Cooking With Mother

I phoned my mother to get the recipe for one of my favourite meals of all time: beef stew with feta cheese and walnuts. Here it is:

Well you’ll need some oil, about one or two pounds of stewing beef, a tablespoon of vinegar, a tablespoon tomato paste, a cup or so of walnuts, and a cup of feta cheese. First you should brown the meat, in small quantities, and put it aside on a plate, then — oh, an onion! — brown the meat first, then put in at least one big onion, good sized. So chop up the onion, and once the meat’s been browned then you fry the onion for five minutes or so, and usually there’s brown bits in the bottom of your pot by this time — you don’t need to worry if your pot looks all brown — and when you put the onions in they turn brown too because of the browning on the pot. So once I’ve done that I usually put in just a little bit of water, and then scrape up the wee browny bits, kind of thing, with your wooden spoon. Then — did I mention about putting in the balsamic vinegar, the tomato paste, and — oh! — some herb of some sort, thyme or basil. Just, you know, sort of a big pinch, kind of thing, of that. And then put the meat back in. And some water. But not too much — as the meat cooks it will release juices. But if it’s too runny you can just take the lid off and let it evaporate. Don’t cover the meat with water, that would be too much. Bring pot to a boil and then turn it down. Cook it at a really low heat, just simmering. Cook it for a good hour and a half, and then give it a bit of a poke. You might have to cook it for as long as 2 hours, or even longer if the meat’s not the greatest. Every so often you can give it a little stir to make sure everything’s cooking evenly. Then if it’s beginning to feel quite soft, you can put in the walnuts and cook the whole thing for 15 minutes, and then chop the feta cheese into cubes and put it in and leave it on the stove for another 5 minutes. Is this you trying to impress Raam? If you want to make it look really nice, chop up a bit of parsley and put it on the top right at the end.  That makes it look really nice.

This was me trying to impress Raam, and it worked even though I skipped the parsley at the end.

Unique Places to Store Change (for Ballers)

Piggy banks for civilized people:

1. Antique Sèvres urn.
2. Preserved foot of endangered animal.
3. The reproduction Trevi fountain in the back yard.
4. Throw it off the balcony. Score ten points for hitting one of the 99%.
5. Then sic the hounds on the plebeian who’s trespassing on your estate.

2011 in Books

Last year I think my only resolution was to read a book a week. I only made it to 46 because I’m a slacker. I’m going to try harder in 2012!

Here’s the list from last year (the best of the bunch are bolded):

1. Decision Points, George W. Bush.
2. Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens.
3. A Year in Provence, Peter Mayle.
4. The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins.
5. Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy.
6. Women of Steel, Maria R. Lowe.
7. Reheated Cabbage, Irvine Welsh.
8. And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie.
9. The Undercover Economist, Tim Harford.
10. Chasing Cézanne, Peter Mayle.
11. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde.
12. Shakespeare: The World as Stage, Bill Bryson.
13. Dracula, Bram Stoker.
14. Toujours Provence, Peter Mayle.
15. Encore Provence, Peter Mayle.
16. Peeling the Onion, Günter Grass.
17. The Tin Drum, Günter Grass.
18. News From Tartary, Peter Fleming.
19. The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins.
20. Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen.
21. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton.
22. The Fry Chronicles: An Autobiography, Stephen Fry.
23. What Maisie Knew, Henry James.
24. Persuasion, Jane Austen.
25. The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan.
26. Into the Heart of Borneo, Redmond O’Hanlon.
27. Practical Programming for Strength Training, Mark Rippetoe and Lon Kilgore.
28. The Road, Cormac McCarthy.
29. Everything Bad is Good For You, Steven Johnson.
30. Naked, David Sedaris.
31. At Risk, Patricia Cornwell.
32. Indian Art, Vidya Dehejia.
33. True Grit, Charles Portis.
34. The Jaguar Smile, Salman Rushdie.
35. When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris.
36. Notes From Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky.
37. Hasten to my Aid and Counsel: The Answers of the Pictures: Private Devotional Panel Painting in Italy around 1300, Jens T. Wollesen.
38. The Language of Passion, Mario Vargas Llosa.
39. In Praise of the Stepmother, Mario Vargas Llosa.
40. Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, Mario Vargas Llosa.
41. A Fish in the Water, Mario Vargas Llosa.
42. The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway.
43. The Politics of Dispossession: The Struggle for Palestinian Self-Determination, 1969-1994, Edward W. Said.
44. Letters to a young Novelist, Mario Vargas Llosa.
45. The Best American Essays, 2010, ed. Christopher Hitchens.
46. Making Waves, Mario Vargas Llosa.

And for those who are interested, incredibly brief reviews of my five favourites:

Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens.

It’s slow to start (I thought I was going to die of the Veneerings!) but it’s the quintessential Victorian novel.

Reheated Cabbage, Irvine Welsh.

I’d given up on Irvine Welsh after The Bedroom Secrets of Master Chefs because it sucked, but I was pleasantly surprised by this collection of short stories.

The Fry Chronicles: An Autobiography, Stephen Fry.

He seems like such a charming, down-to-earth guy. And the book inspired me to watch Blackadder again, which was totally worthwhile.

The Language of Passion, Mario Vargas Llosa.

So glad I stumbled upon this book at BMV! The start of a happy obsession with Mario Vargas Llosa!

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, Mario Vargas Llosa

Imaginative and hilarious. Highly recommended!

The most disappointing book of the year was The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I’ve already trashed it in another entry, but it bears repeating that it was truly dreadful. Minus five points for Cormac McCarthy, add them to Mario Vargas Llosa’s total.

Good Things Come IV

New year, new place, new view. Good is an understatement!

More Odds and Ends

I Am Victory

Nice olive wreath, champ! I’m Victory, the joyous ejaculation of all your anxiety and aggression and arousal. The perfect exceeder. I don’t know anything about losing but I can tell you this: if you ain’t cheating you ain’t trying.

Functional Strength for Women

Can you perform menial household tasks like carrying the recycling to the curb? Can you lift your infant? Can you do the ironing, scrub the floors, and make a decent sandwich? Can you do it all while laboring under the oppressive weight of patriarchy?

Directions

Many recreational activities proceed in a counterclockwise direction: horse racing, ice skating, baseball, lane swimming…

Festive Deadlifts

A Haiku

Drunkenness is not

Conducive to writing haiku.

See?

Good Things Come III

Some quieter views from the balcony…

So Happy!

Last week my enormous brain and I graduated from UofT with High Distinction. It was really windy! My best friend took the photos. Thanks again Lamb!

Good Things Come II

Borrowed balcony. See OCAD!

Good Things Come to Those With Balconies

Satisfaction

You can have many, many things. You can have a whole host of things. A whole phalanx of things! An embarrassment of things! An ostentation! A superfluity! A murder! One of everything! Yes folks, you can have the complete set. A pair of shoes for each of the 2,700 days of the year. You can have a woman in a cage; you can own three hundred souls.

But you cannot, cannot, cannot have It All.