Not To Be Trusted With Knives

So I was driving home from work yesterday and as I was driving by the local cemetery, as one does who lives in location in which a cemetery is located between their home and office, and I noticed a new sign on their lawn:

Here’s a close up of the sign:

So, yeah, just a heads up – if you are planning to die in BC in the next little while, you might want to do it in the next 21 days in order to avoid the 7% hike in taxes that will occur once the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) kicks in on July 1.

Or, you know, you can just purchase all your funeral needs in Washington state, where they will exempting BC residents from sales tax after July 1!

So, I decided to go out for a little run today.  This was the path I decided to run along:

Not too bad of scenery to have as the backdrop to my run, eh?  And as I was lost in thoughts such as “I wonder what world leaders have gone for a run along this very same path?” and “How can I make $1 zillion so that I can afford to come here all the time?”, I ran around a bend to discover this little beauty:

Not something I typically see on my runs in Vancouver!

I continued along this path, but it turned out to be shorter than I had wanted for a run, so I doubled back along the path until I came to the Terrace Trail, a hiking trail through the bush, and ran along it for a while.  It was pretty hilly and rocky, so I had to be careful not to trip or go over on my ankle, which is totally the kind of thing I would do this close to race day.  As I headed back up the Terrace Trail, a coyote ran right across my path!  I wasn’t able to get my camera out quick enough to take a photo of him – he ran deep into the trees and then turned back to check me out. I noticed that there was another coyote in there, but the two of them ran off, leaving me photoless!  I continued on my way and then came upon two more deer!

Or possibly that’s the same deer who had just relocated and found a friend. I don’t know how you tell deer apart, to be quite honest. But unlike the coyotes, they seemed perfectly content to stick around while I took their photos.

Also, I think my runs would be a lot faster if I didn’t stop to take so many pictures!

For the couple of weeks, I’ve been in the mood to try out some new recipes.  And, you know, every time I cook something new, I’m reminded how much I love cooking!  It can be so easy just to cook up something from my usual repertoire¹ – I know exactly what ingredients to buy and can whip up dinner in no time flat – so I’ve sort of fallen into that trap lately. But breaking out some of my cookbooks to look for new things to cook has got me all excited!  Here’s a sampling of things I’ve made recently:

Pizza

I already blogged about this pizza I made – pesto, veggies and goat cheese!  Recipe courtesy of my sister and her bf.  My friend Alicia gave me a recipe for homemade dough, so that’s on the list of things to try out!

Dal

I’m generally not very good at making Indian food and so I usually just rely on the Tikka Masala sauce in a jar from Superstore when I want to make Indian².  But a long, long time ago some friends gave me this Indian cookbook:

and so I figured I’d try something simple from it.  I made a dal and it actually turned out pretty tasty:

But hot.  Probably not hot to an Indian person, but definitely white person hot.  Fortunately, while the dal was cooking I had tried my hand at making raita:

This raita is chunkier than any raita I’ve ever seen before.  That might just be my fault.  It doesn’t look all that appetizing in this photo, but it tasted pretty good.

I was waiting for the dal to cook and realized that I happened to yogurt, cucumber and mint in the fridge, so I got a recipe for raita on the intertubes.  And it was a good thing I did, because that dal freaking needed it to cool it down!

Spinach and Cilantro Rice

My sister mentioned to me one day that she’s madesomething from the Rebar cookbook, which I just so happened to have in my possession:

and I remembered this tasty spinach and cilantro rice that Tod and I made from that book a long, long time ago.  So I made it again:

This is the blenderized spinach, cilantro and parsley that you use to cook the rice.  Mmm, blenderized.

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Bars:

Also from the Rebar cookbook:

I took these to work last Friday.  They were something of a hit at work, if I do say so myself!

Stuffed Poblano Pepper:

I didn’t actually take a photo of this one and I kind of made up the recipe as I went along.  Basically, I cut the top of the pepper off, took out the seeds and membranes and filled it with a mixture of cooked rice (brown & wild), black beans, diced fresh tomatoes and cheese.  And then I cooked it at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.  Delish!

Chocolate Mousse:

Since I had leftover whipping cream from the aforementioned PB&C bars, I had to figure out what to do with it.  I mean, I couldn’t let perfectly good whipped cream go to waste, could I?  And what better to make than freaking chocolate mousse??  I just followed this recipe and it was to die for!  Thought next time I would definitely use a high quality chocolate – like, say, Callebaut.  I just used Chipits dark chocolate chips, which is what I had on hand and it was pretty spectacular, but just the thought of a Callebaut chocolate mousse makes my head explode!  I think I’m going to declare chocolate mousse my signature dessert!³.

OK, so that’s what I’ve been up to lately!  Anyone have any suggestions for other (vegetarian) recipes I could try out?

1. my current staples are Spinach/Tofu/Chickpea Curry, wraps with refried beans and veggies, oven fries (or perogies)  with soy “chicken” breast and some kind of veg, grilled cheese sandwiches [↩]
2. it’s freaking delicious! [↩]
3. for the record, my signature meal is blue cheese risotto and my signature appy is bean & salsa phyllo triangles [↩]

My friend Patrice came over for dinner today, and I made us some lovely pizza.

I did cheat a bit – I bought frozen dough rather than making my own. Because dough has to rise and I didn’t have time to make my own dough, but I did have time to take frozen dough out of the freezer before I left for work, so it could thaw and rise. By the time I got home, it looked like this:

And then I rolled it out to make the crust and I put some pesto on it:

And then some veggies and goat cheese:

There may also have been a spinach salad and avocado and crackers and cheese to tide us over while the pizza cooked.  And water with cucumber and lemon and fresh mint.  This was the reward that Patrice got for being willing to come all the way out to Surrey!

Clearly, I am not above bribing people with gourmet food to get them to visit.  Hint, hint.

• baby Canada geese
• many, many dogs that were very happy to be spending the afternoon at the beach or the park
• many, many joggers – many of whom were running faster than I was
• many, many bikers – some of whom were biking slower than I was running ¹
• an older gentleman holding a single red rose, sitting on a bench, and looking expectantly up the path
• two guys dressed in 1980s YMCA gear – I’m talking bright red short shorts, tall socks, headbands and wristbands – playing ping pong on the beach
• many people who were oblivious to the fact that they were walking right in my way²
• this:

• this monument:

• which I envisioned to look like this:

• and these 10 stop signs a top a hill, which I’ve seen several times before and which always make me wonder – why the hell are they there?³

Image Credits: Image of Alex Burrows was posted by VancityAllie on Flickr with a license saying it was allowed to be remixed. So I remixed it. The rest of the photos are mine.

1. I’m not even sure how that’s possible, but there you have it [↩]
2. note to everyone: if you are walking two or three people across a narrow seawall path and you see a runner heading towards you, move out of the @#$%ing way.  kthxbai [↩]
3. some kind of art installation? [↩]

Not really big stuff – I’m not nearly that skilled¹ – but the assembling of Ikea or Ikea-like furniture is right up my alley!

First up for assemblage this evening was my new little table to put by my front door. I really like to have a small, but tall-ish, table by my front door. A place to throw my purse and keys when I first get home (otherwise, I lose my keys. Guaranteed).  You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to find a table like this.  Nothing in any of the thrift stores I went to, nothing at Ikea, nothing at the many, many furniture stores I went to.  In fact, when I asked a salesperson at a furniture store if they had anything like this, he laughed at me!  “You aren’t going to find anything like that in a *furniture* store! You have to go to the mall² to one of those *accessory* stores. Not a *furniture* store.”  Apparently, tables other than of the end, coffee or dining variety are beneath him.  In the end, I found one at Walmart (*hangs head in shame*) – and not even at just any Walmart. I had to go to the freaking “Super” Walmart in South Surrey.  The biggest friggin’ Walmart I’ve ever seen.  Ridiculous big.

Anyway, here’s what the pieces of the table looked like prior to assemblage:

And here’s what it looked like after I assembled it:

Next up was a small bookshelf, which I also bought at Walmart while I was there³.  I was so excited to get it assembled that I completely forgot to take the “before” picture! I did remember to take a “during” picture:

And here’s the “after” picture – as you may recall, I have a propensity to sit in or on things:

Also, the instructions that came with the bookshelf specifically said not to allow “children to climb on this unit,” and that just sounded like a challenge to me.

1. my sister took woodshop in high school, so she’s got much more in the way of building skills than I do, as I chose “typing” as my business or tech credit (can anyone say “easy A+”?). I learned the basics of building stuff – e.g., how to hammer a nail and that screws go tighty right, lefty loosy – from my dadm but that’s pretty much the extent of it [↩]
2. where “mall” was said with a hint of disgust in his voice [↩]
3. it was only $20 and, though I was expecting it to be made in China, it was made in Canada. Go figure [↩]

The other day I tweeted that I needed an Irish recipe for a St. Patrick’s Day potluck, as my office does a potluck for holidays.  I wanted to do something Irish as we don’t have many people of Irish descent in my office¹ and I felt the need to represent².  My Aunty Barbara came to the rescue with a recipe for potato cakes that my maternal grandma used to make!  They are like scones, but not as dry because they are made with mashed potatoes.

As it turns out, I’m not even going to be at my office today as I have to be at a visioning session in Abbotsford all day, something I hadn’t remembered when the potluck discussions were going on in the lunchroom last week.  But that didn’t stop me from trying out the recipe!

Here’s the dough rolled out:

The orange stuff is cheddar cheese and the darker stuff is potato skin (because I leave the skin on my potatoes when I mash them).

Here’s the dough cut into wedges:

Not exactly evenly cut, but close enough.

And here’s the cooked product:

I may have tested a piece of the one on the bottom left of that photo.  And they aren’t very well browned because I’m not yet used to my new oven³.  So while they don’t look that great, they tasted awesome!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone!

1. in fact, I don’t know of anyone else but me, though, admittedly, I don’t actually know everyone’s ancestry. But Caucasians are the minority, so I’m thinking that means not too many Irish people [↩]
2. almost everything on the potluck list is decidedly not Irish, but rather decidedly green.  Seriously. Guacamole and spinach dip are not, to my knowledge, Irish cuisine [↩]
3. my old oven cooked waaaay hotter than the temperature you set it for, so I’ve gotten in the habit of cooking things for shorter than the recipe calls for or else I’d overcook them. These were cooked through, but not browned and I figured it was good enough for the first time [↩]

For the uninitiated¹, Pi Boxing Day is the day when one traditionally boxes up all the uneaten pie from Pi Day. Except, of course, that you ate all the pie. Which makes Pi Boxing Day the best holiday because it requires absolutely no work. And you are full of pie still.

I told you that I liked to celebrate Pi Day by being irrational.

Image Credit: Posted by slayeh on Flickr.

1. where “uninitiated” = everyone except Kalev and I, who invented Pi Boxing Day last night [↩]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drbethsnow/4358561140/

… pancake style.

Given how many cardboard boxes must be used every day to ship all the things that get shipped, you would expect it to be really easy to get your hands on those boxes.  I’m finding out, however, that this is not the case. I went to two liquor stores, a grocery store, a hardware store, and a drug store last night and all I managed to get were two sub-par boxes from the produce section of the grocery.  The drug store told me to call this morning and ask them to put the boxes aside for me, as they break them down and get rid of them right away.  The liquor store said to drop by today as that’s when they get their shipment.

I raided the recycling room at work and when I was at a meeting at another health unit yesterday afternoon, I raided their recycling room too!  Working in health, however, means you end up with boxes like this one:

And this one:

And my personal favourite: