GIVE ME MEMORY!

My laptop is slowing me down. It's kind of my fault considering that my free space consists of almost 2GB. Yep, that's right...my laptop is running on only 2GB of memory. Sad, isn't it? But I'm about 96% away from burning some photos to DVD and thereby freeing up about 4GB of space. I really need an external hard drive right about now. I also need a new laptop battery but that's another story.

In other news, F man, just F. It's snowing outside and while I would normally be happy, I'm not. It's probably snowing because my birthday is later this week and the world is probably sending me snow for my birthday which I would normally be over-the-moon about, but today I feel so-so about it.

I'm in a bit of a birthday funk. I usually love my birthday. It's the one day that revolves around ME! The day that everyone says nice things to me; that everyone does nice things for me; the day that I don't have to work. This year however, this year things are different. For one thing, I have to work. I can't take the day off. I probably could have asked for it off had I not been sick for two days last week but I can't afford to take any more days off work--not anymore. Not when I'm going to need to take at least an afternoon off to get my bloody G1 all over again (that's another story entirely). I haven't worked on my birthday in oh, five years! Secondly, I'm sick--still! I don't think these meds are actually working. My throat still feels rather sore though not as sore as before though my glands are definitely hurting. It makes me really unsocial at work because I just don't want to talk to anyone.

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Food as of late hasn't been entirely interesting. I haven't really wanted to eat and on days when I have wanted to, I've been stuck with things like three-day old mushy rice noodle soup or really bland chicken broth because I think my tastebuds have malfunctioned. Here's a half-decent recap because being sick hasn't really made me want to take pics.

18th...no photos :(
I think my camera ate my photos.

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19th...Friday
Finally on day two of some antibiotics (argh, as I wanted to avoid them), I was tired of having mushy stuff to eat and decided to go all out with a bowl of Frosted Flakes and organic milk for breakfast:Not exactly the smartest idea with a throat infection but hey, I'm a rebel! I also refused to have anymore soup for lunch so instead I made myself some roast veggies and scrambled eggs:
Veggies included a couple potatoes, a sweet potato, broccoli and mushrooms. A couple hours later I was hungry again and decided to have another helping of roast veggies with an orange for some vitamin C.I can't remember what I had for dinner that night and clearly I forgot to take a pic of it but dessert was a bowl of frozen strawberries that I nuked in the micro for 45 seconds with freshly whipped cream and a couple of crushed vanilla bean meringue cookies.Yum!! This was a little bit too much dessert though so I only about 3/4 of it.

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20th...Saturday
Vacay from blogging--not really. I only had two photos: dinner and a bowl of grapes. Not very exciting so I thought I'd skip it. Plus, I spent the day just watching the Olympics so it wasn't very noteworthy.

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21st...Sunday
Breakfasts are Sunday are always kind of iffy. I either eat them or I don't. I usually attend church with my family and by the time I get myself settled it's around 11 and knowing that lunch will be in an hour, I tend to skip breakfast. Today one of those days. I just went straight to lunch:Egg noodles with slices of pork and veggies.

Dinner was steamed free-range chicken, Chinese vegetables and white basmati rice:Obviously other food was consumed throughout the day...I just neglected to take photos of it. Sometimes my mouth wants to eat more than I want to take photos.

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22nd...Monday:
I don't have a photo of first breakfast but instead will present you with a photo of second breakfast, my oatmeal. Here it is in all its glory:Instant organic oats with chia seeds, ground flaxseed, dried mulberries, cherries, coconut and walnuts. The latter was a really crappy decision on my part considering that my throat still hurt. I couldn't finish this. It was a really dumb idea since lunch wasn't until almost 5 hours later! But that's usually what my oatmeal at work looks like.

Lunch was supposed to be this:But as soon as I opened the container to snap the pic this morning, I saw all the mold. Here's a close-up if you need one:Not cool! Luckily I had a back-up for lunch:More leftovers from Mevame, which yes...are almost a week old--yikes! But no mold was present so I decided to go for it. The rest of my snacks included grapes and some dried dates:
Dinner was kind of sad because my stomach wasn't feeling well and my throat was still hurting. I just had an avocado with salt and pepper plus an apple:A little bit later I had a piece of French baguette with cream cheese and I am currently roasting some veggies for my lunch tomorrow. Stay tuned!

DOM + THROAT INFECTION = HOME SICK

It's day two of my homestay. Thursday morning I woke up and my throat was still hurting and my larynx (?) was closing up on me--or that "hole" at the back of your throat--so I figure that was good enough reason to call and sick and head to the doctor. She told me I had a throat infection (and kind of chastised me for not coming in sooner, doh!) and told me to stay home for the next two days. So I've been home, catching up on the Olympics; last night taking in the men's long program and am really happy for American Evan Lysacek taking home the gold medal. Evgeny Plushenko--even though I was a fan of his when I was younger--is now just a really huge douchebag. Who the hell gets up on the gold medal platform when you've not earned it--even if you are just being funny? This ain't the Ice-capades or Stars On Ice, you idiot! Plus on top of that, his comment regarding the quad and men's skating not being men's skating without the quad--ugh! I'm just about done with Plushenko. I'm glad that Evan Lysacek was able to take home the gold medal with a solid performance that did not include a quad jump--hopefully proving to Plushenko that a quad doesn't necessary guarantee you a gold medal.

Anyhoo, back to the food, here's a quick recap:
Feb. 16...Tuesday.
First breakfast was half a whole wheat bagel with PB and Crofter's Asia spread with a banana:Second breakfast was instant organic oatmeal with ground flaxseed, chia seeds, frozen peaches and strawberries that defrosted by the time I got to work. This is what my frozen fruit looks like:I usually use half for my oatmeal and then keep the rest for my lunch "dessert." Speaking of lunch, for lunch I had a mish mash of stuff:Leftover lamb chop, 6 butternut squash ravioli, 2 small pieces of boiled potato and 3 sweet potato balls. Totally random stuff that was leftover in my fridge but it tasted really, really good. I also packed myself some vanilla bean and dried cherry meringue cookies but only ate a couple before I had to get back to work:
Dinner was at Mevame restaurant for my parents' 37th wedding anniversary. We were celebrating a day early because their actual anniversary falls on Ash Wednesday. I've previously reviewed Mevame so I won't go into too much detail this time but I don't know whether it was because of my sore throat but everything was just a tad underwhelming. My family skipped out on appetizers this time (last time we got two and it was way too much food) and started off with our entrees which came with salads:Mine was drenched in salad dressing (which you can't really see here) but I couldn't finish it. It's a shame since I love this salad which features mesclun mix, spiralized beets and carrots, red onions, cucumbers and tomato wedges. My oldest brother and I ordered the same entree, the lamb chops:He got his with a side of fries while I got mine with a side of rice:My mom ordered the dark meat chicken skewers with fries:While my dad and other brother ordered the rainbow trout:One with vegetable and the other with mashed potatoes.

So this time around the lamb chops didn't seem as flavourful as the ones we had upon our first visit to Mevame. Maybe it's just because I had had lamb chops the day before and those were plenty flavourful or maybe my tastebuds were getting tired of lamb chops (I had had them for every meal prior excluding first and second breakfast), but these just didn't seem as tasty. The fries were spot-on and my mom's chicken looked delicious. I wish I could have tried a piece.

I was stuffed after 1/3 of my salad, one pita bread, two lamb chops, 1/4 of my rice and a good helping of my mom's fries so we all skipped out on dessert. Plus, the restaurant's dessert menu isn't terribly interesting knowing that I can make my own creme brulee at home in no time and at 1/3 of the cost. One thing that really irks me about Mevame is that they never refill your water; you always have to ask for it. Personally, I find refilling a person's water glass the easiest thing you can do to guarantee a good tip. If you refill my water glass without having to be asked to do so, it shows that you're being attentive. It guarantees a good tip from me. We had to ask our waitress for water twice. Not really cool considering that we showed up at 7:50 on a Tuesday night and by the time we were halfway through our meals the restaurant was hardly half full. There was clearly no excuse for her not to refill our glasses. That's just my one waiter/waitress pet peeve.

Anyway, my oldest bro and I split the bill so Happy Anniversary mom and dad!

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Feb. 17th...Wednesday. Because I was feeling sick and because most of my food was almost an exact repeat of the day before, I decided to take the day off from food-photographing.

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Feb. 18th...Thursday.
Home sick! Since my throat was hurting, I didn't really feel like eating anything. Before heading out to the doctor, my stomach wanted to eat a bowl of oatmeal but my throat didn't feel like it. I was the mediator and had a banana instead. Then upon arriving back at home after visiting the pharmacy, my dad helped me make some free-range chicken broth to which I added some rice noodles to fill me up:But even after a couple of bowls of that, just an hour later I was still hungry and dying for some real flavour, so I had a bowl of Frosted Flakes with organic 2% milk:Along with that I decided to try out my new tea: chamomile with lavender:Quatchi decided to chill out with me on the couch while we caught up on the Olympics and later on, I fell asleep:Here we are on the couch pre-nap time:The rest of the evening was spent watching the Olympics and eating the exact same thing for dinner that I had had for lunch with the added bonus of beef broth from some bones I found in the freezer. I also added some napa cabbage.

GO CANADA GO!

Holy crap! I can't believe it's been almost an entire week since a new post! What the heck is happening with February!? A lot has been going on. Since my return home I haven't really been able to catch up on my blog posts because I've been sick. Ever since Sunday morning, I've had a sore throat and my cold symptoms now include a slight cough, runny nose, body aches, headaches, bloody mucus, etc. It's not fun. I was paranoid that I had caught the E. Coli, Salmonella or Listeria bacteria but no diarrhea so I'm in the clear for now. I've just been feeling pretty awful and the worst part is that I look fine so when I tell people I'm sick, they probably don't believe me--though my cough, raspy voice and constant sniffling at work are probably turning a few people off by now.

Anyway, Here's an attempt at a quick recap of a week's worth of food:

Monday...the 8th

First breakfast was a slice of wheat and oat bread with peanut butter and banana slices. I also had a pear.Second breakfast was organic instant oatmeal with ground flaxseeds, chia seeds and a whole bunch of blueberries.
Lunch was fresh and light, exactly what I needed after the mega binging during the Super Bowl the night before: Romaine lettuce with mini carrots, radish slices and a can of flaked tuna in water. I also had some sweet potato balls on the side. I dressed it with a tiny bit of Kraft Aged Balsamic Vinaigrette, mostly letting the remainder of the tuna can water act as the dressing.
Snack bento consisted of grapes and blueberries (most of which I used in my oatmeal):Dinner was pretty boring:Rice with eggplant, two kinds of mushrooms and peas. I don't normally eat eggplant (I don't really like the texture and it gave me hives when I was 8) but I really wanted the mushrooms and peas and thought eating rice with just mushrooms and peas would be weird. Since my bowl of rice was pretty small, I ended up having this as some "extra" dinner:A whole wheat pita pizza with zucchini, king oyster mushrooms, red peppers, tomatoes and pear. It was basically a leftover pizza from the pizzas I was making for lunch the next day. Here's a closer look:===

Tuesday the 9th

First breakfast was a slice of toast with peanut butter and banana slices and second breakfast was the same as yesterday:Lunch was my whole wheat pita pizzas prepared the night before. Here it is on the cutting board:And here it is all packed in my bento:My snack bento container grapes, a couple clementines and blueberries, which again, I used for my second breakfast oatmeal:I wasn't really looking forward to dinner that night, my sore throat was getting the better of me, but we were having asparagus and I can't say no to asparagus:Rice with asparagus, tomatoes and beef, along with a side of brussel sprouts.
I also had an orange about four hours later for some extra vitamin C:Lastly, look at this bag of evil:But it turns out that two cups is only 140 calories so I no longer feel bad about my massive kettlecorn consumption!===

Wednesday the 10th

First breakfast was a PB&J sandwich with a small glass of orange juice. My jam this time around is special because I went to the "fancy" grocery store the night before and while looking for something I can't remember right now, I came across Crofter's Super fruit spread which everyone food blogger has been raving about lately. I checked out the Europe version that everyone seems to love but settled on the Asia since I'm not a huge fan of cranberries.Second breakfast was instant organic oatmeal with chia seeds, ground flaxseeds, peaches and strawberries that I buy frozen and are defrosted by the time I get to work and have second breakfast around 10:30.
Lunch was butternut squash ravioli in a homemade tomato sauce of mushrooms. I bought the ravioli in the fresh pre-made pasta section of the grocery store and these aren't bad!I also had my version of Laura Calder's warm goat cheese and bacon salad but mine wasn't very successful. In fact, it's not a recipe I would make again, or maybe my version was crappy because I tried to take the easy route and used the toaster oven instead. Anyway, here it is:Romaine lettuce with goat cheese wrapped in bacon.
Snack bento was what remained of my thawed-out strawberries and peaches:I also packed myself this small container of kettlecorn but never got around to eating it :)Once I came home I immediately ate this orange along with a banana and peanut butter and Crofter's Asia spread:I can't remember what the heck was really for dinner but I must have eaten a little bit of it.
I spent the rest of the evening making cake pops which I will post about later. It was a long night; I was up until 3am.

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Thursday the 11th

Breakfast and lunch from the 11th were the exact same as the day before so I didn't bother taking photos of any of it. I also still felt pretty crappy because of my sore throat and taking photos of food was the last thing on my mind--especially after only five hours of sleep. The only thing I do have a photo of is half a slice of sour cherry cheesecake that I bought from the Valentine's Day bake sale at work to benefit the Hospital for Sick Kids:I normally really dislike cheesecake but this one was really light and the cherry topping was a great contrast to the cream cheese.

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Friday the 12th--let the Games begin!

Yay to the start of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics; boo to being totally sick and miserable and having to stay an extra hour at work on a Friday night. Sean ended up having to wait for me in the lobby for 30 minutes too. Boo-urns to that.

Friday's first breakfast was a sunnyside-up egg with two slices of bacon and wheat 'n oat toast. Second breakfast was organic instant oatmeal with the usual defrosted strawberry and peaches.
Lunch was quite dismal because I ended up eating most of this:Yep, that's right...Kraft Mac 'n Cheese, which I realized, just because of the night before (because I had snuck in a taste), tastes disgusting. Seriously!! I can't eat this crap anymore. It was so gross. I can't imagine how I managed to palate that orange gunk all these years. That was definitely my last box of the blue stuff. I finally understand what the heck Sean has been talking about all these years.

Along with my Mac 'n Crap, I had sweet potato balls (unpictured) and the remainder of my strawberries and peaches:To the right of my sweet potato balls are two chocolate meringue cookies with chocolate chips. They are ridiculous light and airy and really, really addictive. Despite not having an addiction to chocolate, I ended up eating six of these the night I baked them. Good thing to recipe makes a whole bunch of them. You can check out the recipe here. I modified the recipe by splitting the batter in half and adding chopped-up dried cherries to one half and chocolate chips to the other. They were both great but I prefer the cookies with the dried cherries.
Sean and I picked me up after work and after running an errand or two, we headed to Famous Sam's for a couple of homemade burgers and fries. I forgot to take photos. I was really, really hungry and the pre-Olympics opening ceremonies were on TV in the restaurant. Sean and I headed back to his place and watched almost two hours of the opening ceremonies with his mom until we all gave up and then Sean and I watched the first two episodes of Weeds season five. I sipped on a mug of tea and ate two out of three of the following:
There was also a chocolate pretzel stick that was eating but I'll leave that up to your imagination.

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Now it's time for me to get back to watching the Olympics coverage! Oh by the way, what the hell is up with the coverage on CTV?? BRING BACK THE OLYMPICS ON CBC!! And where the heck are the mascots?!