Clementines are better than mandarines.

Yep. They are. Clementines win.

I have tried both, and clementines are better. They are less tough, and more juicy and delicious.

I have even converted one Western-born Canadian! She tracked them down here in Vancouver and brought me some today! BEST!!!

Can’t wait to eat more when I go home for the holidays.

In other news, there was a bear downtown today!!! Wicked.

I made sushi last week. My best ever!! Mine had salmon, avocado, cucumber and yam. OM NOM NOM. We bought a mondo bag of sushi rice so I guess there will be a lot more homemade sushi in the near future. :)

Rosemarie came over yesterday. I made a chicken pot pie while she did some school work. I used all fresh veggies, but I did not make the crust since we don’t have a food processor to make dough. Anyway I used a Pillsbury crust that came rolled up (not frozen), and it was quite nice. I followed this recipe, more or less.

I also made two mini ones to freeze for later. :D

I also made a rainbow cake last week. Cake mixes were on sale at No Frills for 99 cents so I grabbed a box of French Vanilla. I dyed the batter all different colours in separate bowls and then just drizzled them randomly into the pan. I made my own icing but didn’t have enough icing sugar (HOLY COW icing uses A LOT of sugar!!!) so it was a bit runny…. but it kinda soaked into the cake and that was actually delicious. I topped the cake with rainbow chocolate chips because I am 5.

Mmmmmm cake.

I also tried Budget Bytes Summer Vegetable Tian. In the winter. Yep. It was tasty, like of all of her recipes. I think her blog might be my favourite food blog of them all! It’s all about making nice food on a budget (duh). Anyway I put slices of potato, sweet potato, tomato, zucchini, and eggplant, with lots of herbs, and a little cheese on top.

Other food success stories without pictures:

Mirza Ghasemi, a Persian eggplant dish with TONS O’ GARLIC. Verrrry tasty, just don’t breathe on anyone after. We ate it with rice. I really liked this dish, the flavour was different than everything else I cook. I recommend trying this one if you like eggplant a lot like we do.

Jalapeno Popper Quiche, turned out great. Next time I would add a lot more jalapenos.

Savoury Fruit Stuffing. Bit late for this I suppose, but I forgot to post it. This is the stuffing I made at Thanksgiving. It was SO GOOD. OK as usual I changed things: not as much onion as it said, veggie stock powder + rosemary + thyme instead of the herbs it said (didn’t have sage), and no orange peel.

Oven-fried onion rings. I had major trouble getting anything to stick on to the onions, but the parts that did were SUPER crunchy and delicious

Is fall over yet?? I am so sick of pumpkin recipes!!!!

OK I like actual pumpkins like butternut and jap, but NOT that canned stuff that so many October and November recipes seem to be featuring!

Snow fell in Vancouver yesterday, I think that means it’s time to put the canned pumpkin away.

Extreme homework weekend!

Yesterday I sat at my desk for like ten hours. I listened to the entire Triple J Hottest 100 from 2010 playlist which is nearly seven hours long! And then I still did more work after that. And today I’ve spent all morning working on a paper and I still want to start my anatomy midterm notes. I’m hoping that if I do all this stuff now I will have a relatively easy week.

Paper Draft1 is now complete and printed out for proofreading! Woot.

Also banana muffins are in the oven.

Our freezer was getting a little full of frozen bananas so I decided to make up a batch of mom’s choc chip banana bread (in muffin format). Really I might as well stop trying to bring bananas to school because they get SO smashed before I am ready to eat them, so I end up bringing them home and putting them in the freezer.

I really need a banana case.

I saw some at the Granville Market (I think) but they were hard plastic in only one shape, so if your banana doesn’t fit you are out of luck. In my mind I have invented a banana case made of flexible but sturdy tubing (maybe corrugated bendable tubing?) that you can slip over any banana.

New plan: drop out of school and manufacture banana cases while training up for the 2018 Olympics. Yes?

 

Check out this wicked awesome care package we got from Scott’s mum in Australia!

Savoys (similar to Ritz but way crunchier/better), BBQ Shapes, various minty things, choc ripple cookies biscuits, Flake, Wizz Fizz (haven’t tried this yet!), Freddo frogs, Fruity Tingles, Chomp, and some Aussie socks!

It made Scott very very happy. He is rationing everything, heehee.

We may have to send Scott over with an empty suitcase just for Savoys. Australia really has better crackers biscuits.

P.S. How does it make sense to have the same word for a cracker AND a cookie??!