Pride London

Last weekend John and I participated in our first Pride festival, Pride London, starting with the interfaith service. 

The service was led by a pastor from a local United Church of Canada congregation and mostly focused on reconciliation and hope. It was moving and lovely, a great start to the day. I'd really like for my church to participate in Pride next year, and it was interesting to get a sense of what we could participate in, and what other church groups were present. 

After the service, we met up with our friends to march with General Population in the parade. We saw lots of other groups getting ready to march. For example: 

The New Democratic Party (below in the orange) and the liberals were both present. I assume both parties participate every year, but they were especially vocal as we're about to have a "by-election." From what I can tell, it's an election for some Ministers of Parliament (MP) in our area. It's sort of like an election for a representative to your local state house or senate, and it seems to be happening only in the West part of London where we live. 

Anyways, back to the parade, we saw the Regional HIV/AIDS Connection. 

And our group was right behind ARF - Animal Rescue Foundation Ontario. We saw lots of dogs who were excited for Pride! 

John and I marched with a sort of mix of people from UWO's Women's Studies department, our local Graduate Teaching Assistant Union, and Gen Pop, which I've mentioned before. 

Several people present overlapped with all three categories - students, TAs, and fans of Gen Pop.

John and I walked with bookmarks with info about UWO Women's Studies degrees and handed them out along the route.

The "Keep London Queer" banner didn't fare so well in the breeze, but it looked great. In this photo you can see the roller derby girls, the Violent Femmes, waiting to move behind us. 

The dogs from ARF made their way out, bedecked with floral collars. I can't wait to dress our greyhound in a rainbow bandana next year!

I took a picture and cheered for the church groups I saw, including Metropolitan United Church. All but one church group were from the United Church of Canada, the other being Unitarian. It would be great if my Anglican church could participate next year!

We marched behind a pick up truck that played a special Pride playlist to keep us energized for the parade. Anders and Matthew held the Gen Pop banner.

Several people commented on how buried the parade mostly was inside the neighborhood along Queens Ave. Not surprising in conservative London, really. I was pretty impressed with how many people were out to watch the parade, as well as the size of the parade itself. 

We only encountered a handful of conservative Christian protestors. Counter-protestors tried to cover up their signs with rainbow flags.

They quietly held their signs. And this man was peaceful enough to take a photo with some of our group. 

As we exited the park we saw a car painted to celebrate Druids for Pride. It takes all kinds to celebrate Pride. 

Matthew's Birthday, Part 1 and Part 2

This week, London got hit with a part of winter storm Nemo, combined with some regular style lake effect snow from Lake Huron. Everything in town was closed except for UWO and London transit. I spent a snowy Friday in my office, watching it come down. 

A few days before the snow storm, we made the wild rice gratin from the Smitten Kitchen cook book. It's delicious and pretty easy to make. And perfect for snowy weather.

We picked out a recipe from Appetite for Reduction, and then for various reasons, never got around to making it. That recipe shifted to this week's menu, which will be simple because it's the last week before "spring" break.

Today is my friend Matthew's birthday! He had a whole weekend full of celebrating. 

Part one: General Population, aka, Gen Pop.

Matthew helped create Gen Pop, a monthly dance party-fundraiser for an LGBT youth group in London. This weekend was Gen Pop's one year anniversary, so Matthew baked 70 cupcakes and passed them out at the bar. His partner  (and hilariously talented comedian) Anders presented him with a lit tray of cupcakes and we all sang Happy Birthday.

Part Two: on Saturday night we had Matthew and Anders over with a few other friends for a birthday dinner. The menu: two kinds of quiche, roasted potatoes, herbed biscuits, and chocolate fondue (no pictures, because I was focused on the food). John decided to put up some robot/serial killer style flyers for decoration.

(also a reference to The Office, of course)

And now, I'm in the process of turning the left-over quiche ingredients into a breakfast casserole. 

Things are looking up this week. Only one more week until our vacation, it's going to be at least 30 degrees for several days, and by Friday, ALL THE CHOCOLATE THINGS will be on sale. As Tim Best would say, keep hope alive.

After John's Colloquium Talk

Yesterday, John gave a paper in our colloquium series at school. Giving a paper takes a lot out of a person. So afterward, we went with some classmates to Matthew's house for pizza and drinks.

John, posing for his GQ photo spread.

Matthew is a gracious host. Here he is posing with one of his favorite LPs.

For some reason, everyone took a turn doing squats before the pizza arrived. Bunch of show offs.

We capped off the night with a visit to the Early Bird, one of our favorite spots for any time of day, but especially late at night. Here's John enjoying a Pimm's cup.

In other news, John and I are making our way through the Appetite for Reduction. This week: Mango BBQ Beans with Fresh Corn and Scallion Cornbread. Both are easy recipes. I can tell Isa Chandra intended most of this food to be week-night friendly. Also, the combination of spices and liquid smoke in the beans is amazing - it has a great BBQ flavor. We made a double batch, thank goodness.

Gym Christmas Days 12 and 13

Yeah, I missed a day of blogging. Since I turned in my second directed study and then hosted a party last night, I don't feel too bad about it. Also it's hard to feel like your work outs are that important after what happened in CT yesterday. Here's yesterday and today's Gym Christmas updates. 

Gym Christmas Day 12!

Work out: 2k swim. 

I did basically the same work out I tend to do, except there were no pull buoys, so I made an adjustment: 

• 400m freestyle warm up
• 6 X 200ms, alternating swimming and kicking (no pulling). 
• 400m free cool down. 

Finals week is a great time to swim or do anything at the gym really. I think swimming once a week has been really good for my brainz. 

GYMGO: I checked off a Get Wet box that didn't really advance my GYMGO chances.

Then, John and I had some UWO friends over to decorate "Gender Non-Specific Gingerbread Persons," as Matthew likes to call them. I used a recipe from America's Test Kitchen's Family Cookbook, and cookie cutters that my Aunt Becky gave me two summers ago - including a couple of turkeys and menorahs. 

Let's count gingerbread cookies and dough as the thing I ate.

The one menorah was turned into a martini glass, about 6 o'clock in this picture.

And one person made this very attractive Ginger Pope.

Gym Christmas Day 13!

Work out: 3-ish mile run with John around the neighborhood. Based on my perceived level of effort, I'd say we did more like 3.2 or so, since it was more like a tempo run. But we didn't map the route before or after, we just ran around for 32 minutes.

GYMGO: Socialcize, aka, GYMGO #2! Woo hoo!

Thing I ate today: definitely no more gingerbreads. I sent the leftovers home with our friends. But I did a healthy portion of the greek olive hummus I got at the store this week. Mmmm olives in hummus.

Jess and Alex's Wedding

Two weeks or so ago, our good friends Jessica (aka my favorite hippie) and Alex got married in Toronto. John, Matthew, and I made the trip for what turned out to be a fantastic weekend. 

Some highlights: 

Between the ceremony and the reception, we stopped at a bar with some other wedding guests for a drink, and John found this giant Muskoka Brewery chair outside. 

The bride and groom met out in British Columbia, where they were tree planting during the summer, several years ago. A lot of their decor reflected their love of the environment and the landscape out in BC. I jokingly asked the groom how many trees were cut down to make this entrance hall display, and he told me they were already dead. 

Here's me and my favorite hippie on her wedding day: 

The tablecloths were made from burlap, and each place setting was decorated with a few small pinecones. For favors, each place setting received a little sapling, to be planted at home.

Their wedding was at the Baptist church where the bride's father is a pastor, and the reception was at the University of Toronto, in Wycliffe College. It was so beautiful in there! We had dinner in a hall that looked like a library, attached to what may have been a chapel at one point. It was a gorgeous venue with lots of stained glass, and ample room for dancing after dinner (which was amazing! So much great vegetarian food!).

The groom's family comes from Austria, and after dinner, his dad led everyone in some traditional Austrian songs for occasions like weddings.

They had an amazing band that was at once, incredible, but also difficult for me to know how to dance to. Instead, we mostly sat and talked with one our favorite professors who was in attendance.

This painting is part of why I think the room used to be a chapel. We tried for a while to come up with captions for the scene in the painting (Easter morning and the empty tomb, in case you were wondering). The winner was definitely Matthew's partner, Anders, who said, "Whose got two wings and is totally drunk? THIS GUY!"

We stayed at the wedding until late, and then went to the after party. The next day, I didn't have the energy to do much, and the touristy run that John and I tentatively planned went right out the window. Instead, we went with Matthew and our friend Emily, who was hosting us, to a place called Snakes and Lattes. It's a cafe where you pay $5 to get in for the day, and then you can play unlimited boardgames. We started off with Nutella lattes and a game called Cards Against Humanity, which is sort of the R-rated version of Apples to Apples. 

After an hour or so, we moved on to Betrayal at the House on the Hill. This game involves exploring a haunted house by rolling die, until a certain moment when "The Haunting" begins. At that point, one of the players betrays the rest and you have to act as a group in order to defeat him or her. It was obvious that you could play this game a hundred times and end up with a different scenario. After Matthew described it to us, John immediately announced that he wanted it for Christmas.

I'm normally not a huge board game/rpg player, but I really enjoyed Snakes and Lattes, and both of these games, very much. John LOVES playing games like this, and he was sort of overwhelmed with excitement when we walked in; the place is stocked with every kind of game you can think of, and the staff is incredibly knowledgeable, so they can help you select something to suit your mood. It was a great way to spend Sunday afternoon before driving home.

All in all, we had a great weekend, and we're so grateful to be included in Jess and Alex's wedding day!

Sushi Making Party!

One of the things I miss most, now that I'm a vegetarian, is sushi. Some places offer creative, delicious vegetarian options, but they aren't as common. Recently, I started to think I could probably make my own sushi. When I say "homemade sushi," I mostly mean maki rolls, since they are fairly straight forward: just some rice, sheets of nori, and veggie fillins'. How hard could it be? What could possibly go wrong? 

(I refer you to the robot ccokie monsters, and the terrifying snowman cookies, but two examples of how I've demonstrated just how hard it can be.)


John and I consulted a couple of sources before setting out to make the maki rolls. First, we used a book that came in a set of things his mom gave him a couple years ago, for making sushi at home: Simply Sushi, by Steven Pallett. This book came in super handy, and we used it to make the sushi rice - by far the most time consuming and impressive part of the meal. How can rice taste so good? It's amazing, and well worth the time. Pallett also gives a guide to all the products you need to make sushi, and where to find them. I used his book to make our shopping list.

Going to buy the ingredients was a whole other part of our sushi-cultural experience. We went to United Supermarket, aka, the happiest place on earth, our favorite Asian supermarket. Here's the thing: I've never bought sushi rice before. And they have probably 20 kinds of rice, with very little English in their labels. So when we went to find it, I was the confused white girl in the rice aisle, saying things like, "This is short grain white rice. But it's from Thailand? Should it say sushi on it?"
Yes, it should. We also took a while to find the nori sheets, since kombu (a different kind of seaweed product) was sold in a separate aisle. Yaki-nori sheets were the ones we needed, and we happily stumbled upon them.
John and I also watched the sushi episode of Good Eats, where Alton Brown gave step-by-step directions that matched Palletts perfectly (side note: you can find the whole episode, "Wake Up Little Sushi," on youtube). After that we relied solely on the book, since all the directions were so consistent.

Ok. On to the sushi!
We asked Matthew to come over for dinner, since we hadn't seen each other in a while, and because he seems to have finely honed culinary instincts. He had also been to a make-your-maki party before.

First, we layed a half sheet of nori on a rolling screen (which came with the book). John covered it in what turned out to be 100% too much rice.

He drew a line down the center with a tube of wasabi, also purchased at United Market.

He stuffed it with avocado, mango, and a (fried) sweet potato. I didn't fry the taters, so much as cook them in oil in a skillet, to save time. John rolled it, per instructions, tucking the fillings in with his fingers as he went.

In the end, it looked like a little sushi-burrito hybrid, with the filling bursting out. We quickly learned that less is more, if you want the roll to close. The picture below is of his first roll after we cut it. So instead of plating that one, we just ate it in pieces off the cutting board, and went on to the next attempt. And it turns out that falling-apart-sushi tastes just like regular, beautiful sushi!

John went about a second attempt, while Matthew tried for an inside-out roll, where the rice is on the outside. He figured this would allow for more fillings.
First, he covered a half sheet of nori with rice, as before, and sprinkled it with sesame seeds.

Then he flipped it over. Note: for inside out rolls, we put a sheet of plastic wrap on the rolling screen, and it worked perfectly.
With the nori-side up, he layered on mango and avocado.

Then he rolled it up, and it looked great! This one completely hung together, so we cut it and put it on a serving tray to eat when we had a couple of other successful rolls.

Naturally, I forgot to take pictures of everything once we started eating (the gin and tonics may have had something to do with that...and they might be the reason why so many of these pictures are a tad blurry). But I did snap a picture of the last roll I made: also just avocado and mango.

It was my most successful one.

Here's another shot of a moderately successful roll on the serving tray.

 

The biggest lesson we learned was to keep it simple. John and I tried to think of a bunch of fun veggie fillings, and we had too many. While the mango, avocado, sweet potato, and shiitakes were gone by the end of the evening, we didn't even touch the carrots or cucumber (but we ate them separately the next day). But keeping the shiittakes were the one thing about this dinner that we did absolutely right: I just gave them a quick sautee in some soy sauce with a little sugar, and they were so good. We got a big package of them at the market, and I would completely do that again. Shiitakes are very easy to over cook, so they probably only spent 2 minutes in the pan, max. The texture was perfect, and they went well with all the other ingredients. 

 

I think that's Matthew's sushi face.

All in all, we were so happy with this meal! It turns out, sushi is hard to make, especially hard if you want it to look nice. But everything tasted fantastic. The three of us agreed that making it gave us a whole new respect for chefs in sushi bars who just crank out beautiful rolls all evening, in minutes. That's some real skill.

Now that we know how to make it and what to expect, I think we would definitely make this again. But we'll probably wait until we have an occasion to have a couple people over, since it's definitely a fun group activity.