#maevaflavestaycation

Do yourself a favour and take a staycation if you can.

My girlfriend K. is nearly home (Saturday) from a two-week trip to India. We're not likely taking a big trip this year together, so I've got all this vacation time to use. Since she's away having a blast and experiencing new things, and life is just "same old, same old" for me, I thought, why not take advantage of this time by myself? Why not take 5 days off work and just be here? Here in my apartment, here in my city (Waterloo), here in my province (Ontario), etc. So I did! Today is the fifth day of my staycation, I'm returning to work tomorrow, and I have enjoyed this time off to the max!

Here's what I've gotten up to:

• Many sleep-ins (on my first day off, I slept in until 10:30!!!)
• Much leisure time spent on my computer -- catching up on my personal email inbox, doing some of my volunteer board work, buffering, and I even "went on a retreat" and spent two hours refocusing my professional blog (analyzing traffic, what works, what doesn't, etc.)
• Hanging out with friends and family!
• Eating -- pizza, Thai, panzerotti, Pakistani, sushi, burrito, sub, and more!
• Tasks around the apartment -- laundry, cleaning, organizing, and even little projects like I painted a chalkboard wall in the apartment and another project that I'll reveal later (I want to surprise Kate!)

New chalkboard wall in my apartment!

• Celebrated my friend W's birthday!!! -- first visit to Lahore Tikka House, trampolining at Skyzone, and more time spent with W. & friends
• Gym -- I've had four solid gym visits over the course of the staycation, including an awesome Sunday morning Body Pump class with my sister
• Arts & culture -- I saw Die Walküre at the Canadian Opera Company by myself on Sunday. It was nearly five hours of intense performance and gorgeous singing. I'm a regular opera goer, but still a rookie, so I was a bit apprehensive about a 5-hour opera. I shouldn't have been. I was totally enchanted! I also saw a movie, Birdman, yesterday at Princess Cinemas in Waterloo. I had wanted to see it anyway, but once it won the Oscar, I knew I had to. It was captivating! What a unique film; the way it was filmed, the acting, the meta-ness, the sort of heightened reality... something totally new. I loved it!
• Car wash -- bumper to bumper. This was so incredibly satisfying! My car looks brand new!
• Cooking -- I went for a big grocery shop on Monday night and then yesterday made a dish that yields ten servings!!! I even went out and bought new lunch containers, and then I divided the dish (lentil chili) into its servings and currently have eight (!!!) servings in the freezer ready for next week's lunches (meaning when K's home, I can devote time to being with her rather than cooking for the week ahead!). I also bought the ingredients for a second meal which I'll hopefully cook today!

That's mostly it! Sleep, leisure time, seeing friends, eating, cooking, working out, doing tasks, taking in performances... It sounds simple, but rejuvenated may not be strong enough a word. 

If you get the chance, do it! Now... back to my final 21 hours of staycation!

Broth Talk

I wanna preface this post by saying that I in no way think of myself as some expert chef. However, I cook a lot, I love to cook, I'm getting pretty good at it, and I make a point of learning how to cook better. Some of my learning happens by reading recipes online, cookbooks, and finding tips on how to cook certain things (better). Some of my learning happens by watching the Food Network, or watching friends as they cook, trying to pick up tips in that way. However, my best learning happens through my own practice; good ol' trial and error.

My latest and favourite discovery involves oil. I love cooking with oil, and of course it's a crucial element to a great number of meals. However, the more vegetables (or whatever) you cook, sometimes the more oil you need. And that is an issue! For example, lately (probably once a week) I've been making my interpretation of Chinese food; a sort of improvised vegetarian chow mein dish. I don't know how authentic it is, but it's tasty and seems like Chinese food to me! At the very least it's Chinese-inspired. Anyway, I cook the vegetables in steps, and often have to add more oil with each addition. Then come the noodles which I boil, drain, mix in soy sauce and sesame oil, and then fry in oil for a few minutes. OIL, OIL, OIL!!! The dish ends up well-cooked and delicious, but very oily. Not good.

So yesterday evening as I cooked this dish I was determined to eliminate the oiliness factor. What did I need? Another cooking liquid. What did I use? Vegetable broth.  It keeps the wok moist and gives the vegetables the liquid they need, but doesn't oil them up and absorbs really quickly. It really seemed to solve my problem, and I'm using it in other dishes, too.

Now the question is, is it legit? For those of you out there who cook, is this effective in the real cooking world?


Currently reading... Quiet by Susan Cain
Posts to come... long overdue salute to John Lennon, my overview of all contestants on "RuPaul's Drag Race" to date, and a Christmas post

My 5 Favourite Foods

My friends and I had an impromptu session last week of naming our five favourite foods.


Here are mine:

1. Thai red beef curry (there are so many versions that I love, but a memorable one comes from Thai Viet Restaurant in Waterloo)
2. Guacamole (the best I've ever had [including Mexico City guacs] is from Frida on Eglinton West)
3. Seafood pasta (Linguini di Mari from John's Italian Caffe in Baldwin Village & Spaghetti Positano from Roberto's [Yonge-Lawrence area], for example)
4. Sushi from Niko Niko in Waterloo - sushi on its own is great and I have other preferred places, but nothing beats Niko
5. The last food took some careful thought and deliberation, but I landed on something I make regularly myself: peeli daal.  My peeli daal - or should I say, my friend Waleed's peeli daal, a recipe which he passed on to me - is simple, fresh, delicious, and has become a total comfort food.

Bon appetit!!!