Goodbye, Cupcake!

Ok, like a drunk after a lost weekend, I have returned from a vacation in the American South (well, Virginia and Washington DC). Anyone think I stuck to a diet of "rabbit food", as a colleague calls it? I did-- if rabbits eat pulled pork and potato salad, and wash it down with plenty of booze and a cupcake chaser. Like the aforementioned drunk, I now need to get with the program. No Twelve Steps for me, just two: eat healthy and exercise. I'm cutting back, and as I do, let me share some fond memories of delicious southern meals before I am forced to erase these thoughts from my mind, and replace them with visions of carrots and treadmills.

Five Guys Burgers and Fries. We don't seem to have them in Canada yet, but there are a ton in the US. They started in Virginia, so it seemed appropriate to check it out. (Note- during the 2008 election, the Obamas mentioned liking Five Guys, but I had already had it and loved it. So there.) As befits American-sized portions these days, if you order a regular burger, it comes with 2 patties. To get just one, you have to order the mini. The mini is like 800 calories. Not so mini, don't you think? Anyway, the burgers are really yummy, and the french fries are fantastic. There is a sign in the restaurant that is updated daily to tell you the name of the farm in Idaho that grew the potatoes. One order of fries is enough for 3 to 4 people, so if you're alone, watch yourself! They also have refillable fountain Diet Coke, which is the greatest beverage on earth aside from Champagne. All in all, I love my annual Five Guys visit, but I really don't think anyone should be eating there on a regular basis.

One night, we went to a CFA event on the grounds of a "farm" called Seven Oaks. The place was spectacular, as was the food. There were buffet stations with food from around the world. I had a plate of hummus, asparagus, and salad. But before that, I had this: Buttermilk fried chicken, truffle mac and cheese, potato salad, and pulled pork with barbecue sauce. Kind of a wonder they don't keep a defibrillator on that buffet table.

And now, cupcakes. I returned to 2 of my favourites, Georgetown Cupcake in DC and Capellino's Crazy Cakes in Charlottesville. Georgetown Cupcake makes the best cake of any cupcake bakery I've tried. These are from Capellino's- the New Yorker, and the Red Velvet. Very good, but not the best.

That award this year goes to a place in Dupont Circle (DC) called Hello Cupcake. The dulce de leche cupcake was sublime. The icing had a wonderful caramel taste, and the cake itself echoed that flavour really well. If it hadn't been so hot, I would have tried to bring home a half dozen, so I guess I should be grateful for the heat. It's time for me to get back to eating well, so instead of Hello Cupcake, for now, it's goodbye :(

Let's Do This!!

I am a Liberal, and a liberal. I vote Liberal here in Canada, and if I were American, I am quite sure I'd be voting Democratic. I believe the government should stay out of people's private lives, church and state should be distinctly separate, and we need to regulate business. That all seems like basic common sense to me, but my views are apparently the polar opposite of a lot of Americans, particularly.

Let's look at each point briefly. The government has no business, as Pierre Trudeau once famously said, in the nation's bedrooms. I just don't see how that can be argued with. Actually, the only way to argue it is to oppose my second point about separating church and state. The people who want to tell you what to do in your bedroom want to make sure you're not doing anything that their religion doesn't want you to do. Again, common sense tells me that my life is my own business, and that someone else's religion shouldn't affect my personal life.

Ronald Reagan tried to make regulation a dirty word, and the people who oppose it confuse me. I mean, do you want your kid's toys covered in lead paint? Do you want your credit card interest rate to change every month? Do you want the plane you're flying in to have the proper parts? Anti-regulationists say that the market will take care of itself, but only after a few kids die from lead poisoning and a few planes plummet from the sky. If that's worth it to you, I am scared.

I get really wrapped up in American politics. I want the Democrats to do the right thing, but lately it seems that they're too afraid to make the changes they promised. The opposition is uglier than it's ever been before. No one is talking about ideas, and how to do the best thing for the average American; it's all name-calling and absurd rumours. A real hatred has been exposed. Tea Party members throw around terms like Socialist, Death Panel, and Re-education Camps. What I don't understand is this- the Republicans controlled the White House From 1980 to 1992, and from 2000 to 2008. They controlled both houses of Congress in the 90s. Wasn't that enough time to "fix" everything that they say Democrats ruined? For God's sake, Democrats have been in power for 16 months, and the opposition acts like the world is going to end. Seems hopeless, but I've found the solution!

Palin/Bachmann 2012! Let's get Sarah Palin the job she feels eminently qualified for, and back her up with Representative Michelle Bachmann, a woman who sees socialist conspiracies around every corner. Let's get Rand Paul and a host of other Tea Partiers in congress. Give 'em everything they want. All the power. Let's just see what they'd get done. Would they end Social Security and Medicaid? Of course not. Make Christianity the law of the land? I doubt it. Eradicate all business regulations? Nope. But maybe they'd shut up about it if they were in charge. You know, like they were for 20 of the past 30 years.

The Original Spends2Much!

Last week, the Boy Friend's Aunt Peggy died. She was 93. In the 40s she had been a researcher and reporter for the Chicago Daily News Washington bureau. Later in life she married some big shot at the World Bank, and ended up a widow living in Delaware, not too far from the ocean. I never met her, but she sounded like a cool old broad.

The BF drove his mom to Delaware for the funeral, so he got to spend about 16 hours, round trip, in a car with a woman who talks more than I do. He got some good stories out of her, though. Apparently his mom, let's call her Bunny, back when she was a single gal in the 50s, would travel from Cornwall, Ontario to New York City to buy her clothes. And that's not the best part- her biggest purchase was a coat, for $500, when she was earning $20 a week. WOW. The lady spent 6 months wages on a coat! To wear around a hick town in Canada! I have barely managed to spend $500 on a coat, and it was 55 years after Bunny did it. I am impressed.

I have seen old home movies of Bunny, from the 50s and 60s, and she was a Mad Men dream. Red hair, slender, perfectly tailored. She'd wear a cinched-waisted suit and pearls to run errands, where now, we wear yoga pants and a t-shirt. Bunny's style hasn't changed much. This is not an old lady who buys stretchy pants from Wal-Mart. Still looks impeccable when she hangs out at the golf club drinking gin and tonics. No wonder she thinks I'm a peasant- to her, I must look like I've dropped by to clean the gutters.

Well, Eff Me!

Went to Holt Renfrew Last Call in Vaughan Mills a while ago, on a hunt for shoes. A specific pair of shoes. Brown suede Manolo Blahniks that I had seen months earlier. They had been marked down drastically, but for some strange reason, I didn't buy them. Didn't think about them again until recently, when I was overcome by a desire for brown suede shoes. I held out hope that they'd still be there on the shelf, which was of course ridiculous.

What the hell is with the height of heels these days? Are women supposed to be able to walk in their shoes? Almost every pair in the store were 4, 5, even 6 inch heels. Some platform, some not. It was like I was in the Rich Hooker section of Holt's. Who wears these? Where does one wear these?

I'm not one for high heels. Well, not anymore. In my 20s, I refused to wear my glasses out at night. Put a nearsighted, klutzy girl in a pair of F*ck Me shoes, stick her in a dark club, and you'll see some spectacular spills. Luckily for me, I did all my falling in the Pre Camera Phone era. I can still pull off the standard 3-inch heel, but even they are not great for work. In the mornings, before I have been suitably caffeinated, I would be in constant danger of tripping and landing on my face.

I rummaged around Holt's for a bit and managed to find a lovely pair of Manolo flats- black, pointy, and quite elegant. Somehow, out of the hundreds of pairs of shoes on the rack, I seemed to have found the most expensive pair. They had started out as $850, and were now $359 ... still too freaking expensive for flats. Well, flats that aren't Chanel. Thank God for Tory Burch and Michael Kors.

I came away shoeless, but managed to find some great skirts for work. Super cheap Tory Burch and Teenflo. Could have thrown a YSL and Valentino onto the pile, but I restrained myself, which is not something I do very often :)

Islands and Barns

When I returned from the Bahamas in February, I had fallen completely in love with the easy Colonial Island style we saw around Eleuthera and Harbour Island. I'm an Anglophile at heart, but overstuffed chintz, huge paintings, and crazy patterns would look a little weird in my itty bitty downtown condo. Island style combines some elements of traditional British design, but softens the look with, obviously, island touches. It's also much more spare than the Country House look. Just adding a few candles in hurricanes filled with pink sand I brought back (like an idiot), spreading some shells and a starfish on a dark wood shelf, and buying more vibrant flowers have helped bring the look home with me.

This afternoon I was browsing in a popular home store that isn't a Barn and doesn't sell much Pottery. Apparently the style they are pushing this season is Coastal Style. Oh, great. They were selling bags of shells, pieces of (fake?) coral, and sand-filled hurricanes at fairly exorbitant prices. Now I look as though I bought a bunch of stuff at this store. Please. Islands are far more inspiring than Barns.

In the Daytime

I've been lying in bed for about 48 hours now, struck down with flu, it seems. I am exhausted and bored to sobs. My eyes are very tired, so I haven't been able to read much. I have an old TV in the bedroom, and I have discovered that daytime TV is the saddest place on the planet. I tried to find entertainment first with the Food Network, but you can only watch so much food preparation when you are nauseous and periodically projectile vomiting. At one point I seem to have drifted to sleep. I awoke to a Baby Daddy fight on Maury Povich. I have to assume I rolled onto the remote, because even high on Benylin I would never watch Maury Povich. My solace has been, oddly, the Military Channel. I watched most of a documentary series about the First World War. It was truly fascinating. In 1919, the victors re-drew the maps of Europe and the Middle East, and I think we can all agree they did a bang-up job with that!

Believe me, I channel-surfed. Even doped up, I can't enjoy The Facts of Life or Fantasy Island. Dr. Phil is a show of such epic train-wreck proportions that I believe I would emerge from a coma to change the channel if that blithering fool were on my TV. After a while, I just gave up, and dragged myself out of bed to do laundry. Maybe this is all a corporate conspiracy- in order to ensure people don't take too many sick days, Big Business got together to make sure that even with mountains of channels, daytime TV would still be awful. I'm planning to go back to work tomorrow, not because I feel all that great, but because I am so thoroughly bored I can't bear another day in this room. The daytime TV landscape, even with hundreds of channels, is a barren as one of those WWI battlefields.

Don't Put That Hammer Down!

I was born in Hamilton, Ontario. Yes, The Hammer. The Canadian Pittsburgh. We moved to Burlington when I was 8, so I don't remember it well, but I know that it has had it's ups and downs. When I was little, it was still sort of vibrant; the downtown area had lots of old department stores, cool architecture, and parks. The steel companies employed thousands of people, and paid them well. The 80s and 90s were not good to Hamilton. A one-industry town suffers most when the economy isn't good, and the Steel Town of my birth did not weather change well.The downtown area still needs a lot of work, but I must say I was pleasantly surprised to discover some real revitalization going on. The area where my mom now lives, just over the bridge from Burlington (and my old high school, Aldershot), has lots of large brick single family homes, the sort that anyone in a cramped Toronto condo looks at with envy. It's no wonder so many people from the city are moving out there. Parks, large lots, and big, solid houses, the sort which would cost you at least 900k here, are about 400k in Hamilton, from what we saw in the window of a realtor. You will, however have to live a large chunk of your life on the QEW. Yikes.

One thing you won't go without is a cute stretch of shopping. Locke St, a few minutes from Chateau Mom, is amazing! We had lunch at a cute Italian cafe, Il Fiasco, then wandered up the street and discovered a homey little bakery called Schilling's, a chocolatier, several antique stores, a few organic markets, and a recently opened store called The Cheese Shop on Locke. This place was amazing! Massive selection of interesting cheeses and meats, all sorts of accompaniments, and a great atmosphere. There was an old piano being played. The decor was Country Store Chic. The sell funky pottery, good knives, and interesting foods. Heaven! Mom got some honey mustard and a good cheese knife, I got some honey, Le Blackburn cheese, and asparagus pasta, and Peter got asparagus soup and corn tortillas. Everything was local. You could taste things, and meet reps from the area businesses featured at the store.

A few doors down was a serene store called Pure Home Couture, where I got a very cool Jessica Kagan Cushman bangle for 1/2 price! It's the awesome "Ripped off by Chanel" bangle she made a few years ago when Chanel started showing bangles that looked suspiciously like her work. Who'da thought I'd find it in The Hammer??

So people, the next time you're cruising down the QEW on your way to Niagara or Buffalo, consider taking that Hamilton exit, and you may be pleasantly surprised.

Bahamian Food

There are two types of people: those who take pictures of food, and those who don't. Guess which kind I am? I do have my limits, though. I didn't take pictures of dinner at the Ritz in Paris, and I didn't photograph my incredible dinner at The Landing in The Bahamas. The Ritz was too intimidating, and The Landing was too dark. Seriously, they give you a mini flashlight with which to view the menu. The only lighting is a hurricane lantern with a single candle on each table. I don't think the crowd in there would have appreciated my flash going off during dinner, either. That being said, our dinner at The Landing was really special. I had the local lobster. There was more lobster on my plate than I could finish! It was succulent and well prepared, with simple accompaniments of fingerling potatoes and French green beans. And butter :) Boyfriend had mahi mahi, which he also enjoyed. We shared a bottle of good Chianti, and a classic molten chocolate cake for dessert. New York prices, but I don't mind paying if I feel I have gotten something special as I feel we did there. The landing is one of the old colonial buildings on Harbour Island, dating from 1800. Amazing that is has survived- there are hardly any buildings that old in Canada.

My second favourite meal was at a place called Dunmore Deli, also on Harbour Island. We just happened by on the way to the beach, and I had an incredible sandwich called The Islander- medium rare flank steak marinated in jerk sauce, caramelized onions, avocado, and spicy citrus aioli, served on a baguette. So good! Washed it down with 2 Bahamian beers called Kaliks, and watched island life go by. This is how I want to spend all my afternoons.

On Eleuthera, we stayed in an area called Rainbow Bay. The nearest restaurant was a place called the Rainbow Inn, owned by Canadians, as it happens. We both had grouper, which had been out of the water for 6 hours, served with zucchini from the garden. Doesn't get much fresher than that! We ate on the back patio, and watched the sun set over the Caribbean.

Our last Bahamian meal was the most special, in some ways. We had driven past a place called Lee's Cafe, in James Cistern. (You drive past the same places frequently, since there is essentially one road that runs through Eleuthera, the Queen's Highway). It had a rudimentary hand-painted sign, but I had heard good things about their fried chicken. We showed up on our way to the airport, heading home. We were greeted by two very sweet ladies, who seemed concerned that we had been on Eleuthera for a week and they hadn't met us yet! We told them we had come by the previous Sunday, but they were closed, despite the sign saying they were open Sundays. They told us that they close for 2 1/2 hours to go to church! After promising to come back to their island, we got our chicken take-away (mine fried, BFs grilled). They were also cooking beans and rice, macaroni, and some barbecued ribs that smelled fantastic. OK, this chicken was NOT healthy, but it was the best piece of fried chicken I have ever had. I could not stop myself from devouring every bit of the skin. My mouth is watering right now thinking about it. If you're ever on Eleuthera, and you really should go, you must stop by and spend time with the ladies at Lee's Cafe. Then you should probably go jogging and do a juice fast.

I'm just saying.

My Financial Decade

It’s 2010 and the start of a new decade.  Yes, I know, sticklers say the new decade starts in 2011, but who are we kidding, we started counting this century in 2000, so 10 years have passed.  Quickly!  And what a decade it was.  The world changed in great and terrifying ways, and my life changed far more subtly.  That’s the way I like it.

 2000 was a transitional year for me.  Well, the end of the year was.  What I remember most is the 3 week period where the Mets lost the World Series to the Yankees, the US election happened (over and over again), and I was laid off.  That last bit had never happened to me before, and I was terrified!  I remember leaving that publishing company holding a big box of the junk that I kept in my office.  My boss gave me a twenty so I could take a cab home, but I wanted to save the money, so I stood out on King Street West, in front of newly-opened Susur, sobbing and waiting for a streetcar.

 Unemployment turned out to be less scary that I thought.  I was earning so little in publishing that the slide down to EI from my meagre salary wasn’t all that painful.   I spent months and months looking for a decent job, bumming around the city, and exercising. Then September 11 happened.  I took the next job I was offered, which was at Williams-Sonoma.  I had applied for a part-time job there, but was offered a management position, and since it paid more than my publishing job did, I figured I’d give it a try (oh, and my EI was running out).

 Ultimately, it wasn't the right job, but (most of) the people I met there made the whole experience worth it.  I cherish the friends I made at WS; they have brought so much to my life that I could never regret that job. And I guess I should thank Williams-Sonoma for the 40% discount that enabled me to have a kitchen tricked out like a label-whore chef.

 This decade took me to, among other places, New York multiple times,  Paris, San Francisco, San Diego, Memphis, Washington D.C., Quebec City and all over Italy. I travelled with friends, my Mom, and Peter. I took trips for business and for pleasure. And I spent money like a drunken sailor either way.  (Surprisingly, all the people I travelled with are still speaking to me.)

 As the decade ends, I’m wondering if things have changed much for me financially from when it started. Yes, I earn a lot more, but my expenses are truly ridiculous.  If you had told me 10 years ago that my monthly Rogers bill would be what it is now, I would have laughed.  I lived, I think, perfectly well on my former salary, but in my case, the more I earn, the more I spend.  Ultimately, I think I now have too much stuff.  Too many sweaters, too many frying pans, too many kinds of shampoo.

 I’m going to try (yet again) to make this new year and decade about less.  I’ll still strive for quality, but not quantity.  To that end, I am conducting a purge on behalf of Goodwill.  No longer will I have 4(!) rolling pins, 20 pillow cases, and 100 cookbooks.  I’m keeping the best and the useful, and everything else must go.

 I wish a happy and prosperous New Year to the 4 people who occasionally read this blog. If you want a rolling pin, let me know :)