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I made sushi last week. My best ever!! Mine had salmon, avocado, cucumber and yam. OM NOM NOM. We bought a mondo bag of sushi rice so I guess there will be a lot more homemade sushi in the near future. :)

Rosemarie came over yesterday. I made a chicken pot pie while she did some school work. I used all fresh veggies, but I did not make the crust since we don’t have a food processor to make dough. Anyway I used a Pillsbury crust that came rolled up (not frozen), and it was quite nice. I followed this recipe, more or less.

I also made two mini ones to freeze for later. :D

I also made a rainbow cake last week. Cake mixes were on sale at No Frills for 99 cents so I grabbed a box of French Vanilla. I dyed the batter all different colours in separate bowls and then just drizzled them randomly into the pan. I made my own icing but didn’t have enough icing sugar (HOLY COW icing uses A LOT of sugar!!!) so it was a bit runny…. but it kinda soaked into the cake and that was actually delicious. I topped the cake with rainbow chocolate chips because I am 5.

Mmmmmm cake.

I also tried Budget Bytes Summer Vegetable Tian. In the winter. Yep. It was tasty, like of all of her recipes. I think her blog might be my favourite food blog of them all! It’s all about making nice food on a budget (duh). Anyway I put slices of potato, sweet potato, tomato, zucchini, and eggplant, with lots of herbs, and a little cheese on top.

Other food success stories without pictures:

Mirza Ghasemi, a Persian eggplant dish with TONS O’ GARLIC. Verrrry tasty, just don’t breathe on anyone after. We ate it with rice. I really liked this dish, the flavour was different than everything else I cook. I recommend trying this one if you like eggplant a lot like we do.

Jalapeno Popper Quiche, turned out great. Next time I would add a lot more jalapenos.

Savoury Fruit Stuffing. Bit late for this I suppose, but I forgot to post it. This is the stuffing I made at Thanksgiving. It was SO GOOD. OK as usual I changed things: not as much onion as it said, veggie stock powder + rosemary + thyme instead of the herbs it said (didn’t have sage), and no orange peel.

Oven-fried onion rings. I had major trouble getting anything to stick on to the onions, but the parts that did were SUPER crunchy and delicious

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Is fall over yet?? I am so sick of pumpkin recipes!!!!

OK I like actual pumpkins like butternut and jap, but NOT that canned stuff that so many October and November recipes seem to be featuring!

Snow fell in Vancouver yesterday, I think that means it’s time to put the canned pumpkin away.

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Check out this wicked awesome care package we got from Scott’s mum in Australia!

Savoys (similar to Ritz but way crunchier/better), BBQ Shapes, various minty things, choc ripple cookies biscuits, Flake, Wizz Fizz (haven’t tried this yet!), Freddo frogs, Fruity Tingles, Chomp, and some Aussie socks!

It made Scott very very happy. He is rationing everything, heehee.

We may have to send Scott over with an empty suitcase just for Savoys. Australia really has better crackers biscuits.

P.S. How does it make sense to have the same word for a cracker AND a cookie??!

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This weekend was the UBC Apple Festival. We had a really good time last year, so both Scott and I were quite excited to go again this year. We brought along a friend of mine (one of my classmates) this time and all three of us had lots of fun.

We tasted a million kinds of apples. My favourites were Jonamac, Fiesta (which apparently I liked last year too!), Honeycrisp, and Lord Lambourne. Both Scott’s and Gill’s favourites were totally different than mine, and each others. All apples really do have different tastes, textures, and juiciness. It’s really neat to try so many at the same time. I prefer softer, juicy and not overly sweet, while Scott likes crunchy and very sweet.

Actually we all liked Lord Lambourne, but that one wasn’t available for sale!

Scott entered an apple peeling contest.

I ate the whole peel except this tiny strip, so Scott used it for a disguise.

Scott and Gill shared a piece of apple pie.

And we took a corny photo (that I love).

We all bought one bag of apples. Jonamac for me, Senshu for Scott, and Aurora Golden Gala for Gill.

It really was a great Saturday morning. Unfortunately the rest of the weekend is filled with homework. Back to studying now…

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me and my turkey

Our Thanksgiving party ended up being a big success! Lots of fun!

Do you like my homemade sushi apron??

lotsa food

I overcooked the turkey a bit (was so worried about it being safe!) but everyone said it was still good. We put bacon on the top! All 12 of us ate through most of the 13 lbs, except for one tupperware of bits of meat that I pulled off later for sandwiches and a bunch of lunch packs that I sent home with some people. My stuffing got devoured, mmm it was so good. It was a savoury fruit stuffing with apples and cranberries, and vegetarian so Scott could eat it too. We also had two kinds of mashed potatoes (one with mascarpone and crab!),  roasted vegetables and squashes, bread, cheese, beans, salads, 50 million desserts and lots of wine. Probably more that I am forgetting!

I’m pretty impressed that we had such a big dinner with the supplies we had. We had to share knives and Stew had to eat out of a tupperware container though, haha. And Scott had to perch on the back of the couch. I loved how it all went though, with everyone just digging into the food and lots of laughter.

post-turkey pre-dessert coma

haha why does Rosemarie look so disgusted?

After dinner we played a few games of Wits and Wagers and drank more wine. Then the night ended with the boys playing Street Fighter and girls playing Carcassonne, and then one final late night Carcassonne game with Scott since Lauren would be leaving in the morning.

Took me ages to fall asleep. Too much adrenaline after all the hosting and all the fun!

A+ Thanksgiving 2011. Hope yours was amazing as well!!