Nom nom nom

I'm still feeling pretty sick today -- dry coughs and fatigue. I'm pretty sure this is just how my body likes to celebrate being nearly done school, but let's hope it doesn't celebrate for too much longer.

Poor Lenny didn't sleep really last night (thinking of experiments and I was coughing and giving commands in my sleep apparently) so I made him a delicious breakfast of coffee, Omega 3 eggs (because let's face it: we hardly have fish), and turkey bacon. After dropping him off at work, I picked up some groceries and came home to make some chocolate chip banana muffins using some bananas that went bad over our weekend trip. I was amazed how quick these bananas turned ripe but was Super excited to make these delicious muffins again -- usually they're gone so fast! I doubled the recipe to use up all 3 of the bananas and the batter made a LOT. Here's a final pic:After another succesful work day at the store, I went to my last night class for this degree! Awesome sauce! Also nice was that it ended only 45 minutes into the 3-hour class.

Tomorrow I have a phone interview for a summer recruiting job (WOOT!), am working for two hours over lunch, and then tackling my to-do list! Ttyl!

Steph's 24th Birthday & Dakota's Dog Sweater

Better late than never. Here are some pictures from last weekend.

First up is cute-sauce Dakota showcasing her extreme excitement that we are home for a visit:
Suprisingly she was calm enough to allow me to put on her jacket that I knit her. Too cute!

Next up is the reason we came home really, Lenny's cousin Stephanie's 24th birthday. Steph's father is Lenny's mother's brother. She's currently at York but Lenny and I can't seem to agree with what she's studying, so we'll just leave it at that. Here's a picture of her post opening all the presents. Her boyfriend John is on the left:

Here's Steph's gift from us to her, handmade by moi. I'm getting better at this piping thing, but I still have a lot to learn. I'm also getting a little more creative with colour mixing. This was meant to be and actually turned out to be light purple, her fav.


Next up is a picture of Steph's actual birthday cake. I did not make this. ha! It was so pretty and so ornately decorated by her favourite bakery.
Let me introduce zeppole to all non-Italians here. Zeppole are served only around this time of year to celebrate the Feast of St. Joseph. They are amazingly delicious and look kinda like this (cut in half):
And the last picture from this weekend trip is of some sugary-ish nuts. I can't remember what Lenny's grandma told me they're called, and Lenny didn't know they had a name, so for now, I'll just post it up and we'll see if perhaps some of you know what they're called. They certainly were delicious though!

TGI(A)F!

Thank God it's almost Friday!

Thursdays are always my most nerve-wracking days: a lecture of my most demanding course and a lesson immediately after. Both of these things also usually involve rushing to and from as well as a lot of mental focus -- something I'm not so great at these days. To add to the madness of today, it was also freezing cold rain today. At least I remembered an umbrella! The class went ok although for the second week in a row, the material she asked us to prepare wasn't discussed. Bummer. My lesson went really well and I think I probably had a personal best for the performance of the Kozeluch concerto.

When I came home, Lenny was already busy cooking dinner and had washed all of the day's dishes. Here's a pic of his Spicy Asian Chicken Stirfry:That's right mom: I ate vegetables and everything! It was scrumptilidelicous!

Tomorrow night we're hoping to go out with Kirsi to celebrate her 22 birthday. Well I'm sure we'll feel a bit "old" (ha!), it should be a lot of fun. In a fun twist, she actually lives in my exact old apartment that I lived in for 3rd and 4th year (the Richmond St one). I'm really curious to see what it looks like after a supposed renovation and with all different furniture and stuff. Should be fun!

March fails

I had the best intentions of today being a productive day. Honest. I worked for an hour on an Industrial Relations assignment, finished that, went onto working on an HR Planning paper for an hour and then decided to take a break. At this point it went down hill. I decided to watch some Cake Boss and work on my knitting. Long story short, I decided that counting the number of stitches in a row would be a good idea because I hadn't done it in a few rows and low and behold I somehow added 10 (?!?!!) stitches! I think it's possible that I've actually just been +10 stitches the whole time and just didn't notice because I normally just count in groups of 10. After triple checking the count using some stitch holders, I decided it was time to rip out all of my work and start again but not without taking a picture first. I haven't actually ripped it out yet because it just breaks my heart, but ah well... probably after this post.
It doesn't look like I'm that far, but the knitting is really fine. Hrmph.

Needing another pick-me-up, I decided that it'd be a good idea to bake some chocolate chip cookies so we have something to snack on this week. While not the healthiest of snacks, I do like that they're preservative free at the very least so away I went. I got about 1/2 way through and realized we only had one egg instead of the necessary two. Against my better judgement, I decided to take a trip to Costco. Now we usually go to Costco sometime during the week and not a weekend afternoon. Today I was reminded why. Although there are way more sample ladies on the weekends, there are also about 10x as many shoppers strutting along and it's really hard to get in and out quickly (P.S. I also looked for mozzarella cheese to do a pasta dish tonight but the cheapest amount they sold it in was $12!!). What would normally take me 10 minutes ended up taking 45. Ugh. Stolen parking spaces even though I was signaling, being rammed with carts by people not looking. Ugh. Not a great experience.


Anyhoo so I arrive home and start unloading the groceries only to find Lenny is having a nap having just come back from a 26-km run in slushy slushy slush. So after unloading all the groceries myself, I get to the recipe and stupidly only add 2/3 cup of flour instead of 2 2/3 cup of flour. FYI, this is what your cookies will look like if you try that yourself sometime:
Well I'm off for round three of attempting to get into a better headspace to continue on this paper and spend some time practicing. Let's hope everything comes up peachy this time!

Banana muffins

This morning I made these banana muffins using this buttermilk subsitute. It was nummies!

Unfortunately it hasn't been that great of a morning. I got some marks back and got a 57 on the midterm I thought I failed (so close!), a 65 in participation for the same class (guess I should stop being on Facebook and doing crossword puzzles during this incredibly boring class), but pulled off an 88 for the course I didn't even read all the material for. Ah well, what can you do... Only 5 more weeks to go.

In other news, I went to apply for some positions with Health Canada in London only to discover that the applications closed yesterday and I've been denied the Passport job because of a lack of experience. At least they have my resume I guess. Hopefully something else will come up. I do have a meeting with Sun Life this coming week and am hoping for the best for that.

Today I'm hoping to get some papers done so I don't have to worry about them later on this month. Wish me well!

It's not a tumour!

I've taken some pictures over the last few days of some of our cooking adventures.This one is from Friday night. We made some pizza together to use up a green pepper we had that was about to go. The funny bit was that Len didn't get all of the air bubbles out so there was this giant bubble that kinda looked like a tumour.
These next few pics were for further explaining how we do the broiled sweet potatoes.

1. Peel the sweet potato (or two)
   
2. Chop it into bite-sized pieces
3. Toss with a few tablespoons of EVOO, cumin, sea salt, and rosemary
4. Place on a foil-lined cookie sheet and broil until the edges are blackened (should take no more than 10 min)

They caramelize quite nicely with the broiling and thanks to the tin foil are fairly easy to clean. Here's the final product (we did nachos as well so that's what's on the right).

1. 

Well there you go mumsies, proof that we're cooking and feeding ourselves with real food. Nummy nummies!

Wacky Wednesday

This is going to be a bit of a random collection of points, but it will keep you entertained nevertheless.

Today we made a blonde pizza for dinner. This is a new concept to me but it's pretty tasty and fairly healthy. Basically you take some pizza dough, roll it out and put about 3 tbsp of some high quality EVOO on it, sprinkle with rosemary, garlic powder, and sea salt. We also added some spinach and mozzarella because that's what we had. It was pretty yummy! Here's a (dark) picture:
My mom got her prezzie in the mail today (the purple leaf scarf & hat). I also sent along this cute Valentine's card that I found: She'll be starting her first round of chemo on Tuesday next week so the timing couldn't have been much better. Hopefully these will keep her comfy and feel a bit closer to me when I'm not there.

I stumbled across this recipe for Chicken Bacon Avocado Quesadillas today and I'm really wanting to make them. Lenny's not really big on Mexican dishes but I think I may have some luck with this because of the avocado. Num nums!

The midterm for i miei studenti went well tonight. Overall I think this is probably the best group of students I've had out of my four classes: they're really quick learners and actually seem to remember things from week to week. Can't really ask for much more than that.

Right now Lenny and I are watching America's Funniest Home Videos. This show really is underrated. That or I lead a kind of dull life because I find a lot of these videos to be really funny. Good times -- you should try it!

Oreo Truffles

This is what I made for dessert last night: Oreo truffles. They were really quick to make and taste quite delicious. I attempted to melt some white chocolate to drizzle on top but it over-heated and started to turn brown and then in addition it started to melt open the seams of my piping bag... ah well. Still delicious!

Dinner is the oven. Tonight we're having Shepherd's pie with some left over mashed potatoes from a pork tenderloin dish a few days ago. I'm still looking for various potato recipes as we have about 20 left from a sack that Len's Nona sent down for us a while back.

Not for tonight, but I'm thinking these Baked Parmesan Zucchini sticks are in our near future. They look so yummy.

This morning I ran through the Telemann Bassoon Sonata in F with my accompanist. We're performing it in my studio recital on Thursday evening. Hopefully my stamina will be a wee bit better than it was in rehearsal today, but other than that, I'm pretty happy with how things are coming along. In hindsight, running up the stairs before playing is also a good thing to avoid.

After rehearsal I went out to the Spencer Lodge for the faculty of music annual Christmas Dinner. The buffet was scaled back significantly more than it is during the holidays but still had some fairly delicious food. My favourite? Cheese tortellini. I love pasta.

After some good eats I came home and read another chapter for my midterm on Thursday and then had a quick 20 minute nap. After that, I went to pick up Len from the hospital and we headed off to Starbuck's/Chapters/Petsmart. I enjoyed a delicious tall skinny vanilla latte, but after spending $4 for a small drink, I've decided that that will be my last latte for a while. It's time to start drinking black coffee and saving some money. We didn't see anything in Chapters but did see that Petsmart is having a puppy adoption weekend this weekend. While we still aren't committed to getting a pup quite yet, I'm enjoying this stage of finding out lots of information. Currently, I'm thinking a Cocker Spaniel may be the perfect match -- not too big, not too hairy, and super cute! We'll see how things go...

Well I'm going to go check on the Shepherd's pie and do some more reading!

MS Trivia night & Sunday cooking

Last night we went to the MS Trivia night despite a large snow storm creating some whiteout conditions. At the halfway point we were in 5th place (out of 15), but I don't think we finished that strong (they never did announce any of the places other than first and second). Anyhoo, here are some pictures of the evening:

Our team name:
The happy couple enjoying some sugar and free coffee:The other happy members of our team, Len's coworker Jon, and the parents of one of the Trivia Night's committee members, Stan and Sharon:

They were selling raffle tickets for some of the many prizes they had donated and I won a one-month pass to GoodLife and a Goodlife sweatshirt. Hopefully Lenny doesn't mind the company at the gym, but to be honest, I'm pretty sure he's thankful to have a little extra push to go more regularly right now. Me with the loot:

When we woke up this morning, the driveway was plowed, but I took this picture to give you a bit of an idea of how much snow we got. The snow banks are certainly getting bigger and bigger! Am I ever grateful to be driving the SUV instead of the rental car now -- it would be so tricky to see around those snow banks!


I actually studied this afternoon! My training and development midterm isn't until this Thursday, but I've got a lot of little things to take care of between now and then. Anyhoo, only 4 chapters left to go... I might get to another one tonight although continue to knit that hat I've been working on seems awfully more appealing.

This morning Len and I made Sugarlaws' Cinnamon Rolls. Not only did we not have the desire to kill each other in the kitchen (a problem we sometimes have when cooking together), but it was actually fun! The cinnamon buns turned out to be DELICIOUS. Like uterrly amazing. SO good. I may have eaten 4... for breakfast... Here they are fresh out of the oven but pre-icing:

Tonight while Lenny was out injuring himself on a snowy run :(, I made some homemade pizza for "the game." It turned out really well but for whatever reason the dough was really poofy (hard to take a picture of, but here's a try):Ah well, as long as it tastes good right? I'm also happy to report that I made the pizza sauce from scratch too. Turns out that some tomato paste mixed with Italian seasoning is a perfect alternative to those pre-made onion-powder-filled pizza sauces.

Well, off to do other things now. Party times!

Presents & Baking

We're getting ready to start the journey back to Brockvegas this weekend. Our plan is to depart tomorrow morning, visit with our friend Tamara in Waterloo for the afternoon, and then continue on to spend the night with Lenny's family in Toronto. Unfortunately I haven't done much packing as I've pulled some muscles in my back working at the store over the past few days (moving a lot of inventory boxes, trying to keep up with demand). So far I've coped by making big lists of things to do and hope to just throw everything together tomorrow morning. I'll let you know how that goes ;)

I'm excited that we'll be hosting Lenny's family dog once we get back. Dakota is a pug mix and about as obiedient and cute as can be.
I've spent the evening doggie proofing the house, which largely translates to taking down Christmas decorations. I'm fairly confident that Dakota won't get into too much trouble, but best to be safe rather than sorry. I've always been a big believer in trying to clean up as much as possible before leaving for vacations so coming back isn't as stressful.

Last night we baked our final component of our cookie containers, Chocolate Peppermint Whoopie Pies. Our landlord had her kids pick out this gift package mix, complete with a really nice winter display plate. This place is truly the best. Anyhoo, on with some cookie making pictures:

Len and I baked them together and surprisingly didn't kill each other in the process! Can you guess who did the left and right baking sheets?

The finished products on our new winter-themed serving plate.

A close-up of the finished product.


This next picture is pretty dark, but check out just how many presents result when we purchase gifts for all of our immediate family members:

The tree and tv look so small in this picture, but I can ensure you that they really are not! Putting these gifts into large reusable grocery bags was quite satisfying though; wrapping presents is one of my favourites... as proof, here's a picture of Lenny with one of the final cookie boxes before we took it to give to his Little Brother (of Big Brothers Big Sisters) tonight:
Well happy travels everyone! It's time for me to check out Home Alone on tv!

Holiday Baking Awesomeness

Thanks to the snowday, I was able to do a lot of baking. Oh boy did I have fun :)

I have to say that for at the least the first two, they are the BEST and you all should try making at least one of these delicious treats. The squares were just ok, and still very easy peasy and yummy, but not quite the same level of awesome as the other three.

Buttery Hazelnut Lace Cookies
courtesy of Chatelaine, Dec. 2010
Prep 25 min | Total 45 min

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 2 tbsp orange juice
• 3 tbsp all-purpose flour
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 cup sliced hazelnuts or almonds (I used almonds & walnuts b/c that's all we had)
• 1 tsp grated orange peel

POSITION oven racks in top and bottom thirds of oven. Preheat oven to 350F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

MELT butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Remove from heat. Whisk in sugar, orange juice, flour and salt. Then whisk in beaten egg. Stir in nuts and orange peel. Mixture will be wet.

DROP 1 tsp batter for each cookie onto prepared sheets, about 2 in. apart. Batter will spread. Bake in top and bottom thirds of oven, switching and rotating sheets halfway through, until edges are golden brown and centres are light golden, 6 to 7 min. At halfway point I would also recommend re-shaping the cookies (mine tended to pool all together).

COOL cookies on baking sheets for 2 min. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.


Flourless Chocolate Snow Mountains
courtesy of Chatelaine, Dec. 2010
Prep 30 min | Total 1 hr

• 1/2 cup ground almonds
• 1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch-processed cocoa powder
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 112 g dark chocolate, about 4 squares, chopped & melted (I used 1/2 dark and 1/2 semi-sweet)
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup icing sugar

WHISK almonds with cocoa, baking powder and salt in a small bowl. Beat butter with brown sugar in a large bowl using an electric mixer, until light and fluffy, about 3 min. Beaet in egg and vanilla. Stir in chocolate. Fold in almond mixture until combined. Cover bowl with mixture until combined. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate until dough is firm enough to roll, about 10 min.

POSITION oven racks in top and bottom thirds of oven. Preheat oven to 350F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Place granulated and icing sugars in 2 separate small bowls. Scoop dough and roll into tbsp-sized balls. Coat with granulated suagar, then icing sugar. Place on prepared sheets 1 in. apart. Bake in top rotating sheets halfway through, until cookies crack, 12 to 14 minutes. Remove sheets to a rack and leave for 2 min. Cookies will look undercooked but will continue to bake as they sit. Remove to a rack to cool completely.


Tiger Bars
courtesy of Hershey.com, including the picture (mine are still cooling, so no pictures yet)

• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/4 cup golden corn syrup (I used 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup water as we don't use corn syrup)
  
• 3/4 cup Butterscotch Chipits, divided
• 2 cups Rice Crispies cereal
• 1 cup Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chipits
• 1 teaspoon oil

1. In large saucepan, combine brown sugar, butter and corn syrup; bring to boil over medium heat. Stir until sugar is dissolved.

2. Remove from heat; stir in 1/2 cup (125 mL) of the butterscotch chips; stir until melted. Stir in cereal until well coated. Press into greased 8-inch (20 cm) square pan.

4. In medium bowl over hot water (or in microwave), melt semi-sweet chocolate chips. Spread evenly over surface of bars.

5. In small bowl over hot water (or in microwave), melt remaining 1/4 cup (50 mL) butterscotch chips and oil. Drizzle in lines over surface of bars. Chill. Cut into bars.


Lenny's "Bear"scotti (biscotti)
created by a talented LennyDry:
1 2/3 cup almond flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup flax seed
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 1/2 tablespoon cracked black peppercorns
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tbsp pureed ginger
1/4 cup natural sugar cane

Wet:
1/2 cup honey
2 tbsp agave nectar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 tablespoons grated lemon peel
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large eggs

1) Preheat oven to 350°F.
2) Butter and flour large baking sheet. Pre-melt butter for wet ingredients in microwave.
3) Whisk dry ingredients.
4) Make well in center of dry ingredients.
5) Add wet ingredients to well.
6) Stir egg mixture until blended; gradually mix in dry ingredients.
7) Drop dough onto prepared sheet by tablespoonfuls, forming two 12-inch-long by 2-inch-wide logs. Space logs 3 inches apart.
8) Using moistened fingertips, shape logs neatly.
9) Bake logs until golden and firm to touch, about 14-16 minutes.
10) Cool logs on baking sheet 10 minutes.
11) Reduce oven temperature to 325°F.
12) Transfer warm logs to work surface. Cut on slight diagonal into 1/2-inch-thick slices.
13) Arrange slices, cut side down, on 2 clean baking sheets.
14) Bake until pale golden, about 7-10 minutes. Cool completely. About 1 hour.



Hope that inspires you all to do some Christmas baking. Now to recover from my sugar high...

FINALLY!!!

Finally... It is December. This means that I am almost done school for a while and it's almost time to see la mia famiglia!

Finally... We are returning to the world of TV and doing so In Style. That's right, not only did we order cable (to be delivered tomorrow morning) we actually bought a new TV! Thanks to Black Friday deals, we saved over 70% on our purchase (depending on how you calculate it). Thank you Sony Store. Here is the before:
And here is the after:

Finally... I don't have to wait for the put-put-put that comes with watching TV streamed over the Internet. This is going to be Awesome. We are SO excited. Now to decide whether a Blu-Ray player and/or new TV stand are worth the investment...

Finally... I taught my last bassoon class of the semester today which warranted some baking! Lenny, turns out, is awesome at measuring and mixing things (guess it's kind of reminicent of his experiments) and we made two dozen shortbread cookies in no time. I used some red, green, and white coloured sugars to help brighten my festive "holiday cookies."



Well I think that's it for news and excitement. Friday night is the Lawson Health Research Holiday Party, of which Lenny is actually organizing and then Saturday is the London Christmas Craft Show. No doubt there will be lots of good pictures on the way.

Picture update!

Combine some pretty wicked tendonitis in my arms and a sick Lenny to take care of, I haven't blogged much at all this week! Nevertheless I have been taking a bunch of photos as things have been going along.

Here's a picture of a meal I made once Lenny's tummy was feeling normal again. Flank steak with spinach, pine nuts, and panko rolled in with some delicious sweet potato fries on the side.


Next up is a picture of me at the Victoria Park lighting party. Lenny hadn't been out of the house at all this week, so a Friday night trip to Williams followed by a 10 minute walk through the newly lit park was a great outing. The park is so beautiful and the hot coffee helped soooo much.

Now onto Saturday's adventures. We drove up to an area of London we're not too familiar with to see a Santa Claus parade and came across Ungers. It's a really nice little market that looks like it's been around for a loooong time. They also house the "London Icecream Company" which I've heard of but never tried. Something to keep in mind the next time I'm missing the now defunct Angelo's market.

Our trip was to see the Santa Claus Parade as Lenny has never been to one!?!?!?! I was really excited to run into one of my work colleagues, Sasha, and his family outside of Ungers. The parade was way more fun with excited kids around.

Here's Lenny with an antique ambulance! Cue ghostbusters music!

Lenny also wanted his picture taken infront of the choo choo train. This event was way to cute.

Next up we have a tractor - which I'd like to point out - has a bear plastered to the grill. Is this a normal thing? I've never noticed it before but almost all of the trucks had teddy bears strapped to the grill... a little disturbing but also mildly hilarious at the same time :)

This picture is a John Deere float for Lenny's stepdad, Mark. Mark, you would've loved the high participation of John Deere products in this parade.

This was my favourite. Although I despise LTC, they do have an Awesome BEAR-themed Christmas/Holiday bus this year :)

The Mustangs Marching Band! I didn't see any of my friends performing (guess they don't all do every parade) but it was still fun to see them do all their choreographed aweseomeness.

And what you've all been waiting for, Ho Ho!

Lenny's first picture with a Santa Claus Parade Santa.

All in all the parade was a great experience and was the perfect length of time given the temperature.

Next up is a picture of where we parked, Sweeney's Barbershop. I laughed out loud. If you're not sure why, google "Sweeney Todd."

This weekend I found some great purchases. One being this roaster for only $20. We actually cook a fair amount of roasts and they never seem to a) fit in our current pan or b) do very well without a resting rack, which this one comes with. It also matches our pot set so I'm pretty excited. Lenny is too, although not as much, as you can probably tell by the picture.

My mom sent me a HomeSense giftcard in the mail (AWESOME!!) so I promptly went out and bought these purdy wintery towels that say Pretty without being overwhelmingly girly. They'll also be useable all winter long so that's nice. The second item is a group of higher quality socks. My feet are always cold and I suspect it has to do with my inferior sock choices. Hopefully these new Christmas socks will do the trick!

Last but not least I have a picture of me wearing my Aunt Donna's sweater from c. 1970s. My grandma knit it and somehow it got passed down on to me. It's soooooooooo warm and therefore awesome.

Well that's it for now. I'm off to enter the happy world of marking and, hopefully, the Amazing Race!