Welcome to my indulgence

Sunday drives and grocery trips:
A recent Sunday afternoon drive to Cambridge, simply because we could, reminded me of my childhood. My father often took the family on a trip through the Annapolis Valley countryside just for the fun of driving around and seeing the sights (mostly trees and hills, fields and cows, the occasional horse). Our recent Sunday drive, not for errands or necessities or any other reason than we had gas in the car and a desire to eat someplace besides Hamilton, took us through what I started calling "Lilacville," aka Flamborough, on the way to Cambridge. Never having seen so many blooming lilac bushes and lilac copses in one area, my head swivelled around so much that I almost tweaked a muscle: I yelled, "Look-it the size of that mass of lilac bushes!" and "Look-it that colour on those lilacs!" about a hundred times, and then I realized I hadn't tried to take a single photo. The one I finally got (see pics below) shows a wall of lilacs at the moment we entered Cambridge. The whole time we were driving through "Lilacville," we kept singing to each other "Bring it on down to Lilacville" in our best impression of Justine Timberlake on SNL; what a great way to spend a Sunday drive through the countryside, making each other laugh and smile.

Liquorville SNL Sketch with Justin Timberlake - Click here for more home videos

Rest of Sunday drive pics follow:

A wall of lilacs in "Lilacville" (giggle!)

One of the beautiful stone houses in Flamborough/Cambridge

This sign was too good: had to take a picture

Never heard of this business before: but a great name!

Dan and Mulligan at the river look-off in Cambridge

Look at the camera, not at the squirrels!

Is that a swan? Look-it the size of that bird!

Yes, it's a swan (new camera zoom is LAME)

Pretty parting shot (new camera macro is awesome)

I have a feeling all my blog posts from now on will be photo essays: I'm having so much fun with my new camera. I even used it during food-shopping today. Every time I step into the local "upscale" grocery store, I revel in the ultimate hedonism of the experience. The epicurean display titillates me to the point of feeling giddy and guilty of my enjoyment of this food circus that we 21st-century denizens call a necessity of life. A few items we spied on our trip today produced more giggles, maybe not as many as "Lilacville," but close:

Forever trying to capture people's imaginations and taste buds with odd potato chip flavours: I didn't buy these because they sound too weird.

A new-to-me snack option: okra chips (I think I'll stick with potato chips for now)

Wall O' Caffeine (nuff said)

Food challenge issued: my D. says, "Make a dish with these Lupini beans!"
"What are Lupini beans?" I asked. The guy who had been following us around the store,
watching me take pictures, responded "Beans are beans"  in a very dry manner.

Beans are beans, but it turns out the Lupini beans are quite bitter, and a definite challenge to cook with, so we'll see what happens. Be assured, if anything does turn out edibly from this food dare, I will post the results, with pictures!

Royal Pho

We've found a new favourite place to eat: Royal Pho at the Meadowlands in Ancaster. I hadn't really tried pho before I ate it at this place a few weeks ago, but once I had rare beef pho here, I was hooked. We went again this week (we're almost regulars lately!), and it was delicious again. This food takes such good pictures that I decided to share. Yes, I know, another food blog, which has been the main topic on my mind lately and I just got a new camera, so of course I'm going to post about our meal outings.

Appetizers: crab & cheese wontons and salad rolls

Beautiful basil and sprouts to stir into your pho

Forgot to take the pic until the soup was half-gone; this is a small of the rare beef pho

Veggies and tofu, such fresh and colourful veggies!

My love affair with noodles knows no bounds, and finding a new place like this just feeds my addiction. I actually almost made a package of ramen this morning for breakfast. I even found a movie about noodles: Ramen Girl, which I highly recommend (except for the ending, but it is a Hollywood flick).
Today we tried the new Mr. Dumpling Express at the Dundurn Plaza, but it was very disappointing. High marks for the decor and the friendly service, and the sesame chicken, but the dumplings were sub-par (they didn't have the steamed Thai dumplings advertised on their menu, so I opted for steamed chicken), the spring rolls had a weird taste, and the excessive packaging for an eat-in meal was depressing. I don't know if we'll go back, but the prices are okay, and it's nearby, and the Szechuan Vegetables and Tofu were also okay. For a place called Mr. Dumpling, that part of the menu was supremely disappointing, mostly just the basics, and one item not even available in their first week of business. And let me tell you something, Mr. Dumpling, even if you put a pound of filling in each dumpling, if it doesn't have good flavour, then it still won't be successful. Darn, I had such high hopes for a place like that opening in my neighbourhood. I would recommend Dragon Court in Westdale over Mr. Dumpling any day of the week. There, two restaurant reviews in one blog. Whew!

Cooking Red Corn

On a recent trip to the grocery store I bought some bicoloured corn, something new to try cooking. Since the weather was so unsettled today, and I had the irrational weather theory that if I set up the BBQ it would immediately start to rain, I opted to roast the corn in the oven. One of my favourite spring/summer salads is a black bean mixture that I thought would go great with the roasted corn. A new camera has inspired me to take photos of almost everything, and a friend's food pictures of her culinary adventures are always so wonderful, that I had to try a food blog entry. Here are the pics from our nice dinner of roasted corn and black bean salad.

Bicoloured red corn from the grocery store

Corn with butter and spices, ready for the oven

Black bean salad ingredients

Salad prior to mixing

Finished plate with an egg bun and some peach chutney

 Yum! And I have enough salad left over to stuff into taco shells with extra salsa tomorrow for a quick supper prior to heading out for trivia night. Wish I could post this in taste-o-vision because black bean salad is scrumptious.

Munch

The only thing that keeps me sane when I have the respiratory flu is to eat as often as I feel like it. Some people, such as my D. who gave me this virus (thanks, D.!), lose all appetite when they are sick; I am the opposite: I am positively ravenous, every three hours. I cannot eat giant portions (luckily), but all I can think about besides the coughing and the headache and the chills is what I am going to eat next. I mean, my body is craving so I'm listening. I don't need to add self-restraint to the agony of dealing with influenza, therefore I just give in. Luckily my D. was feeling up to a quick car ride to the grocery store yesterday in the late afternoon, because I had devoured almost everything in the house in two days. He returned with pizza, sushi, cookies, orange juice, a dream! Thanks, D., you rock!
My being home and eating all the time is driving the poor dog bonkers. She is restless from few walkies and drooling all the time from the excess food flying through the house. Poor thing, I felt so bad for her today that I bundled up and trudged to the park. She blasted around in the snow as though she had never seen the stuff before, poor housebound pupster!
But after that exertion, you guessed it, I'm hungry again. This blog post was meant to be longer, and yet my stomach is assailing me, gotta go eat. Thanks for tuning in, and stay well; I wouldn't wish this flu on my worst enemy.

Clench

I have now spent at least 31 years in a state of clench. I only recently noticed that was my main problem in dealing with my life after discovering that a newly tried activity or two could actually make me feel relaxed, a state that was almost foreign to me. Women like me, who can never really relax, who feel the worst could happen at any second and therefore must remain on guard, who cannot yield to the joie of a given moment for fear of the judgment of others, women like that, like me, clench over many, many things.
And yes, this constriction started more than 30 years ago. As a child, I was often told to suck in my stomach, something I did every day, all day, once I was told that no woman should have the rounded distended belly of a child, and god how I wanted to get over/through/out of the childhood nightmare and become a woman, so I sucked it in and have remained taut in that area since that time. I mean, under the layer of fat (achieved from living a rather decadent lifestyle for the past 16 years), I have ab muscles of steel, even giving myself a diaphragm cramp now and then because I can't seem to ever release that particular clench. Makes it hard to breathe properly sometimes.
When I did "become a woman," that state of being added another clamp on my physical nature: god forbid anyone would ever know it was that time of the month. Hold it in, hold in the pain, the emotions, the symptoms, act like nothing negative or distressing was happening every single month.
Oh, and when you get a little older, you notice how they mouth off on tv about these Kegel exercises, which you can even do at work. Yes, let's think up another way to get all the women in the office place to feel uncomfortable. "Darling, you don't want to wear a diaper when you're old, do you? Well, clench it up right now, do those clenchers every day, no one will know, just do them at your desk." Some tv and movie writers seem to think it's a big joke because I cannot count how many different shows I've seen that "gag" in. My 80-year-old grandmother used to tell me about her Kegel exercise routine, and yes she never had to wear a diaper, so I guess there's something to it. But she was also one of the most clenched-up women I've ever known, so maybe the Kegel just came naturally to her.
Even sitting here writing this now, instead of experiencing a catharsis or a release, I can feel all the different little bits of my body entering their state of compression. I think I need to write a poem about this topic in order to really impress on myself that I have much work to do in this area.
And don't even get me started on the various ways "the clench" has permeated my state of mind and my emotions and how I interact with people. That is a whole another blog post, maybe, in the future. One of those psychological clenches has been keeping me from blogging much too. Luckily, a couple people I follow in the blog-o-sphere have inspired me to keep on keepin' on.
Once I realized that I was spending an inordinate amount of my time in one type of clench or another, I began trying to learn how to relax more. It is a deep and bitter struggle for me, to accept a state of being that is so foreign, yet so delicious and rewarding once achieved. I must continue to do these new activities that help me achieve "the relax."
And yet, sometimes I think that maybe I should embrace my typical state of being, get to know it better, glean some strengths from it, understand how it makes me feel safe and secure to be so so so clenched, somehow in control of something when I really have no control over anything at all. I could even use "the clench" as my new coat of arms:

clenched human fist, armour