Life Updated (Part 1)

Oh dear blog and the small handful of faithful readers I have at the moment, I miss you so and have felt a small part of me at loss since my life has taken a turn for the distracted and busy in the last seven weeks. Knowing very well that life was in fact going to get quiet busy, I still jumped into my world of blog, setting my impatience free of restriction. This is a little update of what i've been doing with my time and to raise my arms up in glory for food, cooking and adventure. As much as my mum chooses hope over belief when I whisper the word 'promise', I am going to promise to never leave you again, for such a long time, readers of now and hopefully many more to come.

Since i've been absent I have set quiet a few lovely projects for myself. On the last day of Febuary I hosted a dinner. A family supper. I hosted this in honor of cooking up a storm and to get a Sunday night roast at my work rearing for the lucsious months of spring (and pumping bbq's in the summer..mmmm..meat on a stick). As I am yet to obtain some delicious photos from the table at Sunday Night Supper, it will be a wee few weeks until I get it together for a tasty spot on here. So stay tuned as you are.

Early into March, it was my birthday. A day I could have as much fun and enjoyment if there was nobody else in the room. In this case though, there was my husband and a couple of dear friends of ours. Whom decided that it would be a bit of a treat to fly in a very small sea plane (and an even smaller one on the way back), up to Victoria, BC. Of course the adrenalin of it being my birthday way overided the fear I usually get when in small planes, so to celebrate, we promptly ditched our bags at the hotel and headed straight for food and cold beer. In good old Mike and Ann fashon, they took us somewhere with a little touch of home.  I don't know, maybe it was drinking beer on the water with the sun shining, or maybe just a little old fashioned commonweath brotherly love. Or do I need to say sisterly? There is nobody here to ask, so i'm going with my feelings. Needless to say, this crickety old brewery on the harbour of Victoria was the perfect place to begin our birthday festivities, that would roll well into the night, with certain people a little worse for wear.

The place that did stand out from the rest, with the smell of Indian food still very fresh in my mind, was the Empress Hotel. From a distance it was grand and royal, than when you enter, it has that old, not very homey feel to it. As we twisted and turned up and around stairs we made it to the apparently ever so famous Bengal Room. We missed High Tea, so of course beers in cold handled glasses was what we were sipping for the next couple of hours. Glenn, my husband, and I usually get to Indian Buffet at least once a fortnight, shamefully. So sitting in a magficent room that looks like it was in the set of some parts of Ghandi, drinkning crisp cold beer and nibbling on those nice and nasty indian bar snacks you used to see eight years ago at party's was magical.

What a great way to spend the last birthday of my 20's. Turning 30, or whatever age for that matter, has never really got me all twisted in a frenzy. Take it full circle I say. Who know's, maybe I won't agree later in life, but now I do.

Geez, what else. Moving a lot, that's for sure. In the past 7 weeks or so Glenn and I have been gradually moving our life possesions, something I said I would hope to never do gradually again. But there we were, a couple of car loads at time, a couple of times a week, driving to Columbia City where Glenn's sister awaited our belongings to store in her garage. In between all this shifting, I still managed to collect more things, such as a food mill here and there. In honor of food mill, we invited our special friend Kalee over for potato gnocchi. Since I hadn't made gnocchi in about 5 years, I was a little size happy with these tasty morsals of dumpling. After I worked out how to make the food mill work (sometimes one just needs to ask for help), we made a mighty fine mess with some mighty fine starch. Like I said, it had been a while since making gnocchi and of course not following a recipe I just went on ahead and peeled those potatos, realizing after I did it that i'd already buggered it up. Off to the store to get more spuds. Boil. Seperate skin. Now we're having a messy fun with the food mill.  

Although gnocchi takes a little work, practice and loving care to get awesome, I think it's well worth the effort. That night after i scooped them out of salty, boiling water, I tossed them through a classic buttery and creamy sauce with garlic, mushrooms and peas. We had so much left over, that a few days later I browned them up all crispy like on the outside and still super light and fluffy on the inside. Just the way I like them.