helloooo wtfers!
here we are, hot on the heels of another epic reunion! katie threw a mega 10 year wedding anniversary party, so we all travelled to canada for a couple weeks of fun and friendship and kid-fueled chaos :) many core memories were made, (too) many hot dogs were consumed.
we don’t have any new recipes for you this edition because, again, we’ve been eating mostly hot dogs. so instead, here’s a lil’ recap of what we’ve been up to for the past month:
wtf did we eat?
snacks! the law states that on a holiday, every day is a weekend, which means you’re constantly out and about. which means you need to have a bag full of snacks at all times or ELSE. we packed every crevice of our bags with fruits, granola bars, rice cakes, pouches, and pretzels, which were the biggest hit. so much so that they eventually had to be hidden so the kids wouldn’t die from salt dehydration.
hot dogs. how many hot dog dinners is too many? we may have reached peak dog. the grown ups were able to mix things up with a few BBQ feasts - steaks, grilled veggies, big salads (alongside the dogs, of course), but the kids became Lords of Dogtown and Princes of Pizzaville. we are now detoxing.
swiss chalet. not a chalet in switzerland, but the classic canadian rotisserie chicken chain. why is this not a thing on the euro side of the ocean? give the people what they want (a quarter chicken and shirley temples).
sugar snap peas! new-to-rowan veggies were crunched and enjoyed! that’s a win. does anyone know where to find snap peas in dublin?
wtf did we watch?
bad guys. out of nowhere, bad guys became THE kids movie of the vacation. i think both of our kids watched it (in part or in full) close to 10 times. there’s a christmas one they all enjoyed, too.
ed: the holdovers. i, impressively, managed to watch one whole movie on the flight over to canada and another on the way back. and i nailed it, both were A+. the holdovers feels like one of those movies which got away from a lot of us, we all committed to seeing it in the cinema and then never did. i was delighted to see it on the in-flight entertainment and thoroughly enjoyed the 70s aesthetics, as well as the cutting insults and on point soundtrack. it’s a movie that hits you in the feels and leaves you feeling a bit better about humanity.
ed: snack shack. this one is a 10/10 coming of age movie, also hitting you right in the feels with a killer soundtrack. these kids are the kinda kids I wanted to be during my teen years, but absolutely was not.
katie: nobody wants this. seth cohen & veronica mars in a 10 episode rom com? a millennial fever dream. say less.
katie: emily in paris. it’s absolute trash and i love it.
wtf did we read?
LOL, nothing! if we ever get around to reading actual adult books again, we’ve got the bee sting by paul murray and intermezzo by sally rooney waiting in a pile. our kids read a lot though!
robert munsch. a can-lit legend, these are always in rotation. ed went home with a collection of miniatures, which rowan is devouring at bedtime. even though he’s still too young to read, he’ll ask to keep the light on at bed time so he can look at them before going to sleep, which is adorable.
bad guys. katie’s eldest otis (8) is reading les mechants. it’s the bad guys series, but in french (he goes to french immersion school, and technically this is part of his homework, do NOT tell him).
yoto audiobooks! highly recommend getting a yoto player for your kiddos, there’s a huge library of books and podcasts to choose from.
ed: pizza night. being one of those families who religiously commits to pizza friday means I’m an also an avid follower of alex stafford’s
substack. i’ve been meaning to pick a copy of the book up for a while and was pleased to see it on the shelves of katie’s local bookstore.katie: pass the plate. i’m so happy this is finally out -
is such a creative cook and her substack is one of my faves. her recipes are always a slam dunk (spiral dogs!!!!!!!!!) and the book is full of fantastic dishes that i cannot wait to make.
fail of the month:
leaving rowan’s crocs (full of good jibbitz) at toronto island. he was very mad, and we were sent straight to jail.
assigning a simple ikea build to otis, thinking it would be “fun” for him. the moment he put a piece in the wrong way, we knew we had made a huge mistake.
more of a very important lesson than a fail: without this we would have been in deep deep deeeep trouble with our toddler on the long haul flight from dublin to toronto.
OK! this is where we’ll leave you for now! we have plenty of good stuff in the works here and on our instagram, including new recipes, our next edition of the zine and more!
ttyl,
kt & ed