Gratitude – 01/16/2012

Today, I am grateful for:

1. Breakfast sandwiches.  Elizabeth and I, in our ongoing quest for health, well-being, and general non-fatness, have made a concerted effort to reduce our intake of carbs.  Particularly in the form of pasta (which we love) and bread (which we also love).  This carb reduction also envelopes pancakes, waffles, and crepes, so at this point we have pretty much eliminated four of my five favourite breakfasts – the fifth being bacon n’ eggs.  So this morning, when we elected to make breakfast sandwiches which included (gasp) cheese and (apoplexy) English muffins, along with fried eggs and slices of crispy bacon, I came quite close to weeping for the joy of it.

2. Moneyball.  Both Brad and I recently finished reading this book, and feel the world is a better place for its existence.  The book focuses on: 1) baseball; 2) statistics; 3) the story of a person’s quest to find truth in the face of great odds; and 4) a fundamental shift in an industry.  If you like any one of those four, you will likely enjoy the book.  If you like all four of them, you will love it.

3. Little Big Planet 2.  There is a very, very, very small subset of games that Elizabeth is willing to play.  Incredibly small.  In fact, this subset currently consists of precisely one game.  This is that game, and last evening we spent a pleasant hour or so muddling through a few of the early levels together and generally getting in one another’s way.  I maintain that, on her part, this in-way-getting was largely intentional.

photo credit: Kasia/flickr

Chai and change

I remember, at one point about 10 years ago, walking into a Starbucks and being instantly annoyed.  I wanted to order a straightforward coffee; instead, what was presented to me was a perplexing cacophony of lattes and mochachinos and frothy whippy fluff.  The teens behind the counter referred to themselves as baristas, and used “grande” and “venti” to describe drink sizes.

“There is not a person in this place who has set foot in Italy,” I muttered.  “Just call a small a small and let me order my caffeine.”

Fast forward to yesterday, when I strode into the Starbucks outside our building and, without hesitation, ordered a grande non-fat two-pump chai latte.   If my twenty-something self had been there at that moment, I’m pretty sure he would have kidney-punched me.

photo credit: Chris Owens

The Crepe

Elizabeth is quite pleased with herself today.

It all began a little over a month ago, when our cousins, aunt and uncle (or CAAU) got us a crepe maker for Christmas.  I had never made crepes, though I am partial to them.  Actually, I suppose I’m partial to anything in the flat-baked-breakfast-batter family, which includes pancakes and waffles.

But back to the crepes.  When we first brought it home and unpacked it, we carefully read the instructions for clues on making the perfect product.  According to the manual, the general technique was to crank the heat to volcanic levels, dump the batter onto the griddle, and then hustle to spread it into a circle before it cooked too solid to do so.  “Okay,” I thought.  “Seems simple enough.  Pour it n’ spread it.”

The challenge was that, with the griddle being so blisteringly hot, we had about 4 seconds to get the batter spread in a uniform thickness to all edges of the pan, which seemed to grow larger with each passing instant.  It got to the point where the crepe making became an increasingly stressful affair.  The air was thick with tension as we prepared to pour the batter.  A deep breath; then one of us would take the plunge,  and the race was on.  Batter splashed onto the griddle, sizzling and popping.  The one wielding the crepe spreader would leap (literally) into action, dancing about the pan and frantically whipping the batter about, trying to make something approximating a circular shape.  The seconds raced past as the liquid cooked and thickened, and the situation became more urgent.  The batter-spreader began hopping from foot to foot, resembling a squirrel with an overabundance of Coke in its system, desperately looking for pools of batter that could be spread out.  And then time was up, the crepe was cooked, and a misshapen, slightly lumpy cake would come off the grill.

It was tasty, but the experience felt slightly lacking.

So last week, on the way home from work, we stopped by the crepe truck that sometimes parks outside our apartment.  This was partly to enjoy a savory crepe for supper, partly because we like the friendly people that run it, and partly so we could spy on their technique.

We learned two valuable things from this stop.  One, we had the heat way too high on our crepe maker.  And two, that the recommended “short, quick strokes” approach to spreading batter was not necessarily the most effective.  So yesterday morning, as we were making sweet crepes for breakfast, Elizabeth employed a new tactic — one that involved low heat and a sweeping circular motion — and produced a perfectly even, perfectly round, perfectly baked crepe.  As we ate our breakfast with strawberries and syrup, she sat there with a big “I’m the best crepe-maker ever” grin on her face, occasionally calling my attention to the beauty and deliciousness of the food she had prepared.

I am going to need to practice, because apparently breakfast has become a competitive sport.

Gratitude – 01/22/2011

Today, I am going to focus on one thing for which I am grateful.

City living.

I really didn’t imagine that, at any point in my life, I would actually be grateful to live in the city. Having grown up in rural Ontario, I very much appreciate open skies and wide spaces and the freedom to run about bellowing at top volume without anyone around to see you and quietly judge.

I have, however, come to appreciate living in a place where the commute to work is short, and a goodly number of entertainment sources are within walking distance. The inspiration for today’s post comes from Friday evening, where Elizabeth and I wandered up the street and revisited a restaurant we haven’t been to in a while. The ambiance was just what we were looking for that evening, the food was quite tasty, and they had a Quebec beer on tap which I’d never tried before. I won’t get into pretentious language of hoppiness and fruitness and bounciness; I’ll just say that it tasted like the love child of Guiness and Blue Moon, and the world is a little bit better for it being here.

Being that I had not sufficiently achieved my gluttony goals for the evening, we toddled across to our favourite cafe, the Beechwood, for an après-supper latte and dessert. Here I incurred Elizabeth’s ire when I stole a tiny bit of icing from her cupcake.  Given the deliciousness of said cupcake, I would say a little ire was worth it.

We pretty much froze solid on the walk home, which is one more reason why I was glad that our place was relatively close by.  Settling onto the couch at our homestead, we got to discussing how much more walking we did now that we lived in the city, and the fact that we’re probably the better for it.  It’s not ideal for our pocketbook, and having cupcakes and lattes in such close proximity to the house will surely come back to haunt me in 20 or 30 pounds, but there is certainly something to be said for the experience of having a neighbourhood we call our own.

photo credit: joiseyshowaa

There’s not much going on in New York

This is the conclusion that Elizabeth and I recently reached, as we lay abed of a Saturday morning and mused about how to enjoy our hard-won freedom.

“Perhaps we could take a cooking class,” one of us ventured.

“Maybe we could go to one of the museums,” another of us proposed.  This was instantly shot down in what was, I must state with some indignation, a most abrupt and non-collegial manner.

“Let’s take an art class,” said another of us, in a somewhat huffy tone given how his previous suggestion had been eviscerated before even being given the chance to spread its wings and soar toward the sun.

An art class, we agreed, was a Good Idea, and so we set forth to the Interwebs to find ourselves a class to take.

Nobody, it seems, is very interested in teaching art on Saturdays anymore.  We scoured websites high and low in search of individuals or institutions who would be willing to impart on us a hint of culture.  Initially, I began by searching for someone who would teach us to execute oil painting on canvas, preferably in a ne0-Renaissance manner.  I soon scaled this back to just “oil painting”, then “painting”.  Then we began searching for “art”, and “culture”, and finally in a desperate flurry of keystrokes I found myself looking at the Google results for “makin’ stuff”.

It is a bleak and barren landscape out there for the weekend art class warrior.  The one course we did find that looked interesting was a class on digital photography.  This perked us up for a moment.  Then we realized that: a) the course extended through Saturday and Sunday, and we had already made commitments for Sunday; and b) we would need to get showered, get dressed, purchase a digital camera, learn to use it, and get to the class within the next 55 minutes if we were to make this work.

I was okay with most of those, but just didn’t think I’d be able to get dressed in time.

Instead we made crepes and watched really bad TV.

photo credit: mikebaird

Gratitude – 01/16/2011

Today, I am grateful for:

1. Cragganmore.  Particularly of the 12-year-old variety.  Elizabeth, with gentle coaching from Brad, offered this to me this evening in celebration of a recently completed project.  The only thing that is preventing me from getting completely fuzz-bombed on the stuff right now is that it is entirely too fine a product with which to get completely fuzz-bombed.

2. The Museum of Natural History.  I visited this fine institution once again today, and once again was a kid in an academic candy store.  A candy store with giant replicas of the universe and the fossilized carcasses of carnivorous predatory beasts.  To me, it just doesn’t get much better than that.

3. Elizabeth.

Gratitude – 01/08/2011

Today, I am grateful for:

1. The French press.  Elizabeth recently procured one of these for me, which means that I can now enjoy a cup of coffee of a weekend morning without hauling out the Buick-sized, coffee-by-the-gallon brewing monster that lurks in our kitchen.  I feel simultaneously more refined and more rustic, as I grind the beans, boil the water, and pour myself a hit of caffeination.

Also, the fact that this particular press was manufactured by Bodum means that I can intone “Bodum, Bodum, Bodum” in a middle baritone whilst preparing the beverage.

2.  Coffee.  This sort of goes hand in hand with the one above, but it bears special mention.  One of my Christmas presents this year was a pouch of a truly splendid blend, grown by leprechauns in the forested hills of Chile before being roasted over St. Elmo’s fire and carried to our home on the backs of homing miniature donkeys.

3. Family.  We are moving about the apartment today, prepping for a couple of my cousins to spend the weekend with us, which is sure to prove entertaining.

My plan is to serve them fresh coffee.  I haven’t really planned much beyond that.

photo credit: Gideon Tsang

Gratitude – 04/17/2010

Today, I am grateful for:

1. Bicycles.  Particularly when they replace old, dual-wheeled dilapidated death chariots like the one Elizabeth was riding previously.  Her former chain-churner should, by rights, have been taken out behind the barn and shot quite some time ago, but we had never really gotten around to it.  This weekend, that changed when we rolled her shiny new toy out to the park, where we did one lap before being driven back inside by frigid winds and the ever increasing threat of chill rain.

2. Caramel squares.  Elizabeth doesn’t make these terribly often, which is probably good because otherwise I would be enormously fat.  I’m talking manatee levels of fat.  Nonetheless, when she does make them, and when I can get to them before they are (horrors!) given away, I stuff them into my face like a chipmunk in autumn.

3.  Blanton‘s.  We’ve spoken before about bourbon, and the merits thereof.  Blanton’s takes bourbon to a whole new level – a wonderful, caramel-y level, where the stars pour forth their melodies and noble stallions charge about your living room.  Metaphorically.

Incidentally, the fact that each bottle is hand-labeled just makes it that much more awesome.

photo credit: josef.stuefer

Gratitude – 12/22/2009

Today, I am grateful for:

1. Vacation.  There probably isn’t a need to elaborate further on that, but let me just call out that it is the holiday break, my projects are done, and I am in full-on not-thinking-about-work mode.

2. Skiing.  Elizabeth and I have decided that we need to take up a hobby.  We’ve been looking for something we can do together, that’s active, and that we both enjoy.  Skiing (of the downhill variety) fits the bill, and has the added bonus that it’s frigid cold and offers an unparalleled opportunity to wrap ourselves around trees at high velocity.

3. Lasagna.  Diggory got a great recipe from his mother for the stuff, and it makes for a fantastic meal.  Plus, it’s one of the very few dishes that actually tastes better as leftovers.

photo credit: gregor_y

Gratitude – 09/17/2009

Today, I am grateful that Elizabeth returned home safely from her trip to Spain.

You may be asking why Elizabeth went off to Spain, while I stayed at home and toiled mightily.

This is a good question.

In any case, she is home and she has posted some pictures and reflections on her shiny new blog.  Feel free to wander over there if you’re interested in Spain, architecture, or giant anatomically correct bull sculptures.

I only wish I was kidding about the bulls.

photo credit: Paulo Brandão