Showing posts with label baking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label baking. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Market, Mom, Merriment

I think my mom is awesome. (yes perhaps I'm a little biased, but seriously, it's true. She's pretty incredible). Anyway, I always love our dates together and she even joins me in my craziness from time to time.

Last week my mom and I went to the Canucks game together. We decided to go into Vancouver early to enjoy the Vancouver Christmas market. It was slightly lame. There was a nice choir singing. It was pouring rain. And the food was wonderful. We ate. And ate. And ate some more.


We had baked apples with fillings covered in vanilla sauce, crepes, apple cider, swiss raclette (soooo good), and bratwurst. A tasty time indeed!



For the swiss raclette, they melt the cheese and then scrape it onto a piece of bread for you, all wonderful and melty like. So tasty. And super healthy too. Always a bonus.


And we even met some friendly gingerbread people. And I got a little bit wet.


And then we cheered fiercely for the Canucks. And we won. In a shootout. Against Anaheim's good shooters. Wonderful.


Last week also held the annual cousin cookie baking. We call them hidden jam cookies, I'm sure they're called something far more sophisticated in German... but we like our nicely adapted name. Before eating it, we say "Where's the jam". We're cool like that.


Everyone is hard at work as these pictures show...





And then we tried making the stupid icing a million times. Actually only five times, but five is still a lot. And it failed. Last year was the only year we got it right.




Mmm. cookies. See, you can't even tell there's any jam inside.


So that is a tiny sneakpeak into my life of late. Full of family, friends and Christmas merriment!

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Rollkuchen, Relax, Rolling

What are good summer evenings made of?


Being with great friends and family...


Being creative when you don't have the exact tools you need...


Working hard for a great end product...


Relaxing on chairs on the lawn under the beautiful blue sky...


Enjoying fresh flowers...


Eating good food...


Laughing around a table together...


Listening to each other's stories...


Capturing smiles and giggles...


And eating a lot of rollkuchen of course...

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Bathroom, Boxes, Baking

Happy December 1st!! Crazy that it's is already December but also very exciting!! I write to you as I am house-trapped. Hehe.. I've had people in and out of the house working on stuff the last couple of days so I've needed to be home. The only problem is that most of the rooms are being worked on, leaving me nowhere to go!! hehe.. So that has been making me feel a little crazy. But since my living room is full of boxes, I have been organizing and throwing out and giving away a lot of stuff!!

Yesterday, a few girls from the youth group I help out with came over to bake cookies. Last month we went into Vancouver to hand out sandwiches to the homeless. So this Friday for their Christmas party, we're handing out sandwiches and cookies, so we figured we'd make some fun shaped sugar cookies to hand out. It was a lot of fun to bake together and our cookies looked pretty great! Except for the minor incident where one slipped off the pan, into the oven and lit on fire, everything went off without a hitch!! :)


In the upstairs of my house, I've had to move stuff around a lot in order for the different flooring to be put in. So last night I saved myself a few trips down the stairs and packed the bathroom full of stuff. When I glanced upstairs it made me laugh because of how full the bathroom is!! :) Soon it will be done and then I will have the arduous task of putting away all my books and everything else. But I will be setting up myself an office space, so I'm excited to finally have somewhere to do my work!! I'm contemplating organizing my books using the Dewey Decimal system but I figure that would take far too much time!! So maybe I'll wait for a rainy day!! Have a great day and there will be pictures of renos coming soon I promise! :)

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Cousins, Cookies, Crazies

Tonight I am reminded of what a great family I have. A bunch of my cousins and I got together tonight to make a traditional family/Mennonite cookie that our Omi always makes. So we all went to my cousins' house in Langley and enjoyed dinner together and let the cookie making begin. Desiree and I usually make jam jams, but we were making the hidden jams which we often try to make because a couple of our cousins love them. However, usually something goes wrong. Tonight everything went off without a hitch and they were probably the best ones we've ever made! And it was a great time-lots of fun with a big group of people!

My favorite part was when I phoned my Omi to get the recipe. Here's how our coversation went:
Me: Hey Omi! Can we get the recipe for the hidden jam cookies?
Omi: Okay, let me get it. Okay, you put in (okay i don't remember the exact amounts)... sugar, honey, syrup and flour. And that's it.
Me: Um.. Aren't there spices or some other ingredients in there?
Omi: Nope, that's everything.
Me: Are you sure?
Omi: Oh... wait, yes, there's eggs, cream, baking soda, cloves, cinnamon...

Hahaha.. we had a good laugh at that one. Luckily we got the entire recipe! I took a bunch of pictures but I have no idea where my camera cord is, so once my house is back in order after all the renos after the basement flood and such, I will upload them, so something to look forward to. But I figured I'd post since I'm back to posting now and all.. :) Have a great Sunday!

Monday, September 21, 2009

Baking, Burgers, Best

Chrystal and I are quite the homemakers. Actually it's nice because she likes baking and i like cooking. really it's the perfect match! So while Chrystal used the many rotten bananas that have been sitting in the freezer for a while to make muffins, I made turkey burgers! Boy were they tasty-sometimes i even surprise myself!

And here's a puzzle we made. We love making puzzles so it was fun to sit down one afternoon and work on this one. I like fun ones that aren't overly difficult!

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Cow, Castles, Cookies, Calgary, Carey, Cirque, Carry, Chips, Crazy

First off, my apologies for taking so long to put up a post!! Life has kind of been insane with school and everything else, so here is the longest post in the world. Okay, maybe not, but it has lots of pictures and such. And the longest title by far. haha..

Amy, Amy and I with our nacho mountion (spelled wrong as a joke...) These are two of my friends from Trinity. They both gradded last year and I miss them at school but am glad we can still hang out during other times!

My friend Jenn came to visit from Calgary last week. It was last minute but definitely a great surprise and we had a lot of fun. Jenn just moved back to Alberta from Quebec (where we met) and her dad is a truck driver so she caught a ride with him to BC. I met them both for breakfast on the Monday and then Jenn went over to the island and on Wednesday I picked her up and we hung out for a few days. On the Wednesday, Jenn came to class with me and then we went and watched Canucks cream the Flames, 6-1. Jenn's a Calgary fan so I had fun with that, and with Vancouver's win against them on Thursday, so we're all good. :) We went to Bridal Falls which was really fun and then we headed to Harrisson to see the international sandsculpture competition which was amazing as per usual! On the way we stopped at the BC Hazelnut Store to pick up some tasty treats. Mmmm.. here are some photos from our day together:


I kept looking for the bear but sadly did not see it. I had my camera ready! After taking a picture, I don't know what I would have done however!



I love all the moss on the trees up there. They have about 125 different varieties of moss in this one forest alone. Pretty cool.



Jenn and I by Bridal Falls


here are some of my favorite sculptures from this year



Baby being born
All of the feelings and emotions that are inside someone- the psychology student in me loved this one. :)





My new favorite motto :)

Friend Cow (Jenn's friend) came along for the trip too


I got hungry for steak.. poor Friend Cow



Last weekend, my mom, Bobbi and I headed to Las Vegas for the weekend which was a lot of fun. Didn't take a lot of pictures, but we went to a bunch of shows and did a lot of shopping! Right before going to Cirque de Soleil, we were getting somethign to eat and noticed people with large cameras. Bobbi asked them who they were waiting for and they said Mariah Carey.. so I pulled out my big camera and stood and waited with them. The photographers got ushered off and I was still waiting for my mom and Bobbi when a guy came up to me and said "Since you're taking photos for us tonight, you can come to our special section over here.." haha.. Here I was being deemed a press photographer! I opted out and went to Cirque instead which was amazing!! Before that we saw Danny Gans, a comedian/impressionist-very entertaining!

We bought a few shoes...

Night lights. had i been by myself and had a tripod i think i could have had a lot of fun with the lights

Inside the mall

Dinner at the Cheesecake Factory-mmmm!

The Eiffel Tower- we stayed in the Paris Hotel so enjoyed the view




Me with some shopping bags... on the way back we only had one checked suitcase for the three of us and 7 carry ons plus 3 purses!! hahaha..

We all bought matching shopping shoes!
The view from our hotel window
Friend Cow trying to help close the suitcase. Didn't help much..



This week, Kristen, Jocelyn, Krista and I had a three hour presentation in our human sexuality class. We did a presentation on trans-sexualism and it was super interesting. Generally people bring a snack and it can be related to your topic.. so we made sugar transgendered people. We thought we were pretty clever. Jocelyn did an amazing job of rolling them out and cutting them into their shapes.

I did an amazing job of decorating them. Later ones actually had hair and stuff too.


Matt saved the people from the fire... Actually they are dismembered, so I guess he just saved them from being burned?

Kristen was in charge of putting the cookies in and out of the oven.. Little did she realize that parchment paper slips off pans quite easily.. She got excited pulling a batch out and the parchment paper slid, plunging the little people to their deaths at the bottom of the oven. They broke into pieces and one lit on fire upon contact with the burner. Kristen stood there with her oven mitt yelling at the top of her lungs "FIRE, FIRE, FIRE!!!" By the sounds of it, you'd think there were huge flames engulfing us all. Thankfully it was just a little fire and I turned the oven off and it ended and Matt saved the rest by pulling them out of the oven. After a quick vacuum of the oven, we were ready to go once more! Sadly, the little people did not make it. Some had pretty bad burn marks. Sad day.

Our presentation thankfully went better than that one batch of cookies... We had two guest speakers come who are both trans-sexuals. So, the man was originally born with a female body and the woman was born with a male body. Super interesting to hear their stories and their experience with it. They answered any questions we had and it was really a good experience.

And now it's Thanksgiving long weekend and that is something I am thankful for! This past week, every night was up until 3am finishing a paper or a presentation due for the next day. never have i ever been in this situation before.. ahh.. I have been stressed and overloaded and kind of reached my breaking point this week where I couldn't go on and couldn't do anything more. Thankfully I'm on the up and up and have stepped back from everything and can view it from a better position. Extra sleep this weekend has probably helped as well!!
Friday night, Chrystal and I went to Cats the musical and it was fantastic! Great songs, great costumes and incredible choreography!! We both love musicals and are determined to see all the ones we can!!

Tomorrow I have two family gatherings. Brunch at ten with my dad's side of the fam and dinner at 5 with my mom's side! Should be a full day (ha-no pun intended...) Then back to the grind with school!!!

That's all for now! Congratulations if you actually made it to the end! :)