fat little weirdo

the fat little weirdo returned with a VENGEANCE on tuesday night. i didn't think i was going to be hungry after scarfing mad pizza and cake at lunch - i figured i would only nibble on some fruit or something. but apparently the fat little weirdo had other ideas in mind.

i microwaved a bag of light popcorn and started shoveling handfuls into my mouth. then i took five hotdogs from the mennonites (no nitrates!) and boiled them and ate them sans bun. the dotytron was strangely immune to my "dinner" of choice. instead he studiously tried to ignore me as i stood behind him in an oversize, dirty breakcore t-shirt, with a plate of hot dogs, spearing one up and dipping it's snappy, taut end in ketchup before taking giant bites and asking through noisy, snuffly chews, "you sure you don't want some of this?" for some reason he finds it distracting when i do that.


last night i made us a quickie dinner of pan fried paneer on top of a warm chickpea salad consisting of some of T's preserved chilies, onions, garlic, and chopped zucchini blossoms. i scooped this warm mixture on top of some baby spinach and squeezed half a lemon over and sprinkled it with sea salt. then i topped it with the fried paneer.

for dessert i was really craving a pudding cake. i LOVE pudding cakes of all stripes and persuasions. chocolate pudding cakes, pouding chomeur, strawberry rhubarb, etc etc. blueberry pudding cake is one of my all-time favorites though. it's the best of both worlds - warm, ultra-blueberry compote on the bottom cradling a tender, light as air quick-bread cake with a crusty top and chewy-browned edges, a perfect foil for a scoop or two of vanilla ice cream. the best thing about pudding cakes is that by and large, they come together in less than 15 minutes. 15 minutes of active time for a warm, homey, old-timey dessert? yessum!

i worked really really really hard today. one of those days where i was juggling a million different tasks and phone calls and memos at once. i barely got up to pee and didn't eat a thing all day except 2 tim horton's cookies. after work we went to pick up our grillz. the dotytron's fit amazing but mine didn't turn out and i have to get remolded. it's very demoralizing. what if mine's not done in time?!?? what's wrong with my teefs?

then we got the dotytron some flip flops and hit up chipotle for dinner. the barbacoa at chipotle is a wonderful thing. so good! we were going to try to be thrifty and split a burrito but i was so demoralized by my grill not fitting that i ate the whole thing. plus i was probably suffering from low blood sugar from not having had a chance to eat all day and getting up at 6am for a run.

now i'm recording a billion takes for the performance cd. singing is hard. it's hard in a lot of ways. first you have to be in tune. this is HARD. then you have to project. this is also hard. then you also have to EMOTE THE FEELINGS IN THE SONG. this is very hard. in combination with all the other stuff it's damn near impossible. especially if you, like me, are tone deaf. here's my tip: REVERB IS YOUR FRIEND.

tomorrow is a BUCKSHOT day. we have our purchaser's visit to the house, which means we have like, 6 different contractors coming through to give us quotes. then we have to go to the bank and like, take out every dime we've ever had in our lives. here's my tip: 3.7% FIXED INTEREST IS YOUR FRIEND. then i have to get my mold done for my teeth and come home and get my hair cut and then have the kdubsguelph crew over to do backup vocals and gossip. i'm exhausted and stressed just thinking about it.

here's the recipe for the blueberry pudding cake:

fin.

------------------------------------------------
blueberry pudding cake
serves 4-6, from gourmet magazine, july 2005

1/3 cup plus 1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon cornstarch
10 oz blueberries (2 cups)
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
1/2 cup whole milk
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly

- butter a 9" square baking pan (i use a 9" round casserole dish with 3" high sides)
- preheat oven to 375F
- stir together 1/3 c. sugar with water, lemon juice, cornstarch and blueberries in a saucepan. bring to a simmer. simmer 3 minutes, set aside.
- stir together flour, baking powder and salt. whisk together milk, egg, and butter.
- stir liquid ingredients into dry ingredients. spread into prepared pan.
- carefully pour blueberry mixture over cake mixture (blueberries will sink. this will look wet).
- bake for 30-45 minutes until top spring backs when touched and is golden brown.
- serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

passing before my eyes

this is what i've read in the last 3 months or so (continued from this post):

frequent readers know what a fan i am of yoshihiro tatsumi's work. i've reviewed other books of his before. adrien tomine (another comic writer/artist i'm a fan of) has been instrumental in getting drawn and quarterly to republish tatsumi's work and rescue this dude from cult obscurity. tatsumi's stories are like a cross between haruki murakami's work and twisted, pulp, fiction. these stories all centre on some kind of warped desire or "deviant" sexual proclivity. works in "the push man and other stories" were originally published in 1969, while "good bye" features select works from 1971-72. it shows a very different side of japanese culture than what we in the west are usually exposed to, even more so because the stories all focus on the lower-middle class - not the droney, repressed office workers of contemporary american depictions of japanese culture, but sewage workers, janitors, and failed, impotent men in general. the drawing style is naive, but with an expressive grace - tatsumi is incredibly evocative with a few thick lines of ink. the stories can be a little hard to swallow. the subject matter can be difficult to read - the seedy underbelly that's exposed is something you don't necessarily want to see. at the same time, they lure you with their almost surreal horror - like murakami's work, you're left puzzling at the subtext and deeper meaning of the grotesque vignettes.



i followed those up with jeff lemire's eisner award nominated essex county trilogy, which i read out of order and then pieced together sequentially after. these are top-shelf comics, folks. and so canadian! and for once, i'm not using that as a pejorative! these interconnected, slim little books tell the stories of a few generations of a small town in ontario, weaving together the genealogy and history that belies the open, aching, sparseness of the countryside and its inhabitants. lemire's drawing style runs the gamut - mostly thick, messy, and scrawling, but controlled all the same, and at times, fine and delicate - when showing the frail stubbornness of an old, alzheimer's-ridden drunk at a senior's home, the lines echo the faint, papery vibrations that beset the elderly. the story is touching and sweet, full of what's not said, the secrets that breath out in the vast stillness in the sleepy farming community. i can't say enough good things about these comics. highly recommended.

i don't know if you guys remember, but i was kind of obsessed with mormons for a while (i may or may not have mentioned this here.) this coincided with my fleeting fascination with those giant-family shows on tlc. you know, like the duggers of "18 kids and counting" fame? the thing that gets me is that there's this weird normalization of fringe religious wackpotness under the guise of, "look how cute! they have a million children! all with weird j names like jebediah and josiah!" i feel like this discourse carefully sanitizes (to the point where creepy black and white low-grade junior photoshop photos of giant crosses in the duggers' house are blurred out for the cameras) and elides the religious fanaticism that turns women into baby machines and nothing else and subjugates them under a yoke of patriarchal obedience and ugly fashion and bouffant hairstyles. there's also an explosion of mormon bloggers and mormons in popular (i use that term loosely) culture and i feel like they're an insidious force.

ANYWAY, spurred by a conversation with P, who had read this book, i picked it up. it's kind of standard jon krakauer fare - using a true crime, ripped-from-the-headlines story to examine what makes people stand on the edge of heaven or into the wild or whathaveyou. in this case, it was the murder of a woman and a baby by mormon fundamentalists. did you know that mormonism is the fastest growing religion in the u.s.? did you know that they think that there's nothing better for a woman to do than sit at home and obey her husband and make babies? did you know that they don't like the gays? did you know that there are doctrines against interracial procreation and they hate black people and only allowed black people into the church hierachy in like, the 80s?!? did you know that joseph smith was a class A charlatan and kook of the highest order who flirted with the occult? did you know that the mormon origin story is on par with scientology? did you know that brigham young and other mormon historical paragons were freakin' crazy? well, you'll find this and a lot more out in this book. it was way creepier than tatsumi on a bender, lemme tells ya.

okay, that's enough out of me for one night. i've got a couple more book reviews to do and then i'm done. i'm going to go pack some things and stress out and take out my sublimated anxiety on the poor dotytron.

fin.

p.s. pizza lunch today was THE BOMB! my coworkers did something super cute and got us (the dotytron came for lunch too!) a giant basket of some of their favorite foods (some of them just got T to pick out something). we had pizza nova pizza and chicken wings and ate it in the park with caesar and potato salad and sparkling juice. then T made us not one, but TWO cakes! one was an ice cream cake made entirely from ice cream sandwiches layered with hot fudge sauce and chopped pecans. the other cake was white cake layered with sheriff lemon pie filling and canned pineapple topped with whipped cream, with sliced almonds pressed into the side and strawberries that she had cut to make a heart on top. T IS THE BEST. i'm so lucky!!!!!!!

people keep axin' me

if i'm preoccupied with things to do before the big performance. am i? i don't *think* i am. should i be? i don't *think* i should be. i feel like i've got bigger fish to fry. i think the only thing i have left to do is make my bouquet and get my hair cut and figure out what i'm going to do with these unruly tresses and log some time in the recording studio (aka our walk-in closet) and book tee times for the interested golfers and make sure everyone shows up where they're supposed to be at the right time, and bake my cakes and transport said cakes and cake stands down to the states. i dunno. i think with only 20 or so attendees, it's not that big of a deal. forgot the beer? need more ice? it's a 5 minute drive to the convenience store away.

i'm taking it one week at a time. one weekend at a time. one task on the giant to-do list at a time. with a reminder that even though we're going to be very very very very very much in the red when the month of september is said and done, we'll have (hopefully) had a spectacular time. the only thing i have to promise myself is to live in the moment and enjoy it and not wish, worry, and fret the time away. on our epic bike ride on canada day on the path that runs along the lakeshore, we passed the donald d. summerville outdoor pool, which is the very first municipal outdoor pool i ever swam in, introduced to me by the dotytron during our second summer together - after he had taught me to ride a bike, when it still seemed completely natural to be riding a bmx everywhere (my poor knees!) because of the strike, it was empty and forlorn, a concrete monolith left to stew out in the sun, bereft of laughing children and the slap of wet feet on the deck cut through with the staccato tea-kettle warnings from the lifeguard whistle. "boo! i can't believe this strike means i won't be doing any swimming in pools this summer," bemoaned i. "well," the ever philosophical, perennially half-full dotytron replied, "that's true, but you know what? i'm guessing the outdoor swimming at disney is going to be pretty fun, and the outdoor swimming in hawaii is going to be EVEN MORE fun." this effectively checked my ire.

it's true. as usual, we are very very very lucky and you shouldn't let a minute go by without being mindful of how fortunate we are. yes, you. even if, unlike me, you aren't going to disney with your entire family (the luck on that is debatable, in terms of the corresponding tax exacted on sanity and peace of mind). we're lucky to be living in the northern hemisphere where living amongst refuse is a minor inconvenience instead of a fact of everyday life. where we are fortunate enough to have the time and wherewithal to go on vacations, to have the use of our limbs and faculties and to be surrounded by love. what's a few (few few few few few) thousand in debt over a lifetime compared to that? it'll all work out in the end (hopefully). gah...i wish i wasn't so superstitious...so worried that the fates are waiting to mete out retribution for my (relative) good fortune when i least expect it. know ye this, fates: i'm well aware of how very lucky a button i am and grateful for every second that i get to continue to be thus.

on my way home tonight from work, there were cops stopping and redirecting traffic along wellesley. i was really confused and there were people clustered on the corners, wondering what was transpiring. then we saw a funeral procession, flanked by police officers on motorcycles, with people in the procession waving at us in the street and waving a canadian flag. for some reason this moment filled me with sadness. the people in the funeral procession were waving at us standing on the sidewalk as if we knew who they were (for the most part, we didn't - there was only one gentleman there, standing with a sense of purpose brandishing a canadian flag) when really, we were waiting for the resumption of our everyday lives, paused by a nameless, faceless inconvenience. the two narratives weren't related, or translateable. this death, that should have been pregnant with meaning, seemed so futile. was it a soldier from afghanistan? was it an officer? for a moment i was forced out of my lists and forced to be still and to wait and i'm not even sure to what i owe that moment.

this is a horrible way to transition into a review of a bbq restaurant. i'm not always the most elegant of writers. look, i'm writing at 11pm at night while having been up at 6am to go running. cut me some slack. the stockyards was a disappointment. the dotytron and i showed up early, just after 5 and decided to take a peek in. at that point in the evening, they were ALREADY out of ribs. OUT OF RIBS. ON A SUNDAY. BEFORE THE PEAK OF DINNER SERVICE. what the blood? way to not be serious about success. oh, did i mention that they only do ribs on TUESDAYS, FRIDAYS AND SUNDAYS?!?? these are RIBS. ribs are some of the EASIEST things in the world to pre-prepare. you smoke 'em, you park 'em, you bring them back up to temp on the grill with the sauce/rub of your choice. you could have ribs going in a CONSTANT rotation, QUITE easily. this drives me nuts.

then when we rendezvoused with bwong and sidled up to the counter to place our order, we found out they were out of smoked meat, had taken the chicken and waffles off the menu (when i asked why, i was given the cryptic and non-confidence-inspiring answer that "they weren't working out" --> FOR WHO?!???), were out of the cod and chorizo fritters, were out of the smoked chicken. oh, and they were REFUSING TO FRY ONIONS RINGS. because the fryer was occupied with fries and chicken. allow me to repeat that: THEY HAD ONION RINGS ON HAND BUT WERE REFUSING TO FRY THEM BECAUSE FRYER REAL ESTATE WAS AT A PREMIUM.

que?!???!!!??

we ordered a bunch of stuff to share to maximize our variety : dollar ratio. we split the pulled pork sandwich. this was a rather stingy portion of shredded, mildly smoky pork on a textbook correct, soft, tender bun with a pittance of coleslaw acting as a buffer between porcine haystack and carbohydrate casing. the sauce was sweet, thin, and rather one note. it was okay. portion could have been bigged up.

next up, the porchetta sandwich. roasted pork, supposedly with cracklings, on a soft baguette roll, with lemon aioli. the aioli had no lemon to speak of. the pork was again, a meagre portion, with maybe a piece of crackling the size of my pinky nail somehow finding enough pig in the sandwich to hide within. inexplicable. again, the pork was tender, but the portion size and the absence of crackling put me off. i'm from the school of: "if you're advertising crackling, i want there to be CRACKLING on the plate" crackling service. don't put it on the menu if you're going to be leave me with doubts. in matters of pork crackling, there should be no questions.

the fried chicken (the fryer hog) takes 15-20 minutes. it's fried to order. the chicken was moist and steamy with a nice salty crust. it was quite good, but the chicken pieces were scrawny. plus, the fries, which ordinarily would have been to my specifications (thin, salty, crispy and lean) suffered from being kept in close quarters in the swedish chicken steam room that was the take out container's 5 minute journey from restaurant (there's only seating in there for like, 8 people max) to park bench. for $12, i thought this was decent, although if i spent an equivalent amount at popeye's i would emerge with enough self-hatred to bend the ear of a thousand confessional priests. and the chicken would be meaty AND halal.

we got one of the last orders of rib tips. these are the parts of the rib trimmed when you're cutting st. louis style ribs, where you have a befuddling network of thick cartilage around which the meat is stretched. they're pretty tasty. the specimens here were medium tender, not much of a smoke ring, very mild smoke flavour in the nose. they were still a little tough and were glazed with the same indeterminate, sweet style bbq sauce the pulled pork got. they were okay. not excellent. okay.

finally, our sides. for some reason that makes no sense to me or anyone who loves bbq, the sage minds at the stockyards opt to do a DAIRY LESS potato salad. guys, this isn't oktoberfest. if i wanted german potato salad, i would get it. i want MAYO and plenty of it, thank you very much. it was also touted as "7 herbs" - i counted 2, possibly 3, parsley and tarragon. the red skinned potato chunks were cooked correctly and swam in an oily pommery mustard slick. that's the size of the coleslaw portion you get with the fried chicken. the coleslaw wasn't mixed thoroughly so some bites were redolent of black pepper tickle and some were just sweetly, mildly briny bland.

overall, i feel like there's a LOT of room for improvement and it hurts me that they'll probably win the "best bbq in toronto" mantle by virtue of having been written up by the idiots in now and toronto life. if you're going to do it, do it RIGHT. i don't want orangina at a bbq place. i want ROOT BEER or a sasparilla. i don't want cute limeade at $3 a pop. i don't want 1/3 of the menu to be unavailable at peak hours. i want you to learn how to run a restaurant and meet demand. i want you to look at your portion sizes and price accordingly. i want my bbq to make my clothes stink with smoke. i want there to be peanut butter pie on the menu. i want A dessert at least! gimme a banana pudding. SOMETHING.

i wouldn't make the trip up to visit this place again. not worth it.


tonight for dinner i made us GIANT salmong burgers with that cucumber, radish, dill and feta salad in the sweet white wine vinaigrette. i lazied out and pan-fried the salmon patties. they're dead easy to make. i took the salmon filet, skinned it, cut it into rough chunks and then pulsed it in the food processor with some breadcrumbs, and egg, some scallion, salt and pepper (you could get fancier and add ginger, soy, sesame oil, chili sauce) until it looked like it would hold together. formed them into patties and cooked them until golden brown on each side in a bit of olive oil in my cast iron skillet.

i think we each ended up eating 1/2 lb. of salmon. i was mega-hungry. i worked like a dog all day and i've got crazy deadlines this week and friday is my day off and i've got a slew of meetings all week eating up my potential researching time. the nice thing is though, that tomorrow my colleagues are treating me to a pizza lunch (my feelings on said don't have to be repeated. oh what the hell - I LOVE PIZZA LUNCH!) to celebrate my coming nuptials. it's awfully sweet of them. the dotytron is going to come too. it's just a lowkey picnic in the park, after all.

fin.

i can't believe it's only early afternoon on sunday

so far this weekend i've:

- eaten conch
- played TWO rounds of kickball
- went to a strawberry-less strawberry festival
- had my first 'montana's outhouse' experience (or is it 'montana's cookhouse'?)
- ate too much cake
- snoozed my way through the movie 'doubt'
- had a conversation about child pornography sentencing in the united states and the failure of the left
- gotten hosed at a second hand book store. i was a willing accomplice (nay, instigator!) in my own hosing

friday night's dinner was a blur. as usual, my grandparents INSISTED on our attendance but then scarcely paid any attention to the kids and rushed through a dinner seen as an inconvenient and unwelcome interruption to their mah jong wheeling and dealing. that's where the conch came into play. we had it mixed with mushrooms and bechamel and stuffed into a conch shell and broiled with a breadcrumb topping. it was pretty good! they also had a new kind of shark's fin soup on the menu and soy braised quail.

the next morning the dotytron went to work while we had brunch and then we went to the park and played kickball, my outlaw brother against everyone. in this case, "everyone" turned out to be me and my sister, as my niece rapidly went apocalyptica when she realized she didn't know the rules of the game and thus, was losing (did i mention that competitiveness runs in my family?) little ze clearly had less of a comprehension of the rules than my niece and was basically running in circles making sound effects. in the end, me and my sister got destroyed like, 10 to 2. it was an ignominious defeat that only stoked my desire for a rematch.

after that, we briefly regrouped and then hit the stouffville strawberry festival. call me crazy, but i kind of expected STRAWBERRIES to be featured. boy, was i wrong! instead there was the usual town festival assortment of sunglasses, hats, and garden decorations for sale, fried food, funnel cakes, and various main street stouffville enterprises setting up shop trying to entice people to buy their wares. there was a strawberry cafe, that sold strawberry shortcake (SPRAY CAN WHIPPED CREAM! a travesty!), strawberry pie, a bowl of strawberries and cream, and cookies and water. the cafe was a tired, sad looking thing. no decorations to speak of - only a ragtag group of community centre tables with a few forlorn people half-heartedly picking and their food. the shortcake was abysmal. airy, foamy cake split and topped with the aforementioned spray can whipped cream (NO NAME BRAND!!!!!!) it grieved my food and fair and festival loving soul. i also got into a tussle with one of the doddering old women who was running the show. i ordered: 2 strawberry pies with ice cream, 1 strawberry shortcake, and 1 bowl of strawberries and cream. she asked me, "was that 2 shortcakes and 1 pie?" and i repeated the whole order again (politely!) and then she CHASTISED ME for MAKING HER CONFUSED. lady, please!

there were some very shady carnival rides - shady even by carnival standards. so shady that everything was coated in a fine film of wd-40 and tetanus and a hepatitis cocktail.

the best part of the strawberry festival was that when we came upon a funnel cake stand, my sister turned to me, her eyes glowing, a beatific smile on her face, pointed, and said, "FUNNEL CAKES!" and then my outlaw bro said, "get one!" and she said, triumphantly, "SEE! he supports me!" lol! and that my friends, is how you make a relationship work. when your partner wants a funnel cake, you support them, dammit!

we came home and played ANOTHER round of kickball, this time with the dotytron on our team, and we STILL lost. this is after c-hova came out to give outlaw bro a hand playing outfield and twisted his ankle in his rookie debut. somehow for dinner we ended up at montana's. ummmm...that place is THE WORST. the worst, the worst, the worst! we paid $8.99 for a calamari portion that was little 1/2 a cup of rings and tentacles. THE WORST!



playing two rounds of kickball and then wandering the stouffville strawberry festival like the tribe of issachar was tiring to say the least. we ate cake and then passed out. the cake was a TWELVE layer cake. in retrospect, i should have made a double batch of chocolate buttercream and used that to sandwich in between each layer. instead, i alternated layers of jam and nutella and then frosted the whole thing with chocolate buttercream. it was pretty good, but could be improved. it certainly LOOKS impressive. i used 8" foil pans to make all the cake layers. i can fit 8 into my oven at a time, but the layers took a long time to cook. the most time consuming part was really cutting out the parchment circles to line the cake pans and then greasing and flouring the pans. overall, i think the cake base recipe could use some work...it tastes kind of under done and not very overwhelming. i'd probably just double a standard cake recipe that i really like, or use 1.5 times the recipe and go with that instead of the one provided. live and learn!

we were supposed to go see "public enemies" but it's tracking at 60% on rotten tomatoes so we were hesitant. plus it's uber-long and the only show we would be in time for was the late one. so we watched "doubt" instead. and by "watched" i mean "snoozed intermittently through." it was BORING. so boring! i say this having watched maybe 5 minutes total. i trust my opinion though.

so now we're at home, waiting for the dotytron's new guitar student to show up, even though it looks like she's bailed. for dinner we're going to try this new place called the stockyards. i'm totally pumped for it! i hope it doesn't disappoint!

full review to come a demain.

fin.

i'm on a streak!

first the cookie bake off and now, today me and my partner won the work lunchtime bocce tournament! we beat the undefeated team! it was amazing! i won last year too which makes me a two-time champion. AND our prize was $60 EACH! considering that after the driving range i had all of $3 in my wallet that i was going to try to ride out until my next paycheque (next thursday) it was quite the welcome boon. the adrenaline was pumping and i played a pretty good game. probably my best this whole tourny. previously, my partner had been carrying me.

yesterday was fun in a bun as they say. and by "they" i mean a certain miss S mckay. against the odds, the weather cooperated like how so hanbo, dr. rei, the dotytron and i went to beach fairways driving range and hit a large bucket of balls each. i did pretty good! so good that i'm hungry for more and i'm going to try to convince the dotytron to head out again on sunday afternoon. i'd say that i was happy with about 30% of the balls i hit in terms of straightness and distance. 50% were clunkers and 20% were outliers (i guess 20% is a pretty high outlier percentage...can you still be an outlier at 20%? good question, huh?) my goal is to be the only woman on the LPGA tour with rented clubs. that's what i aspire to.


then we headed home and ate chips and gossiped and then H et famille came over and then bwong and we had burgers and strawberry pie and drank sangria and then trooped on over to withrow park to watch the fireworks. i never got to do that stuff growing up. well...i did, but the fireworks displays were at disney. i remember one year when i was really young living in thornhill, the neighbourhood did some kind of street fireworks on canada day or something, but then we moved to estate housing and there just isn't the same neighbourhood-y spirit. it's kind of important to me to participate in these kinds of things. i can almost always hear like a wonder years-type narration going on as i stand in the dark with my friends and loved ones watching bats circling overhead and the distant laughter of kids and muted applause from adults punctuated by the shriek, pop, and boom of the fireworks. there's something kind of bakhtin carnival-witching hour about it all...teenage kids splayed out on the playground equipment, cars going by with the windows opening blasting tunes, people out past their bedtime. it's where memories and tradition are forged into nostalgia and as we all know, i'm highly susceptible to nostalgia's siren song.




i even like cleaning up after a party. half-heartedly packing leftover food away, lining up wine glasses on the counter, piling dishes in the sink, debriefing in hushed, sleepy tones with the dotytron over whether and how "that went well" or (hopefully) didn't. it's nice to bring people together and sit and talk and laugh in the waning light of dusk as your tableside neighbour becomes a little more indistinct and shadowed with each passing minute.

tonight the dotytron made pesto and we had it over boiled cheese tortellini. it was a thrify housewife meal. then we went and subbed in on a dodgeball game. then i came home and baked little ze a VERY SPECIAL birthday cake befitting a 3 year old fat chinaman. the main item on the agenda this coming weekend is to hang with my niece and nephew and watch "public enemies" i'm the only one in the family who hasn't seen "transformers" i care not. i really really really love the SOUND in "transformers," especially the sounds of stuff exploding and the low low sonic boom bass rumble and the sound they make when they transform, but i don't feel like sitting through the whole plausibility stretching interminable movie for those small pleasures.

i will say though, i think i'm a meghan fox fan. i've read a few interviews with her and she's kind of awesomely unscripted and self aware. she says all kinds of things she's not supposed to say like how she's only cast in movies where all she has to do is look hot and how she likes it cuz it takes the pressure off from her actually having to act. she seems pretty on the level and clear-eyed about her role in hollywood and i find that refreshing that she's not so edited and lobotomized to say it.

tomorrow is one of my grandma's textbook birthday party banquet gongshows. we're heading up to markham for the weekend. back on sunday. hopefully we can squeeze in a round at the driving range before heading to the roomie's pad for dinner. i have a sneaking suspicion that if the weather isn't nice she's making us spaghetti in tomato sauce. that's her go-to. it's a ground beef sauce with cut up onions, peppers, and canned tomatoes. just between you and me, i feel like she could probably make something better. it's not like she can't cook! it's just her default dish. i feel like i'm kind of past the point of eating hunt's tomato sauce spaghetti when i go over to people's houses who aren't like, 21. order in! or at least like, OWN IT. get everyone a hungry man dinner or something. don't be a halfway crook about it.

fin.

bob villa-ing - RESULTS!

here is the big reveal of a couple of weeks worth of gluing, clamping, sanding, priming, painting, more sanding, more painting. first, let's see what i started off with:

rickety, creaking, splintered wood, veneer all but gone, the seats were covered in an off-white (from age and dirt, not intentional) naugahyde that was stretched over maybe a 1/2" of cheap stuffing over a rock-hard plywood base...basically a recipe for 'roids if i've ever seen one.

this is what i turned them into:

and a detail of the MOST ADORABLE FABRIC OF ALL TIME:

i'm feeling pretty damn proud of myself if i may be so bold. they look fantastic! i bought foam for the seats and reupholstered them with a borrowed staple gun from H and with the help of my trusty, new, upholstery staple remover from lee valley. i wanted one to be a little punchier than the other and i think the pink is pretty sweet, while the russian white (that's CIL's nomenclature, not mine) one is more subtle and elegant. i haven't added a polyurethane coat. i'm going to see how they hold up. if they get scratched the hell up then i'll touch them up with my leftover paint and then seal them. i don't picture that happening as they're not going to be really high-use pieces.

today is canada day. we went for a long bike ride along the lakeshore and then came home and ate dippy eggs and toast. i prepped for the bbq today...we're having:

- burgers (veggie and 100% ground beef) with cheddar, usual toppings, and smoky red pepper feta spread for those who want to be saucy like that
- panzanella salad (tomatoes, roasted peppers, cucumber, olives, red onion, croutons, basil in a balsamic vinaigrette)
- baby spinach salad with strawberries, toasted sunflower seeds and lemon vinaigrette
- fresh strawberry pie with whipped cream
- coconut-pineapple-lime popsicles for the vegans
- a pitcher of peach-mango sangria (viognier, grand marnier, simple syrup, cut up peaches, mango, and fresh mint)

i just finished all my prep. i did it all with a bread knife and a paring knife! i'm strangely chuffed about that for reasons unknown.

now we're going to do some organizing and house cleaning before hopefully hitting the driving range with dr. rei and the hanbo. i hope the rain holds off.

fin.

the dotytron cracks me up

he's joining my dodgeball team on monday nights. we're both only playing one night a week because i selfishly don't see the point in giving up TWO weeknights during the summer to get sticky and heat-rashy in an under-cooled school gymnasium despite my competitive, dodgeball-loving tendencies. i went to check the team's profile on the intramural sports site. as i scroll through the list of team names, i see that the only person who's posted a profile picture is the dotytron. i stop and take a closer look. then i double click to make it bigger. the dotytron has uploaded the following:

i started laughing. i call him at home and say, "hey, i like the photo you posted on tcsssccsc" he says, "what one was that again?" me: "the kitchen god" him: "oh. no one else had posted anything and i figured they give you the feature for a reason and i was going to take advantage of it." i find this really funny. mostly because the dotytron and i and the goosetang clan are steeped in the ins and outs of messageboard culture (that's how we all met, really) and if there's one thing that's an unforgivable sin in the messageboard playbook, it's not taking FULL advantage of avatar possibilities. more often than not, you're so overwhelmed with funny/in-joke-y avatars that you have a rotation going, based on whatever's happening in popular culture/the messageboard itself.

anyway, i truly believe that the dotytron is one of the funniest people i've ever met in my life. it's actually kind of tough living up to that. i feel like i'm funny, but not that funny. it's a lot of pressure.

tomorrow is canada day! excite abounds! predictably, we're hosting. i think 10 or so people. hosting 8-10 people for dinner is such a part of my routine that i always forget how weird it is for almost everyone else to entertain as frequently as we do and to the extent that we do, until i get "the look" from people. you just have to do a lot of planning (i excel!) and be organized (i also excel!) and love to have people over (i excel to the nth degree!) i love hosting, i really do. it makes me sad that lil' ugmo isn't as conducive to it or won't be for at least 2 years. i've been threatening the dotytron that i will not cook in that horrendous kitchen until we can gut it and reno it. we're eating paninis for 2 years. lol!

today is little ze's THIRD birthday! THREE! three years ago i was at canoe, frantically trying to sneak out during service to use the phone and call home to get word, any word at all, on the status of the baby s-dawg was referring to as shiloh. then the fat little chinaman was born and he's been near and dear to our hearts ever since. him and uncle dodo are especially best buds, but seriously, this kid's personality is the best. he's such a happy go lucky lug. but surprisingly sensitive at times. he can use his long-lashed cow eyes in the service of a hangdog expression to devastating effect when his puppy dog enthusiasm has been curtailed. i can't wait to see him this weekend. i'm baking him a VERYVERYVERY special cake for the occasion.

tonight i'm having dinner and a visit with my friend S. i get to see her new apartment and go for tacos el asador. pretty fun! i'm also going to check out this "fiesta farms" that everyone talks about (and by everyone i mean S and my ex-prof J). apparently it's some kind of organic grocery store?

fin.

al fresco fry party

was a resounding success, greatly helped along by the fact that the dotytron was on fire that night and was pumping out zingers, left, right, and centre.

some of the topics of conversation included:

- me being skeptical that skin bleaching actually works and bwong countering with this buju banton tune called "dem a bleach" as his chief evidence for the existence and efficacy of skin-bleaching products
- captain save a hoe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6PodtDfdb4 (aka the new name for our car)
- bringing up "cotton eyed joe" in reference to michael ignatieff
- how jack layton is an undignified rube who's dragging the ndp party down
- catherine di medici's secret recipe for jalepeno poppers
- and many, many others.

we were also visited by a crack obsessed (probably rabid) squirrel who was FIXATED on us and our food and was bold in the way that only crazy animals can be. he kept giving us the stare down from the fence that rings our property which would result in the dotytron hucking weeds at him while shouting random patois and then hopping up and down in one spot to see how far he had chased it. it was hilarious/terrifying. this is he:



it was a good thing the food was great! we had great cheeses, great cured meats, tasty olives and of course, the ever-popular roasted pepper-proscuitto-provolone things. and jalepeno poppers, which were the only un-slow food thing on the menu.

the festivities broke up almost 4 hours later at around 11pm and then me and the dotytron headed down to that party which ended up being a colossal bust. there were like, 10 people there. you know what the problem was? i can tell you: mistaking the toronto drum'n'bass community for your friends. classic. you can't count on skeevy party goers for anything, much less to turn up for your wedding jungle party when there's no headliner. it was disheartening but that's shiz you gotta learn, son. plus, i took all the good uns out of the jungle community: dr. rei, bwong, the dotytron, my doppelganger, A, etc. i separated the wheat from the skeevy chaff. we stayed for like, 10 minutes and then headed home. we were kind of cheesed that we paid $10 cover though. they had a trumpet player, a trombonist, and the bride is a mc who kind of sings over her groom's djing. i'm not gonna lie, i didn't really feel it. but that didn't stop the dotytron from threatening to charge up on the stage and start jamming on this lone stratocaster he spied up there. i had to literally pull him back. he said he was going to do it "funny" and under normal circumstances i wouldn't have had a problem - i just didn't want to be left sitting alone with the dregs of toronto electronic music society. can you blame me?


sunday dawned rainy and morose. we had bacon, egg, lettuce and tomato sammies on lightly toasted leftover fred's bread with mayo. i picked up my bike from the shop (i had the brakes tightened up and traded in my collapsible baskets for saddle bags). we did some light packing, i painted another coat on my chairs, and then we started cataloguing my records on discogs. it was super slow going. molasses slow. treacle slow. we had a good time though - mostly because we got to listen to my seldom-heard tunes and stuff ourselves with leftover meats, cheeses, paper-thin sliced mortadella, and zucchini pancakes.

we were supposed to go to the roomie's place for dinner but she bailed on us. the back up plan was to eat steak sammies, but were were kind of full from hoovering cured meats and cheeses so in the end i seared off the steak and we split that. and then we had A QUARTER EACH of the fresh strawberry pie i had made for the roomie as my contribution. this pie is amazing. i might even like it better than the strawberry cream tart we had at al fresco fry party. it's like the essence of strawberry goodness in each and every bite. it's intoxicatingly good. staggeringly good. you want to eat it all day every day kind of good.



then we watched half of the zizek documentary and i passed out at EIGHT THIRTY. eight thirty!!!!!!!!! and slept through until 6am this morning whereupon the dotytron joined me for my morning run.

tonight for dinner we had orecchiete w/ peas, lemon, mint and crème frâiche and some roasted asparagus on the side. with the leftover proscuitto roasted pepper things. followed by even MORE strawberry pie. oy.

fin.

consequence of waking up at 6 to go running...

you pass out at 11pm on friday night and miss having drinks with your friends. bogus.

so i came home to zoomzoom parked in our driveway. it's red! VERY red! this is after a series of phone calls to the dotytron where i gave him a list of groceries to pick up and threatened him upon pain of death by haranguing that just because we have a car now doesn't mean we're using it for non-necessary missions (ie. grocery shopping) and that we have to be careful of our ecological footprint and peak oil, blah blah blah. i'm not above checking the odometre if i have to.

see, that's the thing about downtown living. i don't really know why a lot of people who are car-obsessed want it so. i know people who talk about how they couldn't stand living in the suburbs but don't make ANY use of downtown amenities. they do all their grocery shopping at giant loblaws (and overpay for the privilege) and use a car to drive to the gym or go a block. it's ridiculous. i don't want to be those people.


the pizza last night turned out splendid, with some tense moments. my margherita kind of imploded - i overloaded it my too-wet tomato sauce and too much fresh sliced mozzarella and so it reached critical mass and the topping began a slow, volcanic slide off the pizza and into the belly of my bbq. not good. we managed to rescue it in the end and it was supremely tasty, as was the other pizza, which ended up consisting of lardo, some of T's chilies julienned, chili oil, and roasted garlic. it was heavenly! what made the pizzas taste so amazing was the use of the pizza stone on the bbq. the thing got ripping hot and the pizzas were done in under 10 minutes each. then we turned the grill off and finished the asparagus on the pizza stone with the residual heat. it makes a convincing argument for a wood-fired outdoor oven. someday.

today i've been busy. i dropped my bike off to sven and his band of norweigian misfits (that's cyclemania to you) i made a fresh strawberry pie, a strawberry cream tart, and prepped the dip for tonight's dinner. the menu is as follows:

- olives
- cheese
- cured meats (capicollo and mortadella)
- smoky red pepper and feta spread
- grilled pitas
- those zucchini pancakes with mint sour cream
- deep fried, breaded, roasted pepper, proscuitto and provolone antipasto things.
- deep fried jalepeno poppers (odd one out: i have a box in the freezer, STILL left over from super bowl party!)
- strawberry pie w/ whipped cream
- wines
- convivial fun

the deep fried roasted pepper things i made once last year. T from work heard about them from our other italian colleague, A (she says, as if she can be counted as one of the italians in the workplace). you take a roasted pepper (i just used the jarred ones - much easier!) and wrap it around a piece of provolone, which in turn is wrapped in a piece of proscuitto. then you secure the roasted pepper so that nothing will escape with a toothpick. then you bread it (flour, egg, panko/breadcrumbs) and deep fry them until golden brown. season with salt and it is a truly DELIGHTFUL snack. so delightful that i've basically guaranteed myself a week of getting up at 6 and running in exchange for my dionysian gluttony this evening.

i'm going to do a second coat on my pink telephone table and a single coat on the other one. i had some good advice from random strangers at home depot when it came time to pick the colours for the tables. my original plan was to pick out the red or teal from the fabric i used for the seats, but i couldn't find a good match and the home depot crew (staff and custies) rightly suggested that red and teal can be VERY hard on the eyes - almost vibrate-y. so i went with a cream and a pink. the pink is still VERY pink but i think it's less visually wearing than the red would have been. i also beamed with pride when i was told that i was a "good girl" for priming the pieces before hand. i love validation, i truly do.

okay...i'm off to bake a loaf of bread and read in the sun and do some painting.

after dinner we're going to this party. our friend frankie gunns got married and they're doing a jungle party type reception for the entire toronto jungle community. bonus: it's in the neighbourhood! walking distance! other bonus: RAVE!

i'll take pictures of our bacchanlian feast and post them tomorrow.

fin.

living a lifetime

i feel like i've lived super-long days lately. this would because i decided to take up the suggestion of a colleague and GET UP AT 6AM TO GO FOR MY RUN. it's been suspiciously easy getting up a full hour before my usual wakening time and exerting myself physically. the pros: it's cooler, i can run farther, get it done, show up at work earlier, shower. the cons: none, other than the easily rectifiable one where i've been eating loads of cookies and cake and sweets everyday and undermining my own determination.

i'm so ready for the weekend! even though we don't have much planned - probably going out for drinks tonight with B & G and crew. tomorrow i'm futzing around getting ready to host people for an alfresco fry party, then going to a jungle jam. on sunday we're free all day with some contingent plans to have dinner at the roomie's new pad. i also want to lay down the first coat of paint on my telephone tables.

yesterday we had grilled salmon with cucumber-mint yoghurt on curried couscous with yellow squash, red peppers, and grated carrot. i'll upload with photos tonight. then, after recovering from the shock of michael jackson's untimely death (wtf?) we went with the dotytron's sister to drop off something we sold on craigslist and pick up something she bought on craigslist at the same time.

the torrential mid-afternoon rains we got yesterday washed away all the heat and dust and created optimal bike-riding conditions, so we set off on a dusk ride with the eventual goal being an inaugural visit to jah cold stone creamery. riding your bike at dusk when the air smells clean and your heat-tired skin is rejuvenated with the benediction of a cool, peony-scented breeze and you have your partner by your side makes bike riding and by extension life, worth doing. we rode up to pottery road and paid a visit to the dairy queen at the corner of broadview and pottery, that has a teeny little patio area that overlooks the don valley, where you can watch the sun set with the majesty of the don spread out before you and feel emboldened like those first toronto city planners must have, when they stood on the banks and imagined a sinuous artery of the fordist age, part of a network that would cover the city in a concrete filigree. sorry, i got caught up in my own literary excesses. the point is: the patio on that particular DQ is lovely.

from there we zig-zagged our way until we arrived at our destination. jah cold stone creamery is in the tim horton's on the corner of logan and the danforth. i was a little skeptical, because said tim horton's also used to house the danforth and vicinity's only wendy's, before they closed it up and i was left smoky bacon mushroom melt bereft. as with most american franchises/ideas transplanted onto canadian soil (target! beware! be ye not so stupid! don't mess with a good thing!) - jah cold stone creamery was a bit of a bust. due to the limitations of physics, the marble slab ice cream phenomena is not conducive to speed or efficiency. the server takes a glob of ice cream and massages it on a chilled slab with two gelato paddles, folding in whatever monstrous and unholy combination of "mixin's" your heart desires. this takes time. especially when you're dealing with the soft, atrophied muscles of today's disaffected low-wage teenage ice cream parlour workforce. add to that that this particular jah cold stone creamery counter has been frankensteined onto the end of a tim horton's counter and you have a gothic nightmare waiting to happen. the employees are tim horton's employees temporarily drafted from their large double-double and french cruller duties to manipulate ice cream before your rapt gaze like some kind of north pole benihana. it's a mistake. tim horton's custies suffer and jah cold stone creamery custies suffer. i doubt we'll go back. plus, the dotytron had serious issues with their chocolate ice cream.

in the defense of marble slab ice cream everywhere, the stuff i had in the states from jah cold stone creamery was way better. and the belgian chocolate ice cream at the marble slab creamery in markham was bitter and dark and velveteen. the dotytron's base ice cream tasted like frozen chocolate milk. not good.

tonight for dinner i'm making grilled pizzas. either thrown directly on the grill or on the pizza stone temporarily residing on the grill. haven't made up my mind yet. one is going to be a margherita, the other is going to probably be a roasted garlic and lardo pizza with olive oil and sea salt. we're going to have this with grilled asparagus. hopefully eaten outside if the rain holds off and out.

i'm also going to do some patch-priming on some areas the dotytron missed on the second telephone table. he kind of did a poor job but you can't hire good free help these days.

in other news...by the time this day is done we're probably going to be the proud owners of a car. a 2002 mazda protegé 5, in fact. let's hope we didn't just blow money we didn't have on a lemon! can i just say that we are haemorraghing money right now? eeks.

i'm also going to do some yoga tonight because i haven't stretched at all lately and i can feel my hamstrings seizing up in protest at the new torture i'm inflicting upon them.

lastly, i would be remiss if i didn't give a big fat RIP to poor MJ. i'm sorry we did this to you. well, us and joe jackson. joe jackson started it and we finished it by turning the poor guy into the favorite object of our morbid and grotesque fascination and rabid excesses. the king of pop indeed - his musical legacy deserves better than what became of him. the dotytron and i played "favorite MJ song" last night while riding.

here are our picks:

finally, best week ever did it again with "the greatest MJ move of all time"

fin.

super cheap night!

lately i've been on a roll. last week when sarah dessen's newest, "along for the ride" came out officially in bookstores, i went out on my lunch break to grab it. as i sidled up to pay, i pulled out a indigo/chapters gift card of unknown provenance, thinking that at best, there was maybe a balance of $2.00 left, at worst, nothing and at least i would know and would be able to remove it from my wallet. there was $25.00 on it! i only had to pay $2 for a HARDCOVER BOOK! score!

then today, i was on my way to see "away we go" with K and J and H and that guy. i walked up to the theatre with K and was contemplating what i was going to eat - mcdonald's being an option, because today was my colleague's retirement party (29 years! holy cats!) and that meant that i had prepared for the bounty of potlucked goodies by designating it an "eat whatever i want" day. i had a mcdonald's gift card and ended up only spending $2 on my big mac combo! score! then i went to the theatre and pulled out a mouldering cineplex odeon card of equivalent unknown origins as my chapters/indigo one, again thinking that i had maybe a few bucks on it. nuh-uh. i had $25.00! enough to pay for my movie AND another one in the near future! score! so i only spent $2 tonight (notwithstanding the unforeseen tragedy whereupon i forgot my subway tokens at home and had to buy a set of five, because i find it ridiculous to pay full fare for the ttc when there are always [nominal] savings to be had by buying in groups of 5 or 10). at any rate, it was pretty good for my newfound thrifty self.

"away we go" was nice. i wasn't expecting to like it. i had kind of gotten the impression (hammered into me by the constant touting of its' literary pedigree and hushed, reverential "from the hands of david eggers and vendela vida" association that it was probably going to be smugly intellectual. it doesn't help that sam mendes' fingers were in this pie. have i mentioned that i loathe "american beauty"? well, i do. i probably haven't mentioned it because it's a dated thing to hate. but i remember and will trot out this old chestnut if needs be. anyway, reading a.o. scott's review didn't help. but it wasn't as horrid as i thought it was going to be. it was decent. not great, but decent.

maya rudolph gives an even, measured, against-type performance while john krasinski's burt is a little harder to swallow and i'm not one of the few women (or men) immune to his rumpled, crooked-smile charms. i just have less patience for the man-child, ambling, educated slacker thing. and by "less patience" i mean, "no patience" - you're talking to the girl who hates lloyd dobbler and "reality bites" (and by extension, ethan hawke's entire raison d'être). it's basically about a couple travelling around trying to find a model of family that they can subscribe to. i found some of the models with which they're presented really overplayed, especially the alison janney one and the maggie gyllenhaal one. i got the point, i just think the same point could have been made with a measure of subtlety and been all the more effective for it.

there were some things i questioned, but it would be spoiler alerting for me to expound on them, so i'll refrain. they weren't big enough to risk ruining it for you and you'll probably come to the same "huh?" moments as i did anyway. we did see the previews for both "paper hearts" AND "(500) days of summer" both of which seem very twee, indie, and painfully winsome - all things i teeter on the brink of loving/loathing depending on the proportion of heart, humour, and sincerity present. i'm excited to see both of them - i kind of find joseph gordon levitt cute and we all know how i feel about zooey, even as i fear her zooey-schtick is getting as well worn and uncomfortable for its familiarity as michael cera's (his cera-schtick, i don't think he does a zooey one).

this is monday night's dotytron-prepared dinner. pretty tasty looking, eh?

last night i came home after returning some stuff to lee valley that i didn't end up needing and made myself red cabbage coleslaw with a fried pork on a bun sammy that had lettuce, tomato, and plenty of mayo as dressing. it was TASTY.

in other news, does anyone else find it stupidly cliché that all the actors and big stars in l.a. support the lakers and not the clippers? it's so annoying. wow. way to be the biggest jerks and not support the non-rich, non-winning team. so i think i want to rep the clippers. even though i know nothing of basketball. but still! they need love, too!

okay, i'm off to slang stuff on craigslist. i'm also going to try a new thing tomorrow of getting up at 6am and going for an early morning run. we'll see how that goes. the idea is it won't be as hot and i'll be motivated to run longer (possibly) and then i can have my lunches back to do what i want, instead of slogging through the worst of the sticky, still, oppressive heat of the day.

roll call of awesome:

cb2
this is my new favorite online store in the whole. wide. world. i want to buy the store - if you're ever complaining that i'm hard to shop for, get me a g/c here, please. i want all these things:







roll call of bunk:


also from cb2 (hey, not everything can be amazing) - do you really want to hang up your toothbrush and have the bristles in some guy's crotch? no thank you!

fin.