further derailed

i didn't confess to what we ate last night - it was gross. we ordered from dangerous dan's - which wasn't the same old revel-in-caloric-excess glut of expertly prepared fat-compounded diner riffs of yore. the fries in the poutine were your garden variety diner standbys (they used to use thick-cut, beefeater ones) and the onion rings were soggy. the burger and the rib sandwich were still a sloppy, fun, delicious mess to eat but they were made with their less than usual care.

either way, i felt a little guilty after. all i need is a solid week of home-cooking so that i can face take-out with impunity and my head held high.

i've added a new wreath concept - i want to do a felt leaf one, an ornament one, AND a yarn-wrapped one! inspiration from the ones made by this etsy seller, knockknocking:

pretty cool, huh? i'm going to raid michael's for styrofoam wreath forms and then see what kind of yarn i have to get rid of before i go looking for complimentary felt. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUN.

so, of course, the tree ornaments i love the most above all are the ones that whip ebayers into a frenzy of pre-auction expiration overbidding and merciless sniping as the clocks wind down. these are mercury glass bead icicle ornaments. aren't they beautiful, though? so delicate and colourful...i love them.

what i should REALLY be doing with my time is doing GMAT practice questions so that i can apply next year to start school in 2010-2011 - but that's assuming i still want to do this silly masters of public policy anyway. and seriously, if it impedes perfectly acceptable crafting time - why would i prioritize it?

tonight i made us a kale, ricotta, and mozzarella pie with a spinach salad with a warm bacon vinaigrette and pecans.

i forgot to post the recipe for the cheddar jalepeno drop biscuits last night, so they're at the end here - MAKE THEM. they're good! and the perfect accompaniment to beef up a weeknight soup dinner.

roll call of awesome:

i'm currently coveting these 2 prints to dress up lil' ugmo (available from lovelydesign):


aren't they dear? i love that late 70s, early 80s educational aesthetic. love the font, love the colours, love the subject, love the overall design. love them!

fin.

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

cheddar jalepeno drop biscuits

adapted from gourmet magazine, makes 12 hearty biskweets

2 1/4 c. all purpose flour
2 1/2 t. baking powder
2 t. sugar
3/4 t. baking soda
1 t. salt
3 scallions, finely sliced
1 jalepeno, minced
1 c. sharp cheddar cheese, grated
6 T. cold unsalted butter, cut into large pieces
1 c. shaken buttermilk

- preheat oven to 450F
- mix the dry ingredients together with the scallions, jalepeno, and cheddar
- cut in the butter (i rub it in with my fingers) until the butter is in small, pea-sized pieces
- stir in the buttermilk
- drop by 1/4 c. (i used a large ice cream scoop) and drop them on a silpat or parchment lined tray, spaced about 2" apart
- bake for 15-20 minutes until they're golden brown.

my love affair with fall

has cooled somewhat. biking in the pitch black, sleety rain last night kind of dampened my ardor. my new canada post pick up location for packages that i have to sign for is WAY FARTHER and out of the way than my last one - boo. i also had a miserable experience trying to ascertain which canada post location holds my packages (i left the slip at home). i called canada post and spoke to the woman who was completely clueless. first she told me that she couldn't find out that information, which i responded to with incredulous indignation. how can they NOT find that out? it's not RANDOM. there's surely some kind of metric in place where postal codes beginning with XXX get sent to blah blah blah, right? then, when i asked her for the phone number of the outlet i suspected had the package (the online canada post location-finder listed canada post's head office number for that outlet, which is what got me into this customer service quandary to begin with), she told me she COULDN'T GET THAT INFORMATION. which made my common sense barometer go haywire. i told her frostily that subway sandwich head office could give me the direct number for all THEIR franchises, why couldn't canada post? then i demanded to speak to someone else who was able to get me the correct info in 2 seconds. 15 minutes of my life, wasted.

i was miserable when i got home, which was a crappy way to start a week, considering my sunday had been so aces. we puttered like crazy and got a good amount of work done...hanging pictures, painting the magnetic primer coat on my magnetic chalkboard wall, raking leaves, cleaning...and then treated ourselves after our exertions to mulled warm apple cider and snickerdoodles:

now if that little vignette up there doesn't scream "idyllic new england cabin" i don't know what does. and we all know how big a sucker i am for buffalo plaid hunting jackets, hats with ear flaps, woodsmoke and maple syrup americana. love it! we settled in for a viewing of "the name of the rose" which is dr. rei's favorite movie (this explains A LOT).

it's pretty standard genre fare - a bookish, aristocratic-method espousing franciscan monk who solves a mystery at a benedictine abbey filled with all manner of seedy monks (this plotline was basically written for the express purpose of titillating an impressionable young dr. rei). there are homosexual monks, creepy hook-nosed monks, a black monk (who is referred to as "the black monk"), fat albino monks, and a daft hunchback played by ron perlman (how did ron perlman get typecast to always play "the beast"?). it's full of suspense and intrigue and some racy bits, but it's not what i would call a thought-provoking, particularly well-executed film that withstands the test of time. it is a creepy pot boiler though.

then we went with my mum to this new chinese hot pot place, called 100 degrees. i was a little suspect at first - but we were soon cajoled into looking more favorably on a new AYCE hot pot place by the fact that this place is much roomier than our usual stand-by. also, at dow's noodles (the usual place - we've been going there for like, 5 years now), they always give you a complimentary glass of this weird smoky plum drink (dr. rei calls it bbq sauce) that no one drinks but my mom and dr. rei. at THIS place, you get a chilly glass of honey ginseng drink which is AMAZING! usually i have to order a coke to cut through the hot pot, but this is tasty and potable (unlike plum bbq sauce one) and serves the same purpose, negating the necessity of ordering pop. AND they give free refills!

then we had the TSN turning point. one of the things that has been a hallmark of our ordering experience at dow's noodles is that they make you pay for each egg you order. chinese hot pot is one of those lovely cuisines that encourages the use of raw egg as a dipping sauce. you basically make a sauce out of a sweet, thick soy and a raw egg, beaten together. whenever we go to dow's with my mum, she makes the four of us (the classic hot pot combo is: me, my mum, my brother cameron, and the dotytron) split 2 eggs cuz you have to pay for them.

well, colour us impressed when we sat down and ordered and were presented with this:

A WHOLE DIPPING SAUCE TRAY! WITH AS MANY EGGS AS YOU WANT! lol! the three of us looked at each other with big eyes and were like, "this place is the best!" hahaha! plus the condiments were way more extensive. they give you the tray and you can mix up your own dipping sauce to your taste before they take it away. it's awesome. they even have a peanut sauce that my mum was really loving.

here are some pics of the actual spread:

the broth (we got half satay and half corn and pork bone, which just tastes like normal broth)


a small sampling of what we ordered. it was delish! we're definitely going to go back with the goosetang clan as dr. rei in particular lurves some chinese AYCE hot pot.

last night for dinner i came home to an empty house as the dotytron was off cavorting with his old teacher's college cronies. i made that spicy three grain soup i've talked about before along with some cheddar jalepeno drop biscuits. these were DELICIOUS and frightfully easy. i've posted the recipe at the end here. they were soooo good, hot out of the oven, all craggy and cheesy and tender.

today i've been researching winter tires. oy vey. what a headache! it's too much to know! but i've got some good leads and i've compiled a decent short list. we're going down to my sis' place next week for a little long weekend in western new york. going to get the captain suited up for the winter, too. some new winter tires, a new stabilizer bar, some new brake pads on the front - she's going to be taken care of. car ownership is a pain in the butt - it's a lot to stay on top of. we've had some people tell us that we shouldn't have bought used...but i don't know that i agree. we paid around $6000 for a vehicle that we're going to get a lot of life out of yet, no interest, and we're just spending the amount of money you would usually spend at this point in a car's life. i have faith in the captain.

i was having a mild freakout about the holidays again today. between my cookie baking and gift buying - who has time for anything else? then i kind of got it into my head that i want to make a felt wreath. a grey-green one with lots of silvery and green holly leaves and hot pink felted ball holly berries on a squooshy wreath form to hang on our door. and then i got it into my head that i wanted to do one of those ornament wreaths. and then i got it into my head that we have a place for a real xmas tree this year and that i'd like to make a quilted tree skirt out of a bright and cheery red flannel gingham. and then i got it into my head that i've got a looooooong list of knitted gifts to get cracking on. and then i got it into my head that i wanted to make even more xmas decorations and then i realized that i'm plumb crazy.

to get a real xmas tree or a fake one? fake ones are better for the environment, because you're not mowing down trees for no reason every year, but they're also really plasticky and hard to dispose of, and won't decompose. real trees smell nice but make a mess when they shed needles. the dotytron has settled the issue: "we're not a fake tree family" - i guess that's that.

i also only want vintage xmas tree decorations - like those old mercury glass ones - like so:

so i've started scouring ebay for ones. i don't need a full tree all at once...i can collect them over time. i just love the look of the vintage decorations.

i gotta get knitting.

fin.

too much to tell!!!

i haven't posted in forevers and evers and thus have the backlog of all backlogs. wednesday night was my hideous night wrassling with the ttc and their completely inept and customer-service skills bereft staff. when i realized that i wouldn't be getting home any time soon, i called the dotytron and told him to pick up 2 boxes of kd, a pack of all beef hot dogs, and a pack of buns.


i ended up eating FIVE hot dogs and 1 box of kd that night and then spent the rest of the night writhing and rolling around on the couch complaining of thirst (probably because i had ingested the equivalent of ONE CUP of salt).




the following night we played a killer game of dodgeball and then met up at caplansky's for round dos with our buddy L. L started with the matzoh ball soup (he said it was lacking salt - i was really skeptical that it would be as good as my matzoh ball soup, anyway) and we split a smoked meat poutine. the dotytron ordered the kishka again and the potato leek soup (special of the day) which had a good hit of white pepper (maybe a bit too much - white pepper can give an ass-y aroma to stuff sometimes) which was tasty. then the dotytron went sammy and i got the caplansky's combo, which is tongue (I LOVE TONGUE!!!), smoked turkey (meh, i'm meh on turkey and smoked turkey is still bland), grilled #58 verst salami (sooooooooo good!), liver, and fatty smoked meat. it's about 1lb of meat - but i polished it off fine. the place held up to a second visit, for sure!

friday night we picked up chinese bbq and rice takeout and headed to A & C's for the quickest eating of all time. then we drove to the kdubs to help lug stuff to A & J's new digs...but by the time we got there all the hauling was done so we just got to hang out with the kdubsguelph crew. i love those guys...A & J's new house is huge! and beautiful! with a big, gorgeous maple tree in the front and a YARD at the back! AND it came with a giant bbq that's hooked up to the gas line! and it's got an awesome kitchen with green glass tile backsplash, a huge new fridge and a gas range with a power burner that could probably boil water in under 2 seconds. custom cabinetry, a pantry, all kinds of nooks and crannies that you expect in an old house, a cold storage room for preserves - it's fantastic. i'm so happy for them! and so sad for me for overpaying for my miserable hovel.

just kidding! the thing i'm realizing is, then when you buy your own house, you kinda start to love it, warts and all, cuz it's YOUR house. it's yours! everything about it is about YOU and YOUR decisions - so i'm growing to love lil' ugmo...and right now, i can't see myself trading it in for anything else - we've already banked some good memories here and i'm excited for the times to come. this also bodes well for me loving whatever children may or may not be in my future, even if the kid is kinda dumb or isn't cute. because it's YOUR kid! i was actually kinda worried that if my kid wasn't the awesomest, that i might not love it. isn't that awful? but what if my kid turns out to be an anti-abortion religious libertarian anarchist? how am i supposed to love that?

last night was HILARES. total, total HILARES. i finished carving my pumpkins and set up our gravestones just in time for the first kiddies. kids come EARLY! like, at 6pm they started!!! this is what our front looked like:

we ended up doing gravestones with "rip rigor" "rip nuance" "rip critical thinking" and "here lies william blake" (if you think about it, the william blake shout-out kind of ties the whole thing together). lol!!! we were a BIG hit around the neighbourhood.

these are my pumpkins this year:


darth vader cuz all the kids on my street are OBSESSED with clone wars.

and acclaimed documentary filmmaker, werner herzog:


the neighbourhood kind of went bananas. i had MANY favorable comments (although some people thought werner was karl marx?!??) peeps were coming up and saying "oh, i was told to come to this house to check out the pumpkins" lol!!! so much pressure for next year!!!

we didn't get as many kids as we had thought...but it was still awesome seeing the costumes. kids are the cutest! we had dr. rei and hanbo over for dinner - i spent all day cooking...i made us porchetta (i skinned and trimmed the fat off a pork loin roast, butterflied it, rubbed it with a mixture of salt, ground fennel seeds, lemon zest and black pepper, rolled it up and tied it and cooked it PERFECTLY - so that it was about medium, still pink, and verrrry juicy); scallion corn pudding with cheddar cheese; pan sautéed brussel sprouts; and a sweet potato and yukon gold buttermilk mash with dill.

we basically spent the whole meal laughing our butts off and simultaneously stuffing our faces to the point of PAIN. the funniest moment of the night was when the dotytron was telling us about the musician themed costumes at his school -

dotytron: "so one of the teachers was jimi hendrix, the other one was kanye, the receptionist was gaga"
hanbo: "kermit head gaga?"
dotytron: "no, lady"

which basically had us barfing with laughter. the central confusion being that the dotytron clearly hasn't seen THIS infamous image of the gaga:

we COULD NOT stop laughing. so funny!

then bwong came by and we suited up:

gandalf and dumbledore - you don't know which is which.

mr. peanut

wolfgang amadeus mozart

group shot with bwong's highly topical balloon boy costume in the back.

LOL!!! we obviously decided to bail on every party we were invited to/contemplated going to and went for a walk. bwong went off to some other house party and then we ate snickerdoodles (picture is coming) and drank tea and those guys ate candy and we watched "drag me to hell" which is kind of textbook sam raimi (funny, gory, kinda scary in the jolty kind of way):

and that was halloween 2009. it was a resounding success all around AND we have THE BEST costume for next year already figured out. it's a group one.

yesterday i cleaned house like a mofo - i tore apart our vestibule, painted the stairs, went and did errands, carved my two pumpkins, and made a sumptuous feast. today i'm doing more organizing stuff but in a more laid back manner and tonight we're going to have all you can eat hot pot dinner with my mum up in markham.

fin.

culture round up part 1

i've got a LOT of catching up to do - going all the way back to august!

the night of the performance, we rounded everyone up to go to the drive-in...we saw "funny people" - which was TERRIBLE. the best thing this film did for us was to give aziz ansari the opportunity to do the raaaaaaaandy shorts that turned up on funny or die.

i get what judd apatow was going for - he wanted to show the costs of being funny/being a professional comedian. it's like the insidious side of "inside the actor's studio" that you're always hankering for but that beard-o is too busy being all, "so tell me about that time you were awesome" to give. it was a self-reflective look at the misanthropic, self absorption of the mensch comedian. too bad it went too far and presented us with someone who was so convincing, you as the audience didn't care. it was off-putting. adam sandler wasn't endearing at all and way too believable as the neurotic schmuck. the movie is populated with unlikeables and what "funny" moments there were unfortunately just didn't cut the mustard. it was dreary and about 10 billion hours too long. FAIL! the only good part is seeing judd apatow's daughter maude, absolutely DESTROY "memory" from the musical "cats" in full cats garb. it was smashing.

we saw a lot of movies in hawaii because everyone in hawaii either a) goes to bed super-early or b) hated us and were off having post-9pm fun in a secrete locale unbeknownst to lagerfeld and the dotytron.

"inglourious basterds" was pure entertainment - great tarantino fun, without as much of the tarantino talky flourishes and trying-to-be-cool that can be a little off-putting. the performances are fantastic - christopher waltz's mannerisms and enunciation as the courtly nazi colonel were note-perfect as was the luminous performance of french actress mélanie laurent as jew-in-hiding shosanna. i liked that a lot of the violence happens off-camera - it didn't trade on gore - and there were so many deliciously tense moments. the movie time flew by and it's a film i would definitely recommend. not something that's particularly thought-provoking, but a well-crafted pastiche of movie tropes and fantasy.

i read an interview with tarantino where he talks about his impetus for making the film, that he thought surely, not all the jews meekly marched aboard the cattle car - that there must have been some violent resistance that the annals of film refuse to acknowledge because it doesn't fit into the conventional narrative we've constructed around the holocaust. i liked his point - especially as it helps to shake up the wwII film genre.

"district 9" i loved. loved loved loved. just a few shades below "children of men" in terms of dystopian, future-rooted thought experiments cloaked in film. talk about thought-provoking! we spent the entire night nattering away at each other about the movie. so subtle, so damning an indictment of apartheid! what a depiction of the ease with which "everymen" get swept by their own apathy, ignorance, and disciplinary cultural forces into colluding/constructing oppression of "the other." you hear that, "the reader"? this says everything, more elegantly and with greater nuance, that "the reader" in all its forced mannerisms and oscar-baiting wanted to say but failed miserably at conveying without the full force of a sledgehammer.

so graceful! so compact! one of the more exciting films i've seen in a long time. a perfect blend of action and ideas. subtle, cheeky...this was great.

"the time traveler's wife" was disappointing. it was okay (i mean, it made the dotytron cry) but it lacked a lot of the emotional punch of the book. it was pretty enough - but you weren't really invested in the central relationship to care - as a review i read said, the time traveling is really depicted more as an occasional inconvenience than anything else. this was very meh. i mean, it's the kind of meh, blandish, aimed-at-(imaginary)women duff that i would probably see anyway, on a lazy rainy saturday afternoon when i only have my own company to contend with. but this was a poorish example of that particular genre.

one night in a moment of weakness, after feasting on volcanoes all day, we rented "confessions of a shopaholic" from the local (only) convenience/pizza parlour/video store in the tiny village of volcano and staged a take over of the cable-bereft, under-used common room at our lodge. wouldn't you know that right when we're in the middle of what is perhaps the most potentially embarrassing rental choice to be seen with outside your own home, THAT'S when all the guests come clambering out of the woodwork to try to stake a claim on the common room, only to leave in haughty disgust at our viewing material??? this was really, really, REALLY bad. it doesn't even give you enough unintentionally funny moments to make fun of à la the infamous "jane austen bookclub" night with dr. rei. it's horrid.

okay, so that brings us up to speed. i'm done dragging up pop culture from 2 months (aka a lifetime) ago. on my list now is:

- "a serious man"
- "an education"
- "more than a game"
- "an education"
- "zombieland"

and a billion other things. but those are tops on my list, currently.

tonight we're playing dodgeball and then going to caplansky's (encore un fois!) with our buddy, L. i'm going to venture into the breakfast menu, methinks.

full review to come!

fin.

it's come to THIS?

last night before the roomie and l'army came over, we were doing some frantic, last-minute tidying...to the tune of satie's gymnopédie no.1 do you know what this means? we're ACTUALLY like, no better than edward cullen from "twilight," who wooed bella with debussy. it's sick! in case you thought this had anything to do with me, allow me to correct you - i came home last night singing the one line i know from miley cyrus' "party in the u.s.a." nuh-uh - this is all the dotytron (who, incidentally, hates that "twilight" sullied debussy's good name by using it as a cheap vampire panty-removing tactic). i will say that it gymnopédie no. 1 does make whatever it is you're doing, no matter how mundane or frenzied, take on a certain air of limpid languor. it makes dirty clothes-hiding and half-hearted sweeping much more civilized.

i went with dr. rei today to return the boots and hear more about her and hanbo's time away. we've decided that we basically need a week's worth of lunches to catch up. so our mission today was to bring the mersereau's back to aldo and hopefully get the motorcycle ones. except fate and dr. rei's keen eye intervened. when i put the mersereau's back on in the store, she said she liked them and the oddness of them comes not from the boot, but from the fact that i really don't wear boots with pointy (almond shaped) toes that are so feminine and girly. the motorcycle boot was playing it safe, but would be an unnecessary addition to my wardrobe. and that was that.

see why i needed her back?!? my warping mirror at home and the style-blinded eyes of the dotytron are no substitute for the sage advice of a bestie. especially a girlie bestie at that. i feel better, now. i also woke up this morning feeling like it's time for a hair change. i've been rocking the same hair for FOREVERS.

i think i want blunt bangs and layers by my face and i'm going to lose the side part and go with something either in the middle, or wherever it wants to be - i've been wearing my hair down the odd time and S does such a great job cutting it, that the grow-outs are fantastic. i think the blunt bangs would make wearing it down a little more fun - i'm thinking something along the lines of zooey deschanel:

i keep meaning to try the braid hairband but never get around to it. maybe this weekend. i want to lop some inches off but still have it kinda layered and a little textured to work with my natural wave - i have high hopes.

ugh...had the worst tussle with the TTC today. i effing hate them. any bleeding heart, leftist chickenhead liberal who tries to defend the blatant mismanagement of their frontline, customer service staff is completely blinded to the reality that ttc ticket takers, bus drivers, streetcar drivers, etc. break down into roughly this proportion: 10% amazing, pleasant, nice, lovely, considerate; 60% apathetic, middle of the road, disinterested; 30% AWFUL, stupid, ignorant people who kinda deserve to get spit on, sorry to say. i mean, no one DESERVES to get spat on, but some of those dudes are d**ks. the way a d***y cop can be a total d**k who invites a little civil and not-so-civil disobedience from the general populace. think about it this way, td bank records like, all of your phone calls to their staff and you still get crappy service about 15% of the time - what do you think is going to happen with the ttc peeps? it's like the wild west out there! do they even HAVE supervisors?

it's appalling. the indignities of public transportation in toronto shave years off your life, i'm convinced. our transfer system?!???!!!

it took me almost an hour and a half to get home. redonkulous. feeling a little down - reading harvey pekar and joyce brabner's "our cancer year" - totally depressing. hoping to sleep it off.

this trailer totally made me perk up, though:

it's quite dear. stop motion makes wes anderson's usual affectations much more palatable. and well, the clooney could sell you on most things.

the other thing that made me perk up was watching south park tonight and hearing cartman say, "oh, F**K OFF!" to a homeless guy asking for change. the comedy network keeps showing an ad where they have cartman farting over and over and it always makes me laugh and the dotytron turned to me the other night and said, "you're such a f**king cartman, sometimes." it's so true. i am a f**king cartman sometimes.

fin

p.s.

diaries of a hypochondriac

so the question on everyone's lips (or, facebook statuses) this season is: to get the h1n1 shot or not to get the h1n1 shot?

i think i've got a fairly good immune system. i don't like to advertise this fact, lest the fates strike me down for my impudence, but...i've never had the flu. the dotytron has and i've bathed in his virulent juices by sleeping in the same (double!) bed with him while he's been sick, and i've never gotten it. my secret is that come winter, i eat 2 grapefruits, 1 banana, and an apple almost every day. i also drink a glass of o.j. every day. and generally (popeye's chicken notwithstanding) eat healthy, home-cooked, veggie-present meals.

the last time i got really sick was when i had bronchitis like, 7 years ago. i was working at bymark then as the day hot apps person so i worked through the increasingly ragged cough for 3 weeks. then, by the time i went to the doctor, she said that my phlegm had changed back to normal so there was no point prescribing me penicillin as i was already on the mend. is my immune system basically a biological double for jesse ventura's character blain in "predator"? "i ain't go time to bleed" = "i ain't got time to get sick"???

the problem is: i'm a hypochondriac (no surprise for faithful readers - i'm a self-aware hypochondriac, at the very least). so while i'm usually fine with my decision to forgo the seasonal flu shot - this h1n1 stuff is scaring the crap outta me because i'm in a RISK group! it strikes healthy people! women more likely to die! HEALTHY WOMEN more likely to contract a more virulent case that will require more aggressive treatment! as i was joking to my male doppelganger, A, i need a hypochondriac vector on the WHO statistics, or a lens, or like an applet that i can run - a hypochondriac google translate was his suggestion. lol!

so i don't know quite yet what i'm going to do. i'm going to send the dotytron to get the seasonal one AND the h1n1 because he's around filthy, disgusting, grubby children all day and that's basically like spending your time simmering in the pus from scabrous boils(golly, do i have the maternal instinct or what?!)

i'm not really getting the hang of this whole, "cooking for 2" thing. we're swimming in leftovers. so i have to get over my innate aversion to eating things twice. this means that last night i ate leftover farfalle in the creamy squash sauce with herbs and tonight i'm planning on tucking into another round of creamed chicken stew with dill dumplings. truth be told, with leftovers like these, it's no hardship having a second go.

i had a talk with my film friend D about "where the wild things are" - he really didn't like it. he said that a) he hated the soundtrack (it's hilarious talking to him about it because he has no idea who karen o is) and talked about how he hated the keening, one voice vocals and how he doesn't know from pop music (the funny thing is, the dotytron had exactly the same opinion and he DOES know from pop music). he brought up some things i agreed with - how the pseudo-freudian notes were out of place in the film...and he talked about how his favorite image in the book is when max goes to bed without his supper, and the walls come crashing down and the ocean comes in - and how in the hands of a director like spike jonze, that would have been a lovely scene. instead what you get is a max running away in the night and a strange boat appearing out of nowhere. i think upon revisiting, i would say that's it's an unsuccessful children's film AND an unsuccessful adult film, with some funny moments.


last night we watched "anvil: the story of anvil" it's a documentary about this band, anvil, that reached it's zenith in the early 80s and served as a total inspiration for megadeath, anthrax, gun's'roses, etc but never achieved the same fame and then fell off the radar. the two principals, "lips" and robb reiner, have continued to put out record after record, playing to crowds of like, 40 in sudbury and the documentary follows their attempts to record their 13th album and make a last stab at success at the age of 50. it's really, really, great. so entertaining - it's like metallica's "some kind of monster" but like, good, because they're real people and not total wads like lars ulrich and you actually care about their process.

guys, can anyone BELIEVE how much of a wad lars ulrich is? every time i see that guy or hear him speak i want to spit in his mouth.

"anvil: the story of anvil" is really great - i highly recommend it. it made the dotytron cry because nothing gets to the dotytron more than talented, well-meaning musicians trying to eke out a living in this crazy world. also, it features a brief appearance by scott ian from anthrax, who i've always had a soft spot for because he KILLED an episode of rock'n'roll jeopardy i saw once. he was really smart! anyway, you become so invested in anvil's success (they're actually REALLY good if you like that kind of classic, shredding, super-fast metal sound) that we went upstairs to see how they're doing now. i think the film has developed a cult following so based on their website (talk about a throwback! check out that webpage!!!) and myspace, they're touring a fair bit and at decent-sized venues, too!

can everyone else feel the insistent tug of fall? the lull? the desire for cocooning, coziness, legs curled up and under a woolly afghan, sleeping in a pile, long-stewed, simmered, braised meats, root vegetables smelling like the earth? the golden light of hearth (i wish) and home winking out into the darkness? i love this season for mulled apple cider, and warm cookies, and sheepskin slippers, and flannels.

i'm almost dizzy with joy when i ride over the bloor viaduct and i see the don valley stretched out like a giant, undulating carpet of russet, tawny port, claret, and gold. i feel so alive and so present and so immediate in the last flush of sunlight before the dusk comes and casts long shadows over all.

it's getting harder and harder to come home and think of anything but settling down on the couch with a big bowl of warm foodstuffs resting on my belly and a pile of books to bury into. i'm letting more and more things slide until "tomorrow" - if ever.

we had the roomie and l'army over after dinner for some SYTYCD and cookies and talking - it was fun! they hadn't seen lil' ugmo since we had gotten ceilings - so it was a big revelation - they were suitably awed.

fin.

those who know, know

i kind of wish the world at large had the opportunity to enjoy the unique experience of going to costco with the dotytron. it's hilarious. "do you want to see those chocolate muffins i was talking about?" yes, yes i do! "this tea was obviously brewed using water that's too hot, you can taste the bitterness" *sampling from a styrofoam sample cup of tetley's green tea* lol!

so last night, our plans to meet up with high school peeps got derailed. lemme tells ya: gimme an old-fashioned tyrannical despotic regime anytime! trying to reach a decision based on consensus, through email, makes you want to tear your hair out. i had suggested the idea for a bi-monthly dining club - it was warmly received. but when it came time to decide where we were going to eat, all hell broke loose. there were last minute dietary restrictions, no one willing to come down and pull the trigger, it was too much! so in the end we bailed on the dinner plans and did our own thing, which turned out SPLENDIDLY!

incidentally, i think if you're going to do a dining club, participants just have to submit to the selector. like a book club. it's so and so's turn to pick, you read the book (even if it isn't to your taste) and then you get to pick based on your parameters when it's your turn. people all have to be on the same gastronomic page, too...if you have a raw vegan on board, it's going to be REALLY hard to find places month after month.

anyway, we ended up at caplansky's, in their new location. love it! bright, light, airy, with exposed brick walls and art deco hanging light fixtures i covet. there was a bit of a line-up at 7:30pm, but we got seated at the bar, promptly. the bartender was excellent - backing off when you didn't need him, materializing just when you did, chatty, warm, a real food hound (btw, he recommended hashimoto's to the TEETH. he said the chef will email you photos of what you've eaten so that the next time you come, you won't get the same thing twice - that the room was designed by the chef and that the chef attended the kaiseki institute in japan. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! way to make me blinded with lust to go, buddy. line of credit balance be damned!).

the menu has been expanded since the days at the monarch...there's a breakfast, lunch, AND dinner card. we collected ourselves, the dotytron ordered a fantastic draft beer purportedly made by a disgruntled ex-mill st. brewery employee, and then i rattled off our order in a staccato burst of ashkenazi gunfire: 1 kishka, 1 knish, 1 liver appetizer, 1 fatty sandwich combo with fries, 1 medium sandwich combo with the borscht (not beet based). at which point, the bartender paused from his frantic transcription, looked up, and cocked his eyebrow: "that's a lot of food"

inwardly, i bristled. i nodded, "yeah, we wanted to try the stuff we haven't had" and he nodded and went to input the order. the dotytron turned to me and said what i was thinking, "i take that as a challenge." ME TOO! i'm kind of like, don't you know who i am? i'm iron-stomach lagerfeld! i'm the girl who will eat 8 hot dogs in a single sitting and still be clamoring for more! who thinks nothing of a 3 piece fried chicken meal while waiting for my banquet burger to be done! please! well, the food came, it was across-the-board, delicious:

the borscht that came with the dotytron's combo meal (sandwich and choice of soup, salad, fries). again, it's a beef and cabbage based borscht, no beets. they used the smoked meat bits in making the stock - deliciously fragrant, soothing, warm with a hit of sourness...perfect for a biting fall day.

have i ever encountered a chopped liver i didn't want to order? no way! this little scoop was full of livery livery punch with the added bonus of little bits of unpuréed liver for texture. rich with the faint coppery taste that i associate with liver, it's served with rye ends (too many for the zeal with which i enthusiastically apply liver to carb) and red onion and some tomato.

kiskha! a nice snap from the skin encasing a flavourful, fluffy, mealy interior, browned and crisped on all sides and served with a ladle of smoked meat gravy. oh, my stomach is burbling just thinking about it the next day (seriously, i just had to swallow a mouthful of anticipatory saliva).

their knish is obviously sliced off a big slab, instead of the individualized portions i'm used to. we got the potato, with the smoked meat gravy (other options are smoked meat and they also have a vegetarian friendly mushroom gravy). sliced pavé of perfectly yielding, fluffy potatoes encased in a short, flaky pastry, redolent of onion - good god, i'm going to need a spit cup - i want to go back RIGHT NOW and eat more! DID I MENTION THAT THEY SERVE BREAKFAST!???!!!


finally our sammiches. is there another option other than fatty? if yes, i don't want to hear about it (the dotytron got a good-natured ribbing for opting for medium). hand-carved and delectable. unlike schwartz's, as your mouth hovers over the sandwich for that split second before your teeth meet yielding rye and layer upon layer of brisket, your nose and mouth pick up the unmistakable drift of smoke that's been impregnated into that meat. it's revelatory. fantastic. the smoke is so subtle that you can't really taste it, but your keen sense of smell knows it's there and that's what makes this sandwich. not the mustard - as i told the dotytron, "i never put mustard on my smoked meat sandwich" him: "really?" me: "yup, i bare-back it." neighbouring lone diner at the end of the bar, overhears, chokes on his sandwich and looks at me with admiring, awestruck eyes. lol!

the fries are the same...the way i like them, on the too-salty side of salty, some crispies, some limpies, all of them amenable to a good squirt of ketchup and a mawing by the forkful.

after polishing off EVERYTHING on our plates, we got daps from lone diner, whose admiration for me had only increased as he watched me pack away bite after bite, and an apology from the bartender, for thinking we couldn't do it. i wanted to say, guys, we've eaten in ROCHESTER, sons. we're (well, the dotytron is an honorary one by now) CHINESE, sons. you think you can throw something at me, portion wise, that can even test brian's u.s.a diner on a no-atkins day? or the cracker barrel when i'm being circumspect? puh-lease. come again. it wasn't even THAT much food. we finished our meal and i felt fine. nothing that would require a witching hour pepto shot, that's for damned sure.

so we ordered dessert.


cherry pie for the dotytron and lemon meringue for me. the bartender warned me that the lemon was a little watery and gave it to me for 1/2 price. sweet! what a great place! the crust was tough (to be expected) and my lemon meringue wasn't punchy enough, but they were decent. i'd call those a $3 slice of pie, not a cent more (i think desserts cost a bit more).

anyway, for all that food, we spent $60, including tax and tip. a pretty solid deal if you ask me.

we saw the movie in the beaches cinema. well, well, well, aren't YOU a civilized movie going experience? $9 for non members, no crowds, no screaming kids and blaring arcade. loved it. overall, i enjoyed this film - i think like all the reviews have been saying, it captures the tumultuous confusion and capricious emotions of childhood. i love catherine keener and mark ruffalo - would watch them in just about anything (and in the case of a 10 minute, "13 going on 30" interlude whilst channel surfing last weekend, i mean it when i say, "just about anything") didn't love the soundtrack - although karen o's keening does kind of match the mood of the film. the wild things were a revelation - the confluence of ace voice casting and the CGI'd expressions resulted in a rich, emotionally gratifying performances from the fuzzy suits.

i loved the interaction of the wild things with each other and the way they stood in for recognizable (western) family dynamics. however, i thought the movie was a trifle long - the time that max spends with the wild things, is a little too thin on plot and character development to justify how long jonze lingers. i would have liked to see MORE during max's self-imposed exile. more exploration into the wild things' characters - less of a too-easily digestible mirror for his interactions in the human world with his family. overall, it was quite good...i'm not sure that i'd recommend it. i loved lauren ambrose as k.w. - there are some lovely, funny moments.

this morning for breakfast i attempted (in my own way) to atone for the supper time excesses of friday and saturday night with some whole wheat and oat scones (the same recipe i've posted before, subbing whole wheat flour for the white, and turbinado sugar for the white sugar). we had these with devonshire cream and strawberry fig jam.

then was the aforementioned costco trip that inspired the title of this post. we were almost paralyzed by our inability to choose the right candy/chocolate/brand mix for our halloween grab-bucket. but we soldiered on and then headed to the garden store to grab my canvases for carving.


tonight for dinner i made us a proper fall/winter sunday supper - the kind that sunlit, nippy, kaleidoscope-leaf days like these cry out for. creamed chicken stew with cornmeal dill dumplings. i contemplated throwing everything into the slow-cooker but that would have been a mistake - we don't like it when there's little nubs of chicken bones that you have to contend with in an otherwise luxuriant, silken bowl. so i par-cooked the chicken, at a low simmer (thighs and drumsticks) then let the chicken cool, removed the skin and deboned them. i used the chicken poaching liquid as my chicken stock. we have leeks in there, and carrots, celery, thyme, sage, parsley, rosemary, mushrooms, peas, and a sweet potato, cubed small in a slightly thickened, cream-infused liquid...all topped with dill-flecked, winking dumplings. nom nom nom.

dessert was a sour cream apple tart from altitude with vanilla ice cream. the dotytron has been feeling the onset of sickness (he's ALWAYS convincing himself that he feels a cold a coming on) but i'm banking on the restorative powers stewed veggies and chicken, prepared with love.

i'll let you know how it does.

fin.

busy busy busy

guys, halloween is SO SOON! and we have AMAZING costumes this year! mine has the following going for it: comfort, funny, dashing. the dotytron's has this: historically relevant, a wig, a women's sized MEDIUM coat. lol!

what have i been up to the last few days, eh? well, on thursday night my mum and big d took us out to big mouth kee for dinner along with some of their friends who gave us wedding presents (cash) that my parents promptly stole. lol! i think that's how it works in chinese culture. basically, you're always giving money back to your parents for having birthed/raised you. when i was a kid and i asked my mum what i was getting for my birthday, she'd inevitably reply, "ummm...what are YOU getting for ME?" chinese people in general don't really do birthday prezzies (or maybe it's just my fam?) that's not cash, which made the grade-school post-birthday debrief of, "sooo...what'd you get for your birthday?" kind of squirm-inducing. what was i supposed to reply? "uh, i got the gift of being born 8 years ago"?

anyway, big mouth kee is kind of dingy on the inside. i think i've mentioned before that it's rigged up to look like hong kong circa the 1920s or something. big d is a HUGE big mouth kee champion but i've never seen it before - but that meal on thursday was INSANE! INSANE! we had:
1) roast suckling pig - one of the best iterations of that dish evers! the perfect balance between the crispy skin, a sliver of pork fat and a sliver of tender pork - just enough to support the weight of the bristling skin
2) sea cucumber (which i usually hate) - stuffed with shrimp paste and served with perfectly cooked broccoli
3) shark's fin soup but in a rich, crab bisque reminiscent broth
4) these little nests made out of thin, rice noodle threads that had been deep fried to shattering delicacy, holding asparagus and scallops
5) the veggie dish was mushrooms (maitake, i think) and shanghai choy
6) braised duck with shitakes and more veggies
7) a GIANT like, 8 lb lobster that had been hacked apart and deep fried and showered with crispy bits which was browned garlic and the tomalley
8) a "high class" steamed fish (i guess even fish aren't exempt from hong kong chinese people's obsession with class consciousness)
9) fried rice
10) dessert #1 was silken tofu in a ginger syrup
11) dessert #2 was deep fried, black sesame paste stuffed glutinous rice balls
12) dessert #3 was steamed asian pears in a sweet syrup with gingko and nuts

bliss of blisses! the dotytron was enthralled! i was stuffed to the gills! and what a fitting and decadent way to end off my short work week.

yesterday was my day off. i celebrated by:
a) showing up 3 hours early to my massage, thereby scaring the beejezus out of my lovely rmt, not to mention waking earlier than i had to
b) doing all of next week's grocery shopping, which meant wrecking my back by carrying about 40lbs of groceries on my bike in the sleet and rain
c) going to the dentist and getting a cleaning
d) then showing up LATE to my scheduled massage, thereby cheating myself out of my rmt's restorative ministrations
e) coming home ravenous and eating 2 cupcakes (1 was for the dotytron) and 4 pepperoni sticks (2 were for the dotytron)
f) crafting my heart out.
g) hosting s-dawg for some low key hangs and popeye's fried chicken
h) having gut rot and then being a giant buzzkill

the plus is: i got all the stuff i needed for the dotytron's costume. and i made my halloween bunting.

this is what lil' ugmo's dressing up as for halloween:





pretty cute, huh? the bunting turned out really sweet. i used my new favorite font: cooper black. i'm really obsessed with 70s style fonts lately (bodoni, cooper black, etc.) i didn't do a very good job sewing the cut-out letters so the edges might fray away to nothing - we'll see! it would have been easier to use a font that had all right angles - but this looks so nice! don't you think?

i cut out the pumpkins using this tutorial as my guide/inspiration and put them up in the windows of our enclosed porch. then i cut out some leaves from some random wrapping paper i had around and placed them around the pumpkin heads. they turned out really well! i'm also supposed to make the grave stones today...finished project pics will be posted accordingly. and tomorrow i'm going to pick out my pumpkins and those will add the finishing touches (plus "monster mash" playing on repeat) to lil' ugmo's first halloween.

i'm also supposed to start/finish my costume today. then i will call it a day. and by "calling it a day" i mean: "sit on the couch and organize all my photos into albums or if i don't feel like doing that, knitting and reading all the comics i ordered from the library"

tonight we're purportedly meeting with some high school crew for dinnie at caplansky's. i had previously reviewed them in their former incarnation at the monarch. now they've added kishka and knish and all sorts of other jewish deli staples that i'm itching to try. the smoked meat was always good as were the fries. the sides tended to be lacking. my sis ordered matzoh ball soup there and it was TERRIBLE. tasted like dirty dish water. i'm going back in their new, self-standing location so i can know whether to close the book on the place or not.

we're hoping to follow that up with some "where the wild things are" action.

okay...costumes don't make themselves!

fin.

p.s. in case the neighbours didn't hate us already, the monday after the move, on my first real day to start tackling lil' ugmo, i made it my first priority to do this:

yep, i spray-painted "fire walk with me" in red stencil letters on our garbage, green, and recycling bin (i also put the address on the other side).