true love, 584 style

this year for valentine's day i gave my partner a gift with heart.
pig heart, that is.
and he let me know that he thinks i'm a bag.ok, ok, so the pig heart* was one of the random parts we got with the 1/2 pig we bought last fall.** and because i'm not that cruel, he also gets a 6 of beer. i picked the bag out for myself yesterday, and i love it. my new camera***
finally has a home!


* i also gave my partner the pig's tongue, just because. but i didn't take a picture because looking at it made me want to puke
**there's a local guy who raises pigs ethically. he grows the grain to feed them, even. organically. ethical meat! cheaper than the grocery store! and much, much tastier!
*** i recently got an exciting new camera! a million times than my shitty-ass old one. it's fan-freakin'-tabulous. yay for random gifts from wealthy relatives!

book review: last chance saloon

marian keyes' last chance saloon is the archetypal chicklit book. stock characters (the skinny, neurotic one, the chubby, bubbly one and the gay man, plus peripheral characters, equally predictable. all of them are in their early 30's and live in london and none have any real responsibility) shop, drink, diet, obsess, and go through crises. in the end they are happy, well dressed, well partnered, and well shod. not to belabour the point or anything, but the last pararagraph is

'to life!' seven glasses clinked in the middle of the tablewhile seven chorused, 'and men with big willies!'

i'm not deriding the book, though. not at all. fluffy, silly books like this serve a purpose. today i had two small, feverish bodies draped across me and i wasn't exactly about to read dostoevsky. similarly, when i was pregnant i couldn't get enough of the girly fluff. for people who don't watch sitcoms or chick flicks, these books are fantastic escapism. last chance saloon didn't change my life or teach me anything, but it entertained me through many tedious hours.

but before i let the book and the genre off the hook completely, i have a few questions.

• why are there never lesbians in these books? frequently a flamboyant gay man, but never a dyke.
• why are there no people with mental illness or physical handicaps?
• why are they all nonreligious? there's always one person who is investigating her spirituality, but she's the flaky, gullible one.
• why is no one non-mainstream? no goths, punks, hippies, never the most distant glimpse of a metalhead...

it's the homogenized humans that bug me. maybe what this genre needs, in order for me to embrace it fully, is a book proudly featuring a one-legged hindu lesbian with down's syndrome. her best friend would be a post-op trans man who works at walmart and listens to bluegrass. can anyone point me in that direction?

guest post: daffodylic the terrific

my narcissistic friend is here again. enjoy.

Sometimes we take on more than we can handle. By "we" I mean we human beings, and by "take on more" I mean adding so much to our plates that "biting off more than we can chew" becomes an understatement. Examples of this can include parenting (come on, did we ever know that it would be this challenging?!) or deciding to glue together 500 pieces of a broken figurine made of porcelain. You know, those moments when you are in the middle of a project and you think, Oh. This is harder than I thought it was going to be. I don't feel very qualified….

Several months ago, an old friend of mine (read: ex boyfriend) sent me a text message asking me if I would be available to tutor his client's son. I sent a text back indicating that he could pass on my contact information and I would scope out the opportunity. (For what it is worth, the message did not read "lol omg txt my # 2 doc" though my friend would have found that hilarious.)

I did take the gig - partially as a favor to an old friend, partially for the money and partially shits and giggles. The boy is fifteen with muddy red hair and Coke-bottle glasses. He is skinny and acne-prone. Oh yes, and he's an Aspie. The first few tutoring session with him went surprisingly well. We had one enormous success with a baking soda and vinegar science experiment that ended with a monotone declaration of his love for me. And that's the problem with successes: We get comfortable. Confident. Pretty damn sure we can waltz in and take the challenge blindfolded with both hands tied behind our backs.
Until we are blindfolded with both hands tied behind our backs.

A couple sessions ago, I hit a brick wall with my young student. Several times during the hour, he put his head down and groaned. He ended our session by saying he had to poop, and he got up from the table never to return. I chalked it up to a bad day. I left, discouraged but still overall confident from the prior successes whispering monotone affections in my memory.

My last tutoring session began with a sleeping teenager, who rapidly morphed into a groggy, grumpy teenager. I had brought color-coded word games for him (surely he would love that). He played 30 seconds with the stack of cards and then put his head on the table. I brought out my clip-art-enhanced writing prompts with graphic organizers. He looked, groaned, and laid his head down.

I leaned close to him and said very softly, "Give me a word. Any word."

"Goodbye."

Clearly he wanted me to take a hint. Instead, I pulled out my thesaurus and looked up "leave." On my tablet, I wrote down abscond, escape, exit, travel, depart. He tried not to let me see him watching me. I flipped over to the E's. Evacuation, exodus, expiration.

"What are you doing?"

I flipped the pages purposefully and answered, almost like an after-thought, "I'm looking up words."

"Why?"

I smiled at him, "So I can find exactly the right one...." He picked up the tablet and looked at the list of words.

"Give me another word, and I'll show you," I said encouragingly.

"Depressed." He tossed the note pad down. Then his head went down. Uncertain, I slowly flipped toward the D's. His mother chose that moment to come in.

"You are going to FAIL your writing test tomorrow if you don't GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER and let your tutor HELP you. Do you WANT to fail? GET UP NOW AND WORK."

His eyes nervously focused and unfocused. "Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh," he groaned and breathed rapidly. His mother wasn't quite finished. "You know, she's being really patient with you, and you're being mean to her." She left the room and I flipped to the P's. Patience, forbearance, perseverance, long-suffering. He was watching again.

"Suffering, all right," he snarled at me angrily. I looked in his eyes. He hated me at that moment. He was terrified. He was frustrated. And nothing I was doing was reaching him at all. I touched his shoulder and he jumped back growling at me, peering down and over the tops of his glasses and baring his teeth.

I had one last project tucked in my bag. A list of 21 sentence starters. I pulled out the sheet, and read the first one off to him: This morning I got out of bed, and I.... He groaned. I read off two more. More groans. That's when the moment really hit me. I'm not qualified to do this kind of work. I have a measly little degree in Creative Writing, earned from a less-than-stellar university over eight years ago. Just because I work with college prep students and teach grammar in an unorthodox way obviously doesn't mean I can come into this home with no experience and reach this boy.

The hour was almost over. My head throbbed right in front, over the forehead. I was hungry. I was embarrassed that I had even pretended I could take on this project. Unqualified was an understatement.

Number 20: When I need a quiet place to think, I go...

"...To bed."

I looked at him. He looked at me. His eyes are a pretty shade of blue and I bet no one ever notices that about him.

"Write it," I said, shoving the tablet and a pen toward him. "Write 'when I need a quiet place to think, I go to bed.'"

He wrote it, and said, "Sometimes my brain wants to stay awake longer than my body."

"Write it. Write exactly what you say."

He wrote five sentences, saying them out loud and then copying his words onto the paper. Midway through the last sentence, he looked at me.
"You know, you're right - it is easier when I say it out loud first and then write it." He finished writing the fifth sentence. It was time for me to go.

"Tomorrow, on your test, talk to your paper, ok? Just talk to it. It's ok to do that. Then write what you say." I wrote in all capital letters on a blank sheet of paper: "TALK TO THE PAPER." He drew an outline of Yoda on his hand. His hand said, "Do or not do, there is no try." And he said back to it, "I will talk to the paper."

On my way out the door, his mother asked me if there was anything else he needed to do before I cam back the next time. I mumbled something about the sentence starters... five sentences for each one. She paid me a little extra.

Sometimes we take on more than we can handle. Sometimes we learn a little something about ourselves in the process. Our boundaries, our limitations, our fallibilities. Humility. Perseverance. Long-suffering.

short

my partner and my baby are feverish, limp and sad. my boy is being pretty good, considering. i'm tired and bored and stressed. so instead of posting i will just say:

camping. it's in tents.

pottymouth

this morning i was peacefully sipping my coffee when i heard a little voice coming from under the table.
...mumble mumble bloody fuckin' mumble mumble....
he sounded just the way his mama (charmingly) does when she's frustrated with something.

my son has recently become fascinated with language. he wants to know the french words for things, the synonyms for things, and when different words are appropriate. we've been trying to teach him that there are certain words, beverages and behaviours that only grown-ups get to do. (before your mind throws itself in the gutter, by 'behaviours' i mean using the stove, telling the baby not to do things, filling the bath, and staying up late)

we've rolled our eyes when he's felt the need to run around the house yelling 'penis' over and over and over. it's perfectly acceptable when he says 'what the heck. what the heck, mama!' but we have serious talks about age-appropriate language when he tells me that he just took a shit. in fact, he recently told a guest that he wasn't allowed to say hell or ass because he's just a little boy.

i realize this arrangement isn't ideal. we've been trying for more than three years to clean up our language. what i've realised is that i love swearing, and i really resent being censored, even if it's by a baby. this is just another part of the struggle between being true to my (foul-mouthed) self and doing what's best for my kids. i'm trying to find a balance, and for now being openly hypocritical seems to be what works.

in other language-related news, the baby can say 'death star' and 'yoda', but not 'juice' or 'apple'. we teach our kids right, 'round here.

fuckin' a.

recipe: gluten free spanikopitas

last night we hosted a stuff white people like-themed party. there was fondue, ugly sweaters, california rolls, granola cookies, science fiction references, cbc radio, and a lot of witty comments. white people like themed parties.

without fail, the day after a good party i feel mopey and antisocial. it may be my passive-aggressive way of avoiding having to do the cleanup, but i always want to be left the hell alone after a good shindig. today was no exception. i've spent the day trying to dodge human interaction, with mixed results. the day is finally over, the babies are asleep, my partner has quit with the friendly overtures, and i get to sit by myself and drink some leftover wine. bliss.

~*~

i feel bad for so rarely remembering to write down my gluten free recipes. if a person liked spending a pile of cash on hard-to-find ingredients that made so-so food, they'd find that the internet is a treasure trove. for people who want something tastier and less expensive, not so much. i've had to make things up as i go along and improvise substitutions to make my favourite recipes acceptable for little mr g. f. so here's my recipe for gluten free spanikopitas. (spanakopitas? i never know how to spell that)

really, this is just a regular spanikopita recipe, heavily canadianized, with one major modification that makes it gluten free. please go ahead and alter this to fit your preferences and fridge contents, it's a versatile enough idea that you can really do whatever you like with it.

first, take these:
feta cheese, chopped spinach, pepper, eggs, dill, and cheddar. the cheddar is my very canadian addition, if you prefer a more authentic taste, skip it. similarly, i really like dill, but people often prefer oregano and other more greek herbs. add in chopped tomatoes and sauteed onions if you like.

i like to just wing it, so the quantities pictured above are not accurate. you want the mixture to be gloppy but not runny, and nicely cohesive. i used 500 grams of spinach, half the feta, one of the chunks of cheddar, both eggs, ~1 tsp of dill and ~1 tsp of pepper. it could have used more pepper. the quantities are really up to you, so long as it isn't runny you're good.

next, get:
a package of rice paper, (also called rice wraps, available at asian groceries or the asian aisle of a big grocery store. these usually cost less than 3$ for two or three batches of spanikopita, hella cheaper than phyllo) a bowl of superhot water, and your nicely gloppy mixture. the water should be in a round bowl or pot that's big enough to hold the rice paper.

this is the tricky part. (but not trickier than using phyllo) dip one sheet of the rice paper in the water and leave it there for a few seconds while it softens. the colder the water the longer it takes to soften. then pull it out and lay it down carefully. if the paper touches itself it will stick. if the whole thing clumps up into a sticky, unusable mass, put it back in the water and try again. if all goes right, you should have a more or less flat circle of sticky, wet rice paper on your counter, like this:

as pictured, put a bit of your glop in the middle. the amount is up to you: do you want bite-sized snacks or meal-sized turnovers? then fold it up into a neat package, being careful to leave some space inside the package. if it's too tight the cooking contents have nowhere to expand and your spanikopita will spill all over the pan. it's less appetizing when that happens.

place your bundles of deliciousness on a greased cookie sheet. they don't expand when they cook so they can be really close to one another, but don't let them touch or you'll end up with siamese twins. er, um, conjoined multiples. whatever.
bake them with whatever else you're putting in the oven, checking them every so often. when the rice paper is hard and the bits of cheese that have spilled out are getting golden and tasty-looking, they're done. i've never personally cooked them on their own and i suspect that baking time depends on the amount of goop in each spanikopita, but i'd say you could probably put them in at 375 for at least 20 minutes.

i know my instructions are hard to fit on a recipe card, and i'm sorry. but this is how i cook and i have a really hard time translating my vague, guesstimation-based cooking style into something succinct. probably why i'll never write a cookbook.

anyways, they're tasty and gluten free. and if you get feta made with goat milk, they're lactose free. i hope you enjoy them. i think i'll go pull some party leftovers out of the fridge now, thinking about these tasty little bundles has made me hungry.

my seeds came!

i was just wondering what to blog about when my crazy mailman came with a yellow padded envelope of happiness for me. yay, mailman! naturally, i pulled out my seed collection (kept in the kitchen next to the vitamins, for easy access) and started obsessively shuffling through them like an 8 year old with baseball cards and a sugar rush.
i have:

1. bull's blood beets
2. early annie tomatoes
3. hosta mix (loves shade, perrenial. i'm not going to plant these, so let me know if you want them)
   
4. bison tomatoes
5. purple dragon carrots (came free with this year's seed order!)
   
6. golden bantam corn
7. magic carpet snapdragon mix (i don't really plant flowers, so if you want these you can probably talk me out of them)
   
8. jaune de doubs carrots
9. arikara sundlowers (these don't count as flowers, since they make tasty food)
   
10. german red strawberry tomatoes
11. hungarian hot peppers (these don't grow well in my climate, i got one pepper from the plant last summer. granted, it was in a tomato's shadow, but still.)
    
12. ring-of-fire cayenne (ditto these. one pepper per plant = not worth the space they take up)
13. cherokee trail of tears black beans (my son calls these crying beans and they did very well. we finished the last of the beans we harvested in january. i'm not trading these since i'll need all i have to plant in the spring, but next year i'll set aside more for planting and swapping)
14. blue pod capucijners peas (these are for guerrilla gardening. i like to plant peas all over the neighbourhood each spring. peas grow without much encouragement, climb things, look nice, and are edible. it's interesting to see which ones are left to thrive and which are uprooted right away)
    
15. siberian home peppers (no picture, but these fantastic little peppers grow on a sturdy little tree in a pot, and produce year-round. i love gathering fresh hot peppers for my chili in february)
    
16. sweet purple & yellow bell peppers (no pic, from a swap. i have no details aside from the name)
    

they're all either from a reputable seller of heirloom seeds, saved from last year's harvest, or from seed swaps. i'm up for swapping most of them, if anyone wants, and i'd happily give away the hosta and some of the snapdragons. leave me a comment with contact info and i'll get back to you.
note: i don't necessarily want more seeds if you have some other small thing to swap. try me, i'm easy. (like your mom)

28 things about me

1. escalators make me nervous. regular stairs, too. i avoid them when possible.
2. i can lick my nose
3. i'm a certified jeweler
4. dairy, onions and peppers give me gas
5. i learned to read when i was 3
6. i don't know how to drive
7. my knee is semi-crippled.
8. my parents think i'm an evangelical christian
9. i'm agnostic, but i call myself a pastafarian because that's more fun (and means basically the same thing)
10. i endeavor to be better at photography. i read about it and practice lots.
11. ditto knitting.
12. i often struggle with the way my life is. this is nothing like what i had planned.
13. i'm very allergic to beestings
14. dragonflies terrify me
15. my belly fat is deeply embarrassing to me.
16. i accidentally killed a mouse when i was 7 and i still feel guilty
17. adopting a couple of girls would be a dream come true for me, but i don't think it will ever happen.
18. i spent a couple of years being severely depressed
19. i wanted to name my younger son jedi but my partner vetoed the idea.
20. i had a pet rat named snitch, but i only had her for two weeks. don't cosleep with rodents, yo.
21. sugar is my main vice. i don't really have any others.
22. well, and caffeine. but nothing else.
23. i only have a few friends in real life. my online social life is much more active.
24. i pronounce apricot ape-ricot, not app-ricot, to my partner's chagrin.
25. reading is much better than watching tv, in my opinion.
26. i know how to tango. badly, but still, i know the basics.
27. most of my undies are organic.
28. i normally use all owercase letters when typing because i'm not a capitalist.

any questions?

grossout (a contest)

my partner and his friend ate canned haggis this week. the two of them often eat really gross stuff together, like preserved duck eggs.
i go out when they're having one of their disgust-o-fests.

like i said, this week it was canned haggis. he and his friend cooked the haggis and ate it on toast. they washed it down with scotch, to make the experience more authentic.
when they opened the can, the haggis didn't smell or look much worse than canned dog food, they say. i was previously unaware that things that are unfavourably comparable to canned dog food were considered edible. i believe his exact words were 'like canned dog food, but with an organ-meat sort of tinge to it, and gelatinous'.
my partner was disappointed that it wasn't encased in a sheep's stomach. perv. he also claims to have enjoyed it. i've refused to kiss him for the past few days. i can't kiss a mouth that has eaten this:in case you're wondering, the ingredients are: water, lamb heart, oats, pork fat, lamb liver, pork, salt, flavours, and dehydrated onion.
the can advertises that the product is free of additives and preservatives. if i were trying to market a can of lamb hearts preserved in lard i wouldn't focus so much on that particular aspect. i'd be more likely to put 'at least it's not human flesh!' on it or something.

which brings me to my contest. what line would you put on the can to make canned haggis attractive to shoppers? how would you market it? is there a slogan or catchphrase that would make this putrid sludge appealing? leave your idea in the comments section. if you have an image that you would print on the label, link to it. the contest closes on valentine's day. the winner will recieve a variety of cool band-aids from my son's collection. he definitley has shrek, superman, spiderman and batman band-aids, and i think there are still some hello kitty, jesus and pirate band-aids floating around here somewhere. if the winning response is cool enough i'll probably feel the need to throw some other random, bizarre stuff into the prize envelope, too.

comment away!

purists, avert your eyes.

whenever avocados and cucumbers are on sale at the same time i take it as a sign from the gods that it is time to make sushi.

typically we have california rolls in this house. these contain avocado, cucumber and fake crabmeat, wrapped in rice and nori. i've experimented with putting random leftovers in a roll, with varied results. the thai red curried tofu that was too hot to eat made delicious, interesting sushi. the spicy peanut sauce added interest to a plain-jane roll. the steamed broccoli did not.

this week i branched out even farther from the norm. i was making some delicious rolls for dinner and thought my son might like his own special sushi. he's usually happy to eat the rolls we're having, so long as they're small enough to fit in his mouth. (i omit the fake crabmeat since it's glutenny) but this week i thought i'd do something special for my boy.... hot dog* sushi.
one roll had avocado and hot dog, the other had hot dog and ketchup. he loved both equally. little weirdo.

*before you call me a hypocrite and a sell-out, let me explain the hot dog. yes, we eat only ethical meat. but the kid lost so much weight when he was sick in december that i doubled my fattening-up efforts. i've been buying him hot dogs because he loves them, and they take no prep. so i can grab one out of the fridge and let him shovel it down. i've also gotten the odd package of non-ethical bacon for him. i'm still fervently against factory farms, but i'm even more fervently for my son being a healthy weight.