Real Love 2

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Real love is sending cute facebook love notes and then being too excited for the other person to get them...so calling to say "umm check your facebook"

Pad Thai

Pad Thai

Sauce (mix all ingredients together in small bowl and set aside)

6 tbsp Brown Sugar
2-4 tbsp chili garlic sauce
2 tsp soya sauce
2 tbsp oyster sauce
6 tbsp rice vinegar
2 tbsp ketchup


Pad Thai

1 cup raw chicken breast sliced on the diagonal
10-20 shrimps (raw or cooked) cut them in half
2 eggs *I feel these are optional
14oz dry thai rice stick noodles
175g chopped extra firm tofu
4 tbsp cooking oil
1 tsp minced garlic
½ cup chopped green onions or chives
1 red pepper sliced in strips and cut in half
1 yellow pepper sliced in strips and cut in half
1/3 cup chopped coriander
2 cups bean sprouts
½ cup ground peanuts
1 lime (cut in wedges)
¼ tsp fish sauce
½ tsp soya sauce

**Soak noodles for at least 30mins in lukewarm water
**Mix fish sauce with chicken and let sit while noodles are soaking

Put 2 tbsp of oil in wok and heat using medium high temperature.
Add tofu together with Soya sauce, reduce heat and cook 2-3 mins each side
Increase heat to medium, add garlic and cook til lightly browned
Add chicken. When chicken is cooked, add shrimp.
Add remaining 2 tbsp of oil. Add eggs and stir.
Drain water from noodles
Add half the sauce to ingredients in wok, add half the noodles and stir fry.
Add second half of sauce and noodles to wok, continue to stir fry mixing well.
Cover for 2 mins. Remove lid and stir fry until noodles are soft.
Add peppers, green onions, coriander and 1 cup of the bean sprouts.
Stir for a minute and remove from heat.
Serve with remaining bean sprouts, lime and peanuts. Garnish with green onion and peanuts.

Pretty Good little Sunday

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Mum and I got up early and just sat on the couch discussing life love and the pursuit of happiness. Before I knew it it was 11am, and I had promised my grandma I would come to her house and start going through my grandpa's things. She said she just can't bare to see her husbands life reduced to "stuff" but she just needs things packed away. It is just too raw for her. 61 years together and suddenly you become single again. She has been part of Joan and John essentially all her life, it is so sad to see her struggle with who she is as herself. Mum and I made piles to take to the community outreach, piles to throw out and piles of things we want to keep. I ended up with a brown suede fedora, a book of quotes and his old burberry umbrella. The umbrella is so old that it appears it might disintigrate at the first sign of rain, but it just screams "Grandpa" to me and I love it. We spent a few hours immersed in his things, which was both sad and funny. He kept some of the strangest things over the years. I found notes I had tucked in his pocket when I was 10 years old. Seeing what was important enough for someone to keep for 18+ years really says so much about a person. I have always known he loved me, but I just felt such a sense of being loved today, it really meant a lot.

A week of living well

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I decided that this week off I will live well. Get my life and my positive thoughts back on track if you will. I started off this morning by nearly killing myself on the elliptical machine at the gym. Watching the timer count down for 30mins was brutal, but I feel incredible now. I came home and hung out in my Mums phenomenal shower for a while...we have nowhere near this water pressure in Toronto. I am heading into town shortly to catch up with some friends and run some errands. Healthy dinner tonight, I already planned the recipes. Should I keep my act together in Toronto like this healthy eating will be much easier. The trick is planning ahead, something I never seem to do. Tonight it is BBQ salmon with stir fried Kale. I will post recipes if it works out how I want it to. As I said yesterday, spring is here and with it is my hope to bust a move, get my life in gear and keep moving towards being happier and healthier.

Real Love #1

Real love is staying up until 4am helping your girlfriend build a condo model out of foam core.

Hope Springs Eternal

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It is a gorgeous day in Toronto. A no coat needed, tempted to break out my birkenstocks kind of day. G and I are driving up north later on this afternoon and I just can't wait to have the windows down in the truck while we cruise.

I feel as though these days that promise that summer is on it's way really do cause such joy in me. I am feeling more lifted than I have in ages and it is such a needed emotion. I think that I really do get affected by the dumpy Ontario winters and the stress that this past season brought along with it. I am trying to focus on the future life wise as well as season wise and get through it bit by bit.

I am not sure why, but lately I have felt so much more in love with G. I get giddy when we are together and I actually miss him when we are apart. Almost pathetic as sometimes we are only apart for 8 hours while we are in classes. I think that sometimes I feel as if this relationship can't be real. Surely I do not deserve to be this happy. Why is that? I guess cause I used to date total assholes and I just don't realize if I made better choices when I was younger, I would have been happy then too. It's just that as we move further and further into our relationship, meshing our lives and our personal effects into one, I panic at how easily it could all disappear. I think once realizing that I can actually be this happy in myself and in a relationship, I see just how much I have to lose. Part of me wants to hold back, just a little so that if things don't work out I would have some shred of self left, but I just don't know how. And it is literally ridiculous writing this as I know he is just as batshit crazy for me as I am for him, but years of self doubt are hard to break free from.

My get up and go got up and went somewhere

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I finished term 2 yesterday...and now I have a week off before term 3! No exciting plans, some of my fellow students are going on trips and I would be lying if I said I wasn't jealous. Florida, Dominican Republic and Germany. I on the other hand am going to Meaford. I can't complain too much cause I am actually looking forward to spending some time with my Mum. We are going to drink red wine, scrapbook and read lots. Don't we sound like party animals? It feels SO good to be finished school and one incremement closer to graduation. I decided that I would just hang out around the house today run some errands and clean up (I currently am surrounded by a flury of foam core) G is very supportive about school and how much crap I have, but I wanted to surprise him when he got home from class with a clean looking pad. However, it took all the energy I had to go pick up our photos and hit the pharmacy (we are out of toilet paper and shampoo) And now I am sitting on my couch blogging instead of tidying up. Oh the lazyness is just all encompassing.

I was just planning on listening to music and tidying up, but my Ipod seems to have crapped out. I am super annoyed by this as Emma just put tons of new music on it for me. As much as I love technology, I have to say that it can just be frustrating. G accidently deleted 2 years of music from my ipod on Valentines day and now that it has music on it again it doesn't work ahhhhhh.

Ok, this is me leaping off the couch and taking garbage down...here I gooooo...

Farewell to a great man

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My grandpa passed away on Saturday afternoon at age 86. Here he is last spring dancing a jig in celebration of his 60th wedding anniversary. (Note my Nan looking at him like he is crazy) This is how I will choose to remember him, smiling and being somewhat silly, not like the scared fragile confused man he became in the past few months. He had cancer which seemed to cause some dementia and watching his rapid decline lately has been heartbreaking.

Quite fortunately I have had minimal experience with death. My Dad passed away suddenly three years ago, but this is the first time I have had to watch someone suffer and waste away. The past few weeks we have been praying for him to go, so that he wasnt in pain anymore. But getting the call from my mum that he had died wasn't any easier. Expecting the end doesn't seem to lessen the blow. We have always been really close, and I can already feel the hole in my life that he has left. Grandpa I love you.

Sick gurl

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I have a wicked cold. Not the garden variety type but one that is totally kicking my ass. I am lightheaded, exhausted, can't swallow and just general all around sickyness. I just spent 15mins trying to sort out where to add a badge to the side bar of my blog, but my reading comprehension level seems to be down along with my immune system so I can't sort it out. I am blogging every day at Grace in Small things and I just dont get around to putting it up here as well. Homework tonight involves sketching out 25 chairs from the 20th century for a class tomorrow. No motivation whatsoever. I really just want to keep watching Nip/Tuck to try to catch up.