Gingerbread Fun!

I got together with some friends I haven't met since we were all together in Beijing tonight for some gingerbread fun. Imelda extended an invite to me and though I was iffy at first about going because of how last minute it was and the fact that I would be a few hours late, I'm glad I went! I drove out to Richmond to meet with Imelda, Sue, her boyfriend Ryan, a Ukrainian guy by the name of Serge, and a guy named Sameer who's apartment we gathered at. In addition to the standard gingerbread house, we created a swimming pool with the gingerbread man swimming in it, a diving board made of cardboard with a Cathay Pacific airplane next to it (which looked more like a recreation of 9/11), a Christmas tree with a gummy bear as an angel on top, and a snowman/woman with large breasts, a penis, and balls. A little bit of icing was used to complete this vulgar image. Childish, I know!

Though punching out the windows and doors from the ready-made gingerbread pieces came as an afterthought, it still looked wonderful. A great team effort!

It was really nice to see them all again, together.

Winter Harp.

Directly from work, I boarded the SkyTrain at Surrey Central to Waterfront Terminus station, hopped onto the SeaBus to the North Shore, then took the bus from the Lonsdale Quay to Capilano College for the Winter Harp performance at 1900h. I was amazed by how quickly I made it to the college from Surrey entirely by transit. The connection was just bang on-time!

Jen invited me out to see this concert of period costumes and medieval instruments with her parents, her brother Chris, and his wife, Karen. Throughout the instrumentals were narration by a well versed gentleman with an English accent who told stories, read poems, and painted a visual with words. His take on the Twelve Days of Christmas told through letters written to and from each of the true loves was especially memorable.

www.winterharp.com

First Snow.

We saw our first snow fall today but it didn't last long. It didn't even stick before the weather quickly turned to rain. It snowed yet again around lunch hour but like this morning, it didn't last for long. Temperature by nightfall hovered at around 5ºC.

Kuchenbakerens.

Sigrid and I got together to spend the weekend baking all sorts of yummy goodness. After a trip to her neighbourhood IGA and Safeway, we got to work in the late afternoon starting with a fusion dish of proscuitto and cheese wrapped in wonton skin, baked in the oven, and drizzled in honey as soon it came out. It was our first time making this, following a recipe found in TV Guide.

it was pretty okay, though I found the wonton shell to be a little hard and sharp. It broke in shards of little pieces. At one point, we had a small grease fire in the oven, but that was taken care of with quick thinking.

Next up were the pear apple pies. The original recipe called for Grannysmith apples but because I love pear apples, I used them instead. That turned out to be a mistake as pear apples were juicier, and therefore, runnier than the other varieties. That and the fact that we forgot to put in any flour made the pies look like apple sauce in a pie shell. Though the presentation wasn't there, at least we didn't forget about the cinnamon, so the taste was still okay.

I decided to spend the night on Siggy's couch because it was already getting quite late and all we wanted to do was watch Hot Fuzz and Top Gear on BBC Canada.

Sunday rolled around and I rolled off the couch for another day of baking. After languishing around for a bit, we drove over to the Wolf and Hound pub for brunch. Siggy had an appointment with a masseuse soon after, so while she was getting her tense muscles all relaxed, I wantered about around Point Grey and thought about the time Jen and I wandered around this same neighbourhood many moons ago.

We got started with the 50% cocoa chocolate bark with chopped almonds and the shortbread cookies. It was time consuming and labour intensive beating the butter in with the flour and sugar. Siggy's electric mixer wasn't working well either so I had to do it manually! I got to the point where I was rolling out the dough on a sheet of wax paper and got all excited with the cookie cutters. I was stampin' out the gingerbread mens, the stars, and the hearts while listening to Siggy's iTunes playlist. The heads kept breaking off the gingerbread men, so I ended up baking more of the stars and hearts.

When all was ready, it was well past my departure time again. With Siggy's generosity to put a roof over my head for anther night, I slept on the couch again and left for work directly early in the morn, taking Tupperwares of chocolate bark and shortbread with me.

We had a splendiferous weekend.