NaNoWriMo 2012

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That's right. I'm a glutton for punishment, and I can't help myself, so I've once again dragged myself back into NaNoWriMo for another non-stop year of literary pain and/or insanity. It's totally okay though, because I've recruited my roommate, part of my Brit Lit study group and maybe a couple others to join me in glorious battle.

To be honest, I'm not even playing to win this year. If I do, I'll be a shocked, appalled and y'all better declare me as your leader. November promises to be busier than Christmas with the McCallisters, only with less hilarious booby traps and heartwarming charm, and more carpal tunnel. WOOF. Not only will I have all of my schoolwork to juggle, but also the occasional assignment for school newspaper, the building of a genuine 20-something social life, plus later in the month, JILL IS COMING TO VISIT! She's going to be my first visitor and I'm already freaking out about taking her ALL-OF-THE-PLACES and we're going to eat ALL-OF-THE-FOOD.

(Aside: I like listing these things like I won't spend a large chunk of the month napping/watching TV.... Both of which MAY have to be sacrificed to the deities of writing for the sake of keeping my head above water. Sort of. Maybe I'm not kidding anyone though. Nappers gon' nap, even a little.)

I'm going to write another blog post some day SOON, because stories are cool and so are you, and you two deserve each other. For now, I have to go cut up a mango, do some midterm review and then hit the hay. 

Killer Queen

My cat is a psychotic killer.

Sunday, Bek and I drove back in Montréal after celebrating Thanksgiving in Ontario with our fam-a-lams. We spent 7 hours in the car in the midst of a cold blooded murder machine and we had NO IDEA. (To his credit, he did a good job of whining pitifully for 75% of the trip, scaling the head rests and sleeping for the remaining 25%. Crafty as.)

When we arrived safe and unscathed back in our apartment, I went to put on my moccasins. As I picked them up, I spotted something odd on the floor. My first thought was one of those tumbleweeds of hair and fluff that seems to accumulate in corners of the obsessively un-compulsive. My second was a hairball. My third was horror.

I leaned closer and realized I saw a long tail and two hind legs, as well as a dash of spinal chord. Where the head and the other half of that mouse disappeared, I don't think I'll ever know.

As I stared down at the massacre, Bek asked me what was wrong and I lightly explained to her in a voice that had been through a sugary sieve that the cat had gone rogue and caught whatever he had stalking under the fridge for the past few days, leaving some for later.

I watched my roommate grab the broom and proceed to sweep up the mouse corpse off of my floor. Except she chiseled it off-- because apparently it had been there long enough to have dried onto the wood.

Did I mention this is the roommate who (apart from odd gallant moments) has to call me into the room to handle any spiders?

P.S. HAPPY NATIONAL COMING OUT DAY FROM ME AND MY GAY KITTY. (Seriously. Everyone in my family doubted it until he tried to molest all the boys we brought home. 'Cause he's a STUPID FABULOUS BETCH.<3)

 For your viewing pleasure, me, messing with my Mama.

I Dream of Gnocchi

SO, I have a food post for y'all. I didn't really take too many pictures because I was busy thinking that this was going to turn into a complete disaster or be mediocre or at least be one of THOSE dishes. Disappointing or unimpressive:

We're our own worst critics, at least until Kuzco gets involved. What can I say? Despite the odds, the dish turned out awesome. When I make more friends dans Montréal, in my magical dream scenario, I would cook this and bring it to a pot luck.

It was an experiment, after I saw a recipe for a Vegan pasta sauce that was similar to an alfredo, but made with acorn squash. What did I happen to have after my adventure in impulsively grabbing produce at our local fruiterie this week? You guessed it, acorn squash.

I'm an addict for creamy pasta sauces and I was craving comfort food after a tired Monday in classes. It's a little work intensive, not because any of the steps are TOUGH, just because there several of them to be taken in the process.
So if you make this at all (DO IT), set aside time and DON'T BE STARVING when you start. Also, don't be Vegan. Also, don't be scared. Cooking without a recipe from your brain is an art.

Now's let's make some delicious art, baby.

Riley's Experiment Turned Totally Awesome Squash Gnocchi

Ingredients
• 1/2 baked acorn squash, peeled (Slice squash in half. Gut it. Put the halves face down on a baking tray or casserole dish with a half inch of water in the bottom. Bake at 350 for 45-60 minutes, until the flesh is tender and the skin peels off easily. If you're cooking for a crowd, use the whole squash and 2 packs of gnocchi, maybe?)
• Cream cheese
• Milk
• 2 cloves garlic, minced (depending on how much you like garlic, add more or add less)
• Cooking oil of some kind
• Salt & Pepper (freshly ground if you have it)
• 1 package potato gnocchi
• basil, fresh or dry
• some type of hard Italian cheese associated with pasta on the regular. Serious, Parm, Parm Reggiano, whatever you've got on hand. 

 #1. In a bowl, mash together the squash, cream cheese and splashes of milk. Stir until it has a thick, creamy texture. (This is totally up to you, how much you add of everything. Thinner sauce? More milk. Flavour? More cream cheese.)

#2. Brown garlic in a saucepan with a splash of oil, not too much, (this is all going into the sauce) but enough so the pieces don't stick to the bottom of the pan. When it's a toasty golden colour, pour the contents of the saucepan in with the squash mixture.

#3. If you don't mind bits of garlic, you can totally throw this back on the burner now (put it all back in the saucepan from the bowl first) on low heat, stirring so it doesn't burn. I was looking for a really smooth texture so I spooned the sauce into my blender and let it rip until I felt it had been sufficiently whipped into silky goodness.  At the same time, get a pot of salted water on the boil for the gnocchi.

#4. Rip up a few fresh basil leaves and add them, plus a small amount (at most 1/3 of a cup) of my good friend Parm Reggie, grated, and stirred until it combined and melted. Salt and pepper the sauce to your taste.

#5. Cook the gnocchi in the boiling water, according to the package. (Note: When they float to the surface, they're done. GET THEM OUTTA THERE, into the nearest colander like a bad-pasta-ass action film.) 

A neat trick I like to use to thin out my sauce is to ladle pasta water into it a bit at a time. The starch from the noodles gives the sauce body, or something. I'm making that up, but it makes sense to me, OKAY?

#5. When the gnocchi are all cooked, add them into the sauce pot and stir until they're evenly coated. Then, MANGE. Slightly sweet, garlicky, creamy sauce enrobing pillowy soft gnocchi. Not bad for a shot in the dark dinner experiment! Next time, I might add more veg, like onions or wilt some baby spinach into it...

Do not even lie, you want this in your face.

Reboots

Bek and I wanna get the fashion blog up and running again because we...like fashion. Montreal, and the Plateau where we live in particular is chock full of kitschy and trendy stylish people all over the place. It's inspiring to see so many modes of aesthetic. Personally, I feel inclined to start dressing with personal flair, or at least begin blogging about it again. Hopefully, we'll see more activity in that direction in a little while.

(Maybe not this weekend. We have the Pop Montreal festival to attend. And I have homework. And writings. AND. AND AND AND AND--)

The important part is that we make it more manageable. One of the hardest things about running V is for Velvet before was that it was so time consuming to make outfits in photo shop, hunt down trends and samples, code the HTML for EVERY item we had to link, that sort of thing. It's important that we be consistent, but it's also important for us to have a LIFE... Which is why we moved here in the first place. A changing of the pace so to speak.

Here's a little sample... I can't get the button to work, but if you happen to have a Lookbook account, you can click the pic and be transported. (Ooooooh.)

Also, I got my first piece of Montreal mail yesterday! A little card from my mom, testing the system so to speak. It was written dans tout le Francais, which was some adorably awful French. I later found out Google was responsible for poor translation, so let this be a lesson to you, kids. DIY.

A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Muffin

In case you couldn't tell (or you don't like reading-- GIRL, GO HOME) I'm back in school and the student life. The sore shoulders from backpacks, the early morning class & coffee combo, the rambling sentences about creating a general atmosphere of my current life experience. In one of my lectures (British Literature to 1660) as her introduction, the professor told us a little bit about herself. She said that when she was working on her Ph.D her escape from the mountains of pressure was sewing.

Well I might not be after a Ph.D, but this is my first time in university and I'm already apprehensive about what's expected of me. I'm no slouch when it comes to school. I slack like the Dickens, but when push comes to procrastination, I get it all done in the end. What I'm leery of is whether or not I'll be able to get a grip on all the higher thinking. University is filled with big concepts and it's built to open up your mind and teach you things to change the way you see the world. I just want to understand it. And survive. And not ruin my future. No worries, right? 

I might not be much of a seamstress, but apart from blogging and running, one of my best escapes from the pressures of life is baking and cooking. Paper panic? Cookies. Bad day? Squash Risotto. Another part of being a student is counting every penny and putting it to good use. Use meaning, when life gives you browning bananas, you make good on your money and bake muffins.

Moist, delicious, wholesome banana muffins from the recipe your mama swears by. So, last night, I threw on some tunes, my apron and brewed some coffee in my favourite mug. (Great Gays, ASSEMBLE!)

Monsieur Smith's Mix & Match Muffins

 CAST:
1 cup oats
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp each cinnamon & nutmeg
1 tsp baking soda 
1/2 tsp salt 

2 eggs (room temp)
1 1/2 cups yogurt (I used greek, vanilla)
1/2 cup oil 
Dash of vanilla
1 cup fruit of your choice (MASHED BANANAS!)

1. Get two mixing bowls, one bigger than the other. The big one is for dry ingredients, the smaller one, wet ingredients. Sift all the siftables into the bigger bowl. Then added the brown sugar, oats, and salt. Mix it!

2. Combine the wet ingredients in the smaller of the two mixing bowls. Eggs, yogurt, oil, vanilla. Blee bloo blee blah.

3. Mash up! You don't have to mash the fruit if you use other kinds, but bananas work better in muffins mashed. So I got to work, like a boss. Fork. Measuring cup. Badassery.

 

When you've adequately expressed all your angst and rage and panic, add your bananas to the rest of the wet ingredients and stir.

4. This is where the magic happens. You see, when two mixing bowls love each other very very much....

They add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients to make muffin batter. Stir just enough to incorporate the two together, no more and no less! Overmixing makes for tough muffins.

5.  Heat your oven to 350 degrees. Grease 1 1/2 muffin tins. (My mama said this batter makes 12 muffins. I want to live in her world of titanic muffin tins and humongous carbs. For the rest of us, two muffin tins are probably a good idea.)

Basically, use as many tins are you need. These babies rise, but not by much. I got 18 muffins from this recipe...
6. Bake 20-25 minutes, until a knife comes out clean.

7. Bask in your glorious, oaty children.

8. Now eat them. Bek put butter on one half of hers, and peanut butter on the other. I tried mine with pumpkin seed butter. Both were amazing.

The muffins are dense, moist, not too sweet but tasty. There's nothing quite like fresh baked goods... The best thing about baking is that it also ensures you have food ready to eat when you need a quick snack or a study break.

Uhh. I got muffin else to say here...

BYE!

Well, there's always next weekend.

Stuff I Did This Weekend: 

vendredi
• Went to a "meet & greet" with staff of Concordia's independent student newspaper, "The Link" (and signed up to be a contributor to several categories.)
• Hit up a local microbrew with The Link staff, sampled both raspberry and honeybrown beers.  (Notes: both, good.) Also, listened to Bekah debate the merits of different Bowie albums with an Irishman. Met a journalist grad who majored in Russian studies, spoke fluent Russian and gave us three reasons why his apartment was haunted.
• Walked home in the rain, threw on the new Darkness CD and fell asleep even though I was SO SURE I WASN'T TIRED.

samedi
• Slept in. (durr.)
• Trekked out to Value Village to find some back to school garb, and ended up with three pieces and 5 books-- more than I meant to buy. (Oops.)
• Went for a solid 5K run. Upon which I threw down Hans Zimmer's The Dark Knight Rises soundtrack and ran like I WAS the Batman. (Cape not included.)
• Read T.S. Eliot and Allen Ginsberg aloud, lying on my yoga mat, in the kitchen, to Rebekah.
• Split for the evening to the Village, danced like a FREAK, and then split early. Last trains are the despair of my dancing shoes.
• We made the mutual decision that 1AM was a premature turn in on a Saturday night and thus, headed out to the legendary La Banquise, a 24-hour poutine joint. ATE EVERYTHING. Seriously. (Bek: La Elvis. Me: La Matty.)

La Elvis

 

I realize this looks like the most disgusting thing ever (all poutine does), but there is steak and green peppers and gravy and that's all you need to know.

 

• Walked home. C'est froid.

dimanche
• grocery shopped
• tidied my room
• made epically good vegetarian chili
• put up the rest of my picture frames
• #occupied Second Cup to steal their internet. (The money I'm going to save when I don't have to buy tea to use their internet connection is going to be awesome. Like. Seriously, 4 bucks a week.)

Stuff I Didn't Do this Weekend:
• laundry
• cocaine

The French Revolution: Welcoming Party

I keep having these moments where everything seems to fall into perfect, clean lines. Seconds of belonging, kind of what I've been looking for as I get my footing in this brave new place. Some solace or reassurance, that I wasn't alone, that I have a chance to make it out of here alive. (Maybe even better off?)

#1. Bek and I went out to look for a bar. It was our first Saturday in the city (well, the first where we weren't covered in moving dirt, sweat and exhausted) and it was not to be wasted. After spending the afternoon making our little flat into a little home (pictures hung, vinyls spinning, stocking the fridge with fresh veggies from our nearby fruiterie) we were too tired to go dancing, but not too tired to go out and sit on our butts with a cold drink. So we got dressed and wandered out into the night to find a scene.

The nightlife in Montreal is the stuff of legends (says the tour book that Jill got me for my birthday). The night was cold with the first mumble of autumn making us wish we had brought scarves. Each bar or pub or bistro we passed promised something different. One, a young scene, loud and boisterous. The next, sophisticated, wine swilling patrons with square plates and assembled, precarious appetizers. People wandered this way and that through the streets. No one clear direction was marked as the path to the par-tay.

We decided on Chez Baptiste, not sure why, but with our eyes on it, we both decided it would be a good place to check out. Mutual, mind connection decision made. Inside, the bar was dark and the Black Keys blared over the speakers. People wore berets and thick rimmed glasses without a sense of any irony whatsoever. Our waitress asked us where we were from and we explained we have moved, and it was our first week dans la ville. A few minutes later she came back with a tray, and on it, three shots. "Welcome to Montreal!" And I can't be sure whether the warmth from this welcome was me being genuinely moved, or from hard alcohol. Either way, we left a few hours later in high spirits and thanked the waitress again on our way out the door.

#2. Today at school, I discovered they serve a free vegan lunch from Monday to Friday. I gawked at the wealth of the young and the hip and the smart and the beautiful. I felt, like this was a place where my passions, my interests and my morals were aligning. I learned about poets and my prof talked about epiphanies and Oscar Wilde and poetry. Hipster Mecca. Who knows, sooner or later I might even get to call it my home, instead of that place where I just happen to have landed at the moment.

#3. I even wandered into a pet store, and bought a scratching post for the cat using my lame French skills. Bravo, moi. Bravo! The house is more or less emptied of cardboard boxes, too. I made a vegetable stock out of the bits and pieces of cut up vegetables Bek and I haven't made use of. The weather is getting colder and stuff is starting to come together.

Keep calm, and carry on, y'all.