Lentil Soup

I was bored with all my food options yesterday, so I decided to make soup. I had all the ingredients for soup here *BONUS* and so off on another soup making adventure!

This was the recipe that I used and modified a little:

3 tbs. olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 tbs. tomato paste
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 to 1 1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
3-4 cups quart chicken or vegetable broth
1 cup red lentils
1 large carrot, diced (at least 1 cup) --- I used 2 carrots
2-3 tbs lemon juice
chopped fresh cilantro and plain yogurt to top (optional) --- I only had yogurt

(I also threw in 2 stalks of celery)

In a medium sized pot, sauté onion, carrots, celery and garlic in olive oil on medium high heat until golden, about five minutes.

Stir in tomato paste, cumin, black pepper and sauté another five minutes.

Add 3 cups broth if you prefer a chunky soup, 4 cups for a thinner version. Add lentils. Bring to low simmer and cook, uncovered, stirring occasionally until the lentils and carrot are soft (about 20-25 minutes).

Blend soup, using an immersion blender (first time I used it and it was great!) or in a countertop blender. You can choose to blend completely for a smooth and supple soup, or leave some texture if you’d like it a bit chunky. Both are good.

Add lemon juice. I like this soup quite lemony and use somewhere between 2 and 3 tbs. You may want to stop at 2 tbs.

Add salt. Depending on the salt content of your stock, you may want more or less salt. Start with 1/2 teaspoon and work your way to where you like it. I always use at least 1 tsp, sometimes more.

Serve topped with yogurt and chopped cilantro, if desired. It’s also delicious without any topping.

I loved it, tasted great, got to eat veggies and the lentils that would otherwise just sit there in the back of the cupboard.



This I thought I'd post cause it was kinda cute. This is what the bird traveled in on the way to the bird hospital. Apparently people use "bird incubators" which is just fancy talk for a small hard plastic insulated box with a handle and no perch (so they don't fall off). PFFT to that! I had a scarf and fleece blanket that worked fine. Tony wants a bird incubator for incase we ever have to transport the bird again...like around Christmas :P oh Tony...he loves his bird so much.

My new love is...

Pears! Oh my goodness either I bought the tastiest pears, or I am crazy. I bought 2, for lunches for Tony and I and I was so hungry when I left the store that I scarfed one down so fast, I don't think it made it past a block or 2. So tempted to eat the other on the way, but I refrained and in the end ate it at home. Tony will never know what he missed out on.

I gotta say, I will never like canned pears again cause these were delicious! Must get some more. I am sure the baby enjoys them and their vitamins and antioxidants.



See, its almost half way done and I was just sitting down to write this.

New Moon Party!

Only waited for forever for this movie to come out. I didn't expect it to be spectacular or anything, but it was way better than the first one. This is us waiting in line at the theater. We were there early and got awesome seats. From left to right, we have Kathryn, Beth, Aria and Mikaela.


They weren't paying attention, but I liked that Aria was laughing. Its an iphone so its a crappy ish camera.


What do you do when you are bored in a line up? Make art! I had the genius idea to deform the "famous" magazine for fun. Taylor Lautner was not harmed in the deforming of this magazine lol.


Oh fun times. Beth and Kathryn were more about putting speech bubbles throughout the thing instead. We even displayed our art in the magazine rack, but some girl moved a good one in front of it. At least she didn't throw it out.

After the movie we went back to my house for cake and pop and food. We had mini pizzas that Mikaela made the dough for. Tasty food!

Update on the bird:

He is doing well. He was prescribed liver tonic and is a poop machine again and super happy all the time. He loves showers and the lose change that he finds on our desks. Nickels are his favourites.

sick bird :(

The bird is sick :( He's been very quiet all morning which is his usual time to be super happy and energetic. Hes not flying around a lot and sits in the cage by the cuttle bone. Tony noticed him straining and fluffing up but not pooping. He did a small poop but had to shake his tail to get it going. poor thing.

So unusual for the bird who is a little poop machine. I am gonna watch him today and if things don't get better I might be taking him to the Night Owl Bird Hospital. For a tiny budgie it seems a little much, but Tony would be crushed if this bird died. I was looking up things about constipated budgies and all I could find is to feed them veggies (which our bird wont touch) or put a tiny amount of apple cider vinegar in his water. I am a little too nervous about doing that as I don't want to be the one to kill the bird.

Oh bird, why couldn't you get sick after payday. We are both worried about him. Budgies hide their sickness as a natural instinct so that they dont seem weak in their flock. Well once they show signs of sickness they are usually very sick. We both know this.

:( :( :( :(

Why hello there baby!

I am not feeling so different, it doesn't look like to me that a baby is in there. Tony shakes my tummy a little when I wake up and tells the baby to wake up. Sometimes he does it at random during the day.

Baby is 15 weeks exactly today. Yay baby! Yay no more sickness, although my morning sickness wasn't terrible (compared to what I've heard about), just felt queezy and the pre-natal vitamins made me puke. Taking the vitamins before bed has helped and so I feel great.

I really want to find out what this baby is, but right now its a little expensive for us. We also don't get to find out until after Disneyland. This means it cant really be my Christmas present. :( Tony doesn't really want to find out because he told me that its not like we can change it at all. The curiosity about this baby is driving me crazy! I don't need a surprise, just need to know lol.

Corn potato chowder soup recipe

Now I kinda did this with vague instructions from my mother, but this how I made the soup and you shall also need to tweak this a bit:

Ingredients:

3 carrots
3 celery stalks
2-3 potatoes
1 onion
1 can creamed corn (use frozen or whatever works for you) if you like corn, maybe 2 cans of corn or creamed corn
6 cups vegetable or chicken stock or water
2 cups milk
flour
1tbsp olive oil (optional)
salt and pepper
thyme

So chop all your veggies. I had my pot on med heat and then added the olive oil and veggies to cook a bit.

Then I added the veggie stock and 1 package of chicken bullion, potatoes and corn. Thyme, Salt and pepper now!
Once the potatoes were all tender, I whisked the milk and flour and then strained it while it was going into the soup to avoid the icky lumps. Depending on if your mixture is thick or not, you may want to add more flour or less. I added 1/2 of flour to the milk.

Once things get thick, I tasted it I added more salt and pepper (I like soup peppery).

Done!


In other news, today was the first day the bird bathed in the sink. He was in the bathroom with me while I was doing my hair and I noticed that he kept peering into the sink, and flying from one side of it to the other. He was too afraid to go in by himself. I helped him get down in there and turned on the water to just a dribble. He really enjoyed drinking from the stream of water and then he got all excited about getting wet. He got right under the stream and fluffed his feathers up like a big fluffy ball and wiggled around. He likes to get his chest wet, that is why he looks like hes falling in one of the pictures.






This last one is where he was wiggling around on his chest with his wings all open. He really had a good time. When he came out he landed on my shoulder and did what all animals do after getting wet, he fluffed up and got my face and neck all wet with wet bird. He stayed fluffy and has been very happy listening to the postal service with me.

blustery day

Last night was bad. I woke up several times due to the crazy wind. Usually we keep our bedroom window open a crack cause its just too warm otherwise. Well, I woke up with a start cause the blinds and curtains were just blowing in our room and it turns out that the wind blew our window wide open.

Only a couple hours later I was awake again thinking it was just way too cold out. Window was fixed, but all the blankets were on Tony and hanging off his side of the bed. I woke him up a little by shaking all the blankets off him and straightened them out. He doesn't remember it, but he did look apologetic seeing me all angry. On the up side, I got to sleep in until he put the bird on my hand. Its pretty startling when you wake up to tiny claws holding on to you. I almost sent him flying.

So today was a day to clean up a bit, Aria and Mikaela are coming over this Saturday for a sleepover party thing :) Also today was a good day for soup. This weather always reminds me of having soup. When I lived at home and my momma would make soup I would eat it all day long, for snacks, for dinner, for breakfast. My favourite soup is potato corn chowder.



I have had 2 smallish cups of it so far. Hopefully it lasts the week (but I doubt it).

soomo (not sumo)

is driving me crazy! Its a fake name of a fake energy drink and we are supposed to do designs for it. Keep in mind that its not about sumo wrestlers. That took a while to get out of my head. Its apparently a natural energy drink with electrolytes in it.



I dont feel creative and yet I have to crank out more stuff for it. Le sigh. Maybe I need to get away from the disaster area that is my desk and go have a coffee (or tea), or peppermint mocha! :O I feel a field trip coming on!



Anyways, this is the stuff I am doing for school, I will have my other art stuff from my other class up next.



These kind of remind me of the I spy books only less clutter than that. Some days it feels like that much clutter. I wonder why I put the remote on my desk.

should never run with scissors (or be around sharp objects)

I've done it again! I had a great idea for Christmas crafty things and it involved the use of my carving tool and linoleum. I know that you aren't supposed to cut towards yourself. I've made the mistake of cutting my finger before with the same tool and it smarts. Well...it happened again.

I don't think my brain was on, or had even remembered the last time, but I was doing my thing and wanted to get a small piece out of the way, and had to hold the linoleum very still to make it a straight cut. With much force to make a clean cut, I slipped and nailed my middle finger (literally hit the nail so that's where the cut stopped, just under the nail). Oh my goodness that smarted! My brain remembered to hold my cut above my heart (I had it above my head to avoid seeing the blood). Oh the pain! The cut is curved like a "U" shape that scoops my skin under the nail kinda. I don't want to take off the band-aid to take a picture of it cause it was gross looking.

I almost thought I would need stitches, or that they would just pull that skin off. Neither of those appealed to me, so the bleeding stopped and on went 2-3 band-aids for maximum protection.

It takes twice as long to type now and hurts when I use that finger. This is what I was doing when my finger got sliced:



On another note, Tony came home and I got a picture of him, he had others, but this was the best one.

Cozy!

These are my new fingerless gloves from my friend Kelsey. They are tres awesome! They are elbow length and keep me warm when I am at the computer. Typing with regular gloves just didn't work out.


They are a tweed colour and they make me want to learn how to knit. Maybe she can teach me...hmmmm :) I shall get on making her a robot butter dish I think.

its fall!

I am trying to go on walks a lot more these days. Instead of walking to the bus right at the Emily Carr, I walk to the next one at 5th ave . So anyways, I don't know if I've posted a photo of the carpet in the apartment building, but here it is in all its glory!

Thankfully its not in my house. Instead I get carpet that has cigarette burns on it and is so wrecked.

This is the street that I live on. I think the little smart car is cute. I tried not to include too much of the mushy leaves that are on the street. Yuck!

On my way to my destination I always pass this place. They used to just serve very American diner food. Now they serve sushi. *gag*

My tree infront is almost bare. Poor tree.

This is part of the giant holly like tree near our house. I think I am going to secretly take some and decorate with it at Christmas.


More leaves on almost bare trees. I really wanted to get a shot of a super huge plane flying by, but the sun was interfering.


Ahh finally my destination! Its Christmas at Starbucks! YAY! Here baby, have some caffeine for today. Don't worry, its only a tall size.