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I got SO riled up on Friday night about skeleton. I was watching the final race of the 2012-2013 Skeleton World Cup season, which was in Sochi on the new track that they will be using for the next Winter Olympics. I’ve been watching all season long and was REALLY excited to see how all my favourites do on this track that was brand new for all of them.

I follow a lot of skeletoners on Twitter and for the past two weeks they had been tweeting about cancelled practice sessions and poor ice conditions and horrible hotel food and all sorts of negative stuff. And the fact that it was 17ºC out!

Anyway man oh man the mens race was BANANAS. Especially the first half of the first heat.

  • Tomass Dukurs started pushing his sled, then at the last possible second decided it wasn’t a good push and quickly managed to stop his sled, do a u-turn and carry his sled back to the start line to try again. This is allowed as long as long as they haven’t reached the first timing eye, and they do actually start within the 30 second start window. It was very surprising because I have never seen any one do that before.
  • The start groove was really NOT straight and many sliders hit in to the walls right at the very top of the run.
  • One guy smashed into the side and a mini avalanche of snow and ice fell down on to the track. And then no one cleaned it up!! So the next few sliders had a big disadvantage because they had to slide over a bunch of ice chunks.
  • The track has a totally unique uphill section.
  • The outrun looks super dangerous and several sliders hurt themselves trying to slow down.
  • There is exposed wood in several places down the track, and the ice is super bumpy. Many sliders pinballed down the track. Some sliders opted out of the race because their brain was too rattled from training runs.
  • Everyone struggled except Martins Dukurs, he made it look easy as usual. He is an INSANELY good skeletoner from Latvia. If he won this race he would win €100,000 for the “Triple Crown” by winning three specific races during the year. It was close between him and a Russian but of course Martins won!! HE IS AMAZING! I think he finished the season with 8 gold medals and 2 silvers, in 10 races, plus the title of World Cup Champion. And when he won a race he won by a mile.

The womens race wasn’t as exciting. The ice was deteriorating quickly and each person coming down had a slower time than the person before them. At least they straightened out the start groove so there wasn’t near as many wall smashes. My favourite non-Canadian slider Noelle Pikus-Pace won the race, and a German girl won the World Cup.

Well now I’m sad that the skeleton World Cup is over, but I’ve still got one more weekend of sliding to come in two weeks so that is good. And I can’t wait until the Olympics!!!

PS My skeleton coach was Martins Dukurs coach in the Vancouver Olympics. :D You can see him yelling at him to run fast in the Olympics footage.

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Hmm what have we been up to in the last 11 days? I’ve been a terrible blogger lately. SO BUSY with school stuff, all in preparation for my big vacation that is rapidly approaching (YAY!).

  • Scott made a cool loaf of bread.
  • We went to a friends house to play Ticket To Ride and eat pizza. Panago butter chicken pizza really doesn’t taste like butter chicken at all.
  • Went out for drinks at the pub after school.
  • Lifted lots of weights at the gym.
  • A FREAKING LOT OF HOMEWORK.
  • Went out for a yummy Peruvian Valentines Day dinner of fish ceviche, deep fried pork, and amazing sweet potato chips.
  • Woke up at a painful hour of the morning to make it to work on time for my hotlab rotation.
  • Had much more success putting in IVs.
  • Went to bed at 8:00 PM.
  • Watched Amour, slow but good.
  • Ate a lot of Nerds.
  • Went to the library and got a bunch of books that I won’t have time to read.
  • Chatted with Rosemarie who is now back in Fiji for her second semester.

That is actually a pretty good representation of what I’ve been up to, if you multiply the homework by 50. I just keep reminding myself “it’ll all be worth it soon”.

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Thanks to Scott’s work we got to go to a Canucks open practice yesterday morning. It was pretty cool because we got to sit nice and close and watch them practice power plays (which they actually weren’t very good at) and shooting and stuff.


It was funny to see Alain Vigneault wearing skates instead of a suit.


I enjoyed myself. And I got to invite Vipi (one of my classmates from the other set who I haven’t seen since last semester) so that was nice.

Some of the pucks went over the glass right in front of us but all the kids snatched them up, to Scott’s disappointment. Burrows was flicking extra ones over but we didn’t get any. I think they were just generic black pucks though, not Canucks ones, so oh well.

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It definitely wasn’t a perfect fortnight… there are some very non-nutritious meals in here. Just being honest, I guess.

I AM going to include some recipe links this time because there were a few winning dishes in between all the crap. :D

january 27, 2013 – spinach and artichoke lasagna

january 28, 2013 – thai lemon shrimp with rice and peas

january 29, 2013 – homemade fish and chips, with salad

more dinner pics after the jump…

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Over the last six months Scott and I have experimented A LOT in different ways to make popcorn. Some batches have been great, some have gone straight to the trash. (Good thing popcorn kernels are really cheap!). I think we have finally figured out THE BEST ways to make popcorn at home now though!!

Things we have tried:

  • regular popcorn in a cheapo air popper with butter or coconut oil
  • regular popcorn in a paper bag in the microwave
  • caramel corn
  • white chocolate oreo covered popcorn
  • kettle corn in a pot with butter or coconut oil
  • kettle corn in a wok with a lid with coconut oil or vegetable oil

The failures:

  1. Cheapo air poppers don’t work. It used to work but after a month it started spitting out 50% un-popped kernels.
  2. A regular pot doesn’t have enough space in it to allow the popcorn to move around and not burn. If you’re going to use a pot it’s going to have to be one of those huge stock pots. Preferably one with a thick bottom so the heat is more uniform.
  3. Butter browns and tastes funny.
  4. Vegetable oil has a funny smell/taste. Plus it’s not even made out of vegetables??!! The one we bought is made out of soy. That is weird.

The successes:

  1. Coconut oil tastes just like butter on popcorn and it’s much healthier (as far as I know). Plus if you get it on your fingers you can just rub it in to your hands like a moisturizer.
  2. Caramel popcorn was ULTRA delicious. Just like Kernels stuff, but a fraction of the cost. Very unhealthy but extremely tasty.
  3. White chocolate Oreo popcorn looks bad but tastes really really good. We brought this to Whistler over Christmas and everyone devoured it.
  4. Kettle corn is pretty easy to make at home!!!
  5. Coconut works very well for popping popcorn in a pot/wok.
  6. A wok with a lid has enough room for popcorn to move around while allowing the oil to pool at the bottom with the kernels.

Conclusions:

Coconut oil is essential. You can get it at a lot of stores now, in the oil aisle. You can also get it online for cheaper. We bought a mega tub of it from well.ca with a $10 off coupon. Some brands have a hint of coconut smell/taste, and some are totally neutral. It is great for popping popcorn and for putting on top of popcorn.

These are our house recipes now:

REGULAR POPCORN: make in a wok on the stove with coconut oil. You’ll have to ask Scott for the measurements! He’s really mastered it now.

CARAMEL POPCORN: melt 4 tbsp of butter, then add 1/2 cup brown sugar + 1/4 cup honey + 1 tsp salt in a pot over medium heat until it reaches 235 Farenheit. Immediately take off heat and pour over 6 cups popped popcorn (you could use the previous method without salt). Stir stir stir, then let cool.

WHITE CHOCOLATE OREO POPCORN: I found no faults with this recipe.

KETTLE CORN: (for this one you should get all your tools/supplies prepared ahead of time because you have to work fairly fast.) Put 1/4 cup coconut oil in a wok or large pot over medium heat. Throw in three popcorn kernels and put the lid on. When those three kernels have popped throw in 1/2 cup popcorn kernels + 1/4 cup sugar in and quickly stir a bit. Put the lid back on and start to agitate the wok/pot. Never let the kernels stay still! Scott usually just shakes the pot back and forth over the element, with the odd vertical toss every once and a while. Keep it moving, this stuff burns super easily. When all the kernels have popped, pour it out on a baking sheet and immediately put some salt on it. Let cool!