I had this bag of frozen raspberries, and I need to make room in my freezer because I ordered five pounds of cherries so I figured I should use the raspberries for something. I originally only intended to make juice with them; the popsicles were Symmie’s idea. This juice actually tastes better frozen so I guess it was a good one!
Ingredients for Juice/Popsicles
4½ cups frozen raspberries
8 cups water
½ cup sugar (you could use more, I was concerned about over sweetening so I only used a little)
Combine all ingredients in a large pot and bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve all the sugar. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes, then remove from heat and allow to cool completely. Once cooled, strain out the berries and discard.
For popsicles, pour into popsicle molds and freeze, durr.
Makes 2 liters/8 cups/half a gallon of juice, or as many popsicles as you like.
I should really set a day for these posts instead of having a bunch of them all week long. Maybe Friday? idk.
Wednesday dinner: fried panko tofu, rice and weird, stringy salad. I bought a TRI-PEELER that does Julienne slices so I went to town on some vegetables. Oh and I’m pretty sure this is the first time in my life I’ve ever cooked tofu. AMAZING. It was just okay though- I put paprika and chili powder in the coating but I was worried it would be TOO spicy and Sym wouldn’t eat it. Instead, it wasn’t spicy enough ie it was very bland. Crunchy as hale though.
Wednesday’s lunch: ICE CREAM. Chocolate and vanilla with chocolate sauce and sprinkles. Yum.
Thursday’s lunch: fresh-baked catloaf.
I’ve also had tons and tons of milk. I bought expensive organic milk but I STUPIDLY grabbed a jug that was expiring in just two days. I didn’t want all that money to go to waste so it’s been a desperate race against time to finish it before it goes bad. On the plus side, it’s given me an excuse to stuff my face with chocolate chip cookies!
Tons of people commented on the dotted nails I posted on Monday, asking me how I did them, so I put together this little tutorial to show you how easy it is! All Sym’s fake nails popped off on the weekend so I used her as my hand model.
All you need to do these nails are a few different colours of polish (I used eleven for my own and five for Sym’s) and some toothpicks. The toothpicks I have are cylindrical with a pointed and a blunt end- use the blunt end for dotting.
Apply your base coat and a couple coats of your background colour. It’s okay if it’s a little streaky since you’ll be doing the dots on top. This is Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Peachy Keen.
Next, get out your dot colours. I used OPI in Planks A Lot, Essie in Mod Square, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Lacey Lilac and Sally Hansen Maximum Growth in Delightful Dawn.
To do the dots, simply dip the toothpick into the polish and dot away! You don’t want so much polish on the toothpick that it drips off, the dots will run all over your nails if they are too big.
The dots will look lumpy and 3D at first but they’ll flatten out as they dry. You don’t need each layer of dots to dry totally before adding the next one.
Keep adding dots until you have good coverage and you like how your nails look, then apply your top coat!
… it’s my old cat Ophelia! I’ve rehomed her about a million times, but she always finds her way back to me.
Thankfully*, this time it’s just temporary. Her owner is in the hospital recovering from emergency surgery so Ophie is staying with us until she can go home.
*Thankfully for Ophie. She hates kids and dogs and other cats so she isn’t very happy here.
I forgot I was planning on making smoothies this morning until after I’d already eaten cereal for breakfast, so I made these for Sym and Taylor. Strawberries & raspberries from the farmer’s market, local honey and vanilla yogurt.
… or more accurately What I’ve Been Eating and Reading and Why I’ve Been Eating What I’ve Been Eating Because of What I’ve Been Reading. That would be too long though.
right, top to bottom: cheese, tomatoes, lettuce & black bean humous sandwich; goat cheese mini-frittatas with salad; Mangled Eggs at the Templeton (eggs, brie and veggie bacon on a croissant) with rosemary potatoes; left: poutine with vegetarian gravy
So all of these meals have something in common: NO MEAT. Why? Because last week I read Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer and omggggg I am so grossed out now. I read the part about chicken processing while I was at the salon getting my hair done and I seriously almost barfed in the shampoo sink.
It also made me feel really sad and guilty. The cruelty and abuse is just… ugh. I can’t even explain it. I know that the food industry in Canada isn’t quite as terrible as it is in the US, but it’s definitely not good. I even feel bad about the eggs in my fridge, and I bought them for $6 a dozen at the farmer’s market from an organic biodynamic free range family farm, but is that good enough? IS IT? I feel like I’m one step away from being these people:
I mentioned reading this book in a general discussion forum and these are the replies I got
if it wasn’t for bacon, i swear…
I feel like once a year I’ll read a book about the ethics and environmental problems caused by eating meat and then 6 months later I’ll crave bacon.
i read that and saw food inc which made me very concious of what i eat. i still eat meat but not lots of it and i try to know where it came from
reading that book convinced me to be a vegetarian.
I definitely ate some bacon from Taylor’s bacon poutine last Thursday, without even thinking because I ALWAYS eat bacon from his poutine. Should I stop doing that? Will I stop doing that? I don’t even know. I’m loathe to say “Oh I’m a vegetarian now!” because I mean WHO KNOWS how this bacon thing is going to play out, but right now I’m too grossed out to even consider eating meat.
a full list of all this year’s books can always be found here, and as always, book links are usually to Amazon, and clicking on them might earn me a nickel.
I wanted to post this sooner but SOMEONE takes eight thousand years to upload pictures.
How Taylor and I spent our nation’s birthday:
He bought me french vanilla, apple and pomegranate jellybeans.
This is the only picture I managed to get of Taylor in his outer layer of Canada Day regalia, aka a Team Canada jersey. It turned out really warm so he stripped down to his inner Canadian layer, a CBC t-shirt.
In addition to my super sweet nails I wore a red shirt of Taylor’s and my denim jacket with some jean shorts. That’s right, a Canadian tuxedo. I totally rocked it, too.
We spent most of the day doing our regular day off things- brunch, shopping, dog park and watching tv.
Georgie got very grubby at the park and needed a bath. When she’s all wet her nefarious evil really shows.
We finished the day watching the fireworks from beside the Olympic cauldron, which is now a fountain. It was a true Vancouver moment, from the crazy guy in the fountain gathering up all the coins to the group of drunken international students next to us talking in like, four different languages. Such is the mosaic, amirite, Canadians?
It happens every time- I just put away all the bottles of nail polish on my desk and BOOM! There’s another dozen or so out again.
Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Mellow Yellow, Green With Envy, Lacey Lilac and Blue Me Away!;
Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Yellow Kitty and Peachy Keen;
Essie in Turquoise & Caicos and Mod Square;
Cover Girl Boundless Color in Candy Corn;
OPI in Planks A Lot;
Sally Hansen Maximum Growth in Delightful Dawn
