Just when I think I've gotten a handle of my dumb eating disorder, I catch myself standing over a sink, debating whether or not to dump out half a vitamin water (calorie count: 60) because because because calories????


I didn't. I'm drinking the stupid vitamin water and will probably feel bad about it later but fuck those feelings. I look great and I am healthy. 


I once read that those little verbal affirmations, the whole "every day in every way I'm getting better and better"-style of thing, don't really work on people with low self-esteem. I remember not being terribly shocked by the news, as I knew first hand that there is a big difference between knowing something and believing something. For example, I knew for a long time that no one really cared about the things I did or didn't do or how I looked or whatever, but it took me a long time to accept it and start believing in it.


If I recall correctly, the guy who wrote this thing (which I think was a book excerpt off of Amazon?) spent a great deal of time talking some mess about how being sad is perfectly valid and forcing yourself to feel something false solves nothing which hey I completely agree with. I am a strong proponent of being sad sometimes and feeling what you feel without shame or judgement. 


But then he went on about how small talk is terrible and a pointless waste of time and so forth. Whatever dude, being nice and participating in society once and a while costs you literally nothing. 


In non-crazy person news1, I've been recreationally watching my way through the animated DC D2DVD movies and they're... okay. Nothing has really blown me away (except for the incredible animation quality). I'd like to actually sit down and maybe write a real review of the ones I've seen at some point, so maybe that will happen.


This blog still feels like it's in its beta stage, where I just write rough shit until I get a little better at saying what I want to say.




1 haha not really

Extremely informal taco review

So last night I went out  for dinner to the only place in Toronto that, as far as I can tell anyway, will actually serve vegetarian tacos.

Yes I am vegetarian, have been since January. So far it's been pretty frictionless, save for the family potluck wherein every single dish featured bacon (my fault probably for forgetting to tell them I don't actually eat meat anymore).

Anyway, the place is called Kitch and I'm going to go ahead and cut through the tension and just say it sucks. Or rather, it's two vegetarian tacos (yam+chipotle+goat cheese and beet+walnut pesto+goat cheese+basil) suck. Maybe their meat selections are better but brother, for $9/per two tacos there are better options available.

The taco trend has pretty much exploded all over Toronto, so much so that Torontoist has begun a "Tacos of Summer" series that explores the different tacquerias in the city. Like the other current food trends (Izakayas and chacuteries) that are super hot right now you guys it's not terribly convenient for vegetarians.

And for vegetarian foodies/gourmands/whatevers? Forget about it.

I don't really want to talk much about the restaurant itself because I don't really care about how it looks, what music it plays, or what kind of tattoos our server had (I think she maybe had a half sleeve). The only thing worth mentioning there is that it's way the fuck out on Dupont, across from that bastion of sadness, the Galleria mall (not to be confused with the awesome Korean super market of the same name). I only mention that because if you really are jonesing for $9 meat tacos, there are probably better locations (hell, there's that little one in K-Town -- I don't remember what it's called, but it's got the sign that claims it's home to "Toronto's 'best' tacos" which is always great to see).

Instead I'd like to talk about the food because that is what I like to talk about all the time anyway.

First off is the yam+chipotle+goat cheese, which was the better of the two. It was warm, although the shells it was served in were not, and moderately flavourful. Now, it's hard to go wrong with the yam and chipotle flavour combo -- one of my favourite things to make is a yam chipotle enchilada -- but the addition of goat cheese to the mix is pretty weird. Like, I like goat cheese a whole lot, so I was intrigued, but the execution was lacking. There wasn't a very strong chipotle flavour, the yam mash was watery, and the goat cheese was just sort of weirdly over-powering.

The beet walnut though...  yeesh. I took my first bite, looked at my friend, and said "this tastes bizarre". That is probably the best you can hope for. The taco was cold, the beets were bland and watery, the walnut pesto was probably absent, the goat cheese was again too much, and the basil was just odd odd odd. This mix would probably be better served on a bed of noodles, where the flavours would be allowed to spread over a wider medium, rather than just being crammed in a tiny taco, where all of its subtleties are lost.

HOW I WOULD IMPROVE THESE MESSES

I would start by not buying my yam and/or beets in a can. I don't mind using canned substitutions as a time saver, but when you are a fucking restaurant and you are charging me nine goddamn dollars, you can maybe afford to buy an actual yam and some actual beets and fucking roast them yourself. Do you know how good roast beet tastes? They're goddamn amazing.

Ironically, I would then just buy some chipotles canned in adobo because I'm pretty sure they just used powdered chipotle which is ridiculous because a can of chipotles cost less than $3 what is wrong with you.

I would put some fuckin garlic up in that pesto because I couldn't taste any.

Finally, no goat cheese. It was ambitious, guy who designed this menu at Kitch, but it didn't really work in execution. I'm not really a cheese expert so I don't really have any suggestions on what to use instead. Maybe I'll ask my fellow veg pal who fuckin loves cheese.I bet she knows what's up.

FINAL SCORE: "don't go to that place unless they get a new chef maybe".

24/f/Toronto

The trouble with blogs, or rather, my trouble with blogs, is that they're fun to think about (and I do think about it, frequently, because I have so many things I want to say into the grand empty theatre of the internet), and I've had many friends encourage me to write one, but actually getting down to creating one really bores me. 


Because I don't like introductions. I love the idea of having an established blog, but I'm less enthused about writing an introductory post (which is starting to feel like a cover letter), picking a blog title (my fault, because my standards for titles are so ridiculously high that a good title must a) state what this blog is about, b) do so in an amusing, pithy way, and c) maybe reference something I like), and basically that involves me making a statement of "this is who I am, this is what I'm about" to a group of strangers.


But... I also really like the idea of doing it. I've been fascinated by keeping a diary since before I knew what diaries were even called (I called them "lock books"). Back then I was obsessed with the idea of having a book that only I can open, with words only I can read or write. I wanted to have secrets, and I wanted to have control over those secrets. Now the idea has evolved into something more complicated: I still want secrets, but more than that I want opinions and I want to share and discuss them with people I've never met and maybe will never meet. I want to share parts of myself, while still feeling in control of the image I'm projecting. I probably have a better chance of doing that with words on a screen than I ever did as a ridiculous person with a face and a body who gestures and spits when she talks sometimes.


I also really want to work on my writing because holy goddamn is it rusty. Look at all of those awkward sentences up there. 


So here's my compromise: I'm gonna write this introduction and then I'm going to pretend I've been writing this blog for at least a year and a half. I'm going to tell myself that I am established no really you guys and there are absolutely people in the audience, I just can't see or hear them because I'm way too caught up in the monologue.


But first, I am:


- way too intensely into food/comics/music/stories
- part of the fearsome third wave of feminism
- president of the wake up club
- here to party


And this blog is about:


- all of the things I'm way too into
- also feminism


I'm gonna go eat tacos tonight (a fool's errand in Toronto but fuck it) and maybe I will write some words about that later? I may also write about how great Justice League: Generation Lost was (so fucking good you guys).