one martini, two martini, three martini...floor.

I went on my uncle's boat yesterday and we rode over to the Island. An afternoon of caramel apple martinis and conversation. It was really lovely, but I must confess the afternoon went a little like this: one martini, two martini, three martini, floor.

I put up a brave fight, dear readers, but I've become a terrible lightweight. My days of drinking double rye and waters of epic numbers are gone. It's the heat and the smog, I'm telling you! Honest to goodness truth! Somehow I don't think my declarations were all that convincing.

We passed a school of sailboats and I mentioned how I would like to do that sometime. "Sign up next summer," my uncle said, "and find a nice man whose parents belong to the club." Well, that sounds easy enough.

The conversation reminds me of Stevie Nicks' "Landslide" because it recalls the questions we ask ourselves (I ask myself?) about whether we'll fulfill all of our wild dreams, whether we'll find the courage within ourselves to move forward, whether we'll make it. "Can I sail through the changing ocean tides? Can I handle the seasons of my life?" she asks, but we never know, of course. Judging strictly by the conversations I've shared with others while under the influence (!), though, I can't help but feel as though so many of life's answers can be found at the bottom of a martini glass, caramel apple or no, and that by discussing our fears with others we can somehow expunge them from our thoughts. Or something like that.

(I'll quit with the martini jokes, I promise.)

As Elizabeth Gilbert announces so candidly in Committed, "I went to Cambodia because I had to go. It may have been a messy and botched experience, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't have gone. Sometimes life is messy and botched. We do our best. We don't always know the right move." We just flat out don't know. Can I manoeuvre a sailboat? Can I succeed in this city? Can I learn how to bake a soufflé without burning it?

I think Baroque painter Caravaggio had the right idea. Even in the darkness, all of the objects that appear in his works are strikingly clear and visible. Perhaps if we're willing to open our eyes, the darkness has the ability to shine a little light -- however dim the light may be. And maybe if we're too preoccupied with the search for a bright, obvious light, we'll miss our chance to move out of the rabbit hole. Sometimes our wants come to look so different than we ever expected them to.

Thank goodness for that.

Caramel Apple Martini

2 parts butterscotch schnapps
2 parts sour apple liqueur
1 part vodka

Add ingredients to a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake vigorously and strain into a cocktail glass. Pace yourself: it may taste like candy, but this drink is as potent as they come.

"as if it were a tart on a platter..."

When I was a kid, my Nan lived in the house her father built with a backyard brimming with Queen Anne's lace. She grew rhubarb, and at the back of her yard emerged a large crab apple tree, directly adjacent to the cornfields. My sister and I used to eat fresh rhubarb, ruby red or tart and underripe, and picked as many apples as we could carry. Most of them were filled with worms. It wouldn't have been like my Nan to have used pesticides.

We picked out the bugs, washed the fruit well and bit into those crab apples, subtly sour and crunchy. It was worth the work, I thought. Lessons imparted to me by my Nan, grandmother extraordinaire, maker of the best sausage rolls (or pigs-in-a-blanket, whichever title you prefer) in the world, a woman who made it her life's mission to head to all of the weekly local yard sales, who stored books on an unused pool table upstairs, collected antique dolls, who read history books and loved Alfred Hitchcock films. Yes, we ate rhubarb, and picked at our apples, and learned to love feral cats, good literature and old movies.

And landing employment? That's worth the work, too. I was officially hired on as a server with a recruitment company that deals exclusively in the hospitality/catering business. To add to that, I'm up for two full-time positions, one in the publishing industry and one in finance. Employment, you have never looked so lovely! If this all pans out, I will be the happiest of the happy people. There will be wine in this apartment again yet (and more furniture, artwork and pairing knives, but that is neither here nor there.)

I'd love to say the weekend was full of great food and fun, but dear readers, it was not. Well, fun it was, and I did pick up some local peaches at the market, sweetly fragrant and ripe, juicy and -- just perfect. I also came across the mango nectarine, which happens to be delicious. However, there was a terrible sushi incident. I usually think of sushi the way I do pizza or chocolate; even when it isn't great, it's still pretty good. But after lunch on Saturday, I can say for certain that I'm no longer firmly rooted in that camp. Best sushi restaurant in Toronto? I think we have a poseur in our midsts, ladies and gents.

Yesterday was of a different breed, though, and took me a bit by surprise. I walked with a spring in my step. I ate oatmeal with sliced peaches for breakfast, and leftover daal for lunch topped with a poached egg and sriracha, and for dinner I devoured a couple baked poblano peppers stuffed with mashed pinto beans -- chiles rellenos, I suppose, but modified enough from the original, I suspect, to warrant a debate about that. I interviewed at that recruitment company and had a nice chat with the HR woman. And, as soon as I walked in the door to my apartment and dropped my bag, I poured myself one of these -- a Moscow Mule.



It's such a retro drink. A definite oldie, but a goodie. Even that line is old. Oh well.

Moscow Mule

Serves 1

2 oz vodka
2 oz fresh lime juice
8 oz ginger beer or decent gingerale
Dash of bitters

Mix all of the ingredients in a highball glass with ice.

And I'll leave you with one of my favourite excerpts from one of my recent reads:

"What young people didn't know, she thought, lying down beside this man, his hand on her shoulder, her arm; oh, what young people did not know. They did not know the lumpy, aged, and wrinkled bodies were as needy as their own young, firm ones, that love was not to be tossed away carelessly, as if it were a tart on a platter with others that got passed around again. No, if love was available, one chose it, or didn't choose it. And if her platter had been full with the goodness of Henry and she had found it burdensome, had flicked it off crumbs at a time, it was because she had not known what one should know: that day after day was unconsciously squandered." -Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, p. 270