A soaker of a Saturday

I'm sure for some Saturdays are restful days. As for me, I dream about lazy weekends. I might even talk a little in my sleep. Perhaps it's because it's January. Because we're all bright-eyed and wistful, making our affirmations and writing down our resolutions. Lose ten pounds, maybe. Live fearlessly. Be positive. Stay hydrated. Fall in love. January, that keener, is full of ambition, and so am I. Paint the bathroom, I say. Organize the closet. Find a spot for those spare towels. Commit to an area rug. Keep in better touch with your friends. Take more photographs. Plan a vacation. Mornings filled with writing and newspapers and sunshine are best left to summertime, maybe. For now there's grocery runs and a never-ending supply of dirty dishes and fridge doors that come unhinged randomly on a Wednesday night and ruin your plans. For instance.

This is not to say the weekends are painful. I might wake up a little later. I might perch myself on the couch and sip two cups of coffee, eat breakfast -- this morning I ate a glorious bowl of spiced oatmeal with grated carrots -- and listen to "The Dog Days Are Over" while catching up on my reading. But mostly they are preoccupied and busy, complete with a very, very long to-do list. The kind of list that emerges if you've spent the last four days desperately trying to ward off illness because everyone in your office is sick and the building is poorly ventilated and no one on the street has the decency to cover his or her mouth when he or she coughs! The nerve! Knock on wood, I'm still healthy, but as I came home every night this week exhausted and sore, I mostly sat down in front of the television, or in a bubble bath, and did nothing. Would it be more or less annoying just to let myself get sick, I wonder? In Toronto, there's now a store that promises to mix an individual fragrance for you, so that you, too, can smell like peppermint without sucking on a hard candy. There's a place that specializes in French furniture replicas and refurbishing. But what of the common cold?

Anyway. Now there's work to be done. I put a decent dent in the list today, trekking all over town and all, and was forced to add the following item to the list: buy winter boots. I've been ambivalent about it. Do I really need them? I admit, I've been whining about it. I already have a black leather pair that I adore and that work just fine (so I thought.) They're comfortable and my skinny jeans fold nicely into them. But walking back from the St. Lawrence Market today, I found myself with a giant soaker. It only needs to happen one time, as it turns out. My mind is made.

But tonight, apart from boot-hunting, I took a small reprieve from the world and cooked. I wanted to. I wanted to make something successful. Last week was full of flops: a beet-fennel soup that was awful and required modification of all kinds (I really should have known better),

potato-spinach cakes that were too liquidy and didn't form into, well, cakes. I planned on writing an elegant and lovely post, perhaps, or one full of passion and anger, but instead, on this snow-filled day, you get this: me eating vegetarian chili and sipping on a Manhattan. Before me lies a night of cleaning and organizing, of glancing at my new library books (I'm so excited!) --The Cook and the Gardener: A Year of Recipes and Writings from the French Countryside and Cooking for Mr. Latte: A Food Lover's Courtship, with Recipes, both by Amanda Hesser, My Life in France by Julia Child (so I can finish it), and Eat, Memory: Great Writers at the Table edited by Amanda Hesser -- and dreams of that lazy weekend I know I'll have one day (certainly by July!) Concerning all of that Amanda Hesser up there, what can I say? Lately I'm really impressed by The New York Times. The recipes are just plain solid. Ruth Reichl, Melissa Clark, Amanda Hesser -- each represents the gold standard in recipe-writing. Unlike the recipes featured in this publication.

So if you, like myself, have a night full of crazy in front of you, sip on one of these. And make the chili. It's the perfect remedy to a day of insanity and a night of (sigh) work.

Manhattan

Yields 1 drink

2oz whisky, preferably rye whisky (I use Forty Creek)
1/2oz sweet vermouth
2 dashes of bitters
Maraschino cherry, for garnish (optional)

Combine all ingredients (minus the cherry) and shake well in a cocktail shaker with a couple ice cubes. Strain mixture into a cocktail (martini) glass and garnish with cherry if desired.

On Montmorency cherries and rekindled loves

I do love Saturday. I bounced!!! trudged out of bed at 7am!!! 10am and indulged myself in two hours of Canadian news (I am so very uninterested in and unimpressed by the Calgary Stampede), two cups of rich and delicious coffee, a warm breakfast on a hot day, and design blogs. PS. Spike Mendelsohn, you really get around.

I'm sure you're at the edge of your seats wondering what I ate for breakfast, as you should be, for it was a bowl composed of feshly cooked quinoa, a sliced melt-in-your-mouth local peach, a kick of cinnamon, chopped walnuts, a drizzle of honey, and soy milk. Hello, heaven. I'm generally an eggs kind of girl, but I'll admit, even I swooned a little.

My swooning tends to border on the obscene at times.

I walked my way down to the St. Lawrence Market, through St. James Park as I'm known to do,
and exchanged hellos with the man who stands by the front door of the market each week, welcoming incomers.

There was rhubarb and giant strawberries and golden raspberries, hot peppers and artichokes and fresh herbs, massive heads of lettuce and sweet smelling melons and wild blueberries. There's a chocolatier who makes truffles and single servings of chocolate mousse, and a baker who sells salted caramel macarons, oui oui. Sometimes I wonder why I put myself through the sadness that is staring at a giant cart of cheese and having to leave it all behind. If I had scads of money I would've brought home that Burrata, a miraculous, oozy mozzarella di bufala stuffed with cream (!), tossed it with coarse salt and promptly slathered it on some of the crusty bread I have sitting in my freezer from my favourite Windsor bakery. Please, if you're ever fortunate enough to come across the amazing dairy product that is Burrata, snatch it up and keep it a secret from everyone else.

I, unfortunately, did not come home with Burrata. I returned to my little abode with three poblano peppers, a large head of Romaine, two red hot chili peppers, good-quality feta, a dozen eggs, an English cucumber, and a pound of Montmorency cherries.


It seems Montmorency cherries, more commonly known as sour cherries, are little gems in Toronto; they are ridiculously difficult to track down. A couple summers ago while I was still living in Windsor, sour cherries were plentiful -- in fact, I remember hitting the Ottawa St. market, picking up a 3L basket of them and throwing them impulsively in my mouth until my stomach grumbled and my tongue went numb. I digress. Job or no job, I will have my Montmorency cherries! (But the Burrata will have to wait.)



Tonight, I am making tomato sauce and going on a date with my boyfriend.

Yes. He is very rugged and handsome, dashing and witty, hopelessly obstinate and quite the romantic. He's also still in high school, and I graciously share him with many other women; the measures a girl's willing to take in the name of love. Oh, Pacey Whitter, you are so sexy!

My friend Andrea and I are beginning a new tradition, one where I take the subway to her house in the suburbs on Saturdays and we watch hours of Dawson's Creek. I've been waiting in suspense all week to see if Joey Potter will come around, and I think tonight, she just might.

I enjoy that I can re-live my youth vicariously through my former favourite television show. It's not that I have any desire to return to my days as an awkward and insecure sixteen-year-old, oh non, non, non, but I do miss the innocent puppy love that accompanies inexperience (have I just dated myself? I believe I have.)

I remember anxiously awaiting my first kiss, an event that wouldn't occur until months after 9/11, in the springtime, just before the war broke out. I was standing in front of the door to my room at a hotel in Avignon, France, and he tasted like green apple Mentos. Ohh, the excitement! The anxiety! I may have swapped green apple kisses for quinoa and cherries, Avignon for Toronto, but my palate, she's as sharp as ever.