pickled egg recipe.

a bunch of people have been asking for my pickled egg recipe from a couple posts ago. here it is, you maniacs.

"beet root pickled eggs"

you can used canned beets - i juiced one. it's up to you. also, i couldn't find one big mason jar so i bought two little ones. they held three eggs each but use whatever size you have. these measurements worked for a half dozen eggs. adjust accordingly.

1/2 cup beet juice
3/4 cup cider vinegar (or any other flavour you like. 5% acidity minimum.)
1/4 cup white vinegar
clove of garlic (chopped in big pieces)
1 tbsp brown sugar (or any sugar other than white)

boil eggs for about 6-7 minutes. they shouldn't be wobbly or runny. let them cool completely. like, totally cold. carefully peel, put in jar(s). mix vinegars, beet juice, garlic and sugars until dissolved. remove the garlic (eggs will be deadly otherwise), pour liquid over eggs, seal the mason jar, pop it in the fridge and wait. i dug in after four days and they were fine but feel free to wait a week or longer!

mmm, bright red brine.

brine, sugar and lydia deetz.

the pickled eggs were, as doctor nick would say, a complete success! they've inspired me to try other food related experiments. i bought some little pumpkins in kensington this weekend that i plan to draw faces on (read: spike's rendering of angel on the punching bag) and later make mini pies with!

this weekend was a real blast. good friends, food and blacked out band practice. i took a ton of pictures of stuff i ate and ventured into the world of continuous shooting/gif animations with my new slr. the vice party was a joke, le petit dejeuner is my new favourite brunch spot and i teared up when michael j. serenaded us (with vocals and trumpet) at the communist's daughter when the jukebox shut off. on sunday, during groceries, phil and i slipped in a bunch of clothes shopping (again). i got a great slutty skirt, new gloves and the perfect dress for my halloween costume. pumped!

last night we started first season x-files on dvd and made some peanut butter cookies. i read a recipe online that suggested mixing the egg with the sugar first to make the cookies fluffy. good goddamn, it made all the difference in the world. i'm not quite a happy homemaker but i am on my way to being the queen of stoner couch eats. go, go ganja goodies!

inspired by the commie.

i decided today that in order to skip the gym i must do something creative or active. so today (in lieu of kundalini chanting) i ventured deep into the kitchen supply stores of chinatown and bought mason jars to make pickled eggs in. i saw a recipe last week that involved beet root juice and couldn't stop thinking about it. i had never used the juicer attachment on the magic bullet and beets are totally in season right now so i was stoked for the experiment.

while i was waiting for the eggs to cook i started the crossword from the newspaper the jars came wrapped in. it was too hard so i flipped the page over and found a word search. i totally finished it before the eggs were done. no big deal.

after cleaning and cutting the beet into manageable pieces i revved up the bullet and started shoving the chunks in. that didn't work (an infomercial lied to me!) so i eventually pureed them as mushy as i could and then juiced the pulp. it worked alright. i yielded 1/2 cup of juice from an eight ball sized beet... i added two parts cider and one part distilled vinegar, some brown sugar and smashed up garlic cloves. after mixing well, i poured the liquid over peeled hard-boiled eggs and screwed the lids on tight.

it's been three hours and all i can think about is eating a briny, red egg. i must wait, though. pickling takes time and i will respect the laws of nature. for now, kiiiiiiim! gimme a mini butterfinger!

i'll eat your glands with polenta and pine nuts.

saturday afternoon phil and i went to dufferin mall. i bought new tights (eight bucks!) with the intention of making them last. we got home, got dressed and went out to dinner. they caught on a snag the moment i sat down at the restaurant and exploded from ankle to crotch. FUCK.

i can't manage to keep pantyhose intact for longer than a night. i remember my mom washing hers and hanging them to dry over the shower curtain rod. i always assumed that was normal but, now, it seems completely fucking impossible. i've bought cheap, expensive, thick, thin, patterned, flat... i even bought thigh high socks in an effort to not shred them apart. no luck. within an hour of wriggling into them i'm either reaching for the clear nail polish or leaving my tights in shambles, crumpled in the washroom garbage at the bar.

are you a train wreck too? is it just my lifestyle? either way, don't wear expensive hose to the black hoof. the food is mind altering (read: fatty, smoky, creamy, decadent) but the booths are unfinished. you've been warned.

break downs and break beats are no longer mutually exclusive.

time passes and society evolves morphs. i get this. but, within change should come improvement, no? when one thing dissolves into another it becomes something else entirely and should therefore be titled as such. for instance, when a solid becomes a gas we don't still call it a solid. it's not a gasolid or a solidous mass or some other stupid term: it's a fucking gas. so, why, when "punk rock" dissolved into half-grown men gyrating in their underwear pseudo rapping about ho's or diamonds or "talking with your hips" did the labels not change?

a co-worker just forced me to watch a live performance by her favourite "band" because "dude totally can't sing live". what? is there some new wave of idiocy that humans over 25 are immune to and can't convey to their younger counterparts in monosyllabic enough sentences for them to realize that what is happening in today's "music" industry DOESN'T MAKE ANY GODDAMN SENSE?

i'm going to listen to analog recordings of poets whispering in forests in sweden because that's the closest antithesis to the trite i just subjected my eyes, ears and mindgrapes to. thank you youtube, you've confirmed my belief that the generation below, beneath and after mine is completely fucking doomed.

+ a friend (ally in the fight) just said it so poignantly, "bring it back to ugly people playing beautiful music."

i'm in love with martin picard.

feeling much better today. fresh snip, favourite shirt, fairly sunny.

maybe it was gluttony withdrawal. i ate my weight in foie gras this weekend and most of it was coated in gravy or maple syrup. my opinion of montreal has changed. quebecers are still pretty rude but the architecture more than made up for it. why does toronto tear down historic buildings with character to erect condos for yuppies? it's embarrassing, no? i live in a city with a rich history that is constantly erased and rebuilt. even in the (just shy of) ten years i've been here so many (personal) landmarks have shifted, disappeared or been completely destroyed by gentrification.

i would love to see myself living in a flat in a bike friendly city with a fire escape that faced into a secret garden with wafts of duck fat and smoked meat slipping heftily through the air. if only it weren't so goddamn cold dans la belle province.

humph.

i feel bad today. i don't feel sick or unhappy or mad. i don't want to cry and i don't want to scream. i tried to buy things. i wanted to change my mood with clothes or books or make-up. i spent the weekend in montreal and came back to the exact same situation i left. same job, same apartment, same bike, same city, some life. i'll probably feel fine tomorrow. i'll cut my hair and shave my legs and find some shirt i forgot i had and eat this chocolate and drink this wine and take this painkiller and capture it all in neat little sentences for strangers to read while i watch the same tv shows over and over and wish it was fucking spring already.

torontonian authors > canadian authors

across the street from my work is one of those little temporary stores that sells books no one wants to read and 4 for $20 dvds that no one wants to watch. occasionally i'll wander over on my lunch and see what's interesting. mostly i laugh at the newly packaged, straight to dvd "films" that star celebrities when they were nobodies. you know those? (don't buy them - they're always terrible... unless you love michelle pfieffer. she's in, like, a hundred of them.)

last week, a book caught my eye. the withdrawal method by pasha malla. i bought it (five bucks) and, honestly, i read the whole goddamn thing straight through. this is the best collection of unrelated (but eerily similar) short stories i have ever read. some of the prose was so fucking poignant that i actually read it aloud to my coworkers. grab this book if you see it somewhere or download it. (can you get books illegally, too?)

when one of the characters, a struggling writer, forces himself to try and find the metaphor within the situation, to make the natural beauty mean something else, something he can use... i wanted to scream. it was just too perfect.

divacup rules.

there are a lot of things i don't understand. i'll admit it. i can't trust women who can't stand the sight of blood. it just doesn't make any sense to me. do you close your eyes for 5 days a month? YOU FREAK ME OUT.