More tasty things

Last weekend I decided that I had not been making anything very interesting for a while, mainly due to working too late to stop at the market on my way home and not being organised enough to plan my meals during the weekend. So I decided to spoil myself a little and buy a lobster. I figured that the total cost would still only be equivalent to going to a restaurant and having a nice steak, so once I thought of it that way it seemed a pretty reasonably priced meal. So I went for yet another trip to Granville island to get the necessary ingredients.


While at the island I decided to take a few photos so you all can see what this market I keep talking about is like. I thought it would be more arty or something if I took them in black and white. The market was very busy, being Saturday afternoon, so it was difficult to get any good shots without getting people mad at me so these are the best I could do.


Now back to the lobster. I have a few different recipes for lobster in my cookbooks, but decided that the picture of the angry lobster looked better than the other ones and the recipe looked tasty too. Basically you cut the lobster in to pieces and coat in a seasoned flour mixture then pan fry then in some chili infused oil. Then you add cherry tomatoes and basil with a spot of butter at the end. Very simple and oh so tasty. It was rather messy to eat though.


On Wednesday evening I went back to school for the first time in 7 years. This time however it was a very different kind of school than I had been to before, it was a cooking school. Vanya (cousin Ryan's wife) had a voucher for this cooking school at a local cooking shop and asked if I would like to come along. The class we went to was a new French cooking class where you get to participate in the cooking too. There were 5 different recipes that we were taught, with each group getting to prepare one of them. The recipes were all very tasty, starting with a smoked salmon soup followed by a chicken breast with Madeira sauce that was accompanied by a Swiss chard gratin. Then there was lamb medallions with cilantro sauce. And for dessert we had a rather unusual sounding basil ice cream. Vanya and I were given the task of preparing the Swiss chard gratin, which was probably the least interesting of the dishes but tasted quite good. For those of you unacquainted with the North American names for vegetables, Swiss chard is what we would call silver beet in New Zealand. The basil ice cream was the big surprise of the evening, it was actually a remarkably nice dessert and one that I will be sure to attempt to make at home some time.


I didn't have my camera the cooking school so have no photos to show, however I had a shot at making a variation on the lamb dish last night. I didn't fancy spending large amounts of money on lamb fillets so I used a lamb leg steak instead. It worked pretty well but didn't look quite as good on the plate. Also I felt the sauce needed a bit more to it so added some chopped up prunes just before serving. It all tasted amazing

A brief update

Well it has been 10 days since my last posting so I guess it is about time I add some fresh content to this ever so dynamic blog. I haven't really done much of great interest lately, hence the delay in posting.

Last Thursday evening I went up to Grouse Mountain again with Ryan and Andrew my flatmate. It had been raining in the morning so the snow was pretty soft and wet and very bumpy. I think the snow has been completely different every time I have gone up to Grouse. Apparently it is like this more in Spring so I guess I will get plenty more wet snow experiences later in the season. With the snow being so soft I thought it would be a great opportunity to improve my jumping skills. After the first unsuccessful run I asked Ryan and Andrew for a few pointers, and sure enough there were a number of things I was doing wrong that could explain the lack of success I was seeing. On getting some tips I found the whole jumping thing to be much easier than I had expected it to be, and by the end of the evening I was landing most of my jumps and even braved the terrain park a couple of times (sticking to the easiest jumps still though).

On a slightly sadder note, one of my bass guitars was stolen back in NZ a week ago. It was a very nice bass, probably my second favourite after the MusicMan. On the bright side, my insurance has paid out so I can get myself a new acoustic guitar when I get back to New Zealand in June. I was planning on getting one on my way home in San Francisco but the insurance company paid out in credit at the rock shop so I guess that is one less item of luggage to cart back on the plane.

In other breaking news, I have decided to go to Papua New Guinea for 5 months or so in July to help out with some software development with Wycliffe Bible Translators. They have already sent me an official invitation so now I am starting to get my visa application other paperwork sorted out. Apparently getting the visa can take a while so I need to get on to it pretty promptly.

My meals over the last week have been a bit more simple than they were last month. Work has got a bit busier so I am not taking so many trips to the market on my way home. Tonight's pasta dish was pretty tasty though, I made a simple tomato based sauce with a bit of sausage and a few mystery spices to add a bit of a kick. It didn't look too flash so I didn't bother taking any snapshots of it.

Whistler and Harrison Hot Springs

Last week Roz and Reuben had the week off so we all decided to take a trip up to Whistler for a few days of midweek snowboarding action. So on Wednesday afternoon we went to Enterprise car rentals to pick up our compact class car. The car they gave us was a Toyota Yaris, a very small car. After driving 15 minutes to my house to pick up some stuff I forgot, we decided that this car was really not going to work for us, as it would have been a very uncomfortable trip with 2 snowboards and a set of skis. So we gave the rental company a ring an organised to pick up a larger car a Chevrolet Malibu. This car was much nicer and fit us in very comfortably. So of we went for the 1 3/4 hour trip north to Whistler.

It was my first time driving any significant distance or in any traffic in a left hand drive, and at for the first little while it took a bit of adjusting to. Reuben was very helpful in pointing out that I was very close to the right hand side of the lane, I guess I wasn't used to having that much car to my right. The sea to sky highway from Vancouver to Whistler is a notoriously dangerous road, but after driving it I fail to see why. Compared to roads in New Zealand it was a very easy drive. I guess if it had been snowing or if the roads were icy it could have been a little scarier, but in the fine conditions we had it was quite a pleasant drive.

On arrival we checked in to our hotel then went out for a bite to eat. The restaurant was having an open mic night as the entertainment, but not many people took up the invitation to join the band and sing, so we were stuck listening to some band obsessed with reggae music. We didn't stick around long after our meal.

In the morning we got up nice and early to get our free breakfast before hitting the slopes. The weather was very nice with barely a cloud in the sky. Unfortunately it had been that way for quite a while prior to our trip, so there was no fresh snow around and some places were a bit icy. I decided that given the hardness of the ground, this was not going to be a good week to practice any jumps, so contented myself with just improving my turning and general control. I also decided to retry the run that I got very stuck on last time I was at Whistler. Last time there was over a foot of powder on that run and I had an awful time trying to get up each time I fell over. This time there was not much powder at all and I found the run to be much easier and great fun.

On the second day Roz and I spent most of the day going down the intermediate runs at Blackcomb, where the snow was a bit better. On one run Roz got a little over confident and went for a jump off a little drop off. Unfortunately for Roz she hadn't checked out what was below the drop off and she ended up bailing pretty badly as she landed amongst a bunch of moguls (big bumps in the snow). I was following a little behind her and decided to stop at the top of the drop off. When I looked down, there was Roz lying in the snow with her poles and hat 15 metres up the slope. The fall hurt her knee a bit, but she was able to keep on skiing, although her confidence was a little damaged for a while.

After our 2 days at Whistler we made our way back to Vancouver, then on Saturday seeing as we still had the rental car, we decided to take a trip to Harrison Hot Springs for a nice soothing soak. Harrison Hot Springs is about 1 1/2 hours east of Vancouver, just past Chilliwack. After driving for an hour on highway 1 I was beginning to see why people think the sea to sky highway is so dangerous. Highway 1 is really straight, for miles and miles.

When we arrived at Harrison Hot Springs we found that the public pool was a little on the disappointing side, it was pretty small and patroned by mainly old fat people. We decided to pass on the pool and just had lunch at a local restaurant that we had a discount voucher for instead. The food was decidedly average, or maybe even a little below average, except for the seafood chowder that Roz and Reuben shared, apparently that was quite nice. I had some scallops and shrimp with some kind of risotto. The sauce that accompanied the shrimps and scallops was very bland, in fact I can't even recall it having any flavour at all. The risotto was actually difficult to cut on one side, making me think it had perhaps been sitting under some warming lights a little long. The lake at Harrison was very pretty though, so the trip wasn't a complete waste of time. Unfortunately I didn't take my camera with me, so you will just have to take my word for it that it was a nice lake.