listersgirl | Entries tagged with our world:food&drink

Am very hungry. Very very hungry. This appears to be my default status these days. It's a little distracting.

Manners for Men: Really excellent, funny in a somewhat terrifying way, and awfully depressing. The guy, whose name is Justin somethingthatI'mtoolazytolookup, creates amazing characters with just the tiniest motions.

Curriculum Vitae: Funny wander through one man's work history, framed with silly observations about writing a CV. Tailed off weirdly at the end, but kept me laughing the whole way through.

We also tried twice to get into Talk Thirty to Me and failed both times. The second time, the last tickets were sold to the people right in front of us. Denied!

And now, the interactive portion of this entry:

I am stymied by dinner once again! I spent ages in the grocery store on the weekend, trying to think of what to buy to make dinners for the week, and left with almost nothing. So, what are you eating these days, in this summer weather?

There is a new farmer's market every Thursday, across the street from my work. AWESOME. Today I bought asparagus and strawberries. I can't wait for blueberry season; everyone else is going to have to get there really early or else just accept that I will buy ALL THE BLUEBERRIES IN THE WORLD.

Ahem.

The thing is, every summer I have the same five conversations with myself*, and every summer nothing happens, but this summer! This summer, one of my "shoulds" will become a "do".

*1. It's very bright out here. I should give in and buy expensive prescription sunglasses.

2. Maybe I should just get contacts instead and buy cheap sunglasses.

3. I should go do some of those things that people do in Toronto in the summer. There's more to summer than air conditioning and patios, or so I've been told.

4. I have so much free time these days.** I should take a class, or go back to the gym.

5. Now would be a perfect time to start buying all my vegetables at farmer's markets.

**No, I have no idea why I think I have more free time in the summer. It must be the heatstroke.

Last night while watching ANTM (and, by the way, I'm not particularly happy with the outcome there) I decided that I wanted to make cookies. This is not entirely unprecedented; I often find myself thinking about dessert during ANTM. In any case, I wanted to make cookies to take to work, in order to run with my time-honoured plan of making people like me through bribery (in this case, the goal was to have the staff remember me as the best temporary manager ever). So I made cookies.

First I had to go to the store, because I don't generally have eggs or butter in the house, although I still had white chocolate chips and dried cranberries lying around from the last time I made these cookies. When I got back from the store it was already 9:15, not the best time to start baking, really, considering I normally try to be heading to bed at 10, what with having to get up at 6 and needing lots and lots of sleep in order to not be a cranky, weepy mess during the day. Also, there was the small matter of my dirty dishes, which covered every surface in the kitchen (this is not as bad as it seems, since my kitchen is approximately the size of a closet and has basically enough counter space for a cutting board or a mixing bowl, but not both) (however, the dishes had spread to the top of the stove, which is my back-up preparing surface).

So I made cookies on the kitchen table. Some of you, at this point, are probably sitting there thinking, "but what about the stove?". My stove sucks, as I've mentioned here before, and doesn't heat up to anything near the temperature you set it at, and doesn't keep the heat. So I tricked it and preheated it to a ridiculous temperature, which meant that by the time I was ready to bake the first tray it had struggled almost to the temperature I really wanted, although they did have to cook a little longer than the recipe said.

You're probably all anticipating a big dramatic ending here -- something along the lines of "I stayed up until midnight making cookies and they didn't turn out at all and life sucks!" Amazingly enough, this was not the case. I was up pretty late, because I am sloooow and I don't have a mixer of any sort, so I spent a large amount of time sitting at the table with my wooden spoon, attempting to make the butter and sugar and eggs mix together, but the cookies turned out just fine. And the bribery seems to be working!

I have been press-ganged into a book club. Not that I don't want to join (although I am, as always, completely terrified of meeting new people and what will I say and what if they think I'm a loser?), but it was just a little amusing they way it happened - basically "here's the next book for the book club and here's when we're meeting" and I was all "book club? whaaa?". It also felt weirdly secretive. The scary part is that it's one of those grown-up book clubs where everyone takes turns hosting. My apartment is TINY and STUDENT "CHIC" and these people have real adult homes.*

Today I was re-certified for first aid, which was actually fun. Our instructor was a blond gay Newfoundlander who looked like a cross between a younger Brent Carver and a younger Wallace Langham, and he talked just as fast as

vestra and was hilarious. Also, I have decided to move to Newfoundland because I adore the accent. It's true love.

And then I walked home, because it's just so unbelievably beautiful out there right now. Also, I may have had a milkshake along the way. Hey, it's a long walk, I needed the energy.

The plan for tonight was to watch more Dead Like Me, but the next disc hasn't arrived. Boo, I say! I am very much in a serial television mood these days, although I'm also considering buying a Hot Docs pass -- apparently I can get extra free tickets through work if I buy some, and there are a few movies that look really interesting, including, oh yes, a documentary about Helvetica. Yes, the typeface. Oh, baby. However, none of that is useful to me tonight, when I really just want to watch more funny Grim Reaper tales.

I wish more fresh food was available in smaller quantities. I think this is part of the problem I have with eating healthily.** For instance, I decide I'm going to have a stirfry for dinner. I buy broccoli - that's at least 2 meals worth of food, more like 4 if I buy the organic that comes bundled in twos. Asparagus - 4 meals. Tofu - 3 meals. Celery - an eternity of meals. At least mushrooms provide the opposite problem for a nice change -- I would happily always have them in my fridge, but they don't last very long. I suppose this is all fine, except that I get bored of eating the same food for dinner every night, and after 2 or 3 meals in a row I come home and can't handle stirfry again. But I don't have any other food in the house, because then that's another ridiculous 4 meals worth of food that won't stay fresh, so I eat Mini Eggs, because I can buy them at the corner store. And I guess I could buy each night's dinner on the way home, but that wouldn't solve the problem of food that comes in too large quantities. It's frustrating! And I cannot come up with a solution. I want the tiny senior's portions of vegetables that they sold at Thrifty's, as sad and lonely as that would probably make me feel. :)

*I'm assuming. But one of them has a gorgeous condo, and at least one of them has a house with a pool. A POOL, people. You could fit my entire apartment into a pool.
**This, and the fact that I'm lazy and apparently don't like being upright for long enough to chop things.

p.s. Both my dinner and my wine smell wrong. I think my nose is broken!

Note to self: If you drink a massive mug of tea first thing when you arrive at work, you will have to pee every 15 minutes for the next two hours. It's a fact.

OFF PLANE NOW PLEASE

This flight wins for least favourite travel experience ever, beating out even the time I fainted on the plane, and the time I arrived at 5 in the morning when I was supposed to arrive at 10 the night before. Not that there was anything wrong with the flight -- no, it was completely on time, and totally smooth. But clearly red-eye flights are All Wrong for me, because I didn't fall asleep (which was my grand plan), and instead spent the last 3 1/2 hours of the flight shaking and feeling incredibly nauseous, which was made worse when I closed my eyes. Since I haven't had any motion sickness on any of the other flights I've taken this year, I really think it's just because my body was angry at being awake during times when it shouldn't, among other things. Never again!

CANADA POST FOR THE WIN

Not only did I come home to lots of cards (my favourite part of getting back to Toronto), there was a parcel outside my door that made it to me even though it was pretty drastically misaddressed (no apartment number, and the street number was reversed). My postal person loves me! Ooh, AND, there was a menu for a new vegetarian chinese restaurant that just(?) opened not that far from me. YUM. Who wants to join me for fake meat and sweet & sour sauce? My favourite thing on the menu: Deep Fried Heaven.

NO MEMES HERE, NO SIRREE

According to that New Year's Resolutions LJ thingy that's going around, in 2007 I resolve to volunteer to spend time with board games. No objections here! I am, in fact, in the middle of making resolutions, which I didn't do last year, although my resolutions are starting to look suspiciously like a very grand to-do list. I'm just better with things that have an end.

TOO MUCH TEA

Not really, of course. But I did acquire, through various means, a ridiculous amount of tea over the holidays. As of today I declare a moratorium on bringing new tea into the house, at least until I go through some of the tea that I have, and work on my first resolution, which is to reorganize my tea shelves. If the tea is going to overflow to on top of the microwave and under the shelves, I want it to at least be all one kind of tea.

OOPS

Clearly the reason why I always unpack (...mostly) as soon as I get home, even if it's already midnight and I have to got to work the next morning, is that if I don't, I never will. Also, I won't be able to brush my teeth. After getting home this morning at 7:30, I basically threw myself into bed, with the intention of sleeping a bit, getting up in time to buy groceries, and then unpacking like crazy. Instead I slept a lot (I love my bed), barely made it out of the house before things started closing, and am, well, clearly not unpacking. In fact, I appear to be looking at DVD sales on Amazon. Damn.

1. Some very sweet person gifted me with extra paid time. Thank you so much! Revel in my anonymous adoration.

2. Peppermint mocha is LOVE.

3. I have cycled back to being desperate to study linguistics. I just want to sit and talk about languages all day long.

4. My secret obsession is covers of "Baby One More Time".

Happy last day of November! It feels wonderfully like mid-September. Sorry, west coast people.

Tea Exchange update.

I got extremely tasty tea from

cloud_hands -- tangerine white tea, and cinnamon cardamon tea. Yum. I hope all your tea arrived safely and tastily, too, but if it didn't, now's your chance to tell me (if you haven't already)! And I will go after the slackers.

On that note, this will be the last round of my tea exchange. There's been too much tea not sent, too many people discouraged, and I feel bad whenever someone doesn't get tea. But please, if you have any tea outstanding, send it off so we can end on a good note!

I've had a lot of fun doing this, despite worrying about everyone's happiness, and I hope you all have too. And maybe you've discovered a new favourite tea. I certainly discovered all sorts of new places to stack tea in my kitchen, since the amount of tea I have far outnumbers the shelf space. :D

I made AWESOME squash and sweet potato soup and now I have a kitchen full of dishes that I am ignoring in favour of Prison Break. OH MICHAEL.

So. David Miller is back in as mayor, and Joe Mihevc is back in as councillor for my ward. Hooray! Life is good. (I can't believe Rob Ford got back in again, though. Yuck.) I've never understood why people don't take municipal politics seriously -- federal politics might determine the grand paths of life, but municipal politics make such a difference in quality of life.

As I went to vote today I noticed that all the buses had signs that were flashing between their route and "REMEMBER TO VOTE". I love it. It's certainly a nice change from "GO LEAFS GO".

I spent most of today crying. Don't worry, there's nothing wrong, but between the various DVDs and booka and the onions*, there was a salty river running through my apartment. Heroes better not be sad - I'm almost out of kleenex and my nose is very sore. It's a hard life.

*From this week's soup - mushroom barley miso (and I added tofu). Very tasty, and a nice break from tomato based soups. I'm so sick of tomato in soup, at least for the moment.

Hrmph.

I made soup, and it's, well, not that spectacular. And there's PILES of it. I can't decide what my obligation is here -- eat the damn soup because it's food, and wasting it would be bad, not to mention the time it took me to make it; or admit that I'm not enjoying it and just dump it.

Probably I'll take it for lunch tomorrow, and see if it's any better. Or if maybe I'm just feeling unusually picky tonight. But it's sad! I'm sad.

I am holding off this cold by mere force of will. Well, force of will and liberal applications of vitamin C, echinacea, ColdFX and vast quantities of tea. Still, the fact that I haven't been completely knocked out like everyone else around me (including the entire library, one at a time, since the middle of September) is cause for celebration. This calls for a throat lozenge.

By the way, when you can't swallow pills, especially gelcaps, and you have to break them apart and dump them in water and chug it down, ColdFX is pretty disgusting.

I just heard a John Mayer song that I actually like. Of course, it's not him singing, so that helps.

I tried the cinnamon tea from Adagio last night. It was pretty tasty - nice and strong. I think I prefer a spice mix, though.

And now? I work! I have been working on this project for days (and days, and days), the end result of which is that I would totally run the board in the category of "Spot the Canadian musicians in this 20 page list. And this one.". Also I get a gold star in justifying why something should be considered jazz or classical instead of pop. The downside is that I am seemingly determined that Bruce Hornsby is Canadian, and no amount of looking him up can convince me otherwise.

I ordered some samples from Adagio Teas a while back (because clearly I don't have enough tea) and they arrived last night (the box was propped in front of my apartment door, which was so random -- I didn't get buzzed to say they were downstairs with a package (not that I was home, but still, usually I have to tell them that I'm not there), and normally I have to go pick it up at the post office). Hooray! They all smelled incredible.

So last night I tried the herbal Berry Blues (really strong, which is nice in a fruity herbal, although I kind of wanted to just eat the tea, since it was full of dried cranberries and apples) and the Rooibus Cocomint, which was soooo tasty. Like high quality mint hot chocolate, but without the dairy aftersludge or the fact that I usually get tired of hot chocolate after half a cup. Definitely a winner. Tonight? I think I'll try the cinnamon.

I have a headache.

I don't like taking medication when I get headaches. This is not for any good reason other than stubbornness. Mostly it's that I feel like the headache is winning if I let it annoy me enough that I actually do something about it. But this headache is in a new and exciting place, providing new and exciting pain, and has been here since I got up this morning, so I broke down and took pills.

Which did nothing.

And when I move my head it feels like my brain is sloshing around inside. Also like my neck is tiny and will break like the stem of a flower.

* * *

My parents have far more exciting lives than I do. Isn't that sad? They're out almost every night of the week, at choir, Scrabble, book club, games night, playing bridge or pinochle, going to the opera or plays, having dinner with friends. And they both still work full-time, so I can't even use that excuse.

Every Sunday when I talk to them I am embarrassed by the fact that they have many more social events and activities to relate than I do. You can hear the sympathy coming down the line when my mother asks me what I did on the weekend and I have to admit that I barely even left the house. I have got to get a better social life. Or at least start making shit up.

* * *

I am craving apple crumble. In a big way. So it's probably a good thing that my oven doesn't really heat up properly.

All day I've been trying to remember why it's important that it's now October, and then I suddenly realized that I hadn't done a tea round-up. Oops! So here it is.

It's the end of another round of the tea exchange! I hope you've all gotten tea some time in the last two months. But if you haven't gotten tea this round, please speak up and I will make with the gentle nudging.

Also, if you want to leave, comment or email me, and if you want to join us, fill out the poll here.

(And if you haven't mailed your tea yet, now is a great time to do so. There was a lot of missing tea last round, which means I might have to start getting mean, but if you send your tea quickly, you can save yourself!)

As for me, I'm in the middle of a sweet flavoured tea with vanilla rice milk phase. Mmmm tasty.

The number one topic on conversation on the flist today is the joy that is the pumpkin spice latte.

Not eating sugar is haaaaaard.

I mean, seriously, I spent 20 minutes at the grocery store convincing myself not to buy my favourite oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Think of all the things I could have done with those 20 minutes! Eaten 20 delicious cookies, for one.

So what, you ask, have I been doing in the last 5 days since I posted? Very little, other than living downtown and enjoying the central AC and the cat. Best cat-sitting gig ever.

Also, I appear to be going through a serious girly phase. I'm sure this is no way related to the fact that I am crushing on everyone around me. Of course not! Anyway, last weekend I attempted to buy a whole new wardrobe (although I failed miserably and couldn't find anything I liked), and today I randomly bought a VERY CUTE pair of strappy red shoes. For no reason at all. They were awfully cheap though, and SO CUTE.

And now for the sad news: I have come to the devastating conclusion that sugar is giving me headaches and making me a cranky, moody bitch. THIS IS TERRIBLE NEWS. I love sugar! I adore sugar! I'm not entirely sure I have the capability of surviving without sugar, especially not when I'm using it to replace so many missing things in my life. But, I need to test this hypothesis, so starting...as soon as I finish this bag of candy I was given, I am going to attempt to stay away from sugar etc. for some length of time. As long as I can. Hopefully a week, but I've never made it that long before. All of which is to say that if I say "let's go for ice cream!", the correct answer is to lock me in the closet.

ETA: Really sad news! Chicklit is closing (at least the content part of the site - the forums will still be around for a while). I will really miss it. It's been such a thought-provoking, stimulating, entertaining place. Plus, that's where I met so many of you.

It's August, and I think we all know what that means...all there is to do is complain non-stop about the weather. No, wait, it means it's time for a tea check-up.

So, tea exchange participants! Hopefully you were all good and braved the heatwaves to make your way to the post office, but if you have not received your tea, please tell me and I will send out ~~nasty letters~~ polite e-mails. You can also feel free to post if you juuuust sent your tea or are juuuuust about to, and in that way avoid my nagging. :)

Also, if you want to drop out, let me know and I will take you off the list, or if you want to join up, read the entry and fill out the poll here!

In conclusion, has anyone found anything that makes truly spectacular iced tea? After working my way through my collection I've fallen back on my old favourite of Vancouver Island blackberry (although I made a really nice one with something ginger), but I'm open to more suggestions.

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listersgirl

January 2015

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Adventures of a Tofu Slut

I have lost the end of my yodel

Entries tagged with our world:food&drink

Final fringe and food

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C is for cookie

Friiiiiiday

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Friday night thoughts

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Today is a lovely day

Goooo Toronto!

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tea for me (although you could have some too, if you come over)

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September is definitely here...

pout

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Tea Round-up!

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January 2015

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