We are sick, we are sick, we are sick, sick, sick.

If you are among the handful of people who've read this little serial of mine since its humble beginnings, you'll know this already, but here it is. When I get sick, this blog becomes devoted to sketchy recipes and obsessive documentation of classic (and not so classic) television. I've been holed up for the last 2 days and find it vaguely comforting that I still resort to the same old tricks to make myself feel well again. I'm also incredibly thankful to have a real couch now, because taking sickroom naps on my dilapidated old love seat was really angst-provoking. Adulthood ain't so bad.

Anyway, here's what I made tonight.

Quinoa Pudding

(Inspired in part by the Joy of Cooking's rice pudding recipe--Volume II, page 458--and in part by this)

3/4 cup quinoa
1 cup water
1/2 cup milk (skim or soy or almond, whatever. I used skim dairy milk because it was all I had.)
2-3 eggs
another 1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup agave nectar (or brown sugar, if you are feeling less self righteous than I am)
1-2 tbsp. honey
1 tbsp. grated orange rind
1 tbsp. vanilla (if we're gonna get honest here, I actually used brandy. Brandy's my oregano--it works in everything.)
1 tbsp. butter
1/2 cup mixed berries (I used frozen raspberries and mango, which turned the pudding a delightful pink)
1/4 cup chopped dried apricots

Bring water and 1/2 cup of milk to a boil. Add quinoa and simmer on medium heat for 15 minutes or so.

In the meantime, combine eggs, second half cup of milk, agave, honey, orange peel, and vanilla in a bowl. Whisk it up.

Once the quinoa is cooked stir in butter. Lower the heat to medium low. Slowly stir in the egg mixture and fruit. Cook, stirring constantly, for 10 minutes. It should thicken up at this point. WHen it's the consistency of warm pudding, remove from the stove, and pour into a shallow baking dish. Bake for half an hour at 325.

Let it cool for a bit, or eat it piping hot from the oven with a little cream and/or maple syrup drizzled on top. Thank your lucky stars your appetite is back.

Best enjoyed while trying to wrap one's head around Lost. I'm only on the first season guys, but I'm already feeling a little overwhelmed.

Home is where the TV is.

Thomas Wolfe once wrote that you can't go home again. Clearly he never had to move back in with his parents in a pinch, like I did last week. I know there's this whole pop culture thing about skulking home, this notion that it's supposed to be funny-sad, like when a clown has to move back in with HIS parents. Iain Reid captured that sense of feeling like the butt of your parents' jokes in his hilarious, wonderful, heartbreaking memoir, One Bird's Choice, which I read in preparation for my own move back to the nest. Everyone should read his book, because it is fantastic, and he is a solid dude, as I learned when I interviewed him for last fall's Kingston Writersfest. He writes about how his father spends an afternoon shredding all his elementary school valentine cards and then drags him to the gym, and about the post-it notes his mother leaves on the cheese drawer so he'll know which cheese not to feed to the cats. Seeing as how I am sitting at my parents' living room table surreptitiously drinking their wine and eating a mango because my mom left a note next to it instructing me to chow down, these stories make me feel like I am less alone.

All self-deprecation aside, though, I worry that I might actually fall on the other end of the spectrum. I don't really mind being back home. In fact, I kind of love it, to an alarming degree. After years of living alone, I love coming home to some company, and some dinner on the table. I love basic cable, although my addiction to Come Dine With Me is reaching fever pitch. I love walking down the street with my dad to go skating at the park. I love hanging around on Sunday mornings drinking seventeen cups of coffee I didn't have to brew myself. I love that nobody knows my phone number. Friends, this is getting dangerous.

In conclusion, hey there, Hamiltonians. We should really hang out. My parents are away till Friday--want to come over tomorrow night? I can offer you free Grand Marnier and a television that will not migrate too far from the Slice network.

Remember, remember, the fifth of November.

Here's what I like to do in November.

1. Listen to Sufjan Stevens. I am pulling the hipster, I Liked Him Before He Was Really Big And Am Not Too Keen On His New Album card on this one and wholeheartedly recommend you go all the way back to Michigan, my personal favourite soundtrack for mooning around the house because it's too cold to go outside.



Fun fact 1a: This song was on the episode of the OC where Johnny, the surfer from the wrong side of the tracks, fell off a really high rock and died. Fun fact 1b: I was really into the OC. "COHEN!"

2. Read Jeffrey Brown. A fan of all things autobiographical and graphical, I discovered Clumsy, possibly my favourite comic memoir, on the shelf of the first library I worked at in Ottawa. Clumsy tells the story of Jeffrey Brown's long-distance romance with a girl from Florida named Theresa. His drawing style reminds me of the tiny, scribbly, incredibly detailed doodles that this gifted guy in my elementary school class used to draw in the margins of his notebooks--stick figures doing intense things. Every page is comprised of six panels of heartbreak. It is a really beautiful book.

Fun Fact 2a: The library just bought his newest book, a collection called Undeleted Scenes which includes some of his best strips and also some random new stories. I am very sad to report that he has written a story about his wife and baby, which I guess means I need to cross him off the Secret Husband list.

3. Watch Brideshead Revisited. The cold gloomy weather at this time of year gets me jonesing for England, and there's no better way to indulge this feeling than to unplug the telephone (just kidding! I don't even answer it when it's plugged in!), turn on the television (ie. laptop) and cozy up for ten solid hours of the decline and fall of the archetypal upper class on the other side of the pond. Like most Brit Lit-loving nerds who went to Gothic Revival style university colleges, I have held Brideshead close to my heart for a very long time. It represents a very particular, dysfunctional dream of academia and intellectualism and the good life that I always thought I might enjoy but never really believed in, the kind of life where you wear tuxes to dinner and a divorce in the family could ruin everything. It is a tragicomedy of manners in which I would like to be a fly on the cocktail tray. It has a very evocative soundtrack which always makes me cry a little.

Fun fact 3a: I've also been watching the Up! Series, which I cannot recommend highly enough, and which I will write more about later, and one of the men profiled blames the failure of his life on putting too much stock in books like Brideshead Revisited. I think I know exactly what he is talking about.

Let's take it out on a little more gentle folk rock. Sufjan covering Dylan? I think my heart just stopped.

From the random files.

Perhaps the most eagerly awaited audio book of all time in the SERIOUSLY?? department: Angelina: An Unauthorized Biography by Andrew Morton, read for you by Bronson Pinchot. Yes,
THAT Bronson Pinchot.




Don't you miss the old ABC TGIF lineup? Growing up we were only allowed one hour of TV a day (which would be forfeited if we didn't do our housework, or if we had some kind of public temper tantrum--the latter was embarrassingly common for yours truly) which was usually taken up by reruns of Get Smart after school. It took every ounce of willpower I had not to tune in to the adventures of Agent 99 (Such style. Such grace.) and that idiot Max on Fridays so I could save up my time and cash in for that week's Very Special Episode of Full House. It was a noble sacrifice.

Anyway, I'll look forward to the pairing of Angelina Jolie's absurd life with Balki Bartokamous' absurd narration. I'm not ashamed to admit I teared up a little while listening to the Perfect Strangers theme song. They say you become more emotional in the autumn years.

Know what I'm sayyyiiiiiiin'?

Remember when Jonathan Torrens played a possibly gay guy on a fake reality show on Spike TV in the early part of this century? Wikipedia sure does. At the time I remember thinking, oh man, there goes another semi-talented Canadian selling his soul south of the border, and I pitied the dude. I know Jono's not exactly someone who inspires strong feelings in most people, but I have to admit, I've watched his career with interest for a long time.

It couldn't be helped--he hosted my favourite television show when I was a kid. Street Cents owned the airwaves around my house (and was also the first place I ever heard Thrush Hermit, who provided one of the early theme songs, and Len, who I still think were cool for a long time before Steal My Sunshine wormed its wormy way into our collective ears). A very dear friend and neighbour met him at Cows ice cream in Charlottetown in maybe 1993 and dear GOD was I ever jealous. (The same friend also met Mike Myers in an airport back when Wayne's World was the height of sophisticated comedy and got him to sign a get-well card for me, because I'd just been hit by a car. She is an excellent human being.) In the years that followed, Jonovision became an embarrassingly present show in my daily life, mostly because even as a smarmy teen I'd watch anything CBC cranked out--we start young in our house. Say what you will about this truly absurd teen talk show, but you can't deny that the famous Degrassi reunion episode didn't completely make your life.



After highschool I didn't think much about ol' Jono until he popped up again on the Trailer Park Boys and stole my heart all over again.



And then, of course, there was the Canadian pop culture orgasm that was his appearance on Degrassi TNG as Shane. I swear, watching that episode, you could hear the collective "WHAT? REALLY?" echoing out of a thousand student houses across the country.

This week, he's back in the host's seat at Q. And he's ruling it. His interview yesterday with Andy Kim, the Canadian songwriter behind Sugar Sugar, was fascinating. This morning he's talking about war photography and violence porn, and asking questions that elicit probing, intelligent answers. Dude's a good journalist, and I never really noticed it before. (Not to mention the fact that he interviewed my secret wife Ellen Page the other day and they discussed permaculture, among other things. Radio porn, friends. Radio porn.)

When I started writing this little non-sequitur I'd intended to frame it as a "wow, look how Jono has redeemed himself this week after years of dumbassery," as I thought about his career arc (and yes I realize how totally trivial it is to sit around thinking about Jonathan Torrens' career arc), I realized he's really done pretty well all the way along. Bit part on Joe Schmoe aside, Jono's the local kid made good. You have to respect that.

You also have to respect the fact that I am a lame Cancon fangirl. I know I do.

Now let's all relax and listen to Bubbles for awhile.

Summer dreams, ripped at the seams.

Fun games to play while watching reruns of Being Erica:

1. Documenting pop-historical inaccuracies. Examples: use of a Sam Roberts song that wasn't really popular yet in an episode about the Great Blackout of Aught-Three; putting Ethan, the whitest, milquetoastiest place-holder/unrequited boyfriend in all fiction, in a fucking Public Enemy t-shirt during his second year of university.

2. Spot The Former Or Current Degrassi: TNG Star: Jimmy (you will never be Drake to me, sorry dude), Paige's gay hockey-playing brother, the late-addition goth girl who dated Spinner for a bit, Crazy Craig (still number one on my TNG secret husband list)*: They're all here, folks!

*(NOTE: If I had to pick an all-time Degrassi secret husband I don't think any of the new cast would make the list. I'd definitely go with Patrick, the sensitive Irish exchange student who helped Liz get over her childhood trauma. Second only, perhaps, to Snake, before be got boring and old. The shine wore off that apple when I saw him picking up his dry-cleaning one time on Queen West.)

3. Blackberry Commercial Emotional Bingo: When you don't have cable and only watch TV online, you forget how hypnotic and consuming and upsettingly fun to watch commercials can be. It's the media equivalent of going through the haunted house at the fair, with even more jarring results.

4. Think about what a good thing it is that you are leaving town this weekend, because this is getting pretty ridiculous.

Happy Civic Holiday, y'all. Here's the official anthem of a four-day weekend.