fun food

kylie and i have been making a lot of fun new recipes lately. i told my friend chauntille that i would send them to her, so i might as well share them more widely.

cranberry/brie pastries - i had these things at a lunch meeting at UBC and i decided to make them myself. they were good cold, but fresh out of the oven they are incandiferous! there might be an official recipe with measurements and stuff out there somewhere but its more fun to freestyle it

buy some filo pastry and brush one side of each sheet lightly with butter. fold the sheets butter side out into 5-6 inch squares. stuff the squares individually into muffin tins to make a shell. put in a chunk of brie cheese about the size of the end of your thumb (depending on the size of your thumb and your love of cheese) add a spoonful of canned whole cranberry sauce. then put another chunk of brie on top.
bake at 350 for 10-15 min
sprinkle some cinnamon on top
devour the whole pan in one sitting


sweet potatoe fries
cut up some sweet potatoes into fries of the desired size (thin = crispy, thick = meaty).
heat up a pan of olive oil to ~350 (or just really hot but not boiling)
dump in the fries (don't stir them too much at first or they will fall apart)
fry until they are the desired shade of crunchy golden brown splendour.
remove from oil and shake with desired spice in a closed container.
i used a pinch of coriander, some rosemary, black pepper, salt and sugar all combined and mixed evenly. apparently curry is good as well but i havent tried that yet; i have been perfecting the above mixture. i think paprika would be good as well.

you can also bake these fries +/- a light coating of olive oil if you're some kind of weird health nut, but if you really desire that deluge of dopamine its gotta be fried.

marc
ps- to counter the fat content of the above recipes i should also advise you to brush your teeth, get regular exercise, wear your seatbelt and bike helmet and eat more fibre (all bran, yoghurt and fresh fruit makes a great desert). oh, and you ladies should get regular clinical breast exams and pap smears
mg

as requested

my new longboard has not yet arrived. apparently they are waiting for the trucks. however my loaner is working just fine. our friend steve tried it out the other day and just about ran over a lady and her two beagles. i'm sure those of you who know steve could derive great pleasure from picturing him hurtling along our street behind niko after a self imposed skateboard celibacy of more than 15 years, but i was super impressed that he just jumped on the board and gave it a try without even a semblance of his family's hallmark deliberation.

The Laundry is Done!

Yeah, yeah, yeah! I have good news to report! I have COMPLETELY finished my laundry. The laundry quagmire was starting to reach its breaking point this past weekend. There were baskets and baskets of dirty laundry and I was feeling really overwhelmed with how much there was so instead of dealing with it, I just ignored it. (A wonderful way to deal with problems I know.) Then on Wednesday night, Marc was getting ready for work and was looking for clean socks and underwear. Well he couldn't find any clean socks or underwear and he has like 30 pairs of underwear and I have recently bought him 12 new pairs of socks because we kept mysteriously "running out" of socks. (This couldn't be because of my laundry debacle.) Anyways on Wednesday night when we couldn't find any clean socks or underwear I decided I needed to go to the laundromat. Marc had suggested this before but I kept putting it off saying I could handle all the laundry myself.

I am so happy I went. Now we have clean laundry, it is all put away folded and fresh and it only took me two hours. I love laundry. For now dun dun dun...........

dam beavers

Check out this sweet beaver dam kylie and i found on a sunday afternoon walk. you can't see the dam very well, but you can see how long it is; imagine how much work that must have been.


We ate our lunch in a nice clearing, courtesy of mr. and mrs. beaver. check out their sweet lodge and guest cottage.



the marsh downstream from the dam


kylie downstream from the marsh

recent events

A lot has been happening in our lives recently. I have been working in vancouver for the past few weeks (and living with susan and friends) but now i'm back in chilliwack but commuting to surrey. i've been learning alot about health care policy and delivery in bc, not to mention how to take care of sick kids and guys who get all the skin on their arm ripped off in a giant roller. I am still trying to sort all the policy stuff out in my head.

here is a shot i got this week while walking niko by the fraser river.


also, our friend andrew stayed with us for a week while he was working nearby. although i wasnt able to spend too much time with him (being in vancouver and all) we did go for a nice hike on the weekend up the west side of harrison lake to a couple of beautiful beaches.






Andrew also brought his longboard along which afforded niko his first opportunity to put his harness to its intended use. I have been harness training him on and off since christmas by getting him to drag an increasingly full gascan around our lawn. I wasnt sure if he had the directional commands down, but i decided to give it a try and he did fantastic. it was great to see his northern genes kicking in and our neighbourhood flying by. he has all the mushing commands down already, so now we just have to work on his attention to the task at hand. i have gone flying off the longboard more than once as he switches directions to go and visit one of the various neighbourhood dogs. i had originally planned to get him to pull me on rollerblades, but the longboard (which i can safely eject from) seems a lot less painful.

Alas, our friend andrew had to move on to colder climes and take his kickass longboard with him. This left me no recourse but to invest in one of my own. i phoned a friend who works at a skateshop to look for used longboards but apparently these are hard to come by. he did however carry the very kickass board that i had test driven. long story short my new longboard should be in next week. my friend's wife even loaned me her longboard (a sweet fat board with a pink cross on it) to help me take advantage of our good weather.

Niko is pumped about the longboard situation which could be dangerous as it results in me careening out of our parking lot around a blind corner at full sprint as niko pins it out of the gate, but i suppose it will give me ample opportunity to practice whoa. dont worry though, i'm wearing a helmet i'll be fine.

andrew's kickass landyacht