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I am excited! Since a lot of our friends here are not actually from Vancouver and won’t be going home for Thanksgiving we decided to have a potluck Thanksgiving dinner at our house. I think 11 people are coming! I am making a turkey (with bacon!) and everyone else is bringing other bits and pieces. Mmmmm it’s going to be goooood.

It’s my first time making a turkey but we bought one of those oven bag thingies so I think it’ll be pretty easy.

Lauren has been staying with us this weekend. Yesterday we went to the Vancouver Aquarium, which was awesome. I liked the dolphin that kept spitting his food into the air and catching it, and the otter that was doing some kind of backwards wavy swimming.

They also had a sloth!

We also went out for sushi for dinner (ironic?) and then to a friends goodbye party. All in all a very fun day.

Party-times today and then tomorrow I have to do mega homework. Boooooooooooooooo.

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Remember my last update where I said it was super dark outside and therefore super dark inside? Well, 3 minutes after posting it actually became SUNNY! Scott rushed to put his bamboo plant in the sun and I rushed around taking pictures of some parts of our house.

I don’t have time to post all the pictures now but I have prepared one of my desk area and one of my new painting series that I finished in those two weeks I had off before school started.

My work area. New desk, Craigslist chair, new computer, new printer, new desk lamp! Lucky me!!

I think we hung the paintings slightly too high. Oh well, too late now.

Do you like my paintings? I am pretty pleased with them! I especially like the middle one, because I only used red, yellow, and blue paint and mixed all the other shades. It was kind of mathematical!

I like rainbows. Also evidenced (is that a word???) by my latest nails.

I find it reallllllly hard to put my hands the right way when I use my webcam. SO confusing!! I had to get Scott to come press the button. Oh and my pinky looks blue but it’s purple in real life. I promise I know my rainbow order.

OK I really must get to my homework now. I had a EUREKA moment at school today with a classmate and need to get pen on paper before I forget. (It’s a question about elastic collisions of alpha particles and a gold nucleus, in case you were curious.

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Sigh, I really wanted to take pictures of our apartment/art today but it’s really grey and gross outside and that means our apartment is extra extra dark inside. It’s already very dark on a normal day, so now it’s like a cave. The lack of light may be my biggest complaint about this place. I really like all the big trees and flowers and plants around our building, but bye bye sunlight.

Instead I will leave you with two Katrina recipes.

Katrina’s Modified NY Times Cookies

My new go-to cookie recipe. The recipe is a bit picky, but you should have seen the original! I simplified it in a few different ways and think that these are still REALLY good, and quite a bit easier. You do have to plan ahead for them though, as they need to sit in the refrigerator for 3+ hours. They’re worth it though!

I like this recipe because the cookies turn out soft and chewy, and they don’t spread as much as Fannie Farmer cookies. I guess they look pretty humongous in the picture above but they’re not! Our oven is really tiny, we even had to buy a new smaller baking pan because the old one couldn’t fit. You can see that our silicone mat is too big now. :(

Yield: 50 cookies! This recipe can be halved fairly easily.

Time: 15 minutes of prep, 3+ hours of waiting! 15 minutes baking time.

INGREDIENTS

  • 3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 1/4 tsp baking soda
  • 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1 1/2 tsp course salt
  • 1 1/4 cups butter
  • 1 1/4 cups brown sugar
  • 1 cup + 2 tbsp white sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 tsp vanilla
  • chocolate chips/disks (white, milk, semi-sweet etc), skor pieces, as many as you prefer

INSTRUCTIONS

  1. Whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and course salt. Set aside.
  2. In a separate bowl cream together the butter and sugars. I don’t have a mixer so I soften the butter a bit in the microwave.
  3. Stir in the eggs and vanilla.
  4. Add in the flour mixture. I do it in several phases to minimize mess, since this recipe makes quite a lot of dough.
  5. Add in your chocolates chips/disks and candy pieces
  6. Cover the top of the bowl and put it in the fridge for 3-4 hours.
  7. Preheat oven to 350º F. Pry of chunks of dough and roll into 1″ diameter balls and bake for 15 minutes.

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Ummmm… Mexican THING

This monstrosity is what happens when it is my turn to cook. Hehe.

Layered from bottom to top: diced tomatoes, tortilla, black beans, tortilla, cheese, chipotle peppers and sauce, diced tomato, tortilla, cheese, green onions, and two eggs cracked on top. Basically whatever you ingredients you like.

Bake for 20 minutes. Top with a bit of sour cream and some sliced avocado.

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While many of you may not care whatsoever about nail polish, water marbling has been the number one search query for people winding up on my blog from Google, so there must be some kind of demand!

I water marbled my nails last weekend and took a bunch of pictures so that I could have a go at writing up a tutorial, including some of the tips and tricks I have picked up during my VAST EXPERIENCE (3 times).

Let’s get started.

MATERIALS

  • A cup/container you don’t care about. It will get nail polish remnants all over it. I use a sour cream container.
  • Masking tape
  • Scissors
  • Lots of toothpicks
  • Q-Tips
  • Nail polish remover/cotton pads
  • Base coat (optional). I use a base coat because my nails got kinda mushy a while ago. Gross.
  • Top coat (optional). For a top coat I highly recommend Seche Vite. You can put it on when the nail polish is still wet and it dries everything up super fast. Plus it’s really nice and shiny.
  • White nail polish. I use Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On (#300). It is kinda gloopy but it’s good enough that you only need to do one coat, plus it only costs $3.49. I forgot it in the picture so I Photoshopped it in for you guys. I DO NOT recommend Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Polar Bare (#120) because it is expensive and it’s really thin and sucky.
  • Lots of other colours of nail polish. Up to you how many you choose and what colours. All the Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear ones I have work really well for water marbling, plus like I said they are cheap. When they go on sale next I am going to buy every colour!!! Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure colours seem to work well. Sparkly/shimmery nail polishes do NOT work as well, and neither did those Wet n’ Wild ones in the picture that I got for 44 cents. Other than that I haven’t tried anything else. Feel free to let me know what works or doesn’t work for you.

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Put on your base coat. Optional.

2. Paint your nails white. It is not super important to get perfect coverage, but you want a nice white blank surface so that the relatively thin layers of coloured nail polish show up nice and bright. I do one coat with my Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear White On.

3. Mask the skin around your nails. *This is just the way I do it and it’s not even that great. If you have a better method PLEASE LET ME KNOW* First I put one piece of masking tape from side to side on my finger. Get it as close to the sides of your nail as possible and as tucked up underneath your fingernail as possible. With the shape of my fingers this is not that possible. Then use a second piece of tape to wrap around your finger tightly to secure everything down. Put that strip right up to the base of your fingernail. I usually mask one hand at a time.

4. Time for the fun part!! Fill your container up with water (lukewarm! not too hot, not too cold). Then drip nail polish onto the surface of the water. Once the drop hits the surface of the water it will spread out really quickly. That is what you want. If any of your drips do NOT spread out that means the surface of your water is too dirty and it will not work out. Time to clean it up and/or refresh your cup of water. Anyway back to dripping. I usually drip two drops of the same colour in a row because I like my colours nice and vibrant.

5. After your first colour, drip some more, so you end up with a colourful target-like coating on the top of the water like in the above picture.

6. Use a toothpick to gently swirl the nail polish around until it makes neat patterns. This will take some practice. The area in the green circle above is the kind of swirling that you want–nice and smooth and clean. The area in the red circle is what you DO NOT WANT–the nail polish has bunched up and gone cruddy. This will look ugly on your nails. You also have to work fairly quickly because the longer you wait the more it bunches up. Ah but you are only going to dip your finger in one or two spots so it’s ok if one part gets bunched up, you can still use the other parts!!

Sorry for the next three blurry pictures. I need a third arm.

7. Dip your nails in the exact part of the swirly pattern that you like the most. I struggle to do more than one nail at a time like other people do so I often just do one at a time. I like to approach the water verrrry slowly and precisely with my face really close so I can see that my nail is actually going where I want. Once it’s in though put it right in. DO NOT let your finger come out of the water!! DO NOT let your finger touch the bottom of the container.

8. Wait a minute with your finger submerged in the water for the nail polish on the surface to dry up a bit. Using your other hand pick up all the extra nail polish on the surface of the water with a toothpick.

9. When all the nail polish is picked up, you can take your fingers out of the water! Admire your work!! (Ignore all the nail polish on your skin.)

10. I suggest waiting a minute, THEN gently and very carefully removing the masking tape. Ugh so many times I have messed my nail up in this step, so annoying.

11. I wait another minute or two and then do a quick coating of Seche Vite top coat. Man I love that stuff.

12. Repeat steps 3 to 11 for you other hand!!!!!

13. Later, when the nail polish is totally dry, I start to remove all the nail polish on my skin. You can do this with q-tips or orange sticks and nail polish remover but I am not a big fan of using that drying stuff on my skin so I usually just have a shower. I find that between washing my hair and gently scrubbing at my fingers under the shower-head I am able to get most of the extra polish off.

DONE! Voila!

This process definitely takes some time and practice, especially if you mess a nail up and have to start right from step 1 again, like I do so many times, but I think it’s worth it! I love how interesting each nail can end up, and how smooth and nice it looks. People often comment on my nails when they are like this and think they are stick on nails!

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I always enjoy the food when I visit America. You just can’t get the same stuff for those cheap prices in Canada! The food we had on this trip was awesome. I had a few recommendations written down from several sources (internet friends, New York Times, yelp) and they did not disappoint. Mmmmmmm.

from Cuban Food USA

The first day we went in search of Paseo, a Caribbean sandwich shop a little bit out of the downtown area. We had to go to a tourist information center to get instructions on how to get there, then take a bus ride, and then walk up a big hill. But mmmm it was worth it.

from Seattle Weekly

I had their popular Cuban slow-roasted pork shoulder sandwich, with aioli, cilantro, japapenos, lettuce and caramelized onions. It was drippy and moist and SO GOOD. The meat was tender and yummy, the caramalized onions were amazing, and the baguette was tasty. I have no complaints.

Scott had the tofu delight, which was similar but had tofu instead of pork. He liked his too but it was a bit small considering it was the same price as mine (and mine was humongous).

Both of us had sticky hands after eating, it was impossible to keep the sandwiches together.

I also tried McDonald’s strawberry lemonade that I’d seen on TV but we didn’t have in Canada. Verdict: meh. Even though that is basically my favourite drink combination, the strawberry stuff was too sweet and the whole drink was just average. I guess what do I expect from Maccas.

The same day we went out in search of drinks and ended up at Barca, a moody bar in possibly a student area. The music was cool and the patio was good and the drinks were ultra cheap. Awesome.

After getting a bit DRONK we headed off to the Mexican restaurant that Scott had picked (Barrio). It was fancier than either of us had guessed, but mmm delicious.

We only ordered two small appetizers and one enchilada plate to share and still ended up with piles of food. In the top left you can see a pork tamale (braised pork in pepita mole, sweet pepper crema, cotija cheese, onion and cilantro, for me, obviously). In the top right is mushroom quesadilla (chipotle roasted portobello mushrooms, oaxaca, jack and cotija cheese, poblano-onion rajas and crema served with pickled vegetables and tomatillo salsa) and then in the foreground is grilled local summer squash enchiladas (with onion-red pepper rajas, jack, oaxaca and cotija cheese and tomatillo sauce).

Everything was super tasty, except for we both thought the corn tortillas were too thick and took away from the tastiness of the dishes.

I also had a strawberry margarita and Scott had a margaveza (a ginormous combination of a margeurita and a beer!). He liked it.

Me with rosy cheeks from walking.

After lazing around for a bit the next morning we headed off for breakfast. The whole walk was uphill, but again, IT WAS WORTH IT. I am still dreaming about this breakfast. We went to Glo’s, another recommendation from an internet friend/NYT. It was a small cozy breakfast joint, with a line out the front door.

We ordered way too much. I didn’t know the dishes were going to be SOOOO big!! We shared the Eggs Californian (avocado, grilled tomato and two poached eggs on English muffins with hollandaise, plus hashbrowns) and the huevos rancheros which I can’t find on the menu but basically had eggs, salsa, avocado, tortilas, sour cream, cheese, jalapenos and more, plus hashbrowns.

I’m drooling again just thinking about it. Everything was extremely yummy. We couldn’t finish it all, but we did give it a good go. Neither of us even thought about lunch at all, we were so full. Actually I was still kind of full at dinner time, but I knew we should eat something otherwise we’d end up starving on the train.

We ended up getting some light Chinese food near the train station at Ho-Ho Restaurant. Scott had some veggie chow mien and I had wonton soup with a bit of duck in it. Yummy. I don’t have any pictures of that.

Well that’s pretty much everything we ate over that weekend. All good stuff! The food was definitely one of the best parts of our trip. Now back to my salad….