it's been busy

maybe cuz i'm having 9 ppl over for "dinner" tonight. i can't really call it dinner, because i'm not cooking a full meal, more like a hodge-podge of things i can put together without burning, overcooking, or poisoning ppl. on friday after work i went to superstore and shopped till i was ready to drop. every superstore is laid out exactly the same, but i still can never find what i need, so a quick shopping trip turns out to be an hour long :P

anywhoo, after my shopping foray, i came home and actually cooked a meal! i tried two recipes......tropical chicken (it's pretty much a sweet & sour dish) on rice and brocolli stir fried w/shallots. i've never bought shallots before....i knew they were like mini-onions, but i've never knowingly eaten them. pretty tasty. unfortunately i overcooked the brocolli because i didn't drain the water right away :P overall dinner was a success. of course when the recipe book says prep time 5 minutes, cook time 15 minutes, i need to double those times for myself. i don't know why, but i just can't seem to get things to work the same way.

so after dinner i got to relax with dawn, priscilla and leanna. we headed to cafe calabria (?) on commercial drive. it's in the e-book, ppl! that day i'd already had a tall marble mocha macciato and a double shot espresso, so i laid off the caffeine, and opted for a hot chocolate instead with a dark/white chocolate drizzled biscotti. so yum! it was good to catch up w/the girls. we don't get together as often as we used to, everyone's just so busy these days. while we were there, leanne saw a friend of hers that she went to the wine festival w/on thursday night. he was with someone else, and it was just so crazy to see him there because we weren't in their "hood", nor did they know each others plans for friday night. dawn was saying she was with a friend and they bumped into ppl at the wine festival, too. as sandra's blog has already mentioned, for a big city, vancouver is very small sometimes!

when i got home, i was ready for bed, but chris was having a dessert craving.....he usually doesn't crave sweet things, but he wanted a mocha ice cream pie. so we headed over to cactus club. he enjoyed the ice cream part, but he wasn't crazy about the mocha kahlua sauce. i had the szechuan green beans. now, i love these beans, but this night i was on fire! i couldn't finish them myself, so chris clutched up.

saturday i just spent the day running errands getting ready for tonight's "dinner". there's lots of ppl moving into our building this weekend.....i waited 5 minutes for an elevator. technically i could walk up/down, it's not that far, but again like cooking, i'm just plain lazy. we went w/chris' dad to milestones (we tried 3 different chinese restaurants, but they were all busy) for dinner. i ordered from the special menu......sirloin topped w/crab and shrimp and i replaced the potato option with curly fries and watercress dip. my meal came with a caesar salad to start. needless to say i was completely full at the end of my meal.

i'll update my blog tomorrow morning.....i'm trying a secret caesar salad dressing tonight. i can't wait to see how it turns out!