life's on hold for the moment.
the dotytron's poppa (granddad) and patriarch of the dotytron clan was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer about two months ago. it happened really suddenly. one minute he was fine, then he suddenly had trouble breathing so he went in, and then through a series of tests they found out about the cancer. last thursday he took a turn for the worse and was admitted to the hospital with trouble breathing and weakness and dehydration. momma and poppa d told us to go to the farm anyway and that they'd let us know if anything happened.
yesterday he felt really weak and requested his family come to visit him. so we took off work and headed out there.
he's doing better now. he has pneumonia that they're fighting with antibiotics. they're stopping the chemo and when space becomes available in a hospice they're going to be moving him there.
this really sucks, guys. poppa is the glue that holds the dotytron unit together - he's a doty through and through and he's so strong and proud and good natured and it's just awful how quickly everything happened. nany kept commenting on how one moment they were going around their usual business and suddenly now he's where he is. we're just trying to make sure he stays comfortable and we'll get out to see him as much as we can - the visits are tiring for him though.
this getting older business is the worst. and i know it makes me an awful person for saying it but i just wish it was happening to someone else. i know we all have to die, but it doesn't make it any easier and it's a curious injustice that we can't just all go in our sleep.
i just really want him to meet his great grandson. the first little guy to carry on the doty name in this branch of the family, all the way down from the first doty who stepped off the mayflower onto the americas, edward doty. poppa's super into genealogy and tracing family trees. granted, the fatburger isn't going to look the way poppa might have expected the doty lineage to turn out, but still, a doty's a doty, a doty. and we can only hope that spumante is as good and strong and caring and loving and full of grace as his great grandfather.
i'm a bit of a hormonal emotional wreak lately. leaky all over. a while back my friend N hepped me to this blog, pacing the panic room, by this guy in florida - who writes about life, parenting, etc. he did a series for this woman called "walk to 40 weeks" which documented a pregnancy and the growth of a family week by week through this woman's pregnancy. it culminates in the birth of their baby in this video which you can see here:
the last moments of 57 hours
i watched it at work with the sound off and was bawling my eyes out. just the strength of that woman, the calm, the peacefulness (i'm sure the calm and peacefulness was facilitated by me NOT having to listen to devendra banhart playing over the video) as they brought that squealing, slippery, little babe into the world had my usually cold, black heart a-melt. life is a miraculous thing to behold in all its terrible wonder.
fin.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
"are you racist?"
i composed this post on monday, before finding out about poppa. thought i'd post it anyway.
that's either a sign of the apocalypse or the hand of god welcoming us to farm country. as soon as we got off the 401 onto trafalgar to head up north, i could just feel all the dirt, soot, and stress get tornadoed out of the way by the gusts of clean air filling our lungs and our un-air conditioned car.
before we left we stopped for a quickie road dinner at this place, the burger's priest, yet another participant in toronto's gourmet/specialty burger shoppes (it's a scene that's reaching, if not has reached, critical mass). the burger's priest is a worthy contender. much better than great burger kitchen (which i've pretty much renounced now for their inconsistency), the burger shoppe, and a lot of the other choices out there.
the burger's priest is a tiny little place, with counter seating for about 4 and a bench or two outside. it also has a very limited menu, consisting of a burger, cheeseburger, double patty burger, or the veggie option, which is two portobello mushrooms sandwiched together with a filling of cheese, then breaded and fried. you can also get the regular meat burger with the portobello fried patty on top. there are also fries, and chili cheese fries. the chief hook here is that the meat is freshly ground, an hour before being griddled and oh, what a difference this makes!
the patty is loose, very very very juicy, and while i'd still have to say that five guys burgers and fries is still the best burger i've ever had, this one is similar. the five guys burger is a bit brawnier, on account of the american tendency to fear e. coli and cook the meat all the way through. the burger's priest patty is tender bordering on tartare, a little small, but very tender and flavourful. the toppings are minimal, which i like, and my only suggestion is that the patties could use a touch of salt. i'm realizing that i much prefer griddled patties than grilled ones. something about that crust you get on a griddled burger is magic.
the chili cheese fries were also good - the fries are a little limp and potato-y:
most of the weekend was spent napping and reading lazily on the porch swing, letting dogs lick our plates clean, eating grilled meat cooked over an open fire on their argentinian barbecue, gobbling pies heaped with fresh cream, starting our day with big bowls of saugeen country organic yoghurt, eating vegetables picked from the garden, playing endless games of fetch with the dogs, watching bob the cat act crazy, cooling our feet in the stream, herding the sheep back into the barn, and small visits into town to check out the gun club. we did a bit of work, too - we weeded the veggie garden for about an hour, but that was probably the only time my muscles were called upon to do anything other than sit and bask in the hospitality of our hosts.
this is violet, she stinks and eats poo, but has
very cute eyes:
our lunch on friday - cheese & pates i had brought:
cooling my piggies in the stream:
R built an argentinian style bbq - i'm so jealous:
this is roxy, she's got the crazy eyes:
this is bob the cat, he's a character. a total joker:
on sunday we emerged onto the lawn after dinner to find
the sheep had broken out of the pen and had invaded:
the presence of the fatburger meant that this time there was no shooting guns or riding ATVs, but next time, i'm so there! there's a big part of yours truly that's a bit of a country redneck - i like doing farm chores and being around animals and i want to go hunting and shoot a deer and mount its skull on my wall - my only problem is i like talking too much. i'd be the loudest, and consequently the most unsuccessful hunter, ever.
being in farm country means that you're exposed to a radically different view point and you realize just how wide the urban-rural divide can be. the night we arrived, our host R was hanging with his helper, a young kid (like, 19) from the next concession over. farm country has different schooling levels - for kids like this one, whose goal in life is to continue his family's farm, they do a very basic secondary school education. this kid was barely literate. the other week when R drove him into toronto, he'd never driven under an overpass before and was suitably wowed. he's a bit thick, but sweet. the conversation was pretty hilarious. i went to bed early but was filled in by the dotytron after.
i did catch an intriguing snippet of conversation and made a note to ask the dotytron about it later, as i was nodding off to sleep in our room in the bunkie. the windows were open to let the night air in and i heard the kid and the dotytron walking out to do some drinking in the barn. i heard the kid ask the dotytron, "are you racist?" the dotytron's reply was a little too muffled for me to hear so i suppressed a giggle and asked the dotytron later, as he stumbled into bed smelling like a distillery.
apparently his response was a slow, "noooooooo...are you?" lol! apparently the kid wasn't racist but he hasn't been around many other cultures. the kid was totally baffled by city folk and our motivations. and he's a bit thick. that's what a lifetime of being understimulated will do for you, i suppose. R and the dotytron spent most of their drunken night sipping tequila and trying to get the kid to understand certain basic concepts, culminating in R saying, "these are city folk! why, sometimes they even vote liberal!" which completely flummoxed the kid. it was pretty funny.
R&R are a good mix - people from the city who've traveled and then embraced farm life. the male R loves to hunt, so he's for gun registration and gun control, but against the nanny state and bans on certain types of guns, which i can understand. it's totally different living out there, where raccoons and weasels will sneak into the barn and kill all your ducklings and eat the eggs. kind of libertarian, i suppose. he's rough around the edges and has some views i don't necessarily agree with, but at the end of the day, it takes all kinds, and he has always welcomed us with a warmth and hospitality that's seldom seen in the city. they're good peoples.
friday dinner: maple-mustard pork grilled on the argentinian bbq
w/ salad
friday dessert: raspberry cardamom frangipane tart
saturday morning breakfast: apple cinnamon fat baby
saturday night's dinner on the bbq
saturday night dinner: venison kebabs, pork kebabs,
kohlrabi & beet salad w/ sour cream and dill, scarlet runner beans &
grape tomato warm salad, sweet potato fries w/ basil mayo
saturday's dessert: sour cherry pie
sunday breakfast: steak, eggs, bacon, chimichurri
as you can tell, we ate a LOT of meat this weekend.
for dinner tonight i wanted to swing the pendulum back so we ate a nicoise salad with bagna cauda and the last of my jarred italian tuna. nom nom. we're going to the cottage for a week on saturday, which means that my diet will again degrade into a non-stop parade of chips and grilled protein - so i'm trying to stockpile veggies whilst i can.
fin.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
hello farm, here we come!
eek! so excited to bust out of dodge and head to farm country and R & R acres! ehmdo is joining us up there on saturday...can't wait! i want to go for a canoe ride on the saugreen river and shoot guns (the dotytron already said i'm not allowed) and ride ATVs (the dotytron already said i'm not allowed) and eat (allowed) and read (allowed) and do farmy type things (allowed).
so the dotytron is signing his contract with the TDSB today! wahoo! and joy of joys, the other private school he likes has agreed to continue to have him on for morning work. wahoo! now he just has to negotiate a raise or something. DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?!? this means that conceivably, for the first time since starting our respective second career strategies, WE'LL BOTH BE MAKING FULL-TIME MONEY. wahoo! well, technically only for like, 3 months until i go on my mat leave, but still. wahoo! wahoo! wahoo! it's going to be a hard year for the ol' dotytron though. he basically has 45 minutes between schools and he's teaching a full course load at both, and at the private school, he's teaching grade 8 science (we kind of thought they would just have him on for music, but no). the 45 minutes will mostly be taken up with travel time. in a lot of ways, it's harder than if he had tried to duke it out and get by with supply teaching - at least he would have had a bit more flexibility to hang with me and the fatburger...but this is good. he can do this.
i mean, it's not like it's going to be that hard for me. contrary to what my academic book club would have you believe. as i told the dotytron last night, "those honky grandmas be trippin'!" j/k. they're all really lovely. and i don't actually believe that it's going to be easy for me. i just don't like going to into things assuming it's going to be all THAT hard.
they just have a different approach than i do. ultimately, it's whatever you're comfortable with, but i just don't personally see the point of reading all the books on WHAT-IF and WHAT-TO-DO-WHEN scenarios NOW before the little one appears. that to me, is a recipe for stressball city, and i just think that life in general is SO FRAUGHT and there's no way to predict all the little and big curve balls that COULD be thrown at you - i mean, i'd rather meet the little fatburger and then see what's what with him before going into research mode. like, if he starts acting weird and i suspect autism, THEN i'll go into research mode, instead of preemptively scaring the pants off myself and worrying unnecessarily.
my friend C in the book club is doing a tonne of research before her baby is born. she wants to be armed and ready with research when she's sleep deprived because her mum is staying with her and she said her mum has all kinds of crazy ideas about parenting that she wants to be able to refute with studies and her research. so i asked what kind of crazy ideas her mum had, and C said that her mum believes that all babies are manipulative from birth, and that you can't go running to them all the time and that you have to set them up on a feeding schedule and NOT feed on demand. C said that all the books she's said refute her mom's advice and when she brought it up at her prenatal class everyone laughed at her mom's opinion and said it was crazy.
well, guess what? I AGREE WITH C'S MOM! babies are terrorists! and i DO NOT negotiate with terrorists! i'm also not about to be bullied by someone I DON'T KNOW. babies ARE manipulative! they're self-interested, the way we all are. and i just feel like you kind of have to get them onto your schedule or else you end up in attachment parenting/how-do-i-wean-my-4-year-old-off-of-night-feedings land. get the little bugger on a schedule that makes sense for your own life, so you're not a no-sleep boob machine, with some flexibility built in.
then the other part of me feels like by NOT researching like crazy i'm tempting the fates and that the other shoe is going to drop and the little fatburger is going to be nothing but trouble and colicky or have any number of other issues. that's stupid superstitious, right? i dunno! *knocks a billion pieces of wood nervously* i'm not being flippant. i'm not being smug. there are tonnes of things that can/will/probably go sideways - i'm just going to face them when they're presented and not before.
how can the books tell you anything that works? that's why people have to read so many. it's not like babies/people are like simple machines. they're incredibly complex machines. that's why you only have to read ONCE about how to install a light fixture or how to fix your fridge. but with people? to me, that's like reading a book on "how to be in a relationship with the dotytron" - like, him specifically. that's what's happening here. there's no way of knowing what the little being is going to be like, want, need, what their personality is going to be - so what's the point of reading books on how to manage it? i've learned how to be in a relationship with the dotytron by being in a bunch of relationships. i've learned how to i, karl lagerfeld esquire, exist in a relationship. and i think our whole lives have been about preparing us to be us, and then as an extension, us in various scenarios. us as workers, us as colleagues, as friends, as sons/daughters/aunts/uncles and now, parents.
life is a crazy roller coaster. you just have to faith and hope for the best and feel grateful for when things go your way for a bit and be strong when things don't go your way for a bit. be worthy of love. and give love in return.
that's my parenting book. right there.
on a less serious-o note. the dotytron makes me laugh like no one else. as you may or may not know, i'm the budgeter in the family. i do the all the financial wrangling and budget-setting. this summer, the dotytron is getting one paycheque from the one private school which covers all his fixed expenses and making up the rest with his private lessons. anyway, with my super-conservative budgeting, it basically left him with like, $20 spending money for july and august.
i was doing the number crunching yesterday and it turns out that we have a little more scrilla than i had anticipated. so this is how the exchange goes down:
me: "guess what? i did the number crunching and it looks like you'll have more scrilla than we had originally thought!"
dotytron: "sweet! i'm going to buy myself a gujin!"
[note: he's wanted a gujin for a long time. they cost about $800]
me: "well, don't get too excited, it's only like, a few hunny more"
dotytron, continuing as if i hadn't said anything:
"a $24 gujin.
...in the form of a lapel pin"
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! lol! does anyone else find that funny? so funny!
in other news, s-dawg has been pissing me off lately. he just likes to complicate things for the sake of complicating things, but without getting in on the ground level.
so he waits for a plan to get organized, and then SWEEPS IN WITH HIS OWN AGENDA and changes everything. it's intensely irritating.
here's how it went down.
1) dr. rei, hanbo, and a bunch of us had been talking for the past couple of months about going to see the blue jays game in the AYCE seats. i had also invited our cleveland friends H & A to come too, but they're out of town that weekend.
2) i realized that the game is the day after we come back from the cottage so i send out an email to my fam outlining that these were the plans i had in play and wondering what my sis was saying (if she and the fam were heading out early, etc.) and if they wanted to join in if they were staying in town for the day.
3) then my mum busts in out of nowhere and says we have family in town (family i barely know) and we should take them out for dinner
4) i'm like, uh, not really - i'd rather do something fun with my friends before my birthday on the long weekend, i was just checking to see what the general plans were so it wasn't the USUAL disorganized CF it always is with my family
5) then big d busts in and says we have no plans with family (lol!)
6) then my sis says she's in. and the outlaw bro is in. but what to do with the kids?
7) i don't want to re-number these, but point #3 should really say that c-hova says he's going to see drake and is out
8) my mum volunteers to watch the kids.
9) s-dawg busts in and says that he can get us seats at the 1st or 3rd baseline, 4 rows up and that the kids would have fun at the game, too.
10) i say: great! so we can all go to the game together!
11) s-dawg then says that he can't get tix for everyone, just the family.
12) my mum then decides that she wants to spend time with the fam-bam so she's going to come now
12) i ask s-dawg why he's trying to plan a SEPARATE, personal family outing when the original plan was based on me wanting to combine both things and get everyone together
imo, s-dawg is just complicating things for the sake of complicating things and hi-jacking the original plan. in his opinion - i'm throwing a "hissy fit" because people aren't going along with my plan. i think this is a spurious accusation because a) with my plan, we all get to do the same thing and hang out together; and b) the original plan was MY PLAN!
i liken it to this: last week when s-dawg had plans to see the UFC game with his friends, he invited us along. if we had then decided that we didn't want to watch the UFC game at bo-pie and then split off to watch the game from montana's because they had a bigger screen, leaving the friends he had ORIGINATED the plan with at bo-pie, that would have been a bit of a hi-jacking and rude. that's what i feel is being done here.
in the end, it looks like we'll all be at the game, but my family will be in the blinging seats and me and the dotytron etc. will be in the nosebleed seats pigging out on hot dogs and nachos. it's probably for the best because i care about baseball only marginally more than i care about the world cup and i'm really in it to sit in the sun and hang out and stuff my face with people i like. bonus: dr. rei's dad might be joining us too! it just sucks that i won't get to sit with my sis and her family.
anyway, he's been really bugging me lately (there was a whole incident with my cell phone that i never bothered recounting here) so i'm just kind off him at the moment.
in less drama news - there will be minimal to no drama at the farm and i'm mucho looking forward to it.
have a nice weekend everyone!
fin.
so the dotytron is signing his contract with the TDSB today! wahoo! and joy of joys, the other private school he likes has agreed to continue to have him on for morning work. wahoo! now he just has to negotiate a raise or something. DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?!? this means that conceivably, for the first time since starting our respective second career strategies, WE'LL BOTH BE MAKING FULL-TIME MONEY. wahoo! well, technically only for like, 3 months until i go on my mat leave, but still. wahoo! wahoo! wahoo! it's going to be a hard year for the ol' dotytron though. he basically has 45 minutes between schools and he's teaching a full course load at both, and at the private school, he's teaching grade 8 science (we kind of thought they would just have him on for music, but no). the 45 minutes will mostly be taken up with travel time. in a lot of ways, it's harder than if he had tried to duke it out and get by with supply teaching - at least he would have had a bit more flexibility to hang with me and the fatburger...but this is good. he can do this.
i mean, it's not like it's going to be that hard for me. contrary to what my academic book club would have you believe. as i told the dotytron last night, "those honky grandmas be trippin'!" j/k. they're all really lovely. and i don't actually believe that it's going to be easy for me. i just don't like going to into things assuming it's going to be all THAT hard.
they just have a different approach than i do. ultimately, it's whatever you're comfortable with, but i just don't personally see the point of reading all the books on WHAT-IF and WHAT-TO-DO-WHEN scenarios NOW before the little one appears. that to me, is a recipe for stressball city, and i just think that life in general is SO FRAUGHT and there's no way to predict all the little and big curve balls that COULD be thrown at you - i mean, i'd rather meet the little fatburger and then see what's what with him before going into research mode. like, if he starts acting weird and i suspect autism, THEN i'll go into research mode, instead of preemptively scaring the pants off myself and worrying unnecessarily.
my friend C in the book club is doing a tonne of research before her baby is born. she wants to be armed and ready with research when she's sleep deprived because her mum is staying with her and she said her mum has all kinds of crazy ideas about parenting that she wants to be able to refute with studies and her research. so i asked what kind of crazy ideas her mum had, and C said that her mum believes that all babies are manipulative from birth, and that you can't go running to them all the time and that you have to set them up on a feeding schedule and NOT feed on demand. C said that all the books she's said refute her mom's advice and when she brought it up at her prenatal class everyone laughed at her mom's opinion and said it was crazy.
well, guess what? I AGREE WITH C'S MOM! babies are terrorists! and i DO NOT negotiate with terrorists! i'm also not about to be bullied by someone I DON'T KNOW. babies ARE manipulative! they're self-interested, the way we all are. and i just feel like you kind of have to get them onto your schedule or else you end up in attachment parenting/how-do-i-wean-my-4-year-old-off-of-night-feedings land. get the little bugger on a schedule that makes sense for your own life, so you're not a no-sleep boob machine, with some flexibility built in.
then the other part of me feels like by NOT researching like crazy i'm tempting the fates and that the other shoe is going to drop and the little fatburger is going to be nothing but trouble and colicky or have any number of other issues. that's stupid superstitious, right? i dunno! *knocks a billion pieces of wood nervously* i'm not being flippant. i'm not being smug. there are tonnes of things that can/will/probably go sideways - i'm just going to face them when they're presented and not before.
how can the books tell you anything that works? that's why people have to read so many. it's not like babies/people are like simple machines. they're incredibly complex machines. that's why you only have to read ONCE about how to install a light fixture or how to fix your fridge. but with people? to me, that's like reading a book on "how to be in a relationship with the dotytron" - like, him specifically. that's what's happening here. there's no way of knowing what the little being is going to be like, want, need, what their personality is going to be - so what's the point of reading books on how to manage it? i've learned how to be in a relationship with the dotytron by being in a bunch of relationships. i've learned how to i, karl lagerfeld esquire, exist in a relationship. and i think our whole lives have been about preparing us to be us, and then as an extension, us in various scenarios. us as workers, us as colleagues, as friends, as sons/daughters/aunts/uncles and now, parents.
life is a crazy roller coaster. you just have to faith and hope for the best and feel grateful for when things go your way for a bit and be strong when things don't go your way for a bit. be worthy of love. and give love in return.
that's my parenting book. right there.
on a less serious-o note. the dotytron makes me laugh like no one else. as you may or may not know, i'm the budgeter in the family. i do the all the financial wrangling and budget-setting. this summer, the dotytron is getting one paycheque from the one private school which covers all his fixed expenses and making up the rest with his private lessons. anyway, with my super-conservative budgeting, it basically left him with like, $20 spending money for july and august.
i was doing the number crunching yesterday and it turns out that we have a little more scrilla than i had anticipated. so this is how the exchange goes down:
me: "guess what? i did the number crunching and it looks like you'll have more scrilla than we had originally thought!"
dotytron: "sweet! i'm going to buy myself a gujin!"
[note: he's wanted a gujin for a long time. they cost about $800]
me: "well, don't get too excited, it's only like, a few hunny more"
dotytron, continuing as if i hadn't said anything:
"a $24 gujin.
...in the form of a lapel pin"
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! lol! does anyone else find that funny? so funny!
in other news, s-dawg has been pissing me off lately. he just likes to complicate things for the sake of complicating things, but without getting in on the ground level.
so he waits for a plan to get organized, and then SWEEPS IN WITH HIS OWN AGENDA and changes everything. it's intensely irritating.
here's how it went down.
1) dr. rei, hanbo, and a bunch of us had been talking for the past couple of months about going to see the blue jays game in the AYCE seats. i had also invited our cleveland friends H & A to come too, but they're out of town that weekend.
2) i realized that the game is the day after we come back from the cottage so i send out an email to my fam outlining that these were the plans i had in play and wondering what my sis was saying (if she and the fam were heading out early, etc.) and if they wanted to join in if they were staying in town for the day.
3) then my mum busts in out of nowhere and says we have family in town (family i barely know) and we should take them out for dinner
4) i'm like, uh, not really - i'd rather do something fun with my friends before my birthday on the long weekend, i was just checking to see what the general plans were so it wasn't the USUAL disorganized CF it always is with my family
5) then big d busts in and says we have no plans with family (lol!)
6) then my sis says she's in. and the outlaw bro is in. but what to do with the kids?
7) i don't want to re-number these, but point #3 should really say that c-hova says he's going to see drake and is out
8) my mum volunteers to watch the kids.
9) s-dawg busts in and says that he can get us seats at the 1st or 3rd baseline, 4 rows up and that the kids would have fun at the game, too.
10) i say: great! so we can all go to the game together!
11) s-dawg then says that he can't get tix for everyone, just the family.
12) my mum then decides that she wants to spend time with the fam-bam so she's going to come now
12) i ask s-dawg why he's trying to plan a SEPARATE, personal family outing when the original plan was based on me wanting to combine both things and get everyone together
imo, s-dawg is just complicating things for the sake of complicating things and hi-jacking the original plan. in his opinion - i'm throwing a "hissy fit" because people aren't going along with my plan. i think this is a spurious accusation because a) with my plan, we all get to do the same thing and hang out together; and b) the original plan was MY PLAN!
i liken it to this: last week when s-dawg had plans to see the UFC game with his friends, he invited us along. if we had then decided that we didn't want to watch the UFC game at bo-pie and then split off to watch the game from montana's because they had a bigger screen, leaving the friends he had ORIGINATED the plan with at bo-pie, that would have been a bit of a hi-jacking and rude. that's what i feel is being done here.
in the end, it looks like we'll all be at the game, but my family will be in the blinging seats and me and the dotytron etc. will be in the nosebleed seats pigging out on hot dogs and nachos. it's probably for the best because i care about baseball only marginally more than i care about the world cup and i'm really in it to sit in the sun and hang out and stuff my face with people i like. bonus: dr. rei's dad might be joining us too! it just sucks that i won't get to sit with my sis and her family.
anyway, he's been really bugging me lately (there was a whole incident with my cell phone that i never bothered recounting here) so i'm just kind off him at the moment.
in less drama news - there will be minimal to no drama at the farm and i'm mucho looking forward to it.
have a nice weekend everyone!
fin.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
because we only saw dr. rei & hanbo
twice this weekend, we decided to have dinner at their place on monday night. lol! you'd think we would run out of things to say, but NO! the conversation was fast and furious and took us well into the witching hour.
dr. rei made egg noodles with the bagna cauda and radicchio and the poached egg - i love her plates. they're so her with her love of canadiana and duck hunting and wearing tweed on a crumbling estate with a library where you swirl sherry in a glass and read out loud from dickens:
i made tiramisu, which i've been craving for a while - nice and cool and creamy. a delicious summer dessert. i over-soaked the lady fingers but it still tasted pretty darned good.
tonight i pitted a billion pounds of sour cherries to make a sour cherry pie. i also made that frangipane tart again but used raspberries this time instead of figs. i made these desserts to bring up to R&R acres this weekend. we're leaving thursday night and staying until sunday. R&R acres is the dotytron's parents' friends' farm. i'm so excited! they have 100 acres - most of which are rented out to farmers who grow stuff like feed corn. they have a small hobby vegetable farm and at various times have had chickens, pigs, horses, goats, and sheep. i think right now they just have sheep and/or goats. it's just north of walkerton and the saugeen river runs through their property. it's been at least 4 years since i've been there last. i'm super-pumped about it. it's going to be so relaxing.
for dinner i made us mushroom tagliatelle (i got it in the food box from my colleagues at work before the wedding) with pesto, broccoli rabe, an a leftover, lone italian sausage i had sitting in the freezer forever. it was TASTY. it looks like a pile of dog crap but trust me, fresh pesto is amazing.
for dessert we went to ed's AGAIN. gah! having that place nearby is killing my low-carb intentions. i got a mix of pina colada and passionfruit gelato and it was HEAVENLY. good thing it takes us 20 minutes to walk there and another 20 back. oy.
fin.
dr. rei made egg noodles with the bagna cauda and radicchio and the poached egg - i love her plates. they're so her with her love of canadiana and duck hunting and wearing tweed on a crumbling estate with a library where you swirl sherry in a glass and read out loud from dickens:
tonight i pitted a billion pounds of sour cherries to make a sour cherry pie. i also made that frangipane tart again but used raspberries this time instead of figs. i made these desserts to bring up to R&R acres this weekend. we're leaving thursday night and staying until sunday. R&R acres is the dotytron's parents' friends' farm. i'm so excited! they have 100 acres - most of which are rented out to farmers who grow stuff like feed corn. they have a small hobby vegetable farm and at various times have had chickens, pigs, horses, goats, and sheep. i think right now they just have sheep and/or goats. it's just north of walkerton and the saugeen river runs through their property. it's been at least 4 years since i've been there last. i'm super-pumped about it. it's going to be so relaxing.
for dinner i made us mushroom tagliatelle (i got it in the food box from my colleagues at work before the wedding) with pesto, broccoli rabe, an a leftover, lone italian sausage i had sitting in the freezer forever. it was TASTY. it looks like a pile of dog crap but trust me, fresh pesto is amazing. for dessert we went to ed's AGAIN. gah! having that place nearby is killing my low-carb intentions. i got a mix of pina colada and passionfruit gelato and it was HEAVENLY. good thing it takes us 20 minutes to walk there and another 20 back. oy.
fin.
Monday, July 12, 2010
chronicles of a lucky pig
look at these photos from AYCE sushi and twilight: eclipse night and tell me i'm not a lucky pig. look at those faces! so dear!
the AYCE was amazing. the nighttime menu is marginally more extensive than the lunchtime menu but it was sooo good. i could seriously eat pounds and pounds of crispy rolls and spicy salmon rolls and the multiple variations on the california roll. and salmon sashimi!!! the thing that's amazing about lolls is how much the girl can take down - she's a worthy opponent on the AYCE japanese battlefield.
it was a fun hang - but a big mixy mishmash of people that i think worked out in the end. even if dr. rei tended to spiral off into M-R-I in joke territory with a failed story about the song she made up in ital-towns when she and the dotytron were trying to force me to eat random sandwiches and non-lagerfeld-restaurant list approved locations. she and dotytron also came up with this equation where you have to solve for x: x + poo-dreads = bong-ra (or something like that).
this was in response to the fact that ALEC EMPIRE searched his own name on twitter and found a tweet that i had posted likening him and breakcore to the stupid g20 anarchists, and he ACTUALLY responded. lol! what a hurtbag!!!
p.s. alec empire used to look like this:
total berlin-y, but decent.
now he looks like THIS (aka like bruno):
lol!!!
okay, so the movie was balls. it was BORING AS ALL HECK. has anyone never noticed that NOTHING HAPPENS IN THE BOOKS OR THE MOVIES?!? it was so serious and stupid and the boringest. there weren't even any laughable moments because jasper isn't doing the google-y eyes anymore and they were focusing on the stupid young volturis instead of the old, bored ones (who are our favorites because all they do is lounge around on giant old chairs drinking out of goblets and being blasé). the best part of the movie was seeing the "harry potter and the deathly hallows" trailer. so sick. can't wait for that one. i don't know if we can continue this tradition though. i might have tapped out on twilight.
when life gives you a potential gestational diabeetus diagnosis (TBD next week!) the obvious thing to do is make chocolate chip banana bread french toast with maple syrup, cream, and raspberries from momma d's garden:
so delicious! but very rich. i think i prefer the simplicity of challah french toast.
saturday was magic. we loaded up our cooler and my paniers with the picnic fixings and biked out to harboufront centre to see a documentary on the wu-tang clan. the footage from the formative years was pretty educational and it was decently produced. kind of low-budge. the latter half focused a lot on the trials and tribulations of ODB and they ran out of material after discussing the impact of the first two albums, but it was still pretty good. we've decided that we're going to cull only from ODB aliases for nicknames for the fatburger. you can't go wrong: osiris, dirt mcgirt, big baby jesus...they're all winners.
the best part was me leaning over to the dotytron about 20 minutes in and whispering: "is prince rakim the same as RZA?" and him hissing back at me, "YES. GOD!" and rolling his eyes all dramatically at how little i know about the wu. lol!
then we biked over to xtina & buns' for the high park picnic which was lovely. i'll let the photos speak for themselves:
so magic! the day was warm but not too hot. we laid out on picnic blankets and played bocce and catch and frisbee and ate all that delicious food and talked and talked and then trooped home when dusk fell. it was so amazing. i'd love a million more saturday afternoons like that with those people. look at them!
then we biked home in the dark (round trip all told that day was another 27 km in the can) and caught the last bits of the symphony of fire. the day had cooled off, there was no humidity, the kind of weather that makes you feel like you could bike forever, in the dark, lit up by the boom and pop and shower of light of fireworks over lake ontario. it was so beautiful and idyllic - i fell in love with toronto again.
sunday we headed out to oakville and paid a quick visit to my friend D and her husband N and their cute little house with their cute little yard. it was nice to catch up with her and go out there for a change, instead of having her meet me in the city. the traffic was really good - we got there in under half an hour - it doesn't seem so far away and remote when it takes you only that long to get there. D and her husband are super-cute together and seem really happy which in turn makes you happy just being around them.
then we headed to hanbo's parents house for a pool party. i love hanging out with parents. not like, new parents. i mean like, people our parents' age. i love it! hanbo's mum totally spoiled us and had made punch and cupcakes and we had burgers and potato salad and she had set out little bowls of banana marshmallows (!), cheetos, pretzels and chips. we swam and were totally coddled and had some big laughs with dr. rei's parents. her dad is the cutest. he claimed he could swim but then might have possibly snapped a noodle with a death grip and he does this cute little doggy paddle in the water and was bobbing around forevers. i brought some raspberry jam bars and dr. rei's parents brought this amazing raspberry tart - so we were stuffed and we snacked some more watching the world cup finals and made all the parental units laugh with our non-stop commentary.
for dinner we picked up takeout from the big smoke, in oakville, which has been getting favorable bbq buzz. we got the beef ribs and pork ribs sampler - which are both dry rubbed and then glazed with a sauce - i like it when the ribs aren't too drippy with sauce, but nicely lacquered. we also got coleslaw and mac'n'cheese. the coleslaw i thought was pretty bad. the mac'n'cheese was alright but lacking richness. the dotytron: "THIS MACARONI SALAD IS WARM!" lol! that's cuz it's mac'n'cheese, numbnuts. i like the smoky flavour on the meat and it was properly falling off the bone - nicely chewy and charred, although i favored the beef ribs for the juiciness. it was pretty good bbq overall. better than phil's i'll tell you that much:
we followed that up with a trip to the coburg lounge on parliament street to see our buddy A play in his trio. phew! that's a pretty ram-jiggedy-jammed weekend but could you ask for better?
i'm such a lucky pig, i tells ya.
fin.
the AYCE was amazing. the nighttime menu is marginally more extensive than the lunchtime menu but it was sooo good. i could seriously eat pounds and pounds of crispy rolls and spicy salmon rolls and the multiple variations on the california roll. and salmon sashimi!!! the thing that's amazing about lolls is how much the girl can take down - she's a worthy opponent on the AYCE japanese battlefield.
it was a fun hang - but a big mixy mishmash of people that i think worked out in the end. even if dr. rei tended to spiral off into M-R-I in joke territory with a failed story about the song she made up in ital-towns when she and the dotytron were trying to force me to eat random sandwiches and non-lagerfeld-restaurant list approved locations. she and dotytron also came up with this equation where you have to solve for x: x + poo-dreads = bong-ra (or something like that).
this was in response to the fact that ALEC EMPIRE searched his own name on twitter and found a tweet that i had posted likening him and breakcore to the stupid g20 anarchists, and he ACTUALLY responded. lol! what a hurtbag!!!
p.s. alec empire used to look like this:
total berlin-y, but decent.now he looks like THIS (aka like bruno):
lol!!!
okay, so the movie was balls. it was BORING AS ALL HECK. has anyone never noticed that NOTHING HAPPENS IN THE BOOKS OR THE MOVIES?!? it was so serious and stupid and the boringest. there weren't even any laughable moments because jasper isn't doing the google-y eyes anymore and they were focusing on the stupid young volturis instead of the old, bored ones (who are our favorites because all they do is lounge around on giant old chairs drinking out of goblets and being blasé). the best part of the movie was seeing the "harry potter and the deathly hallows" trailer. so sick. can't wait for that one. i don't know if we can continue this tradition though. i might have tapped out on twilight.when life gives you a potential gestational diabeetus diagnosis (TBD next week!) the obvious thing to do is make chocolate chip banana bread french toast with maple syrup, cream, and raspberries from momma d's garden:
saturday was magic. we loaded up our cooler and my paniers with the picnic fixings and biked out to harboufront centre to see a documentary on the wu-tang clan. the footage from the formative years was pretty educational and it was decently produced. kind of low-budge. the latter half focused a lot on the trials and tribulations of ODB and they ran out of material after discussing the impact of the first two albums, but it was still pretty good. we've decided that we're going to cull only from ODB aliases for nicknames for the fatburger. you can't go wrong: osiris, dirt mcgirt, big baby jesus...they're all winners.
the best part was me leaning over to the dotytron about 20 minutes in and whispering: "is prince rakim the same as RZA?" and him hissing back at me, "YES. GOD!" and rolling his eyes all dramatically at how little i know about the wu. lol!
then we biked over to xtina & buns' for the high park picnic which was lovely. i'll let the photos speak for themselves:
then we biked home in the dark (round trip all told that day was another 27 km in the can) and caught the last bits of the symphony of fire. the day had cooled off, there was no humidity, the kind of weather that makes you feel like you could bike forever, in the dark, lit up by the boom and pop and shower of light of fireworks over lake ontario. it was so beautiful and idyllic - i fell in love with toronto again.
sunday we headed out to oakville and paid a quick visit to my friend D and her husband N and their cute little house with their cute little yard. it was nice to catch up with her and go out there for a change, instead of having her meet me in the city. the traffic was really good - we got there in under half an hour - it doesn't seem so far away and remote when it takes you only that long to get there. D and her husband are super-cute together and seem really happy which in turn makes you happy just being around them.
then we headed to hanbo's parents house for a pool party. i love hanging out with parents. not like, new parents. i mean like, people our parents' age. i love it! hanbo's mum totally spoiled us and had made punch and cupcakes and we had burgers and potato salad and she had set out little bowls of banana marshmallows (!), cheetos, pretzels and chips. we swam and were totally coddled and had some big laughs with dr. rei's parents. her dad is the cutest. he claimed he could swim but then might have possibly snapped a noodle with a death grip and he does this cute little doggy paddle in the water and was bobbing around forevers. i brought some raspberry jam bars and dr. rei's parents brought this amazing raspberry tart - so we were stuffed and we snacked some more watching the world cup finals and made all the parental units laugh with our non-stop commentary.
for dinner we picked up takeout from the big smoke, in oakville, which has been getting favorable bbq buzz. we got the beef ribs and pork ribs sampler - which are both dry rubbed and then glazed with a sauce - i like it when the ribs aren't too drippy with sauce, but nicely lacquered. we also got coleslaw and mac'n'cheese. the coleslaw i thought was pretty bad. the mac'n'cheese was alright but lacking richness. the dotytron: "THIS MACARONI SALAD IS WARM!" lol! that's cuz it's mac'n'cheese, numbnuts. i like the smoky flavour on the meat and it was properly falling off the bone - nicely chewy and charred, although i favored the beef ribs for the juiciness. it was pretty good bbq overall. better than phil's i'll tell you that much:
we followed that up with a trip to the coburg lounge on parliament street to see our buddy A play in his trio. phew! that's a pretty ram-jiggedy-jammed weekend but could you ask for better?
i'm such a lucky pig, i tells ya.
fin.
Friday, July 09, 2010
camp momma & poppa d
oy. yesterday i called in sick to work. one too many sleepless, restless nights in a row - a combination of the heat, the no a/c at lil' ugmo, and the fact that on wednesday night we went out to see the dotytron's friend K play at gate 403 on roncesvalles in a straight ahead vocal jazz band. we didn't get home until midnight. i've been going to sleep at 9:30pm. it was a combination that resulted in me waking up on thursday morning feeling tired, cranky, head-achey and like a giant, sweaty, over-heated tubster. i couldn't face going to work.
instead, we went to the dotytron's parents' house and i napped and soaked up their a/c and loved life. it was so nice to visit with them anyway. the live up the street (but quite a distance away - like a 25 minute walk?) but we don't see them nearly enough and so we drank their pop and they bought us pizza and spoiled us and treated us like big kids.
it was heavenly.
this all meant that even though i woke up at 3am last night and had to stay up reading on the couch (we're still sleeping on the living room floor) by flashlight for 2 hours until i could get back to a fitful sleep, i am much more well rested today and ready to face the mountain of work ahead of me.
tonight we're going for AYCE sushi and then a viewing of "twilight: eclipse" with jenny calendar, lolly, dr. rei & hanbo, bwong and his new gf (!!!) and my mum. what a crew!
i'll try to take some pics.
big weekend ahead!
fin.
instead, we went to the dotytron's parents' house and i napped and soaked up their a/c and loved life. it was so nice to visit with them anyway. the live up the street (but quite a distance away - like a 25 minute walk?) but we don't see them nearly enough and so we drank their pop and they bought us pizza and spoiled us and treated us like big kids.
it was heavenly.
this all meant that even though i woke up at 3am last night and had to stay up reading on the couch (we're still sleeping on the living room floor) by flashlight for 2 hours until i could get back to a fitful sleep, i am much more well rested today and ready to face the mountain of work ahead of me.
tonight we're going for AYCE sushi and then a viewing of "twilight: eclipse" with jenny calendar, lolly, dr. rei & hanbo, bwong and his new gf (!!!) and my mum. what a crew!
i'll try to take some pics.
big weekend ahead!
fin.
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
things i hate the mostest
1) doing a deuce in an non air conditioned bathroom on a hot, muggy day in the summer. the grossest.
things i love the mostest:
1) the pool!
it's been deadly hot around these parts lately. i think due to budgetary concerns we're going to hold off on the central AC until next summer. i've actually been fine, but the dotytron! oy! what a pile of gripes. we're totally taking advantage of the pool though. it's going to be a bitter pill to swallow when they start charging a dollar a visit (!!!) next summer. zomg, we're so lucky. here are my words of advice for all you prospective home buyers: make sure there's an under-used pool within a 2 minute walk. we totally do the walk of shame back to our house in our dripping suits with just a towel wrapped around us - treating it like a private/backyard pool. the dotytron is all about his mid-day dips. anyway, we've been getting by with the fan circulating on the furnace, dips in the pool, and cold showers before bed, and a spray bottle filled with ice water for a nether regions shpritz followed by a fan blast. we did haul our futon down to the living room yesterday evening and slept there. it was fun! i love wall-to-wall soft smushy spaces. maximum loafage.
today i had work book club. we read carlos ruiz zafón's "the shadow of the wind" which was sold to me (by the other book club members) as a "magic realism" novel (already a genre i'm not super-duper fond of) but actually turned out to be more correctly, gothic. it's about this boy, who is taken by his father to pick a book from the "cemetery of forgotten books" - he picks a title by this obscure spanish writer, julian carax, and then finds out subsequently that a mysterious figure has been systematically destroying all of carax's books in existence. the story is interwoven with scenes from a barcelona still in the grips of franco's fascist dictatorship in the post-war era - it's very removed from the barcelona i know and love, which was all sunshine and life.
the book is very grey, misty, shadowy - filled with family secrets, a crumbling mansion, thwarted love and (gothic alert!) incest. i wasn't super into it. maybe it's the season - i didn't feel like reading something so dark and misty in the headiness of summer. i also found it inconsistent and discordant, tonally. it's quite literary, but the narrative elements doesn't uphold that literary quality - instead the story is quite melodramatic and soap opera-y. i'm not sure if that might be a difference dependent on the culture of the audience (it was a new york times' bestseller and is one of the top novels spain has ever produced), but overall, i wasn't feeling it.
last night's semi-low carb dinner was grilled ribeye steak, corn on the cob, potatoes roasted in a foil packet with roasted garlic on the bbq, then tossed with chimichurri, and finally, that bean and grape tomato salad with mustard dill dressing:
then i went decidedly non-low carb and treated us to ice cream at ed's real scoop. so danger having that place close by. i figured it was a reward for doing 8 lazy, preggos laps in the pool and biking to work and back. tonight's semi-low carb dinner was whole wheat pasta with a fresh tomato, red onion, basil, garlic, pickled eggplant, chili oil and balsamic vinegar "sauce" with a baby spinach salad with leftover dressing from that antipasto salad i made ages ago:
no dessert (so far).
fin.
things i love the mostest:
1) the pool!
it's been deadly hot around these parts lately. i think due to budgetary concerns we're going to hold off on the central AC until next summer. i've actually been fine, but the dotytron! oy! what a pile of gripes. we're totally taking advantage of the pool though. it's going to be a bitter pill to swallow when they start charging a dollar a visit (!!!) next summer. zomg, we're so lucky. here are my words of advice for all you prospective home buyers: make sure there's an under-used pool within a 2 minute walk. we totally do the walk of shame back to our house in our dripping suits with just a towel wrapped around us - treating it like a private/backyard pool. the dotytron is all about his mid-day dips. anyway, we've been getting by with the fan circulating on the furnace, dips in the pool, and cold showers before bed, and a spray bottle filled with ice water for a nether regions shpritz followed by a fan blast. we did haul our futon down to the living room yesterday evening and slept there. it was fun! i love wall-to-wall soft smushy spaces. maximum loafage.
today i had work book club. we read carlos ruiz zafón's "the shadow of the wind" which was sold to me (by the other book club members) as a "magic realism" novel (already a genre i'm not super-duper fond of) but actually turned out to be more correctly, gothic. it's about this boy, who is taken by his father to pick a book from the "cemetery of forgotten books" - he picks a title by this obscure spanish writer, julian carax, and then finds out subsequently that a mysterious figure has been systematically destroying all of carax's books in existence. the story is interwoven with scenes from a barcelona still in the grips of franco's fascist dictatorship in the post-war era - it's very removed from the barcelona i know and love, which was all sunshine and life. the book is very grey, misty, shadowy - filled with family secrets, a crumbling mansion, thwarted love and (gothic alert!) incest. i wasn't super into it. maybe it's the season - i didn't feel like reading something so dark and misty in the headiness of summer. i also found it inconsistent and discordant, tonally. it's quite literary, but the narrative elements doesn't uphold that literary quality - instead the story is quite melodramatic and soap opera-y. i'm not sure if that might be a difference dependent on the culture of the audience (it was a new york times' bestseller and is one of the top novels spain has ever produced), but overall, i wasn't feeling it.
last night's semi-low carb dinner was grilled ribeye steak, corn on the cob, potatoes roasted in a foil packet with roasted garlic on the bbq, then tossed with chimichurri, and finally, that bean and grape tomato salad with mustard dill dressing:
then i went decidedly non-low carb and treated us to ice cream at ed's real scoop. so danger having that place close by. i figured it was a reward for doing 8 lazy, preggos laps in the pool and biking to work and back. tonight's semi-low carb dinner was whole wheat pasta with a fresh tomato, red onion, basil, garlic, pickled eggplant, chili oil and balsamic vinegar "sauce" with a baby spinach salad with leftover dressing from that antipasto salad i made ages ago:
no dessert (so far).
fin.
Monday, July 05, 2010
ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG!
THIS DAY HAS BEEN SO CRAY-CRAY!!!
zomg! a zillion different things going on and trying to schedule a zillion different things in the too-limited time we have left this summer. oy oy oy! my to-do list and to-see list is mega!
*deep breath*
first things first, the dotytron just might very well have a job in the TORONTO DISTRICT MOTHER-EFFIN' SCHOOL BOARD, A-HOLES! wooooooooooooo!!! it's only a 0.5 but that's still so so so good! so now he's trying to see if he can do that in the afternoon and keep his private school gig teaching music in the mornings. but worse comes to worse, the principal said that he can usually pick up supply teaching mornings in the school where his contract would be. wa wa wee wa!
i had an epic phone convo with dr. rei at lunch just trying to figure everything out for this summer into september. we got so much going on this summer! heck, we got so much going on THIS WEEK! pingy is still in town so we want to have a night in with her and then our friend A comes into town from his sojourns in NYC doing his masters in music composition and he's playing some shows that we should see and also just see him and catch up. dr. rei is itching to have us over for dinner so we're trying to fit that in somewheres. we're having AYCE sushi with goosetang & lolly on friday night followed up with a viewing of "eclipse", on saturday we're having going to see a wu-tang documentary with the kdubsguelph crew and then a picnic in high park, and on sunday our supper club was supposed to meet but i think we have to cut that out in favour of going to lounge in hanbo's parents' pool. the dotytron's parents are also trying to have us over to clean out their basement. phew! it's exhausting/exhilarating/gratifying having so many good peoples in our lives. we're such lucky pigs.
and to re-cap: so much sun this weekend! this was probably the first weekend where i felt impeded by being a vessel for the fatburger. the combination of the sun, playing outfield during kick/whiffle ball, and the squirmy bean meant that i got yelled at alot by s-dawg for doing a bad job playing outfield. basically he just sits there and screams "LAGERFELD!!!! JESUS F**KING CHRIST!!!! YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME!!?" while i half-heartedly tried to chase the kickball into the outfield.
on friday i went shopping with the roomie and our montreal friend I. we hit my favorite grocery store clothes, joe, AND winners where i managed to snag some suitably bump-friendly clothing that should take me into fall. i got a dress, 2 pairs of leggings, 1 blouse, and 3 button down shirts for about $125. pretty good, overall, i'd say. on the way up to markham for the big grandparents' s**tshow i was driving and the dotytron and i were singing in the car. we basically only sing extreme's "more than words" but last summer, when we were practicing our vows and taking all those road trips to geneseo, i seem to remember us having more in our repertoire. so the dotytron was like, "don't we sing any other songs?" and as a joke, i was like, "yeah, don't you remember how we used to harmonize to 'anna is a speed freak'?" which got a round of LOLs. in case you forgot the early 90s, "anna is a speed freak" goes like this:
ahahahhaahahahaha!!! then we flipped through the radio and the dotytron was like, "all i want to hear is 'runaway train' right now" and seriously made a concerted effort to find a call-in request show so that he could request it. we were close with 97.3fm, but i forgot the last digit of the phone number so that was a bit of a fail. in the end we dredged up the lyrics from our respective drug-addled youths and managed to cobble together a pretty solid rendition.
saturday we went for AYCE japanese and managed to break free from the loafing forces of suburbia to wrangle everyone downtown to the beach. it was LOVELY. although i have to say, the toronto beaches is a big, ol' cocktease. YOU CAN'T GO IN THE WATER?!?!! we laid out in the sun and then my sis and i took the kids to the donald d. summerville public pool, which is right at the beach. it's pretty awesome. it has an olympic sized swimming pool, a kiddie pool, AND a diving pool all in the same complex. we followed that up with the kids getting nice and sandy and the boys going to challenge some super-asians to a series of beach volleyball games that they lost.
we also made an important discovery - THERE IS SOMEONE WHO SELLS FUNNEL CAKES AT THE BEACHES! FOR LESS THAN WHAT YOU PAY AT WONDERLAND. this was a BIG deal! this means that i'm a 5 minute bike ride away from funnel cakes ALL SUMMER LONG.
we posseyed up and then headed to big mouth kee for a textbook big d's big day at big mouth kee meal. s-dawg had this plan to see the UFC fight at bo-pie with some friends. the outlaw bro, chova and the dotytron were obviously in for drinking and carousing so they went. this is how my sister and i watch UFC fights. we show up at bo-pie. order 2 glasses of water. order a brownie sunday and their chocolate explosion. eat dessert. leave before the fight begins. rent "valentine's day." i can't comment on the movie because i basically passed out from BOREDOM to the sounds of my sister complaining about how they can't write a decent romantic comedy any more and how implausible EVERY SINGLE PLOT POINT was and how shrill all the female characters are. good times. i will say that the fatburger was going BUCK during the UFC pre-fight stuff. i think he wanted to fight his in utero cousin.
on sunday me, my mum, and my sis went to this nearby nail place to get a pedicure. guys, i was BRUTALISED at that session. i'm not kidding you. the lady was ROUGH with me. doesn't she know that pedis are supposed to feel GOOD?! she had false nails and so she kept pinching the flesh on each toe between her talons and she made me bleed when she was working my cuticles. alls i gotta say is: if i end up with a staph infection or find out that i was paula abdul'ed , kathy's nails, i'm coming for ya.
we then met up with my grandparents at dim sum brunch at chili secrets. whereby my grandma dropped the BIG BOMB that she dislikes the dotytron? basically my grandpa was ribbing chova about why he and his ex gf broke up. then grandpa said that they didn't really seem compatible. then i asked out loud, somewhat rhetorically, "are the dotytron and i suited?" and my grandma, totally frowned, and shook her head, "no"!!!!! i was like, DID ANYONE JUST SEE THAT?!!!??? my grandma is like, evil incarnate so i'm not taking it seriously, but dayum. p.s. the dotytron was sitting right there. awwww, poor dotytron!
we fought the MSG AGAIN and managed to take the kids to a splash pad in this fairly awesome-for-suburbia park in richmond hill which had a playground, a splash pad, a basketball court, and like, 2 soccer fields. it was pretty fun, even if it was a little dirty. i don't think suburbanites understand that you're supposed to PUT GARBAGE IN THE GARBAGE RECEPTACLES PROVIDED. it's like a mystery to them or something. they probably expect their nannies to do the cleaning up. the next time i'm going to call the town of markham and complain just before we go up so it's all tidy. the kids had a good time and when my niece started whinging we set up a game of my sis, s-dawg and myself versus team whitey (outlaw bro and dotytron) at kickball/whiffle ball (we alternated innings). it was pretty hilarious and fun. mostly because we were using my niece's skipping rope to mark third base and when she asked to use it to go skipping WE WOULDN'T LET HER. lol!!!
so she threw a fuss and didn't want to play and basically sulked and cried for like 20 minutes. when she had calmed down she then asked to join our team when we were up at bat, WE WOULDN'T LET HER. we told her to that she COULDN'T JOIN THE BATTING ORDER MID-INNING and would be able to join once we flipped to playing outfield. LOL!!! i keep thinking about how those two events would go over with the super-research-y and super-liberal parenting types i know and i can already hear them calling CAS on us. lol!!!
after being a giant piggerton all weekend, i resumed regular low/good carb eating today. for dinner we had a salmon, corn & bacon chowder with a spinach salad with strawberries, toasted salted pumpkin seeds, and red peppers in a lime-honey dressing.
i also did the lane swim thing. things the dotytron likes about my swimming attire: i wear pretty skimpy bikinis, almost exclusively. things the dotytron DOESN'T like about my swimming attire: i top said bikinis with a speedo swimming cap which is probably too small AND mistakenly purchased CHILD-SIZED speedo swimming goggles (also too small) so it's party on the bottom and immigrant aquaman on top. pure sex.
fin.
saturday we went for AYCE japanese and managed to break free from the loafing forces of suburbia to wrangle everyone downtown to the beach. it was LOVELY. although i have to say, the toronto beaches is a big, ol' cocktease. YOU CAN'T GO IN THE WATER?!?!! we laid out in the sun and then my sis and i took the kids to the donald d. summerville public pool, which is right at the beach. it's pretty awesome. it has an olympic sized swimming pool, a kiddie pool, AND a diving pool all in the same complex. we followed that up with the kids getting nice and sandy and the boys going to challenge some super-asians to a series of beach volleyball games that they lost.
we also made an important discovery - THERE IS SOMEONE WHO SELLS FUNNEL CAKES AT THE BEACHES! FOR LESS THAN WHAT YOU PAY AT WONDERLAND. this was a BIG deal! this means that i'm a 5 minute bike ride away from funnel cakes ALL SUMMER LONG.
we posseyed up and then headed to big mouth kee for a textbook big d's big day at big mouth kee meal. s-dawg had this plan to see the UFC fight at bo-pie with some friends. the outlaw bro, chova and the dotytron were obviously in for drinking and carousing so they went. this is how my sister and i watch UFC fights. we show up at bo-pie. order 2 glasses of water. order a brownie sunday and their chocolate explosion. eat dessert. leave before the fight begins. rent "valentine's day." i can't comment on the movie because i basically passed out from BOREDOM to the sounds of my sister complaining about how they can't write a decent romantic comedy any more and how implausible EVERY SINGLE PLOT POINT was and how shrill all the female characters are. good times. i will say that the fatburger was going BUCK during the UFC pre-fight stuff. i think he wanted to fight his in utero cousin.
on sunday me, my mum, and my sis went to this nearby nail place to get a pedicure. guys, i was BRUTALISED at that session. i'm not kidding you. the lady was ROUGH with me. doesn't she know that pedis are supposed to feel GOOD?! she had false nails and so she kept pinching the flesh on each toe between her talons and she made me bleed when she was working my cuticles. alls i gotta say is: if i end up with a staph infection or find out that i was paula abdul'ed , kathy's nails, i'm coming for ya.
we then met up with my grandparents at dim sum brunch at chili secrets. whereby my grandma dropped the BIG BOMB that she dislikes the dotytron? basically my grandpa was ribbing chova about why he and his ex gf broke up. then grandpa said that they didn't really seem compatible. then i asked out loud, somewhat rhetorically, "are the dotytron and i suited?" and my grandma, totally frowned, and shook her head, "no"!!!!! i was like, DID ANYONE JUST SEE THAT?!!!??? my grandma is like, evil incarnate so i'm not taking it seriously, but dayum. p.s. the dotytron was sitting right there. awwww, poor dotytron!
we fought the MSG AGAIN and managed to take the kids to a splash pad in this fairly awesome-for-suburbia park in richmond hill which had a playground, a splash pad, a basketball court, and like, 2 soccer fields. it was pretty fun, even if it was a little dirty. i don't think suburbanites understand that you're supposed to PUT GARBAGE IN THE GARBAGE RECEPTACLES PROVIDED. it's like a mystery to them or something. they probably expect their nannies to do the cleaning up. the next time i'm going to call the town of markham and complain just before we go up so it's all tidy. the kids had a good time and when my niece started whinging we set up a game of my sis, s-dawg and myself versus team whitey (outlaw bro and dotytron) at kickball/whiffle ball (we alternated innings). it was pretty hilarious and fun. mostly because we were using my niece's skipping rope to mark third base and when she asked to use it to go skipping WE WOULDN'T LET HER. lol!!!
so she threw a fuss and didn't want to play and basically sulked and cried for like 20 minutes. when she had calmed down she then asked to join our team when we were up at bat, WE WOULDN'T LET HER. we told her to that she COULDN'T JOIN THE BATTING ORDER MID-INNING and would be able to join once we flipped to playing outfield. LOL!!! i keep thinking about how those two events would go over with the super-research-y and super-liberal parenting types i know and i can already hear them calling CAS on us. lol!!!
after being a giant piggerton all weekend, i resumed regular low/good carb eating today. for dinner we had a salmon, corn & bacon chowder with a spinach salad with strawberries, toasted salted pumpkin seeds, and red peppers in a lime-honey dressing.
i also did the lane swim thing. things the dotytron likes about my swimming attire: i wear pretty skimpy bikinis, almost exclusively. things the dotytron DOESN'T like about my swimming attire: i top said bikinis with a speedo swimming cap which is probably too small AND mistakenly purchased CHILD-SIZED speedo swimming goggles (also too small) so it's party on the bottom and immigrant aquaman on top. pure sex.
fin.
Friday, July 02, 2010
the pioneer in the city
before:
and after:
from the back row, we have: garlic dill pickles, bread'n'butter pickles, strawberry rhubarb jam, and there's some jumbleberry jam in there too, just not visible. it was a VERY productive canning session, although i think i upped the humidity in toronto by about 700% that weekend (during what was already a hot, humid, sticky, stretch).
i've been feeling kind of lazycakes lately - all sleepy and tired and listless - so wednesday night our plans to see the dotytron's sis' residency were curtailed by an intense need to sleep and rest and lay on the couch reading (but mostly sleeping).
canada day was much of the same. we woke up, i went for a 50/50 run/walk and the dotytron readied himself for another (probably fruitless) interview with the TDSB. the power was out so while he was gone i did some yoga and when he came back and the power was back on we ate this for breakfast:
that's a red pepper, tomato, dill, and parmesan frittata with english bacon and whole wheat sourdough toast - low carb!
then we basically just snoozed all afternoon and then went for a cold dip in the outdoor pool that is literally at the bottom of our street. it is SO ACES! i can't wait to come home and do lane swims during the week. it's very utilitarian - just a concrete deck and a big rectangle with a shallow end and a deep (no diving) end. it's maybe like, 5' deep at the deepest point. it's not the funnest for kids cuz there's no slide or anything, but it's perfect for doing laps in and the lack of a kiddie pool means that the kids make do with the splash pad in the park or go up the street to the more kid-friendly pool. bliss! they also keep it on the lightly chlorinated side. we'll see if they can keep that up as the season progresses.
came home, ate this for dinner:
that's a homemade vietnamese pork bun, consisting of pork loin slices that i marinated in sugar, lime, ginger, garlic, soy, sesame oil, and rice wine vinegar and fish sauce and then grilled. under that are rice noodles and julienned cucumber, shredded iceberg lettuce and grated carrot, with some fresh mint and chopped scallions to garnish. i also made homemade nuoc cham to douse the whole thing with. it was really tasty.
we ate it on the front porch and chatted it up with the neighbours and got a tour of one of our other neighbour's house - which was extremely illuminating. we've never invited any of our neighbours in...i guess we probably should...but their houses are all so much more done than ours. although the dotytron claims that i'm being irrational.
this also resulted in us witnessing an unfortunate car crash (i'm using the word "crash" lightly) in slow motion - a lady in a toyota pulled up, turned around in our driveway and then tried to 3 point turn her way out. she slowly kept backing up. slowly...slowly...slowly...and right into our neighbour's parked scooter, which was knocked over. then she tried to pull out to pull over but our other neighbour's tow truck driver friend stopped her and accused her of trying to get away. the neighbour who owns the scooter started taking pictures and freaking out when the hitter refused (somewhat inexplicably?) to give her DL and insurance info. the irate meltdown was made all the more dramatic by the fact that the scooter owner neighbour's face was painted up (i think she let her kids paint her face) so she looked like a deranged member of the insane clown posse, if they had blind people doing their make-up. it was very intense!!!
we packed up and headed to the roomie's pad, where our friends pingy and montréal I were converging - we sat on the roomie's upper deck and talked and drank wine and snacked on chips and this dessert i made:
this my friends, is a fig and frangipane tart - a SCRUMPTIOUS concoction and one of my go-to recipes when figs are in season from here on in. oh my. picture it: a crisp, buttery, flaky crust, the soft, cardamom-scented almond richness of homemade frangipane nestling caramelized figs, all jammy and plummy with their figgy essence. topped with a dollop of whipped cream and served warm - it was delectable. absolutely delectable. i've included the recipe below for you. i can picture the cardamom flavouring working equally well with poached pears or apples in the winter (i'm guessing you would have to poach the winter fruit to prevent that awkward, leathery drying that can occur when apple/pear slices are placed on top of a dessert without a lid to keep the moisture in). i'm going to try this tart again with cherries, very shortly. it's just so good!
today we woke up early, as is our wont. have i told you that i feel the fatburger frequently now? i guess i've been feeling it for a while, maybe the past 2-3 weeks? but i wasn't sure if what i was feeling was IT, you know? how the heck are you supposed to know? but now the motions are much more insistent to the point that there's no denying that it. i mean, it's not like i've ever felt my pancreas, uterus, stomach, intestines, etc. twitch around in there. people have different ways of describing it. my sis calls it popcorn popping. i've heard flutter, bubbles, butterfly wings. to me, it's something like this: you know when you're at the cottage and it's quiet, and you're sitting on the dock, or in your tin can fishing boat, and just a few feet away, you hear the little flick and plop of a fish eating a bug off the surface of the water? it feels to me the way that sounds. the little "plop!" of the tail going under.
we're so clueless. last night the roomie asked if we've been able to feel it from the outside yet. to be honest, i hadn't tried. but this morning i put my hands on my belly and totally felt a little pop! then i had the dotytron do it. we laid quietly and he put his hand on my lower belly and i felt the plop and i asked him, "did you feel it?" and he was like, "that wasn't you?! i totally did!" it was pretty cool, i must say.
now we're waiting for future shop to deliver our new dryer which may or may not actually fit down the stairs to the basement. whoops. they don't make dryers that aren't the size of our new one, anymore!!! what the heck are we supposed to do?!? we have about 1/4" of clearance, maybe. we're crossing our fingers. it's a front-loading (but aren't all dryers front-loading?) high efficiency number with the steam option. thrilling!!!
after that it's a rendezvous with I and the roomie again and eat brunch and talk our heads off. following that will be a trip to get new all seasons for the captain and then up to markham for the annual massive chinese banquet dog and pony show for my grandma's birthday and hanging up there for the next couple of days with my family.
fun! finally, check out our new knocker(s):
we actually got it a year ago as a wedding prezzie from ehmdo. isn't it the sweetest?
fin.
---------------------------------------------
fig frangipane tart
realistically, serves 6-8. if you have any sense, you'll eat it all to yourself
1 9" tart crust, blind-baked (10 minutes in a 375F oven with foil and beans in, 10 minutes with the foil and beans out)
2/3 c. blanched, skinless, sliced almonds
1 T. all purpose flour
7 T. sugar
3/4 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
1 egg
1/2 t. ground cardamom
1/2 t. salt
8-10 large, ripe figs, cut in half
- let your tart crust cool while you prepare the frangipane (keep the oven at 375F)
- in a food processor, blend the almonds with the flour and sugar until finely ground. add the butter, egg, cardamom, and salt until it's all mixed into a loose paste.
- spread the paste into the prepared tart shell, smoothing it out.
- tuck the figs into the frangipane in the pattern of your choosing
- bake the tart for about 40-55 minutes, or until the frangipane is set, the figs are caramelized at the edges and the top of the tart is golden brown.
- let it cool, but serve warm with a dusting of confectioner's sugar, and whipped cream.
and after:
from the back row, we have: garlic dill pickles, bread'n'butter pickles, strawberry rhubarb jam, and there's some jumbleberry jam in there too, just not visible. it was a VERY productive canning session, although i think i upped the humidity in toronto by about 700% that weekend (during what was already a hot, humid, sticky, stretch). i've been feeling kind of lazycakes lately - all sleepy and tired and listless - so wednesday night our plans to see the dotytron's sis' residency were curtailed by an intense need to sleep and rest and lay on the couch reading (but mostly sleeping).
canada day was much of the same. we woke up, i went for a 50/50 run/walk and the dotytron readied himself for another (probably fruitless) interview with the TDSB. the power was out so while he was gone i did some yoga and when he came back and the power was back on we ate this for breakfast:
that's a red pepper, tomato, dill, and parmesan frittata with english bacon and whole wheat sourdough toast - low carb!then we basically just snoozed all afternoon and then went for a cold dip in the outdoor pool that is literally at the bottom of our street. it is SO ACES! i can't wait to come home and do lane swims during the week. it's very utilitarian - just a concrete deck and a big rectangle with a shallow end and a deep (no diving) end. it's maybe like, 5' deep at the deepest point. it's not the funnest for kids cuz there's no slide or anything, but it's perfect for doing laps in and the lack of a kiddie pool means that the kids make do with the splash pad in the park or go up the street to the more kid-friendly pool. bliss! they also keep it on the lightly chlorinated side. we'll see if they can keep that up as the season progresses.
came home, ate this for dinner:
that's a homemade vietnamese pork bun, consisting of pork loin slices that i marinated in sugar, lime, ginger, garlic, soy, sesame oil, and rice wine vinegar and fish sauce and then grilled. under that are rice noodles and julienned cucumber, shredded iceberg lettuce and grated carrot, with some fresh mint and chopped scallions to garnish. i also made homemade nuoc cham to douse the whole thing with. it was really tasty. we ate it on the front porch and chatted it up with the neighbours and got a tour of one of our other neighbour's house - which was extremely illuminating. we've never invited any of our neighbours in...i guess we probably should...but their houses are all so much more done than ours. although the dotytron claims that i'm being irrational.
this also resulted in us witnessing an unfortunate car crash (i'm using the word "crash" lightly) in slow motion - a lady in a toyota pulled up, turned around in our driveway and then tried to 3 point turn her way out. she slowly kept backing up. slowly...slowly...slowly...and right into our neighbour's parked scooter, which was knocked over. then she tried to pull out to pull over but our other neighbour's tow truck driver friend stopped her and accused her of trying to get away. the neighbour who owns the scooter started taking pictures and freaking out when the hitter refused (somewhat inexplicably?) to give her DL and insurance info. the irate meltdown was made all the more dramatic by the fact that the scooter owner neighbour's face was painted up (i think she let her kids paint her face) so she looked like a deranged member of the insane clown posse, if they had blind people doing their make-up. it was very intense!!!
we packed up and headed to the roomie's pad, where our friends pingy and montréal I were converging - we sat on the roomie's upper deck and talked and drank wine and snacked on chips and this dessert i made:
this my friends, is a fig and frangipane tart - a SCRUMPTIOUS concoction and one of my go-to recipes when figs are in season from here on in. oh my. picture it: a crisp, buttery, flaky crust, the soft, cardamom-scented almond richness of homemade frangipane nestling caramelized figs, all jammy and plummy with their figgy essence. topped with a dollop of whipped cream and served warm - it was delectable. absolutely delectable. i've included the recipe below for you. i can picture the cardamom flavouring working equally well with poached pears or apples in the winter (i'm guessing you would have to poach the winter fruit to prevent that awkward, leathery drying that can occur when apple/pear slices are placed on top of a dessert without a lid to keep the moisture in). i'm going to try this tart again with cherries, very shortly. it's just so good!today we woke up early, as is our wont. have i told you that i feel the fatburger frequently now? i guess i've been feeling it for a while, maybe the past 2-3 weeks? but i wasn't sure if what i was feeling was IT, you know? how the heck are you supposed to know? but now the motions are much more insistent to the point that there's no denying that it. i mean, it's not like i've ever felt my pancreas, uterus, stomach, intestines, etc. twitch around in there. people have different ways of describing it. my sis calls it popcorn popping. i've heard flutter, bubbles, butterfly wings. to me, it's something like this: you know when you're at the cottage and it's quiet, and you're sitting on the dock, or in your tin can fishing boat, and just a few feet away, you hear the little flick and plop of a fish eating a bug off the surface of the water? it feels to me the way that sounds. the little "plop!" of the tail going under.
we're so clueless. last night the roomie asked if we've been able to feel it from the outside yet. to be honest, i hadn't tried. but this morning i put my hands on my belly and totally felt a little pop! then i had the dotytron do it. we laid quietly and he put his hand on my lower belly and i felt the plop and i asked him, "did you feel it?" and he was like, "that wasn't you?! i totally did!" it was pretty cool, i must say.
now we're waiting for future shop to deliver our new dryer which may or may not actually fit down the stairs to the basement. whoops. they don't make dryers that aren't the size of our new one, anymore!!! what the heck are we supposed to do?!? we have about 1/4" of clearance, maybe. we're crossing our fingers. it's a front-loading (but aren't all dryers front-loading?) high efficiency number with the steam option. thrilling!!!
after that it's a rendezvous with I and the roomie again and eat brunch and talk our heads off. following that will be a trip to get new all seasons for the captain and then up to markham for the annual massive chinese banquet dog and pony show for my grandma's birthday and hanging up there for the next couple of days with my family.
fun! finally, check out our new knocker(s):
we actually got it a year ago as a wedding prezzie from ehmdo. isn't it the sweetest? fin.
---------------------------------------------
fig frangipane tart
realistically, serves 6-8. if you have any sense, you'll eat it all to yourself
1 9" tart crust, blind-baked (10 minutes in a 375F oven with foil and beans in, 10 minutes with the foil and beans out)
2/3 c. blanched, skinless, sliced almonds
1 T. all purpose flour
7 T. sugar
3/4 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
1 egg
1/2 t. ground cardamom
1/2 t. salt
8-10 large, ripe figs, cut in half
- let your tart crust cool while you prepare the frangipane (keep the oven at 375F)
- in a food processor, blend the almonds with the flour and sugar until finely ground. add the butter, egg, cardamom, and salt until it's all mixed into a loose paste.
- spread the paste into the prepared tart shell, smoothing it out.
- tuck the figs into the frangipane in the pattern of your choosing
- bake the tart for about 40-55 minutes, or until the frangipane is set, the figs are caramelized at the edges and the top of the tart is golden brown.
- let it cool, but serve warm with a dusting of confectioner's sugar, and whipped cream.
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