I am pondering putting in an order to Mighty Leaf for some more luxury tea. I can’t really afford it this month, but maybe next month.

And I’m noticing that they always have free shipping for orders over $75, so if anyone in the area wants to join in the order, that’d be awesome, too.

But here’s what I’m pondering while I’m not actually buying yet:

one from Column A: (Sexy Dessert-type Black teas that I’ll drink any ole time)
Celebration
Pear Caramel
Orchid Oolong (and don’t let the Oolong part fool you, this is a yummy dark tea)

and one from Column B: (Warm and Toasty Green teas full of flavour)
Hojicha (on sale right now, if I buy 100)
Kyoto Rice

My mother would go in on the order by buying their Darjeeling, but while it’s a very wonderful tea I’m not sure it’s wonderful enough for the price. Other places do very well at your standard black teas.

Oh, and remember when I was pimping the olive oil people? Alejandro & Martin? Well I liked their oil, but I got an email saying that they are probably going out of business. The only discount is off shipping if you spend over $250 (HA!), but I did go and pick up a couple 100mL bottles before they completely ran out.

Tags: tea

So yesterday I was feeling antsy and a little achy, so I went for a leisurely three hour walk.

I bought some chocolate bars, popped into DiBruno brothers for some gooey cheese and a loaf of bread to eat it with, stopped in Williams Sonoma and registered for a free class on cocktail party tips (and ate yummy free samples), and then got some tea at Last Drop (which no longer carries Mad Hatter’s Teaparty, which doesn’t seem otherwise to exist outside of Canada) and sat outside to drink it with my cheese and bread.

Then I happened across a nifty block of Pine Street with a whole row of cute little boutique shops – my favorite one is here. Then I was almost there and I hadn’t been in a while, so I went over to check out Passional (NWS) – they now have two stores! – one for clothing and corsetry and a whole separate two-story shop with the sex toys and art gallery.

And then today, I went to the gym, too.

At work, however, I found out that I wasn’t supposed to work on Friday. It was a holiday and no one told me. However, my boss was there, too, and she saw me there. So I am going to get paid (overtime?) for showing up. Woo HOOO!

Also, I just tasted the chocolate I bought – Vosges’ macha tea dark milk chocolate – I am so happy – This stuff is incredible. It’s not astringent at all, just smooth and soothing.

Tags: cheese, chocolate, tea

I think I’ll make mushroom risotto for dinner tonight – so the big question is whether I want to stick with what I know’ll be tasty or whether I want to try to add bacon and a tiny bit of maple syrup to change things up a bit.

I’m not usually a fan of maple syrup, but I think the bacon I usually use (for breakfast and stuff, I haven’t tried it in risotto yet) will taste… classier… with a bit of syrup drizzled about.

ETA: a drizzle of maple syrup worked even better than I expected.

Tags: bacon, risotto

this place in chinatown has all you can eat sushi… I think for $22, but I didn’t write that down.

According to the woman on the phone (who was busy and might be wrong), it is available Mon-Thurs 11:30am – 10:30pm and Fridays 11:30am – 11:30pm.

I work 1-9pm. So I could either go very early or very late – or on a day I am off.

Would anyone else be interested in:

• Thursday, November 22 (Yes, it’s Thanksgiving, but I’ve only got the one day off, so I don’t have anything more elaborate planned)
• Monday, December 24
• Tuesday, December 25th (if they are open)
• Thursday, December 27th

And, no, I have no idea how good the sushi is. I’ve never eaten there before, either.

[redacted] – you should tell me whether any of these meals pleases you, or whether there should also be random (KFC-type) food planned for Sunday!

food I have
Produce
parsley
thyme
green papaya (1/2)
carrots
roasted red pepper
cucumber and onion salad
lots of potatoes
1 perfect feeling avocado

meat
1/2 chicken (dark meat only left)
leftover beef roast
eel!
salmon
duck stock
and I am going to buy a bottom round roast because they’re on sale

dairy
plain yogurt
half & half
cream cheese
sliced cheese nicked from reception at work

bread
2 1/2 onion rolls
tortillas
1-2 cups of leftover saffron basmati rice

meals
Thursday, November 15
salmon will probably go off first, so I’ll have that tonight!
Maybe with mashed potatoes

Friday
breakfast – eel over rice
dinner – D&D munchies
(buy an apple and make more chicken/papaya curry (based vaguely on this recipe) to freeze with the basmati rice)

Saturday
stuffing my face on free food?
quesadillas with avocado, red pepper, and any leftover seafood
(Make chili)
(boil stock and put in fresh container)

Sunday
Chili?
(buy sour cream)
(Make some kind of other soup to use up the stock?)

That leaves me with an unused roast of beef – the kind you need to make in thin slices… maybe stroganoff

Tags: chicken, papaya, salmon

So I have occasional dates with a chef. It’s lovely.

And he brought gifts! I might have mentioned that I would occasionally like flowers, but this was better – he brought me salmon and eel and cucumber salad. That’s true romance.

Then he cooked the salmon for me (powdered garlic and ginger, 5 spice powder, ground nutmeg, and cracked brown mustard on the fish cooked in just a little olive and sesame oil, deglazed with rice vinegar and soy sauce, with sticky rice on the side), and we had some islay scotch to go with.

So usually I try to cook for him, instead of the other way around, because there’s less fun in doing for your down time what you do for work. But every now and then, it’s rather fun – and he’s generous about it.

Tags: salmon

Man am I grumpy today.

I went to put the cover I bought to let the wicker couch I got for free survive the winter, and it didn’t quite fit. With the little wicker legs sticking out, there is a much greater chance of it (a)not surviving or (b)getting stolen. But I can’t bring myself to buy a chain for it because there’s nothing I can think of to chain it to that I am not willing to have damaged in an attempt to steal the couch.

However, while I was wrestling with the couch, I noticed that the last time the grass had been mowed, they had also mowed flat my blackberry brambles. It’s not like it wasn’t the fucking neighborhood drunk doing the mowing – and I know he knows that those are my fucking blackberries! If he thought he was pruning them for the winter, he could have just asked and I would have told him that they aren’t going to produce a single fucking blackberry until they can grow for *two* years. Fucker. And it’s not like he even bothered to mow down the *weeds* in the yard, either. If I’d noticed before that he’d done that, I wouldn’t have loaned his girlfriend (the former neighborhood cat lady) $5 this week.

Also, scheduling will not work for this weekend. Nothing. There are 15 things I could do, and none of them want to work work with the others. Also, I want a weekend off. Though it I have a weekend off, there are projects at home I need to work on that I have been very successfully procrastinating. And that’s not buddies a weekend off at all.

I have a craving for steak, and yet I seem to be incapable of actually getting around to ordering it anywhere other than this one restaurant.

Or maybe I should just start taking iron supplements again. 🙂

Tags: beef

Weight Watchers is coming to campus. They are having meetings every Tuesday – at a time (11:30am – 12:30pm) I can actually attend, even with my crazy work schedule. Starting November 13th. The initial sign up is less than half price, if you start either of the first two meetings, and then each week is $14 after that.

• Can I afford it? Yes, but I could be putting that money toward credit card debt
• I’ve done Weight Watchers before… and I thought it was one of the more sensible diets out there but
  • I wasn’t invested in being thin (beyond a certain weight, I started feeling cold and getting sick a little more frequently)
  • I got tired of obsessing over food quite that much
• My household isn’t set up for it
  • I often pick up leftovers from my mother that aren’t going to be measured or made in a particular way
  • I guess I could still make large meals and save portions, but it’d call for a lot of tracking and calculating
  • there are, less with Weight Watchers than other programs, a lot of cheats to coming to the right amounts that require buying pre-packaged stuff (especially WW’s mysteriously light bread product), and I’ve been moving farther and farther away from artificial food products. It used to be that I couldn’t tell much difference between regular sour cream and diet sour cream – but now I can spot the carageenan and other texturizing agents right away, so I’d be doing more cutting things out than substituting 🙁