Woke up this morning to an offer of admission to Michener, for xray. Hooray, kinda. Michener is Plan C at this point. Nice to have something though, as long as they don’t force me to decide yes or no too soon.

As promised I have some food to talk about.

“Mexican Lasagna”

We had a bunch of tortillas that we needed to use up so I invited some kind of mexican lasagna. Mexican food amuses me, because it’s pretty much always the same ingredients, but in different combinations and formats.

For this one I stir fried some red onions and garlic, dumped in a can of rinsed black beans, and a tin of diced tomatoes (not ideal, but I was feeling too lazy to use fresh tomatoes), some frozen corn, and cumin and chili powder.

When that was cooked a bit I layered it with some tortillas and cheese in a baking dish. From bottom to top: mixture, tortilla, mixture, tortilla, cheese, tortilla, mixture, tortilla, cheese. Then I baked it at 350ºF for about 25 minutes, then topped it with some green onion and avocado. Delicious!

Homemade Strawberry Daiquiris

Our local grocery store has big boxes of Californian strawberries on sale a lot. Last time I bought one I ate all the ones that looked decent (three years working for Shouldice has turned me into a total strawberry snob) and then cut the top off the rest and froze them.

To make the daiquiris I tipped a bunch of frozen berries, a couple tbsp of sugar, a couple shots of rum, and a little bit of lemonade at a time into the blender. I always end up making too much though because you have to use a fair amount of liquid to get the blender circulating. :/ Anyway they were delicious and I like the all natural bright red colour!

Black Bean Burgers

Ugh WORST PICTURE EVER! This was the leftover patty. We devoured our burgers too fast to get a good picture!! Anyway these are really really delicious and I highly recommend giving them a try if you want to have something other than a beef burger.

  • 1 can rinsed black beans
  • 1/2 large green pepper, diced really small
  • 1/2 onion, diced really small
  • 2 cloves garlic, diced really small
  • cilantro, optional if you’re one of those who hates the stuff!
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp chili powder
  • 1 tsp cumin
  • 1 huge squirt sriracha
  • 2 pieces toast, chopped up

Preheat the oven to 375ºF. Mash the beans in a bowl until they are pretty demolished. Add everything else, and mix. Form into patties, then bake ~20 minutes. Be careful when you pick them up, they sometimes crack.

Use in a hamburger bun with mayo, spinach, tomato, cheese, and/or whatever else you like on a burger!

Vegetarian Sushi

So I had my first go at making sushi with no supervision. It only had avocado, cucumber, sweet potato and marinated tofu because there was a bit of a seafood shortage that day. Well they tasted good but I don’t understand why all my fillings ended up on one edge and all the rice on the other! I need a sushi lesson.

The West Edmonton mall was very very cool. It really had every retail thing you could think of, except maybe IKEA. Although they did have The Brick so you could still furnish your house, do not worry!

It had a pirate area, a Chinatown, a Bourbon Street, an ice rink, an aquarium, a sea lion show, and SO MUCH MORE.

Check out this water park! It looked so awesome, but I wasn’t in the mood for going in by myself. It’s really really heated inside so that would be a lot of fun in the dead of winter I reckon.

On the other side of the pool, you can go rock climbing, and then bungee jumping!

I also saw a wicked high ropes course.

The looping roller coaster was probably my favourite part though. I liked that it is indoors yet has three loops. It goes right up through the ceiling rafters too, which is neat. Unfortunately it would have cost $10.50 to go on it if I just bought tokens, so I didn’t go on it.

I didn’t shop too much. I finally found a certain cheap H&M skirt that I’d been looking for for a while (and saved $0.90 because of cheaper tax rates in Alberta) and I got some new underwear. I had Taco Bell for lunch. Haha I still love that place and we don’t have it in Vancouver. I think the further away Taco Bell is from home, the more I want it.

The rest of the time I window-shopped and people-watched and rested my sore feet on benches.

Finally I could check in to my hotel room so I went back to the hotel. After a bit of a hassle I got my room and did not come out until the next morning, fully rested and feeling a lot better.

The NAIT interview went well. It was very similar to Michener. I messed up one question pretty bad because I didn’t read it properly, but everything else was fine. We also had to a little career investigation report and I felt quite confident about that part.

The interview didn’t take near as long as I expected so I was out of there pretty quickly. I went straight back to the airport hoping to get on an earlier flight home, but they wouldn’t let me switch for free. Instead I sat there and read my book and watched the election results start to come in. Flight back was uneventful and then FINALLY I was back in Vancouver with Scott. What a trip.

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!!

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!

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!