The Thrifty Chef: Stewed Tomatoes

Despite the fact that I’m 24 in about six weeks, it seems my father still assumes I live off of frozen pizza, take-out and a myriad of other similar no-cook recipes as I did when I was a teen. Let’s just say that these pieces will be dedicated to my father as a sort of ‘nah nah nah nah nah nah’ I can cook and it’s edible.

But let’s be honest, I’m not getting Kobe Beef 5 days a week, and cooking for one can be a bit of a challenge in terms of food waste, thus, the Thrifty Chef exists to make the best use of what I have, with as little waste as possible.

This week’s superstar? A can of stewed tomatoes!

Why not plain canned tomatoes or diced, you may ask. In all honesty, I thought I’d grabbed 2 cans of diced tomatoes, but once home, realized my error and decided to make the best of it. A large can of this stuff lasted me 3 meals (including some tomato-chunk snackage while cooking.)

Meal #1 : Sundried Tomato Spaghetti with Stewed Tomato and Basil Pesto Sauce.
This was a shoe-in. I had this delicious Catelli spaghetti and instead of just tossing a fine coat of Basil Pesto, I decided to quickly heat up about 2 cups of the stewed tomatoes with 2 tablespoons of the pesto, mixing in the spaghetti to make it adhesive. This made a meal and lunch, YUM.

Meal #2: Stewed Tomato Soaked Tilapia Fillets
Normally I baste my tilapia fillets with an Indian curry sauce or korma sauce, lightly with olive oil, usually I like the fillets dry.
But for a change, I drenched the fillets with the stewed tomatoes and some olive oil and they came out soft and fell right apart into a bowl of rice, nom.

Meal #3: Stewed Tomatoes, Rice and Chorizo Sausages
This was the most comfort-food of the bunch, and easiest!
In my portable grill I had 2 chorizo sausages for about 15 minutes, I cooked a cup of rice and made it nice and sticky. I warmed up the stewed tomatoes and drenched the rice, which stuck together quite nicely. Chopping up the sausages, the tomato flavour reduced the heat of the sausages. Also made enough for lunch the next day.

So, yes. No photos this time around but look forward to more installments of the Thrifty Chef and other tasty staples to make you meals a little more efficient.

Feminism (or lack thereof) in Opera

Before I started working for the COC at the beginning of the 07/08 season, I knew next to nothing about opera. The most experience I had with the art was through an opera course I did audio/visual assistance for in 4th year. And despite enjoying a lecture or two, I was mostly paying attention to the tracking on the decades old VHS’s the professor had somehow managed to dig up for that week.

But now that I’ve been working for the company since the beginning of the 07/08 season, I’ve made the most of my employment and seen every performance, my favourite being the first I saw, The Marriage of Figaro and the least being the second one I saw, Don Carlos.

But unfortunately, my impression from the 11 operas I’ve seen so far is that the subject matter of the majority of major works seems to be extremely sexist and anti-feminist. At least, until the day I saw Fidelio.

Fidelio, Beethoven’s first and only opera, has the interesting quirk of having a married female disguised as a male as it’s hero and main character, fighting for the freedom of her wrongly imprisoned husband. The character Leonore (who’s male persona is Fidelio) is an anomaly, she is neither described by anybody during the entire opera by her physique and even during the lovely duet at the end of the opera, she is spoken of with respect and equality as opposed to the usual lamentations of womanly softness and frailty.

As a female lead in opera, she is also strange because she is neither the love-struck, marriage focused girl, nor the bawdy (and usually evil/doomed) sex-pot. She is courageous, loyal, hardworking and brave. By posing as Fidelio, she uses her wits and know-how to impress the prison-keeper Rocco both as a valuable employee and a trusted son-in-law, earning the love and trust of his daughter Marzelline, to get closer to her goal of freeing her husband.

While considering the feminist character that is Leonore/Fidelio, I had a hard time reconciling that with the other female in the opera, Marzelline. While Leonore/Fidelio very much isn’t a stereotype, at first glance Marzelline is very easily the love-struck, marriage focused girl, but when looked into closer, things are not as they first appear. Before Fidelio comes along, Marzelline is in flirtation with Jaquino, another employee of her fathers. But when Fidelio arrives, she changes her tune. It’s very subversive that this young girl should reject a reasonably suitable male suitor to fall in love with another, a woman who is posing as a man. This is because it seems that Leonore as Fidelio, as a male imposter, is more of what a man should be, than even a real man. And the fact that Marzelline falls for Fidelio, the more true, devoted and steadfast character, is telling of her being slightly more than just a love-struck girl.

While there are only two female characters in the opera, they play off each other well, and at the end of the opera, when Leonore is called a hero and rewarded for her bravery, Marzelline is shocked and understandably upset. But the story doesn’t insult her by immediately pairing her off with her former suitor Jaquino, instead the story ends with her still in shock, to at least respect the gravity of what has happened.

The care, sensitivity and depth to which both females are given in this opera struck me as out of place, and it pleased me. Now if only there would be more operas of this kind coming to the COC in the next little while, but this is unlikely.

The other performance this winter, Rusalka, is about a woman who falls for a man purely based on appearance and then LOSES HER VOICE and pretty much all her power and independence at the same time. Upcoming in the spring is La Boheme, which while a romantic classic, is really about a woman punished for her sexuality (by her own partner) who ultimately dies. Then we have A Midsummers Night Dream, one of Shakespeares most humourous plays which unfortunately stereotypes women in quite an offensive fashion. And while next year brings us more romantic and gorgeous classics, Carmen and Madame Butterfly, they are both extremely negative in their image of women, their stories focusing on women losing their power due to their relations with men, and then their lives.

Hopefully I can hold out until Maria Stuarda comes in spring of 2010, because if a power-play between two of the United Kingdom’s most power-playing queens doesn’t highlight strong female roles, I don’t know what will!

It’s 2009, do you know where your millenium is?

I can barely believe this is the final year of the 00’s.

I remember the excitement and denouement of 1999,
the anticipation of Y2K,
the ‘yawn’ when it didn’t happen.

I remember 9/11,
the SARS outbreak,
the blackout of 2003.

I remember my disappointment during George Bush’s first term,
and the subsequent disbelief at his second,
but I also remember my relief at Obama’s win.

I remember our bullshit minority governments with a little more venom than I wish to publish today.

I just hope I remember to blink when the second decade of the 21st century begins!

Grow/n/ing Up

I got bored today and decided to reminisce and pour through old journal entries from the summer of 2005 to January 1st of 2006, approximately three years ago. And what did I learn?

A lot can happen in three years.

I graduated, I moved (3 times) I started and ended more jobs than I can even recall, I dated, I didn’t date, I met new people, I got a new boyfriend, I got a cat, I got ANOTHER cat. But those are things where I benefited, other things have happened too.

I lost one friend, I lost another, wash, rinse and repeat yet again. Although not to death or distance, (well, emotionally) they kept dropping like flies. How were the people who I called my best and brightest, those who made life worth living and helped me realize this when times were grim, walk out on me so?

Spending the past few months mulling about my most recent loss, I’ve realized it has nothing to do with me, in a good and bad way. It’s not personal, it’s not an attack or a reflection of my affection or friendship, just their way of coping with their own stress and tendencies. Maybe I was too good, too attentive, too there for them to deal with.

Or maybe, just maybe, they were jealous? I guess I’m not to know.

But also? I surprise myself.

Instead of feeling sad and remorseful, reading these exultations of my ‘best’ friends who have come and gone, instead I pity them for losing me as a friend.

Because, as with 2009 on the horizon, a new year, I think I’m actually going to become quite awesome.

Updates and Musings

Sometimes my cat makes the best poses where she looks like a broken ragdoll, legs askew, tail slightly up, head slightly twisted, she looks like she’s broken her neck and she STILL looks adorable. Except she moves EVERY time I try to take a picture, like right now. So instead I try to describe the vision for others to see.

I’m possibly getting another cat on the weekend, so we’ll see if she continues being cute or degenerates into a fluffy monster for the next few weeks. I’m gingerly expecting a present on my pillow or in my shoe (not the shoes!) once this happens.

I’ve been writing up a storm at blogTO and while my experiment in writing for a month certainly didn’t go badly, the fact that I never even typed up a conclusion makes it a failed attempt on my behalf. As it goes, there are actually days I do NOT even check my email lately. It’s freeing and slightly weird at the same time. I feel my world is changing slightly, not sure how, but this is one sign of it.

Looking to see more concerts and shows in the future, lately I’ve had the luck of seeing the opening night at the TSO, as well as the COC dress rehearsal of War and Peace, with Don Giovanni later. But I’m itching for a good old fashioned show, such as You Say Party, We Say Die! at Wrongbar in a few weeks. Hopefully I’ll swing by.

One of these days I’ll upload my nuit blanche photos. But not today.

Instead, you get a moment of zen, courtesy of cuteoverload.