hot and not

here are a few little thoughts from my brain on what's hot and what's not

note:
i may or may not confer hotness upon any of these things, just trendspotting.


HOT/ NOT
So You Think You Can Dance / SYTYCD without Mia Michaels

reduce, reuse, recycle/ not caring about the 3 Rs

saving $/ wasting $

teen vampires/ teen vampires

looking younger when you're older/ botox, surgery and suddenly fat lips

H1N1/ H1N1 - blech.

'bucc', 'sick'/ gee whiz, neat

blindingly white teeth/ you guessed it. . . yellow ones

reality tv/ desire to vote ppl out of everything in real life

XBox/ Wii

any other hockey team/ Leafs

gift cards/ gifts that make you cringe inwardly

cyber/ face to face *this is so sad :( *

sliders/ giant, artery clogging burgers

scarves/ pen necklaces

castro hats/ bucket hats

getting Christmas shopping done early/ having to do Christmas shopping at all

mystery

I'm wondering how comfortable I am with mystery.
There are things I will never know.
Why is death so capricious and random?
Why do the bad get away with their badness?
Why are the good given the shaft?
Why does the heart choose the way it does?
Why does the sun seem to shine upon some and the shadows never lift from others?
Why is justice so often miscarried?
Why can't people come back from the dead to tell us what to expect?
Why can't we see God?

God.
God is a mystery.
God is
at home in paradox,
existing, working in and through
divine, human
architect, infant
one, three
love, judgement
almighty, intimate
creating the universe, matter and anti matter,
forces, light, elements,
intricate creatures, seen and unseen.
Maker of worlds unknown, far, far, far from our weak eyes
and our toy telescopes circling a tiny corner of the cosmos.
i could stop there, stupefied,
monosyllabic.
unable to comprehend.
mysterious greatness is all around
I look but can't see.
Why is my vision reversed?
Why do i magnify the trivial and trivialize the magnificent?
Mystery, I'm Helen Keller.
How can I make sense of you?
I can yell and flail my arms to strike out at you.
I can bump into you and not even see you.
You will elude me
and entice me,
frustrate me.

Goodness is sweet like honey.
It's no mystery.
It just is.
Why question it?
It's the quintessential feeling of being home.
It's aaaaaaahhh, like lying down when you're tired and feeling so perfectly at rest.
It is light, it's that gorgeous 'blindness' we get when the brightness of the sun is too much for us and we close our eyes
and bask and sigh.
So welcome.
So wanted and loved.

The origin of evil perplexes me.
Blackness.
Malignant.
It makes my brain and my soul hurt to think about it.
God is good.
He designed everything to be perfect.
We all know it didn't turn out that way.
How did Lucifer, his perfect creature change?
What was the catalyst for this thing, this evil that grew and gestated in his core? and how dare he infect us with it?
Some say there is no evil.
I am certain this is untrue and that is no mystery.
Blatantly present everywhere.
viral,
predatory,
destructive.
real.

Mystery.
God.
Good.
Evil.

A few small words with so many billions of us crammed into them.
Trying to make sense, grow, live.
Trying to understand these hard to understand things.


Will we ever?


Of course not. . .


and that's okay.

food

I love food.
I love everything about it.
I love to shop the market, love the grocery store, the gourmet shop, the baking supply store, the cheese shop, the butcher, the farm.
I love to take a collection of disparate ingredients and put them together
to make something beautiful and delicious.
I love fresh, in season, quality food. I love to develop its flavour. I love to serve food.
I love to make people happy with meals, desserts.
I might not always hit the mark, but I really try.
It's an ever increasing passion.

I love to watch chefs prepare food, this is a longstanding fixation. . from watching Julia Child on PBS in the early 70s, to Food Network's molecular gastronomists like Heston Blumenthal, the Rubino brothers from Rain, i watch and watch. . there is almost nothing I love more than seeing things stirred, sauteed, melted, poured, ladeled, browned, chopped, minced, kneaded and glazed.
I love to think of cooking.
I love to pore over my food magazines, cookbooks. I love to plan menus.
I try not to waste food, that makes me sad.
I get giddy thinking about buying a new knife.
I love my sharpening steel.
I love my copper bottomed, heavy gauge stainless cookware.
I love tongs.
I love my microplane grater.
I love smoked paprika.
I love grey salt.
I love thyme and parsley.
I love vanilla beans.
I love melting chocolate over simmering water.
I love fresh pineapple.
I love cinnamon and fresh ginger.
I love to work with. .
a fresh cut of meat,
a fragrant, piney bunch of rosemary,
fresh, ruby coloured berries,
a dense loaf of bread,
beautiful 'rainbow' carrots with lacy green tops,
golden paper-wrapped bars of french bittersweet chocolate,
amber jars of melon blossom honey,
blocks of pale yellow butter,
the most wonderful things I can afford . it makes such a difference.

You can't make bad food taste good, but you can make great food taste amazing, if you respect it, respect the gift of the ingredients, respect the preparation techniques and respect the people you will be serving.

I don't really enjoy eating at restaurants. . I feel too removed from the process, I don't know what they're doing to the food. I don't know what kind of ingredients they're working with. Do they care about quality? Are they fry happy? Do they nuke everything? Do they use frozen, canned, packaged? Do they care? Are they handling food safely? There are too many unknowns. Makes me angry when people don't care. I'd rather go hungry. I want to go into their kitchens, their walk in fridges, their freezers . .or maybe I don't? Cooking at home is the way to go. . unless you can find those people out there who love good food, who can do it justice.

I spend pretty much every day daydreaming of recipes, ingredients.
I work at my job, but my mind is always dreaming of running a shop,
baking, serving, catering, planning events, talking to customers. .

Who knows, some day I might take a giant risk and go for it?!
In the meantime there are cookbooks to collect, food to make, new ingredients to try.
*smile*