Following the trend of easy consumables, I have to share my love for the Keurig. It’s the food pill of the coffee world. No bags, no scooping, no cleaning the pot… It’s my kind of awesome. You buy these little cups that have a foil lid and a filter inside, stick them in the machine and presto! Single serve coffee in your mug!

For a while I thought the system only caters to people like me - who wake up zombie-state, and only ever really make one cup of coffee at a time. But they’re equally awesome if you have lots of guests, some of whom might want different kinds of coffee or tea. I could totally sell these things on an infomercial, I’m really this thrilled about the invention.

I bought a sampler pack from Tweed and Hickory. You can get 5, 10, 50 or 100 different kinds of cups. Being moderate, I chose 10. Next time, 100 for sure.

Just like in real life, all Kcups are not created equal. Some are amazing Gloria Jean’s Cappuccino was a 5/5. Others are absolutely disgusting Van Houtte Rasperry Chocolate Truffle for example… Not sure what they were thinking. I wasn’t really impressed by any of the Timothy’s Kcups either. For the most part they were 3/5.

I just googled “I love the Keurig” and got over 427 000 results. OK time to cut back on caffeine.

When we first moved into our own place {sans roommate(s)} -we had a great set of neighbours. They were an amazing, friendly couple from Nova Scotia, who -as an added bonus -brought us food on a regular basis.

To find nice people like that in the downtown core is pretty much impossible. So you can imagine how devastated I was when I found out that they were moving out only four months later. Little did I know then, it would get much worse.

At the beginning of the year our new neighbours moved in… with dog.

Now I should take a time out to say that I absolutely love dogs. I can’t make it through a day without thinking how much my life would be better if I had one. But I’m aware that my life can’t accommodate a dog. I live in an apartment downtown and that in itself means NO big animals.

I guess these neighbours find themselves exempt from this basic logic, because they have a HUGE dog which I have not seen, but have definitely heard on multiple occasions. This leads me to conclude that they neglect their dog. This thing barked all weekend. Unless the owners are deaf I think it’s safe to assume they were away for those two days.

During the weekend howl-fest going on one wall over, I made the best brownies of ever. I will forever call these “The Best Brownies of EVER” because that’s what they are. Some people like their brownies extra fudgey. I am not one of those people. A brownie purist knows that brownies are supposed to be somewhere between cake and fudge. I like mine 60% towards cake, and not too sweet. If your palette is anything like mine, I strongly suggest you make these. Trust. They are perfect. Even more so if you are living through trying times –auditory or otherwise.

The Best Brownies of EVER

Ingredients:
4 oz Unsweetened Chocolate Squares (4 Bakers Squares)
1/2 cup of Butter
1 and 1/2 cups of sugar
3 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
1 cup of flour

No mixer allowed. This is easily done with a bowl & spatula.

Method:
1. Preheat Oven to 350 F (180 C)
2. Melt chocolate squares and butter over medium heat
3. Stir until completely melted
4. Transfer melted chocolate mixture to a bowl. Add sugar and mix.
5. Add eggs and vanilla. Mix again until incorporated.
6. Add flour. Mix only until the flour disappears completely.
7. Transfer to a greased glass dish (I used 9 x 9 lined with parchment paper).
8. Bake for 30 minutes or until toothpick test comes clean.

Let cool and dig in. Invite some friends over to do the same.

Back in June, we babysat my nephew for 5 hours so my sister could do normal human things… The kinds of things you don’t do when you have two boys under the age of 5, I imagine. Things like sleeping, and staring at the wall for a few uninterrupted minutes.

Dear audience, a 4.8 year old is hard work. We made a few science experiments for him, and this video is the result of the volcano we engineered. This video was made from part 1 of the volcano explosion, and part two when I cut in closer to get the detail of the bubbles.

Each time we did this, X-man was all “I wanna do it again!” Towards the end, I said “Welcome to year four…. of life.” Because the whole day was like that. Case in point: After the seventeenth time alternatively hiding/seeking, I could have been passed out from exhaustion on the living room floor and he’d be all like “I wanna do it aaaagain!”

I have no idea how my sister does this.

But wow, isn’t he adorable? It’s totally worth it.

I want to own a dog (again). It has been too long. The dog pictured above is a one year old black lab named Rascal whose owners ran the apple farm we visited a month ago. Like many other things in life, I’m in a spot where can’t have what I don’t need. I don’t need a dog, although it may seem like it to me sometimes. Particularly difficult, for example, are the mornings or evenings en-route to and from work, where I am taunted by the dog park full of adorable bouncing and trotting canines. Part of me yells “I want a dog NOW. Nownownow!” I feel like a four year old in the toy store aisle. “It’s unfair that everyone else can own a dog but me.” Then the rational, practical (and budget-wise) part of me has to calm the other down. Yes I am this psychotic. And yes, it’s pretty tough to be like this.

I don’t spend absurd amounts of money on most things. My mom, who was raised in post WWII England made me astutely aware about saving -and engrained the “waste not want not” motto in my head. I think it has served me in some ways, and then has been truly detrimental in others. I hate debt, for example. I hate paying money in interest to already-rich banks. On the other hand, giving things away is brutal, and there have been times where I’ve carried stuff to thrift stores while bawling my eyes out.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this entry. To be honest, it’s not even 11 on a Friday night and I’m exhausted to the point of delirium. I’m working on a new theme to replace this generic one wordpress gave me by default.

Also, I signed up for 12seconds and here is one of the videos I made before I realized you can’t really put any significant content in 12 seconds, because, well, it’s twelve effing seconds:

Rice milk on 12seconds.tv

Rice milk tastes pretty bad… sort of chalky. Save yourself the money*, soy is way better.

*do you see how I tied that in perfectly to the other point in my post? do you!? flawless right?

There was always something magical about Halloween. More so than Easter or Christmas or any birthday. It has always been and still is my favorite holiday. I guess there are probably some socialist undertones that probably play their part in my enjoyment of the celebration, but those aside, I think I figured out at a young age that Halloween was a good gauge of personality. The crabby old neighbours who were always mean would NEVER give out candy. The only night of the year their lights were off, and they weren’t snooping on neighbourhood activities. The nicer ones would decorate, and take genuine pleasure from seeing kids in their costumes. There’s something to be said about Halloween, and the fact that people give for nothing tangible in return.

I was in grade 4 during the Halloween shown above, and I honestly can never remember having a store-bought costume. I was pretty pissed off about it when I was slightly older than in the picture above, particularly as the quality of my costumes deteriorated rapidly. (I distinctly remember going as a lamp one year. My mom painted my face yellow and it was brutal all around).

Now I appreciate the kitchyness of homemade costumes, and I miss coming up with ideas and executing them. Some of the best times in my undergrad were spent with my three other girls, cutting and pasting cardboard to clothing. To be perfectly honest, of the pictures above, only the first one was from a Halloween night, where the four of us went as different cereal box characters. The middle one was from “Fake Prom” and the third one was from a departmental party where I was Hook…the girl, complete with talking parrot.

Today walking home after work, I saw all the kids on campus dressed up, and it made me nostalgic. On a happier note, my nephew was a dinosaur this year, and I can’t wait to see pictures! Happy Halloween!

At the beginning of the summer, with fairly high hopes, R. and I decided to become urban gardeners. Both of us had previous experience planting vegetables in, you know, actual gardens. Neither of us had ever tried to grow anything large in a planter –but really, how hard could it be?

I remember being in Canadian Tire, picking out some of our seeds. I told R. it would be unwise to buy them, but we somehow still walked out of there with Heirloom tomatoes… not fully realizing that the plant would later take on super-powers and grow over 6 feet. You know how turtles grow proportionally to their environment? I think it’s safe to say this isn’t the case for the botanical world.

Interestingly enough, this one particular plant was completely disinterested in growing more than 2 tomatoes. It was almost hell-bent on becoming a tree.

The carrots, however, were the garden’s mystery. There was no way of really knowing how big they would get. So when R. told me he was going to grab a couple of carrots, the documentary filmmaker within me surged, and I grabbed our camera. I should explain a few things about this video:

Please note…
1) That before this clip, I asked R. to explain what he was doing.
2) In an attempt to keep an element of decorum, I had to BEEP out the name of the individual (his friend) he references in describing the carrot-size.

Also of particular note: While watching this video now, I recognize that I am so accustomed to his humor that I completely disregard how sarcastic he gets. At the same time, he completely disregards how incredibly whiny and high pitched I get (I am not usually like this).

Impressive! We have learned to live with each other’s annoying characteristics. Now THAT’S love.