Beyond Tea and Toast: Summer Breakfasts

Ahh, summer hols. The sun rises earlier, the temperature soars higher, homework is long forgotten and exams are so yesterday. And in the lazy days before Real Summer Plans of jobs or classes or jet setting begin, what is one to do with all this time? More importantly, what is one to eat? You don’t have to scarf down half a bowl of cereal before running, backpack flapping open, to make it to class on time. Mornings can be leisurely or slept through or filled with the aromas of Hearty Breakfasts. Here are a few of my favourites…

The Breakfast Sandwich

An excellent way to use up leftovers

The Boy actually came up with this one when I refused to get up at the ungodly hour of 9 a.m. one day. It’s very simple: half a ciabatta roll with a pesto spread, and a fried egg, smoked salmon and arugula on top. It sounds fancy, but it’s way easier than trying to whip up hollandaise sauce.

The Smoothie

Stella’s Original Smoothie

We’ve been blender-less for a while now because the dishwasher melted the top of our blender, but the replacement has finally arrived so I can restart my smoothie kick again! My go-to recipe is 1 banana + 1 punnet of berries + (almond) milk + OJ. The banana base is solid, easily made tropical by switching the berries for mango, pineapple or papaya. Smoothies are surprisingly filling and wonderfully cold for these sticky days

The Brunch

Brunch at L’évidence with my parents

Okay, I’m cheating here, but going out to brunch is a totally valid option. What’s better than fresh-squeezed juice and perfectly crispy hashbrowns, especially when you don’t even have to help with the dishes? My favourite places are L’évidence in Montreal, Easy Rider in Toronto and Stella’s Bakery and Café in Winnipeg, and I usually get some version of Eggs Benedict, swapping out the ham for spinach, salmon or, most recently, crab! At L’évidence, the Bennies come with hashbrowns and the most beautiful arrangement of fruit, while I’m addicted to Easy Rider’s peanut butter smoothies and Stella’s green ones.

What to Do for Fun When You Live in the Middle of Nowhere: Cycling

My hometown is the Greater Fort Erie area. It’s very small (Ridgeway just had a second stop light installed a few years ago–it’s practically a metropolis now!). Growing up, I busied myself with extra-curriculars and books, because there was nothing going on in town. For entertainment, the hooligans roamed the streets in packs and walked in the middle of the roads; that’s about as wild as we get in this neck of the woods. I’m loving the area more now than I did when I was in high school; I appreciate how hard the local residents (i.e. old people) and businesses work to create a feeling of community, putting on festivals and events and creating spaces for performance and art. I also like that everything is green.

As I am only working one full-time job this summer (last summer’s double jobbing was too cray-cray), I have a little free time that I should be filling with preparations for applying to grad schools and research for my honours thesis. Those sound an awful lot like work though, so I am putting them off for a little while, until about June, and am taking my days off and running around town with them. Surprise, surprise: there are lots of interesting things to do in my little town!

I never biked in Montreal; that requires nerves of steel. The Fort Erie area has a beautiful length of trail called the Friendship Trail (awwwwwwww) that only occasionally crosses a real road, so I feel relatively safe from car traffic when I bike around town here. I’ve also found that my cycling abilities have improved

since last summer! I had one embarrassing incident when I tried to ride down to the lake with my friend Chu, and couldn’t make it up the ONE, SOLE HILL in all of Ridgeway without getting off my bike and walking the rest of the way up. Pathetic! This summer, I rocked my bad self all the way up that hill on a recent bike ride. I think my running training has vastly improved the strength in my legs: success!

 

 

Photo Essay: Summer in Crystal Beach, Ontario

Nobody checked my bag. I feel sneaky.

May 7 and it’s already bikini season.

Some charming graffiti.

Down the beach: Bay Beach.

This is what contributes to the Big Stink during late summer.

Bay Beach biker.

On the old site of the Crystal Beach Amusement Park is the “Crystal Beach Tennis and Yacht Club”, a gated community where the rich people live. No yachts in sight.

Maybe their yachts are docked in their bathtubs.

Not a single shop on this street has a business in it.

This stretch of businesses used to be the Crystal Beach Bavarian Village; now they’re all empty, but painted in pretty pastels.

Queen’s Circle, at the centre of Crystal Beach.

Hey Montréal!

I know we’ve been having a great year together, but I really need to work this summer. Since my French is embarrassingly bad, the only place I can get work is back in Ontariariariooooo. It’s going to be rough being apart for the summer; we don’t usually get super emotional, but I have to tell you I’m going to miss you a lot. Don’t cry. Here’s a tissue. Seriously, stop that. You’re gonna make me cry.

I’ll keep blogging from afar, so we can still keep in touch. Here’s what I’ve been doing lately: biking, running, and taking pictures from every angle of all the cool stuff I never appreciated in my home community while I was in high school here. I’m starting with the township of Crystal Beach, because I’ve only really been down there a couple times in my whole life, and I’ve been living in this area since 2001.

Crystal Beach is a township of Fort Erie. It used to have a very popular amusement park on it, with massive rollercoasters and three distinct eatable specialties: Crystal Beach suckers, Loganberry juice, and these pastry things that look like wagon wheels and are covered in icing sugar. The amusement park closed long ago, but area residents still remember it nostalgically. When it closed, the whole area went downhill. Crystal Beach has almost zero economic activity, and the beach itself is threatened with private ownership in certain spots. Each part of the beach along the shoreline has a different name, but it’s all part of Crystal Beach, the township. Bay Beach in particular has been part of a huge town scandal; a condo is in development, and the Town of Fort Erie has been trying to push it through to maybe up the economy of the area, but the local residents don’t want that part of the beach to become private. Many, many angry articles about this have been flooding the local paper for the paper for the past couple of years, and yellow “Keep Bay Beach PUBLIC!” signs are everywhere.

My mother has warned me to avoid swimming in Lake Erie at all costs: maybe a decade ago, it was deemed completely dead because of the pollution levels in it. It’s no longer dead; the ecosystem has revived itself, and most people don’t give a hoot about pollution and swim in it all summer long. I might brave the waters later this summer, but for now I just dipped my feet in and strolled about a bit.

It’s certainly not the McGill Ghetto, but I’m finding it quite interesting. Maybe I’ll ride down to Stevensville one weekend; it’s a much smaller township, but it’s local economy is actually doing quite well. It only has one block of businesses, but hey! they’re not doing so badly!

Until next time, Montréal.

xo Baboushka

The End Is Here

School is done. Third year is over forever. And so now there are no textbooks to read, vocab words to memorize, essays to write, passages to translate, exams to study for. How liberating! But it’s also terrifying like whoa. Every April, I get a little frisson of terror as all the free time starts piling up and I’m not quite sure what to do with it. Somehow, it’s fun to click away an hour on the Internet when the only other option is to do work, but when sunshine and freshly cut grass and the ice cream truck beckon, perusing mommy blogs just doesn’t have the same appeal. And so I socialize to the max, planning lunch dates and tea parties and Skype sessions. There’s lots of talking and giggling and squealing. And after three days of catching up with Rez Friends and School Friends and Home Friends, I’m exhausted, possibly even more than after I wrote my last exam.

And so what is an introvert to do in the long lazy days of perfect weather, before summer plans kick in? I’ve narrowed it down to three brilliantly time-sucking activities.

1. Mainline television shows

I have my shows, like we all do. Back in middle school, the guy sitting beside me in homeroom and I played “Friends Trivia” when we were supposed to be doing creative writing in French. Since then, I’ve had love affairs with The O.C. and Being Erica and Murdoch Mysteries and Big Love and Hart of Dixie and rediscovered my kindergarten infatuation with Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, but I was always very careful to watch in moderation, one episode at a time.

Well, my friends, that has all changed. I have discovered Grey’s Anatomy, all 192 episodes of it. That’s a whole lotta watching to do, and I’ve learned that I’m not so bad at staring, entranced, at my computer screen for hours at a time. I powered through Season 1 (which has, albeit, but 9 episodes) in thirty-six hours, and I’m jonesing for more. It’s bad. I’ve always felt superior to those souls who knock back a series in a week, but I get it now. It’s so easy. You don’t even have to hold up a book, or balance a floppy magazine! You just sit back, press play, and fly away to the dramas of Seattle Grace Hospital.

2. Like, read. Like, for fun.

Books = happy, obvs.

No more pencils doesn’t have mean no more books. I had few friends in grade nine, and so I read almost seventy books. Yes, I kept track. I’ve always been a reader, but now I only have time for what’s on the syllabus. So when I can drag myself away from the wonders of the television, I read. For fun! Right now, I’m in the middle of Small Island by Hilary Mantel, about Jamaicans moving to the UK after WWII. Next on the shelf is a non-fiction book (le gasp!) called The Juggler’s Children by Carolyn Abraham, about her adventures in genealogical research and DNA testing. My dad sent it to me because he heard an interview with Abraham on CBC’s The Sunday Edition, which had also piqued my interest.

3. Experiment!

Sure, that can mean sex swings if you want it to, but it can also just mean trying something new — a new restaurant, recipe, outfit, neighbourhood, exercise class. I don’t have to only eat omelettes, salads and pasta anymore! There is time to concoct culinary delicacies, and so I’ve made scallops (yes, I had to call my mum to ask how, but still), and Baboushka and I made dairy-and-gluten free chocolate cake and a clementine cake, and I have grand plans to try cooking swordfish in the near future.

But for now, Dr. McDreamy awaits. (He is, by the way, another succulent piece of manflesh. But I think we all knew that. Still, a photo for fun!)

Do I Have to Grow Up?

Over the Christmas break, my hometown had a glorious snowfall. The whole town was thickly blanketed in fine, perfect snow. It wasn’t very good quality for packing, but there was a huge amount of it, so I bided my time. By the third day, it had very slightly melted and settled, so that the entire yard was my toolbox. I arrived home earlier than everyone else from work, and slipped out to make my mark on the neighbourhood. The results were great:

SNOW GOON!

By the time my parents rolled into the driveway and my brother sauntered down the path, the yard held a few surprised for them in the dimming light.

GOOD GRAVY, THERE’S ANOTHER!

My brother was reasonably impressed with my homage to Calvin and Hobbes, and my dad was apathetic. My mom smiled a little, and then told me that at one point, I would have to grow up.

My first inclination was to stamp my foot and declare that I certainly didn’t need that, which perhaps proves her point. There’s a precedent to my outrage, though!

I criticize myself most of the time with admonishments to stop being so quiet, and prim, and sensible, and boring. I’m naturally pretty introverted, and very comfortable being alone. I enjoy the company of my friends and can be goofy and sociable with them, and I assuredly miss them when they’re not around, but I never feel lonely. I don’t need much to entertain me, and I can be amused and diverted by the simplest things. This is all to say that hanging with me doesn’t usually entail a totally wild time; one of my friends described it as “adorable homebodiness” and is continually trying to get me to break out of my comfort zone. I’m continually grateful for her efforts, because I always enjoy myself immensely when I do; I’m just not great at thinking of and initiating other social activities besides coffee dates. I will have you know, I am great at coffee dates. If anyone ever needs someone to chat with over coffee, I am your woman.

So when I do get an idea to do something even slightly wild and interesting, I’m quite pleased with myself. Making stupid snowmen doesn’t seem like much, but it’s out of character for me. Even that idea is ludicrous, but that’s how I feel.

This summer, I’m planning to run wild in the neighbourhood; I’m going to to the beach (it’s 15 minutes away from my house that I’ve lived in since I was 9, and I’ve been only twice; this is unconscionable), I’m going to frequent the local movie theatre to see the cool foreign films they show every week, I’m going to play badminton on the front lawn with my brother for hours, and I’m going to hang out with my friends outside of a coffee shop whenever I can. I’ll be working full-time as well, but on my hours off I am going to ignore the fact that I’m otherwise a cool, confident adult. I’m going to have fun! Good gravy, last summer I worked two jobs and didn’t even have time to read a book; I’m never going to willingly repeat that experience. I really don’t have to sacrifice my maturity and regress to childhood in order to justify having a little leisure time to goof off in.

My adulthood is my second childhood, only in this one I’m conscious of what a great opportunity I’ve been given. Let’s live it up!