Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Delicious creations of mine!

A couple weekends ago, we celebrated Tabi's birthday at her new apartment where just us girls: Nikki, Tabs and I celebrated with a night of drinks, Swiss Chalet, and hanging out on mattresses in a freshly painted apartment!

Because Tabi makes cakes for everyone else, I figured that it was time for Tabi to have a cake made for her. So I made this delicious strawberry cake (with strawberry jello powder and fresh strawberries and whipped cream/cream cheese icing... yummm!!) for Tabi. I figured that since we were going to eat a delicious birthday cake, we should definitely have it paired with chocolate covered strawberries so I dipped this little guys up too. I am very impressed that all this stayed in tact on the drive from London to Kitchener.
We ate that cake with a 3 forks....

Lets change the food discussion to supper. Aleksy and I have been in a super rut: this means that we continue to recycle the same suppers over and over and I swear that we buy every vegetable at the grocery store and I am waiting for a "new" vegetable to appear.
black bean salad with salsa, salmon with veggies, chicken caesar salad, and any meat really with peppers & onions is out go to.
So... I found a new recipe, with a new source of protein, tempeh to try out. It is a vegan & vegetarian recipe... but it was oh so delicious. The only set-back to this recipe was that I had to make it in 2 parts:

The first part is these: sweet potato biscuits.
I made these the night before so the meal would be less prep the next day.
I got the recipe here (its actually an inspirational blog... take a meander!):

http://hungryhealthymj.com/tag/sweet-potato-biscuits/

I did follow the recipe for the most part: I used regular unbleached white flour, and whole wheat flour and they turned out great!
This is the full meal of the sweet potato biscuits with the tempeh gravy (also from the same site!). In the gravy was a package of tempeh (which I bought at an asian food market), white beans pureed in the blender and many seasonings (all that you would have in your cupboard already... except sage... I had to buy sage. I think it smells like weed).

Sooo carbaliously good! This was for supper last night and it won't be the last time.


So long, supper rut... 

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Welcome to our World Colton!!

Steph & Al have had their baby!!
This post is devoted to welcoming the newest little man in our life to the world!

Colton McCoy was born on April 18th at 7:30pm.

 We met him for the first time on Friday April 19th... he was just 26 hours old!
Steph was an absolute champ with Colton and didn't get an epidural. Steph didn't complain her entire pregnancy, labour, and childbirth... she's my hero!
I told Aleksy not to expect the same when our day comes...

Both Aleksy and I got to hold Colton as he slept... but I didn't get to see his eyes because he was so sleepy!

I look forward to watching Colton grow and being there to see all his stages! Looks like we have a new ring bearer for the wedding!

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Chile: the last couple days

After Valdivia, we headed back to Conception where spent 2 nights before having to fly back home :(
In those couple days, we had some lunch at Bartolo's Mom's place, and toured Conception a little more.

On our final night in Conception, we went to a little pub and bought a bunch of craft beers to share. We spent our last night together sharing beers, and eating chips, meat, pebre (again... this is definitely where those 7lbs came from).
In Chile there were many buildings, houses, retail spaces that were effected by earthquakes. This was a municipal building that couldn't be restored after an earthquake and as a result was left untouched for a long time.


This is the amazing town centre of Concepcion! On our last day in Chile (the day we flew out) we spent the day wandering around, checking out the shops, and had some lunch.
We made sure that we were all packed up prior to leaving to tour the city for the day since we had to get on our flight in the afternoon. We packed up our things after our day in Concepcion and went to return our van (which was right across from the Airport).
 After a sad good-bye to our favourite Chilean friends, we hopped on flight #1 of 3 home... this was the state of feeling about leaving Chile and going back to work <

:(
In between flight #1 and #2, we had about a 4 hour delay in Santiago, Chile (which is the capital of Chile). Here, me and Chelsea enjoyed our last Picso sour in Chile. Then after our last Picso sour, we had another last picso sour, then another. Then we heard our names over the intercom and realized we almost missed our flight from Santiago to Dallas (that's the 9 hour flight)... oops! Darn delicious Pisco sours!!




It was a long 20 hours of flying until we got back to Canada. Aleksy and I had some swollen ankles for sleeping in a sitting position. And we got right back into the craziness of life when getting bck! Birthday celebrations, running around for bday presents and all.

This was definitely an amazing experience of a vacation... and we spoke Spanish! And got pretty darn good at it too I must say. But now, it is being lost (our Spanish tutor would be so disappointed).

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Argentina Adventures & Valdivia, Chile!

Next was our border crossing into Argentina! After driving from Rio Tranquil to Chile Chico, we headed to the border crossing where the Argentinian border guards deported the Canadians... because they wanted us to pay a $90 entrance fee online. But, they would not let us use their internet. So... we went back to the Chilean border patrol to use their internet and pay the entrance fee! They sure made it hard to give them a whole lot of money...
But about 3 hours later, we were on Argentinian land! The weather immediately became warm and sunny when we crossed the border... and the mountains disappeared!

You can see the flag of Argentina at the top of the flag pole here! This was in a little town along the route to our overnight destination (well... kinda "destination"... we knew the general area that we were going to stay overnight).

This flag means that I got another stamp in my passport from Argentina! It excited me to think of all the countries in my passport! Australia, Dominican, Chile, Argentina...
After our first night in Argentina where we found a random little town to sleep in, we headed toward our destination: the city of Bariloche. After visiting a unique artisan centre, we arrived to Bariloche, checked into our hotel then sought out supper. Bartolo informed us that it was very popular in Argentina to eat at a Parilla: a meat bbq of sorts.
This is us a a Parilla restaurant in Bariloche where we ate some kidney, neck, intestines, blood sausage... you know the usual meats ;) < sarcastic winky face. I didn't really like... anything... but I definitely think it was worthwhile to try and I did try everything! The wine was delicious...
 Here's the cooks grilling up all our crazy meats!
After our Parilla experience, we headed back to our hotel where we spent some time in the lobby area having some drinks and playing some cards.
But...
When we asked Bartolo if he had cards he gave these < to us. No spades, no hearts, no diamonds, no clubs??
So we creatively played a game of Asshole making the "King of Lumber" the equivalent to the King of Hearts. We laughed for a very long time at these cards which didn't have Jack/Queen/Jokers... but we still managed out game of Asshole!
The next day was an explore the City of Bariloche day. The 3 couples broke off and traveled independently to get the most out of a shopping day!
This is in the town square. On this day we got some good shopping in: bought some jewelry and gifts from independent kiosks, some new shoes for lex, and a new picture for our home!

There were many amazing chocolate stores in the town centre of Bariloche and we bought these from one of them. They are a very common dessert in Argentina called alfajores: 2 soft cookies with dulce de leche in the centre (like a caramel) and covered in chocolate!! All my favorite things in one dessert! So good!
Before we started our shopping day, all of us went into a cheese, meat and wine store in the morning and made arrangements for them to make us a couple of platters to have as an evening meal. This is us picking up our 2 trays of delcious cheeses, meats, and crakcers.... an amazing evening snack with wine.
When we asked for the staff to take a picture (in beautiful Spanish because by this time we have asked this a million times!), they insisted we open a bottle of wine to toast the picture with... free of charge! So nice!
This was our last night in Argentina then the next day we headed back to Chile.

After crossing the border back to Chile, we headed to Valdivia, which is where Bartolo stayed while doing part of his schooling. So Bartolo knew of this Cerveceria (brewery) and he took us here before we headed to the cabin in the woods where we were staying.
Here's us at the Cerveceria with our flights of beer! We wanted to try everything so the best way is with the flights! Aleksy and I bought a 3 pack of mixed beers and brought it home with us to Canada from this brewery.









One of the beers we brought back is a blueberry flavoured beer and this ice cream below is made of that blueberry flavoured beer!! Mmmmm beer ice cream!


And this little appetizer (above) here is what Warren had for a little snack. Alejandra recommended this popular appetizer: basically toast with some ground beef and some garnishes to go on top. But... we are just not used to eating RAW ground beef! So since it was so different and we were all in awe we all had to try it! It actually was good tasting... I just couldn't get past that whole raw ground beef thing...

After enjoying our beers and raw ground beef, we headed to the cabin in the woods where we were to stay the night in Valdivia. It was the cabin that belonged to Bartolo's adviser for his PhD.
After a struggle to get into the cabin (Bartolo lost the keys) we finally entered around 11pm and then Alejandra made my favourite dinner in the entire world for us!! Chels and I were the sous-chefs in charge of chopping onions and such...
This is shrimp in white wine sauce (made with Olive oil, garlic, white wine), and red wine rice (made with mushrooms, Parmesan cheese and red wine). So amazingly delicious!!

I still need to try to make this at home... I need to prefect it.

On this night,  despite it being so late... and that we were pretty tired at the brewery when we were cooking and enjoying some $4 1.5L of wine, we got a burst of energy that lasted until about 3am!!
And THIS is the amazing cabin where we had an amazing late late night supper, and drank and danced the night away until 3am!

When we woke up we were amazed by the view in the back of this cabin. So serene...
After our rice and shrimp, we continued the party... hammock and all. There was a lot of energy that came out of no where on this night. I think it was the vibe of the cabin...










This was the final night of our roadtrip, then the next day wee headed back toward Conception where Alejandra and Bartolo's flat is located to give us plenty enough time before our plane back to Canada.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Chile Adventures: Coyhaique & Rio Tranquil

Leaving Puyuhuapi was very hard & sad since we loved the hiking and Bartolo's family so much.

After 3 nights, we headed to Coyhaique, which is about a 4 hour drive from Puyuhuapi, which is the most populated town for many km's and has many stores ad touristy things to do. Here we stopped, parked our car in a lot and stopped at some street vendors and stores (where we bought our matte... a traditional Chilean tea drink), then stopped for some supper. While in Chile, we tended to savour the food when eating a meal and we did this while in Coyhaique: had some appetizers, a nice big meal, some dessert then headed back to the van.... then we realized THE GATE WHERE WE PUT OUR VAN WAS LOCKED! Ooops.... we lost track of time and forgot that the sign said at 8pm, they lock the gate and you can't get your vehicle until the morning. So we checked in with the cafe beside the parking lot, got the number of the owner of the lot, and while some of us had coffee and found a cabana, the others cabbed it to the owner of the parking lots's house and got the key to the parking lot!
p.s. it was raining... and I had flip flops on...



This is the cabana (cottage) that we found after the van incident: We may have been unlucky with the van, but we got super lucky with this cottage! It had multiple floors, a full kitchen, an a ton of space! It was a quick stay though... we arrived about 10pm and left the next morning for Rio Tranquil! Rio Tranquil is the farthest South we went in Chile!
This hand print is from a stop that we made along the way to a museum (in the middle of no where) where there were hand prints on the face of the rock of the mountains which were said to be done by animal blood. These hand prints were also said to be there for million years and placed there by the native people of Chile. 

It was a nice break along our drive for a little bit of history. These hand prints are on many Chilean post cards, and I think its really cool when we get to see some of the infamous sights in Chile.

< We actually did camp in Chile!!
When Aleksy and I were preparing to go to Chile, we pictured a ton of camping and roughing it, but it turns out that Rio Tranquil was the only camping that we did in Chile! It was for 2 nights and was a nice change from our cottages (that all had full kitchens!).

I like camping and am not a complainer (ok I lie, if there's bugs I'm a complainer) but here at this place, I had the COLDEST shower of my life. It was like showering in glacier water. I was ready for a cabana again after that!

So, I know I said it it my last blog... but again, you are just not ready for the awesomeness of these pictures. We weren't even expecting this crazy amazing scenery! While we were in Rio tranquil, we went on a day outing to hike a glacier. We thought it would be similar to the beautiful nature hikes in Puyuhuapi, but it was so so different!

This is the first part of our hike. It was really rocky, and we thought it was really neat that underneath us was ice (the ice was just not visible unless you brushed the stones away). It didn't look like a glacier, and we could not see any snow in the distance because of the fog so we didn't know what we were in for...
And then as we got closer to the mountains, the fog began to go away and the view was amazing! The rocks disappeared the closer we got to the mountains and the ground became ice/snow!
When the rocks completely disappeared, we has to put claws over our shoes so that we could get to amazing caves and areas where the glacier had melted and created deep holes of turquoise water... there was a certain technique to going down the hills...
< that's the guide helping me down because otherwise I probably would have tumbled (or pricked a hole into my lululemons like Chels!).
The guide was great at taking us to caves for picture taking, even if it was hard to get there down/up the hills of snow.

You can see the claws on our shoes in this picture. These allowed us to go anywhere on the snow!
This is a little water trail down the glacier (with little stones along the trail under the trickle of water) where we hiked back up out of a cave!

We also drank that glacier water... although Aleksy kept talking about million year old diseases that scared me a little so I only had a little...














After our camping (with some delicious campfire food) in Rio Tranquil, we headed to Chile Chico where we crossed over to Argentina!

Thursday, April 11, 2013

My Amazing 27th Birthday!

This year my actual birthday this year fell on a Tuesday so I decided to take the day off work and do things for myself. On my birthday day I went to the gym, went for a massage, got a tan, and had my haircut! I then went home and waited for Aleksy to get home from work for some evening birthday celebrations.
We made arrangements for the big celebration to be on Saturday the 6th, since everyone else works during the week too!

When Aleksy got home from work on my birthday, he surprised me for supper with my FAVOURITE supper of life!! Mmmm Swiss Chalet! Perogies and quarter chicken dinnes. And my favourite red wine: Jackson Triggs Meritage... a perfect birthday supper!
On Saturday, for my birthday party, Aleksy made arrangements for our friend Tabi to make my birthday cake. Tabi is just friggin amazing. Aleksy asked for a princess birthday cake and this is my amazing cake that Tabi made! Each layer was a different flavour and each layer was delicious. There was caramel chocolate, banana chocolate, and margarita flavours... they were all so delicious but I think my favorite was the margarita.
We already booked Tabi for our wedding cake... she's the best!









This is all of our friends who were able to make it for supper (Chels and Warren also came later) with Aleksy taking the picture. We made bbqed chicken, and salmon and everyone brought a side dish to go with the chicken and salmon (salad, baked beans, pasta salad, veggie bake). Aleksy also pintrested a bunch of appetizers that we had before the supper which were very aesthetically pleasing and delicious.
Then I got to open my presents!! I got so many amazing things from all of my amazing friends and fam!! I am super lucky to know so many awesome people who are so thoughtful (people know me so well.. my wine rack is very full right now).
Cake time! I got a piece of each flavour... then later... at 3am, I ate what was left!
My Nikki got me my first bridal item (although Aleksy's sister also bought me bridal magazines!)... and I was very excited about this! These underwears say "Bride" on them... yay wedding!!
Whenever Aleksy and I are throwing a party, jello shooters are always a must! We made 4 packages of these goodies... and I made Steph hold one too (but she's actually going to pop any day now!).
This is the best that me and my sister could do for a picture of just us, we had many other takes which ended up having lots of people making faces in the background. This blurry take I think was the artwork of Aleksy... its even almost centred... good job Aleksy.
Girls shot! Minus Tabs and Steph who had to leave for baby reasons (one grumpy baby and one baby in the belly making Steph tired!). My Rachel has the cutest cupcakes PJs ever!

Group shot! Aside from our supper group shot, this is the best I have of most of us from my birthday party! What an amazing night!







Saturday, April 6, 2013

Easter treats!

Last weekend was the long Easter weekend and since I had a little extra time with the extra day, I decided to take my Good Friday and bake some Easter treats! Buying chocolate for my nieces is boring, so I thought I would give them birds nests instead: These are super simple, I melted semisweet chocolate chips and peanut butter on the stove top on low, mixed in corn flakes and put them into a muffin pan!


I wanted to bring a little dessert to Easter dinner (which we had on Good Friday at my Mom's place) so after some searching on the internet for ideas, I decided to make little shortbread bunnies. These would have been a lot easier with a bunny cookie cutter!


And my platter for Easter dinner... nothing fancy for dessert but cute.

After our Good Friday supper, we had friends over for supper on Saturday (and made some "Easter" chili), impromptu stag & doe that Saturday night, Sunday Easter afternoon dinner with Aleksy's parents, then we had my sister, brother-in-law, nephew, and niece over for some bbq Easter Sunday dinner (not so traditional, but some good company!).

And later today... my birthday celebration! Prep time...