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I really should be studying biology right now. :/

On Saturday I slept in and then TTCed out to near my aunts house to meet my two aunts and my uncle. We drove out to see mom’s urn thingy, which was good, I guess. I hadn’t been there before. (Dad, Rose and I did our own thing at the cottage with our portion of the ashes.) Then we had dimsum. The restaurant was kind of in a weird location (there were fields around it??!) but it was the best dimsum I have ever had. Plus they ordered all of my very favourite things (ta siu bao, ha gao, fried white carrot thing, shu mai, rice noodle thing with bbq pork, and so so so much more). It was all really nice quality with no skimping on fillings, and it all arrived HOT. YUM. They forced me to eat basically everything.

After lunch I went with one of my aunts to her apartment and we went swimming and chatted.

Near dinner time I headed back out to Janine’s place where her and Steve had prepared a mega mega bbq (in size and deliciousness). Another couple came over and it was really nice and we all had a lot of fun.

We watched a bit of the Canucks game but when regulation time ended I had to go to bed because I had to leave for my flight at 4:00 AM the next morning.

I didn’t sleep very well (probably because I was digesting, and also stressed) so the next day was a bit rough. Also my feet were really hurting because my shoes were not that comfortable. I arrived in Edmonton at 9:00 AM and took the airport shuttle to the cheapest hotel. I really needed a good nights sleep so I decided to spend a bit of my pocket money to not have to stay in a hostel. Probably was the right decision, although the hotel was pretty dodgy.

I couldn’t go in to my room right away so I went to the West Edmonton Mall for the day…… details of which will have to wait for the next post!!

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I voted today! Since I will be in Edmonton on election day I had to do advance voting today after work. There was a bit of an issue with my name, but I just had to fill out an extra piece of paper. Weird that Elections Canada somehow knew my new address, but didn’t know my new name, when I changed everything all at the same time. Anyway– sorted now.

We had a very nice long weekend. I relaxed on Friday and worked on party planning while Scott went to Metrotown with his aunt. She bought six Quatchi’s!!

(That isn’t Scott’s aunt!)

Then we watched two movies. Nearly finished our movie alphabet. Will post soon.

Saturday was a big day. Scott made hash browns, then we went up and did laundry and groceries. Then we stopped by Scott’s work so he could check on some servers, went to T&T, and then to Costco. They have SO many samples at the Costco here. Best one was the cheddar jalapeno sausage (for me). Mmmm. I ate half a poutine (was not as good as I remember) and then we bused up to SFU to help Rosemarie move out of residence. Funny that the only times we went to SFU this year was the very beginning and end of the school year. It really is quite far away.

After dropping her stuff at our house we got back on the bus and went back to that ice cream place with 200+ flavours. It was such a nice sunny day we thought it would be a good School’s Out treat for Rosemarie.

This time I tried CURRY, BALSAMIC VINEGAR, Go Canucks Go (?), and Bailey’s chocolate cheesecake. Eventually settled on a Ferrero Rocher cone, while Rosemarie got Toblerone and Scott got White Chocolate Cranberry.

The rest of the evening was spent playing lots of board games (Agricola, Settlers) and dinner (Rosemarie and I made spicy eggplant and pork).

On Sunday morning we made a yummy breakfast with beans, eggs, toast, hash browns, bacon and then tried to digest it for the rest of the day. It made us all SOOOOO tired! We met up with Scott’s aunt and went to the Granville Market but didn’t stay long as other people don’t seem to be as interested in looking at vegetables as I am, haha.

We came home and relaxed and played more games and I made salad and black bean burgers (recipe to come soon).

Rosemarie is off to Squamish now and I won’t see her again until the party in Ottawa. :( I miss her already!

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I had a major cooking disaster yesterday.

I was making smore squares. First you bake a graham cracker sugar cookie crust, then you melt milk chocolate over it, then top it with marshmallows and broil it a bit.

Everything was going well. I put it in to broil, went to get a drink of water, came back to take a peek…. HUGE FLAMES IN THE OVEN!! EVERYTHING ON FIRE!!

I ran around in a circle yelling ‘IT’S ON FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!’ then I came to my senses and turned off the oven and opened the doors and windows and Scott took the flaming pan out of the oven.

It’s funny (?) that our smoke alarm will go off at 4:00 AM sometimes, or when I am cooking perogies, yet didn’t go off when there was AN ACTUAL FIRE.

Unfortunately I did not get a picture while there were still flames. But I did get that “after” shot. Sorry it’s blurry, I was rushing. Scott said it looked like the surface of another planet or something.

Anyway I scraped off the entire burnt top in one piece, and then tried again, this time broiling with the oven door open and me staring at it. It took about 8 seconds. Success! I reckon the extra little burnt bits just make it more authentic.

They are REALLY tasty.

Smore Squares

  • 3/4 cup butter, softened
  • 1/2 cup white sugar
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 1/4 cup flour
  • 1 cup graham cracker crumbs (I got them in the bulk bins at our supermarket)
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda (I accidentally used baking powder. I don’t think it matters)
  • about 1 cup milk chocolate chips
  • about 2 cups small marshmallows

1. Preheat oven to 350º F. Combine butter and sugar. Add vanilla. Then flour, graham cracker crumbs, salt and baking soda. Mix!

2. Spread in bottom of large baking dish. I used an 8″x8″ pan but that was a bit too small. Something a touch bigger than that would be perfect. No need to grease the pan. Bake for ~20-30 minutes, until cooked. Mine took forever because it was so thick.

3. Immediately sprinkle with chocolate chips. Let it stand for a few minutes, then spread the melty chocolate around.

4. Set oven to broil. Sprinkle marshmallows over top of chocolate, and broil for about 8 seconds. WATCH CAREFULLY!!! They brown FAST. OK maybe they take longer than 8 seconds, but not much more. Allow to cool a bit, and enjoy!

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The most informal save-the-date possible:

If you didn’t know already, our wedding-ish party will be on Sunday June 26th, in Ottawa. Invitations and more detailed plans to come later. We hope you can make it!!

In other news:

I’m just finishing up week 2 of the Couch to 5K running program and will start week 3. I bought running shoes. My face gets so so so red and I definitely struggle with the program, but I’m proud of myself for actually doing real exercise multiple times a week. I go right after work. Scott has been using his work gym too.

Are you also having an eggplant shortage where you are?? We haven’t been able to get eggplant in a couple weeks now and that is really sad. I love that stuff!!! Rosemarie came over on Friday and we were planning on making Sichuan Spicy Eggplant with pork but I couldn’t find any eggplant anywhere!! :( We made pirogie pizza instead.

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I had another doctors appointment on Friday. All my tests came back negative again, and due to how I felt the night before the appointment with definitely no dairy- dairy issues were ruled out as well. The doc seems pretty content to say I have ‘stress-induced IBS’. Bummer.

I might try yoga. Mom seemed to like it. I’m just shy about learning it in a group. I’ll look for beginners classes or something. And probiotics.

To celebrate being able to eat dairy Scott and I stopped for ice cream on the way back from our very unsuccessful shopping trip in the city (couldn’t find anything we were looking for). This ice cream shop always intrigued me, because it’s open very late every day and is always busy, even though it’s winter and it’s in a weird industrial-type location not close to any houses at all, and strangely has Chinese writing on the sign, as well as Italian.

Anyway we went in and saw that they have 218 flavours of ice cream, including very weird ones like balsamic vinegar, garlic, curry, durian, fennel, corn etc. etc. You’re allowed to try them so I tried the ‘pear gorgonzola’ ice cream which was not surprisingly quite strange. It really did taste like cheese. Cold cheese.

They also had many many many normal flavours. Scott settled on mint Oreo, and I got hazelnut fudge.

This isn’t my picture but this is half of the inside of the store.