Decorating the Christmas Tree

Cassandra and I went shopping this weekend for a tree to decorate. Our place was looking a little empty and Cassandra was getting pretty antsy with a couple bins of decorations and nothing to put them on. We first went to Kent a hardware store like Home Depot here, they were sold out of fake 4ft trees and only had 3 ft ones left. Dominion's had 4ft pre lit trees though that fit the bill perfectly.

Fluff the branches

Hang the snowballs

Add the stars to the top of the tree.

Make sure they are in the right spots.

Voila, Merry Christmas!!

What Have I Missed

The delicious lasagna that I made with Cassandra's guidance.

This is the one day it snowed quite a bit.

The stairs filled with snow on November 31st. 

The next morning, on December 1st, we woke up and there was no snow.

Our tacky Christmas sweaters. We wore these to one potluck already and I will be wearing mine to work tomorrow. We'll make sure to bring them to Winnipeg for an ugly Christmas sweater party over there.

Hobbies

In the last few minutes of my break I thought I would spread the word that I'm looking for hobbies to do when I get home from work. Cassandra enjoys running a lot more than I do and going to Pilates at lunch, drawing and such and I'm looking for stuff to do other than homework when I get home. Do any of you have suggestions? Preferrably I would like something to do at home instead of else where but that may be too limiting, photography has crossed my mind but I need a project to work on.
If you have any ideas feel free to leave a comment or shoot me an e-mail.

- T

Catch-Up

Hello,
Yes it has been a while and a combination of homework and just being tired after a long day at work leads to missing a few weeks of posting. Here is some of the latest things we have been up to in Newfoundland.

It seems that I have just been capturing Cassandra venture through various recipes and crafts.

Someone, Deb, sent us a package without a senders name. It contained some tasty spices. One of which was for focaccia bread. Cassandra went to work and mad some delicious stuff that went great with pasta and tomato sauce.

Cassandra made some Halloween chocolate cake for the Hallow's Eve party we went too. No black or orange food coloring was around to be bought on the day before Halloween.

Sorry no pictures of costumes were taken : (

We hosted the next weeks get together though.

This got us into picture framing and hanging action.

Liz those photo clips are getting some use.

We (I mean Cassandra, I did kneed and stretch out the dough though) also made some delicious Pizzas for the potluck at our place. Everyone makes such good food. Hope everyone is doing well at home.

T

A Night out and Sushi for Lunch

 Cass and I got tickets from my Dad to go see this play at the newly renovated LSPU hall downtown. It was pretty good, about a professor trying to cope with his past by ignoring it and then having it catch up with him and forcing him to make amends or at least confront what happened.

I got stressed out thinking we were going to be late because I wanted to be there half an hour early. Turned out we had plenty of time getting their 10 min before curtain.

The next day I wrote my english Essay on the imagery in Bessie Head's short story "American Woman" for English. Since that is not exciting enough though Cass and I had to try and make sushi. We wanted to make summer rolls but we couldn't find any rice paper. Dominion had to be sold out so we got Nori from the Bulk Barn.

My brother got us a sushi set when we were in Toronto. The big dishes are for soy sauce and the little ones for wasabi (which we decided to pass on). Watching a few demos on youtube I toasted the Nori or dried seaweed paper in a frying pan and made short grain 'Sushi' rice.  We cut up some vegetables (avacado, bean sprouts, cucumber, carrots) and I rolled it all together.

Cassandra then cut the rolls into fairly small bite size pieces. We made 3 rolls and got 26 pieces, some a little skinny but we wanted testers.

They tasted pretty good, especially with soy sauce. I think they were missing something though, not sure what. We had a few left overs so I'll take 'em for lunch tomorrow.

T

Thanksgiving

Wonderful. Cass and I had a great time going to two turkey dinners, one on Saturday and one on Sunday. On Saturday we had a potluck with other grad students, Cass made a couple amazing pumpkin pies and a stupendous apple pie. I made some delicious cranberry sauce.

Cassandra's family ordered us a lovely bouquet.

The apple pie ready for the oven. The crust almost didn't cover the top.

A baked and un-baked pumpkin pie with two containers of my homemade cranberry sauce.

Delicious.  

On Sunday we went to my friends house where she prepared the whole turkey meal. She did a great job. She made a great big 16 lbs turkey with all the trimmings and made an awesome stuffing with wild rice and cranberries. To devour the turkey as well as the apple and pecan pies she invited a gathering of 8 CFAs or Come From Aways, we had a great time.

Now that I have spent the whole weekend stuffing myself and procrastinating from work I better study for my Business mid-term on Friday and write my essay for English. I hope everyone at home had a great weekend, I get jealous of the weather every time I look at the forecast.

T

Sick This Weekend

I've been sick this weekend. So I've been staying in a relaxed position drinking tea most of the day. So the camera hasn't been out much, neither have I for that matter. So all you get this week is something that made me laugh a little at home.

Cassandra headed to the weekly pot-luck today while I stayed back to bless kleenex. She decided to prepare spiced lentils for the night. Which I might add are quite tasty. Green lentils, cloves, cinnamon and orange juice. While she was preparing said dish she decided to get her book, which lead to this multitasking marvel.

I usually don't think of reading and cooking at the same time. Especially when it involves tasting the food and looking at the cookbook. Cassandra has a talent I guess.

T

Potluck and Scottish Dancin'

In need of some dessert and not willing to buy chocolate cake I decided to make some cookies to snack on. Peanut butter and Cinnamon with an almond topper. I added some raisins to make them more interesting.

I made these last year for work in Abbotsford. (I forgot to post this to that blog)

The next day Cass and I went to a potluck at one of her friends. We had a candle lit dinner because the light went out at the house we were at. THe power lines are still pretty weak at some locations. It was fun though, there was a diverse group of grad students (all girls) from different disciplines and backgrounds. Cass and I decided to make two dishes from the Essential Vegetarian Cookbook.

Cass made this egg and tomato tart with a brown rice crust with fresh thyme garnish.

I made this lime butter carrot and pea thing with roasted almond slices and paprika dusting.

Today Cassandra and I decided to go to a Culture Days celebration here in St. John's at the Masonic Temple. The St. John's pipe band played and there was highland, Scottish step and kaylee or Scottish country dancing. We participated in the Scottish country dancing. I thought it was good time and was worth putting off some homework for. 

We tried several dances all very simple, heres an example of one.

This is a slightly more complicated dance than what we tried

Back to homework now. I'm going to have a pretty busy 3rd week of October with mid-terms and assignments that are due.

T

Hurricane Igor

I thought about making "I survived Igor" T-shirts but decided against the idea. 

Cassandra and I and our whole block went without power for just over 50 hours. Which is a very large inconvenience when you start noticing everything you use electricity for. Thursday evening we decided to go out for dinner. After dinner, before we made evening plans Cass thought we should just swing buy the house. Cassandra had a hope but I was skeptical the power came on in the space of an hour. To my astonishment the lights were on in the window. It was nice to finally be able to flick a light switch to see in the dark and not have to light candles for warmth.

On the first day I just thought power would be out overnight. I didn't realize the devastating winds that Igor brought with him downed hundreds of trees over power lines. Even 100 year old trees in peoples yards were up rooted. Across the province communities are still stranded with washed out bridges and limited or no power, water, gas or food. I hope they pull through.

T

Clean Bin project

Cassandra and I just got back from a screening of the Clean Bin Movie. http://www.cleanbinmovie.com/

The movie was great it made you feel inspired, guilty, frustrated and made you laugh. It's about these two people from Vancouver that decided to go one year producing no garbage and buying nothing. They had to recycle and compost everything they could. At the end of the year they measured who produced more garbage over the course of the year. They both were able to limit their garbage to a small sized bucket.
You can read their blog here http://cleanbinproject.com/

These two people decided to do a film bike tour across Canada promoting this video and this was their last stop. They plan to submit the video to film festivals and then have it come out on DVD or download afterward.
I feel like now I have to be conscious of my consumerism and whether I really need to buy everything I do.  There is much more of a green movement now then even a few years ago. Propaganda and other social views are changing so that more people frown on cities and other people that don't at least try to reduce, recycle and re-use.

Cassandra and I are both still shocked that there is no curbside recycling here, they say it is going to start next month. Others have said that promise has been around for two years. We are saving our recycling though in a hope that it does start. If not, there apparently is a depot where you can drop recycling off but can we trust it doesn't just go into the garbage anyway? I hope everyone tries to do something at least. Cass and I usually always have re-useable bags for shopping, and try to avoid the use of the small plastic produce bags. We can't wait to start composting, the city says a program will be in place next year. Again we will wait and see, in the meantime we frown every time a banana peel goes in the garbage.

T

Cape St. Mary's

Last Week Cass and I ventured out to Cape St. Mary's Ecological Reserve. It was a two and a half hour drive to get there, several windy roads and hills with the last 13 km only on a 1.5 lane road. Another coastal location with cliffs 100 ft above the water this place is home to 50 000 Ganets, a type of seabird. Following a 1.4 km hike down a slightly prairie type landscape (except for the fact you are near a cliff) you can get surprisingly close to a nesting rock covered in birds.

It was also incredibly windy. It looked like some of the birds would just hover when they tried to fly into the wind. When we got back to the silent and calm confines of the car you could tell how loud the constant wind really was. My ears rang for a bit after.

That cliff face is covered with birds.

Here it is zoomed in.

On the hike.

The Ecological Reserve is essentially a wide open field extending from the cliff edge. All activity, other than following the trail, is banned. Oh and sheep grazing is allowed as well. I guess they have to mow the lawn in some way.

You can see the visitor center on top of the cliff.

This one Cassandra took. She's starting to like snapping the trigger a bit.

Th babies are born in the spring covered with down. They start to grow out of it in the fall.

 

The view further down the coast.

There isn't much to do there but look at the birds and walk around the visitor center. There is a look out nearby that we ended up skipping and a restaurant that serves Moose. After a couple hours of bird watching we headed for home and stopped in a little town called Branch along the way. It's a small fishing village with a sandy beach that the waves come crashing in on. There were kids chasing them in and out. There were also some break waters that the waves crashed on that were pretty cool. Cass promptly fell asleep in the car once we headed home from here.

T