chinese broccoli » eggs

confetti, pom-poms, resurrection of christ

liz — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 05:05:34 +0000

Dear Newmindspace,
I know the gal from NOW Magazine would have preferred you to blow 5,000 chicken eggs out yourselves in order to “lessen your impact on the environment”, but hey. Thank you again for the easter egg hunt.

This year’s hunt area was a little daunting. I thought maybe Andrea and I would have more fun if we started at vapid, businessy Yonge and moved back Annexward—but we were lazy and just started from my house. And luckily so, as we would have been very discouraged by the lack of anything eastery left whatsoever in the fancypants Yorkville environs. (What, you guys couldn’t arrange something cute and purple plastic in the Cartier window? Harumpf.)

But the ethos of truly using your whole city as a playground and a place to live lives on. There’s nothing quite like stumbling around sleepily—maybe even a little hungry and lightheaded and nauseous, hey—on a Sunday morning only to gleefully spy that orange plastic ovoid in a planter, wedged behind a window grating, stuck up a tree, wherever. It’s delight—it’s pointful in its pointlessness. It’s living like a kid and like a curious person and participating—and whether there’s a message inside the egg that says something inspiring or just some confetti and robot stickers (my cat loved the green fuzzball, by the way) it’s about so much more than that. I find it weird that detractors even exist, frankly.

So, thanks to everyone who went out in the frigid freaking freak cold at 4:30am and hid things for the joy of other people, and who continue to make Toronto interesting and strange and intimate and vital in the subtlest little ways. For the record, we found the eggs dangling from fishnet in the arbor at the Tranzac and aloft its fire escape, (and a helpful passerby pointed out the ones in the bird-feeder!); we recovered the eggs stuck in the window at Trinity-St. Paul’s, and behind its lumpy Bloor Street banner. Andrea turned up the one in the mailbox at Lee’s Palace, and we couldn’t miss the one on the patio chairs at Future Bakery. And of course there were all the others we forgot where we found but that have left us pretty much drowning in bunny erasers until 2008. Strangely we encountered no one else on our quest—but the shards of pastel dollar store plastic all along our main drag told the story of comrades, albeit early birds and keeners.( At least this saved Andrea and I from having to get into hair-pulling fights with competing hunters.)

Til next year, kids!

Easter in the Market

liz — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 05:41:12 +0000

Let me talk a little about how much I love Kensington Market. It is dirty. It smells bad. It is not super convenient for me to get to on transit, and it is generally covered in filth. I don’t like to shop much for vintage clothing, nor do I usually find myself in need of a wide selection of South American legumes.

That said, and it’s no controversial stance or great statement to say this, I find its total chaos and griminess so perfect sometimes I can hardly stand it. I tried to imagine, today, some kind of situation—city mandated or even grassroots—that would involve actually de-grossifying Kensington, and I just can’t ever see it flying. We love it in its cat-pee-smelling messy crowded annoying multicultural dirty glory.

(Or, as Carol said, “I find I need it as a contrast to the rest of Toronto.”)

Another thing that’s a good contrast to the rest of Toronto, besides the absolute squalour, is Kensington’s seeming obliviousness to statutory holidays. On Friday (that’s “Good Friday” to you xians) I wandered down to the market with Andrea to see if we could pick up a birthday present for our pal Linds. We didn’t, but we did enounter multiple fishmongers open for business—and grilling up free, intensely smoke-creating fish, and handing them out to passersby. How fucking cool is that?

There are spring days when you walk around your city and you run into people, or you see a beautiful plant, or you stumble into a gigantic cloud of billowing smoke and find someone just handing out fish on the street that you think, “My god. I really love my city.” (P.S. we also saw some girl walking around with her pet iguana.)

Today I participated—along with my lovely neighbours Dave, Carol and Laurel—in the second annual newmindspace Easter Egg Hunt. newmindspace aren’t cynical and tired like me or most of the people I spend my time with. They’re basically a two-person fueled citywide love-in run by people that simply want everyone to stop, observe and be struck awesome by the world around them, and celebrate that. They feel so much younger than me, but they rule.

newmindspace were planning to hide 5,000 plastic eggs filled with notes and candy in Kensington last night (starting at 4am!) By the time my friends and I finished our brunch, almost all of the eggs were gone. We didn’t run into many people searching—a happy family, a couple of disaffected hipsters—but we did find four eggs, and a lot of eggless and abandoned easter candies. My first egg had a note inside that urged me to “Start calling out for ‘Harold’ frantically”, and you had better believe that I did.

Inititally my pals were a little less completely excited by this game than I was (I did actually jump up and down several times when I spotted the first one wedged behind a panel of sheet metal), but by the end we were all hunting high and low and, occasionally, eating candy we found on the street. My god, I really love my city.

chilaquiles!

liz — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 02:18:01 +0000

Near as I can tell from the internets, “chilaquiles” means basically any dish with soggy tortilla chips. Here is mine:

Ingredients:
3 corn tortillas, about 6″ in diameter. (If you don’t have these, use Tostitos, taco shells, whatever). They can be stale.
1/3 cup green taco sauce
2-3 Tbsp green onion, sliced
2 chipotle peppers, sliced
1/3-1/2 cup old cheddar cheese, grated
Pickled sliced jalapenos, to taste (I used about 6, and diced them)
1 Tbsp butter
3 large eggs, beaten

Soak the tortillas in the taco sauce for at least 10 minutes, then cut or break them up into strips or chunks. Heat butter in frying pan or skillet until pan is greasy. Add all ingredients. Cook until delicious. Eat!