The Science Centre, My Home Away From Home

I rolled out of bed and into the bathroom today fairly late, since I was lacking the sleep as they say. It used to be, before I was a Husband and then a Dad, that the bathroom was the one place I could go to be by my self and gather my thoughts, catch up on my reading, pinch a loaf, whatnot. Now, and I'm sure that you parent types can relate, my ass hitting the seat of the john is some sort of homing beacon for both my wife and the Boy.
We have a modern marriage, and I wouldn't have it any other way, but I didn't realize this included casual bathroom conversation. It's not like I'm the best conversationalist when I'm on the Throne. I don't have my date book handy, so it's not best to make any sort of date sensitive plans. Chances are, it's first thing in the morning, and I don't even have my contact lenses in, so coming in a brandishing a fuzzy, out of focus object at my head bone and asking "have you seen this?" will get you a "Well, technically, I still haven't"
It took years, but I have finally convinced my wife to pause for the slightest second before she comes into the bathroom to talk to me, and only 20 minutes of asking for some privacy to get her to leave.
Useless now, because the Boy has some sort of "Dad is immobilized" sensor in his brain, and heads for the bathroom like a rocket. When my wife wants to talk, she usually pushes the door open and says something like "It's your boss, can you talk on the phone right now?". The Boy enters like a Marine sweeping a room, foot first. The door crashes into the cast iron tub, sounding like Big Ben being punted by Godzilla, followed by "Daddy!".
Then 45 pounds of excited child lands in my lap and starts dancing, looking out the window, stealing my glasses if I had the foresight to put them on, that sort of thing. You think it's hard for me to drop a spike while carrying on a conversation? This will invariably be followed by my wife coming in to ask, "Are you almost done, I have to pee".
But I digress. While I was having my delayed morning constitutional, the Boy wandered in and was showing me his trains again (and how much of parenting is showing wondered delight over something you've been shown about five thousand times before?), and I said to him "Do you want to go to the park?" "Park?" he echoed (which usually means either yes, or I'm listening). "Do you want to go to the park today?" he kind of frowned and said "No, no park". Huh.
"Okay then, what do you want to do today?"
"Science Centre!"
Which isn't very surprising, since it's about his favorite place in the whole world. However, this is the first time he's actually answered the question "What do you want to do?" without me running down a list of possibilities. So we hopped in the car and we went. Unfortunately, I was supposed to renew our membership last week, when I was broke, and could not. BUT! The Boy had a milestone, and I was damned if we were going to deny him his spontaneous request, even though we'd only get to go for an hour and a half, and we'd have to pay full price.
I had the strangest sense of Deja Vu going in there today. I suspect that they don't really bother fixing things towards the end of the summer, since the kids are just going to break them again. I guess that's it. When we went today, things were looking... kind of ghetto. It was like visiting in the 80's again, back when the place had become a rundown joke. Who knew that my family membership renewal was all that was standing between them and a return to decrepitude?
They'd better get things fixed for next time, that's all I'm saying.
I was in a breading mood when we left for the day (with another Thomas the Tank Engine toy. I'm expecting a Christmas card from Britt Alcroft this year, we've bought so much of the damned stuff), so we stopped at the seafood counter of our local Dominion store to get some shrimp, lobster meat and some oysters. Then the fish guy bent me over the counter, grabbed a king crab leg and...
I keep forgetting the difference between Chinatown and where the Gwailo shop. For the love of Bob, if you're going to buy seafood, shop in Chinatown. Old or new it doesn't matter (on the off chance someone outside of Toronto starts reading this thing, Toronto has two Chinatowns. Yes, we are that awesome. We also have two Little Italy's, though we call one "North York"). The seafood is fresh to the point of being alive, the prices are insanely low, and the variety is mindblowing. I can get tubs of oysters there for six bucks, a lobster (still kicking) for ten, and a giant bag of fresh shrimp, and make dinner for about thirty bucks and we eat like kings (fresh lobster roll, oyster Po'Boys and popcorn shrimp. Who's your daddy!). If you've never had a Po'Boy, it is a sandwich that only the truly poor could invent in an area that was awash in seafood. We think of oysters as a luxury food, but in coastal areas they were what poor people ate (just like lobster, come to think of it). To make a Po'Boy, dredge half a dozen fat oysters in cornmeal seasoned with some Old Bay and a bit of starch, then shallow fry in hot oil for no more than a minute in a cast iron pan (you can do this on a houseboat over an open propane burner if you want to get really authentic). You're not trying to cook the oysters, but just firm them enough to hold together and give the cornmeal a crunch. Cook them too long, they turn into superballs. Split a roll, layer in some coleslaw then stuff in the oysters. If you're making a lobster, put the rolls in the top pan of the steamer first, so they are hot and soft. You can put on a squeeze of lemon or a drop of hot sauce, but I prefer mine straight up.
They. Are. Delicious.
Hot and crunchy with soft melting rich and slightly bitter oysters, the assertive crunch and peppery cabbage in the slaw underneath with a little cool island in the middle of the heat from the roll. Simple. Perfect. Like a Lobster Roll, it needs very little.
Should you choose to make them for your friends (and they work really well for this, since the cooking time is so short, you can run a queue through the kitchen and be out chatting before the first one is consumed), go to a Chinese supermarket and get the large plastic tubs of fresh oysters, there is a surprising number of oysters in them, and you can feed a party of six for about $20.00. Make the slaw yourself, because honestly people. Most people would say you should get French rolls for authenticity, but I like the Italian rolls because they have a bit more substance to them. DON'T go into a Chinese bakery looking for rolls, they don't really have them, and you may end up like we did, cutting into rolls and discovering they were full of raisins. Not really something that goes well with seafood.

Okay then, bed now.