2009: Week 9

After 5 weeks in the apartment and 4 weeks at work (just 1 for lucky Matt) life is starting to settle down to some sort of routine. The meals are planned, the groceries are bought, and after a few teething problems with the machine (not to mention wet days) even laundry is getting done with minimal fuss. We have found good local Thai and pizza, and our suburb is filled with places to eat, so we're set for those nights when no one wants to cook.

This week we tried out a local restaurant called Churrasco, a brazilian barbeque place serving all you can eat meat. The menu states that they don't cater for vegetarians, and they're not kidding. Dinner consists of various kids of roasted and spit-grilled meat, brought to the table as long as you can keep shovelling it in. We had grilled zucchini, fried banana, and delicious grilled pineapple, but other than that it was beef, pork, lamb, ham, and sausage. The food was delicious, my only complaint was that I couldn't eat more of it. Highly recommended!

Best of the week
- My actual Birthday! Coffee, cake, lunch with Matt, home cooked dinner (not cooked by me), lots of cards, and a surprise present in the mail! All in all, a good day.
- Weekday lunch with my parents - it's lovely being able to just call and make plans for the next day.
- The actual last physio visit :)

Worst of the week
- A nagging cold :(
- Long hours at work for both Matt and I.

Pantry inspired cooking

As we get ready to move, I'm trying to use up as much as possible from the pantry. Anything left will be inherited by our house-mates, but given what I've observed over the last two years, preparation of food that requires actual mixing of ingredients and cooking is extremely rare. I thought I'd share some of the things I'm cooking, and which ingredient(s) they are helping me finish;

- Cannelloni (6 lonely cannelloni shells, parmigiano reggiano, frozen spinach).
- Black pepper and parmesan no-knead bread (470g whole wheat flour, parmigiano reggiano, cornmeal, black peppercorns).
- Fettucine (400g semolina flour, 185g whole wheat flour, sage leaves from the garden).
- Steak with bearnaise sauce (tarragon from the garden)
- Risotto (400g arborio rice).

Now to find a way to use up condensed milk, 2 tins of passionfruit pulp, macadamia oil, puff pastry, assorted spices, and some frozen quince syrup....

Chocolate Brioche

These took so long they deserve more than just a mention in the weekly best of...

Happy Australia Day!

A care package from home, roast lamb, and lamingtons - what more could you want? Actually, I'd like lamingtons made with a different recipe. I usually make them with a packet buttercake, but this time I tried out an "official" recipe from a Women's Weekly cookbook. It's a strange cake, with 6 eggs and no butter - the result was dry and tasted a little strange. Next time it's back to the packet mix...

J'aime Ladurée, j'aime mes amis

La semaine dernière mes amis sont allés à Paris. Aujourd'hui ils m'ont donné un petit cadeau de Ladurée. Les macarons de Ladurée est très délicieux. Merci!

Last week my friends went to Paris. Today they gave me a small gift from Ladurée. The macarons are delicious. Thank you!

2008: Week 3

This week Calgary plunged into a more typical winter weather pattern - cold and more cold! My thermometer reads -20.5C as I write this, and there is quite a bit of snow outside. For now, the snow brings the challenge of driving on compacted snow and working out how to melt the frozen slush that has accumulated behind the wheels. I can hear the tyres scraping on it every time I turn. The real fun begins in a few days when the weather warms up enough to melt the snow. It takes quite a while to melt completely, so there is a cycle of melting and re-freezing overnight to give a road surface similar to a skating rink.

Other events of note include 2 restaurant dinners - Italian on Friday for a work function, and Ethiopian tonight with work friends. The Ethiopian was very good. It's a small local place, not very fancy, but around half the patrons appeared to be African, and food was excellent and reasonably priced. The Italian was good, but not as good as you'd expect for a $35 main dish. I don't think I'd be spending my own money there.

Best of the week
- New recipes - cannelloni and BBQ pork soup - which both turned out well. Filling the cannelloni was particularly fun.
- Varied teaching style in our French class with a substitute teacher who gave some very helpful critiques of our speaking skills.
- Sending off a second long-overdue paper to my PhD supervisor.
- Views of the snow covered Rocky Mountains on clear mornings.

Worst of the week
- Cold gray days. Calgary is usually sunny even when it's freezing - gray days are much harder to endure.
- Being far away from most of my good friends :(

Australia Day

Happy Australia Day everyone! And how better to celebrate than by watching the Australian Open while drinking Aussie beer and eating home made lamingtons?

Cupcakes!

It seems that the cupcake craze is everywhere, including Calgary. I walked to nearby Kensington on the weekend to try out Crave Cookies and Cupcakes. Not bad, although still prefer Magnolia. I tried 3 flavours of cupcake - The Princess (vanilla cake with strawberry icing), Crave-O-Licious (chocolate cake with blue butter cream icing), and Lemon-Lime Twist (lemon cake with lime icing).
The Lemon-Lime Twist is my pick of the three, the lemon cake keeps the icing from being overpowering. The cake texture is a little odd though, somewhat like angel food cake. The Princess was pretty good too, although I think I might prefer the version with chocolate cake. Crave-O-Licious was a disappointment, the chocolate cake really didn't compare to the Magnolia version.

Crave wins on the packaging front - you can see from the picture how well the cupcakes survived the 20min walk home, compared to cupcakes from Magnolia carried uptown on the subway.

Cupcakes from Crave:

Cupcakes from Magnolia:

Calgary

Yes, we finally made it to Calgary. The last day of driving was pretty slow, because we stopped to see a few touristy things along the way. First the Brooks Aqueduct which was built in the early 20th century to irrigate the fields in Southern Alberta. Then on to the Bassano Dam, also part of the irrigation system. We also stopped for the first McDonald's of the trip - not a good move. It always tastes even worse than I remember. But after multiple stops at Tim Horton's it was time for a change.

This morning we went to a Stampede Breakfast - free pancakes, sausage and eggs - all part of the Calgary Stampede. This is ranch country, the Canadian wild west, and the Stampede is a massive yearly rodeo. People on the streets are actully wearing cowboy outfits! I'm hoping to pick up a cowgirl hat myself.