Eritrean Food

Today at work I got a nice surprise: Elsa, the custodian from Eritrea, made me some spicy lamb stew and injera!
While talking last week, I mentioned I like to make Eritrean/Ethiopian food, so she not only made me some to eat, but gave me a tub of homemade spice paste to use next time I cook.
I'm so excited to try it and I'm excited to actually know someone from that area of Africa.

Peanut butter and venison!

We've been eating primarily peanut butter and venison over here at the homestead.
And we are not complaining one bit :)

Several weeks ago I won 3 packs of ground venison in a raffle at a gardening convention on Vashon Island. Yahooo! Free food!

We've feasted on venison pasta sauce with mushrooms and gunsmoke chili (delicious!)

Also in the kitchen:
Adam baked peanut butter cookies. He doesn't like baking and I have rarely seen him as stressed as he became...the poor man.

And last but not least:
Peanut Butter "shakes"
Mmmm, I could eat them everyday! (And I actually do)
2 doublehanded handfulls of ice (3 cups?)
1 frozen banana (soon you will keep bags of frozen bananas in your freezer like I do...)
1 cup rice milk
1/2 cup or more chunky peanut butter
1/4 cup sweetener like maple syrup, agave, brown sugar, etc
ground Chia seeds - for fiber :) (I get free samples from a vitamin shop over here)

blend it up!

Here's me eating 2 peanut butter shakes before I decided to make them myself!

Vancouver 2010

Yes, we made a day trip to Vancouver to check out the Olympics!

It was great. The city was beautiful, clean, had free transportation, and was crowded in a good way. At night people were out walking around, stores were open late, all the restaurants had TV's showing the games, and there was free hot chocolate everywhere. It made me wish North American cities were more crowded all the time.

We left Redmond at 4:45 AM and crossed the US/Canadian border at 6:30 AM.
We parked at a park and ride in Richmond, a suburb of Vancouver and took the light rail into downtown.
Here were are on the light rail:

On the way, we talked to someone who recommended we check the downtown UBC bookstore for extra tickets sold at face value. We were in line at 7:30 AM and got tickets for the women's hockey playoff between China and Switzerland. Wahoo! :)

Nothing was open, since it was still early, so we went to the Granville Island Market. We found it to be much better than Pike's Market and wanted to eat ALL the food.

They even had mangosteen and longan (above).

Then we walked through Chinatown,

and finally came upon some Olympic Festivities

free Canadian candy
(I LOVE wine gums, and Mr. Big is Adam's new favorite candy bar...I think we ate 4!)

and Tim Horton's, a donut/fires/coffee/hamburger place. Here is Adam with the TimBits (donut holes)

and The Royal Canadian Mint

and we found the Olympic Cauldron

Then made our way to UBC for the Women's Hockey game!

Allez Suisse!
And they won the match.
Then we rode the bus back downtown and found a tasty place called Fritz' European Fry House to order my first Poutine:

Fries, cheese curds, and gravy...yum yum tasty yum!
Then we walked around watching the Men's Speed Skating on TV screens in alley ways and got free hot chocolate at Fancouver.

The day went perfectly, we had the best time running all over Vancouver together. However...on our way to leave we found a long line and unfortunately asked what it was for. It was a free Broken Social Scene concert, Adam's favorite band.

He was heart broken. We were there and could easily have waited in line, we just had not idea it was going on :(
Alas...

hahahaha!

Whew! We just went crazy up at Microsoft.
Adam was there playing cards (Magic) when he called me to say there was a huge Marketing party with lots of delicious Indian food. I grabbed a few tupperware containers and hopped on my bike.

...a few hours later...

We were shocked at how much extra food had been ordered. More than twice the amount needed. Legally, they have to throw it away since it had been served and was sitting out.

We found to-go containers in the cafeteria and decided to stock our freezer.
Looking back, we could have come home with a lot more but we wouldn't have had space for it.

free bread

Yes, free bread. Back in September, I was happy to find a Seattle replacement for my free bread supplier, Carlucci's, of Salt Lake City. God bless that establishment.

My new spot - The Essential Baking Company - is great.
They have everything: pear-fig bread, sweet potato pecan, walnut, olive, orange, cinnamon raisin, rye, focaccia, sourdough, millegrain, etc, etc.


They have it all the time! Three dumpsters to pick from, always full of bread.
They have everything all of the time right next to the bike trail! ...it's too great.
:)