Easter in Toronto

For Easter I left Edmonton late Thursday night for Toronto. There was a snow storm in Edmonton in the morning to make things interesting. It had mostly melted in the afternoon but my plane left late not because of weather but because it was late from LA or somewhere. My flight was smooth and Erin picked me up when I arrived at 1:30 am or so and we took a cab back.

On Friday we went for lunch at a German place with Erin’s friend. I had a good wiener schnitzel that came with a potato salad. After lunch we walked around Parkdale and went to Trinity Bellwoods park. While walking we came across a big parade for Good Friday and watched it for a bit. For supper we made a light meal at Erin’s place.

Saturday we picked up lunch at the chicken restaurant that is near Erin`s place at made our way to the ferry to the Toronto islands. Before we took the ferry we found a nice place by the lake to sit and eat. The ferry seemed to take a long time to come for some reason. We walked around some of the islands and took some pictures. It was a nice clear day. After taking the ferry back we met Erin’s cousin and had burgers. Mine was quite good. We then went back to Erin’s place and got ready to go to a Pirate themed party at one of Erin’s friends. The pirate party was quite good and had some pirate themed activities. Such as sword-fights and lighting a cannon.

Sunday involved lots of travel. We went to Erin’s uncle to borrow his car and drive to near Kitchener/Waterloo to see Jamey and his family. His twins have grown a lot since we last saw them. Jen is due any day with a new baby. We had a nice lunch, played Settlers of Catan. Much to our chagrin (not Erin’s) Erin stormed at the end and beat us. We got a tour of the chickens and had a nice supper before driving back.

Monday was my last day there. We bought lunch at a nearby restaurant to Erin. I got a grilled ham and cheese sandwich. We took the subway to High Park. There is a small little zoo in high park that we walked to. It was quite interesting. It is free and may be closing down soon. After a nice walk, cool at times with the wind we took the subway back and Erin made a nice quiche with quinoa and kale among other things. My plane left late at night but on time. I arrived on time for a late night before going back to work the next day

See the pictures below Continue reading Easter in Toronto

Ninja Cookies

Yesterday with Aidyn we made some gluten free cookies. His mum made the dough and we rolled it out, cut, baked and decorated them. We used the ninja cookie cutters I got from Erin and also an Easter egg and Easter bunny one.

Below you can see some of the results of my cookies:
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Legislature at night

Geoff and Abril came to visit me while Erin was here. We went to see the Legislature at night and I took some pictures with my new lens. It takes some pretty good pictures. I think I need to turn some lights off on the camera when shooting dark things. There are some “lights in the sky” that I think are coming from the camera.

Erin and I also bought a new tent. It seems quite nice and we had to test it out by building it in my apartment.

See pictures below Continue reading Legislature at night

Valentine’s Supper

Since Erin is back in town we decided to make ourselves a nice Valentine’s meal.

We started early and made a marinade sauce for the chicken and got the potatoes cooked. While the chicken was marinating we went to find some saffron at bulk barn. We got lucky and there was one box left for us. After getting the saffron we went to the liquor store that my coworker is at and he helped us a pick out a wine that went great with our meal.

We cooked
Chicken Biryani – (rice and chicken and spices)
Cauliflower with ginger and cilantro
Yogurt with potatoes – (Indian potato salad)

Everything turned out great! We learned to not put in nearly as much salt and oil as the recipe asks for. Each dish complimented the other dishes. The potatoes would cool down your mouth when it was hot. The cauliflower had an immediate spice to it and the chicken had a different spice that built up. The wine was not too sweet or sour and the spice helped the flavour out.

Click the link to see the pictures of the meal below Continue reading Valentine’s Supper

New camera lens!

I got a new lens! I had some money from Christmas and decided this would be a nice way to use it. It is a 35mm prime lens. It should be good for lower light pictures and pictures with a fast shutter speed. It can also do neat blurring on unfocussed parts of the picture. I bought it from futureshop (I had a gift card) and price matched the lens and a filter to make it a good price!

Yesterday I took some practice pictures with it inside. Today I went for a nice walk and took some outdoor ones. Click the link to see the pictures. Continue reading New camera lens!

Fish Creek and Pet photos

These photos are a little late going up but better late than never.

I spent the time being busy mostly. For these photos I learned to to remove some green cat eye (instead of red eye) from one of the photos. I also wasn’t always sure with some of the photos when I adjusted them what I liked better for looks.

The pictures can be seen below. The first bit is from a nice walk near the weather. The second bit is some pet photos. Continue reading Fish Creek and Pet photos

Toronto Trip

I had a quick trip to go and see Erin for a bit. I left work a little early on Friday and got back late on Monday. I took Monday off instead of Friday for Remembrance day as Erin was off of school on Monday.

To get to the airport I decided to try jetset parking. It is right near the airport. Booking online the wepark was the same price as the youpark so I did that. I had a fairly smooth drive, dropped off my car, I could even check in my bag and caught a shuttle right away to the airport and could then go right to security. Security was quite busy but they had all the lanes open and it didn’t take too long. I had a hamburger at Montana’s for supper with some ok potato salad. The flight was full and it we got on and left basically on time.

I watched some curling and cfl that was on the flight and maybe drank too much club soda and water as I really had to pee after we landed and there was really no bathrooms until after you picked up your bags. Just one toilet and a big line. It seemed to take forever for my bag to come. Once I got it, I could go see Erin and try to find a bathroom! The close one was closed so we had a ways to go before I could relieve myself.

We found a taxi and made our way to Erin’s. The next day we had an easy morning, followed by some dress shopping for Erin. I got to talk to a guy that had two daughter’s and a wife and wasn’t so happy to be clothes shopping. I also bought a new cheap belt to replace mine that is falling apart. After Erin found a nice dress we did some grocery shopping and she had 4 hands instead of her normal 2 to bring food back. We made a nice supper of chicken mole, yellow rice and squash. It was very tasty. We watched an episode of Nikita that I brought for Erin as her Uncle’s house was in it. I will have to visit his place some time it seems very nice.

On Sunday we went to the zoo and had beautiful weather. We took the subway and 2 buses to get to the zoo. It all went very smoothly. We did not have to wait very long at the connections For some reason when we got to the zoo there was a long lineup to get in. I don’t think they were expecting as many people to come as did. They had a promotion with groupon that made the tickets quite cheap. The layout of the zoo was not how I remembered it. It was as big as I remembered it. We did not see the whole zoo. I took lots of pictures which you can see below. We had a nice lunch at the zoo and took more pictures in the afternoon. On the way back we took one bus and multiple subway trains. It took about the same time as in the morning. For some reason the heat was just blasting on the bus and we were glad to get off it. It made me remember some of my old school bus days when the heat was on! At night we watched Chicken Run. It was my first time seeing it and I quite enjoyed it.

For supper we went to a nice restaurant with in walking distance of Erin’s place called the Butler’s Pantry. I had a slice of vegetable curry pie with salad that had a good dressing made in house. The pie kind of reminded me of a giant samosa. I was quite happy with it. Erin had a zucchini cake. We shared a dessert of a chocolate cake. It wasn’t too sweet and also good but maybe a little bit too much.

Since we didn’t get enough walking in at the Zoo and the day before we decided to walk again. This time we walked to the University for Erin to drop off some papers. We then walked towards Yonge St. We stopped at a sandwich place for lunch. It had fried vegetables and mushrooms on a big bun and I got turkey on it. I enjoyed it but it was a little greasy for me. We walked down Yonge to Queen St. W. On Queen we stopped at a Starbucks for coffee and to sit for a bit. Erin saw a yarn store that looked interesting. It was called Romni and was giant. I have never seen so much yarn before!

We walked to Ossington where we caught a bus as we needed to get back to Erin’s and were tired. We had a nice salad for supper using the leftover chicken mole and also nuts and berries and goat cheese. Oh Erin also introduced dutch rusks to me. They were quite tasty and not too hard or crunchy. They are messy with crumbs though. We also had salsa and chips.

We took the subway and bus to get to the airport. We made quite good time and there was basically no line for security. My flight left and arrived a little early which was nice. It was basically full. There wasn’t really anything good on tv and TSN didn’t come in for most of the flight so I only watched a little of the Monday Night NFL game. Futurama was on that was good. I was quite hungry on the plane so I bought a macrobar. They are vegan bars. It was interesting. I was hoping it had more protein than it did. I doubled up on my snacks and didn’t drink as much water this time.

My bag came quite quickly, the shuttle was there right away for me and I barely had to leave the door. My car was running and waiting for me when I arrived. The drive back was smooth and quiet. I was glad there has been no snow yet. All in all it was a great trip!

See my photos of the zoo below Continue reading Toronto Trip

Beautiful Fall Day

Today was a beautiful fall day here in Edmonton. It got over 30! So I decided to go outside for a bit and enjoy the outdoors. There must have been some sort of police type ceremony at the legislature grounds because there was lots of various police, rcmp, etc all dressed up fancy leaving the grounds.

I took some pictures of the grounds starting to change and you can see them below Continue reading Beautiful Fall Day

Indian Baked Chicken

Yesterday I decided to try and make an Indian dish from the cookbook that Erin got me.
I saw a roasted chicken one stuffed with rice that sounds good. Instead of getting a whole chicken I used boneless skinless chicken strips and marinated them with the sauce. I then baked the chicken and started to prepare the rice and sauce for the rice. When the chicken was mostly cooked, I added the rice and baked it for a bit longer.

I only had some mini disasters as I was making it!

It turned out pretty well. Next time I make it I think I would add some cayenne pepper or something as it wasn’t spicy hot.

Edit: I added the recipe to the comments

To see the results look below Continue reading Indian Baked Chicken