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I voted today! Since I will be in Edmonton on election day I had to do advance voting today after work. There was a bit of an issue with my name, but I just had to fill out an extra piece of paper. Weird that Elections Canada somehow knew my new address, but didn’t know my new name, when I changed everything all at the same time. Anyway– sorted now.

We had a very nice long weekend. I relaxed on Friday and worked on party planning while Scott went to Metrotown with his aunt. She bought six Quatchi’s!!

(That isn’t Scott’s aunt!)

Then we watched two movies. Nearly finished our movie alphabet. Will post soon.

Saturday was a big day. Scott made hash browns, then we went up and did laundry and groceries. Then we stopped by Scott’s work so he could check on some servers, went to T&T, and then to Costco. They have SO many samples at the Costco here. Best one was the cheddar jalapeno sausage (for me). Mmmm. I ate half a poutine (was not as good as I remember) and then we bused up to SFU to help Rosemarie move out of residence. Funny that the only times we went to SFU this year was the very beginning and end of the school year. It really is quite far away.

After dropping her stuff at our house we got back on the bus and went back to that ice cream place with 200+ flavours. It was such a nice sunny day we thought it would be a good School’s Out treat for Rosemarie.

This time I tried CURRY, BALSAMIC VINEGAR, Go Canucks Go (?), and Bailey’s chocolate cheesecake. Eventually settled on a Ferrero Rocher cone, while Rosemarie got Toblerone and Scott got White Chocolate Cranberry.

The rest of the evening was spent playing lots of board games (Agricola, Settlers) and dinner (Rosemarie and I made spicy eggplant and pork).

On Sunday morning we made a yummy breakfast with beans, eggs, toast, hash browns, bacon and then tried to digest it for the rest of the day. It made us all SOOOOO tired! We met up with Scott’s aunt and went to the Granville Market but didn’t stay long as other people don’t seem to be as interested in looking at vegetables as I am, haha.

We came home and relaxed and played more games and I made salad and black bean burgers (recipe to come soon).

Rosemarie is off to Squamish now and I won’t see her again until the party in Ottawa. :( I miss her already!

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I had a major cooking disaster yesterday.

I was making smore squares. First you bake a graham cracker sugar cookie crust, then you melt milk chocolate over it, then top it with marshmallows and broil it a bit.

Everything was going well. I put it in to broil, went to get a drink of water, came back to take a peek…. HUGE FLAMES IN THE OVEN!! EVERYTHING ON FIRE!!

I ran around in a circle yelling ‘IT’S ON FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!’ then I came to my senses and turned off the oven and opened the doors and windows and Scott took the flaming pan out of the oven.

It’s funny (?) that our smoke alarm will go off at 4:00 AM sometimes, or when I am cooking perogies, yet didn’t go off when there was AN ACTUAL FIRE.

Unfortunately I did not get a picture while there were still flames. But I did get that “after” shot. Sorry it’s blurry, I was rushing. Scott said it looked like the surface of another planet or something.

Anyway I scraped off the entire burnt top in one piece, and then tried again, this time broiling with the oven door open and me staring at it. It took about 8 seconds. Success! I reckon the extra little burnt bits just make it more authentic.

They are REALLY tasty.

Smore Squares

  • 3/4 cup butter, softened
  • 1/2 cup white sugar
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 1/4 cup flour
  • 1 cup graham cracker crumbs (I got them in the bulk bins at our supermarket)
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda (I accidentally used baking powder. I don’t think it matters)
  • about 1 cup milk chocolate chips
  • about 2 cups small marshmallows

1. Preheat oven to 350º F. Combine butter and sugar. Add vanilla. Then flour, graham cracker crumbs, salt and baking soda. Mix!

2. Spread in bottom of large baking dish. I used an 8″x8″ pan but that was a bit too small. Something a touch bigger than that would be perfect. No need to grease the pan. Bake for ~20-30 minutes, until cooked. Mine took forever because it was so thick.

3. Immediately sprinkle with chocolate chips. Let it stand for a few minutes, then spread the melty chocolate around.

4. Set oven to broil. Sprinkle marshmallows over top of chocolate, and broil for about 8 seconds. WATCH CAREFULLY!!! They brown FAST. OK maybe they take longer than 8 seconds, but not much more. Allow to cool a bit, and enjoy!

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The most informal save-the-date possible:

If you didn’t know already, our wedding-ish party will be on Sunday June 26th, in Ottawa. Invitations and more detailed plans to come later. We hope you can make it!!

In other news:

I’m just finishing up week 2 of the Couch to 5K running program and will start week 3. I bought running shoes. My face gets so so so red and I definitely struggle with the program, but I’m proud of myself for actually doing real exercise multiple times a week. I go right after work. Scott has been using his work gym too.

Are you also having an eggplant shortage where you are?? We haven’t been able to get eggplant in a couple weeks now and that is really sad. I love that stuff!!! Rosemarie came over on Friday and we were planning on making Sichuan Spicy Eggplant with pork but I couldn’t find any eggplant anywhere!! :( We made pirogie pizza instead.

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I had another doctors appointment on Friday. All my tests came back negative again, and due to how I felt the night before the appointment with definitely no dairy- dairy issues were ruled out as well. The doc seems pretty content to say I have ‘stress-induced IBS’. Bummer.

I might try yoga. Mom seemed to like it. I’m just shy about learning it in a group. I’ll look for beginners classes or something. And probiotics.

To celebrate being able to eat dairy Scott and I stopped for ice cream on the way back from our very unsuccessful shopping trip in the city (couldn’t find anything we were looking for). This ice cream shop always intrigued me, because it’s open very late every day and is always busy, even though it’s winter and it’s in a weird industrial-type location not close to any houses at all, and strangely has Chinese writing on the sign, as well as Italian.

Anyway we went in and saw that they have 218 flavours of ice cream, including very weird ones like balsamic vinegar, garlic, curry, durian, fennel, corn etc. etc. You’re allowed to try them so I tried the ‘pear gorgonzola’ ice cream which was not surprisingly quite strange. It really did taste like cheese. Cold cheese.

They also had many many many normal flavours. Scott settled on mint Oreo, and I got hazelnut fudge.

This isn’t my picture but this is half of the inside of the store.

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SO COLD THIS WEEK.

Not only has Vancouver been having colder than usual weather (-3°C?????!!!), it was -15°C in Calgary on Wednesday. I forgot how going out into super cold air makes you cough. Ha.

I am super spoiled and was lucky enough to have my friend from Dal not only pick me up from the airport, but give me a mini tour of Calgary, stop for hot chocolate, AND pick me up from the school and drive me back to the airport!!!!! So nice! It was awesome to catch up with her, after like three years!

However the interview was not as nice. I was expecting one-on-one traditional style interviews but 30 seconds before I had to go in I found out it was MMI style. I was SO not prepared. There were 4 of us and we had to go to 5 different tables. At each table you got 2 minutes to read over a scenario and some questions, and then 4 minutes to answer. The problem was I thought some of the scenarios were so simple that there is no possible way at all I could talk about it for 4 minutes (ex. You are an imaging technologist at a small clinic with one other technician and a secretary. You notice the secretary has been repeatedly making the same mistake. What do you do? Ummmm…. nicely go over the mistake with the secretary?? WHAT ELSE COULD I SAY?? If I notice a mistake I’m not going to creep around it.)

This made me very nervous and a little rambly and just… unsure. Which is probably the exact opposite of what I should have been. It is REALLY weird talking to someone who is totally unresponsive. I only figured out they were probably told to me like that several hours later.

Anyway after the last table that was it. ‘Interview’ over.

Blargh. It’s really frustrating that I don’t feel like I rocked it. I knew about this style of interview (they use it at Michener) but I just didn’t know this one would be like that and instead of practicing public speaking I focused more on my history, my customer service experience, the course requirements, and challenging situations I have had to deal with.

Who knows, maybe I did ok. The other girls didn’t use up the whole 4 minutes each time either.

My flight back ended up being delayed 2.5 hours. The worst part was that no other flight seemed to have been affected. Even the next WestJet flight ended up leaving 15 minutes before mine. :( So instead of getting home at a reasonable 7:30 I got home at 10:00 and talked with Scott a bit and went straight to bed. I was so tired and had super bleary eyes at work the next day.

Work is challenging again. I’m not doing the old forms I am so used to that I could do in my sleep, and now have to learn 50 million new rules and things. Maybe soon I won’t have to type any more.

Oh and I’m still off dairy. I had some when I was in Calgary and I did feel a little sick that day so I went off it again. It’s just really hard to tell if I feel better without dairy or the same. The differences are so slight and inconsistent I still haven’t been able to reach any conclusions. I made quiche this morning with a store-bought crust (it uses cheapo oils instead of butter), and soy milk. It was good.