playdate

Procrastinate, Appreciate, Salivate

So, in the interest of not failing, I have decided to put off the torture task that is the Elimination Diet until after the U.S. election after I’m dead after an upcoming weekend at my in-laws. I may be forced willing to give up half the foods that comprise my diet in my own home, but I’m not willing to stand at the stove stirring my millet and kale gruel while everybody else is chowing down on my father-in-law’s amazing grilled pork chops, corn and beer. Can’t do it.

This will be a tough challenge for me, I know. Being a reformed picky eater, I vowed never to stop myself from eating any foods so long as they were healthy, and I’ve never ever been on a diet of any kind. Sacrifice is clearly not my forte.

Meet My New Frenemy

Ok, so, you know how last week I totally told you about how much I love food, and how much of it I eat? Well, ha ha, the joke’s on me, as it seems like that very same food is the stuff keeping my body ripe and riddled with chronic allergies, asthma and excema.

I finally bit the bullet and went to go see my friend/naturopathic doctor concerning my trifecta of complaints, and – as I already knew but didn’t want to deal with – she confirmed that diet indeed plays a huge part in keeping me and my inflamed, overworked immune system down.

Food, it seems, has become my greatest frenemy.

How Many Am I Supposed To Be Eating For?

So, I’m just going to come right out and say something that most women don’t like to admit: I eat. A lot. I mean, a lot, a lot. Like, I’d eat almost constantly if my hands were ever not holding a child. When they aren’t, I eat. To avoid eating again, I try to spend my evenings playing mah jong reading blogs facebooking folding laundry or doing embroidery, or keeping my hands busy in some other way. And then I’ll put whatever I’m doing down, and go eat something because, holy heck, I realize, I’m hungry. 

But, y’know? Here’s something else I’ve realized: for the past 4 years and 2 months straight, I have been pregnant and/or nursing. I have been nourishing two bodies with my one for the past 50 months. No wonder I always need a goddam snack.

Of Picky Eaters And Pancakes

True story:
When I was two years old, I would come downstairs in the morning and announce to my mother that I was not eating dinner that night. And I wouldn’t.

I may well have been the world’s most stubborn eater. That, my friends, is different than picky, and opens a mother up to a whole new world of grief. ‘Picky’ is only agreeing to eat chicken fingers and plain toast for weeks on end. ‘Stubborn’ is deciding that you’re only going to eat one bite of a honey sandwich, and you’re going to eat it only after your mother has pleaded and begged, threatened and negotiated, cried and developed an ulcer.

(I’m sorry to say that is all still part of the true story.)

This Post Will Amaize You

Question: What do whiskey, wallpaper, paper plates, margarine, chewing gum, latex paint, penicillin, asbestos and livestock feed all have in common?

Answer: Ron Wood has snorted each of them in an attempt to get high.

I kid, I kid. At least, I have no proof. No grasshopper, the answer we are looking for here is, each of those items list some form of this one common ingredient as an element of the product, or as an element in the processing of the product.

Know what it is? Not yet?

Brunch: It's Not Just for Pretentious Childless Hipsters Anymore

I’m not one to bitch and moan about the things I’ve given up since becoming a parent, but there are a few things from my pre-baby days that I do sometimes pine for. Sleeping in until whenever I feel like getting up is one of those things. So is actually doing something spontaneously. Hell, there was a time when I didn’t really mean it when I would say that I was too tired for sex. We used to go out for brunch.

Of all of those things (and the few more I could name if I really thought about it, like not having an ass that was big enough for it’s own postal code), I may just miss going out for brunch the most. I have always loved going out for brunch.

During university, brunch was the chance my friends and I had to dissect the previous evening’s adventures, and to sop up the previous evening’s alcohol. Once I was with Chris, it morphed into a more sophisticated urban tradition among all of my sophisticated, urban friends. (As well as an opportunity to sop up the previous evening’s alcohol.)

Relaaaaaaaax

You’re leaning back in a Muskoka chair, which is perched on the end of a well-trod dock. The sun has passed it’s highest point in the sky, and is following an arc to the water’s edge, it’s reflection having already made the journey. Your body is soaked in warmth, and you put your hand down beside you to reach for a cold beer. You bring it slowly to your lips, and –

‘Mama? Mama! Where are you! Mama, I pooped!’

You open your eyes and realize that you are not at the cottage, as you had dreamed, but are sitting on your front porch, and your kid has totally harshed your daydream buzz. a weed-choked lawn is sitting where a cool Northern lake is supposed to be, and that beer you thought you just picked up? Your toddler’s bubbles. Bummer.

These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things

Five years ago, if anyone had asked me what my five favourite things were in my hip little Queen West kitchen, I’m pretty sure the list would have looked like this:

1. The drawer full of take-out menus
2. My Bodum
3. The Mr. Peanut commemorative blue glass jar
4. The two retro baker’s racks
5. The half-q of weed in the freezer

Fast-forward to today, when the take-out menus get a lot less milage, the Bodum has given way to full-size coffee maker that must be buzzing by 8 am, the Mr. Peanut jar shattered in an unfortunate moving accident (grrr), the baker’s racks are stacked with kids’ toys in the basement and the greenest thing in my freezer is a bag of broccoli. Which doesn’t roll very well.

How Does Your Childhood Taste?

When you think of your childhood, what are you eating?

For me, the food of childhood is the food of a frugal, frustrated mother trying to keep her husband and four picky children happy on a tight budget. Things like spaghetti and meat sauce; sausage and peppers; chicken soup with matzo balls; various cheap cuts of meat sprinkled with garlic salt and paprika and stuck under the broiler – that is the stuff that stuffed me as a kid. There were also plenty of signature dishes of differing levels of appeal making their way out of our mother’s kitchen; dishes that my sister and I gave names like ‘Ketchup Stew’ and ‘Monsterloaf.’

Road Trippin'

For me, one of the best things about living in the city is leaving it behind for a few days. Luckily, I married a Toronto transplant whose family is far enough away to feel like we’re going on an actual mini-break when we hit the highway, but no so far away that the kids really have a chance to go apeshit in the backseat out of boredom and frustration en route.

That said, I am wont to being particularly over-prepared for our road trips in order to keep the ‘Are we there yets’ to a minimum, and to keep Mummy from ditching the kids at the rest stop and driving into a silent, delicious oblivion all by herself. Oh, and we like to leave at 6am to increase the chance that they’ll sleep at least half of the way there. Heh heh.