Thank you all for your votes. I guess I can keep the layout the way it is, which is good.

You might not hear from me much over the next 2.5 weeks because I have SIX FINAL EXAMS next week and FIVE FINAL EXAMS the week after that. How did this even happen? We only have 8 different subjects??!!??

Anyway I will be back after that with lots of pictures and nails and crafts and food because it will be summertime and even though I have to work at the hospital full time I WILL HAVE NO HOMEWORK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last week I won a vaneats.ca package called Siddhartha’s Nirvana. Scott and I went to redeem it on Friday. Siddhartha’s Indian Kitchen is on Commercial Drive and has super modern and sleek feel.

The server we got had no idea what I was talking about when I said I wanted to redeem the Siddhartha’s Nirvana package I won. I guess not many people have gone in to eat theirs yet? Or maybe she was new. Anyway they did eventually figured it out but only after this very awkward conversation.

The first thing they brought out was a trio of appetizers. That’s not my picture by the way, we ate ours before I realized that I should probably take a picture, so I took the one from the vaneats.ca website. Anyway we got two pieces of vegetable pakora, mine was cauliflower and Scott had broccoli. They were super delicious. We also got a big chunk of chicken tikka masala each, and we split the one scallop. I suppose scallop is a pretty unusual ingredient at an Indian restaurant but it was tasty. It had mango on it. It would have been nice if we got one scallop each though. In general our appetizers were much smaller than those in the picture above.

We each ordered a mango lassi. There weren’t that many drink choices actually, since they are not licensed. The drinks were very nice, mango and yogurt-y.

For the main course we got rice with butter chicken and baigan bharta, a smoked eggplant dish. The butter chicken was extremely good, the chicken was nice and tender, and the sauce was pretty much perfect. I liked that it did not have a lot of oil floating on it, like mine does when I cook it at home. The eggplant dish was also very good, the eggplant was super soft and all the spices were great. This dish was also not oily.

The onion and cilantro naan was good, especially to sop up all the extra butter chicken sauce. Mmm.

For dessert they brought out ras malai which is some kind of cottage cheese dessert with mango. I didn’t like it. There was some spice in it that I knew but couldn’t place, and I didn’t really like the texture. That’s not to say it was bad though, because Scott really liked it and ate the whole thing.

We left the restaurant very full and happy. We didn’t feel gross like after we went to the Indian restaurant near our house, probably because this place didn’t seem to use a lot of oil. Anyway the package is available for purchase for $16 and it’s definitely enough to feed two people.

Siddhartha's Indian Kitchen Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

I’M GOING CRAZY HERE.

The whole apartment has been smelling like cooking onions ALL DAY. Scott is making a batch of balsamic caramelized onions in the slow cooker and it has to cook for 8 hours and oh my, the smells coming from that thing. Three pounds of onions are cooking down and down and down, I think they are actually turning into candy. We will see. I’ve been drooling for 6 hours and I still have another 2 hours to go. O_O

It doesn’t help that I’ve been reading all these papers about sausages. We have to write a paper for our radiation safety course about “anything to do with radiation”. I started off just researching food irradiation, but after coming across a bunch of useful articles I decided to focus on the irradiation of sausages. Mostly because it is kind of hilarious. Who knew there would be so much information about it! Who knew that there is a scientific journal called Meat Science???!!

I painted my nails last night for the first time in a while. I actually have a brief reprieve from school work right now since I finished my last midterm and presentation, and finals are still two-ish weeks away. By “brief” I mean last night and today…. tomorrow I have to start studying for chemistry.

Anyway I think they turned out pretty horrible. I was trying a new technique called “dry water marbling”. Basically you paint nail polish onto a ziplock bag, smear it around a bit, let it dry, then cut out pieces and peel them off the plastic and stick them onto your nails.

It was easy enough to get the pieces stuck on to my nails, but it was hard to get rid of the extra bits around the edges. Plus my colour choices were pretty bad. I like both my index fingers and pinky fingers that are blending two similar colours together, but the other ones just look like messy lines. Blech.

I’ll try it once more and see if it turns out better next time.

We’re going out for the free dinner I won last week and I’m very excited for 7 courses of Indian food. I’ll write about it this weekend.