Category — Food

With the Canucks sadly out of the playoffs, I have jumped onto a very full Habs bandwagon, probably along with every other Canadian. Hopefully tonight wasn’t an indication of how the series is going to go. Jeff and I have been participating in the CBC Hockey Playoff Pool, and by some miracle I have been ranging between 40th and 100th place, which is crazy considering in past years I’ve spent the season tied for 20,000th. When picking for the remainder of the playoffs I picked all players from the Hawks and Habs…no guts no glory.

We were pretty bummed out about the Canucks losing. It’s one thing to lose and feel that you gave it your all, but I’m not sure they would agree that they did (good on Kesler to step up and admit that he should have played better). I guess there’s always next year. I was somewhat lucky enough to be in Vancouver this year during the playoffs. I went there for a work conference and was so tempted to get a ticket to game 3. I am so glad I didn’t since they lost badly, and I would have been in a work meeting at that time but instead came down with the flu. I missed a bunch of the conference and spent 2 days in bed alternating between shivering and sweating. A horrible feeling in a strange hotel room. I wish I could have teleported my body to my own bed. I haven’t been sick for a year and a half so I was due for a flu and I’m sure my body was rebeling after having to play an ultimate tournament at 3 months pregnant.

Upon arriving back to Kelowna, we were visited by my dad and Susan. They were really patient with me as I excused myself to nap all weekend as I fought off the flu. We spent Saturday at the farmers market, the guys did some work out in the yard and Susan made us a wonderful dinner that night. It was an Italian seafood stew called cioppino – delicious. Here’s a recipe to give you an idea of what is in it, but this isn’t the particular one Susan used. It’s great since it’s versatile and you can add all of your favorite seafood. Great served with fresh bread from the market.

For dessert Jeff and I made crepes. We (Jeff) used authentic copper french crepe pans that Susan gave us and it made a huge difference from last time when we used teflon.

A post about family wouldn’t be complete without a photo of our cute cat who was nice enough to allow us to use her table to have a nice dinner:

We just got back from vacation in Beautiful BC.

We started off visiting my parents. First my mom and Doug in Genelle and then my dad and Susan in Thrums. The highlight of the visit it my mom’s house was her new little kitten Winnie. She is only 8 weeks old and 2.5 pounds of cuteness. Last time we went to visit my mom we left with a kitten (Willow) and were so tempted to do so again…. She’s at the cutest age where she’s so bouncy and playful. Here are some pics of the kitten and my mom’s dogs:

Dog Bilby

Dog Oscar

Slightly wet with dog slobber

Sleeping Winnie

Stick 'em up

Then, off to my dad’s place. My dad runs a football pool every year and since last weekend was the first NFL game of the season, we had a no pool, pool party. Most people from the pool came. I had to admit to them all that I dropped out this year since I’m too competitive to finish at the bottom of the pack year after year. My dad even pays my way every year but it’s a bad investment for everyone, so I quit. I still got to go to the party though and meet everyone, even the champ from last year Zeke. Very nice group of people to play croquet and eat burgers with.  Sadly forgot to take photos of the party but here are a few of the yard and garden potatoes:

Is that a Lincoln?

Duck Potatoes

Neighbour's shed in the fog

The morning after the party Susan took us to the 17th annual Garlic Festival in New Denver. It used to be a very small, intimate gathering where people bought garlic but has grown in popularity over the years. Now upwards of 8000 people attend and you can buy all sorts of things: honey, veggies and fruit, clothes, art, and garlic of course. Garlic ice cream, garlic honey…you name it! We went with $100 and spent it all and didn’t come home with even a clove of garlic. It’s located on beautiful Slocan Lake:

Susan, Cheryl and Lindsay in line

Slocan Lake

We managed to get out golfing at the Castlegar Golf Course. I haven’t played there in years, but it’s a great course (especially when you go with your parents and they pick up the tab – bonus!). I think I had the best round of my life but I attribute it to the fact that I used to be a member there. In highschool as a student I think I got a golf membership for $180. I’m pretty sure most people who have been golfing with would question that I was ever a member at a golf course since my game is somewhat inconsistent….but it was on that day. Even beat my dad (although I may have “accidentally” kicked my ball out of the rough a few times).

After a short but sweet visit with my family, we headed off to Kelowna for a mini-vacation. September is definitely the time to vacation in the Okanagan. No traffic or tourists but it’s still 30 degrees! Perfect weather for swimming, playing disc golf and going on wine tours. We went to Summerhill Pyramid, Mission Hill, Quail’s Gate, Dirty Laundry, Sumac Ridge, and Greatta Ranch. Our favorite was Quail’s Gate. Good wine and fantastic food. Here are a few pics from the wineries:

Bell Tower at Mission Hill

Summerhill Winery

grapes

Us at Quail's Gate

Jeff at the DG course

Condo we rented in Kelowna (Playa del Sol)

From Kelowna, off to Penticton for Jeff’s brother’s wedding. Jeff’s dad wrote a post about the lovely day and posted a whack of pictures here. It was a hectic day but a beautiful ceremony.

Flower Girl Sage

Ringbearer Conrad on the run

The Newlyweds

Us with the happy couple

Closest we got to having kids stand still for a photo together

Cool photo of Larry & Brenda in Rose Garden

Roses and rings

Jeff's grandparents in Rose Garden - 59 years married and going strong!

Sage & Auntie Lindsay

The beautiful bride

Sage

Kevin and Tamara were staying in Penticton to enjoy married life and have some calm after the storm, so we went to Princeton to have some quality time with the kids. Luckily Larry and Brenda came too, as the kids are quite a handful at 4 and 2. Sage borrowed my purse so I got to have a mini treasure hunt in her room finding all of the contents. Conrad is at the age where he’s a sponge and it’s pretty much monkey see monkey do. They are both so adorable:

Uncle Jeff with Conrad and Sage

Conrad with curls that any woman would be envious of!

Jeff Riding Tractor at Bear's Fruit Stand (Keromeas)

We were going to head to Vernon to play in UHF, but were glad that we went to Princeton instead and it was kind of out of the way to head back to Vernon. Plus, sleep was in short supply our night in Princeton as Jeff and I got cuddles many times throughout the night from Sage

Now back to reality after a fabulous trip.

Lots of fun had at Sun Peaks this week for Larry’s retirement party. Stayed in a chalet on the hill that was literally ski-in ski-out. Just had to ski down to the Morrisey chair and then took a run back that took us to the doorstep of our place. I had been watching the weather in Kamloops for the last few months and it has been terrible for skiing. But, we totally lucked out and woke up to 16.8cm of fresh powder the first day. So awesome. Some of the best boarding ever. Met a guy from New Zealand who described it as skiing in custard. I’d say more like flour, but either way it was amazing. Wasn’t sure if I wanted to board again the next day since I was so sore (takes a bit of effort to pull yourself out of waste-deep powder all day), but it was too fun to not go. Day 2 was really chilly, but at least we traveled WestJet and received all of our luggage so we were dressed warm enough that it wasn’t so bad. The hot tub at the end of the day sure felt nice.

Thanks to Larry and Brenda’s great meal planning and Jeff’s good BBQing we ate like kings. Lots of fun had with Kevin, Tamara and the two little ones. I think I watched Finding Nemo with Sage 3 times, but luckily she was into that right instead of Barney (which she watched the entire way from Princeton apparently ). Here are a few pics from the week: http://picasaweb.google.com/jeff.sill/SunPeaks#

Yes, you read this correctly. Christmas in January? We had our staff Christmas party on Friday afternoon. Our original party was scheduled for December but was snowed out so we postponed until now. We spent Friday playing mini-Olympics at Shank’s North. We broke into teams and played bowling, mini-golf, Daytona racing and pool. Super fun times. I would recommend this for a stag or stagette. Perfect for a little healthy competition among friends.

My team made the podium, but didn’t come first. I found this strange as 3/5 of my teammates came first overall in one of the sports and one of the guys on my team finished as the top male overall. I guess with these sort of stats we must have shone at times and not so much at others. I really think pool was our downfall. I blame the lack of beer at this point. Who seriously plays pool sober? Afterwards a few of us headed back to our place for some fresh fruit maragarits and guitar hero.

On Saturday morning we had our second annual Garage Hack party. We started this tradition last year after we took up hacky sack after our fall league ultimate games. In the winter we missed it, so we had a hack party in our garage. Last year Jeff made omlets for everyone but this year we had waffles. Great work on breakfast Jeff thanks to the fun crew with the hack skillz:

The whole crew hacking

Nice focus Terri!

Weekend summary: guitar hero, Shank’s, hacky sack, disc golf, coffee, margaritas, squash, Superbowl party, Rock Band, ultimate. All the makings of a great (but a tad tiring) weekend!

A nice quiet evening at home. Sport’s free (postponed our Tuesday workout to later in the week) to spend a relaxing night at home. Might do a bit of Christmas shopping if we feel like going out later.

Otherwise just made a nice dinner and are chilling.

Tonight we had Shrimp Coconut Curry. This one is a recipe we loosely follow from the curry container.

-Prawns or Chicken

-Veggies (eggplant, bamboo shoots, peas (snow peas or regular), carrots, peppers, onions)

-Sauce :

2 tbsp of green curry (we use Thai Kitchen green curry paste)

2 tbsp brown sugar

1 can coconut milk

2 tbsp fish sauce

1/3 chicken stock

Make the sauce. Cook the veggies and meat. Add sauce to veggies and meat. Serve over rice (I recommend basmati) and enjoy the feast. I thought for ages that I didn’t like curry but turns out green curry is delicious. Flavorful with a bit of bite.

Not too much exciting going on here, so we’ll try this theme out for a little while. Food is always fun to talk about and maybe our reader(s) will pick up a recipe or two along the way. Note: You may be extremely frustrated reading this site if you love exact measurements. Apart from baking, we don’t tend to do much measuring. It’s more like adding a bit of this and a touch of that. So sometimes we get lucky and it tastes really good, but you get the odd doozy. We have yet to make the same lasagna twice in a row!

I came up with this blog theme last week, but last week was a BAD week to start. We had 2 dinner functions to attend and ended up at pubs a few times for wings, so I wasn’t willing to confess my diet last week. Let’s just say I think my diet last week may have played a factor in my level of activity this week (squash twice, swimming twice, gym once).

On Sunday we made a ham and had a few friends over for dinner and a slideshow. Each person went through slides and we ended up seeing Japan, West Coast Trail, Nepal, Papa New Guinea, Phoenix (Ironman), Broken Islands, Guatemala and Kananaskis.

As a result, we’ve had to be creative this week with ham as we have lots of leftovers.

Day 1

-leftover ham, mashed potatoes (with leeks and onions), broccoli.

Day 2

Breakfast burritos

-scrambled eggs, ham, peppers, jalepenos, salsa, sour cream, avocado, cheese, all in a flour tortilla.

Day 3 – Macaroni and cheese

-basic cheese sauce. Make a roux (fat + flour), add milk and cheese.

-cook pasta, add steamed veggies (asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, peas) and ham

Day 4 & 5

Jeff wanted to make soup. I veto’d the idea as I think we still have split pea and ham soup in the freezer from last year and we should eat that first. Jeff’s response, “I just never like to see good bone go to waste”. LOL. In the end, we just had leftover pasta for a couple of days.

Day 5

Popcorn!!! We went to the movies tonight to see the new Bond movie, Quantum of Solace. It was incredible! Tons of action and very witty. Even a few good laughs. I’ll note that we probably enjoyed it so much since we just saw the prequel “Casino Royale” last month so the storyline was fresh in our heads.

We got to the show but the early one was sold out. Then we waited for over 20 minutes in line for popcorn. It would have cost $13 for 2 pops and a popcorn but we had a coupon from Airmiles. After my trip to the movies I’m going to have to say that I’m not noticing the recession affecting many Calgarians! But who knows, maybe they all had coupons too!

Very exciting week coming up. Four days till we leave for Japan. The time should fly by as I’ll be super busy planning my company’s annual conference and Jeff’s trying to meet grant deadlines and write papers.

Good thing we haven’t left packing and planning this trip to the last minute…or have we?

Another super fun weekend, leaving no time to get organized. Hung out with our buddy Dylan since we was in town for work. Saturday we went disc golfing at Forest Lawn since it was a gorgeous day. Saturday evening we spent at a quick stop by Tim and Kir’s going away party as they are sadly moving to Whitehorse. We will miss them tons but they should be back often and now we have an excuse to travel up North!

After the party we went to a concert and saw Less than Jake and Reel Big Fish. You might be thinking “who?”…that was a popular reaction from everyone at the party who has never heard of either band.

They are both Ska bands, a mix between punk and big band and you can listen to them on YouTube: [youtube I0e6LUTjzX0]

[youtube PwAC9vWHUvM]

We were so pumped to to see LTJ, as we had never seen them before and we love them. What a disappointment!!!! They were terrible. At first we thought it was just the acoustics in Mac Hall, but we had seen concerts there before that sounded fine. At one point a song was just about over and I realized it was a song I knew. They were entertaining, although nasty at times, and definitely not appropriate for an all ages show. To be fair, it was the lead singer’s 32nd birthday so he was indulging a little… I think I’ll stick to listening to their CD’s from now on.

As for RBF, they did not disappoint. We have seen Reel Big Fish 3 times before (once with Goldfinger, once with Suburban Legends, once on their own) and this was definitely their best show. The determined for us that is was not the concert hall that sound bad, it was infact LTJ that sucked. They were so high energy and upbeat. Great show! I highly recommending seeing them if you are even remotely into ska of if you just have an appreciation for live music.

At least the crowd was entertaining during LTJ. One chick spent the entire evening taking bad photos. She never even tried changing her camera settings or taking the flash off. Bad photo after bad photo. She had Jeff and I laughing pretty hard most of the show. She must have taken 100 terrible photos. It was the best when the lead singer would come to the edge of the stage and she’d click the button just in time for him to turn his back and walk away. Timing wasn’t her strong suit.

As people got tossed from the mosh pit from crowd surfing, the bouncers would grab them. The first offense resulted in a marking on your arm, and the second time you were tossed from the concert. These bouncers didn’t mess around. Permanent marker, thick tip, 4 times up and down your arm. Saw a few dudes trying to wipe it off and head back to the pit. Yeah, good luck with that.

Had Mary Anne and Robert over for dinner. Was a fun evening (Jeff made fajitas) but now it’s time to hit the hay! Four more sleeps

I decided to bring my concerns to the attention of Timmy Hortons and sent them an email. I thought I’d share the nice response with you in case you share my same concerns:

Dear Lindsay,

I would like to thank you for taking the time to contact us at our Head Office.  We appreciate your feedback regarding our contest cups.

Our ‘Roll Up The Rim’ Promotion is a very exciting time for both our customers and our company. The contest is in place to reward our loyal customers, such as yourself, and to thank you for your patronage.

Throughout the Roll Up The Rim contest, our take-out cups serve two purposes; one as the coffee cup, and the other as the contest “entry form”. If a customer has a hot beverage in a china cup, an entry form of some kind is still required, and in this case, it is the paper cup.

In the past we have investigated the option of having a scratch card rather than the roll up tab, however, having scratch cards printed would actually increase the paper usage because our cups are already going to be printed regardless of the contest, and thus, serve a ‘double purpose’. Nonetheless, a copy of your comments and suggestion for scratch cards have been forwarded to the appropriate personnel in our Marketing Department for
review.

It is through feedback from valued customers, such as yourself, that we have been able to continually grow as a company.  If you have any further questions or comments please do not hesitate to contact us.

Thank you again for contacting us and we hope to have the opportunity to serve you again soon.

Yours Truly,
THE TDL GROUP CORP.

Jeff and I are doing better than predicted at Roll Up The Rim To Win (RUTRTW) this year. As our score indicate on the right hand side of our website, we have won more than 1-10 as the odds state. That means that 2 people out there are about 1-60. I think one of those people are one of my coworkers…he’s about 0-160.

I like going to Timmy’s during RUTRTW, but there are a few things that bother me about going there. First thing, in order to play RUTRTW I have to get a paper cup and can’t use my travel mug. Secondly, they always try to give me two cups to make it less hot to hold, especially when I order tea.

They should just have a little tab of paper that they give you to roll up if you have your own mug. Also, have they ever heard of those heat sleeves that every other hot beverage company has adopted?

I’m glad it only lasts for a couple months of the year. Hopefully someone out there reads this and cares about the environment like I do. I guess I could just not go there but RUTRTW is soooo fun!  If I can’t win the Matrix everytime, I  love winning a coffee since then I get another chance to win!!

We spent the first half of Sunday in the kitchen making all sorts of tasty stuff.

Jeff made cinnamon buns. I helped make homemade pasta and stuffed manicotti (with ricotta and spinach). The cinnamon buns were super sweet and tasty and the manicotti turned out perfect even though it was a typical Jeff and Lindsay recipe where we add random stuff that we think will taste good into a bowl and hope for the best!

As for the homemade pasta, I highly recommend trying to make it if you haven’t already. It is super fun to make and the results are definitely worth it. We made fetticini and it was delicious and so amazingly fresh tasting. It took quite a while since it was our first time and we were figuring it out. Next time it will be a breeze. The great thing is that there are only 2 ingredients needed to make pasta: flour and eggs. No preservatives, salt or other hidden crap. And it freezes really well too!

We bought a pasta roller from Stokes for $20 and when Jeff was buying it the saleswoman told him all the old Italian ladies in Calgary buy her out of stock constantly.

Here we are making pasta:

While I’m in the mood to post pictures, I might as well post some random ones. Here’s the ambulance Jeff got for Christmas and built. Maybe he should have been a Civil Engineer instead of Electrical:

We also did a bit of “spring cleaning” (way ahead of the game), inspired by Heather’s blog on cleaning out any old clothes she doesn’t wear. We did the same and ended up with 2 huge garbages bags of clothes (this photo is to inspire you to do the same):

After all of our hard work on the weekend, we rewarded ourselves with some floor hockey and Sunday evening ultimate. Now we’re just trying our best to stay inside and keep warm. I hope wherever you are reading this, it is warmer than -42C!!!