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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

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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.

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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.)

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I made cupcakes this weekend. They don’t look too pretty but they’re mega tasty!

I cut a cone out of each cupcake and then cut off the tip of the cone to allow for maximum pudding capacity. Then I filled each cupcake with vanilla pudding before putting the top back on and covering them in icing. The uglier ones got topped with rainbow chocolate chips as well.


The pudding filled centre. Om nom nom.

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Saturday was our second anniversary. It was a beautiful hot cloudless day in Vancouver so we spent the whole day outside.

First we had lunch at Boathouse in Kitsilano. We shared a pitcher of delicious lime margarita.

The whole restaurant is pretty much a big patio with great views and fresh air. So lovely on a nice day!

I had lobster grilled cheese benny and it was amazing. Big chunks of lobster, nice bread, poached egg, cheese…. OM NOM NOM. It was very rich and it made me really full. I would totally order this again if I ever get to go back.

Scott had ahi tuna. He liked it a lot too.


After lunch we went down to the beach and read our Kindles in the shade for a couple hours. I did go for a quick swim in the ocean (another summer goal checked off!!) but didn’t stay in too long because it is boring swimming by yourself.


After swimming we headed home to shower and get ready for my work party. There are ten people in our department that are turning 30, 40, 50 or 60 this year so they had a big birthday party for all of them at our bosses house and the students were invited as well. It was Mexican themed and pretty fun. I liked all the appetizers and the cakes were super cool. Each cake was personalized for each person in their favourite colours AND type of cake!