Conspicuous consumption

Here are my two entries in the Webkinz Olympics.

Up at four, here's a little tasting menu for you:

What will we have for supper tomorrow? Did I buy too much food? Skip exercise tomorrow, go to the gym on sunday and run on Monday. What will we have for supper on Sunday? WIll the girls go to the gym on sunday? I can't go to Banff. Why am I leaving Guelph? Im too tired. What will we have for supper tomorrow? If we eat the fish tonight, that leaves four more nights. How will I survive saturday without exercise? I ate too much.


I could go on and on ( and believe me I did). I think I'm putting this out there so that someone will see it and say dear god girl you need professional help. Check yourself into Homewood and put yourself out of that misery. Its a never ending reverie.

Nem is really out of sorts tonight. Practically chased her around the neighbourhood to get her in tonight - now she's floofing about in her room. I can't be on top of every little transgression, but I dont know how to discipline her.....

Ballet day

I always want to write at night, but I am practically comatose by the time the girls are in bed. Why is it they go to bed later (9) and are up earlier (520 today!) when Y is away? Add to that the no nap wonder, and I have a two year old getting by on 8.5 hours of sleep.

Finishing up at work today as I won't be back before we leave on Wednesday. My to do lists are scattered around on almost every surface. I feel strangely numb to all the events - which is good. Focus on here, now. Walking down to the river to see the gosslings, picking lettuce for supper tonight (I planted lettuce spinach and swiss chard practically in the snow in March - I now have a healthy crop and a delectable salad each night, thanks Jim).

I apologize to my readers (yes you, bip and bop). I wanted to have a food blog, especially a forum to experiment with microbes. But life got in the way.

Y is starting to perk up a bit in Berlin - he sounded so wan until he experienced how large the beers are. He had a heffeweissen and seems to be just fine.

But me, what the h***k will I eat over there?

Incommunicado

Yianni, are you out there? Do you even realize I have a blog? Call me!
After a whirling reverie in Kelowna, I need to talk with you - I am totally befuddled.

Here's what you've missed: Nemy found a huge beetle, we went to a dismal carnival in the parking lot at Zellers, I've started the girls on a high fructose corn syrup diet, and Artemis has transitioned out of naps.

Oh, and we have 19 web kinz now.

I feel torn between two realities. I am so different - depending on my back drop.

Here's the thing: when I landed in TO, deftly navigated Pearson, the 401, I drove through Guelph, parked in front of our house, and I thought: I am home.

Grind stone

This is the only picture I have of myself hard at work. And work I have been doing, non stop since I learned of my trip this Thursday. I have been a mole in a hole. A very big hole, the New Science Complex. Alone on a long weekend in a behemoth of a building, fretting and sweating, sweating and fretting.

And my frontal lobe - I can feel it. It feels fuzzy, a bit fluffy. I can feel it when I try to think. Im cognitively impaired right now; completely unable to make decisions. There are too many variables, too many potential outcomes.

What do I do? Can't do nothing -

And this talk, does anyone really care about mycorrhizas?

Blueberry parfait by Anemone

Sorry for the slap-dash post, but I needed something, anything, to get the octopus picture off the dashboard. Yeeggsh.

My anxiety is about to crest - and the house is falling apart. Anemone is wild lately: she is so ultra sensitive, beligerent. I don't know how to approach her. She is an bottomless pit for my affections. Why is she feeling so vulnerable? Each day something upsetting happens to her at school. And she's been hobbling around because her legs ache. ??

I wonder what to do. There is a lot of crying in the house lately. And Y becomes so fit as to be tied by all the goings on.

Maybe this is all too much for us? To be quite frank, Im not overly enthusiasic about Berlin. I feel a bit blah about the whole ordeal, as though I don't quite have the energy for it. For the record, it was not my idea. Rather, Y's insistance that he needed to apply for a Humbolt.

So - do I remain in Guelph alone with the girls? Is that better for us all?

I really don't know what to do. Although August looms heinous in the future...how do I manage it all?

You asked for it...

Well even if you didn't, here it is: octopus salad. Artemis freaked, Nemy cried - and well I lost my appetite. Im just not big on molluscs, no matter which way you slice it. Yianni enjoyed it, however. Good on him.

My afternoon of restorative yoga was all for naught: within 1/2 hour of returing home girls were crazed monkey maniacs - the histrionics lasted until bed time. The yoga, though, three hours passed surprising quickly. Which is unsurprising, actually, given the number of times I nodded off (two, three?).

And everything else fades away as we approach the final countdown to Berlin: new buggy (check), portable pharmacy (check), what else is there?

Why bother?

I'm changing. It's funny how it sneaks up on you. I no longer have the time for anything pastiche (if one can use that term in reference to food). Take these squares for example. Another one of my cockamamie attempts at "healthy" snack foods: ie, lots of wheat germ, ground nuts, agave nectar, etc. But, honestly, do you really want to eat this?

If you want something healthy that tastes good eat a freakin' apple!!!

I'm done with this kind of thing. If Im going to bake, damn it, it's going to be delectable.

To that end, if I'm going to cook, it damn well better taste good. Which explains my lack of productivity in the cuisine as of late. If I can't eat it raw (salad, fruit, bread, cheese, yogurt), no thanks.

However, since we are 14 days and counting to the land of wurst and weiners, I have got to move a lot of consumables. Take for instance the 6 baby octopus in the freezer down stairs.

WHAT WAS I THINKING?

Failure to deliver

I really should change the name of this - not only do I not write about food, I no longer experience food. Last night grilled cheese, tonight Wendy's. Honestly, with a raging sinus infection, it's all just spongy filler.

I don't even have any photos of the gruesome event I like to call supper. Lying suppine on the couch in a vegetative stupor does that to a person. Spending my time perusing other's food blogs. And I ask myself, why am I doing this? I don't really want to spend all my time thinking about food. Im not really a foodie. It eclipses any other pursuits - like a career, for example.

I'm hot on the trail of a burgeoning career in wine microbiology. May make a trip to the cool climate viticulture institute in St. Catherine's next week, providing I don't hear from, well, the traffic police.

Y is downtown educating the masses on soil fertility (??). The girls have just gone down. Nemy's reading blows me down....she is reading at at least a grade 3 level. Tonight, she read me a Mercer Meyer, and then tucked herself into bed with a picture-free Disney book.

To bed, to bed...

BTW, deadheads, where are you? I was off b/c of severe gastritis...what's your excuse?

A birthday, a move and sejour in limbo

My baby turned 2 this weekend. She had a hopping party with friends and seemed to thoroughly enjoy the festivities. Her sister, however, is highly strung. I sympathise, suffering from overstimulation-itis myself. My baby is no longer that. Her balloon floated out the back door yesterday. Now and then a puzzled expression passes through her face. "where did purple balloon go? To the sky? To the moon? Where is it?"

However, her most popular refrain is a loud, garrulous "Wha's zat?" About , well, everything. "Who's that? Whas zat?"


N and J moved this weekend - a drawn out affair that seemed surreal at times. Their new house though - I can see why they moved: bright, new, optimtistic...I am tired of old and dark.

So we drove up to Limbo last Saturday and parked in Purgatory. So far no traffic police have come by, asking us to move along. No, not yet......

10 days later and Herve This

Went to TO on Tuesday, ostensibly to see Herve This, but also to go out for a bit on my own.

Several problems: as departure loomed, could not see the point of going all that way, leaving my girls. Retreated into full panic attack mode. What is wrong with me? Have I not moved around the world alone, visited foreign countries unaccompanied? And yet leaving my girls for the afternoon - an abyss.

So inserted firecracker, and made it onto the bus. But in TO, once again victim of the 'where the s.s. is this place [Toronto the cosmopolitan]'. I miss the mark so often in TO. Dundas square for example. Where the s.s. is Dundas square?? I've walked loops around down town TO. How have I missed it?

I'm sure TO is a vibrant city crackling with excitment. I always find myself walking down endless streets of office buildings punctuated by pawn shops, drug stores, and restaruants catering to the office workers.

Of course Im too nervous to eat all day long. Scrurry along in the shadows until I find a Starbucks (honestly, without SB I would probably die of thirst or hunger - Im far too nervous to stop anywhere else these days).

However, survived long enough to see the esteemed Prof. This. He was your anti-academic, so of course I loved him. He was funny, he was vain, he was a ham....He inspired me not so much by the results of his labour, but by how he was able to pioneer this somewhat spurrious academic discipline into an international phenomenon, that still retains acceptance from the scientific community. And it all started so simply: refute old wives tales in cooking, invent cool new recipes, bring science to the kitchen.

I think molecular gastronomy is interesting, but it is not me. Fundamentally,he believes that nature can be improved upon. And that, to me, is blasphemy.