loves me a good deal

score! so you know how i was talking about how redonkulously expensive those glass doorknobs were at the door store? i told my colleague and she sent me a link to a bucket of glass knobs that just got deposited at the habitat for humanity restore in north york. people and businesses make donations of new and gently used stuff to the restores, which they sell at discounted prices. they had a heap of knobs for $25/set!!!

so i sent the dotytron and he snagged 5 for us...for the same price (actually, much less) than we would have paid for ONE at the door store! wooee! now we just have to buy the rosettes and latches - i found a guy on ebay selling retrofit sets including rosettes and latches in a variety of finishes for $25 USD/set...but we're still going to see if home depot or lowe's has any first. SO ACES! so we're going to get the entire thing done for less than $60/door which i can totally live with. $180 door when you have cheap doors is just silly. i think they're going to look pretty amazing when we have them set up.

the colour of our dining room is starting to drive me kind of crazy...i really want to repaint it, but i'll probably be sensible and wait until we have our kitchen done (a year or two? depending on when i win the lottery?):

this is the kind of colour i'm going for. i think that kind of rich, jewel tone will look lovely against the deep purple in the living room and provide a gorgeous backdrop to bring out the tones in the sideboard and will make the white accents in the room (the chairs, the centrepiece) really pop.

okay...so here's the annoying thing about the dudes on my dodgeball team (the dudes and ladies) which you might be able to chalk up to the fact that they're young, but mostly due to the fact that they're dummies. so i put together this dancehall, hip-hoppy mix of tunes with some ragga jungle thrown in to get the team (read: me and doty) pumped. there's been some controversy because s-dawg has been playing his mix which includes your standard kind of stadium fist-pumpers along with the theme from "rocky" (the orchestral theme), which when it came on, totally through two members of the team (they're young girls) for a loop and they were all like, *curled lip* "WHAT IS THIS?!" and being all snarky and one of them turned it off, even though the dotytron and s-dawg were getting all hype because they've actually SEEN "rocky" (i haven't, but i don't get ruffled by the tunes that people play during dball, generally. like, most of the time my team when they play on sundays plays really stupid metal and i just shrug it off.)

ANYWAY, sister nancy's "bam bam" comes on:



and AGAIN the two girls are curling their lips (p.s. one of them DOESN'T EVEN PLAY DBALL AND IS THE GIRLFRIEND OF ONE OF THE PLAYERS AND IS LIKE AN ELEVENTEEN YEAR OLD WHO WORKS RETAIL - NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING INTRINSICALLY WRONG WITH THAT) and asking incredulously, "what IS this?!?" like they've NEVER HEARD DANCEHALL or reggae or music made by black people before.

and i'm like, b***h, SHUT IT. it's infuriating. like, i don't expect everyone to know EVERYTHING, ça c'est impossible. i get it. but you don't have to be all like, "what is this freak music for jerks" about it, when really IT JUST SHOWS THAT YOU are a small-minded, sheltered weirdo from HICKSVILLE, WHITEYTOWN! (your standard caveats about context, blah blah blah) like, there's an opinion about music after having listened to it and giving it a chance and then there's just showing your ignorance and being a jerk about it.

like, how come i can take the time to know what fleet foxes and ok go and tragically hip and ALL THAT OTHER CRAP I THINK IS THE WORSTEST sounds like, so that i can say, "you know what? it's not my thing" but you can ONLY know the tragically hip and think all songs written by non white hairy dudes that aren't derivative to the max is "weird"? COME ON. and as usual, HAVE YOU MET YOU?

and then the dotytron told me that when then this tune came on:



and one of the tithead girls comes running up and is like, "i know this! it's sean paul!" and was all crestfallen when she realized it wasn't dance mix 2005. not that there's anything wrong with sean de paul. but they're BABIES. who DON'T KNOW ANYTHING. and most egregiously, DON'T KNOW THAT THEY DON'T KNOW ANYTHING AND MASK THEIR PROFOUND AND TOTAL IGNORANCE WITH DISGUST.

gah. it just makes you feel old. but i mean, i don't think there should be an age limit on being as well-rounded as you can be. there's no time when it's okay not to be curious about stuff.

yesterday's meals were all about the poultry and fries. my colleage T took me to lunch at this place on yonge called the coach house which is the kind of old fashioned diner-type places with vinyl seats, an ancient cash register up at the front, and formica tables and where they serve the classics like hot turkey sandwiches on white bread with boiled veggies and fries with real chunks of turkey and fake gravy. it was awesome. we went halfsies on the club and hot turkey and ate fries and i was stuffed. then after dodgeball we met up with old kitchen friends of mine M and F who are married and ate duff's wings and fries for dinner. i worked with M at bymark but he got out of the business and now does landscaping and F is the sous chef at george and is trying to get out of the business or at least reduce the hours/time spent in the kitchen. it's a hard mentality to break. only working 10 hours days instead of 12+ and leaving at a reasonable time and not feeling guilty when you say goodbye to the other line cooks that you know still have 6 hours of service and clean up ahead of them.

tonight we're heading up to markham to visit with my sis and the kids, sans outlaw bro. sis is in town to go with s-dawg and myself to my uncle's funeral tomorrow. it's my deadbeat dad's bro. we've only met him a handful of times so i'm feeling a little removed - but it's always sad when people go before their time.

for dinner the dotytron and i are going to phoenix, which is famous for their hainan chicken rice and hk style food (well, this type of restaurant tends to do like, hong kong takes on singaporean and malaysian style food - and hong kong style western food. malaysian curries, ox tongue spaghetti and whatnot.) i'll take a photo of our meal and post it. hainan chicken rice is rice that's been poached in a chicken stock that gets re-used over and over to produce an ultra-flavourful, concentrated stock. the accompanying rice is cooked in a fatty, rich chicken stock resulting in fragrant, perfumed rice with a distinct unctuousness and separate, fluffy grains. it's traditionally served with a piquant ginger-scallion relish for dipping. it's so addictive. totally comfort food all slippery and slightly neutral and gentle on your stomach. the best is now restaurants make the hainan chicken BONELESS. sweet mother of all that is good that was a major step forward in hainan chicken rice preparation.

fin.

still runnin'

3km yesterday in about 20 minutes, with a couple of minutes of stitch-induced walking thrown in. i think if i'm working up to anything, my max will be 5km...or basically whatever i can do in 20 minutes which seems to be the outer limits of my interest in non-competitive athletic activities. BUT THIS IS BORING. i knows. i'm just compulsive about documenting my life. sorry!

on monday night my bro came over for dinner unexpectedly. he was quite content to eat leftovers and loudly spoiler-alert us in chinglish to upcoming twists and turns on "lost" that weren't yet revealed. i served pouding chomeurrrrr for dessert:

with a bit of vanilla ice cream. fact: maybe as a by-product of my running regimen and training but i haven't really had a taste for sweets lately. like, i EAT it, knowing intellectually that heretofore i've been a dessert hound and i like things like sticky toffee pudding and pouding chomeurrrrrr but my heart's not in it. i don't enjoy it the way i have. maybe this is just signaling that it's time to turn to less wintery desserts and embrace the light, chilled, fruity desserts of spring and summer.


last night we had the roomie over for dinner. i made capellini with broccoli and chickpeas in herbed butter (oregano, parsley, thyme, lemon zest mixed with softened unsalted butter). i actually hate capellini. it's such a beast to work with unless you're dealing with something extra saucy. i had to add quite a few glugs of olive oil to loosen up the fine strands. the salad was romaine hearts in a ceasar-y vinaigrette with croutons and crumbled strips of extra-crispy bacon that the dotytron didn't think were fit for our breakfast sammie on sunday. actual bacon bits in a salad was a BIG TREAT. we NEVER do that.

tonight i went for a massage and then negated all that tenderizing by schlepping my butt to the library to pick up a billion pounds of books that i then carried home lopsidedly over my shoulder in a flimsy bag.

for dinner i made a broiled feta, grape tomato, olive, poached egg and sage dish, served with toasted slices of ace focaccia. the recipe is here. my only deviation is to take some grape tomatoes and toss them with garlic and olive oil and a bit of chopped rosemary and broil them first until they start to burst and get jammy. then i add the olives and feta and sage to the dish and broil again, top with the egg and eat with an intense gusto.

okay, so the latest book that i've read lately to make me go MENTAL was "graceling" by kristin cashore. i turned into a slavering, instant-graceling acolyte, preaching its glories from on high for all who would pay me any mind. it's SO GOOD. it's in the young adult fantasy type demographic, but as usual, i think that genre designation does the work a great disservice - i can tell - you're already raising your eyebrows and your mind has gone into: "DISREGARD!" mode. DON'T. the themes are mature, the characters leap off the page and come to life, the story is engrossing - if you could read harry potter, you can read this. you will LOVE this. it's like the best of tolkein, but with an a**-kickingly strong, intelligent, independent FEMALE heroine for a change. that's right, frodo, you and all your male-centric homoeroticism can take a back seat and let the ladies have the action, adventure, and be the driving force of the story.

wow. i only WISH this type of novel had been around when i was a kid - it's so progressive! the story centres around katsa, a woman born graced, which means that she has eyes of two different colours and has a special skill. gracelings, as they are known, can have useful skills (mind-reading, sword fighting, the ability to divine water, the ability to make people laugh) or random ones (the ability to stand on one's head for long stretches, to hold one's breath, etc.) katsa's grace is killing people and she's been raised by her uncle, the king, as a torture/bullying vehicle for his power machinations. that's only the tip of the iceberg...the story unfolds from there with thrumming dialogue, action, adventure, and a wee bit of a love story...but a forward thinking one - katsa isn't the type of heroine to give up her life and spend her days idly waiting to be rescued/cosseted by her partner.

it's SO GOOD. gah. one worth owning for suresies. i couldn't get enough of it. i'd read it walking to the streetcar, on the streetcar - wishing i could feign ignorance and ride to the end of the line for just a few more minutes with the book, i'd eat with the book propped up before me, and my last companion at night.

i'm not saying it's going to be for everyone. but if you can get over your initial irrational mistrust of all things fantasy and young adult, your open-mindedness will be well rewarded. trust me, i see a mass-market fiction book with a woman in silver skirts and a heaving bosom riding a dragon and wielding a scimitar and i get all skeptical, too. this isn't really even fantasy. think of it as more medieval lit.

anyway, no wonder it's won a tonne of awards and shown up on countless best-of lists.

fin.

in which i put together a rather hideous quilt top

sunday breakkie consisted of a BLT with egg and smushed up diced avocado, red onion, and lime on a whole wheat kaiser. delicious! intensely filling!

i spent the afternoon fiddling with the layout for my quilt top...uhhhhh...it's turning into a bit of a monster - have a look for yourself:


well...lesson learned. here's where i went astray:

a) there are two distinct types of blues going on - the strong, bold blue and orange and the slightly lighter, more pastel-y blue/orange palette.
b) some of the fabric combos i paired have A LOT of movement which can be stressful for the eye.
c) this is my first time doing this.

i mean, i guess i could potentially separate out the two blocks of colours and make 2 smaller quilts that are more unified, but at the same time, i kind of like my little clashy quilt and i think i'm going to see it through. it'll still make a perfect picnic base or a lying-on-the-couch-during-cool-summer-nights companion. plus, its very n00b-ness makes for some built-in nostalgia down the line - like your first ever made-at-home chocolate milk popsicle, or your first lumpen, craggy clay bowl, or pipe cleaner edifice.

last night's dinner was delicious. the heritage turkey was tasty, full of pumped-up mayflower turkey flavour. the drumsticks were stringy and tendon-y, befitting a breed of bird who's been eking out a hardscrabble existence since the time of the pilgrims. the meat was juicy (probably due in equal parts to genetics and my cooking method) and had the faint wildness and slightly resistant texture of a squab or quail. for dessert i served the last of the sticky toffee pudding from the freezer - i'll have to make pumpkin pie another day.

the goosetang had a lively debate about the TTC and how it's the most ineptly run transportation system in all of christendom. we watched the oscars and ruminated on such things as:

- why penelope cruz can't speak english yet
- how the dotytron should use penelope cruz as a case study for his ESL teaching course he's taking right now
- how dr. rei is convinced that randy newman was in a folger's commercial singing "the best part of waking up/is folger's in your cup"
- how dr. rei is convinced that christoper plummer was a jerk and a tyrant on the set of "the sound of music" based on an interview with all the von trapp kids that she may or may not have imagined seeing 10-15 years ago
- that we all collectively hate the fact that they always say, "precious: based on the novel 'push' by sapphire" instead of just calling it "precious"

the oscars were super-long and kind of boring, although i was pumped to see neil patrick harris do an opening number because i really really like him.

tonight for dinner we just had hot turkey sandwiches with gravy. my digestive system has been all mucked up lately...i'm not sure that hot turkey sandwiches slathered with reconstituted swiss chalet gravy counts as something to revive a sensitive tummy, but i got it down okay, and it's sitting okay...so win!

we've started watching "lost" - we're giving it the proverbial old college try - again. we figure that now that it's almost all over, we can watch and marathon and there's no pressure to catch up and if it doesn't take, it doesn't take. we finished watching "how i met your mother" season 1 and it's hi-larious. jason segel and neil patrick harris (NPH) make the show.

fin.

a night in tunisia

training started in earnest yesterday, with a 20 minute, 2.86km run (a very very slow job, actually), some crunches, weights, push-ups and yoga. it's easy when the weather is all springlike and sunny.

i finally managed to convince the dotytron to go to the castlefield design district so that we could do some research on lighting at union lighting and research some door knobs (i want to replace our brass fittings on all the doors with antique, glass knobs) at the door store. the good news is, union lighting had a pretty decent supply of schoolhouse fixtures that were reasonably priced. we can get stuff that we like for the whole house for about $350, which is way more affordable than i thought it was going to be. the bad news is, antique doorknobs run about $100/knob (minimum...some of them were $285/knob - and the price changes on the knob depending on the finish you want.) because we don't have antique doors but new doors with the new whole drilled in, we have to get these weird converter plates made by a company that allows people with pre-drilled doors to have old knobs fitted. those are a minimum of $30/plate (you need 2 per door) and then to get them darkened is an extra $10 and then to have them re-plated (if you don't like an antiqued bronze look but want pewter or nickle or chrome) is bajillions more.

the long and short of it is: the knobs will be the LAST thing we do. and for all of you homeowners, helping homeowners out there, nice doorknobs are EFFIN' EXPENSIVE!

we had dinner with my friends D and N last night. they're both pretty adventurous eaters so we headed to this tunisian restaurant, djerba ladouce on the danforth. it was SOOOOO GOOD! i couldn't believe it! they don't serve alcohol, so we started our meal off with mint tea. the tea was served hot and poured dramatically from a silver tea pot very high into pretty, tiny, embossed glasses. the tea was tooth-achingly sweet and not particularly my style.

the restaurant is nothing to look at. there are some hand painted murals on the wall and the chairs and tables are standard-issue thrifted from some dated second hand restaurant supply store. you don't go for the decor. the chef proprietor (pictured on the homepage) came and answered our questions about the menu. D asked what the "salad grill mushwa" was and he said it was a pureed salad and that it was fantastic so we ordered that to share. technically, the chef owner said that EVERYTHING was good and recommended the calamari, which, he claimed, was like "no calamari anywhere else." despite that enticing endorsement, we opted to just go with the mushwa instead.

the salad mushwa was DELICIOUS. oh my goodness! according to the online menu it's a puree of garlic, roasted tomato and onion. there are capers and olives strewn about and a bit of hard boiled egg. bits of crunchy pickled cucumbers and a hefty dousing of fresh parsley brighten the rich, smooth flavours of the dish. served with warm pita for scooping it was positively addictive. so freakin' good! it was hard to identify the spicing but alls i know is, it tasted divine.

i ordered the lamb couscous which was a generous, properly braised shank portion on top of impossibly fluffy couscous (every time i make it, the grains clump, but at restaurants, each little bead is always distinct and tender) with a mix of vegetables: tender baby carrots and cabbage predominantly in some gentle spicing. it was delicious and so affordable at $13 for the dish.

the dotytron got the merguez "platter" which featured links of lamb merguez sausage in a hearty, smooth, and intensely flavourful spiced sauce with vegetables and bits of french-fried potato. served with warmed pita for sopping up the delicious sauce.

D got the trout platter which was a huge plate of poached trout covered in a herb sauce that was very rich and creamy but didn't appear to have any cream in it.

everything was amazingly delicious and the bill came to $73 total (incl. tax, without tip, cash only). i'm excited to go back again. the food was unlike any i had ever had before and really satisfying - exciting for the taste buds.

this morning we're doing small futzy things around the house. sunday breakkie will be a BLT with egg on a whole wheat kaiser. we're having goosetang over for an oscar/thanksgiving party. we haven't had an only-goosetang hang since montreal - i'm so excited! it's a slash-thanksgiving party because i got snookered into buying a heritage turkey from the mennonites - i ordered a goose, they convinced me to buy a turkey instead, claiming it was a heritage breed that's like, all dark meat, when i tried to change my order to a duck, they guilt-tripped me saying they had already ordered it and the farmer was weeping silent tears on their doorstep blah blah blah. anyway, i didn't get to cook thanksgiving dinner this year, so i'm doing it now. we're having: roast turkey, sage stuffing, garlic mashed potatoes, gravy, brussel sprout and carrot horseradish casserole, and i'm kicking around the idea of doing another vegetable as well - maybe mashed sweet potatoes with marshmallow topping. but i feel like that already is a lot of food for 5 people, especially with sticky toffee pudding and bourbon caramel sauce for dessert...so i might hold off.

it's going to be a fun/productive day!

fin.

nothing to see here

boringtown! not much to report - played dball last night...a crrrrrap game on my part. i think housing a giant plate of fish'n'chips (haddock) from parkside fish'n'chips did me in. parkside has been around since 1928 and the asian couple who run the shop have had it for the past 24 years. it's pretty grimey and dingy in there, but the first rule of fish'n'chips is NEVER, EVER judge a fish'n'chippy by its environs. that's a fatal mistake. parkside is all fluroescent lights buzzing atop a long, thin room dominated by an ancient battleship of a fryer facing 3 worn and stained chairs for waiting patrons (i stand). it's a takeout operation only. when you open the door, the old man emerges from the back of the shop with a dirty apron on and creakily moves towards you, taking your order with an affable smile.

news alert that should surprise no one: HE BREAKS MY HEART. your choices are cod or halibut or crab cakes all served in a crisp, industrial batter with a heap of fries (soggy, hand-cut, limply exemplifying the essence of potato) wrapped in the de rigeur newspaper and paper. all for the pauper's sum of $8 flat. packaged tartar sauce (the way it's supposed to be). i'm a fan. it's never going to usurp harbord fish'n'chips for value and glassine batter, but it's miles ahead of my hated fish'n'chips nemesis, chippy's. so close, too!

did i tell you they're opening a gourmet burger shop in lil' ugmo's hood? it's going to be called great burger kitchen...they're touting local, organic beef and claiming to be a purveyor of poutines. yessssss!!! AND the new neapolitan-style pizza place seems to be legit enough - wood burning oven, ingredients shipped in from ital-towns - enough so that i will never line up for pizzeria libretto again. seriously, the pizza at libretto was good...but not NOTICEABLY different from the satisfaction derived from a terroni's pie or a piping hot massimo's slice on the enjoyment scale. certainly not enough to warrant lining up for, at any rate.

anyway, i played a listless game of dodgeball cuz i was weighed down with a pound of grease and fries soused in reconstituted swiss chalet dipping sauce to make up for the meagreness with which parkside dispenses tartar sauce packets (at places that have packaged tartar sauce, i understand and commisserate with the miserly distribution of the tartar sauce...THESE ARE OLD CHINESE CHIPPY PROPRIETORS, WE'RE TALKING ABOUT HERE, PEOPLE!!!) and their lack of any gravy whatsoever. as s-dawg said when he walked in the room and espied our pre-game dinner, "now i know why you guys are always so loagey at dodgeball" - CAUGHT!

tonight we're hosting one of the dotytron's oldest friends for dinner. they reconnected on FB. apparently S was the dotytron's first partner on all imaginative, kid-creative fueled journeys of the sonic kind. i'm going to let them reminisce and talk shop and stay out of their hair. i'll sit downstairs and try to fast-forward through precious or work on my quilt and watch mad men while they reminisce and music nerd out together.

for dinner i made us a "mexican" lasagne of corn tortillas layered with a chorizo, kidney, black bean, dried chile chipotle sauce (aka my chilaquiles base), roasted, peeled canned poblanoes, and shredded jack cheese. served with a tomatillo salsa and avocadoes chunked up with lime, red onion and sour cream. it was a pretty tasty variation of my favorite ingredients.

fin.

it takes a village to cure some meat

it should come as a surprise to absolutely NO ONE that i wasn't able to sustain my own self-generated 4x4 yoga challenge. it's too damned hard! what the hell? how am i supposed to have time to do FOUR HOURS of anything during the week? it's too crazy! what with dodgeball on thursday nights and my alternating movie club/dinner with the roomie commitments on tuesday nights and then socializing on the weekend and random stuff coming up during the week - it was too hectic. i'm still committed to a more regularly weekly yoga practice and i'm going to start throwing in some crunches and weights in there to get myself in fighting form for the summer, but the rigidity of the 4x4 was not happening.

in other news: i think i might try training (in the same kind of meandering, not super-regimented way outlined above) to do a try a triathlon this summer. something late in the season. i like biking, swimming, and running but not enough to do an entire challenge devoted to one of those things individually. plus the try-a-tri distances are very manageable - you swim for 375m (in open water though), bike for 10km, and then run for 2.5km. i'm not super into placing or anything - i just think it would give me something to work towards when i run/bike/swim this summer. i don't really care about beating times...i just think it would be fun. i pretty much can do all of those distances now (the weak point would be swimming) but they say when you're training you should try to exceed those distances, like, don't just stop at a 2.5km run and call it quits because you want to have some mustard in you. they also say that you should practice biking for 10km and then hopping off and running, which also sounds like sound advice.

i've also been pooched since like, mid february. i think it was the mid-february blahs, which didn't manifest itself in any way other than to make me want to sleep a zillion hours every night. it hasn't helped that i've been nose-deep in several books for the past little while - books are seriously like crack cocaine. the ones i've been into, i've been hard-pressed not to try to sneak in reading time at work. all i want to do is curl up with the book and finish it at the expense of other things like my quilt top and my knitting. again, the pitfalls of having too many interests.

i freakin' love my food friends. this guy who i worked with at my first cooking gig at angus glen golf club in markham recently re-connected with me over fb. this guy was/is HARDCORE. the kind who does a tonne of research into food and will try everything and is super curious and well-informed. he's also the guy who i got to hone my skills at being unbelievably crass and off-colour in the kitchen with (this was the time of bukake gripping the minds of a generation of people newly unleashed onto the internet). ANYWAY, he recently got into charcuterie and smoking and hepped me to all these messageboards AND he has an arborist friend who has hooked him up with all these hardwoods for smoking (apple, pear, cherry, mulberry, white oak, sugar maple) and he's going to hook ME up with them in turn. then my buddy J of cellar and table said he'd get me in on his buddy's 5kg bag of sure cure so that i can start making my own bacon/cured meats. HOO-HA! i was totally beaming about this community of food-hounds coming together. i don't usually like to define myself by my interests, but i'm so glad that my time spent as a cook has brought me such a diverse, interested, and educated community of like-minded people. what resources! as the dotytron said as i told him about the sharing in excited tones over dinner last night: "i'm way more into that kind of community than the exclusive crap of these stupid supper clubs like charlie's burger" SO TRUE.

my cook's heart's cockles were equally warmed when i reached out to some friends from canoe (my buddy A and his now wife S, who worked at auberge de pommier) who now live in NYC. A worked at tru in chicago and is super-precise and an extremely gifted and dedicated cook. i'll always remember that he was the one who first heard my strangled curses when i dumped the pot of boiling water on my footie and he was the one who immediately filled a giant bucket with ice water for me to dunk my foot in. we were just kind of copacetic - on the same food wavelength. anyway, he's been working at per se and his wife was working at del posto. i contacted them because we're heading to nyc in may and i thought we should get together and try to work something out. in the message, i expressed my dismay and still-lingering embarrassment over having served these two incredibly talented, gifted cooks my corned beef hash (with canned corned beef, natch) the day before they left toronto for a going-away breakfast meet up at my place. he's going to work at per se and i'm frying up corned beef hash as a goodbye meal. lol! the wife, S, was so sweet and posted on my fb wall that it was the best corned beef hash she's ever eaten. i don't believe it for a minute...but what a sweetheart. i love unpretentious cooks!

monday night's dinner was a GIANT bowl of the last of cream of cauliflower soup and my favorite quickie sammy of cheddar and onion toasted in an oven on ace focaccia.

last night's dinner was an old favorite of mine. steamed chicken with dried shitakes and chinese sausage (lap cheong) in a sweet soy sauce with steamed brown rice with gai lan (chinese broccoli). topped with a raw egg. that's some good eats, right there...even if it is loaded with carcinogenic nitrites.

tonight i made us steamed mussels in a thai-inspired (read: it had lemongrass and fish sauce in it) coconut curry sauce which we had with toasted chunks of my homemade bread and steamed gai lan with oyster sauce. unf unf!

i read joann safar and emmanuel
guibert's "the professor's daughter" a while back. it's another comic. i was a big fan of guibert's "alan's war" (the review to which i was going to link until now, when i realized that i didn't actually write one). i didn't like this one at all. the images are watery and undefined and the whole story is rather ridiculous and half-baked. don't bother.

but DO read guibert's "alan's war" which is a touching, well-drawn, poignant capturing of the reminisces of american g.i. alan cope, who fought in wwII. alan, who met guibert in the last years of his life in france, is a wonderful storyteller, effortless and unselfconscious. the comic is basically a straight transcription of alan's reminisces of his war-time experiences. it's deeply personal but the deft, meandering storytelling makes it a fantastic read.

i didn't read all the pieces in this compendium of food writing from the pages of gourmet. some of the "endless feasts" were more compelling than others (i don't really need to read 3 separate stories chronicling the life and appetite of james beard.) some of the writing was dazzling and evocative and so of its' time with charmingly colonial colloquialisms (siam, "the chinese") that made you wonder at these impressive gourmands, so impossibly bourgeois, scattering across the globe in the post-war era of discovery and sending back dispatches of meals taken in rice paddies or of glistening trout fetched from a stream in switzerland and plated, piping hot but moments later. it made me miss gourmet magazine.

"olive kitteridge" was the 2009 pulitzer prize winner for fiction and my work book club's choice for the march meeting. elizabeth strout's writing style reminds me of annie proulx's - spare, lean, and yet palpably descriptive, bringing the short interconnected stories of small-town, new england life in portland, maine, to vivid life. you don't get verbal and linguistic acrobatics here. what you do get are characters who are real, filled with longing, regret, fears, worries, yearning, suppressed emotions. complicated, nuanced characters, like the title character, olive kitteridge, whose presence in every story - however incidental at times - ties the collection to gether. olive is a stern, repressed, conflicted, and taciturn woman, set in her ways. around her the stories of the novel unfold. ultimately the reader is left with a profound sadness for the complexities and fleeting moments of life - of how moments of tragedy and beauty can strike in an instant and how our reactions to these moments are fractured and messy. how we constantly wage a battle against our own histories and characters. i have to admit, i started out not liking this book (i dismissed it as mom-lit), but gradually it drew me in, bit by bit, and i was gifted with an intensely rewarding reading experience.

this didn't start off being a big post...but somehow blossomed into one. i'm saving my latest favoritest book of all time for its very own post later.

snowstorms, stubbornness, scrabble scrambles, and more

i just typed a monster post summing up the weekend and then it disappeared leaving only the stupid momofuku milk bar's compost cookie recipe. GRRRRRR...i'm not redoing the work. here is the weekend in picture form:

wednesday night's dinner of perogies with the healthful addition of kale to the usual bacon-onion-garlic mix. all slopped with full fat sour cream, later.

friday morning (snow day - no school!) breakfast


playing in the snow

friday night dinner: chicken parmesan (with red pepper and mushrooms hidden in the paul newman's marinara sauce), garlic knots (from mamma mia's), and the zucchini that resulted in a 2.5 standoff with the kids.

saturday lunch - aunt cookie's subs! i ate a foot long sub in under 5 minutes. these subs are the BOMB. that's an italian assorted with everything pictured above.

post-scrabble scramble ("the tory spellings" = me, my sis, s-dawg placing 5th; "the drunken outlaws" = dotytron and outlaw bro, placing in the bottom 1/3). we have sweet and sticky oven baked ribs. warm potato salad with bacon and mustard. quick pickled beets with dill. and roasted brussels sprouts. i also made us a caramel cake (not pictured).

sunday breakfast was chilaquiles.

sunday snacks were momofuku's compost cookies:


we stayed for the hockey game. imo, canada was outplayed. it was fun watching with my sis (repping team canada in her jersey) and the outlaw bro (repping team usa in his jersey). my niece made this awesome "baby cake" for a food network "baby cake" challenge. it was awesome. especially with the blinky light all askew:

a lot more stuff happened. we got lost in the storm on the way down. we watched MTOD (movie trailers on demand) and sang karaoke and played a billion rounds of wii sports resort...but i'm so pissed from having to re-write that that's all you'll get.

fin.



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

momofuku milk bar's compost cookieschristina tosi of momofuku's by way of regis & kelly's website by way of the amateur gourmet

1 c. butter (that's two sticks, unsalted)
1 c. granulated sugar
3/4 c. light brown sugar
1 T corn syrup
1 t vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
2 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
2 t Kosher salt
1 1/2 cups your favorite baking ingredients (options: chocolate chips, raisinettes (gross!), peanut butter chips, cocoa krispies)
1 1/2 cups your favorite snack foods (chips, pretzels, etc.)

note: i used a full pack of ghiardelli bittersweet chocolate chips and crushed pretzels (had the kids crush them in a ziploc bag with a rolling pin) and salted ruffled chips. because of the salt content in the chips and pretzels, i would have reduced the amount of salt in the recipe. it's is VERY IMPORTANT not to try baking these cookies until they're well chilled and firm, otherwise, they're going to liquefy in the hot oven.

- in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream butter, sugars and corn syrup on medium high for two to three minutes until fluffy and pale yellow in color. scrape down the sides with a spatula.
- on a lower speed, add eggs and vanilla to incorporate.
- increase mixing speed to medium-high and start a timer for 10 minutes. during this time the sugar granules will fully dissolve, the mixture will become an almost pale white color and your creamed mixture will double in size [this is the rather unusual step in the recipe]
- when time is up, on a lower speed, add the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
- mix 45 - 60 seconds just until your dough comes together and all remnants of dry ingredients have incorporated. scrape down the sides of the mixing bowl with a spatula.
- on the same low speed, add in the hodgepodge of your favorite baking ingredients and snack foods and mix for 30 - 45 seconds until they evenly mix into the dough.
- i used a 3/4 oz. ice cream scoop (approximately 1 1/2" diameter) to portion cookie dough onto a parchment lined sheetpan.
- wrap scooped cookie dough tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for a minimum of one hour or up to 1 week.
- heat the oven to 400 F. take the plastic off your cookies and bake 12-14 minutes. While in the oven, the cookies will puff, crackle and spread.
- cool the cookies completely on the sheet pan and enjoy!

schadenfreude

don't worry, i haven't been rejoicing in the misfortune of others...the term has just been popping up everywhere i look, lately.

i forgot to post monday night's dinner. it was a cream of cauliflower soup that i topped with leftover toasted breadcrumbs from the giant braised lima bean dish. we had this with an ace focaccia sandwich with cheddar, roasted peppers, and a bit of the oregano pesto also left over from the braised lima bean dish (the dotytron: "are you sure about that? it's quite herbaceous" [in his stupid know-it-all voice]), pressed on the panini. the sammy was good! it kind of ended up tasting like a pizza sandwich.

yesterday we had the roomie and l'army over for dinner. it was really fun! we had a lot of catching up to do.

i put out the last of the rainforest crisps, the leftover pear chutney thing, some leftover fresh goat's cheese and the last of the murcia al vino.


for dinner i made a quick pasta of guaciale, crisped and rendered, with some of T's chilies, chili flakes, roasted cauliflower, a lot of grated pecorino and a bit of chopped parsley tossed together and loosened with the pasta cooking water. i also made a crunchy salad of cucumber, red peppers, and celery with some red onion and sliced scallions in a cumin vinaigrette. the vinaigrette is supposed to have mint but we didn't have it on hand. it's a great summer salad generally, when you want something cool and crisp and crunchy.

so my favorite retailer of late, modcloth, is driving me crazy! look at all the lovely things they have for spring and summer that i've wish-listed:

i have NEVER been able to resist the allure of crisp white eyelet in the summer. i tend to go either very preppy, very kind of 90s raver, or very mrs. roper in the summer but this skirt would look DIVINE with a fitted sherbet coloured lacoste polo (preppy). am i getting too old for eyelet? i worry sometimes.

this dress would be perfect at the beach/cottage as an easy cover-up with some flat black strappy sandals (aka my birks...lol!) so summer! along with my favorite straw hat it's the definition of easy like sunday morning. standing in line at the short film festival, eating greg's ice cream, wearing that. so perfect.

i'm actually less into this the more i look at it. i feel like it's skewing a little young for me and would probably make me look blocky. plus, i need a casual summer dress the way i need a new hole in the head (for those of you who aren't familiar with that little ancient colloquialism, that is to say that i don't in fact need a new casual summer dress at all).

i thought this would make a good work piece that would transition well into fall, with some tights. i've decided that next fall i'd like to invest in some chunky, open-toed heel shoes - all the better to showcase my dazzling array of tights.


this is another grown-up lady piece for work that would function well all year round.

this is my piece de resistance. i've got two fall weddings already in the pipeline and well...wouldn't it be nice to wear this dress? with my vintage, patent, peep-toe kitten heels and a black lady cardigan with some jet beading and my feathered head piece? WOULDN'T IT?!??!!!! if i get anything from the above (and keep in mind, that's only a SMALL SAMPLING of what's on my wishlist) i will get this. even though i have a closet full of fancy dresses. that i have no occasion to wear. but still!!! one of the weddings is at the king eddy! *rampant justification alert* i haven't bought clothes in forever! *this is a lie* i'm a little concerned about the slight puckering to the satiny material you see on the shoulder part...but that's nothing a meeting with my iron wouldn't fix, would it?

between modcloth and social butterfly (for when i feel ambitious enough to actually contemplate TRYING ON CLOTHES IN A STORE AND NOT HAVING THEM ARRIVE IN A TIDY PACKAGE ON MY DOORSTEP) - it's nice knowing that all my sartorial needs are covered.

that's all for me today and probably the rest of the week, too. we're having perogies baked with bacon, onions, mushrooms, and chopped kale tonight for dinner. the dotytron is in charge of dinner duties. i'm getting a 1/2 hour massage. yay! then we're packing and sorting things out because tomorrow, after i spend all day at this librarian conference and the dotytron gets home, we're going to take our harvey's coupons and get harvey's for dinner and then hit the road for a long weekend in geneseo!

yayayayayayayayayayayayayayay!!! so excited! there's a "scrabble scramble" for some literacy charity where we're going to be on a team competing with a bunch of other brainiacs to make the highest scoring scrabble board in 45 minutes. you have ALL the tiles at your disposal and i think you have to work around and incorporate few words they set up for you on the board. apparently the judge's research students (this is the judge who officiated our performance - very good-naturedly i might add) compete and they're all like, super law school kids. nothing gets my competitive juices flowing like having my siblings take on post-secondary grads at board games!

s-dawg will have been watching the kids on his own from tuesday night until we arrive late thursday. hopefully the haven't turned feral in the interim.

fin.

sri lankan'd!!!

babu was something else. we roll up, and the place is bumpin' they basically do a very brisk catering/take-out business. everything except for the hoppers, tandoor items (including naan) is ready to go, in gleaming, immaculate steam tables. you line up, and then one of the servers personally attends to your order, guiding you through the vegetables, curries, biryanis and pilau's, desserts, and fried items - assembling your order and making sure everything is together. everything was really clean (with flat-screen tvs advertising prices and specials) and there were a lot of people there waiting to pick up but it was very orderly and they were super-nice and gave you tastes of everything you might have considered. we ordered A LOT of food.

- fish patties (like fish-filled deep-fried samosas)
- veggie samosas
- white rice
- biryani rice
- ginger chicken
- butter chicken
- curried goat
- some other curried chicken
- mutton
- muttar paneer
- potatoes and cabbage
- collard greens
- dhal with pumpkin
- mushroom curry
- naan

and it all came out to $90. for so much food for 6 people. like, we probably ordered 1/3 more than we should have.

it went down easy.

here's the bad part. by the next day, the reports started coming in that 5 of the 6 people got sick from it. like, bad sick. the kind of sick that requires medication so that you're stomach isn't clenching in agony and you're not chained to the bathroom. so bad!!! i felt so guilty. there were a few reasons: a) because i had pushed strongly for it; b) because it's such a bad stereotype that indian food makes you sick (even though this was sri lankan...you know what i mean); c) because it really put a damper on the weekend.

ugh. we got babu'd...or, as s-dawg called it: "SRI LANKAN'D!!!"

luckily little ze and miss ramona didn't have any. that would have been THE WORST. so i don't think we're going to be going back any time soon. we're really gun shy now. the worst part about food poisoning is that it really makes you fear your own farts. it's amazing what sort of every day freedoms get taken away from you. lol!

saturday we rolled around and napped and watched "remember the titans" which is a pretty awesome sports movie that s-dawg claims i had seen before (apparently i had completely forgotten the experience.) (this makes sense when you take into account that the time that i saw it was in a florida hotel room the day we got back from our family vacation cruise and i was bushed from a week of family vacation time AND s-dawg also made me watch "serendipity" the same night.)

coming so fresh after the 1 month a year following the super bowl when i show a passing interest in foot ball, i was particularly susceptible to its sports-movie clichés. it's also got an all-star cast. kate bosworth! ryan gosling! denzel washington! a young avon barksdale! an ever younger hayden panettiere!

having to face dream menu with a case of the rumble in the bronx belly was a bit of a nightmare. the most important thing was that my grandpa had a good time and the food was really, really delicious.

top row (left to right): baked stuffed crab shells with fresh crab meat and breadcrumbs; pig's stomach soup; pig's stomach soup fixings

second row: steamed 3 egg dish (chicken egg, thousand year old egg, salty egg); peking duck; pan-fried glutinous rice dumplings filled with coconut and black sesame

third row: deep fried pork with spicy salt; little chinese sweets; fried rice with egg white; sweet'n'sour pork; red bean dessert soup with dumplings; ginger dungeness crab with yi mein; dried oyster, fat choy and veggies; lemon chicken

(it's all out of order because the stupid collage does that). i think i'm missing a dish or two, but suffice to say that we were not up to the task. especially not with TWO peking ducks and an out of whack digestive system and doubled orders on a bunch of things.

because it was late and we had been babu'd - we weren't up for the task of driving back downtown for a jungle party at the basement. we just couldn't do it. i'm glad too...the reviews today have been mixed...asc played a pretty minimal, no-breaks, glitchy set and that wasn't what i was in the mood for. also, photos from the event show that it was the same old, same old.

sunday we had dimsum with C and K and their adorable family of ankle biters. look at those cheeks!!!

the only photos i have of M are blurry and she's clearly giving me the wary eyes. it was such a nice time...hopefully we'll see those cats again soon.

and that brings us to today. i was zonked last night. passed out at 8:30 and slept clear on through to this morning. i could have kept sleeping, in fact. feeling a little headachey and still tired today...i'm going to go down and bake some cookies and see if that doesn't set me right. baking cookies is my first line of defense when faced with an unprecedented amount of snow.

fin.

adventure/nimrods abound

imma do things chronologically so we don't lose anything in the mix.

when we got hitched, we had to rent an amp. so we went to the only music store in geneseo, ny - buzzo's music. owned by this fine gentleman:

who walks with the help of a jerry-rigged cane (it looks like a bunch of metal rods taped together with packing tape) and speaks in a raspy mumble that's near incomprehensible. buzzo, who's famous catch phrase is: "you kidding me or what?", is a well-preserved relic from the trip the light fantastic, don't drink the kool-aid, shine on you crazy diamond 60s counter culture. he doesn't really do rentals, but he made an exception for us. in return, the dotytron bought this shirt:

when the last of our auxiliary performance thank you cards went out shamefully late, i made sure to get the dotytron to include one for buzzo, with some photos of the amp and the dotytron rocking out with the electric guitar.

on wednesday, i came home and emptied the mail box (note for posterity and future house-chore labour division collateral: THE DOTYTRON NEVER EVER CHECKS THE MAIL) to find this envelope:

i waited for the dotytron to come home and we opened this letter together:

it reads:

dear lagerfeld and dotytron,
so glad it's gone so well!!!
hope this finds you both healthy and happy!!
the pictures will be "on the wall" somehwere (or on the "green giant")
thanks!!
best regards,
al "buzzo" bruno

AMAZING ON SO MANY LEVELS!!! first of all, only buzzo would write BACK. second of all, only buzzo's lsd-derived chicken scratches would take us the better part of half an hour to decipher. third of all, we're going to be immortalized on the wall of a geneseo institution! so the best! we got deep roots there, folks.

last night for dinner we had another legume-based dish. i made that warm baby spinach, lentil, bacon, shallot salad that i do. i usually bread and fry the goat's cheese rounds but we didn't have panko and we already had toasted breadcrumbs leftover from the lima bean dish on tuesday, AND i was feeling chided and remorseful from the weekend of gluttony followed so closely by fat tuesday, that i just smeared the goat's cheese onto toasted slices of my sourdough bread and served it alongside, topping the salad with toasted breadcrumbs for texture. it was good!

so we pile in the captain to do some errands before dball. as we're driving to dball, i start talking about ehm do's show on saturday and the dotytron mentions that he's kind of weirded out by how she was making kind of ribald comments (it was close to valentine's day, after all) and he doesn't really want to see his sister being sexy - that it gives him the willies. and i was talking about how you have to be supportive and then i said, "i'm sure if you were dita von teese's sister, you would go to her show"

the dotytron, driving, looks over at me with narrowed eyes and a puzzled, uncomprehending look and slowly says, "okaaaaaaaay.........i'm not really sure where you're going with this."

and i was like, "you know, if you were dita von teese's sister, or her parents, you would go to her show, even though it's sexy."

a couple of beats passed in puzzled silence. my puzzlement at the dotytron's obtuseness, his puzzlement to be revealed a second later when he burst out laughing, "oh, i get it. i thought you meant that dita von teese's sister would be going to ehm do's show, and i was all like, 'why would dita von tee's sister go to ehm's show?!?'" LOL!!! we laughed our guts out. it was the way he kind of gave me the puzzledeyes and was all like, "okaaaaaaaay..." about it. like he didn't have a clue where i was going but was willing to reluctantly follow along. kind of like a metaphor for our relationship.

so we played against a team that i kind of dislike in dball and lost because they're an amazing team. my team (well, like 2 players) got super rattled and freaked out and started accusing the other team of cheating and then one of the dudes on my team walked out like a poose. it was so poose. this broad on my team said that there's more glory in throwing someone out when you're the last person on the court for your team than a catch. THAT IS SO WRONG i almost smacked her upside the head. catching is the NUMBER 1 SKILL in dodgeball. the NUMBER 1! repeat it after me: CATCHING IS THE NUMBER 1 SKILL IN DODGEBALL. because it's the double whammy - you get someone out AND you bring someone on your team BACK IN. what an idiot.

anyway, on the way home, we got pulled over by the cops because the sticker on our license plate was expired and we hadn't renewed it. the dotytron tensed up like whoa, but i found the whole situation kind of funny. we were literally 1 block from our house. i've never been pulled over before so i put my hands up in the air in the car to show the 5-0 that i wasn't packing. the dotytron was unamused. when the lady cop (it was a lady cop!) was shining the light in the car i suddenly had a hilarious idea. how awesome would it be to be pulled over by the cops, have them come up to the car, shine the light in, only to have you turn around with one of those halogen head-lamps strapped to your head?!??? ahahahahahahaha!!! i can picture it in my head and it would be so funny.

so we're waiting there while they run our vehicle and registration and insurance shiz and then the lady cop comes back and says, "it's your lucky day, guys. we just got called to a knifing" WHAT THE HELL? lucky us, unlucky schlub who got knifed, i guess.

so i've been on twitter for about a year maybe and i finally got into a snippy tweet flame war with the food writer for the toronto star, who wrote this incredibly smug article about how torontians aren't being "cool" about the arrival of guu. read about it here. it got linked in my twitter, so i'm like, ummm...FIRST OF ALL ELECTRO CYBER GEEK, how do YOU get to be an arbiter of taste i toronto? have you met you? btw, you posted THIS as your twitter picture:

what an "asexual snail" in the words of dr. rei. explain how i'm supposed to take any of the pretentious, holier than thou, "oh, i'm going to ask my FRIEND, the chef at kaiseki-sakura [aka native insider authenticity generator alert!]" drivel that comes out of your mouth, seriously? you, who overcooked a ribeye like whoa?

(i pulled this photo from his blog...which is teeth-gnashingly smug). so i posted in response to him...uhhh... what's your FREAKIN' POINT? people line up all the time. sorry if it's not "cool" to line up. people line up for all kinds of things: ramen at momofokus, yakitori in japan, caplansky's, the black hoof, reserving 6 months in advance for alinea (could be construing as lining up) - are all of those equally "not cool"? HOW ARE YOU "COOL"? so effin' elitist and self-aggrandizing.

sigh. i effin' hate the calibre of the food community in toronto if it's made up of corey mintz and toronto life and joanne kates. where's the realness? where's the inclusiveness? where's the JOY? the joy in eating...that giddy excitement, the desire to share, to encompass the world at your table and while away an evening with friends over the table? if these people have it...it doesn't come across. what comes across is how much you want to sock them in the nads. that corey dude even has a twitter hater who's only goal is to start flame wars with him (misterpsm) kind of awesome.

in other news of people being shacker hackjobs, the special library association, of which i am a member is hosting a workshop with a guest speaker on the topic of "information overload." the guest speaker, whose bio reads thus (you can skim it...the main point is...he talks himself up like whoa):

"Karl Dawson is the CEO of phiScape AG, a company specializing in distributed computing and data integration in heterogeneous environments, with particular application to digital media and knowledge management systems. Prior to founding phiScape AG in Zürich, Mr. Dawson was CTO of Deltavista, a data broker based in Switzerland which connects large volumes of data from a myriad of public and private sources through sophisticated record linkage. In this position, Mr. Dawson not only designed the software and data architecture, but contributed to key parts of the implementation. Prior to Deltavista, Mr. Dawson was employed at the Amdahl Research Laboratory in Toronto, where he helped to develop a relational database system with an embedded rule-based engine. Before this, Mr. Dawson worked five years at I.P. Sharp and Associates in Toronto, where he was privileged to help engineer the company’s APL interpreter, implementing new language primitives. Mr. Dawson holds university degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science."

anyway, chachi up there describes his upcoming presentation thusly:

"Arthur Toffler characterized "Revolutionary Wealth" as resting on three pillars: time, space and knowledge. The identification of these particular elements is in no small measure attributable to technology, particularly the internet. "Internet time" is something that we all know about. "The World is Flat" is the standard metaphor for globalization. But, whereas the internet has compressed time and space, knowledge is expanding at an accelerating rate. This is the “information overload” problem that we experience in our daily lives.

Information overload cannot be solved by search engines alone, since even the most precise search requests still leave us with a lot of information to absorb. We live in a post-Gutenberg world of electronic documents, but where are the post-Gutenberg tools to help us process all this information? There has to be something more than just tag clouds."

i got just one simple question for you: WHO THE F**K IS "ARTHUR TOFFLER"???!!!??? i can only assume you mean ALVIN TOFFLER, the actual author (with heidi toffler) of "revolutionary wealth" - unless of course YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO BE TALKING ABOUT AND MAYBE DIDN'T EVEN READ THE BOOK YOU'RE REFERENCING IN YOUR TALK SUMMARY.

WE ARE INFORMATION PROFESSIONALS. WE SHOULD BE GETTING THIS STUFF RIGHT. this is basic. that's like calling barack obama, bruce obama. or michel foucault, marion foucault. so i posted a comment on the event page. it's infuriating. because, you know, if information professionals actually had A SINGLE THEORETICAL INTEREST outside of hitching a cart to whatever "digital networking/crowd-sourcing/breaking down information silos" bandwagon happens to be jolting by n00b-alley, then stuff like this would be less likely to happen. you gotta crawl before you can walk, kids. GAH!!!

this weekend is gonna be dope.

tonight: dinner with the fam-bam up in markham. we're getting takeout from this sri lankan place, babu. i'm excited to try sri lankan/south indian stuff i've never had before like hoppers, etc.

tomorrow: i don't know where for lunch and then DREAM MENU for dinner for kung kung's birthday. hoping to hit up asc at the basement for old time jungle's sake. haven't danced in FOREVERS.

sunday: dim sum brunch with C et famille and then back downtown for dball.

family and jungle and food and friends - the quartfecta of good times.

fin.