It's coming on Christmas

So today we went and got the Christmas bins from the storage locker in the basement and I put up some decorations. There are 3 boxes of decorations, 2 of which are lights and ornaments for the tree that we don't yet have. So there are only a few things put up. A light up angel, a big Santa, a Nutcracker, a couple of stockings and a centre piece on the coffee table with candles and garland.

I love Christmas. A lot. Always have. My mom made it so special for us growing up - she was so into it. A couple of years ago she painted her giant living room, which has 11 foot ceilings, a really nice dark red, and put in hardwood floors. So whenever she decorates, the entire room becomes so festive. And because she has such a high ceiling, we always pick out a huge tree - sometimes up to 8 feet tall. In recent years she's wanted smaller trees. I think she thinks that since Elyssa and I are old now that we aren't as into it, but we are! I'm super into it. I can't wait to get a tree. This coming weekend I'm going to Nanaimo and going to help decorate my mom's house. Blake and I are going to get a tree in a couple of weeks from the Lions Club. They set up at Fraser and 41st in a highschool's yard. We discovered it while we were living just off Fraser and 45th. We got a tiny little tree for his basement suite - It was very Charlie Brown Christmas tree, we named it Buddy. And after buying the tree we proceeded to this Thrift store where they were selling ornaments for like 10-25 cents a piece, and strands of lights for a buck or two... Unsurprisingly, few of the strands we bought actually worked.

Last year my mom came over for an Alan Jackson concert out in Abbotsford... Oh mom. I stayed at Carla's out in Langley and the day after she came to pick me up and we went for lunch at the Olive Garden, which was tasty! But in all honesty, NO one needs endless soup, salad and breadsticks. It's highly unnecessary. After lunch, we went to Willowbrook and she bought me all these Christmas decorations - she said that when she first had my sister and I, she started collectings tons of decorations and has a really nice collection now, and that she was starting my collection.

I just hope it snows around Christmas, so I can have a white one! I grew up on the west coast and have so seldom had White Christmases!

Anyway, here are a couple of my decorations: The light up Angel, and the Yoshis, chillin' with the baker mice, no big deal.

Snowy Gastown

A couple of posts ago I posted old snow pictures that I had taken with my old camera. But now, I have DSLR snow pictures!

I walked to school this morning, basically. I didn't intend to, I took the bus to the skytrain, and upon getting to the platform, realized how ridiculous my commute to school would be were I to take the train. My instincts were correct, too, because others in my class who came to class on the Canada Line arrived between 1-3 hours late! Well, they were from Richmond, so I probably wouldn't have been terribly late... But I wanted to walk in the snow!

At lunch I wandered down to Gastown to take some shots. It was awesome. While I was down there it turned to rain so I meandered back to class where it was dry and warm!

See the rest on my Flickr account . I will post some more once I've colour corrected and edited more of them! But for now it's very much my bed time!

My omelette, I love it!

This post is going to be mainly just a recipe. I love eggs, and truth be told, I'm really good at making them. My specialty lies in either scrambled or in omelette form. I also love a leisurely Sunday morning for omelettes, and possibly bacon. So, I give you, my omelette:

Olive oil - for frying vegetables and eggs.
4 large eggs
1/4 medium red onion - diced
1/4 red pepper - diced
handful black olives - pitted & sliced
spinach (optional)
one clove garlic (minced) (optional)
cheese - cheddar, havarti, swiss, mozza, monterey jack, almost any cheese will do! depends on the taste you're going for. I usually use grated cheddar or sliced havarti.
dried basil & oregano, or an italian seasoning mix
salt & pepper

1. First, heat a non-stick frying pan on medium and add olive oil. About a teaspoon is enough, but feel free to add more. Saute the onion, red pepper and garlic until onion is translucent and all are browning.

2. Prepare the eggs in a bowl. Crack them into the bowl and add a pinch each of dried basil and dried oregano, or Italian seasoning, and salt & pepper. Whisk eggs and seasonings with fork thoroughly. Remove vegetables from frying pan and set aside.

3. Pour egg mixture into the same heated frying pan. Add a bit more olive oil if the vegetables have soaked most of it up, if not then the original amount of oil should be sufficient. It really depends on the frying pan and stove...

4. Make sure the egg mixture is evenly distributed over the pan for even cooking. Also make sure the pan is at a medium temperature so that the bottom does not burn. Let the eggs cook to a point where the top of the eggs don't "wiggle" very much when you shake the frying pan. Then add an even layer of cheese over the eggs, about half an inch from the edge. I like a lot of cheese, so I usually put a fairly thick layer of cheese.

5. Once cheese is laid on the eggs, add the vegetables - the sauteed onion, red pepper, garlic, then the black olives and spinach. Make sure to only place the vegetables on one half of the omelette.

6. Once you're sure the omelette is cooked all the way through (that there is no more "wiggling" egg whites!), fold the side of the omelette with no vegetables over the vegetable half. Let the cheese from each side melt together for a minute or so, flip if you feel the need, and then remove from pan. Sprinkle with more cheese, salt or pepper, if you desire and serve! Yum!

I love snow!

I'm sitting in my apartment, it's 10:15pm and I have the blinds fully open onto the alley, watching the snow falling under the street lamp.

I grew up on the west coast, I'm used to rain, not snow. Growing up, I would wait impatiently for snow, and get really upset and disappointed when the Weather Network would "lie" to me about snow in the forecast. The disappointment in a lack of snow would double if it were christmas morning and I was hoping so much for a white christmas! Alas, it rarely happens. But maybe this year! Two years ago I had a white Christmas, the first I'd had in a long, long time. Anyway, that's basically it, I love snow, and it's snowing! I hope it sticks! So far it's sort of sticking to the dumpster - Of course, that's the only thing I can really see from my viewpoint, seeing as I face the alley... The dumpster and the bare back of Toys R Us, which has had graffiti painted over multiple times... This year, now that I have my DSLR, I hope to get some really nice snow shots. I have these from my little point and shoot:

These were from Winter of 2008, before I went to Ireland and when Blake lived at Main and 41st. These are at his place.

The following are from when I was living in residence at SFU. I loved my time there, especially when it would snow so much that the entire school would shut down, and we'd get stranded! The buses would stop running, and we'd be stuck. The beauty about SFU being on a mountain is that there are tons of hills to go sledding... And one of my favourite things to do when I stayed up ridiculously late was to go for walks around campus, and this of course was especially awesome in the snow.

J'adore la neige! Isn't that right, Genine? Do you not agree??? Mais non, je sais, tu deteste la neige...

Anyway, I will be posting more about food, soon. Especially if I can start eating full meals again soon...

On a side note, Arrested Development is on one of the really high-up channels on shaw, and it's reminding me of just how much I love this show!

Anyong!

For us, food is tradition.

Oh hai!

It's time for another food update. Today the topic will be pizza. I love pizza, but it does not love me. But I've found that if you do the pizza a certain way, then it works out! The trick is to get the right ingredients and make it light. And also fresh!

Carla, my best bud, and myself, we have been friends since high school, and since grade 12, we've been getting together with the purpose of eating. In grade 12, I used to make her wraps for lunch at school because she'd always be running late for school and not make one! She's deemed me the food fairy for a long time, now. She has a vlog about life and its craziness, and if anyone is interested, this is the link!

For years we'd get together to eat big, heavy, unhealthy meals. Our favourite was nachos! Nachos with green onion, black olive, tomato, lotsa cheese, chipotle dip and sour cream! Either made at home, or out at Moxie's or something. Occasionally I'd make my "Laura-tastic pasta", which involved linguini, onion, garlic, red pepper, sun dried tomato, half and half cream and a whole lot of parmesan. Usually with garlic bread, and occasionally with home made caesar dressing and croutons on a caesar. It was delicious but so unhealthy!

I discovered this pizza in Ireland when I was living there. One of my friends/brief roommate (or flat-mate, as the Irish/Brits like to call it!) introduced us all to this recipe, as she had made it previously. She was from Texas and liked to say "y'all" a lot. The Irish didn't really understand her, it was funny. Anyway, I suppose this pizza isn't terribly healthy either, but it's a hell of a lot lighter than nachos or "Laura-tastic pasta" and after eating it, we don't end up feeling disgustingly full.

So here we go - Naan bread pizza with pesto, pear and brie cheese! Mmm!

It's simple really... just buy some:
(Serves 2)

Naan or pita bread, preferably whole wheat - 2 pitas/Naan
Basil pesto - approx. 200 grams
1-2 d'Anjou pears
Brie cheese - the stronger tasting, the better - a large triangle piece or half a small round wheel.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Lay Naan or pita bread on a large cookie sheet, and then spread the pesto on the bread. You'll want a decent amount of pesto because some will dry up in the oven, but not so much that it overpowers the pear and brie. Then slice the pear into thin strips, leaving the skin on, and lay the strips on the Naan/pita. You don't have to cover the pizza in pear, there can be gaps! And finally, cut slices of brie and lay it on the pear. Here you don't need to cover the pizza with cheese because when the brie melts it spreads, and it can often be overpowering if overdone. So what I usually do is lay one slice of brie per strip of pear. Then place in oven and cook for 10-15 minutes. But be attentive to the pizza, it cooks really quickly. It'll be done when the brie has melted and started to bubble around the edges, and the pear's skin has gone brown. Then serve!

We used to get our ingredients for this pizza just at any old grocery store or market, but recently I've started making pointed trips to Granville Island when I know we're going to be making this recipe, because the Naan/pita (sometimes I can't find Naan there so I go for pita) is local, the pesto is freshly made at this Italian deli, I'm not too sure where the pears come from... and the Brie I always get is from Comox on Vancouver Island! I just find it tastes better that way. Anyway, here are pictures!

Test Blog!

So this blog is simply to test if I connected my Blogger account to my Twitter successfully!

So testing, testing!

Fresh is Best

There's this salsa company based out of Kamloops called Fresh is Best that makes salsas, nacho chips, guacamole and a garlic spinach dip. They sell their products at certain places throughout BC. They have this little store on Broadway near MacDonald in Vancouver that sells all of their products, and places like Save on Foods and Whole Foods carry their chips. They are so delicious. The chips are always so light and crispy, and their dips taste as if they're made with the freshest of ingredients. My boyfriend is originally from Kamloops, and his mom introduced us to the garlic spinach dip over a year ago. Coincidentally my mom discovered the nacho chips in Nanaimo, and introduced me to those. They have a website here .

This past weekend I ate out quite a bit. On Saturday afternoon, some friends and myself went to The Foundation on Main and East 7th. It's this total hipster restaurant with 70s furniture, jam jars as glasses, and sort of crappy service. But the food is great. The menu is odd... It really takes you a while to decipher what the items are. It's difficult to describe what I mean, but if you ever go there, you'll immediately know what I mean. I had a spinach-chickpea salad in a sesame dressing. It was called Goman Salad - once I started eating the salad I realized that it was named after Spinach Gomae at Japanese restaurants as it tasted almost identical. I also had a carrot, yam and ginger soup.

Saturday evening I had my first concert as a violinist with the Vancouver Philharmonic Orchestra, and it went wonderfully! Afterwards, a few friends and myself went to Earls for a late night appetizer/drink/dessert. I had these two mini flour tortilla chicken tacos, with lettuce, avocado and this hot sauce. I also had a martini and shared a vanilla gelato sundae with Carla.

Sunday morning, Carla and I went to The Naam on West 4th and MacDonald. We aimed to go for breakfast because we really felt like eggs! She and I had been meaning to go to The Naam for a long time - I had been a couple of times for lunch, and she had never been at all. It's quite a famous Vancouver restaurant, notorious for its vegetarian menu, its poor service and the fact that it's open 24 hours for those cram-studying UBC students. We both had the special, which was scrambled eggs with cheese, mushrooms, zucchini, red pepper, onion and parsley. It came with a slice of baked-in-house multigrain bread, home-made raspberry jam, and little square potatoes fried with green onion and parsley. I also asked for a side of peanut butter and found out that even their peanut butter is made in house. I also had a small pot of "Catnap" relaxation tea, where the tea blends are made in house, also.

Today, after class, I met Carla again for lunch downtown at a little soup, sandwich, salad and hot meal place called The Dish, on Davie near Burrard. I had a simple turkey sandwich. It had real sliced turkey, mayo, lettuce, cucumber, tomato and a wonderful cranberry-pear chutney.

Let's review all of these places so I can demonstrate why Fresh is in fact, Best!

• The Foundation - Goman Salad & Carrot, Yam and Ginger soup - $11.50
• The Naam - Breakfast special and a small pot of tea - $11
• The Dish - Turkey sandwich - $6.25
• Earls - Chicken taco appetizer, martini ($1 off special) - $16.60

The three first are all single-location restaurants, and they all focus on creating foods with in-house made, fresh ingredients. All three of the first serve decent portions, at reasonable prices. After having eaten at the Foundation, Naam and Dish, I felt really well. I felt little to no pain from what I ate, and also felt energized, and even if I was full, it wasn't the uncomfortable, painful kind. 

Earls, however, was the most expensive, had the smallest portion of food, had foods that were I'm sure, mostly shipped in or frozen, and ended up hurting me so much I woke in the middle of the night from the pain. 

I'm finding this pattern more and more as I eat... the fresher the foods, the more simple and natural the ingredients, the better it is for me. Not only that, but places like Earls, Cactus Club, Moxie's, Milestones, etc. all have really pricey menus and small portions. As franchises, they need to have consistent recipes for their menus, so that means that everything is pre-prepared at a different location, and that the cooks in the kitchen make the food via a very strict formula - meaning that they're usually not necessarily trained cooks, and generally, they don't give a shit about what they're doing... Whereas in the small, single-location restaurants, everything is made on site, by trained cooks who, for the most part, generally care and take pride in what they're doing. I myself have worked in the food industry for quite a few years, in places where all the food is made on site. One place I was the main cook, and I used to create recipes and would do all the prep and a lot of the cooking, and I took so much pride in that food, and made sure that what I prepared was as fresh and delicious as it could be!

... So, all-in-all, I think we can now see that Fresh is Best! I apologize to Elijah, as he has to read these long posts for class... Sorry!

Until next time!