newsflash!

the movie "notorious" is AWFUL! especially cam-versions you downloaded that feature the camera-wielder's heavy breathing (seriously, our bootlegger must have had the deviated septum to end all deviated septums), audience laughter, and action that happens OUTSIDE OF THE CAMERA'S FRAME. lol!

what we rapidly discovered is that we, or anyone who knew the FIVE facts that EVERYONE knows about biggie, could have made the movie. this is surprising because the movie was executive produced by someone who purportedly knew him quite well, puffy. the only good thing the movie does is make you hate puffy more than you already did. it presented LITERAL depictions of his lyrics (ie. numerous scenes with biggie making sure that everyone in the five boroughs know how much he loves it when you call him big poppa) strung together in a haphazard fashion with no struggle, adversity, character development, or anything that would you know, make a story compelling.

actually, i'm wrong. the movie also does another good thing, which is make tupac prance around in silky, blouson shirts that make him look like gianni versace's kindred spirit (this is before tupac makes the sudden, capricious, and completely unexplained metamorphosis into the thug life tupac of california love - aka the video that features people inexplicably screaming and spraying spittle at the camera in some cirque-du-soleil meets mad max desert mardi gras setting, replete with people driving atvs across the dunes pumping their fists ad nauseum and locations typed across the screen in generic "computer font" accompanied by "computer noises.")

lil' kim was allegedly pissed off about how she was portrayed in the film and denounced it. i'd like to venture that lil' kim hasn't actually SEEN the film, because not only is the actress portraying lil' kim about 1000000000 hotter than lil' kim herself, it's actually a pretty sympathetic portrait. same with faith evans. poor angela bassett acts her HEART out as biggie's stern, set-upon mother - it's actually quite tragic that she's even in this movie and trying half as hard as she does. finally, none of the actors look anything remotely like the people they are supposed to be.

which isn't to say that last night wasn't the FUNNEST, but that's because the goosetang clan takes immeasurable joy in being together and can find laughter anywhere. i was a pretty cranky, sleep-deprived bastard, and it was still the funnest. we ate pounds and pounds of popeye's fried chicken and biscuits and sides, washed down with pop and beer, and finished with a classic goosetang clan viennese dessert table consisting of miami snack cakes, ah caramels, and my caramel cake which was DELICIOUS! i'll take a pic and post it tonight. it's quite the homely little thing - just a golden cake topped with a caramel icing, but when i say "just," instead picture a tender crumbed, lightly sweet, brown crusted delicious cake topped with a sweetly warm oozy sticky topping. i did the southern thing and used the a** end of a wooden spoon to poke holes all over the cake, so that the caramel could seep in. it was lovely! just the thing with a cold glass of milk and it's going to be my treat tonight when i get home from dodgeball.

i was glad my dodgeball team invitees bailed last night. i was too cranky to deal with them. i really do enjoy their company but there's vast differences between us. differences like: they prefer a soundtrack of death metal and don't get hype from hip hop (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) on mondays, when we're the "west coast rap ball stars" i'm responsible for providing the soundtrack, which is naturally, hip hop. people don't like it...they associate it with laying out, when i've had some of the crunkest times of my life to old skool hip hop. death metal to me seems like joke music. one time we walked into a gym and someone was playing prodigy and one of the girls sneered, "what IS this?" it kind of broke my heart a bit. prodigy > death metal.

they can also be kind of young sometimes. like, not knowing how to rsvp young.

here is a general rule i like to live by: if you're eating the hottest wings on the menu, have tattoos, or are drunk - I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT IT. really, i don't give a s**t. people who feel the need to announce when they are drunk and draw attention to it, are frequently the same people who like to make a big production out of eating the spicy wings or think that tattoos or piercings actually constitute some kind of cultural capital. as a general rule: these people are the boringest. you can totally take that to the bank.

tonight is take out night. the roomie is "cooking" (aka buying us vietnamese food) and i'm going to go to bed early and catch up on my shut eye. how happy am i that it's a 4 day work week? MUY!

oops, before i forget...CONGRATULATIONS A&C!!!!!!!!

all this levity is really a cover for my broken heart though. chris brown fans the world over were shocked and dismayed at the screaming headlines from the gossip blogs. i can only hope that it's a gross misunderstanding. poor ri-ri.

fin.

ruined.

omg. so effin' tired. we got home at 3:30am last night. THREE THIRTY AM! i haven't been out that late since 2008 (which isn't that long ago, but still, it was EARLY 2008 probably, considering my rapid descent into doddering old fogeydom.) didn't fall asleep til 4am, got awoken at 7am on the nose by a soon-to-be destitute stupid cat caterwauling at the top of its' lungs for his beloved master.

last night was THE FUNNEST. i seriously love kdubsguelphtoronto crew to the moon and back. LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE THEM! moving to waterloo love them (incidentally, houses in waterloo are FLIPPIN' HUGE!)!!!!!!!!!!!! it was pure non stop laughs and story telling and fun times.

the only thing i have to do today is somehow get myself to dodgeball, avoid getting hit with stuff, and then my reward is maxing time on the couch with the goosetang clan, possibly a few dball stragglers (though there was rumbling of bailing). we're doing round two of biggie night, consisting of ordering popeye's fried chicken, possibly frying mozzarella sticks and jalapeno poppers, eating some biggie-approved snacks, pounding some of the caramel cake i made yesterday, talking mad s**t, and making up the dialogue for the movie. in other words, bliss.

i'm going to try to take a thirty.

fin.

my opus

we went to bed pretty early last night...passing out at around 10:30pm after watching the first episode of the newest (and last) season of battlestar galactica - now we only have 2 or 3 more to catch up and we're in real time.  

i'm always totally knackered by friday night anyway and this weekend is a full one.  today i'm meeting up with H, M and baby D to do some trawling around kensington market for haloumi and other random assorted goods.  then we're heading to kitchener to hang with the kdubsguelph crew at our friend's housewarming party.  excitement!!!  i love seeing people's houses!  

i've already eaten breakfast and i got to do a bunch of stuff before i head out...boring saturday stuff like laundry, blogging, mopping the kitchen floor, yoga.  i also have to bake a cake for tomorrow night's festivities with the goosetang clan.  

i did however manage to finish my opus this morning.  what is my opus you ask?  well, every time i travel to a new city, i go on an exhaustive search of my magazine tear outs, my file folders, my collected travel issues of food magazines, my food blogs, chowhound, etc and cull a list of restaurants in the city in question.  i then construct a chart/table with the restaurant name, type of cuisine, address (hyperlinked), transit information (if available), reservation information, hours of operation, and a notes column for the restaurants website, dishes to try, etc.  it's kind of insane and HIGHLY ocd.  i just finished my chicago one.  it's running at 9 pages long but it's a thing of beauty.  my new york one is even more insane.  once i get started, they become works in progress and i update periodically.  i'm pretty happy with the chicago edition.  it's got good coverage between the fine dining molecular gastronomy joints (avenues, alinea, moto, etc) and the beef sandwich/hot dog/deep dish-stuffed crust pizza places.  a bunch of gastropubs thrown in there, and then the last few pages are dedicated to mexican food (taquerias, cemitas, sopas, etc.) 

the tough part will be narrowing everything down!  i know for sure that we're definitely going to have one blow out, insanely expensive, 4 hour long meal at alinea.  then the rest is up for grabs.  i'd like to eat at one of paul kahan's places...probably his new gastropub, publican.  definitely want an italian beef sammich, some deep dish pizza (bwong brought me back a stuffed crust in the summer, so we're going to try deep dish), and then check out some of the creole/southern brunch places (a trip to the US is wasted if i don't get biscuits with sausage gravy.)  and i really want to go to a taqueria AND either get cemitas or carnitas.  my tummy is already growling in anticipation!  i'd also like a chicago dog or two and some garrett's popcorn.  i'll have to consult with the dotytron.  

as nerdy as my charts are, i gotta say, they've never steered me wrong.  

okay, the day is running away from me (i ended up spending some time on realtor.ca)  gotta flash!

fin.

lean back

so glad for the weekend! things picked up like crazy near the end of the week and all of a sudden i have like, 7 questions at work and all this extra stuff to do.

we were going to see "the class" tonight but the dotytron wasn't feeling up to it.

my old supervisor T and i were doing our usual, friday "what are you cooking this weekend?" exchange and i was listing off the meals i had planned when she said to me, "you really like themes, don't you?" DO I!!!!!! i LOVE thematically appropriate meals and i have to say it would totally stress me out to have a moroccan tagine with a ceasar salad or something. that's not to say that i can't think outside of the box - i can...and i think i can be a playful, creative cook sometimes, but more often than not i like to revisit what works. so tonight's meal was a night in poland/austria. we had pork schnitzel with butter-sauteed mushrooms, topped with a fried egg and a squeeze of lemon. on the side we had boiled yukon gold potatoes tossed in sour cream with chives and dill, sauteed red cabbage with some red wine vinegar, and pickled beets. after a meal like that, on a cold night like tonight, you can see why we opted out of bundling ourselves up to brave the cold to see a film. we can always go next week.

even though we're not supposed to be having dessert during the week...i had leftover tapioca pudding so i warmed that up and thinned it out with some more milk. i LUB tapioca pudding! i'll post the recipe below. it's so easy.

roll call of awesome:

les miserables (the musical - the book is good, but hella long and wicked expository) when i was a kid, ever-pliable to the pop culture influence of my sister, i went to a bunch of musicals (this was the era when andrew lloyd weber kind of owned broadway for a while.) i saw miss saigon, les miz, phantom, aida...all the big guns. i had seen cats, joseph's amazing technicolor dreamcoat, the one about rollerskating in the future (found it: starlight express), and had been lulled to sleep over many a family car ride to the tunes from jesus christ superstar. my family was one of like, 10 that actually WATCHED the tony's. then musicals became overwhelmingly uncool and i kind of left that part of my life behind.

about 3 years ago, my brother was driving us back from visiting my sister at some ungodly hour of the morning. it was 6 am, we were bleary-eyed, crammed like sleep-deprived anchovies into his yaris. it was winter. my brother got into the driver's seat, put on his winter gloves, slowly and carefully deposited a cold mountain dew into the driver's drink caddy, started the car, placed a cd into the cd player, and proceeded to sing the entire les miserables soundtrack all the way home (all parts sung by the s-dawg.) it was glorious, it was hilarious, it was the most surreal early morning drive i've ever witnessed. this past winter, bwong showed up and we went out for dinner somewhere and he drove us home blasting the soundtrack from his souped audio system in his car. les mis came up again at the farm, when we were treated to J and B's recreation of the dramatic confrontation between javert and jean valjean.

the dotytron went out and bought the original broadway cast recording, and it's effin' awesome. les miz is actually one of the only ones to truly stand the test of time. we've been listening to it while we make dinner and singing along. i've managed to cull untold humour from calling gavroche a chav, every time the little bastard pops up on the scene.

the dream is, that for the 10 year anniversary of the dotytron's annual christmas cd, we're going to assemble all our les miz-obsessed friends and family to recreate the entire musical. how awesome would that be?!??? what an opus!!!!!!


roll call of bunk:

the whole hipster/crafty fake mustache thing has gotten out of hand. i think that H's friend D is the first person i know who started sporting a curlicued mustache from the days of yore. this was at least 5 years ago. now they're everywhere! i'm not trying to suggest that D is ground zero for hip mustache appreciation except that maybe i am. also! H and M (who is incidentally, D's sister) have had a "mustache dance" since i've known them. dun dun duuuuuuuuuuuuuun.

fin.

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

tapioca pudding

serves 4-6 generously (4 you get a 1 c. portion approximately, with 6 you get 3/4 c. portions)

2 c. milk
1/2 c. sugar
1 can of coconut milk
1/2 vanilla bean, scraped (optional)
6 T. pearl tapioca (not the quick cooking kind)

- bring the milk, sugar, coconut milk to a boil in a saucepan
- add the vanilla and tapioca, stirring
- reduce to a simmer, and cook for about 20-30 minutes until the tapioca is cooked through. stir occasionally so that the tapioca doesn't burn and clump up.
- serve warm, or pour into dishes and refrigerate (put plastic wrap directly on the surface if you don't want it to get the pudding skin. i'm a pudding skin fan)
- if you're reheating it, put it back into a pot and thin with a little milk to desired consistency.

TMZ ain't got nothing on this

wow. in my travels today i came across this article on john maynard keynes, who is like, the biggest comeback story of these credit crunch crisis times.  bigger than britney, kelly "i won't go running off at the mouth about clive davis anymore" clarkson, and pink's apparently resuscitated relationship with her dreamboat estranged hubby, carey hart. it's basically the expose of exposes. not only was he too much of a dirty bird to hang with virginia woolf and those other notorious bloomsbury libertines, but (according to the article) he had unlimited faith in the elite. choice quote: "he even wanted cambridge men to run america, because he didn't think anyone in the u.s. was smart enough." lol. "he also didn't like jews, the french or the working class." yikes! also, don't you find that a kind of weird grab-bag of groups to dislike? i do. that's like disliking "baha'i, samoans, and the petty bourgeoisie." actually, considering his (alleged) unwavering faith in the moral fortification of a cambridge education, his hit list kind of does seem fairly consistent.

the hat i knit my mom is too short. so i have to make her a new one. finished object satisfaction is at an all-time low over here at karl lagerfeld tricotage enterprises. my tudorian neck warmer that was supposed to be an overdue birthday gift doesn't look as nice as it should, i had to rip up the mittens i was knitting for someone else as another belated birthday gift, and now i've got to re-do my mom's hat. bogus. i feel like i've been knitting like crazy but have nothing to show for it. you know who wouldn't have this problem? a cambridge man, that's who.

today apparently is world nutella day.  we're not observing.  after work i went and practiced throwing and catching the dodgeball with c64 and his lady in the gym at his condo (technically, his gf's condo.)  then i came home and made one of my favorite pastas.  it's so easy, but so good (and i suspect, so fatty.)  it's rigatoni with spinach, mushrooms, and fontina and gorgonzola.  the original recipe had you throwing bacon in there...but i'm trying to resist dr. rei and bwong's exhortations to turn february into "biggie month."  plus, i'm feeling pangs from knowing that i've single-handedly consumed a quart of butterscotch pudding over the past 5 days.

i couldn't resist making myself some coconut tapioca pudding. it's a fine line between dessert and breakfast sometimes. tapioca pudding is practically red river cereal - the two are only separated by a slender thread of propriety. besides, all that milk is good for me bones.

roll call of awesome:

thelonius monk's advice to saxophonist steve lacy (1960)
courtesy of eric alba's blog



photos borrowed with gratitude from grain edit

the illustrations of derek yaniger, captured in the book "wildsville - the art of derek yaniger" i love love love these retro illustrations!!!! the colours and lines and forms are nostalgic and fresh at the same time with the bold, blocky compositions. they remind me of the tattered gold-spined books that i had as a kid, passed down from my sister and my mum, or, old disney cartoons from when i was a wee wee bobbin and they'd be satirizing beatniks (remember when people used to actually reference beatniks?!?) and really, who doesn't love a good tiki room? (not me and the b-52s, that's for sure!)


book cut sculptures from su blackwell, a uk artist. aren't they just so delightfully mysterious? there's a wildness to them that hints of the witching hour and the will o' the wisps that come out to cavort in the silvery, thin light of the moon. i love them.

we're nearing the end of "the tudors" season 1. what started as a mission for boobs and racy, cable tv, tarted up historical soft core has yielded a mildly interesting (though overlong) journey into the annals of history. let's just put it this way: we can't get through a whole episode without nodding off. there's too little happening to keep us interested and the endless scenes of courtly mincing tends to have a soporific effect.

fin.

------------------------------------------------
rigatoni w/ spinach, mushrooms, 2 cheeses

serves 4, main dishes

1 lb. rigatoni or other sturdy, short pasta
olive oil
1 onion, thinly sliced
4 cloves of garlic, minced
2 cello bags of spinach (approx. 1 lb), rough-chopped
1 lb of mushrooms (your choice), sliced
4 T. unsalted butter
200 g. fontina cheese, cut into smallish pieces
200 g. gorgonzola, crumbled
salt and pepper to taste

- cook the pasta in boiling salted water until al dente.
- heat the oil in a pan, sautee the onions, garlic until fragrant. add the spinach and mushrooms and sautee until caramelized and cooked through, turn off the heat.
- when the pasta is cooked, quickly drain it, then mix it with the diced cheese, the butter, and the spinach-mushroom mixture, stirring and tossing until the cheese is melted and coats the pasta.
- season to taste with salt and pepper.

let's call the whole thing off

getting tied to the hitching post is a colossal pain in the butt and don't ever let anyone tell you different.  the finely calibrated psychoses of the wedding industry are relentless and pernicious in their insidious ability to infiltrate, coerce, and entice.   there isn't a week that goes by where i don't look at the dotytron and say, "why are we doing this again?  why don't we call the whole thing off?"

we're trying to save money (officiants charge an arm and a leg!) by getting hitched in upstate new york.  my sister's judge (he sits on new york's court of appeals, the highest court in the state) lives 10 minutes away from her and would be willing to do it for bupkes (we'd buy him dinner or a bottle of scotch or something of course.)  there's something very very very appealing about getting hitched in sleepy little small town upstate new york in jeans and a t-shirt and then pigging out at dinosaur barbecue after or going to the drive-in.  sounds pretty darn near perfect, to me.  a marriage license in new york costs about 1/2 as much as one in toronto - don't ask me why.  it's so tempting to have just our families there and leave it at that.  

we talked it over on the weekend, i was having a case of the lazy sundays and didn't feel like doing much of anything - let alone face the prospect of putting together a performance piece that's going to cost a good chunk of our hard-earned/borrowed change.  then the dotytron reminded me of why we're doing the big party - because to have all the people you love in the world, all in one place, is a rare and beautiful thing and doesn't happen unless it's a wedding or a funeral.  so what's a few thousand dollars over a lifetime when it's a (hopefully) once in a lifetime fancy party for your friends and family?  when you put it like that, it's the ez-coating that makes the matrimonial pill a lot easier to swallow.

the key is to stay away from wedding blogs.  i fell headlong down that rabbit hole and it was the biggest mistake ever.  snippet and ink, brooklyn bride, modern vintage, style me pretty - the lifestyles and tastes these sites peddle are insane!  it's really hard to remember that i'm actually NOT a fantastically lithe and twee graphic designer in brooklyn marrying a semi-ironically mustachioed furniture designer groom, or that i'm NOT actually tinsley mortimer or georgina chapman flitting around cape cod during my whimsical, week-long "new england clam bake" wedding.  the house of a thousand inspiration boards is a frightening place indeed.  inspiration boards are this girly blog phenomena where people put up groupings of objects/photos/products based around a theme - snipped and ink does a zillion colour-combination based inspiration boards with wedding-based flowers, favours, shoes, details all grouped (and let's face it, probably photoshopped within an inch of their lives) according to themes like "blackcurrant and lime,"  "tourquoise and red," "dove grey and tiffany blue."  i love my colour theory as much as the next person, but there is no way in zion that i could be that coordinated.  plus, what do these picture perfect, art directed brides do with their homely guests?  they sure as hell don't show up in the pictures.  people who buck the trend and didn't listen to the colour scheme gestapo aren't represented at all.  it's kind of bizarre.  where's the weird uncle?  the aunt of a million shawls? the stocking-feet dancing mom brigade?  

speaking of moms...i went to see mine tonight.  i dropped off some food.  one side of her head is super swollen and she kind of looks like sloth from goonies (in the cutest, most turtle-y way imaginable.)  she's so good at reading lips that it didn't seem to make an appreciable difference in her ability to communicate (once you get the cochlear in, you're completely deaf in that ear.) she's sporting this crazy, jagged scar that hooks around her ear and is held together with about a million staples, and she's keeping herself occupied in her painkiller induced haze by sending the family pictures of said scar with the subject line: "GROSS U OUT" lol!  that's my mum.  we were talking about our plans to do the signing of the nuptial papers in the states and she said, "why don't you just take us all to vegas." (i didn't make a mistake with the punctuation. it wasn't a question, it was a statement.) you seriously don't get more hong kong entitled than my mater.

tonight for dinner i threw together some french onion soup...2 giant spanish onions caramelized in olive oil and a bit of butter, deglazed with rapidly vinegaring white wine from the fridge of provenance unknown, and bulked up with 1 L of chicken stock from the freezer.  a bit of salt and pepper, a chunk of baguette and some gruyere melted on top (the best part of the soup is the sopping, onion soaked bread with its' chewy coverlet of funky cheese.)  

i also threw together an impromptu fridge clearing salad of lentils sauteed with diced onion and roasted garlic slices in a spoonful of the mysterious fat-in-a-jar (turned out to be duck) that i found on an excursion to the deeper recesses of my shelf of random jarred goods. with some baby spinach, a shot of red wine vinegar, sea salt, and some roasted pepper slices, it was pretty tasty.

now i'm having my now 5th night in a row nightcap of butterscotch pudding. the dotytron found it too hard to reconcile his savoury associations with the laphroaig i used to flavour it with the sweet preparation and has been abstaining, which means that i've had to shoulder the burden of methodically plowing my way through our stores. i think that after this week, my taste for butterscotch pud will have been satisfied for at least a full year.

fin.

hypochondria chronicles

okay...so for the past year or so, i've had this weird thing where if i don't eat enough and then do physical exertion, sometimes my vision gets a little funny. like, there's this weird blurry patch that's shaped like a lightning bolt or fine, fuzzy hair in my centre-left field of vision. it has the effect where i can't really focus on that particular area (almost like i had just looked at the sun and that spot is not in focus.) usually it goes away if i eat something and then lie down with my eyes closed for a while. it happened to me last night, so i'm kind of freaking out that i've got diabetes (don't ask me why i chalk everything down to diabetes.) wow. i hate google for self-diagnosis...it could be a heart arrhythmia (i totally spelled that right on the first try!)!!!!! or stress!!!!!!! or my retina could be detaching!!!!!! i'm kind of freaking out and i don't know who i should see. should i go to my optometrist? or my family doctor???????

last week when the dotytron was sick, the onset of his flu also happened to coincide with some neck stiffness from sleeping funny, but i freaked out and thought he had meningitis and called home like every half hour with increasingly hysterical directives to "GO TO THE HOSPITAL RIGHT AWAY IF YOU HAVE A FEVER - WHEN IN DOUBT, GO TO EMERGENCY - DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT GOING TO A WALK-IN CLINIC!!!!!!!" and looking up meningitis somehow led me to flesh eating disease which is like, my worst nightmare. any kind of sepsis is my worst nightmare. i once went through the roomie's medical textbook on birth and pregnancy and scared myself celibate. it was basically an hour of me reading about all these "rare" conditions which consequently lead to me having a breakdown and inundating her with staccato demands that she provide me with statistics on how common they are.

my mum is going in for the cochlear surgery today. i hope she's okay and her transition to having a bionic ear is fairly smooth and intuitive. i'm going to visit her tonight at the hospital if at all possible, but i have to stay late at work to give a presentation so i'm not sure if i'm going to make it there before visiting hours are doneski. the prospect of seeing my mum with a shaved head is more than a little unsettling and makes me sad, even though she tends to keep her hair kind of short. i'm not sure how big the incision is going to be. she had me knit her a hat (very specific instructions - black, with a flower) which i'm going to try to finish up tonight if i don't get a chance to see her.

[edit] big d called and told me that she's sleeping and that visiting hours are only until 8pm [/edit]

i had pizza at work for dinner because i gave a little talk to my boss' class visiting from my old faculty. it was weird!!! i had been in classes with some of these people last year and now i'm like, WORKING IN THE FIELD. bizzare-o.

the dotytron got buzzed with the independent thought alarm today and was hoppin' mad about it. the teacher told him she COULDN'T MARK HIS PAPER because he didn't adequately do what the assignment asked him to do. having read the assignment, i found it hella confusing. you tell me:

"immediately following participation in the event [they had to go as a group to an art event they wouldn't normally go to - the dotytron's group went to nuit blanche] you are required to meet as a group so that you can share you reflections on your experience with other members of your group. as a group you will generate TWO questions about some aspect of the experience that will help you explore what and how you learned from the form, content and nature of your experience of attending your group's selected arts event. the two questions will frame your written personal reflection (6 pages) commenting on your experience as a learning context and exploring the implications that address you in relation to your arts/teaching practice."

i read what he wrote, it was pretty decent. the teacher told him, "look, it was really well written and you gave a lot of great analysis, but i don't know HOW to mark this. i mean, this is the kind of stuff that **i** discuss with my colleagues"  lady!  who talks like that!?!???  

poor dotytron has now felt the sweet, censorious kiss of the independent thought alarm.  poor guy.  it's hard when it comes so late in life.  the independent thought alarm was the soundtrack of my childhood.  good thing i was too much of a pint-sized misanthrope to notice.

i just finished my mum's hat.  i hope she likes it.    i also finished this tudorian neck warmer thing the other day.  i'll post pictures tomorrow.

fin.

the crushing sting of defeat

so the non super bowl super bowl party totally turned into a more conventional super bowl super bowl because of the presence of one hebrew hammer who arrived at the party wearing a t-shirt that was festooned with the word "football!" AND who hasn't missed a super bowl in his whole life, and really, who am i to take that away from him?

so we watched it from beginning to end and by some lucky confluence of events, we managed to cobble together the OPTIMAL conditions for fun super bowl watching. some of the variables were planned: the food, the beer - even though i FORGOT THE CHEESE STICK AND JALEPENO POPPERS AT WORK!!!!!!! we still had way too much food though...between the nachos and the ribs, and the cupcakes, (we didn't end up touching the chili); some of the variables were completely fated: the combo of people who ended up showing up were amazing - my boyfriend, N, the hammer, and for a brief bit, aussie teammate R -; the fact that it was a really exciting, nail-biter of a game, with some historic super bowl moments and a crazy rally from the underdogs (whom we were rooting for, of course); and the fact that the hammer has this crazy knowledge of football ins and outs and trivia, and the added gift of being able to explain football to laypeople in an approachable and non-alienating way. somewhere in there, there were off-colour jokes told, discussions of newton's laws of thermodynamics, gossip, a discussion of the racist term "zipperhead" (which i had never heard before, and have since subsequently discovered through some group google that as far as the origins of racist terms go, is HELLA racist and really discomfiting), and general laughs and hijinks.

i think some of my dodgeball peeps didn't show because of some drama that went down at the game last monday, where two of my teammates walked off the court, mid-way through the game and left, due to some perceived malfeasance from our opponents. i've played quite a few games in my day and while the other team was pulling the classic "deflect-the-ball-onto-own-legs-and-not-go-out" routine (if you deflect the ball onto yourself, you're out.) it wasn't BLATANT and the two dudes on my team seem to have like, passive-aggressive issues...where they won't really stand their ground on the court and instead, complain to US about it, which does nothing but make me and N look away awkwardly and pretend we don't know what's going on. it's kind of hilarious. anyway, they walked off and left us there and then sent an email the next morning using inappropriate language in a non-reappropriating way and otherwise whinging and being babies about how they just couldn't take it, blah blah blah. so i sent a well crafted (hey, it's me!) response email basically telling them that when you walk off, you let your team down, and otherwise don't prove any point to the other team other than you got SHOOK. i just didn't have any patience for pandering to that crap. apparently then there were some sour grapes about that shiz after the fact, to other peeps on the team, even though most of the people agreed with me (but stayed silent, in a political move.) in other words, once again, the straight-talking loud mouth stick to her guns broad gets hung out to dry. le sigh.

in other news...i think i've become a pretty darn good dodgeball player. i need to work on getting my throws a little harder and more consistently accurate during the scramble, and i'm pretty middling at catching (totally have to beef up on that front...catching is the holy grail of dodgeball skills because it eliminates an opponent AND brings back a sidelined player from your team), but i've gotten good at the dodge and more than anything (and you can feel ready to insert your snickers here) i *THINK* dodgeball. in yesterday's game, i stopped play at one point when i was the last person on the court, after getting three people out in a row, and exclaimed (about myself!), "dudes, that was a SICK move!" lol!!!!!!! the amount of times i get hit out when i'm busy showboating after getting someone out is totally embarrassing but worth it for the laughs it generates.

tonight i ate leftover moroccan chickpea and squash stew with couscous and i'm treating myself to butterscotch pudding when i get home. unf unf!

this sports-heavy post has been brought to you by the word:

fin.

lazy weekend

the dotytron's sickness had a nice little unintended consequence for my weekend - i took it as an excuse to do as he did, laying about, watching movies, relaxing, and removing myself from most social obligations. the roomie is away for the weekend and it was lovely to have some lowkey me and him time (even though he spent most of it regaling me with a litany of bodily complaints) without having to rush about.


last night for dinner i reheated some frozen beef and barley and mushroom soup and made a spinach, bacon, lentil, roasted red pepper and avocado salad with lemon vinaigrette. it was delicious and fortifying and nourishing. i've been craving butterscotch pudding like mad lately (ever since it popped up on all the food blogs about a month ago) and i committed to making it yesterday, using a tablespoon of bourbon and one of the dotytron's laphroiag. the recipe came out a little pasty and ever-so-slightly gritty, so i think i might use a different one next time...but it was plummy to delve into a little coupe of the stuff, my spoon catching some of the whipped cream on its' way in.

i finally saw the romanian shmashmortion movie, "4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days" it's really good. it takes place over a single day in communist romania (1987) and focuses on a girl attempting to support her friend as she gets an illegal (they're all illegal at that time) abortion. in the process, she has to make a difficult decision. the movie neither trivializes nor sensationalizes the events, which was refreshing. i think so often, with independent, critically lauded films (i'm thinking the lars von trier school, or the usual oscar/independent spirt awards nominee) you're set up for unremitting tragedy more often than not (or, you get the plucky, intelligentsia comedy of the "little miss sunshine" ilk). while the events of this film aren't anything to take lightly (and make no mistake, the movie IS NOT a comedy!), the movie takes a stark, slightly detached perspective, steeped in the realism and intimacy of the performances and the way the narrative unfolds. you get a sense of the day to day life experiences of a range of people under communism. the texture of the film, the dark landscapes, the shadowy interiors, the utilitarian aesthetic - mirror the oppressive scenarios that delineate the field of potential action for the characters. it's definitely worth seeing.

last night we also watched "man on wire," about philippe petit's successful traversing of a wire rigged between the world trade centre towers. the documentary culls from extensive archival footage and photographs taken by petit and his helpers, along with recreations and interviews with the principal figures. the film manages to give you a sense of the magic, wonder, and enormity of spirit that imbues the act, and the kind of situationist-inspired flight of the imagination that the concretization of such an improbability can engender.

the film is a little bogged down by the fact that the main figure, philipe, while as suitably fanciful and artistic as someone who would dream of such a thing can be, is in the end, all too human, and i personally found his humanity, the imperfect corporealness of his personality, to be too much at odds with the ethereal grace that is his performance on the wire. it was jarring, but perhaps that was the filmmaker's intention. the non-existence of the towers themselves provides a shadow of loss that tints the film, permeates every frame - what philipe and his accomplices accomplished can never be replicated, and the viewer is keenly aware of it, though the filmmakers never address the issue. i wonder if this film could have been made or been as impacting if the towers still stood? either way, it's worth seeing. i'm also wondering how influenced i am by the use of satie's gymnopedie no. 1 in the score. probably a lot. lol!

today i'm going to dodgeball and then hosting a super bowl party (where the super bowl is an afterthought - we may or may not have it on) for the team. i almost kiboshed the shindig because about 3/4 of my team doesn't understand the concept of rsvping. it was aggravating but understandable, because i don't think they're used to the kind of parties that i throw. i don't think they're aware that rsvping kind of makes a difference when someone is preparing a tonne of food and drink for you. it's just not their usual bag, i guess. i made a ground beef, hominy, and kidney bean chili with my usual mixture of secret herbs, spices, and dried chilies. i made a VAT of guacamole with which there'll be sour cream, tomatillo and jack's garden salsa and freshly fried corn chips. i'm deep frying some cheese stick and jalepeno poppers (purchased - i'm not THAT crazy), and i also made some ribs that i'm going to baste with a sticky sauce before finishing them in the oven. i may or may not make cornbread, depending on how many peeps show, and i made the devil's food cupcakes with brown sugar buttercream. we also have beers and cocktails if people want.

the sauce for the ribs is one that dr. rei made for us once, from a recipe in food and drink magazine. i quite liked it. she threw everything into the slow cooker (i think), but i braised my ribs separately, with the intention of basting them with the sauce for the final heating, and then cutting them into individual riblets for consumption. i made some small changes to the original recipe - i've posted it below. the sauce is a pleasant sweet-sour combo that has vaguely asian notes. i upped the lime because i love the flavour and fragrance of limes.

in sad news, i broke my slow cooker. the ceramic is NOT meant to be used for stovetop cooking apparently, and when i touched it with something cold, the ceramic bowl cracked. it's thwarted death once before, when i almost melted off the knob. i was ready to junk it then but it got a sensible, last minute death penalty-by-way-of-garbage disposal reprieve from the dotytron. i'm going to have to get a new one when i go visit my sis in a couple of weeks.

fin

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icky sticky pile of bones (their name, not mine!!!  i would call this "sweet and sour oven-braised ribs")

4 racks pork back ribs
6 limes, 4 thinly sliced, 2 left whole
1 tsp (5 mL) whole black peppercorns
1¼ cups (300 mL) ketchup
¾ cup (175 mL) pure maple syrup
⅓ cup (75 mL) balsamic vinegar
¼ cup (50 mL) cider or red wine vinegar
2 tbsp (25 mL) soy sauce
2 tsp (10 mL) dry or Dijon mustard
¼ tsp (1 mL) cayenne pepper

- preheat oven to 350ºF (160ºC).

- cut ribs racks in half. place ribs in a 9x13" pan. place lime slices on ribs and sprinkle peppercorns onto baking sheet. pour 1½ cups (375 mL) hot water into pan. cover entire pan with foil, sealing edges tightly. Bake for 1 to 1½ hours, or until ribs are fork-tender and pulling away from the bone. discard water, lime slices and peppercorns.

- meanwhile, combine ketchup, syrup, balsamic vinegar, cider vinegar, soy sauce, mustard and cayenne in a saucepan. squeeze the juice from the two whole limes and put the juice and the juiced limes into the saucepan. bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring often. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring often, for about 20 minutes or until reduced by about one-third and thickened.

- line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or foil. place ribs on pan and brush heavily with the sauce, reserving any extra sauce. bake for about 20 minutes in a 400F oven, brushing halfway with reserved sauce, until ribs are glazed and sticky.

(dr. rei seemed to have great success with just dumping everything [minus the boiling water] into a slow cooker - i think that's how she did it!)

how i ended up with a hopeless romantic

...actually, i'm not sure how. he is one though. and how! allow me to provide some examples to bolster my case (if you know him though, i think you'd agree that the prosecution has this one in the bag.)

we've got these giant icicles that have formed off the gutters (like, 4 ft long, cerebral cortex-piercing stalactites) and the dotytron is super-worried that one of us is going to get beaned in the melon with them, on our way through the driveway to the back door. he even called me at work one day to leave me a message telling me to be careful, because he had passed one that had already fallen and the shattered 2" diameter chunks totally wigged him out. as we were trudging back under them one day carrying groceries, i stopped to look up at them, to gauge whether any were likely to come splintering off. "don't look up!" the dotytron told me, "it's like the never ending story, you have to be true of heart to pass through unharmed" lol!

example numero deux. my mom is getting her cochlear surgery done on tuesday. i was explaining to the roomie about how the rehabilitation process is the most challenging part, because people with cochlear implants don't hear what we hear - sound is turned into an electrical signal that their brain has to reinterpret and assign to sounds...like you're basically learning how to hear again. at which point the dotyron, who had been working on organizing his binders, pipes up from the living room, "i would like to be able to hear what people with cochlear implants hear, and then compose music for them, that only they would get" *insert the dotytron's excited, bigeyes face* how is he so the best?

him being so best didn't exactly stop me from turning apocalyptica last night when he started watching that hilary swank teaching movie, "freedom writers" (he has basically downloaded every teaching movie ever made and is watching them all, one by one.) it's about hilary swank as a teacher in a multi ethnic, downtrodden, torn-apart-by-gang-violence community, trying to reach out to the youths. it's based on a true story. the kids published a book of their poetry in real life. somewhat true to form, i became INCENSED with the fact that he was watching such derivative, sentimental, racist, cliched pap. the roomie had already seen the movie (but she's susceptible to that kind of stuff) and they were both defending it and i kind of lost my s**t. especially when he said, "you object to it on artistic grounds, and you're kind of lagerfelding out right now" at which point i almost had a CONNIPTION because not only did i find the treatment of the scenario intellectually offensive, i found it offensive that HE didn't find it offensive.

i told him that this was a just a new version of shuckin' and jivin'. it was a film based on a PERFORMANCE of "black" "latino" and "asian" "inner city" "youth" for the benefit of a primarily white audience, to see how the benevolent, plucky WHITE WOMAN (hilary swank) overcomes her own squareness and RAISES THESE KIDS UP. this movie isn't about THEM. it's about HER! it's a mealy mouthed pandering platitude that reinforces the power stereotypes between white people and minorities . you want to see a great movie about teaching? "half nelson." there. or, that documentary we watched about the kids debating, "resolved." speaking about movies about teaching, in a weird convergence of events i heard about a movie called "the class" yesterday, and then had it brought up to me by no less than 3 other sources through the course of the day: the dotytron, my sister, and entertainment weekly. it looks good! i'm going to try to see it next week.

okay okay. what have i been reading lately? i finished curtis sittenfeld's first book, "prep." sittenfeld published a highly acclaimed, thinly veiled fictionalized account of laura bush's life this year, called "american wife". i tried reading "american wife" only to put it down because i was promised (by a review in entertainment weekly) racy sex scenes and a cursory thumbing through of the pages yielded bupkes. i made it all the way through "prep" but it wasn't an effortless journey. i think the teenage point of view helped temper my dissatisfaction with major elements of the novel.

"prep" follows 14 year old lee fiora, daughter of a mattress salesman from grand bend, indiana, through 4 years of high school at a tony boarding school on the east side (close to boston) called ault. the book was hailed when it came out, although the reviews weren't unremittingly positive. i pulled it out in the lunch room one day, when i was only about 50 pages in, and K (who knows a lot about all things literary and new york times/new yorker book review-y) said, "i heard the main character is kind of annoying." which was the catalyst for one of those epiphany moments when you're finally able to articulate that niggling feeling of distaste that's been lurking at the hinterlands of your aesthetic appreciation.

the main character IS annoying!!!!! i think she's supposed to come off as detachedly observant and smart ("prep" is often compared to "the catcher in the rye" another book about alienated teenagerydom that i find sublimely overrated...and boring), but she's actually quite stupid, kind of racist, and not very endearing. she refuses to make friends and alienates herself from her peers in a way that's supposed to be because she's so acutely aware of her class and how she's an interloper moving amongst the best and brightest of the moneyed society dons' progeny. that doesn't come across. what you have is a kid who's totally a neurotic weirdo freak who kind of doesn't DESERVE to be befriended, and moreover, looks at people with such scorn that she alienates people who seem to be genuinely nice. she's also stupidly hung up on this unattainable dude (named cross sugarman, believe it or not) who treats her like crap. the most annoying thing is that the narration seems to be the voice of an adult lee, looking back on her life...however, she doesn't learn a thing! she STILL seems to be as detached, awkward, and dumb as when she was a teenager!!! she STILL pines for cross sugarman or cross sugarman types! it's infuriating. this didn't stop me from finishing the book (which is also kind of narratively devoid and disjointedly episodic.) but i can't say i would recommend it.

i also read "the key to the golden firebird" which is a YA novel that's pleasant enough, though not quite as enjoyable as e. lockhart's work or sarah dessen's. it adheres to the standard YA plot, awkward teen finds love shortly after some kind of traumatic experience/personal tragedy (in this case, her dad dies from a sudden heart attack.) the writing is decent...but the characters are kind of weak and it's slim (even by YA standards.)

"the bottomless belly button" is a GIANT comic that i found because it was recommended in one of those "if you like ___, try ___" lists in a magazine (who am i kidding? probably entertainment weekly.) in this case, the first part of the equation was alison bechdel's "fun home" which i adored. the author, dash shaw (i know, it totally sounds like a made up name) has a very simple, naive drawing style. the story follows the loony family as they reconvene at the family's beachside home where their elderly parents announce that they are getting a divorce after almost 50 years together because they're not in love anymore. it's kind of sad and quiet and awkward. i don't really get the comparison to "fun home" - i think alison bechdel is way more accomplished and skillful, both at drawing and in creating very realistic, human characters. this comic was one of those ones that's fiendishly popular with those types that insist on calling them "graphic novels" - the indie types who seems to like it when everything is kind of downtrodden and there's always a malignant unnamed force and sense of foreboding overshadowing the story (this malignance tends to find its' apotheosis around graphic depictions of sex - don't ask me why.) i didn't really get it, to be honest.

last night i finished reading guy delisle's newest book (i've reviewed his works before), "the burman chronicles." he's also the author of "shenzhen" and "pyongyang" and like those other two, this follows his slice-of-life observations living in a highly repressive, censored, asian country - in this case, burma. he's followed his partner there (she works for medecins sans frontieres) and they have a small child. i love his work because it's a very subjective travelogue that doesn't seem overly preachy. he's quite critical of the expatriate community and NGOs but it's doesn't come across as didactically ideological - as in any situation where you live in a place for a substantial amount of time (he's there for over a year) and are an open and curious person, you tend to adjust your observations as you get to know people better. compared to his depictions of life in north korea, you get the sense that the people of burma are a lot less resigned to their isolation and the censorship and brutalities of the junta. the people he encounters seem much more aware that their emails/newspapers/media are being carefully edited and culled for anything remotely controversial. this could be because burma seems to be more economically stable, with the major jewel trade. there is some interesting dissection of the work of NGOs and of the private companies that do business with the military dictatorship. i also enjoy the expressiveness of delisle's drawing style and his own sense of self-deprecating humour.

okay. that's enough out of me for one day. but i think i'm dropping my project management class. winter is NO time to be taking a night class. i think i'm going to hold off on it until the fall. i DEFINITELY don't want to be taking a night class in the summer (not when there's eating outside to be doing, and ice cream missions to be executing.) i think fall is a good time to take on some studies...i'll still be motivated to go and it won't feel so soul crushing.

fin.

oh hai, i can has tendonitis?

sad update from the department for prolific and overly verbose posting here at chinotto is my nemesis. i've been felled by a wicked case of tendonitis/tennis elbow. after working for about an hour on monday, i started getting some flashes of numbness in my left arm and slight twinges of pain. not good!

today, before they sent us home early from the wicked snowstorm, i adjusted the height of my arm rests on my chair (i usually angle them in at about a 25 degree angle and put them up fairly high so that my elbows are bent at a 90 angle and my wrists kind of hover over the keyboard, and there was instant relief! that means someone was fuxoring with my chair while i was away on friday (not good!) at least i can type now...one-handed typing is the worst. i'd rather hand write (that's a bald-faced lie.)

so, dear readers, you'll have to be rewarded for your faithful and dogged dedication to this little space with pictures of pasta instead of the promised book reviews, which are growing by the day and becoming quite the unwieldy and oppressive presence, skulking and squatting on my yellow sticky pad on my igoogle.

coming up with new meals can be a little taxing sometimes...i know what you're going to say, "you could always repeat" - but that's basically like saying to me, "you could just let your green bin get all stinky and gross" or, "you could just avoid using words like 'harridan' in disagreements with people if you want the stinging barb to land true" - it's just not the lagerfeld way.

that's not to say that you haven't seen repeats on here in the 2+ years i've been blogging...just that food captures my imagination to such an extent that repeating seems like a waste of a perfectly good culinary opportunity (not that i don't make exceptions for fried chicken, mac'n'cheese, steaks, eggplant parm, etc.)

to complicate things, there are also certain parameters i set for myself when i'm doing the menu planning. 1 meal (weeknight dodgeball night) is takeout (to help me maintain my sanity); 1 meal is leftovers; meals cooked earlier in the week (say, monday through thursday) should yield plentiful leftovers for varied lunches and not require *too* much cooking time; fridays and saturdays are for one-off/elaborate type meals (with fridays favoring quicker preparations); and sundays are for the big, elaborate, but still cozy family sunday supper meal. in addition, i try for meat twice a week, seafood once or twice a week, and veggie the rest of the time. that's a lot of variables to juggle!

with all of this though, i seem to have settled on a fairly predictable formula for a quick, weeknight pasta. take 1 part cured pork product (in this case, some leftover cacciatora i had lurking in my fridge, feel free to substitute proscuitto, chorizo, pancetta, etc. at will), 1 part greens, 1 part legume (usually chickpeas), add some of T's peppers, and pasta and pasta cooking water and voila! last night we had broccoli with the aforementioned cacciatora, chickpeas, T's peppers, and parm over penne. delicious!

tonight, i made a moroccan (it always takes me a minimum of 3 tries to spell that right - i always get confused what letter i'm doubling) butternut squash and chickpea stew, in my trusty enameled cast iron (from here on in, this pot will be referred to as the le creuset, even though the nomenclature is not technically correct and mine is a american-made imposter) dutch oven, served over couscous that we FINALLY got right. the key is NOT to take couscous and pour 1.5x the amount of boiling water over it, cover, and let sit and fluff with a fork. if you ever read another recipe that tells you to malign the couscous thusly, THROW IT AWAY.

no, the method that yields fluffy, distinct, tender grains of semolina goodness is this one documented here. my friends, STEAMING is the key! steaming and a little before and post dousing with water and salt and a final, gentle rub down with some olive oil. sure, it requires maybe 10% more effort, but the results are SO WORTH IT.

the recipe i used for the stew, i adapted from smitten kitchen. it was probably my most successful attempt at moroccan, ever. it was delicious. i ended up buying preserved lemons as i didn't have a chance to make them...the ones you buy are much different - less salty, small, middle eastern lemons floating in a saline bath flecked with nigella seeds. they have a faintly perfumey, rose-water type aroma which i was afraid would overpower the dish...my fears were irrational, you could barely taste it, and if i ever repeat the recipe, i'll bump up the preserved lemon quantities to a full one.

but before i give you the recipe, feast your eyes on THIS (it appeared in today's new york times "dining" section...tip of the hat to my dodgeball boyfriend for bringing it to my attention.)  ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present to you  the bacon explosion

in other news, i got into a verbal disagreement (conducted in a civil, polite, and genial manner) with some striking york cupe members on the grounds of my work this morning. i went up to one of them and said, "excuse me, are you a graduate student?" when she replied "yes" i said, "well, when i was a graduate assistant at york university, we were only paid based on 10 hours of work a week, is that still the case?" she nodded. then i said, "well then, don't you find the rhetoric being employed by the union that graduate assistants make below the poverty line a bit of a specious argument, considering the fact that you're not working anywhere near full time hours or even for a full year?" and she said that the union had taken that off the bargaining table and that now the fight was for benefits. but then she added this, "well, it's only for 10 hours a week, but york doesn't want us working any outside hours because they want us focusing on our studies, and writing papers, and publishing, so we're being asked to live off what we earn because we're discouraged from making additional income" [emphasis mine] [author's note: when i was at york as a grad assistant i was paid a little more than $1000/month, for 40 hours of work, most of which was photocopying ish for my professor]

ummmmmmmm...i could basically pilot the hindenburg through the holes and RANK ENTITLEMENT that underlies that argument. york "doesn't want" you working more hours? okay, babyface...how about you get york to wipe your butt for you, too? how about you try getting off your butt and doing what YOU need to do to survive, like COUNTLESS other people in this great city dO, without the benefit of a graduate stipend? if you're a masters' student in the humanities, you're looking at 12 hours of class time a week. i'm going to be generous and DOUBLE the class time for prep (reading, writing, etc) (but you don't need it.) that still gives you 26 HOURS A WEEK YOU COULD BE WORKING A PART TIME JOB, you succubus! how about you get a work ethic, and THEN you've EARNED YOUR TIME ON THE PICKET LINE?!? heaven forbid you actually have to apply yourself and maximize your time so that you might actually contribute to the elevation of the rapidly degenerating canadian intellectual community.

crikey. and don't get me started on an the ndp. does a party that's so in DIRE need of an image and ideological overhaul, really need to step in on behalf of some 3000 and change striking workers who, if they were really deserving of the tenured positions they covet so, would have found such positions in other academic institutions? thanks for representing the wishes of your constituents, buddies. oh wait, i forgot, canadian politics DOESN'T DO THAT.

wow. i cranked out some maximum rent on a manky elbow. better give you guys what you want. i've posted the recipe below.

fin.

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Squash and Chickpea Moroccan Stew
Adapted from Aida Mollencamp
Serves 6 to 8

1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, small dice
4 medium cloves garlic, thinly sliced
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 (3-inch) cinnamon stick
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 pound butternut squash, large dice
3/4 pound red potatoes, large dice
2 cups low-sodium chicken or vegetable broth
2 cups cooked chickpeas, drained
1 (14-ounce) can diced tomatoes, with juices
Pinch saffron threads (optional)
1/2 preserved lemon, finely chopped
1 cup brined green olives
Steamed couscous, for serving 
Toasted slivered almonds, for garnish
Plain yogurt, for garnish
Hot sauce of your choice (for serving)

Heat butter and olive oil in a 3- to 4-quart Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed saucepan with a tight fitting lid over medium heat. When oil shimmers, add onion, garlic, cumin, and cinnamon, and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until spices are aromatic and onions are soft and translucent, about 5 minutes.

Add squash and potatoes, season with salt and freshly ground black pepper, stir to coat, and cook until just tender, about 3 minutes. Add broth, chickpeas, tomatoes and their juices, lemon, olives, and saffron, if using. Bring mixture to a boil then reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer until squash is fork tender, about 10 minutes.

Serve over couscous garnished with cilantro, almonds, and yogurt.

in a different time, in a different place

...maybe this is the wedding dress i would have worn:

this is a jenny packham gown i tried on at "white toronto" that elicited squeals of delight from dr. rei and her mater and insistent urging that i purchase it right away from the latter. i will admit that it did fit like a dream and the fit gave me a lovely hourglass figure that i don't actually possess and gave me some evidence that perhaps my "i can't wear strapless" edict is perhaps a little preemptive. i did feel gorgeous in it, but it was the kind of "okay for an hour, alright i'm done now" gorgeous. that's a dress for a wedding (capital w, even) not a jokey performance piece featuring a groom who might very well be wearing jeans and stan smith's if he has his druthers.

we tried on some HILARIOUS numbers...one of which was pure sequined, deco, roaring 20s, olsen-twins madness and we had a grand time. i even got to wear those chicken cutlet boob things! now THAT'S something i'd seriously consider. they stick onto your skin, they bring you up a cup size and they're the best bra replacement EVER. i was prancing around topless in the change room with just those tacked onto my boobs with nary a potentially revealing slip to be found. LOVE THEM! anyway, at the end of the day, it was quite easy for me to take off the $2000 dress with only the mildest, faintest, barely registering twinges of regret. i'm not that girl. i'm not getting tied to the hitching post with that guy who gets married to that girl. so i'm glad i had the opportunity to play dress up and take pictures and be a vision in white and at the end of the day come home to my sweet little vintage number. best of both worlds!

biggie night w/ the hamcamp klik was fantastic (minus hanbo who was felled by flu.) taking a cue from big poppa we feasted on "a t-bone steak, cheese eggs and welch's grape" (the cheese is in the creamed spinach, and showed up later.) let's just say biggie knew how to EAT. hooee...that s**t was intense, sons. i mean, i ate it, but i kind of fell like hell after. especially when we broke out one of the goosetang clan's patented, odd-ball, viennese dessert tables. this one consisted of dr. rei-provided/biggie-inspired snacks like, twinkies - microwaved so the filling gets a little bit gooey - (the dotytron doesn't microwave his because he wants the full nutritional value), frito's version of ring-a-lo's (which aren't as good as proper ring-a-lo's because they're a little too corny and the holes aren't big enough for you to stick your fingers through and eat them off your fingies), hostess ketchup chips (question; what are the three little "flame" like mascot dudes on the hostess bag supposed to be? i say they're supposed to be chips), and my cheesecake brownies (second iteration of cheese in the menu.)

what definitely made the night was the conversation...we talked about everything under the sun...palestine, deflation, negative inflation, the lack of sanity in the stock market, the disappearance of the gold standard, how we're due for a return of idealism, sincerity, dignity, grace, and compassion, amnesty international, the dire need for interdisciplinary bridge-building, macro-level rigor to bind us from our solipsistic pursuits of the increasingly specialized...it was a soul-satisfying talk that resulted in more than one goosebump-raising ideological moment. that's ultimately why i cherish the goosetang so. we understand each other (which isn't to say that we agree all the time) and it's so refreshing to be able to have cogent, in-depth conversations with people who are so intellectually stimulating and share me and the dotytron's confusion. what makes it even better is our shared cultural awareness...so we can seamlessly flow between that kind of talk and then spin off into i r serious cat talk (dr. rei's favorite.) that's what i love about my siblings, too and that's probably where i got the taste for it.

the next day i went to visit G and M and their respective families. those two had the CUTEST babies i've ever seen. now we all know i'm biased towards ethnic babies...but seriously...THE CUTEST. freakin' adorable. i was baby hogging to the max and could feel definite uterine twinges. little baby G was giving me the most exasperated rollseyes as he was sleeping in my arms and has the most delicious sturdy little body and super-pouty lips. meanwhile, baby C has GINORMOUS wide eyes and a thatch of hair that looks like it's already been styled into a quasi skater-faux hawk. they're the kind of babies that you could just eat up with a spoon.

then it was hardcore family time...we watched the disney video and kind of figured out where we're going to stay on our big disneyworld family vacation in december '08. my niece also put on this awesome iron man costume:

and i gave her a hair cut and we went for japanese all you can eat and made breakfast and went to scarborough town centre to watch a lion dance. then we went back to markham and had dinner with my grandparents. somewhere in there my dodgeball team played my brother's dodgeball team (we won!) and i got some praise from s-dawg on what a good dodgeball player i am (seriously, i'm not gonna lie...i totally played the game of my LIFE on sunday)

then the dotytron and i came home late sunday and he went a little bit buck getting ready for school after a 12 week hiatus. he was stressing to the max. we went to bed really early after unpacking, but not before conducting our own little chinese new year eve ritual. we stood in front of the picture of the kitchen god that we had posted and bowed three times. then we smeared honey on his lips (to sweeten his words to heaven to the jade emperor):

then we burned him and we're going to put up a new picture today.

when i get home from dodgeball we're also going to fry up some of the tradtional sweet cakes and sweet turnip cakes to eat so that we're lucky and prosperous and will ascend the corporate ladder this year.

okay, that's enough outta me for one day. i'll be back with a whackload of book reviews shortly.

fin.

whoa.

so i just looked up the bridal shop, it's called "white toronto" (subtle!) it's all the big guns of bridal. reem acra, badgley mishka, lela rose, monique lhuillier, carolina herrera, and oscar de la renta. dr. rei and i are both predicting that we're going to get treated like crap.

my project management class looks like a cakewalk. the prof seems super nice, although he goes on tangents and is kind of an over-sharer. at one point his phone rang during class and he said that he wouldn't normally take the call or leave the phone on, but he'd just gotten his daughter out of a "really" (his words, not mine) abusive relationship the night before. HEAVY! it's a mid term, an exam, and then a group project, where you do a project charter and a project plan. easy! the class is 90% asians and brown people - all of whom seem serious about success. the hard part is going to be trying to convince my group that we should work on a FUN project and not the canned one the prof put up online for us. ideally, i kinda want to convince people that we should use my performance as a project. lol! it's called multi-tasking, people! plus, those are practical skills that most of the people in the class are going to use, or have used. we'll see. it's going to require considerable use of my persuasive charisma (aka...leadership skills!)

anyway, apparently there's a project management professional certification that i can get, which involves writing an exam (multiple choice), taking a course, and acquiring 4500 hours of project related experience. according to my prof, they're pretty liberal about what they consider project related experience. i figure that my job consists of micro projects, so i think i can just count my work experience towards it. if i'm going to take the classes, i might as well get the certification, as it has a certain degree of market value.

the pissy part, was that i left early, and showed up LATE for yoga class...which was super-annoying, so i didn't end up going. i didn't want to not get my money's worth, and be frazzled when i started. i was mad. so i came home, edited the dotytron's resume and cover letter, packed for markham, and ate 2 butter tarts, a glass of milk, and a bowl of light microwave popcorn, which is made substantially less light by the dotytron's insistent doctoring with melted butter and additional salt.

i've finished reading a TONNE of books lately. i'll post reviews shortly. in the meantime, after doing errands, it's all about prepping for biggie night with the goosetang clan! i'm super excited!

fin.

project management, eh?

getting ready to head to class. fortified with a belly full of 2 grapefruits (i had a big bowl of vietnamese bun for lunch with former coworker L, who is back home for a bit before she jets off again to estonia.)

i'm buzzing with excitement for my day off tomorrow! it's already a busy one, but i'm still looking forward to it nonetheless. the dotytron is going to have the car, so we're doing our grocery shopping and i'm picking up pastries at bonjour brioche and we're picking up our tv. well, technically we're not picking up our tv...our tv was beyond repair so future shop is giving us one of equal or greater value (we're hoping it's an lcd, but we're not holding our breath...considering the one we sent back in was one of those heavy, giant-backed, tube monstrosities.) i'm hoping to get a visit into the yarn store for munitions as well as hitting the mennonites.

then i'm meeting up with dr. rei for this "wedding dress sale." in yorkville. apparently the dresses are advertised as being 70% off...but that's like 70% off $10,000, i'm pretty sure. dr. rei made the appointment before we found THE dress for her. i'm going to try on extravagant dresses and laugh and have a lark...it'll be fun to have that experience.

then it's biggie night with the hamcamp klik. we're eating a dinner of: "t-bone steak, cheese, eggs and welch's grape" and i'm sure bwong is going to regale us with crazy tales of his time spent in the future (aka japan.) i'm so pumped!!!!!!! then bwong is driving us up to markham for chinese new year flex with my family...my sis is coming up with kids in tow.

i guess i should bounce. if i'm leaving class early to hit up yoga, i shouldn't arrive super-late.

here's the dotytron's sister's music video! crazy! it's hard reconciling her singing persona, emma-lee, with the goofball i know. it's for her song, "bruise easy":



fin.

boy, am i glad i don't live on

...revolutionary road. lol! s**t be bleak over there, sons! before i get to that review, i have some administrative stuff (aka, daily minutiae) to get rid of.

speaking of which: we're starting to see the appeal of why people just run away and do it at city hall or something instead. it just seems like so much work and such a colossal hassle. we're supposed to go over our timeline tonight and set firm deadlines and drill down so that we can make sure all the details get covered. it kind of sucks all the fun out of it. but in my more generous moments i realize that the whole "let's just scrap it" mentality seems to be part and parcel of every party i've thrown - from the big professional ones down to having 6 people over for dinner. the payoff (the amazing time and the laughs) is always worth it. we just got to buck up and get down to business.

so, the dynamic of K, D and myself worked out well! i get freaked out about hanging with old people sometimes (i know, it's very lame of me) which is totally weird because i totally hang out with old people like, ALL THE TIME (my old supervisor T being a notable example.) having a bunch of people interested in film to talk about the movie afterwards was gratifying - people who like to take a movie apart and dissect it and then put it back together again and weigh in some more. it was also useful in this case because K has actually read "revolutionary road," which added another layer to our critique.

so. the movie. ummmm...i can say that i didn't love it. i liked it, but i'm not sure how much i liked it. it was very very bleak and grim, but i don't think the subject matter and the story are what's keeping me from unequivocally claiming it.

one of the things that i found extremely distracting was how close the score was to that from "road to perdition." because i've seen that in the last 6 months, i found it really hard to focus because to me, it sounded IDENTICAL.

i thought that kate winslet's performance was just a hairsbreadth over-the-top, which could also be a fault of mendes' direction, as he favoured really unforgiving tight shots, right up close to the actor's faces. i thought leonardo dicaprio was very good, but they weren't evenly matched. kate winslet seems much older than him, more mature, and more womanly, which i think is just an unfortunate case of leo's baby face and how he hasn't really grown out of the softness of his features - regardless, it was hard to see them matched up as a pair, as she exuded a womanliness that was outmatched by his petulance (tip of the hat to K - that's her entirely accurate descriptor i'm poaching.)

D didn't like the mentally unstable neighbour character, the "id" as he called it - he thought it was too obvious. i agree that having the character is too obvious, but i liked the performance and for that i'd be willing to give him a pass.

it was an unforgiving portrait of two people realizing how ordinary and pedestrian they are, but set against the suburbs, and i think for me, that was the most incongruous element of it. i just feel like we're really far removed from that dichotomizing between the suburbs and the city, and the fact that the director trod this territory before (with "american beauty" - which i also found fantastically overrated and overly mannered) doesn't allow me to view the inclusion of the suburban setting and the desire to make this film with a fresh set of eyes. i don't think i can understand the vitriol or understand how two people who are so vicious to each other would stay together in a relationship. i thought the convenient absence of their two children to be jarring - i kept thinking "where are the kids?" when they were having these knock-out, drag down fights, screaming at the top of their lungs. it was a little too pat to have the kids missing during it, and i think their inclusion would have added a deeper layer and urgency to the violence the couple enacts upon each other.

i thought the film was beautifully shot, though sometimes a little contrived. i really liked that the period details didn't overwhelm the film - the set design and art direction (?) were note-perfect, never veering into distraction (the way i imagine "mad men" does.) i thought the sequence of events was a little strange and the story was a little thin - it came off kind of stagey. i think in the end, i wanted MORE.

at harvey's last night i ate a double cheeseburger (why are harvey's burgers so darn tasty?!?) and a poutine and i was so so so very very very happy. there's something really beefy about a harvey's burger and i love the texture of the patty. they're improbably juicy. tonight we're having perogies, that i'm baking in the oven, slathered with a topping of onions, bacon, and mushrooms all sauteed. i can't wait to eat perogies with caramelized onions dunked in a sour cream bath. unf unf unf! i'll update with a picture tonight.

first i'm going to do yoga and then the remainder of tonight is performance: project management edition. tomorrow IS my friday!!! it's my first EDO this week (earned day off.) i'm so freakin' happy about it - even if it already is jam-packed with activities...at least i can sleep in a bit. it's a humdinger of a day tomorrow though - an extra long one. work and then my project management course and then i'm nipping out of that a bit early so i can make it to my yoga class. ai-ya.

roll call of awesome:

“This is a delusion about credit. And whereas from the nature of credit it is to be expected that a certain line will divide the view between creditor and debtor, the irrational fact in this case is that for more than ten tears debtors and creditors together have pursued the same deceptions. In many ways, as will appear, the folly of the lender has exceeded the extravagance of the borrower.

The general shape of this universal delusion may be indicated by three of its familiar features.

First, the idea that the panacea for debt is credit…The aggregate of this increase is prodigious, and a very high proportion of it represents recourse to credit to avoid payment of debt.

Second, a social and political doctrine, now widely accepted, beginning with the premise that people are entitled to certain betterments of life. If they cannot immediately afford the, that is, if out of their own resources these betterments cannot be provided, nevertheless people are entitled to them, and credit must provide them…

Probably one half of all government, national and civic, in the area of western civilization is either bankrupt or in acute distress from having over-borrowed…

Third, the argument that prosperity is a product of credit, whereas from the beginning of economic thought it had been supposed that prosperity was from the increase and exchange of wealth, and credit was its product.

This inverted way of thinking was fundamental. It rationalized the delusion as a whole. Its most astonishing imaginary success was in the field of international finance, where it became unorthodox to doubt that the use of credit in progressive magnitudes to inflate international trade the problem of international debt was solved…

Was it possible for nations to sell to one another more than they bought from one another…? Certainly. But How? By selling on credit. By lending one another the credit to buy one another’s goods…"
- from Garet Garret, in A Bubble That Broke The World – a book published in 1932

by way of my FAVORITE financial blog the big picture can we say TRENCHANT?!?? love it!

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this photo is absolutely lovely...i love the contrast in the tones. it's from solidbutter's photostream.

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wise words from jim jarmusch.

fin.