Victory is Mine!!

This is a picture of the chess board after my winning game with Shaun. (I'm brown, in case you couldn't tell.) This is the first game I have won against him in longer than I would like any of you to know...and it was SO AWESOME!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go and bask in my glorious victory. Talk amongst yourselves.

It All Pans Out

Montreal is a very convenient city in terms of public transit, so I've never minded not having a car. Truth be told, it's a bit nerve wracking to be a driver here (or a pedestrian for that matter). No one pays any attention to silly things like stop signs, and it's not uncommon while walking down the street to hear several people leaning enthusiastically on their horns. There are only two reasons I really miss having a car (other than the opportunity to actually leave the island of Montreal once in a while). One is that it makes it a lot more difficult to buy furniture - especially now, since our land lady has decided to sell the house and with it all of the things she had furnished it with. For the last little while we've been bringing new pieces into the house bit by bit, trying to fill the large empty gaps in our decor as our previous furniture slowly trickles out.

The other thing that makes having a car so very useful is the ability to shop at Costco. As a child, I spent many a happy hour chowing down on Costco hot dogs, scouring the clothing section for new fashion trends (which never amounted to much), and getting lost among sky high rows of stuff. As anyone who shops at Costco knows, it's impossible to leave the store without a truckload of new things and an empty wallet. It's just not the kind of shopping trip one can take if one has to travel by bus. Fortunately, we've been able to pilfer borrow a car from a very generous friend of ours in order to take these little shopping excursions whenever we need to. But a Costco membership is not cheap, and having only gone three times this year, we decided not to renew ours at the end of the summer. However, we were able to make one important purchase before saying goodbye to our favorite hub of consumerism:

A new set of pots and pans!! Hurray!! I have been wanting these ever since we moved here, and they're finally nestled (very) snugly in our kitchen cabinet.

This one is my favorite. What a long way we've come from this:

which is what we cooked our first meal in. (Don't worry, that paint stirrer is clean.)

I am very happy with my newest purchase, although my husband has been having a fit trying to figure out how to fry an egg without having it weld itself to the pan. Any suggestions?

Marching On

Yesterday was daylight savings, and although the ground here is still covered in snow, the extra hour of cheery sunlight we now get to enjoy is wildly exciting. Not only is it an indication of the beautiful spring weather that's just around the corner, but it means that soon I will actually be able to wear a pair of fashionable shoes outside without destroying them in the evil sidewalk salt. Hurray!

In the meantime, here are a few tidbits from the last month or two (or six) of my life.

Comfort Food: Lavender Rice Pudding

I've spent the last few days being very sick. Like, stayed in my pajamas all day, went through two and a half boxes of tissues, had to slather lotion on my poor little chapped red nose to keep it from falling off kind of sick. It made me realize that I need to see a dentist, because every time I sneezed it made my teeth hurt.
I started off the week with a sore throat (which I managed to ignore by drinking beer, eating Reese's peanut butter cups and going to see a very cheesy movie), and ended it with sinus congestion, chills, and a headache the size of Milwaukee.

An appropriate mural down the street from our house.

My husband believes that there are two kinds of people: those who call in sick at the first sign of a sniffle, and those who keep working until they're almost dead. I definitely fall into the latter category.

I had promised weeks earlier to take charge of the dessert and coffee for a ladies meeting at my church on Saturday night, so I arranged to have a friend come over in the afternoon to help me bake. By the time she arrived, I looked like a character out of Zombieland and felt like my head was going to explode, but I managed to suck it up and disinfect myself long enough to make a batch of  butterscotch blondies. At that point I should have called it quits, but I insisted on going to the meeting and staying the entire time. My friend sat beside me and looked on in pity as I honked and snuffled, stubbornly refusing to admit defeat. When the meeting was over, I took my streaming eyes and nose and hightailed it out of there as fast as I could. I was halfway home before I realised I'd forgotten my purse.

The moral of the story is - keep your diseased self at home. Stay in your pajamas all day. Sit on the couch and watch six episodes of "Jamie at Home" in a row. Make rice pudding. You'll get the rest and delicious dessert that you need, and your friends won't be exposed to your contagion. Win win.

Back to Reality

I'm back! Back to life, back to the grind, back in the game…though not without dragging my feet a little bit, I must admit. I realize it's been well over a month since my last post, and some of you may have thought I'd fallen off the edge of the earth. The truth is, returning to snowy Montreal after spending a month in a South African summer was a bit of a culture shock, and left me with a strong desire to hibernate.

To give you a little taste of what I mean - this was the view from my bedroom window at the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi game park on my first morning in Africa:  

The sunlight came streaming in the window in the early hours to gently nudge me into consciousness and the only sound was...well, actually, it was pretty noisy. My dad had to turn off his hearing aids while we were there because the high pitch of the insects was causing uncomfortable feedback. The rest of us adapted more easily. Waking up essentially in the middle of the wilderness was breathtaking, and the morning sun accompanied by the droning of insects was the greatest alarm clock ever.

This, on the other hand, was the view I awoke to this morning: 

Not exactly the kind of day that makes one want to frolic in the morning air. On the contrary, I made myself a pot of tea and went back to bed. It seemed an appropriate reaction.

On the day after I returned, Shaun and I started an excercise program called P90X (see very cheesy promotional video here) which, aside from getting me out of bed much earlier than I would like every morning and causing intense pain in muscles that I didn't even know I had, comes with a low carb, low sugar, low fat nutrition guide...everything that I am opposed to when it comes to food. Needless to say, my opportunities for baking have dwindled considerably. My opportunities for eating have followed suit. And why, you ask, am I subjecting myself to such a masochistic ritual?

This may have something to do with it.

Also this. 

And these.

Beer sampler? Yes please.

(I didn't eat this entire chocolate bar myself, but only because my family knew better than to leave me in a room alone with it.)

In short, when we arrived home our bellies showed the evidence of much enjoyment and little restraint, the effects of which we are still working hard to remedy.

Of course, there were other enjoyments besides food. 

A Feast Fit For a King!

On Thursday we had the first big gathering at our humble abode: an early Christmas dinner! Isn't that a glorious spread? We provided the turkey (my husband would like me to draw attention to his expert carving job), gravy, stuffing, and the famous Ross family ginger yams, and our guests came through with the rest! It was truly a magnificent feast, and the very first time we have ever cooked a turkey.

 

Here's the beast beforehand...

...and here's the beautiful bird after!!! I have to say, I think we did a dang good job, even if we both burned ourselves in the process. It was worth it. 

 

Unfortunately I didn't really take pictures of anything other than food, but let me just say that it was a wonderful evening, and I'm so glad everyone was able to come! We had a blast. 

As evidenced here. 

We had this dinner for a few reasons. One is that we simply enjoy good food and good friends and love to take every opportunity to combine them. Another is that the majority of our friends here are students and out-of-towners and we wanted everyone together for one last shebang before we all fly off to the four corners of the earth. And, as many of you know, Shaun and I will be doing our own adventuring this year...we'll be spending Christmas in Africa. 

We'll be gone for a few weeks, and as such, for the past few days I've been trying frantically to use up all of the food in our house. Last night I made a fantastic dessert that I've been wanting to try for awhile, which also allowed me to use up some very, very mushy persimmons that had been sitting in my refrigerator for over a week. Win win!

Home Sweet Home!

Alright, so I know I've now been living in Montreal for about three and a half months and still have not shown anyone any pictures of our new abode. This is mostly due to the fact that I wanted each room to look complete before showing it to the world, and most of our finishing touches (ie: pictures and various knick knacks) have been forlornly sitting on our dining room table waiting for a home. As we haven't had all that many guests over for dinner (not having any dining room chairs), it seemed like a perfectly sensible spot to leave them. However, we have recently received a dinner guest and hosted an early Christmas party, and I thought it might be a good idea to make the house look a little more presentable.

So! Being the very handy woman that I am, I hung our pictures crookedly and then asked my husband to finish the job (don't judge me) and otherwise tied up all the loose household ends, finally bringing our home into a state fit to be seen by outsiders.