Tag: Delightful things

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So tasty, but so much I am probably mispronouncing on the menu.

So, yesterday was one of those holidays.

You know the ones – the ones that you feel a little conflicted about honoring even if you enjoy a little party every now and then, the ones where it just seems a little too much like you can feel the grinning specter of corporate profit looming over everything.

But it IS nice to have an excuse to celebrate something, especially now, and so I bought a box of chocolates and around lunchtime we realized we’d need to do SOMEthing for dinner but didn’t yet have a plan. After a brief Google search revealed that some places were doing prix fixe meals in honor of the occasion, we rolled the dice and tried shooting an email to a place to see if we could arrange some last-minute takeout from a place we’d never tried before.

To my very great surprise, the answer was “No, sorry, we’re not accepting takeout orders for tonight – but we’ve just had a couple of cancellations. Want to dine in instead?”

Well. I mean. Why not?

And so it was that we found ourselves heading down to St. Clair to try some Filipino food at Lamesa. No sooner had we pulled into the public parking space when a departing driver offered us their parking ticket, which was fortuitously paid through to the next morning. Serendipity was really with us, I suppose!

As to the dinner itself: I am by no means an authority on this particular cuisine – I think I have sampled it a grand total of once – but this was excellent in my opinion. I had:

  • An amuse-bouche of crisp wontons with a sausage filling
  • Ukoy, a kind of shrimp-and-vegetable fritter
  • A main of chicken adobo with rice
  • Mango tiramisu for dessert

All of the courses were tasty, with an interesting balance of textures and of sweet/sour/salt/acid that I think is characteristic of Filipino cuisine in general. These are big, bright, powerful flavors that are easy to linger over with a cocktail. The service was great, too, and the space is charming and cozy – in non-pandemic times I can easily imagine it being a vibrant little neighborhood spot. I’d be interested in going back in order to try some of their other offerings!

…I’d be interested in going anywhere, really. Going out now – being out in the world – really drives home how limited our environments have been during the pandemic. How little there is to do, and how much of what there IS is mediated by screens. It’s been both kind of exciting and kind of exhausting to get out and about in the World these days (I certainly find myself wanting to curl up and not engage with anyone when I get home.) I wonder how long that will take to go away? If it will go away?

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At least it’s Friday?

Today hasn’t been a great day for writing. Thanks to yesterday’s snow I had shoveling taking up the morning timeslot, which is great for bolstering my failing attempts to build an exercise habit but less great for building a writing habit. Lunchtime involves…well, lunch…and this evening we’ll be busy with groceries and whatnot, so…yeah. This may not be the best day for something thoughtful and complex.

In the interest of not having it be a complete wash-out, here are some odds and ends:

  • This website collects games that include “dark patterns” – sneaky tricks that are intended to keep a user playing…or, even more sinister-ly, paying. Helpfully, it also explains what a number of these dark patterns are, and lists games that are more healthy – so if you find your favorite game on the “dark” list, you may be able to find a nicer alternative at the same time. Just mobile games for now, but I kind of hope this takes off; we could use more resources to aid in vetting such things. (via BoingBoing)
  • A favorite local chocolatier is doing a Valentine’s Day-themed array of goodies. If you’re thinking of something to send a sweetheart, consider giving them a try (they’re excellent!)
  • Lots of us (…me included) have been playing the silly little word game Wordle. Enough of us, I guess, that there was a little game jam recently to play with the concept, resulting in a bunch of variations on the theme that Polygon has done a roundup of. Check them out!
  • I have learned a lot about Nicholas Cage today.
  • To pick up on the recent theme of emotions and the naming thereof: this is an interesting article over at the Baffler on the subject. Can naming our feelings – and changing the names we have for them – change how we deal with some of the big Things we face in our future?
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Reason # who-knows-what why it is nice to be a regular

That up there is a special sushi tray put together by our local sushi place. In this our era of not being able to dine out anywhere ever, it made a nice birthday dinner, and I find it rather heartwarming that when my husband went to ask them if they did anything for special occasions they basically said they’d whip something up. Sometimes it is nice to be a regular.

(I think my favorite thing was the row of rolls at left, just below the edamame; that’s a lobster-and-crab concoction that was lightly broiled on top and just a bit spicy. It was also delicious.)

At left, my birthday-cake substitute, also from a local place:

Clockwise from top left: Vanilla with sprinkles, chocolate raspberry, lemon meringue, and chocolate hazelnut.

The bakery has a very cute interior, with little tables with cozy seating, and once again I heartily wished I could order a coffee and sit and look out the window for a while. Sigh. Maybe later.

The day itself was pleasant enough: I spent a chunk of it puttering around taking care of business the way one always seems to on the first day of a vacation, before settling in for an evening hangout in an online game I’ll be talking about a bit tomorrow. Got the usual round of text messages (from younger friends and relations) and phone calls (from older friends and relations); got a walk in; took a little time to meditate.

Overall, it was a pretty good day.

My anxiety did show up in the middle of the night to torment me a bit about this and that – some upcoming paperwork, that creeping 5 a.m. feeling of existential meaninglessness, unease about some of the relationships in my world and whether they are okay – but at least it had the decency to leave me alone on the big day itself.

Today, feeling a bit tired from all that, with a nagging sense of longing that doesn’t seem to want to settle. Doing my best to let it go and re-center; I have a loaf of bread to make, and tonight there will be a mildly ridiculous kitchen experiment wherein I saw a recipe for salisbury steak and thought “you know, I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten one of those” followed by “wouldn’t it be hilarious if I reproduced one of those old-school TV dinners with, like, the mashed potatoes and peas and so on?”

And then of course I had to do that. So that will be tonight.

But first, another coffee.

Delightful thing of the day, via Boing Boing: Marginalia, a search engine that focuses on teeny-tiny sites. Its “random” page is quietly charming/addictive, a little peek into the weird corners of the internet where webrings are a thing and people are still creating shrines to their favorite ships.

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Just a brief Friday visit.

There is a lot going on today (well, “a lot” in pandemic terms – homework to do, errands to run, the week’s groceries to buy, etc.), and as a result I’m not feeling much of a strong throughline, unfortunately.

Still. Doesn’t mean I can’t share a few Delightful Things:

The webcomic Cat’s Cafe, in which a cuddly kitty…well, runs a cafe, where a host of adorable animal patrons come to have a little something delicious and relax, taking a break from the everyday troubles of living. The cuteness does a pretty good job of at least softening the blow when things inevitably become a bit too emotionally Real – and they will do that. Characters struggle with anxiety and low self-esteem and depression; recently the artist has lost his father, and that comes through in some ways that are…uh…yeah. I know that feel. (But don’t let that scare you away, either!)

The “Return of the Mac” pizza available at one of Toronto’s local pizza joints. This absolutely positively does not seem like it should work – it’s a pizza crust, yes, but topped with cheese, onions, “secret sauce,” meat (or Impossible Meat, recently), pickles, and lettuce – a Big Mac in pizza form. It can be a pain to get, too – that lettuce doesn’t travel well, and so you can only order this one via take-out. But. You guys. It’s delicious. No, I don’t understand it either, but give it a chance if you have the opportunity.

The blog McMansion Hell, which I hadn’t thought of in forever and that suddenly returned to mind yesterday. It may or may not be defunct (the last post was a while ago) – but even so those archives are full of delightful snark about a flavor of architecture I remember all too well from the suburbia of my childhood. (There’s also a subreddit taking up the torch, it seems – and every Thursday they take a break to do some appreciation of beautiful architecture, so we can all enjoy looking at some lovely homes none of us could ever realistically afford.)

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Delightful things, February 19, 2020

Today, a food edition:

  1. The experience of “seasoning to taste” – gauging the difference before adding that sprinkle of salt or dash of citrus and after it; sensing the layers of a flavor gradually unfurling with every little adjustment.
  2. Adjunct to that: the long and gradual process of learning what seasonings DO. Learning that the presence of one flavor can enhance another, that sweetness can counter and elaborate on heat, that the vague sense of something missing in a dish is often acidity (and that a dash of apple cider vinegar can convert an already perfectly tasty goulash into a superlative one.)
  3. Layers in a laminated pastry, the ones you’ll see in a well-crafted croissant. The way the crisp edges crinkle between the teeth, little valleys embracing half-melted butter and lacings of sweet-tart jam. Knowing that this, somehow, has been rendered from a heap of flour.
  4. “Blooming” pour-over coffee, pouring hot water over ground beans to encourage them to release any gases trapped in the grounds. They expand, bubbling, releasing a wave of that rich coffee scent.
  5. Watching milk fold into coffee or strong black tea, a kind of fractal swirling that mellows into something softer and warmer. It tames acidity, affects heat retention…and, of course, it’s delicious.