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So I set out to make chocolate tarts like this:

Using this recipe. It’s French. They are basically tarts with a crust made out of chocolate and crushed potato chips, with a choc mousse on top. The recipe is for four giant tarts, but I made them in muffin liners and ended up with 17 mini tarts.

I followed the recipe very carefully, measuring with a scale and everything, but something went wrong. Instead of a smooth delicious chocolate layer on top I ended up with a beige liquid with brown flecks. After leaving them in the fridge for three hours it became clear that they were never going to set so Scott suggested we put them all in the freezer.

I was quite upset at this point that I had wasted so many ingredients on something that was not working out AT ALL.

But, they ended up freezing into somewhat delicious ice cream pucks with chunky chocolate potato chip bits!!

Not bad at all, if I erase the original idea from my head. A tasty ice cream treat in a manageable serving size (they are about 6 cm in diameter and 2 cm tall). Yum!

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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.

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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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Just a quick update post before I have to get out of bed and actually start accomplishing things.

My epic 2.5 hour BCIT interview went really well. The first hour the guy gave me a crash course on nuclear medicine, and asked little questions all the way through that sort of tested your thinking skills. I got all of them right and he seemed quite impressed. I felt clever. For the second hour I followed nuc med techs around and watched them scan patients. It was neat to watch them deal with the patients and also ask them questions about the job. I really enjoyed it, and was glad to see it was more relaxed than I pictured the job before. Then finally I had to write a quick essay.

Anyway I could tell by how the guy was responding that I did pretty well. Then the next day I called the department head to follow up like I was supposed to and she was really really positive! She asked if I thought it would be a good fit (I said “YEAH! I had a lot of fun yesterday, I’m glad I got the opportunity to do that!”) and she said she had a chat with the dude and he thought I would be a great fit as well. She still wants me to write the bio challenge exam, and take a physics refresher course, but she said once I’m registered in that they can give me a provisional acceptance pending completion of the courses.

…..

YAHOOO!!!!!

Anyway, in other news:

– the Canucks suck now. Poo-ongo let in 5 goals last night and Scott cried as the Canucks chance at the cup slips away in the first round. The series is 3-2 for the Canucks at this point.

– Scott’s aunt is in town for a week, which is neat. We’ve gone out for dinner with her and had her over to our place. It’s the long weekend now so we’ll take her around to the Granville Market and things like that! Next week she leaves on an epic 3 week trip from Vancouver to Victoria to Whistler to Banff to Jasper, then on a train, and then a cruise all the way up to Alaska and back! JEALOUS!!!

– Scott and I booked our flights to Ottawa for the party. Air Canada had a sale so we decided to be optimistic about BCIT/NAIT and buy the tickets. If we end up having to move to Toronto I guess we will cash the flights in for credit and fly to Mexico in a year or something.

Anyway, still a lot of waiting to do. I won’t hear anything definite from any of the schools for another month or two, so we still can’t make any definite plans about this summer or next year. Cross your fingers for me though, we’d like it if I got in everywhere so we can just sit down and make the best decision.

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This week passed by quickly for me. Not that I’ve been doing much though, hence the lack of day-to-day life posts.

I was ultra lazy this week and only went running once. The program is getting harder a lot quicker than before. My next run I have to run 8 minutes straight twice, with 5 minutes of walking in the middle, and then the run after that I have to run TWENTY MINUTES STRAIGHT!! That is too big of a jump!!! At least the weather looks a lot better next week so I have less excuses not to go after work.

It’s still really cold here though, I think. Only about 10°C every day. I want summer NOW. We saw on TV 22°C for Ottawa last week. Did that actually happen?? I’m jealous!

I have booked all my flights for my epic 4 day travel weekend at the end of the month. I fly overnight to Toronto and then spend two days there, then fly stupidly early to Edmonton and then spend about a day and a half there too. Two interviews, plus catching up with J9 and my cousins and aunts, and maybe the West Edmonton Mall? Would going there by myself be fun?

Scott’s aunt is visiting next week and I have my second BCIT interview at the hospital. We also have homemade sushi and a new kind of veggie moussaka in our future.