Baking BONANZA.

The first week of school is a beautiful thing. This semester, my day begins with an 8:45 French class and goes straight on until 5:30: three classes, breaks for lunch and gym, and sometimes work afterwards. And of course, on top of classes, and the energy spent navigating through the campus between classes, the social pressures begin to sink in as well - "Oh my god, I haven't seen you in four months, coffee after class?", "I'm moving again, come to my housewarming party!", "Everybody's back, let's resurrect [lunch at popular diner/Wine Club/Croissant breaks/etc.]!".
However, good or bad, school or social life,
stress is still stress.

And when I am stressed, I instinctively grab some butter, sugar, and flour and eggs. With a bowl resting in one hand and a spatula in the other, I can whip away my problems and instantly return to the happy world (that now exclusively exists in my head) where deadlines and due dates don't exist. I recall everal nights last year where, when legs of my desk were cracking under the weight of articles, textbooks, random notes and papers, and a dangerously loaded laptop, comfort could be found in the smell of cinnamon cookies at 3 AM, fresh from the oven. However, the first few weeks of school do not allow even the briefest of escapes, not even for 15 minute peanut butter cookies, and so as the stress mounted and mounted, with it grew the urgency to bake.

This weekend, I went to my friend's apartment and spent two days and $60 worth of groceries to make meringues, tarts, two varieties of cupcakes, a chocolate valentino cake, ratatouille, creme brulee, milan cookies, and vanilla ice cream.

To put all of this in perspective, over the course of this baking spree, we used two blocks (8 sticks) of butter, two cartons (24) of eggs, almost an entire bag of flour, and enough sugar to send anyone into a diabetic coma.



However, to de-stress was the plan, and de-stress we did! Who knew that scurrying around the kitchen near very hot stoves and ovens for hours on end was just what we needed after the dreaded first week of school?
We also have enough cupcakes to give us the sugar-boost anytime cupcake therapy is needed over the course of the next week (although knowing her roommates, maybe not...).




At the end of each day, we set the table, asked one of the boys to make a run for chicken or wine, put on some jazz, and all sat down, family-style, to indulge in our creations.
And, really, at the end of any day, food and friends are what you ever really need.



As the great Julia Child would say, Bon appetite!

My love, it'll be (Just Like) Starting Over

Along with a long line of different ways to use maple syrup, there's this tradition in Quebec where people fill tiny ice cream cones with dark maple and top it off with sucre à la crème. These are sold pretty much everywhere you can find food, all year round - in farmer's markets, corner stores, grocery stores, etc. Last Sunday (like every Sunday), my friend and I went to Jean Talon Market and bought some. I just finished my first cornet and am now replete with maple-fueled ecstasy.
So this is my life in Montreal.

I have been up since about 10:30, have had one cup of coffee, and am seriously deliberating with myself whether or not I want another before I head to school to run some pre-semester errands (buy gym pass - on credit, thank you- as well as figure out some OHIP form thing).

I feel almost back to normal now.

I hate people.

Every time I'm in Toronto for an extended period of time, say, over three weeks, I begin to go stir-crazy. And as I type this, I do feel a pang of guilt - it's nice being close to my family again, and having the modern conveniences of a toaster oven (in my apartment in Montreal, the oven works well enough to not necessitate a smaller version), television, the piano, and counter space. But at the same time, while in Montreal I don't get the experience the bliss of reclining in a comfy armchair watching Stephen Colbert, cup of tea in hand while the rest of my family is asleep, I have found myself going slightly stir crazy here. Perhaps because in Montreal, I am walking distance within EVERYTHING, and it always seems worth the trek, or because I know that just a few streets away, my similarly unemployed and broke friends are always up for sitting around talking.
I am stressing that there is nothing here to stress out about.
How did I used to do it, all those summers ago when I was in my mid-teens and never had to worry about things like jobs, when if somebody blew me off for the day, I would be content to sit inside and watch terrible day-time television for hours on end? In the past two weeks, I have formed an all-too-intimate relationship with Regis and Kelly that I would prefer to break off as soon as possible.


I actually think this town is making me a more awful person. Impatient, bitter, mean, FATTER BY THE HOUR, and just way more insecure and self-loathsome. I attribute it to the general atmosphere, the hours spent cooped up at home being less than productive...

Sorry, guys. This is my wallow post.

But the next time I write I will be back in Montreal, so hopefully I will be a much easier person to deal with then.

Cleanse.

So I went out last night to the Taste of the Danforth and ate five pierogis, a lamb gyro, and an entire funnel cake.
Today, I decided to take a Leek Cleanse and eat nothing but leeks and leek broth.

I kind of want to take a baby cow, slaughter it, and just take a bite out of its raw thigh, fur and all.
I could also settle for a Big Mac.

BUT I CAAAAAAAAAAN'T.

Observations from the La-Z-Boy at 1:14

1) Craig Ferguson, can you please be a bigger asshole? Bill Clinton just saved two journalists from North Korea and your only joke (that you keep running into the ground) is, "He's used to bringing two girls home" and "He's good at sneaking girls out of government buildings".

2) Craig Ferguson, can you not find a better guest than old washed-out CNN reporters who are known mostly for sensationalizing human interest stories?

3) Wolf Blitzer, can you please delete yourself from life?

Me: "PEOPLE DON'T COMMENT ON MY BLOG."

Dave: "to be fair, your first poem was basically porn"


WHO ELSE THOUGHT THIS??? It was NOT porn, it's actually about two people just SLEEPING together. So get your mind out of the gutters.

ALSO. You people are NOT allowed to complain about me not blogging enough if YOU GUYS DON'T GIVE ME ANYTHING (in the form of comments). Hop to it!

That is all.

Snippets

His thigh is heavy as it has migrated to the bend of my knee, and an arm sinks limply over my waist. I am Toto, the stuffed bear from his childhood.
He breathes inconsistently, one minute through his mouth, blowing a short passage of air into the nape of my neck; and suddenly, with a hiss like a leaky gas pipe and a short gasp, the tunnels change and he exhales through his nose, down my back.

It can't last, and we both know this, but with my eyes wide open, our legs intertwined, and as he is clutching me like Toto the bear, we will take what we can get. With the back of his hands brushing the hem of soft pink chiffon, I feel very eerily like I am on an airplane, seatbelt cinched at my waist, watching the turbulence light flicker.

In two hours, the sun will rise, and I will have both feet once again planted on solid ground.

C'est tout, bébé. We both know this was a one way ticket.

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She stands over the kitchen counter, delicately and lovingly slicing pears. She takes her toasted bread out of the oven, spreads Nutella over them, and lays each sliver of pear across the slices of bread. She glances at the clock.

In the last forty minutes, she has woken up (beating her alarm clock by 13 minutes), lay in bed in deliberation, taken a shower, gotten dressed, and is now eating her breakfast over the kitchen sink. In the next twenty minutes, she will brush her teeth, fix her make-up, zip her luggage bag, and roll it out the door, realizing, two minutes after ensuring all the locks, that she has left dirty dishes in the sink. She does not turn back.

When she is safely on the bus, she takes out a book and flips it to the first page. "I Wish Someone Were Waiting For Me Somewhere". This is an unusual selection for her - it's a recently release book, for one thing, and the title tells nearly nothing about the plotline. Perhaps she chose it because one week prior, she was in the area of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, the very location where the book begins. Or maybe because Vogue (a magazine she frequently leafs through) has hailed the author as a "distant descendant to Dorothy Parker" (a poet she frequently enjoys).
However, most likely of all, it may just be because she wants more than anything to find out how the story ends.

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Hello, mes cheres. I'm back, and boy, am I ever in the deep now.