de facto redhead

Sundays with Vlad: From Pennsylvania to Transylvania, One Man’s Quest to Live in the World of the Undead by Paul Bibeau

I was doing some research into a possible project at work that would involve me delving deep into the world of vampire lore, legacy, and lasciviousness, and I came across this book just as I was about to leave the library. I wasn’t expecting much – why, I don’t know – but as I sat down last weekend to read through the introduction and first chapter, I was immediately and completely enamoured with Bibeau’s hilarious writing style. His humour was right up my alley, and after only a few pages, I was reading out choice sentences to DN. He gave the half-hearted laugh of someone who was just being polite, but I felt confident in the hilarity of the book, and knew that if read these same parts out loud to friends EM and SM, we would all be cackling like fools in no time. I was going to insert an excerpt here as an example of what left me giggling so uncontrollably, but then I thought better of it. What if you didn’t find it funny, pulled out of context and plunked down here for your weak reception and smile? No, it was just too risky, because you need to read the book yourself to understand where the humour comes from. It’s funny, I swear!

And, among many other bizarre encounters, Bibeau also participates in an interactive role-playing weekend with a vampire theme in Louisville, Ky., communicates on a semi-regular basis with various people who believe they are vampires, gives the once-over to the people out there who actually feed on human blood, and goes to Romania to experience for himself the path that Jonathan Harker travelled on his way to doom and gloom in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

What’s great about Sundays with Vlad is that Bibeau never takes his subject matter too seriously, which is a trap he definitely could have fallen into with all the deadpan attitudes and responses he encountered. I did find that the humour fell off the wagon a bit in the last third of the book, but that’s not to say what was written there wasn’t interesting and capable of inducing many “what the?!” exclamations. No previous knowledge of the vampire culture is needed to appreciate this book, and it’s a read that both men and women will enjoy. And aren’t you at least a little curious about what I found so funny?

Off to work I go: Boots, Aldo; jeans, Forever 21; top, Le Chateau; shrug, H&M; bracelet, vintage; necklace, Smart Set; earrings, gift.

Yes, I’m wearing the black boots from Aldo – again. I had to work today and at my weekend job I have to walk around a lot, so the black pointy-toed stilettos that would have looked much more chic with this outfit unfortunately had to be shelved. Otherwise, I would be limping around like Monica in that episode of Friends when she buys a pair of coveted expensive boots with high heels, but while walking around New York with Chandler the boots end up pinching her feet into crippled, mangled versions of what they once were. I have been this person, and I don’t want to experience numb toes and cramped arches while at work. I have come home from parties and such, and the simple act of taking off my shoes felt like how it must feel to have ropes taken off your wrists after you’ve been freed from captivity. Basically, a primal sense of thankfulness combined with pure ecstasy. And yet, even though the shoes were physically removed from my feet, the sensation of the shoes still lingered, like frightening phantom limbs.

So here I am, flat boots and all.

Note: I just have to point out (gloat) that these jeans were $14.50, regular price, and the necklace was $1.50 on clearance.

Left: Freshly baked Darcy’s Squares. Right: Brother and sister all grown up.

“Darcy’s Squares” are named after who – my brother or my boyfriend? Ding-ding! if you guessed my brother. And for those of you who don’t know me or don’t know me well, and therefore had no background information on which to base your answer, yes, my brother and boyfriend have the same first name. This fact has caused much confusion with friends and family, both immediate and extended. People ask me if I find this double-Darcy situation weird, and my answer is always no. I like one Darcy in my life, so why not two?

I think my mom has been mentioned more than anyone else on my blog so far, and her ubiquity only increases with this post. She baked Darcy’s Squares, then known as Chocolate Chip Blonde Brownies, the day my brother was born, so while I might have come home from school that day excited about new baked goods being in the house, later happenings in the day trumped the thrill of the square – welcome to the world, baby brother of mine! I really don’t remember much about that day 21 years ago, but one thing that does stick out in my mind is the blue cigar made out of gum that my dad bought for me. It was good! And then, because I probably begged somewhat pathetically for seconds, the pink gum-cigar I happily acquired after consuming the blue one. I guess I thought the pink variety would have a different taste than the blue, and I just HAD TO KNOW if my suspicions were true.

Anyway, the Darcy’s Squares moniker only seemed appropriate, and now they have become boyfriend Darcy’s favourite recipe in my rotation of regularly baked desserts. But, to be frank, I am getting a little sick of them because of this! I do have some good memories, though, of them arriving, baked by mom, at my various residences in Toronto. Probably slightly malnourished yet bloated on English-muffin pizzas and peanut-butter-covered rice cakes, I was always thankful for some of that down-home bakin’! And for the large grocery bill the parentals always picked up for me on their road trips to the T-Dot, yo. Now both traditions have been passed on to my brother. So, in honour of parent-paid grocery bills everywhere, I present you with Darcy’s Squares:

Base:

1 cup flour

½ tsp baking powder

1/8 tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

1/3 cup Crisco oil

1 cup brown sugar

1 egg, slightly beaten

2 Tbsp milk

1 tsp vanilla

Topping: semi-sweet chocolate chips; chopped walnuts

Mix all base ingredients together. Spread in 8×8” pan sprayed with Pam. Cover with chocolate chips and chopped walnuts. Bake at 350°F for about 25 minutes. Once a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean, you’re in business!

Note: For some reason my computer wouldn’t format some of the fractions and I couldn’t figure out how to do it myself so everything looked the same. Grrrr…!

Before going outside: Boots, Aldo; leggings, Dynamite; shirt-dress, All About Me via Winners; tube dress underneath shirt-dress, Spoof; jacket and necklace, H&M; bracelets, vintage; earrings, Forever 21.

Going outside: Purse, Aldo; jacket, Roots; scarf, Le Chateau; lunchbag, California Innovations via Canadian Tire.

Another mild day fit for the jean jacket! Also a day in which I didn’t require gloves or mittens! But, I do admit I wish I would have had a random pair in my purse because I had to put air in my car tires before heading to work today, and it took a while for my fingertips to warm up afterward. Yes, I do fill up my own tires with air, something I have become surprisingly adept at (and something I didn’t even think about prior to living with DN)!

As you can see, I thought it might be interesting/humorous to showcase my trusty lunchbag that is often by my side. Here, it contains a pear, an apple, four pieces of Wasa crispbread with peanut butter, and some cheddar cheese. And then, because I’m an out-and-out  junkie, I bought Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups at work (for $1.50 from the vending machine – doesn’t that seem kind of expensive?).

By now you might have noticed my hair is usually pulled back. This is the case, always, unless I have a hat on or have just gotten my hair cut and it’s much shorter. So, the picture of my head shows my go-to daily hairstyle. I am not a hair person and haven’t had a haircut since last December 23. And, I blow-dry my hair about twice a year. Gasp and exclamation point!

Note: Something was wonky with the lighting and the camera flash today, and my skin looks blindingly pale – more so than usual.

Anyone who knows me only needs to see a picture of these squares, and they’ll think about how frigging good they were when I made them that one time, and then that other time, and oh, what about that different time…. Introduced to my family by my mom, they are unofficially called the Squeaky Squares and officially called Chocolate Confetti Squares. I prefer the former because it’s such a great conversation opener:

Me: “Hi! These are my Squeaky Squares.”

Potential Square Eater: “Wow, what a name. They sound great—all squeaky and fun to eat.”

Me (leaning menacingly towards Potential Square Eater): “THEY WILL BLOW YOUR MIND.”

A completely fabricated conversation, yes, but ever since bringing this recipe outside of the familial home, it has been a hit. I have been accused (jokingly, I hope) of trying to steal a boyfriend, of being a bad, bad person for bringing such an addictive substance through the door, and of being the only one who can make the squares taste as good as they do (true or false, friends?). Many a party was abandoned for the club/bar and too-expensive drinks, only for a few stragglers to return to the pre-going-out house to eat the leftover food, which always included warm Squeaky Squares. While made to be refrigerated, get a few drinks in anyone and left-out Squeaky Squares suddenly become the epitome of snacks.

Make a batch for yourself and reap the rewards, i.e.:

Party-goer: “Who brought these great squares?”

You (smugly): “I did.”

Party-goer: “Will you marry me?”

(While that scenario might not be as appealing to male readers (and maybe some female readers, too!), just insert your own fantasy into the last line and you get an idea as to the power of the Squeaky Square.)

Squeaky Squares/Chocolate Confetti Squares

¼ cup margarine

½ cup peanut butter

1 bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 small bag of coloured mini marshmallows

Melt margarine in microwave. Pour into large mixing bowl. Soften peanut butter in microwave, and add to margarine. Stir together into lovely melted mixture. Add bag of chocolate chips and stir until mixture is smooth (if you need to put the bowl in the microwave to help this process along, that’s OK). Once everything is all nice and smooth, add the bag of marshmallows and mix in until all are coated with chocolate. Pour Squeaky Squares into 9 x 9”ish baking pan. Place in refrigerator and eat when hardened.

Note 1: Do not use reduced-calorie margarine. I have made this mistake and believe me, it doesn’t work. You can, however, use low-calorie peanut butter.

Note 2: You can use white mini marshmallows, but they lessen the goodness of the recipe, so I don’t recommend tampering!

I am learning how to play with my photo-editing program, and apparently one thing I need to work on is my font sizing. Everything looked so much bigger before I imported to my blog! So, clockwise from top, An annotated life of the Squeaky Square: Squeaky Squares in action; Here lie the Squeaky Squares; One of Squeaky Squares’ debuts; And here they are again; Acting as a birthday-cake stand-in.

Also, in the first picture I’m wearing the leopard-print top referenced in “T’was a mild day in Edmonton.” See? It’s not hideous!

Inside the office: Shoes, Guess via The Bay; jeans, Parasuco via Winners; top, Dynamite; blazer, Lux via Urban Outfitters; earrings, Le Chateau; ring, vintage.

Outside the office: Boots and purse, Aldo; jacket, Roots; mittens, Grammie!; scarf and tam, vintage.

I felt like I had to take a lot of pictures to adequately display today’s outfit – there were so many elements that seemed necessary to showcase!  For example, the fact that my top was sleeveless – I bet no one at the office guessed that! Also, you should know that I do not attempt to walk to work in these heels, but don the scruffy boots instead (the scruffy boots are on their last legs in person, but I think they don’t look half-bad in these photos; kind of motorcycle-bootish…?). And yes, unfortunately I did walk around with that off-centre bow wagging behind me all day. Thanks to this blog, I now know to retie, retie, retie!  One last shout-out: my beloved jean jacket, bought almost six years ago. I will collapse and cry for days once it goes out of commission.

Donny and Kym givin’ it their all.

Last night was the  finale of Season 9 of Dancing With the Stars, and what a two-hour dancing extravaganza it was! Glitz, shine, teeth, tans, tears, and false eyelashes abounded. But, in the end, there could only be one winner, and that was 1970s teen idol (and No. 1 heartthrob of my mom), Donny Osmond.  Dancing with Kym Johnson, Donny quietly dominated the season because of his popularity with the audience, and not necessarily because of his consistent dancing. Team Osmond topped their season off, however, with a show-stopping freestyle dance that had Donny stepping out as a Broadway dancer, all decked out for what was an energetic and exciting performance (Kym was really giving those kicks hell!). Judges Carrie Ann Inaba, Bruno Tonioli, and Len Goodman thought so too, and the pair scored a perfect 30. And, as Tom Bergeron ominously warned many times on Monday, the freestyle dance often makes or breaks a DWTS couple and the best performance usually produces the show’s winner. Voila! Donny and Kym take the cake, Mya and Dmitry Chaplin, the top-scoring couple all season, come second after an oatmeal freestyle dance modelled after a Hairspray number, and Kelly Osbourne and Louis van Amstel place third after a freestyle dance in which Kelly messed up and whose own mistakes left her giggling uncontrollably afterward.

Personally, even though I thought Mya was the best dancer, I was secretly hoping and had myself convinced that Kelly was going to win. The chants of “Kel-ly! Kel-ly!” that occurred twice during last night’s show buoyed my hopes, but alas, it was not meant to be. Osmond-mania strikes in the new millennium.

So, here we are, Mirrorball Trophy awarded, and another season ended. I haven’t watched DWTS from the beginning, but started up with it in Season 6 (winners: Kristi Yamaguchi and Mark Ballas) after much urging from my mom. While it held no interest for me before mom’s fierce recommendation, once I gave it a try, I was hooked immediately! No stranger to reality television, I had no qualms there, and not exactly adverse to copious amounts of TV watching, adding another show into my viewing schedule was not a problem. (Yes, I do have a viewing schedule—what of it, say you?!) Anyway, I love the costumes on DWTS, I think the band is wildly talented in their renditions of anything from jazz to classic rock, the makeup on the women is always amazing, and I like to believe I could dance like that, too, if I just had a professional teacher who would give me one-on-one personal lessons, dammit! But, since I don’t have an abundance of calls coming in asking me to be the next member of the DWTS cast, as their made-up-by-me-new-feature-in-Season-10 “real person,” I guess I will have to settle for, well, nothing because DWTS won’t be back until, from what I can tell, Spring 2010. Until then, I suppose I can work on perfecting my spray tan and then falling asleep every night to Donny’s dulcet tones crooning Puppy Love in my ear.

Sans coat: Boots, Aldo; tights, Giant Tiger; tube dress, Spoof; jacket, Costa Blanca; scarf, brooch, and bracelet, vintage; earrings, Forever 21.

Avec coat: Coat, Urban Behaviour; belt, Le Chateau; gloves, H&M; purse and hat, Aldo.

It has been unseasonably mild in Edmonton this month, and I have been enjoying wearing silk scarves instead of flannel ones, and spring coats instead of bulkier winter ones. I am also thankful for the warmer temperatures, because, as anyone who has worn Aldo boots in -20 C weather knows, Sorels they ain’t!

Since this is my first post chronicling my day-to-day fashion choices, I figure I will point out a few things: I wear my glasses every day, and if you’re curious, they’re from Hakim; I wear this gold nameplate bracelet with “Margie” on it almost every day – it was my Grammie’s and it’s near and dear to me; I bought these brown, suede boots for $30; this brooch was found in a Baggie of assorted “junk jewelry” that I bought for $5 at an antique mall parking-lot sale last summer; I have this tube dress in black and green as well; and the red belt originally came with a leopard-print tube-style top (which sounds hideous, but it’s really not – I swear!).

Here’s hoping for more spring-coat days in November!

If there’s one thing I like, it’s baked goods. They can be your baked goods, they can be my baked goods, they can be baked goods from the grocery store – it really doesn’t matter to me because it’s guaranteed that I will eat whatever has been mixed in a bowl and has had sugar and eggs added to it, preservatives be damned. One caveat, however, and it is straight from what my friends like to call my “rule book”: I do not like fruit in baked goods, so let it be known I will turn my nose up at apple pie, every time.

It is difficult to go wrong with the combination of cinnamon and sugar, though (mini deep-fried doughnuts at any carnival are an excellent example), so for my virgin baking voyage as De Facto Redhead, I decided to dedicate two hours of my Friday night to Snickerdoodles. I was introduced to Snickerdoodle deliciousness while in college. My closest friend (LK) in an otherwise tedious group of journalism students made these cookies for me as part of my Christmas gift. Oh, how they warmed my heart! Slightly raised on top, with craggy breaks in the dough into which cinnamon and sugar fell left me swooning (or, maybe just swaying unsteadily from how full I was after eating the entire tin). During following Christmas-baking seasons, I asked my mom to make Snickerdoodles, and they were good, but they never quite attained the select taste of my first experience with LK’s delectable sampling. Forgetting again tonight that trying to achieve someone else’s baking success is usually impossible, I gave the recipe a try, courtesy of Company’s Coming’s Most Loved Cookies. The recipe started with creaming together the margarine and sugar. As I am no Jean Paré, I’m not quite sure what “creaming” means since mashing and stirring seems to have worked for me in the past, as well as today, but hey, as I said, I’m no Paré.

After more creaming, beating, stirring, mixing, and rolling, and then two hours that involved, among other things, leaning against the sink with one oven mitt on, sampling too-hot pieces of cookie that had come straight out of the oven, my version of Snickerdoodles were baked and browned. (By the way, doesn’t it seem as if you’re eating fewer cookies as a whole if you’re only breaking off pieces of numerous cookies?)

So, are my cookies good? Yes. Are they worthy of a gorging session? Oh, yes. But, the million-dollar question, do they measure up to LK’s? No, they do not!

Snickerdoodle experiment over. I guess all I can do now is eat my cookies. Shame, that …

Snickerdoodles:

Hard magarine (or butter), softened – 1 cup

Granulated sugar – 1 ½ cups

Large eggs – 2

All-purpose flour – 2 ½ cups

Cream of tartar – 2 tsp.

Baking soda – 1 tsp.

Salt – ¼ tsp.

Granulated sugar – 2 Tbsp.

Ground cinnamon – 2 tsp.

Cream margarine and first amount of sugar in large bowl. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Combine next four ingredients in medium bowl. Add to margarine mixture in two additions, mixing well after each addition until no dry flour remains. Roll into one-inch balls.

Combine second amount of sugar and cinnamon in small bowl. Roll each ball in cinnamon mixture until coated. Arrange about two inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake in 375°F oven for about 10 minutes until golden. Let stand on cookie sheet for five minutes before removing to wire racks to cool. Makes about 4 ½ dozen cookies.

Note: Follow the 10-minute baking time! Even though the cookies seem really soft when you take them out, they harden up in the five minutes you leave them on the baking sheet before transferring them to the wire racks. I left a couple batches in the oven for about 15 minutes and they ended up being too hard for my liking.

Safe Passage by Ida Cook

I’m a big fan of Second World War historical fiction – not really the super-historical stuff that I assume appeals to a more masculine crowd, but the books that can be placed in whatever category The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society falls into. That particular example popped into my head because it’s the last book I read before Safe Passage.  And, Guernsey was so good and warm and full of winsome characters that I had hyped myself up to read more, more, more stories from the Second World War. (I am a fair-weather reader who jumps from subject matter to historical period to genre without abandon; if I read a Philippa Gregory, it’s historical fiction all the way for weeks, but if I happen to slip and read a biography about a kids’ camp nurse? More camp/nurses’ stories, please!)

Anyway, back to war stories. I had Safe Passage on my shelf for about a year and, this book-selection round, it had exactly what I was looking for after finishing Guernsey: WWII intrigue and, at the risk of sounding all rose-coloured glasses-y, wartime romance and glamour from the viewpoint of two sisters. The author Ida Cook, and her sister Louise, were two seemingly regular girls from the U.K., but who eventually, surprisingly, found themselves embroiled in the refugee work of getting Jews out of Nazi peril before the widespread German occupation in Europe made it too dangerous and too hopeless for their work to continue. It DOES sound like an exciting story, right? And, yes, it was, except for one big thing that kept me bored to tears: Ida and Louise were bona fide opera fans whose entire lives (well, a very large part of them, anyway) were devoted to following and experiencing what the biggest operatic stars of the day had to offer. So devoted were Ida and Louise that many stars eventually became life-long friends. Opera fans of the old-school variety, rejoice – this is a book for you. For someone like me, however, who knows nothing of opera besides the fact that the word “aria” is associated with it and Carrie takes off on Charlotte at the opera because Big is there with Natasha, Ida and Louise’s travails in this world were of little to no interest to me.

I’ll divide the book into three parts familiar to us all: the beginning, middle, and end. The beginning consisted of me hoping the opera talk would stop once the stories of the war got going. Luckily, they did, for the most part, as the middle kept my attention much better and I looked forward to reading more than a few pages before turning over and favouring sleep instead of Safe Passage. However, I found the individual stories of the refugees difficult to follow, and therefore remember, because of Ida’s scattered writing style. I felt like I was being pulled back and forth between various years and people, and there wasn’t a simple trajectory called time used that might have otherwise allowed me to connect with some of the people profiled in this book. This schizophrenic approach affected my opinion of the last third of the book – otherwise known as the end – because not only were the opera stars of the beginning referenced once more (who, again, I had trouble remembering, or caring about), but some of the refugees were mentioned as well and I couldn’t recall who they were in relation to which escape story I had read.

Safe Passage was originally published in 1950 as We Followed Our Stars, and was republished in 2008 under the title used here. I am left puzzled in 2009 by the seeming lack of a substantive edit to pull a more cohesive book together, especially since Ida is a well-known romance author who wrote under the pen name Mary Burchell, and, because I have nothing against romance novelists, is someone who I think should have known better!

Even though this is a rather negative review of a book that took me an uncharacteristically long time to read (a little over a month for a 304-pager with fairly wide margins!), I don’t disparage the honourable and amazing work Ida and Louise did, securing “families” and the proper and almost impossible-to-attain paperwork for the Jews they helped find safety for in England. For me, however, Safe Passage was just too much opera shoptalk, too little chronological focus, and not enough story worthy of late-night binge-reading sessions I would never regret the next morning.