On Saturday I made Thai green papaya salad with shrimp for dinner. One of my new favourite recipes ever!! I made it a bit too spicy though… next time I will definitely put less red chili. Underneath all the heat though it tasted fantastic, and it’s nice and healthy!

After dinner we met up with Zsofi downtown for more fireworks.

The show was from Italy. It was good!! Definitely better than Vietnam the week before, although we heard that Brazil’s show on Wednesday was the best. Shame we missed it. Scott even won tickets to sit in the bleachers for that show but we ended up selling them for $50 because I can’t stay up that late on a weeknight.

I give Italy +10 points for those cool fireworks that looked like arrows going upwards that I had never seen before, but also -10 points for putting off those lame-o smiley face fireworks that I HATE.

Also the smoke from the fireworks was really thick and sometimes it blocked out a lot of the fireworks (like in the above picture). I don’t think that is really their fault though, I guess it just wasn’t breezy out.

We went to watch the Celebration of Light fireworks with Zsofi and Dylan last night. We got a great spot and had a little picnic with lots of fruit and cheese. It was a good show.

Don’t you think fireworks should have advanced further than they have by now? Everything else in the world is getting faster, cooler, fancier, yet the most complex firework they have is still that dumb smiley face one. Yeesh. I think they should be able to spell out words or make pictures by now!! I hope by the time I die I will have seem them recreate Starry Night in firework form.

Some other stuff I haven’t shown you yet!

Chocolate hazelnut tart from Death By Chocolate that Scott and I split the other night. Reminded me of the hazelnut pie I made a couple years ago. (I never made it again because just the hazelnuts cost me like $10!!)

Crepes of Wrath’s Simple Salmon Tartar. Totally delicious. I already want to eat this again.

Well I declared today CRAFT DAY so I’d better get off the computer and do something DIY.

Last week I was lucky enough to win another vaneats.ca food package called Maurya’s Spice. Maurya’s is a fancy Indian restaurant on West Broadway. We decided to redeem my prize last night.

So we get seated, take a quick look at the menu for drinks, see that none of the drinks have prices listed for them, and they don’t seem to have anything non-alcoholic (I have really not been in an alcohol-drinking mood for weeks now). I thought it was pretty weird that they didn’t even have mango lassi. Isn’t that pretty much an Indian restaurant classic!?! Anyway because the place looked so fancy and the drink menu was frightening we just chose to have water.

When the waiter comes over to take our orders we ask for the vaneats package and he tells us first that YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO SHARE. ONLY ONE PERSON CAN HAVE IT. THE OTHER PERSON HAS TO ORDER SOMETHING TOO. This was disappointing because both of the other vaneats packages we have gotten have been super huge and definitely good for two people to share. Plus Maurya’s regular dishes on the menu were expensive for me (~$16). The way he told us that we were not allowed to share was pretty harsh, and weird.

Finally we decide to get saag chicken for Scott and the vaneats package for me. Then the waiter makes a huge stink saying we can’t redeem the package if we don’t have the printed out voucher. Because I won mine in a contest I didn’t have a voucher, they just emailed me the code. He was all YOU CAN’T REDEEM THE PACKAGE LIKE THAT, YOU NEED THE PAPER WITH YOUR NAME ON IT and I was all UMMM YES I CAN REDEEM IT LIKE THIS? I’VE DONE IT BEFORE!! I CAN TELL YOU MY NAME IF YOU NEED IT! and then he left for a while to make a phone call and then finally came back 5 minutes later saying OK. YOU CAN HAVE IT. :/

Once the food arrived everything was fine, but it sure was an annoying and awkward start to our dining experience.

Scott’s saag chicken is the green dish at the top, then clockwise from there we have a small salad with a vinaigrette that we couldn’t figure out if it was strawberry or raspberry, Seekh lamb kabob, some boring steamed veggies slightly out of the picture, a delicious daal made from black lentils, chicken chettinad, and garlic naan. The chicken chettinad was nice but a little too sweet for me. I preferred the garlic-y savoury saag chicken.

Throughout the whole meal we kept joking about not being allowed to share. Like the waiter was going to come over and yell at us if he saw Scott eating a bit of my daal or something, haha. Oh and nothing comes with rice and who knows how much extra that would cost!

Anyway of course we didn’t finish everything. We brought home enough of the two chicken dishes to have another meal at home. The vaneats package totally would have been enough food for both of us.

Maurya Indian Cuisine Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

I can’t believe it’s already Wednesday. I can’t believe it’s already nearly the end of July. The days and weeks are just slipping by me!! Another month-ish and I’m back at school???!!?!?!

Work is pretty tiring every day because everything is new and I have to be alert ALL THE TIME. By the time things start to feel a little routine it’s time to start a new rotation!

Hot lab rotation has been pretty fun so far. I’ve done about 20 injections in the past three days. :D I saw the images from one patient I definitely remember injecting and it was perfecto – no hot spots in the elbow from a bad injection. WOOT. I don’t get to see all of the images so I’m not totally sure how I’m doing though. I’ve had a couple failures for sure, but I’m getting better I think.

Yesterday I cooked lamb shoulder in the slow cooker. I chopped everything up for it the night before, then Scott dumped it in and set it for 8 hours before he left for work yesterday morning. When I came home in the afternoon the ENTIRE APARTMENT BUILDING smelled like lamb. Not just OUR apartment, I mean the hallways, the lobby, etc. HA.

Thanks to our friend Stew, we got to go to the Florence + the Machine concert last night for free. :D We are lucky to have nice friends with connections. The show was in Deer Lake Park in Burnaby. Lucky it didn’t rain.

The show was pretty good! She was running and prancing and jumping back and forth all over the stage. Also she sings really HARD, she must have muscular vocal cords.

I finished my fourth rotation at the hospital (two more to go). By the second week of it I was doing a lot of the work by myself. It was just the same thing over and over again so it wasn’t as challenging. Next rotation I’m on the hot lab shift and I already know it’s going to be intense. Lots of new things and lots of injections. O_O Scared.

We bought a popcorn maker for $10 and a hand mixer for $7 from Superstore today! How is it so cheap???! Hopefully they don’t start any fires. I am excited to make popcorn at home. Now I just have to figure a way to get a little salt to stick on without using a lot of butter. Any ideas? Is coconut oil popcorn a thing? (I mean using coconut oil as a topping, not to pop the corn… it’s an air popper.)