). my point is this: if you were to have some kind of "information professional trend-spotting olympics" i could TOTALLY represent and not only represent, TOOL most of the n00bs out there, who aren't only n00bs, but are like, loser n00bs. the kind who watch bravo. the kind who are like always 10 steps behind and when they're on the ball, they're on the ball with stupid stuff, like naomi klein or michael moore. the kind who take nuit blanche seriously. actually, it's making my skin crawl.

there was a recent library conference where a parliamentary library in australia surveyed their clients and found out that their clients value BREVITY over ACCURACY. well, me and my manedward tufte would probably agree that the bullet-pointing of information in our society is what is leading to our rapid intellectual degradation, the collapse of analytical ability, and the appallingly abysmal levels of political consciousness and civic engagement (my extrapolation).

what we also fail to understand, as information professionals...is that by blindly incorporating blogs for the SAKE of being "on board" with web 2.0, we are ENSURING our OBSOLESCENCE. any idiot can google information and find a blog and pass it over. my job is to do the editorial selection and quality control. this is MUCH harder to do. i've been given the tools to separate the wheat from the chaff (i actually think i was born with them, but that's another story). people will ALWAYS need researchers. they will NOT need people to do their web browsing for them (unless you're the pope - dr. rei and dotytron and i, inspired by our trip to the vatican, spent a good, long afternoon looking for a bathroom in rome speculating on the habits of the pope. it must suck to be the pope. you're like in this inbetween world. where you ride around in a car and you probably wear sweatpants on your day off but you aren't hip to popular culture)


tonight for dinner i made broiled feta with poached eggs and rosemary focaccia. i took slabs of feta, brushed them with chili oil from this jar of spicy chilies that ex-supervisor T gave me (she didn't make 'em, she bought 'em and thought i should have them), and broiled it in the oven with some olives. i poached some eggs, and served the whole mess with some toasted slices of rosemary focaccia and grape tomatoes roasted in the oven, tossed with garlic, basil leaves, salt and pepper. it was fantastic. a no-fuss meal that took all of 15 minutes active prep time.



fin.

rosh hashanahahahaha

so tonight is the big rosh hashanahahahaha to-do at casa lagerfeld and dotytron.  i'm making poached salmon, yukon and sweet potato latkes (more of a chanukah thing, but we haven't had latkes in FOREVER), sauteed spinach with pine nuts, and honey-ginger carrots.  i'm also making a sour cream coffee cake.  and putting the finishing touches on the secret knitting that has been occupying my time for the last while. and maybe (hopefully) switching up my summer and winter clothes in my closet so i'm not scrambling every morning.  and doing yoga and having an epsom salt bath. but that's a lot of doing for one lonely little evening so i might spread it out some.

last week, before toronto was stricken with a nasty and vicious bout of cold, dreary, and grey weather, i was biking home in a skirt and was stopped at an intersection in boystown with one leg up and one leg down.  this guy, who was CLEARLY a derelict, crossing the intersection, took an unseemly interest in my nether regions and was blatantly trying to get a peek at my unmentionables as he crossed.  we're talking like, bent-over-at-a-90-degree-angle levels of committment.  i don't know how successful he could have been, but he did give me an enthusiastic thumbs-up.  i wish i could take that to the bank.

so.  "margot at the wedding" is nowhere near as accomplished as "the squid and the whale" (for whatever reason).  "margot" is considerably more caustic (if that was even possible) with less humour and moments of levity to cut through the dark, excoriating unpleasantness of the petty intellegentsia.  nicole kidman gives a committed performance and her naturally brittle, cold, demeanor really suits the viciousness and twisted selfishness of her character.  it was easier to follow the trajectory of events and the motivations of the characters in "the squid and the whale" whereas in "margot at wedding" there doesn't seem to be as much of a rationale for the destruction and psychological manipulation the characters wreak.  that ends up being a huge weakness as then you're really just watching people behaving badly and i tend not to be very interested in plumbing those depths for the sake of plumbing those depths.  as a character study, it's pretty flimsy and one-note.

"baby mama" was pretty entertaining, but handicapped by needlessly maudlin genre conventions (tina fey's character has to be saddled with a generic, "good" relationship in the form of leading man pablum-for-hire, greg kinnear). it was probably a B as far as comedies go, so there were a few chuckles, especially from amy poehler's character, against whom tina fey plays the straight man. their chemistry is fantastic and i'd probably pay to watch those two read the phone book. given the paucity of comedies that i would rank as an A, it was still worth the rental price and it's a nice antidote if you're pairing it up with an "adult" "mature" "responsible" kind of flick like "margot at the wedding."

i'll post pics of the food and casting our sins into the water tonight. the dotytron has also really gone hog-wild with being chinese all of a sudden (well, i guess he's been building towards it for a while), fueled by the fact that 50% of the school he's teaching at right now are new immigrants from mainland china. anyway, he hung up a picture of the kitchen god in our kitchen and we're supposed to burn it on or around chinese new year. he also made himself mandarin flash cards. lol!

in other news, michael ignatieff was parked outside of my subway stop the other day, with his angry eyebrows and all, trying to drum up some support for the increasingly shambolic and desperate liberals. he always looks like a slightly tipsy/sinister professor at hogwarts (to me) with his thin-lipped leer.

fin.

----------

the dinner. it wasn't as spectacular as i hoped it would be.

sour cream coffee cake with pecans

sour cream coffee cake interior shot

casting our sins (torn up bread heels) into the water.

fin.

it takes a village

looking after two kids under 5 is tiring. we all went to bed on saturday at 9:30pm. with my niece getting up briefly to puke in her sleep.  the dotytron and i awoke to the sound of her coughing (she had a cold) and then the unmistakable sound of liquid coming up, then the words, "i throwed up."  i went to her bed (we had dragged a double futon mattress down to the foot of our bed and they were both set up there) and saw that she had puked all over her pillow.  "ellie!  ellie!  sit up!" i hissed, frantically, worried that she was going to puke again and maybe choke.  but she was out cold.  i wish i could still be that blase about vomit.  
saturday was ram-jammed to the max.  the dotytron ended up staying home from work because he puked three times on the way to the subway and was very much NOT blase about it.  then the kids came over.  we started with dress-up 

then we went to the park for about and hour and a half, then we came home and the dotytron did crafts while i got dinner going.  

for dinner we had spaghetti and meatballs and garlic bread.  i finally NAILED both the meatballs and the tomato sauce, per my old supervisor T's instructions.  i'm one step closer to mastering italian grandma!

the spaghetti and meatballs were a huge hit with the nephew, but not with the niece, who is an extremely picky eater. she also has a list of ailments that she likes to tell you about at strategic times: "my tummy is growling because it wants dessert" "this streetcar is making my tummy ache"

you can't really tell from this pic, but my nephew is wearing full length overalls a la dexy's midnight runners.

then the dotytron took them for a bath while i cleaned up. my niece helped me make homemade oreos. we watched a movie ("meet the robinsons" which is an awesome movie about orphans, time travel, destiny and family) and then it was bedtime, where a before-bed diaper change by me revealed that the dotytron had performed the classic "put the diaper on backwards" gag.  i don't really get how dudes do that...because it's so much more intuitive to have the tabs fold over the front, instead of trying to get them to stick at the back.  

yesterday we took them to meet up with my fam for our annual, post-ball (my mom organizes a ball to benefit the scarborough hospital every year) brunch at the hot house cafe. on the way over on the streetcar, we passed jilly's (a stip club), my niece looked out the window and pointed and asked what the signs said, so i had to read out: "girls. girls. girls" "party. party. party." it was pretty funny.

then it was dodgeball (i was super logey and msg-weighed down) and came home and we rented movies and watched them with the roomie and l'army.  we got messinis for dinner (gyros) and a poutine that cost NINE DOLLARS and didn't even have cheese curds!  but we were desperate for poutine.

we did a very interesting double bill of "margot at the wedding" and "baby mama" - reviews to follow.

today is work all day, then dodgeball, then home to meet s-dawg, who has turned monday nights into "mooch dinner and commandeer our tv to make us watch heroes" nights.  

fin.

gushy

last night's festivities somehow bypassed tittsworth entirely (the debates were on! there was talking to be done! friday night = being wiped!) and culminated in porn-surfing looking for women who squirt (for educational purposes).

i couldn't love those guys anymore if i tried. i hope they love me! i really really hope they do!

in other news...i was up obscenely early (we still got home at 2am last night...trekking from one end of the city to the other is tough) to prepare the house for the arrival of:



and



i'm making spaghetti and meatballs and have vague plans for making cookies and setting up a fort and maybe painting t-shirts and tote bags if the park is totally out of the question (this looks to be the case). then we're going to either set up camp by dragging the futon down to our room, or dragging the roomie's futon out to the living room and having us a grand ol' pajama party featuring cookies and milk and rice krispie treats eaten in jammies.

fun!

fin.

sodium and cholesterol reveries

whoa. crazy dreams at casa dotytron and lagerfeld last night.

i wolfed down my three piece meal from popeye's and was in the process of circling the roomie's lone piece of breast meat (seriously...who likes white meat?) (she only ordered 1 because she doesn't really know if she likes fried chicken and was en route to a birth), getting so far as to begin loosening a corner of gorgeous, batter-coated skin (all the better to derobe the meat and roll the skin up into a batter-ball, to be crammed into my gaping, salivating maw) when she returned from an outing and claimed it. rats. thus foiled i begrudgingly satisfied myself with her biscuit offering. then me and the dotytron finished watching season 4 of "entourage" and i watched the latest episode of "gossip girl" to get all caught up.

anyway, i dreamed that i was at some work retreat in some gothic, crumbling mansion (picture the "beetlejuice" house) with dr. rei, her fiance, some of my coworkers, and LIL' WAYNE. two of the scenes i remember most vividly:

- lil' wayne had a piece of food that i wanted. i asked him for it. he refused. i asked again, more insistently, and in true lil' wayne fashion, he PULLED A GUN FROM HIS WAISTBAND AND POINTED IT AT MY HEAD. i kept my cool though, and told him, calmly and firmly, that i wasn't intimidated by him, and then he put the gun away and gave me what i wanted!

- my coworker, pregnant, standing in front of me NAKED telling me about how MANDY MOORE (who, in the dream, i also worked with, and who was also pregnant) was eating nothing but hot dogs and cheeseburgers and how unhealthy that was. basically my coworker was priding herself on her good eating habits and being all judgy judgy of mandy's.

the dotytron told me about his dream, which basically revolved around him having this girlfriend who was a vampire and would turn into one suddenly and have hulk-style freakouts which could only be circumvented with toothpaste. hilarious, eh?

i had lunch with my dad today. of the three children my father contributed genetic material to, i NEVER would have guessed in a million years that i would end up having the most stable relationship with him. we used to FIGHT. my parents got divorced when i was quite young and my dad had weekly sunday visits with us. when he remarried his terrible, awful, shrew of a wife and she pulled some whacked out s**t, i would frequently get into giant fights with him that would result in a cold war where i would boycott visits with him for half a year at a time. when we eventually reconnected, it was an icy and wary truce at best, with no small amount of imperious disrespect coming from miss teenage hormones over here. the s-dawg was definitely my dad's favorite...they share the most obvious physical genetic material, my brother is the only son to carry on the family name and he quite clearly put my (very human) father on a pedestal.

when the eventual awakening came for my brother (later than is usual, given the intermittence with which we saw him), where you realize that your parents are screwed up regular folk like everyone else, it changed their relationship no small amount. my sister being firmly settled in another country with husband and child, i've kind of taken up the slack. now that my work schedule has assumed a regularity in both timing and location, i've been seeing my dad once or twice a month for lunch. he comes all the way from richmond hill to visit me downtown...it takes him almost 2 hours in either direction.

when we talk, we generally avoid heavy, too-personal stuff...he occasionally resorts to the cheap shot...needling my brother, my sister, or my mom (still, after all these years) and being the loyal person that i am, we clash when he does. i let him know in no uncertain terms without mincing words what i think of that kind of behaviour. but otherwise, i actually have a lot in common with him...it's like talking to any other reasonably well-read, retiree. we share hobbies in common (fishing and whatnot). lately, he's been unraveling the u.s. economic situation for me, in his slow, laborious, plodding way (it can be a frustrating lesson for that very reason...i'm a speed-learner, but those attributes really help when you're dealing with asset-backed commercial paper) with felt-tipped pen and paper at the ready.

i see a lot of myself in him. my particularity, my anal-ness, my fiscal conservativism, my caution, my risk-adverseness, my lack of tact, my ability to assess things with an (outward) detached lens. so we sit on one of the benches in the park and in neat block letters he teaches me about instruments and mortgages and fannie mae and freddie mac. stuff that my mom and big d aren't as good for (both of them are horrible teachers)...today we hit the so-called "grand finale" of the sub-prime mortgage crisis. it's fun. i'm glad we're building a relationship now. i kind of regret that it's come late (he's almost 70), but better late than never. moreover, i'm not sure i would have been as ready or open before. i would have been too teenage hormone/half-baked/angry. i've settled into my skin a lot more and it's easier for me to take him as he is and as i am and meet him on those terms.

anyway, we're reconvening in two weeks to talk about hedgefunds and short-selling and futures. whereas before i would have fobbed him off indefinitely...i'm looking forward to it.

tonight is hair cut and rotis and kdubsguelph. huzzah!

fin.

now it's starting to get gross

apparently, nicoise salad is NOT enough to keep one reasonably fit and compact girl and one reasonably unfit and gangly boy full enough to bedtime. i mean, it is afterall only a bowl of veggies with some protein thrown in. around 10:00pm my stomach was rumbly and i felt faint. the dotytron tends to need little to no prompting to indulge in some midnight or close-to-midnight snacking...in fact, he's usually clamoring for something sweet (he has a fearsome sweet tooth) at the same time every night.

the long and short of it is: we polished off an ENTIRE bag of ruffled plain chips dunked in some mysterious onion dip that had been sitting in our fridge (but well before the expiry date) for a good two months. THEN i followed that up with 2 GIANT slices of pie a la mode.

today, i distinguished myself by spending TEN DOLLARS (!) at mcdonald's. my big mac combo with a filet-o-fish chaser standard order now costs a 10 spot? i was also charged ten cents for a sweet'n'sour dipping sauce for dunking my fries into. did you know they CHARGED for dipping sauce if you didn't order mcnuggets?!? that's highway robbery? i'm writing a letter to ronald. inflation is a b***h, folks. spending $10 for mcdonald's certainly makes it a lot less appealing. in fact, i spent the rest of the afternoon feeling vaguely ill/inebriated. lately, the return on the indulgence of my fast-food cravings hasn't been as great. i'm kind of losing my taste for it. i'll crave it like crazy, but the actual payoff just isn't there...i don't get quite the same endorphin hit.

that being said...i'm still sitting at the computer at 7pm, seriously considering ordering popeye's fried chicken for dinner. because, all that being said above, once i've gone off the rails, healthy-wise...i always figure i should go whole hog. there's no point wasting a well cooked, healthy home meal on a body that's already scarfed 10000000000mg of sodium and cholesterol. right? right?

i think, more than anything, i really just want to eat at HOME. and eat real, home-cooked food with vegetables and lots of fruit. i also love cooking. so maybe i'm nesting or something? i dunno. i spent a good chunk of today on mls. i found THE perfect house in the neighbourhood i want to live in...for not so much money. it's fantastic! maybe i should make an appointment with the mortgage broker? i've realized that the style of house i want is NOT that condo-chic, super queen west, super-ultra modern, slick, lots of stainless, lots of white, vibe. dark wood floors and turquoise with chocolate brown and everything looking out of "modern young urbanite" mag. you pay a LOT for that faceless, anonymous interior. when it's finally time for me to go house hunting, we'll save money with our fuddy duddy-ness and affinity for mish-mash decor and houses that you can mess up and live in.

tomorrow i'm having lunch with my da and then doing grocery shopping, heading home to wait for the dotytron and then heading over to C & A's pad and meeting up with the kdubsguelph crew and getting my hair cut by the inimitable steph and then eating rotis from mother india (malai kofta for me) and then maybe (75%) going to tittsworth at wrongbar. phew! i may or may not go because saturday i'm babysitting the niece AND nephew for a sleepover and that's going to be draining and i need to be on my a-game with those two.

fin.

shana tova

after an excruciating, frustrating, and extra-long day at work (one in which i stayed late AND worked through lunch), i'm now finally at home, where i love most to be, especially in the fall. what's not to love about fall, really? it's dark and cozy and warm inside, the air is snappy and full of fresh smells, fall food is beckoning my taste buds with the promise of richness and comfort, and my toes are anticipating being curled up in sheepskin. love love love fall. my favorite season by far, forever and ever.

i'm in the middle of researching rosh hashanah recipes. i've decided that we here at casa dotytron and lagerfeld (and casa roomie too, for the forseeable future) are going to start a tradition of celebrating (with food, natch) the festivals of the world (or the ones that i know about...i'm always willing/able to learn more though!). it's something i'd like to pass down to my (potential) kids. knowing what other cultures do and eat and what brings people together. anyway, next tuesday we're going to do rosh hashanah. okay...i just got back from wikipedia. apparently we need a ram's horn to blow to awaken us from our "slumber" and alert us to the coming judgement. i think i'm going to use a kazoo as a substitute. and i think we're going to do the thing where you throw bread or pebbles into the water as a way of casting off your sins.

i think i'm going to do fish. maybe poached salmon? with an herb/honey topping? (sweetness is apparently a big deal during rosh hashanah) carrots glazed in honey and ginger (tzimmes...sweetness is what you want out of the new year), spinach (symbolizes a green year with a good harvest), and a sour cream streusel coffee cake. i LOVE warm coffee cake with pecans with a cold glass of milk.

i have a confession to make. i ate 7 hot dogs on saturday (technically, 1 knacker and 6 hot dogs, only 2 with bun). i LOVE hot dogs! and i barely ever have 'em! so i cooked up a pot of mac'n'cheese for me and the dotytron, and we split that. then i made up a knacker on a bun for me and him. then, he wasn't feeling so hot, so he stopped at that, and i made myself another hot dog on a bun. then i asked him if he wanted any more and he said "not right now" which i took to mean "no, go ahead and be a gluttonous, idolatrous, disgusting pig" and ate FIVE MORE HOT DOGS, dipped in ketchup, SUPER FAST. gross, huh? i felt pretty icky afterwards. but also kind of good. does it make it better that they're mennonite hot dogs? i love forcemeat. there's no way around it.

tonight for dinnie i made nicoise salad. it was a multi-layered, composed affair, that still came together in half an hour, of which i was happy. here are the steps:

1)i cut up some yukon gold potatoes and boiled them in salted water until just-tender, and then i tossed them in my olive tapenade.

2) i steamed some green beans. when they were bright green and still crisp, i drained them and ran cold water over them to set the colour.

3) i generously seasonsed up and seared a 1/2 lb slab of bluefin tuna on both sides, but left it cool and red in the middle. i set the tuna aside and in the same pan, melted 1 T. of butter and added 1 thinly sliced shallot and sauteed that out. then i added a giant plop of grainy mustard and a shot of red wine vinegar. i tossed this dressing over the beans.

4) i poached eggs (has anyone in the history of the world ever loved accessorizing with a poached egg more than i? i think not).

5) in a big bowl, i put a layer of mache, then the dressed beans, then the potatoes, the sliced tuna, and then the poached egg. it was heavenly.



this is what it looks like with the egg yolk bursted:



tomorrow i'm going out for lunch with K, G, and M at work. we're going to MICKY DEE'S!!! OR SOME OTHER FAST FOOD! i've been resisting the urge for fast food all week and i feel like i deserve a treat, even if i haven't run a single step all week.

fin.