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I had a lot of fun yesterday at the fair at the PNE. I have always loved carnivals. Next year I have to find someone who wants to go on all the rides with me!!

First thing we got a deep fried Mars bar. That’s been on my ‘to try’ list for ages so we gave it a go! The concept was delicious but the batter was weird and ick. I was expecting this:

But we got this:

Huh it looks like a pogo? I don’t even get how it could look like that considering the dude had a box of Mars bars right beside him. I thought batter like that could only come out of a factory.

Anyway I’m glad I tried it but it wasn’t really worth the money.

After that we went on the new GIANT swings thing. It was so tall it makes the drop zone look puny!

It was better than I expected. It went really fast and made my eyes really watery. You got a good view from up there too! Again, glad I tried it, but probably not worth the money or time!

For dinner we had fancy hotdogs. I almost couldn’t decide what to get! Scott convinced me that I could make the macaroni and cheese one at home, but not the poutine one, so I had that. It had fries and gravy and bacon and cheese. Scott had the vegetarian one with corn chips and guacamole and loads of veggies.

Sorry for the crappy pictures. This was instance #2 where I brought the camera but forgot the memory card. BLAAARGHHHH.

The bun was very delicious. Actually the hotdog was the worst part of the whole thing. I didn’t finish the whole thing.

Hair inspiration?

To end the night we went and looked at all the animals, then headed for the buses. Unfortunately we timed our exit at the exact same time that the Kenny Rogers concert finished (dang, I wanted to hear The Gambler!) and we were swarmed by really riled up senior citizens. The entire bus was the seniors section, haha.

Well we made it home, full and happy. A good evening.

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We’ve done a lot over the last few days! Unfortunately I don’t have many good photos because I keep forgetting to put my memory card back into my camera. MEGA DOH.

Friday Scott got his gross tooth pulled. This is a good thing. I made him a room temperature vegetable madras rice smoothy for dinner.

On Saturday I dragged Scott into the city to get a free pair of pants. Roots was having a promo where if you brought in an old pair of pants for charity they would give you a free pairs of pants. We got in line right at noon, in the blazing sun. Only then did I overhear that you actually have to take off your old pants in the STORE WINDOW. Bahaha. I asked him if he still wanted to do it and he agreed. It was pretty funny. An hour later, he walked away with a very nice new pair of khakis worth $75! I took a picture but I’ll leave that for Scott to decide if he wants it posted.

Later that day we went to a baseball game. This is instance #1 where I brought the camera, but no memory card. It was a work event for Scott so we got to eat and sit in the BBQ area. The best part was the free popcorn. Other than that I was pretty bored. I really don’t like baseball. I had no idea where to look or what was happening or if I should cheer or boo when anything happened without looking at the scoreboard. So you’re constantly looking all over the place and missing things. I would rather watch football than baseball.

They had a fireworks show at the end that was pretty good. They went for QUANTITY and had so many of the same fireworks going off at the same time that I laughed out loud.

On Sunday I baked bread. This time turned out much better than last time. I used this recipe. Those onions fell off as soon as you touched them though.

We had yummy roasted zuchini and eggplant sandwiches, with mozarella and tomato and ham.

Yesterday we went to the PNE after work, but I’ll make it into its own post because this is long enough!!

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I feel terrible. Last night was one of the worst sleeps I have ever had. I started taking melatonin about a month ago and thought it was helping to at least improve the quality of sleep I was getting, but last night was just back to square 1. Pretty sure you are never supposed to see a clock say 4:00 AM. Why do I feel the most awake out of the whole day when I’m lying in bed?

In other news my new laptop is successfully dual-boot-ed and running great. I love it and loved sitting outside on the patio with it yesterday. On our new patio chairs that I found at the grocery store for $7.24/each. Sweet deal. The weather has been lovely for the past couple weeks.

Rosemarie came back to Vancouver and stayed with us for a night. We did errands and shopping all day, then painted our nails, went out for sushi, and played games. A fun day. Unfortunately now she has gone back to uni and is busy every day for the rest of her life, it seems.

Sushi was SO GOOD. We went back to The Eatery. It was really good going with Rosemarie because it meant I got to share and try 5 rolls, instead of only 2 or 3, since I can’t really share with Scott. We ordered a big list of rolls and they brought them all out on a huge platter that the three of us demolished. Yum yum yum. Again, no pictures because the giant paper maché octopus on the ceiling blocked out all the light.

We tried:

  • Italian Stallion: prosciutto, papaya, eel and cream cheese, hot pesto sauce (5/5 delicious! papaya was awesome)
  • X-Rated Roll: tuna, salmon, crab and eel, spicy misonnaise (5/5 yummmm)
  • The Beautiful: scallop, avocado and mayo topped w/ smoked salmon (3.9/5)
  • Jenny Salmon: salmon, green onion, avocado (3.6/5 good, but zzzz)
  • Miss Piggy Roll: bacon, scallops, asparagus, roe, unagi sauce (3.4/5 pretty weird, too salty)

Scott had:

  • Buddha Roll: tempura yams, red pepper, asparagus and lettuce, with dragon sauce (3.8/5 great sauce, needs avocado, tempura not crunchy)
  • John Lennon: asparagus tempura, carrot, avocado, cucumber, wrapped in a soybean sheet (3.1/5 tempura not crunchy, roll fell apart)
  • Yummy Yam Roll: loads of tempura yams (4/5 poorly tempura’d, but still nice)

Here is Rosemarie warming her hands on a fireplace on the outside of a McDonalds. What???

Oooh other exciting news: we booked a weekend trip to Seattle in early September. We are taking the train and only staying for one night. We get to stay at the Grand Hyatt in downtown Seattle thanks to Priceline’s Name Your Own Price thingy. Four stars!! I can’t wait!

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I tried a new recipe the other day, another thing I found on Pinterest. Homemade Peppermint Patties. It was a pretty easy recipe, with pretty normal ingredients that I mostly had already. I didn’t have (or know what is) shortening so I just used cold butter, and that worked perfectly fine. They taste great, but I have zero skills in chocolate coatings so they look a little rough. Need practice. Here is my slightly adapted recipe.

Yield: 24 patties

  • 2.5 cups icing sugar
  • 1.5 tbsp corn syrup
  • 1.5 tbsp water
  • 0.5 tsp peppermint extract
  • 1 tbsp cold butter
  • 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate
  • 2 tbsp butter
  • splash of milk

Mix the icing sugar, corn syrup, water, peppermint extract and cold butter in a bowl. I smushed the butter with a wooden spoon until it was in pretty small pieces, although it’s not important to get it totally totally mixed in. It should be a crumbly mixture.

Then dump it out on the counter and knead it until it makes a nice smooth white blob. Sprinkle icing sugar on the counter if it is sticking.

Roll/press it out on wax paper to about 1/4″ thick and put it in the freezer for 10 minutes.

Use a cookie cutter to cut out shapes. I highly recommend just using a simple circle shape. I didn’t have that so I used my star cutter, but it made it hard to coat in chocolate later, so I wouldn’t do that again. Put your cutouts on wax paper and then put it back in the freezer for 10 minutes.

Melt your chocolate, butter and a splash of milk if necessary in a metal bowl over a pot of boiling water. Dip your minty pieces in the chocolate, lay on wax paper and put back in freezer for another 20 minutes to firm up. Store in fridge.

As you can see, my chocolate skills are kind of lacking. My second batch of chocolate seized up. Ugh. Also the mint parts warm up when you put them in the chocolate and some of them broke. Circles would be a lot easier.

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I thought I was going to have some exciting news for you, but I found out on Friday that I didn’t get the job. I had applied for a paid blogger position for BCIT where you blogged about what it’s like to be a student there every week. I got pretty excited because I was sure I was going to get it, I wrote a great cover letter and I have 5 years of blogging experience! But alas, I got rejected. WHYYYYY? The part that sucks the most is that I’m pretty much still going to do the job by posting in MY blog, but now I don’t get paid. Wahhhhh. That was a bummer.

On Friday night we went out to a concert at the Commodore. We saw a Mexican chick who was ok, Oh Land who was pretty awesome, and Sia who was hilarious and great and sooooo weird. It was a fun fun show. I liked that in between each song she would chit chat with the audience. 99% of what she said though was not blog appropriate. The set was very crafty DIY. She had a big back board with dot paintings and pom poms spelling out her name, and there were crocheted (that word does not look how it sounds!) blankets all over the place, and every microphone stand had a crocheted cozy for it. She also wore this crazy ruffled costume with neon lady parts embroidered on it.

Then after the show we dropped by Ryan’s goodbye party which was unfortunately in an extremely hot, sticky-floored, smelly dance club. We stayed there too long and missed the last Skytrain home. We had to take a bus that turned out to be a horrible horrible experience. I am never staying out past 12:45 am again!!!!

I slept in a lot on Saturday. Scott did not though, he woke up with a horrible toothache and swelling so he had to go to a dental clinic. They gave him some drugs, and I dragged him along on the plans we had already made for the day. Zsofi and Dylan picked us up and we went out to Alouette Lake, since it was TWENTY NINE DEGREES. WHATTTTT????

It was super nice there, very picturesque, but the water was soooooo cold! Didn’t do too much swimming. It was still nice though, and relaxing. We stayed there until Scott’s tooth was hurting too much and then we came home and I made quesadillas for dinner.

Zsofi and Scott.

Dylan, the only one of us who went all the way in!

See that annoying tree?

All of us!

Now Scott is out golfing with his work, and I am bumming around the apartment. I am officially on holiday now and that feels really nice. I expect the next couple weeks to be pretty busy though.