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Scott and I went out on Saturday morning for hot chocolate and waffles at Leonidas near Waterfront station. They are participating in the Vancouver Hot Chocolate Festival, which runs until February 14th.

vancouver hot chocolate festival

Scott had “Raspberry Cheesecake” hot chocolate which was white chocolate with raspberry cheesecake ripple, and I had “Frozen Noisette” which was melted praline blended into frozen yogurt, topped with a shot of melted chocolate, and finished with crushed hazelnuts. AKA pure deliciousness.

I really liked mine. I always burn my mouth on hot drinks and have to wait ten hours for a drink to cool down before I can drink it, so I actually really really liked that this one was lukewarm. The perfect hot chocolate for me!! Lol. Plus it was also just really tasty. I love praline and hazelnuts and milk chocolate!! I would totally order it again.

Scott liked his, but maybe not as much as his pistachio hot chocolate he had last year.

We also had waffles, to complete our mega sugary breakfast. Scott had his with maple syrup and I had mine with chocolate sauce. It was interesting how different our waffles tasted, Scott’s was ultra sweet but mine tasted savoury! I’m assuming the waffles were the same…. so the chocolate sauce must have had some salt in it. I devoured mine.

We then buzzed and twitched our way home… mega sugar high. I <3 the Vancouver Hot Chocolate Festival!!!

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I resolved to take a picture of my dinner every day in 2013 and post the pictures here on my blog every second Monday. Here is the second set! Again, let me know if you want any recipes or info about any of my meals.

january 13, 2013 – vegetarian chilli

january 14, 2013 – daal and homemade jalapeno cheddar bread

january 15, 2013 – mushroom moussaka

more dinner pics after the jump…

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We’ve had below freezing weather for the past week. The other morning there was black ice everywhere. My bus skidded up to my stop, then later slid half way down a block on the hill towards work. The bus made a lot of weird noises, and then the driver had to reverse back up the hill so he could make the right turn. Terrifying! I was gripping on to the edges of my seat.

I’ve had a pretty good first week of work. My first impressions of the hospital are really good, I feel like I fit in and I like the way the department is run (so far). However I think this has a lot to do with working with a very nice tech all week. We’ll see what my opinion is after working with a scary/mean tech.

I already posted about this on Facebook but it still makes me laugh. So there is a nuc med test called a “gastric emptying test”. Basically we make some scrambled eggs in the microwave with some radioactivity mixed in with it. Then the patient eats it, and we take short pictures every 15-30 minutes for a couple hours so we can watch the passage of the food from the stomach through the intestines. We make a graph of how long it takes for the food to empty out of the stomach into the intestines and this gives the doctors some information about how that persons stomach motility is.

ANYWAY, I was reading through this nuclear medicine manual that I guess is pretty dated, because it suggested this for doing a gastric emptying test:

In vivo labeled chicken liver: 99mTc-sulfur colloid injected in wing vein of live chicken. Chicken killed, liver removed and cooked. Fed to patient as solid-phase marker.

There are a number of things about this that makes me chuckle.

  1. LIVE CHICKEN? At the hospital? PS I have actually had this confirmed that they really used to do this.
  2. INJECTING INTO WING VEIN? OMG injecting humans is hard enough!!
  3. LIVER REMOVED AND COOKED? Hahahahhahaha brb, making some radioactive chicken pâté!

from nourishnetwork.com

I am 50% glad I don’t have to do this and 50% sad that I don’t have to do this. Hahahaha.

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I resolved to take a picture of my dinner every day in 2013 and post the pictures here on my blog every second Monday. Here is the first set! Hope you enjoy. Let me know if you want any recipes or info about any of my meals.

january 1, 2013 – panang curry

january 2, 2013 – smoked salmon avocado eggs benedict

january 3, 2013 – brazillian coconut shrimp soup

more dinner pics after the jump…

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I just realized I totally forgot to blog about NYE, Cirque du Soleil, or the duck. I know it’s all old news now so I’ll just quickly show you some pictures.

We went to our friends apartment for New Years Eve. It was fun. They had crackers that had sweet gifts inside like luggage tags and paper clip holders. One person got a camera tripod!

Cirque du Soleil (Amaluna) was awesome. The tallest guy in the whole tent sat in front of me but I just creepily leaned over towards the stranger on my left so I could see the stage. I let Scott have the good seat because it was his first Cirque experience. He liked it.

I liked: the flexible water tub girl, especially when she swam out of the tub directly into a handstand (I HAVE TO LEARN THAT!!), the tight-rope girl (not the guy), and the see-saw flipping guys. The balancing branches thingy was neato. I wonder if she has ever had it fall down during a show. I wonder how fast she could set it up if she wanted to.

I didn’t like: the bars act, I don’t think it was special enough to be part of the show. We’ve all seen the Olympics! (I know I am a tough customer.)


It’s not burnt, it’s caramelized honey I swear

I decided I wanted to try to roast a duck because they were on sale at Superstore. By the way I really like that Superstore has pages of foods on sale that are for non-white-people holidays. Good on them for realizing that Vancouver has so many people with their own holidays that they should be able to celebrate with as much ease as people that celebrate Christmas.

Scott made scallion pancakes and we chopped up some green onion and cucumber to eat with our duck. It turned out pretty well! Most of the fat drained off the duck onto the pan below. (So much for trying to save some scrubbing… the fat all went underneath the tin foil). I don’t know if I’ll ever cook it again but it was fun to try. PS did you notice that our duck was missing one leg?