Too Many Mushrooms.

#MondayMealPlan

After overestimating the amount of food needed for the cast barbecue on Friday night, we were left with an abundance of portabella mushrooms. While I don't detest mushrooms, I don't love them. They are better eaten when I can disguise them in things, so this weeks meal plan is all about using up mushrooms.

Monday - Mixed Mushroom Soup - Rob cooked tonight, so I could go hang out with the beautiful Loukia at The Beauty Room and have my nails painted. Stay tuned for that update, its amazing!

Tuesday - Spaghetti and Garden Fresh Pasta Sauce - Rob's mom suggested a good way to use up the mushrooms would be to make them into pasta sauce. Since we are about to come into a lot of tomatoes, it seemed like a good plan to get on top of them now. I picked as many as I could find and tossed them in with zucchini, some of my baby eggplants, onion, my amazing green peppers that my teeny tiny pepper plant produced, garlic and a bunch of the leftover mushrooms and made two jars and another glad container of pasta sauce! Rob is away two nights this week, so pasta and pasta sauce make for an easy dinner for me. Along with the incredible bread Shima from the Smalltown cast traded me in return for fig jam.

Wednesday - Spaghetti and Garden Fresh Pasta Sauce  - More of the same, with a side of Gossip Girl. My nights are finally my own again and Amber and I are in serious girl time withdrawal.

Thursday - Sidney Street Market - One of my very favourite things about Victoria in summer are all of the markets. I think I've talked a little about the Moss Street Market on Saturdays, where we get lots of produce and our sea salts... and another favourite is the Sidney Street Market out in Rob's hometown. It runs every single Thursday night in the summer time and is several blocks long, filled with everything you can imagine, carnival food, artisan jewelry, home made kids toys, spices, pies and produce, live music. This is its last week, so Rob and hope to meet out there (if he is in from the ferry from Vancouver in time) for some greasy food and maybe some Saskatchewan Christmas gift shopping.

Friday - Barbecue - A wildcard, we have frozen hot dogs, turkey dogs, beef burger, chicken burgers and kebobs, mostly leftovers from our barbecue, so whatever I pull out first Thursday night I guess. This will be Rob and I's first Friday night in in I don't know how long!

Saturday - Fish on 5th - Samantha is coming! Samantha is coming! We have an unexpected much anticipated visit from our little Sam! In honour of this we will take her directly off her flight into Sidney for my 2nd favourite fish and chips in town, Fish on 5th. Only second to Red Fish Blue Fish downtown. Fish on 5th is open later and closer to the airport. Also indoors, so after Red Fish Blue Fish shuts down for the winter (in the summer months you can sit on the pier and eat your fish and chips while watching the float planes take off... Oh Victoria, I love you so) Fish on 5th becomes our regular fish and chips.

And once Samantha is here, this girl is taking some much needed time off ... to can all of those tomatoes! Stay tuned for tomato everything! Let me know if you have any amazing suggestions!

Swap Into Spring Update

This update didn't happen last night.

Either did the Pho Soup. After all all that touting about meal plans.

Instead I opted for some quality best friend time. Have I mentioned that Amber (who has been my best friend and on and off again roommate since we were 12 years old. Including the 3 years of high school I spent living with her family and 2 of which we shared a bedroom) has moved to Victoria and rented out our basement suite?

It's pretty awesome.
It's pretty much the most awesome thing ever.

Last night we went out shopping for a bit right after I was done work. Our main goal was Michaels, but we took a long time getting distracted by multi-vitamins and apricot scrubs and thigh high stockings before we got there.

And then we bought the prettiest yarn (I wish I had taken a picture of it to post here!) for me to knit us some head/ear warmers for going on our walks along the Gorge. While it may not be that cold here in Victoria, the wind can still make your ears hurt.

By the time we got home it was 8 PM and the thought of still baking my chicken for Pho Soup was unbearable (normally I would have had this done ahead of time as well, but I forgot on Sunday). So I threw the chicken in the oven to have later this week, made a batch of rice to have with leftover curry for lunches at work and Amber made me supper in her place.
See. Pretty much the most awesome thing ever.

And then when my chicken was safely out of the oven we watched two episodes of Gossip Girl. We thought we would pick a show that would bring us together, like Dawson's Creek did in high school, and make us feel like teenagers again. Teenagers that disapprove of all of this bad behaviour! Gossip Girl has been a really great pick and has us squealing like 15 year olds and yelling at all of the characters on the screen every night that Rob has gone out of town.
(Have I mentioned how awesome this arrangement is yet?)

This has not been a Swap into Spring update at all... whoops.

Here it is.
First, my amazing new dress!

I had some reservations about this dress at the swap. It is a bit on the snug side... I am sucking in a lot in this picture so that no one mistakenly thought I was announcing a baby Howland. But once I had it on on Saturday I was so beyond thrilled with it. The fabric has some give so it didn't feel snug at all after having it on for a while, and its a soft cozy sort of fabric, so I didn't even really feel like I was wearing a dress.

Look at all that pretty lace.

It goes perfectly with my feather earrings.

I wore it out to see Rob's little cousin Alana in her middle school production of Annie, that was out of this world! Two and a half hours went by and I almost forgot that they were kids on stage! Incredible. What a fun night out. They had it at the McPherson Playhouse, this gorgeous old playhouse in town and had 118 kids on stage, and another 100 backstage. We were at the closing night performance so the Dirctor came out to say thank you and gave a speech about how importnat theatre is for kids and parents to be involved in. I was so choked up!

 

The last two items are pretty casual, and pretty me. Just a nice t-shirt to lounge around in and...

 Yes. Another black sweater. You never know right?