Category: Food

Into the Woods

Saw the wussified, bowdlerized, defanged and diznified version of Sondheim’s Into the Woods last night with Sue.  I enjoyed it.  Chris Pine ripppppping his shirt off in the Agony song was pretty funny, and Emily Blunt was bloody marvellous, but really all the cast was good, and I enjoyed it.  I’m actually glad I saw it on the big screen as it is quite pretty.

Also I ate poutine and drank beer (except for parties I’m not keeping it in the house anymore).  Now I’m going to get up, make coffee and get stuff done.  Since there is literally no more episodic tv to watch unless we’re rewatching SG1, which is okay too I guess.

Today’s meal

The bird goes in the oven at 1.  No stuffing this time.  The rest of the day is me counting back from when supper hits the table (’round 5:15), prepping veggies so they have a fighting chance of being ready to go at the appointed time, fetching guests from Skytrain stations and cleaning things.

Watched this PG family adventure movie yesterday and quite liked it: Ragnarok. With bonus Sofia Helin from the Bridge series.

 

 

Sleepovers and trash

Keith and Paul and Mike dropped by last night for pizza, movies and conversation, and it was wonderful to see them all.

I’ve done a lot of things wrong in my life, but picking my friends hasn’t been one of them.

Keith slept over – I put a bunch of Woly shoe creme on his work shoes, which are so trashed by salt water that the leather is starting to come apart in layers. There must be six bucks worth of it on there… I hadn’t even opened it and I’ve had it three years, so I’m glad to be using a resource.

One of my fave Beaconites, Dina Davidson, local midwife extraordinaire, got some press time on her favourite subject.

Katie cut her dad’s hair yesterday.  Given that she and Paul hadn’t spoken in the best part of a month – immediately after the birth of the first grandchild – I will leave you to parse that as best you may.

I am doing coffee at church tomorrow.  I think I’ll make a cake, but make something else to leave here so Jeff doesn’t come looking all expectant with no treats.  So I have to remember to immediately put on bread dough the instant I get up tomorrow, because if I do it today, it will be gone tomorrow. Treat Logistics.

I am learning to my horror that the second section of the book is in disarray, and the timelines are all squidded up, and I appear to have TWICE written the same scene twice without incorporating the necessary elements from the other draft.  It’s ugly and I’m frustrated.  I think I’m going to need another writing week without the siren song of Agents of SHIELD to fix this mess (although we are close to the end LOL) so I’ll be checking in with the mOmster to see when would or might be convenient.  Won’t be until after my homily January 4 though.

Autumn, who may really be Peaches, loves Agent Coulson.  She sits on the back of the sofa and gazes at him adoringly.

I have laundry.  I’m doing it, I’m not digging it.  I have to ditch a whole bunch of my clothes because they are not meeting my needs, but that in itself makes me sad.  I should just take a picture and move on.

I’m also hoping to walk over to 6th and do a mini shop.

We’ll see what happens when Keith gets up… he may want a late brekkie.  I can definitely help out with the coffee.

There’s been an update to wordpress, the engine that runs this blog, and it allows me to have an empty screen when I’m typing, which is actually kind of cool and gives you a nice electronic typewriter feeling.

Haunting

I find this haunting. Someone has tried to reconstruct Babylonian song.

Yesterday I saw Sue in Little Women the Musical.  Unfortunately the book was not as good as the actors and musicians.  Fortunately I was able to argue my points with the actors afterwards without being dishonest or unkind, and it widened into a broader discussion of the challenges and rewards of musical theatre.  Ten years ago I would have said, Oh it was great, it was great.  Now I have the brains to respect people enough to be honest and the social intelligence to be honest without being a cad.

It was in Granville Island.  I had half an hour to Christmas shop.  I got an Alexosaurus (stuffed T Rex) and a kazoo.  Strangely, that is what I wanted.  I have rarely had a briefer and more pleasant Christmas shop.  The weather was crisply glorious and I likely won’t get to Granville Island again until Tammy comes.

Jeff and I walked to IHOP and back for breakfast.  It was very pleasant.

I think Riddle Number II is a cloud.  What do you think?

Work on the trilogy continues. Kima is pregnant – with more than 100 zygotes  by three fathers of two different morphs. This presents any number of social, emotional, physiological and ‘race’ issues.

I had a pleasant recent conversation with Dave JD.  He has joined the ranks of the unemployed.  I tried to get Facetime to reduce the expense of talking to him and repeated and lengthy attempts to purchase it were fruitless.  I really loathe anything to do with Apple customer service.  When I want an Android app or book I press a button, and free or not, it appears on my phone in about five minutes.  (I’m still on the first chapter of the Piketty book -if anyone wants to mock me… go ahead).

I can’t really deal with heeled shoes any more so I took two pairs of Fluevogs into church yesterday (the bus DIDN’T COME at 10:03, or even five minutes earlier according to the guy I ran into so I was 25 minutes late for church, screw you translink).  Anyway the teenaged co-congregant who had admired my steampunky shoes got about 300 dollars worth of footgear in a little bag, and if I did nothing else yesterday I made her very happy.  Her socks MATCHED the second pair of shoes, in a most gratifying way.

How do you detect an extrasolar planet? With objects found in hardware stores and Nikon lenses and software and a little something something to remove blur.

Yesterday morning I awoke to a dream in which Hitler’s mustache was crawling up my door frame.  I woke up for real and spent a disoriented couple of seconds looking for it.  Very odd, and not a little disturbing.

Breakfast of writing champions! Peanut butter cookies warm from the oven and fair trade coffee with real cream.  Ha!

We think Autumn may be knocked up.  It’s always something.

Yay, it’s an Alexander day!

Alex will be at church with Katie, or so it was arranged and I piously hope will come to pass.  I do coffee today so it’s even money whether or not I get to be upstairs for the homily portion.  Sue is taking me in early and I’ll do an inventory and see if there’s enough of whatnot for coffee etc., then cross the street and pick it up.  Happy daze.  Should be a good homily though. Marilyn asked me to do another homily for January 4 – one of the worst attended days of the year – so I’m going to do what I can to boost the numbers.  If you’re reading this, why not come to church that day!!??

THE GREAT YULETIDE COOKIEPALOOZA happens next Friday.  It will turn into a filk.  A messy messy housefilk, with crumbs and greasy thumbprints on the music.  Yes, indeed.  Thanks to Tom and Peggy for hosting.  We will also have the AMERICAN CONTINGENT, being the uber crafty Jeri-Lynn and the suavely geeky Jeff.  Who are just so awesome.  Cindy and possibly others will attend also.

It’s raining.  After yesterday’s glorious sun (which I got to walk around in, thanks to Paul not understanding that the Brighton Costco parking lot at 11 am is the worst fucking place in the known universe and how long precisely has he been living in Burnaby grumble grumble, but no harm done).  I drove through the parking lot and then drove back to Planet Bachelor and walked home from there, accompanied by Keith who just felt like continuing the conversation, which was pleasant, and made the walk back go in an eyeblink.  I needed the exercise.  I really wanted to pick some stuff up at Costco because there’s some bread there I can’t find anywhere else plus cheap butter and you know, baking, but perhaps I can borrer the car.  Apart from the walk and the abortive Costco trip I basically stayed in bed crying all day, but I’m feeling much better now.  Tammy is coming in December! Conflikt 8 (I can scarcely credit it…) is coming! And I still haven’t registered or figured out how I am getting there.  If I’m staying extra long I may need to like, bus it.  Bleaaugh.

I love my mOm and pOp.  mOm provided the correct stream of unfiltered bubbliness (occasionally going off mike to inform pOp of my responses) to assist with my bad case of the Marthambles – why, she’s better than a dose of Dr. Tufts finest elixir.

Still no cat.  I suspect what has happened is that the daughter has flung herself on the ground and pleaded her mom not to let Autumn go and the mom has been too embarrassed to tell Jeff she’s changed her mind, but perhaps Jeff is right and it’s just taking longer than expected.  Sometimes I think this culture is so indulgent to its children because these are the last good days and everybody’s trying to make them seem extra special.

I removed an incredible amount of hair surplus to requirements from Margot yesterday.  She was not amused.

Day five of Vitamin D, Vitamin C, B6, probiotics and MSM.  I am definitely feeling less achey, except for my hands, which is making me not want to play my Otto.

Jeff’s playing computer games on line with somebody, I assume Andrew – I can hear him talking to somebody on the headset.  “I think we just combined to kill one of our own tanks!” is the latest.

With sadness, I have cancelled the piano lessons.  He wasn’t listening to my course corrections and I’m not paying a man $35 bucks an hour to ignore me when I can have it for free any time I want on the internet.

My most recent painting is an unmitigated disaster.  I am going to paint over it.  I got the colours right but the design has much suckage – I think I’ll paint over it as a zombie heart.

Now to make a chocolate cake for church and figure out what I am going to wear.  And I have to remember to take a tape measure, for I mean to measure some crania, I do, I do, for future hatmaking endeavours.  Hats and spats. Cravats with cats. Fingerless gloves and pleather utility belts. I have to figure out how to make a living, and since there seems to be an inexhaustible interest in the steampunk aesthetic, I shall pursue that hobby for a while.

 

Singing

I know it’s  very weird to be rehearsing with a band that I’m not part of, but given that Mayhem has constraints (how can Mayhem HAVE constraints) that I can’t get into, because, strangely, reasons involving stupidity on the part of others in foreign climes, I kind of have to.  I suppose that wasn’t really a useful or discursive thing to say.  But I was singing last night and Peggy fed me and Shad an awesome dinner.  I loves me some Peggy.

I am writing, I am editing, and it all goes glacially slowly.  About three hundred words a day and maybe a page of edits.

I am seeing if I can go more than a couple of weeks without drinking.  I no longer seem able to process beer and it makes me really really sad.  It shouldn’t because, hey, water comes out of a tap and that was Adam’s ale, and Vancouver has the best municipal water system in the world, and the tap water is yummy, but I all sad face. Like I want to make a painting of a stubby or something.  Also, there is no chocolate cake in the house.  There should at least be cookies.  And I can always make more cake.  There is a drained lake of beer in my heart that only cake or possibly cookies can fill.

People want to know how much I’m seeing Alexander.  I’m seeing him as much as his mother and I agree seems to be right, and while it could be more, my own dear Grandma didn’t see me until I was walking, and it really helps to keep a sense of perspective about these matters.  If somebody wants my advice they can scarcely get the request out before I’m a-schpraying them, firehose-wise, with a side of and-another-things.  I have concerns of my own, thank the dear one.  Being an introvert Grandma is an interesting experience.

Casino night

Last night I went to the Hard Rock Casino and learned first hand how very odd casinos are.  I, Amanda, Mike, Stuart, Ian, Sarah and Otto got together for a simply lovely meal / some drinks.  Catching up with the old Statpower folks was really wonderful, and I’m in a really good mood this morning.  I thought I was going to gamble going in, and after quite the lecture on statistics from Meester Mike, I no want do that.  So I didn’t.  The food at Asylum was standard pub grub, perhaps 10 percent more expensive that was reasonable, so pretty ordinary for Vancouver.

Jeff is off fixing things and making the world a better place.

I’ve already done my homework for my first piano lesson.

Today I’m going to clean things, write things, sing things, dance things, ingest things, and excrete things.  Isn’t it wonderful that the word things even exists.

Always wanted to try it, this just makes it more interesting. Ayahuasca, that is.

Party at our place in December, details later!

Balloons go up until they come down

The ongoing crisis looms a little closer to North Americans.  Sell your Airline stock. I’ve asked Paul to retire.  Or to consider it if and when we get an Ebola sufferer coming through town via YVR.

Katie is having a rough go, poor lassie, not getting enough sleep.

Turkey soup is bubblin’ away.

Jeff’s at work and going to bring home treats.  I am going to curl up with Thomas Piketty.

 

Alexander’s First Thanksgiving.

Comments having nothing to do with Alexander:

Margot likes babies.  She doesn’t even leave the room when they cry.  Every time I think I know my cat she reveals unexplored depths of character and personality.

It was so good to feast the folks, including Mike and Casey.  The meal consisted of (because mOm will want to know, not because I am a food porn type): Roast turkey stuffed with parsley, one head of garlic and a lemon, boiled and roasted yams, brussels sprouts parboiled in chicken stock and sauteed in butter, sauteed parsnips, iceberg lettuce salad, stuffing made in the crockpot (sadly lacking onions, but still damned good), boughten cranberry jelly, homemade gravy and possibly the worst – the most gluey and lumpy – smashed potatoes I ever made.  Everybody else ate them so it’s not like they were inedible, they just weren’t choice.  Absolutely no sweets, but white and red wine, plus beer, to go with the meal. I did promise Paul his mother’s lemon snow recipe for dessert but that will wait for our next meal together; he very kindly did veg prep and ran people ’round town and brought wine glasses and suchlike, for which I offer thanks and praise.

Keith got off work early; Katie turned up around 4, so we all sat down together around six.

The carcase, less the sandwich making leftovers, is in the stockpot; I made beef and bean burrito fillings yesterday as well, so I don’t think I’ll have to cook for a while, yay me!  I mean apart from deboning the soup ingredients.

Around 8 Katie got toothpicks, and Casey was in the same boat, so Paul took them home.  For another hour Mike, Jeff, Keith and I sat around downstairs and watched Archer, and then since the boys both work in the morning, off they went.

It was not a spectacular meal, but it wasn’t one that anybody else in our group would have WANTED to cook, so I’m glad I stepped up.  After I could sit down, I had a lovely evening.

 

And Alexander was there.

 

Alexander disapprovesHappy Grandma

Walk in the sun

The boys of Planet Bachelor were here yesterday; Keith watched some Archer with us and Paul took me for a walk in Oakalla and consumed cake (I made some more chocolate cake).  The walk was simply lovely, and took place in the only block of fair weather we’re going to get for the next few days.  Keith is considering getting a pufferfish.

THANKS TEXAS YOU RATFONDLERS. Ebola is in the news and you sent a man with a fever who had just returned from West Africa home. ZMapp is a long way from commercial production.  A million dead by January 2015, and everybody from the WHO on down lying; the only people I really trust to report with any candour are Medecins Sans Frontieres.

2020 says ha ha fuck you

 

Haven’t heard from Katie, but I imagine the babymoon is continuing quite nicely without me. Keith will go see her and Alexander today and make the acquaintance of his new nephew.

Divine decadence

I love my friends.  Mike took me out to dinner (lamb) and pummelled me until I felt a lot better.  I had no idea I was sore! He told me about some of the stuff that’s happening at Schneider and I laughed quite immoderately.

Check out this example of divine decadence, being a chair shaped like a scorpion.

REALLY glad I mowed the lawn yesterday; the rain is going to last 5 days.  So the place won’t look like an abandoned house when we have guests on Monday.

I have a big table for Thanksgiving. My immediate fam in town plus two orphans. (Neither of whom are technically orphans). This totals 9.  We are going to eat like FOOLS. Really looking forward to it, even if I’ll be trapped in a tiled cell with a dead bird for a day.  There will be parsnips.  I found a crockpot recipe for stuffing that sounds nommerful.

 

Singing

I have worked up the chords for Just Might Stick Around (it’s in E minor, just like most of Cohen’s tunes).  It amazes me that there is A WEBSITE that has THE SINGING RANGES of various popular singers.  So I was able to google “What is Leonard Cohen’s singing range” and POOF.  All this information, there really is too much of it.

Do you like owls? I do too.  These youngsters are adorable.

Keith came over yesterday and we sat on the back deck in the steadily diminishing sun, and watched Beasts of the Southern Wild (a problematic movie BUT I loved it anyway) and around a store bought roast chicken I assembled baby steamed baby carrots and broccoli, plus when I heard Keith was coming I decided to make garlic bread; the lads fell on it with a will and there’s leftovers for lunch.  At 4 I go over to Tom and Peggy’s to sing and commune with some of the finest, best, most amiable, intelligent and hospitable friends any sane human can ask for.   WE ARE GOING TO SING CAT FABER’S WORD OF GOD IN CHURCH TOMORROW. Means nothing to you, but Tom has been waiting for this day for 10 years.  In his glee I reflexively bask. Cat has written some awesome tunes, which you can read lyrics for here here here here and here, and that’s only a fraction.  A teeny fraction.  She rounds off her accomplishments by being a rather exceptionally pleasant human.

My character George on the subject of death.  “I will continue. My perception of that continuance will not.”

Prior to sings0ngapalooza, novel assembly tasks.

There’s a Vogon Poetry Generator on the interwebs!  Isn’t it cute?

 

See, see the Intelligent sky
Marvel at its big kimshee depths.
Tell me, Liz do you
Wonder why the honey badger ignores you?
Why its foobly stare
makes you feel groggy.
I can tell you, it is
Worried by your sploogey facial growth
That looks like
An egg.
What’s more, it knows
Your frigate potting shed
Smells of Kermit.
Everything under the big Intelligent sky
Asks why, why do you even bother?
You only charm compost.

Rehearsal was excellent, more of the same tonight.

One think and another

Okay TODAY my calves hurt (but nothing else does, thankfully).  I made coffee this morning using the really yummy medium blend that Leo and Linda left us.  We haven’t had the coffee maker upstairs for the best part of a year, so that’s interesting.  And motorvating.

I love ice cream, but not when the people who sell it don’t know how to store it.  I’ll leave the rest of it to Jeff if he can stand it, but I am vastly preferring my version of the I Hate to Cook Book’s chocolate cake.  Which reminds me, must put cake flour on the shopping list, as it really makes a difference for baking.  Also on the list, more acrylic paint and please some more canvasses, smaller this time.

Chicken’s on to thaw for chicken schnitzel for lunch.  Have to figure out which veg to serve, and that means cleaning out the fridge.

Anil Dash on 15 years of blogging (I just passed my tenth anniversary, but like, who cares… except me, I am going back through the entire blog and pinching all the good stuff to put in yet another project called “Broad Hints” which also has recipes and other stuff.  Sort of like a ‘cream of condensed Allegra’).

I am learning Big Hard Sun by Indio.

 

More family visiting

Last night Leo and Linda feasted us at Balkan House; the server tried to get us to eat dessert and we’re all looking appalled and Linda said, “None of us finished dinner” and we got leftovers. Then Jeff walked home, not feeling too great,  (we had all walked there, it being quite manageable) and Leo and Linda and I proceeded on foot to Planet Bachelor, where we caught up with Katie and Ayesha while waiting for the Bachelor Brothers to return home.  Keith arrived first and Paul arrived quite late (late arrival AGAIN just like what happened for his birthday) and we had a nice visit. By ten pm I was so tired I was toothpicking and practically snoring against Katie’s shoulder, but Paul was giving Katie a ride home anyway, so I did not actually have to walk home.  What a relief, I was pretty torpid at that point, but I did get in 2.8 k of walking.

Leo and Linda visited the motherhouse of the Daoist Tai Chi society yesterday, so not only did they have exercise in the morning, they walked for yonks down at the Quay and then walked that additional 2.8 k… so I think “Not Slowing Down Just Because First Grandchild, Thanks” pretty much describes it.

The folks had lots of fun at the Quay, which is an interesting place to spot boats and whatnot.

Now Leo is making Finn Pancakes and bacon, and coffee’s dripping.  They will be heading out later this morning.  I really really hope that their flight isn’t affected by the meshuggas in Chicago this morning, where a deliberately set fire in the ATC utility room is causing chaos across the US.