Just a reminder that this is a NO CANNED PUMPKIN zone. On this blog you WILL NOT find gross recipes using canned pumpkin such as pumpkin white chocolate cookies/hot chocolate, pumpkin dip/cream cheese/scones, pumpkin pie oatmeal/milkshake/smoothie/french toast. Blech. Why are people so obsessed with ruining perfectly good things by adding canned pumpkin to them in the fall??!! I don’t get it.

So this last weekend was Canadian Thanksgiving, and because almost all of our friends here are not from Vancouver (and can’t easily fly home), we hosted a potluck dinner at our house. This year we had 12 Ontarioians (Ontarians?) and Australians!

I cooked a 11.5 lbs turkey upside down, and while it took an hour longer than I expected it to take, it turned out juicy and delicious. Much better than last year.

Scott is clearly not a vegetarian anymore

Scott made super rich mashed potatoes and homemade whole wheat bread, and I made stuffing and gravy. Everyone else brought caesar salad with homemade dressing, homemade cranberry sauce, brussel sprouts that were 50% bacon, and 20 million kinds of dessert (mostly pie). It was delicious and amazing.

Everyone chowing down

I miss being around my family on holidays like this, but it was really nice to at least be surrounded by friends.

Our house still smells strongly of turkey because I am trying out making homemade stock in the slow cooker. I put the turkey bones and leftover celery, carrots, and onions into the slow cooker, filled it 3/4 with water, and set it on low for 18 hours. Then I strained it as best as I could and right now it’s cooling in the fridge so I can get rid of some of the fat before freezing it. It looks pretty lean though so I might not need to do anything to it.

I am so glad it is the weekend because I had a super busy last two days.

Thursday

  • Worked 7 to 3 in the stress lab. Stress lab is my least favourite rotation because it is really busy all day long and can get really chaotic and hectic at certain points. The tech I was working with got me to run the whole thing with no help. IT WAS HARD!! I did manage to do it though, which I think is a pretty good accomplishment. I got a pretty good evaluation for the week.
  • Then I walked around downtown for an hour.
  • Met up with Scott near his work, then walked over to Meat & Bread for dinner. Unfortunately they were out of porchetta so we decided to walk all the way back to Davie Street to try out the American Cheesesteak Co instead.
  • Ate a delicious classic cheesesteak with beef, American cheese, and sautéed mushrooms.
  • Killed time in a coffee shop for an hour or so.
  • Went to Zsofi and Dylan’s apartment for Dylan’s birthday party! Drank some wine and got to try Dylan’s homemade ice cream sandwiches. Really good.
  • Finally went home and went immediately to bed.

Friday

  • Scott went to Edmonton for 4 hours. Seriously. He had to wake up at 4:30 AM to do that.
  • I went to school. Human Behaviour class was extra uncomfortable and awkward. So much second hand embarrassment. Wasted two hours of my life in Research Methods learning about maybe using highlighters as a research aid, and some other stuff that we already went over in another class last year. Then a couple hours of Communications, which was actually fine. I don’t mind that class.
  • Went out for bubble tea with most of the people from the other set. I miss them. I had milky strawberry slush with pearls and it was yummo.
  • Went home for a couple hours. Scott arrived with sushi in hand. The best.
  • Took public transit for 1.25 hours to get to SFU to help out at the skeleton club Gangnam Style pub night. I helped sell tickets and do coat check for three hours. It wasn’t the best night for a fundraiser (Thanksgiving weekend!) but I think we still made a bit of money for the club, which is really good news.
  • Bussed home and collapsed into bed for the night.

Today is homework and chores day. We have to get the apartment ready to host the 2nd Annual Orphan Thanksgiving Potluck on Monday night. I think we have 12 people coming, and I’m making turkey again. :D

For some reason I decided that for the month of September I would take a picture of my dinner every day. I guess because I am often curious about what other people eat for “normal” dinners. I definitely didn’t remember to do it every day, but here are the 17 pictures I DID remember to take. Let me know if you want recipes of anything, almost all of it is homemade.

September 5th, 2012

September 6th, 2012

September 7th, 2012

September 9th, 2012

More after the jump…

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Oh glorious weekend after a long week at school. We haven’t actually gotten that much homework yet, but being at school sucks compared to working at the hospital. I am looking forward to my first rotation at St. Pauls Hospital, next next week.


For some reason we decided to cook all sorts of things this afternoon.

I made oatmeal choc chip muffins, nutella stuffed choc chip cookies, and two mushroom spinach bacon quiches (although I should have just made one, they turned out really thin). I kind of want to cut out a circle out of one of the quiche and just put it on top of the other quiche. :/

Scott made that amazing looking cheddar jalapeno bread in the middle of the picture, and also tempered some chocolate to make chocolate covered strawberries. OM NOM NOM.

Now every single dish that we have is dirty. Also I have no idea where we are going to put all of this food. Scott said we should have a bake sale.

I think my nails turned out pretty cool last week. I used my nail stickers again. I like the bare nail parts. Pretty handy that this manicure doesn’t get messed up when your nails grow!

Well……… I don’t have much more to talk about at the moment so I guess I’m off to start the dishes now.

P.S. Thank you very much for all your nice comments on my last post. I appreciate them very much. <3