Weekend!

Hooray! The weekend is here, and actually means something again due to my current employ. I'm also (due to an event involving a certain baby with no socks on and a certain sheepish husband) very glad to be in charge of my baby's care again. Apparently he's been moaning "momomomo" for me all day. The feeling is mutual, little guy. I'm optimistic about this weekend. It involves going out to the bar to celebrate Mike's birthday, hopefully successfully making an angel food cake which is Mike's favourite, and going out to the 'Mongolian Grill' with Mike's family to celebrate the day following.

The Mongolian Grill actually has an interesting story. According to the website, the reason they cook their food over this giant wok-type deal is because of the nomadic and warring history of Mongolia, in which soldiers would roast their food in their sheilds which they hoisted over an open fire. Or at least that's what they tell white people. Frankly, I think that cooking food on your shield doesn't make a lot of sense. Like what if you needed it while you were cooking food? And wouldn't the grease build up and make it kind of slippery to hold onto? Picture it: Your group of soldiers is ambushed at dinner. You try and pick up your shield but it's burning hot, and your buddy has his, but shit! It just catapulted out of his hands and now he's toast. No good. But hey, what do I know. Maybe there's a taboo amongst Mongolian soldiers against fighting during dinnertime.

I'm looking into a naturopathic doctor at the moment. No, there's nothing wrong with me. I'm not ill. I'd just like to go. Ever since my pregnancy I've been fascinated by the efficacy of naturopathic medicine. I see it as somewhat of an oversight on my part. I, who constantly expounds the value of listening to undervalued narratives. This is certainly one of them. In our Western society we're so used to turning up our nose at a cure that comes in a tea, rather than a pill. Something cheap must be ineffective. But this isn't true! Big-pharma can't always be right, they can't put a patent on rasberry leaf tea, which has been utilized by women for centuries. Also, they do allergy tests at naturopathic clinics, and I want to see if I am truly allergic to shellfish. I wonder now if the shellfish I ate the times I had a bad reaction was actually bad (shellfish poisoning can sometimes look identical to an allergy) and I'm crossing my fingers. I think it would give me a whole new lease on life if I could eat a lobster. I fantasize about them. I dream about them. I look at recipes and remember the feel of soft yet crunchy lobster flesh against my teeth, drenched in garlic butter, sucking the flesh out of the little legs. Yum yum. Sea bugs.

Well this has been an odd entry, and one that took me all day to write. So now I'm going to look at lobster recipes. Good night!

A Picture of Food

Since I keep wagging my tongue abou tthe awesome things I\m cooking, here's sample. Duck pate with braised endives, watercress and a cube of smoked gouda. Yum!

Happy Birthday Mike!

The man in my life turns twenty-seven today. Twenty-seven years of awesome, as I like to say. If you're a regular reader of my blog, it's no secret how much he means to me. He's handsome, caring, and most of the time he's smarter than me. He's also an awesome dad. I wish I could have rung it in with him today better than I did, but we've reserved Saturday for that, where I'm going to spoil him rotten. That's what birthdays are for!

This is going to be a shorter than usual entry--either Ender is getting sick, or getting more teeth!

Back to the grind: Version 2.0

I worked today. I have been working/volunteering/whatever you'd like to call it, at the properties company of my mom's boyfriend. Who is really a stepdad, except they're not married and I'm too old to require secondary parenting. Anyway, the prop shop has always been a place I've felt fairly comfortable. When I was little I'd bum around the prop shop (this very one, in fact) and glue pieces of string and shiny mylar to a piece of paper. I would sort buttons and generally make a quiet nuisance of myself. I was kind of dissapointed when my mom became a drama teacher. She loves it, but it's so much less interesting than describing the part of Phantom of the Opera that she created.

So now, I'm working there.

This is part and parcel of my 'take a dose of my own medicine' resolution, which is one of my many this year. More on that later. So aside from getting a mohawk (don't worry, grandma- it's very conservative), which I was always agitating Mike to do, I decided to stop moaning at my mom about how she had the coolest job in the world and go find my own. It was fun. I had fun. I hope I did a good job and I'm quite flattered at the amount of responsibility that has been afforded me. Probably to my bosses they are handing me the most bo-bo work they can think of, but anything is more exciting than sweeping. Or filing. Which I will probably be doing also. But the best part is that it's part time and flexible. I don't have to be away from my baby boy much at all, and when I am, he's spending time with his dad. Beautiful.

In a continuation of my past post, I found out yesterday from my grandmother that the part of Paris that we stayed in was actually only blocks from Julia Child's very house, and the market where we shopped was the very market where Julia shopped herself! It made me tear up a bit. I still haven't quite put my finger on why her story resonates with me so deeply. Perhaps it's the idea that one can turn 40 and still find their calling after that point. That you can be a nobody and then be a somebody way after everyone has written you off.

In that vein, I shall stave off on yet talking about my latest endeavor, dear readers. Let us just say that I have applied to a school and I hope I get in.  That if I do, it will change everything for me and my family in a big way, and that there is nothing wrong with following your bliss.

Also, I've been yearning for some spiritual peace and relaxation lately. I haven't been able to get away from the city -- the snow squalls up my mom's way always scare me. I'd hate to get in an accident with the baby in the car. As soon as it gets warm again I want to go camping, or cabin-ing (preferably) and hike and the show the baby the out of doors properly. I will let him listen to bugs and birds and the rushing flood waters of spring, grabbing at grass and dirt with his chubby little hands, and he'll look up with wonder at the dappled sunshine through the canopy of leaves. And it will be so green that the air will practically vibrate with life, and we will both breathe a sigh of relief that this godforsaken winter is over.

Julia would be proud

How meta is this? Blogging about a movie that is about a blog. But either way, I simply must rant and ramble about 'Julie and Julia' which is one of the best movies that I have seen in quite a while. You see, Julia Child holds special significance for the women in my family. In the fifties and sixties, during Julia's meteoric rise to fame, my grandmother, a young wife to a Unitarian minister lived and breathed gourmet cooking. She made meals that would have made Julia proud. Which is, judging by the movie, a qualifiable thing.

I myself have spent hours poring over her books trying to recreate her masterpieces. What is nice about her books is that yes, the recipes are hard (which is in itself refreshing for the at-home chef who has tried everything) but they are beautiful and delicious. Julia Child never says 'here is an easier version of this beautiful, delicious thing'. She gives you instructions and fully believes that anyone is capable of it. I myself recently made myself and Julia proud by cooking her duck pate. Deboning and defleshing an entire duck, baking the seasoned forcemeat and breast in its own skin. It was divine. I remember trying to make Isles Flotant with my mom out of that very same cookbook when I was ten or so. The islands did not float, but there was something about trying to burn our own sugar for caramel that was strangely affirming. You don't usually need to buy a ton of crazy imported products for these recipes (like some cookbooks of late, which are of the more difficult variety but mostly in the form of frustrating grocery shopping) with a pound of butter and a pound of sugar and some cream in the fridge, you are capable of anything.

As I watched Julie and Julia, I also noticed the beautiful flame red Le Creuset dutch oven and braisers they were using. These things are so cool they make me salivate. My grandmother used to have them, but had to give them up as they are quite heavy and her arthritis wouldn't allow for it. Now I have something to put on my christmas list for next year, or maybe if I get a big fat tax refund I'll splurge.


Next on the list is stuffed cabbage, and Mike has been making sounds like he wants an aspic. Yes an aspic. So if I can steal a jelly mold from my mother, I may just try it. For Julia.

Catch up

Well I'm back, my dear neglected blog. Life has been crazy! I suppose that's no excuse, because life is always crazy, but this kind of insanity has kept me from blogging. The kind that keeps your arms full, and your butt off the couch. A very welcome kind of business.

So let's see what we missed:

Christmas came and went, and we were blessed to be given many gifts from loving relatives. Ender made off like a bandit, and now all his toy storage is full, and I've made peace with a large pile of toys in the middle of my carpet at all times.

Mike and I went out at night for the first time since my birthday in August (which ended with lung/ear shattering screams) to the pleasant surprise that Ender will go to sleep for my dad. Not for me, but yes, for my father. Go figure. The amount of freedom this has afforded me has been bittersweet, because although I can go out to the bar, I don't really want to. I rush Mike home so we can get home to Ender, who sleeps obliviously, sprawled out like a chubby little starfish on the couch. He doesn't mind my absence, but I certainly do. I find myself weighing every moment that I'm out. Is this brief halt in conversation really worth me being away from my child? haha. I know it's necessary though. I am a person, apart from being a mom.

I also wrote and got my LSAT scores back. I am not going to be a lawyer. There is some kind of relief in that. My scores basically say that while I scored better than 72% of the people who took the test, I have no place in law school. After some tears of disappointment, I am okay with that. Really, I agree. Now I have time to pursue more artistic dreams (more information on that to come, dear readers, I'll leave you with that tantalizing piece of half-information).

On christmas, by far Ender's best gift was his two front teeth. No joke. Two bottom teeth simultaneously broke the gums on christmas morning. How perfect! The perfect beginning to a perfect day. Since then he has been the smiliest most laughiest baby ever. Apparently he's been teething for 8 months, and only now his personality has had time to shine through.

Well, time for the morning feeding, but there will be more blogging to come!

potential and expectation

It is now October. Officially fall and my favourite time of year. The air takes on the smell of potential and expectation, a leftover conditioning from my school days. I am taking a physiology class, and I delighted in the trip to the school bookstore and picking up new notebooks and glistening pens that look like candy in their wrappers. The air is cool enough for a light jacket, and the grime of the streets is washed away nightly with the rain that pitter patters on my roof, lulling me and my family to sleep every night.

In this season of potential and expectation, I have begun going to the gym. I had to do the mandatory thing when you join a gym, which is when you go for a 'fitness assessment'. If you've never had one of these, picture this:

A man or woman in significantly better shape than you, with better highlights and more coordinated workout clothing makes you do cycle for as long as you can, do sit ups and suppresses a smile while you fail at a push up. At the end, they weigh you and inform you that you are 42% body fat, and the only way to get in the shape you want is through 2300 dollars of personal training over the next three months. But don't worry, they say, they have a fantastic plan that can stretch your payments out over a nine month period (!) and you can't really put a price on your health, can you? At which point you leave, thoroughly discouraged, and that is pretty much akin to death in the workout world. Discouragement means fatness. However, you swallow your pride, and return to the gym the next day, huffing and puffing and jiggling your way up a stairway that leads to nowhere.

Anyway, the end of this story is that I have 30 pounds to lose, and I'll be damned of I'm not going to do it myself, without any kind of personal training. I can put a price on my health, and it stops at the price I pay for a gym membership. I know I *can* do this though, because I've done it before. Though, before my technique was smoking and drinking the weight off, I'm sure this way works too. Plus, you get a total endorphin rush when you finish working out. I highly recommend it as an end to any argument with your spouse.