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

Impromptu lunch time post.

So my last post about skeleton ended at the end of the first session. We had lunch at a diner (I just had soup, since I packed a thousand sandwiches) and then headed to Rob’s cabin. I studied for a while since I had a chemistry midterm on Monday morning. Was a bit stressed out about that.

After study time the boys bought food for dinner (I had another sandwich) and wine and they cooked and we drank and ate. It was fun! We also played cribbage. And laughed a lot.

It is kinda funny that I was hanging out with these two strangers basically but they were really friendly and we got along well. I’m glad it was so fun, it could have been an awkward weekend.

I woke up on Sunday morning with very very sore thighs. I think it must have been from lifting the sled. The sled weighs about 60 lbs and the way I was picking it up was basically doing squats with the 60 lbs. My body is sooo not used to doing that kind of exercise. The boys had sore necks, but mine was ok.

Noon: time for session number 2!!

In the truck going up to the top. We are all laughing because Rob got into the truck without his sled and then had to jump out and get the driver to stop. It was funny at the time.

This is my favourite picture! Thanks to Rob for taking all the action shots with his nice camera. They are so cool!

Coming out of a corner.

At the end there is an uphill bit to slow down. Once you’ve gotten as high as you’re going to go the track workers jump in and stop your sled from sliding back. Then you climb over the edge and they pass it to you and you carry it back to the truck.

Second day I had a top speed of 98.1 km/h! Sam improved a lot the second day and beat me by 0.1 km/h, dang. I did have two runs over 98 km/h though and I am very pleased with that.

I really wish I could go more. The coach emailed us and said we could come back for more sessions this weekend but I simply cannot afford the money or the time. Sigh. It’s a little sucky that we probably will not really improve because we all can’t go very often. We probably will not be able to move up to the higher starting point this year. I feel like if I actually was able to go a lot I could actually get good. I really like skeleton and wish I could pursue it.

It is totally totally awesome though that we get this opportunity at all though! When the next winter Olympics roll around we’ll all be like ‘oh yeah, I’VE DONE THAT!’. Pretty cool.

whistler sliding centre

Like I said before, my long weekend was AWESOME. Originally I was only planning on sliding on Saturday, but (1) I couldn’t find a ride home and (2) a guy in the club (that Rosemarie is already friends with) said we could stay at his cabin at Whistler for free, so I ended up staying for the Sunday session as well. That meant I had to do MEGA HOMEWORK all day Friday. Worth it.

super excited

SKELETON WAS SUPER AWESOME.

In the truck going up for our first run!

We all met up with our coach (he is from Latvia) and he picked out sleds for us and we got helmets. We changed into our tightest clothes and then eagerly awaited instructions. None came. We all get in the truck and get a ride to the Maple Leaf start (at curve 11 out of 16) and eagerly await instruction. Still nothing. Time for the first run. He tells us “Just go! Do nothing! It steers itself!” Okeedoke.

Our coach + launching board thing + Rob going around the first corner

Sam goes down first and thirty seconds later we hear his speed. NINETY ONE KM/H!!! Whoa that was way faster than I expected. Anyway quick quick quick we get lined up as soon as the person before leaves and next thing I know I’m lying on my stomach about to get pushed down the ice slide.

EEEEE IT WAS FUN! So fast! G FORCES! AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN!

We got to do 5 runs each the first day, and my top speed was 95.4 km/h. I was the speediest in our group hehe (not counting the club girl who has been doing it for a year now).

The way to succeed seems to be just being relaxed, focused, with your shoulders down and your face as close to the ice as you can (my chin guard scraped the ice a few times). The bottom straightaway was the hardest part, because once you start going crooked you kind of ricochet off the sides worse and worse each time. A little painful.

bounce

Fun fun fun. I’ve got more pictures but it’s time for relaxation time before trying to sleep. This is a tough week. Part II to come soon.

I water marbled my nails last weekend during a break from schoolwork. I did rainbow colours this time and am quite pleased with how they turned out. I kinda need a brighter green though, I think.

I won’t be buying any though because I officially signed up for skeleton club. Scott and I discussed it a lot and decided that this is a pretty neat opportunity that may not come up again and in the long run what difference is a few hundred dollars going to make. In ten years I would regret not doing it more than regret spending the money, I think. Anyway so now I am on ultra-budget.

Of possible interest: My water marbling tutorial.

The first skeleton trip is next next weekend. :D I am iksidid.

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??!