Thursday, December 1, 2011

I'm not back yet

Has it been a year yet? Jeeze. I've been so busy with school that I abandoned this place completely. But I still have such warm feelings for it! While I did abandon the blogging, I did not abandon cooking! ... But I did cut down on it due to my time being taken up with assignments, projects, and other fun exciting learning experiences.. :| Don't get me wrong, I'm all about learning, but learning so much in so little time is just stressful.

Almost done though! One week of classes, one week of finals, and I'm practically free to finally set up our Christmas tree, cook up a holiday feast for some friends, and make treats for Nickie's family's Christmas dinner.

What have I been up to lately... Let's see.. Nickie and I almost moved in together! So now it's like, legit. We had our 3 year anniversary, for which we visited La Chaumiere - a fancy French place uptown. We went there for our 1 year anniversary too, and had another very pleasant, very expensive 2.5 hour dining experience complete with wine, cheese, and souffle. We were the youngest couple there - it was full of older folks and (clearly loaded) families. I can't express how grateful I am to be able to experiences places like this at my age.

We also were hoping to go to a German restaurant and beer hall Wurst, but it was bad judgement on our part - we arrived around 7:30 on a Friday night and just couldn't get a table. So we settled for Antonio's Garlic Clove just down the street from Wurst. We had brie in pastry filled with roasted garlic and spinach, pasta for main (I had the one with seafood - very nice!), and garlic-y desserts. Yes, literally everything in this place has garlic in it, and unless you have a few days to spend at home on your own afterwards, I would not recommend this place. And it's not because of garlic breath. I'm gonna stop talking about that now.

Nickie and I attended his first company Christmas party last Friday. It was at Alloy, just off of MacLeod Trail close to downtown. Great place! Although it looks like it's located in the sketchiest part of town, they do a very nice job of camouflaging the fact. Great ambiance, delicious food, open bar... Good party! I was very happy to meet the people who work with Nickie. Also, I had a pavlova for the first time! Twas, how you say, yummy.

We've continued drinking lots of new beer, and I've acquired a taste for red wine. The Co-op beer passport thing ended, and we actually collected all four steins, and all 4 sets of glasses - although we've yet to receive one of the sets.

What else, what else... I got a great deal on a KitchenAid Dutch oven! Was $100, I got it on sale for $30! Didn't have a chance to use it yet, though. It's too pretty. I also got a Breville Convection oven on my Visa points - woohoo! It's awesome. I plan on preparing basically everything that will fit in it. It's got tons of settings, and I assume is pretty damn good with heating up to the correct temperature and maintaining it. My oven is old :( The convection oven takes little to no time to heat up, too! It's great.

I attempted to cook an artichoke at some point a few weeks ago - complete failure. I probably didn't strip off enough leaves, but they were super mushy on one side, and not ingestible on the other. Didn't taste good. Will try again later...

All in all, I can't wait to finish school, get a job, and get back to my favorite hobby of cooking.