Montreal

Last week I was lucky enough to be on vacation.  And doubly lucky in that I was actually able to go somewhere on my vacation: Montreal, Quebec!  Why Montreal?  Well, Muse is on tour and Montreal was the city that best worked out for me, my sister, and my brother-in-law to all go see them (they live in Central New York, which, relatively speaking, isn't that far from Montreal).  Plus, it had been over a decade(!) since I'd been up there and I quite like the city.  I also have a friend who lives there, so it was an added bonus to get to hang out with him.
I headed north to my parents' house on Saturday and Sunday Martha and Ed came and got me and we were off to the great nation of Canada (with a brief stop in Potsdam to go Eben's Hearth and see all the new construction at Clarkson)!  We didn't do much on Sunday except check in to the hotel and grab dinner with my friend, Blue at The Three Brewers (very tasty!).  Monday, though, it was time for a little sightseeing!  And me, being horrible about such things, only took pictures at the first place we went to, St. Joseph's Oratory. 

We were also lucky to have very nice weather

Blue had recommended we check out the oratory, but I also wanted to go there so I could get this picture:

Look at that lovely young couple!

And why did I want that picture?  Why, because I had this picture, of course!:

Look at that lovely young couple!

That would be my Grammie and Grandpa at the same spot, some many, many years earlier. 

We didn't go see the reliquary, but we wandered around most of the rest of the basilica.  It has a huuuuuge organ.

I don't even know how you'd play that.

And, naturally, quite a few pretty stained glass windows.

Ed said the color theme reminded him of the Scarlet Monastery

The oratory also has a museum, which houses approximately one bajillion versions of the nativity from all over the world.  They range from very simple depictions:

From Eritrea

To very fancy-pants:

Who knew Jesus was born in a very gaudy palace?  Thanks Poland!

From cute and simple:

Don't remember where this was from.

To horrifying:

Gaah!  Curse you, South Africa, marionettes are creepy!!

Abstract:

Yep, those are bowling pins

Silly:

If you can't tell, those are snowmen.  USA, keepin' it classy!

Overly complicated:

This is just one side of this one from Germany, and the whole thing is this busy.

And just plain pretty and tasteful (this was one of my favorites):

Don't remember where this was from, either.

There were a lot more, and I took pictures of many of them, but I think you get the idea.

And since this is where I stopped taking any pictures, I'll just kind of gloss over the rest of the trip.  We went to the planetarium next, which was super neat.  We got there in time for the English presentation and the played around with some of the interactive exhibits for a while.  Then it was back to the hotel and dinner at the Irish Embassy Pub & Grill where Ed got their peanut butter bacon burger, which I find the concept of to be horrifying, but Ed said it wasn't bad.

Tuesday!  I was in rough shape from trying to keep up with people who have longer legs than me and who also have been running races.  But, I hobbled along and tried to keep my complaining down to a minimum.  Ed really wanted to see the Formula One race track out on Ile Notre-Dame, so we headed out there.  He thought it was pretty neat.  I thought it was a road and thus not particularly interesting.  La Ronde is out there, too, but unfortunately doesn't open until May, so no roller coasters that day.  After wandering around the track for a while, we all decided we were pretty tuckered out and headed back to the hotel to rest up a bit for the concert that evening.  We stayed at the Hotel Espresso which, while not the fanciest of hotels, was reasonably priced and about two blocks from the Bell Centre, so we were able to just walk on over for the concert.  And the concert was sooo great!  Our seats were pretty high up, but we were off to the side of the stage, not all the way across the arena, so we could still see pretty well.  It was a lot of fun!  The 2nd Law isn't Muse's best album, for sure, but those boys sure can put on a show.  Poor Blue had originally planned on going with us, but got stuck having to go to class, so we hung out for a while after the show.

Wednesday!  Time to leave Montreal and head back home.  Blue took us to breakfast at Chez Cora where I had an incredibly delicious crepe full of raspberries and cream cheese.  And then it was time to go.  Unfortunately, we hit road construction and a huge detour, so it took a lot longer to get back than anticipated, but we went straight to Stefano's where we had garlic knots and pizza, which made it all better.

Thursday!  Back to Virginia!  Ugh, that's a long drive.  But I stopped in Richmond on the way for dinner with my friend Josh, so that made it a lot better (and also allowed me to avoid the worst of the traffic on 64).

Friday!  Yeah, I didn't do much.  I played Dishonored and did a little housework, and that was about it.  And Saturday it was back to work.  I really had a great time in Montreal.  Hopefully I'll be able to get back there (and/or Ottawa) again sometime before another decade goes by.

Chicken Stir Fry

Today's "tasty recipe with about a million ingredients" is chicken stir fry!  There's a lot of prep work involved, but once you have everything chopped, minced, sliced, and grated it's pretty easy.  Here's what you need: 2 C broccoli florets; 1/4 C peanut oil; 2 Tbsp minced garlic; 1 Tbsp grated ginger; 1 onion, sliced; 1/2 C chopped scallion; 1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into 1/2" chunks; 2 Tbsp soy sauce; salt and pepper; 1/2 C chicken stock.

Cook the broccoli in a pot of boiling water for about 2 minutes and then drain it and set it aside.  Over high heat, put half your oil in a large skillet.  Swirl that around for a bit and add in half of the garlic and half of the ginger and stir that around for about 15 seconds.  And in the onion and stir that around for about 2 minutes.  Now toss in the broccoli and scallion and stir it all around for about 5 minutes (your broccoli should be tender, but don't let it cook so long it gets mushy).

Turn the heat down to medium and remove all the veggies.  Add to the pan the rest of the oil, garlic, and ginger.  Stir that a bit, then add in the chicken.  Turn the heat back up to high, let the chicken cook undisturbed for about a minute, stir, and keep cooking the chicken, stirring occasionally until the chicken is no longer pink.  Should take about 5 minutes.  Now put all the vegetables back in the pan, stir it around, and add in the soy sauce.  Sprinkle it all with salt and pepper and add the chicken stock.  Keep cooking on high, stirring and making sure nothing sticks to the bottom of the pan, until the liquid is reduced a bit (say around a minute).

And you're done!  I recommend serving this over some nice jasmine rice.  You can also put whatever else you want for vegetables.  I just happen to like broccoli.  Enjoy!

Goulash

Normally on Easter, I like to have a delicious boiled ham dinner made by my mom.  Sadly, that hasn't happened for the last several years, what with my folks living several hundred miles away and all.  Rather than make that myself, which would result in about a ton of leftover ham (you need a good sized ham for it to turn out really well), I decided to try something new: goulash (which also resulted in a ton of leftovers).  This is another slow cooker recipe, which means the only very busy parts happen at the beginning, assembling the ingredients, and at the end to finish it off.  The middle part involves mostly just hanging around playing through the fantastic Bioshock Infinite.

What you'll need for this recipe includes: 1 1/2-2 lbs stew meat, but into 3/4-inch cubes; 1/2 C beef broth; 3 Tbs paprika; 1 1/2 tsp salt; 1/2 tsp caraway seeds; 1/4 tsp pepper; 3 onions, chopped; 2 cloves of garlic, chopped; 1 14.5-oz can whole tomatoes (undrained); 1/4 C cold water; 2 Tbsp flour; 6 C cooked noodles.

Goulash fixin's!

In a large skillet, cook the meat over medium heat until it's browned (about 5 minutes or so).  Drain and transfer to the slow cooker.  Now mix in everything else except for the water, flour, and noodles.  Break up the tomatoes a bit with a fork, too (and watch out, because they will squirt you!).

Put the cover on and set to low heat for 8-9 hours.  At the end of that time, shake up the flour and water in a tightly covered container, and stir the mixture in to the rest of the stuff.  Re-cover and turn the heat up to high for 10-20 minutes, until the whole thing thickens up.  While that's going on, cook the noodles.  Serve the goulash over the noodles, and you're done!

Magazine Wall of Underwater DOOM!!!

At the library I work for, we have a wall with fold-up shelving that houses our magazine subscriptions.  A few years ago most of these shelves ended up being empty due to budget cuts and it somehow became my job to beautify the area so it didn't look so depressingly empty (though we've since mostly bounced back with the number of our subscriptions).  I used to try and do seasonal displays, but since I can no longer be sure I'll be able to get to it often enough, I switched themes a while ago.  First I did the End of the Dinosaur Age, with a giant meteor coming down from the sky (which was made by my incredibly talented coworker) and dinosaurs stuck in tar pits.  Next up was Deep Space, in which the giant meteor was re-purposed into a comet, there were some planets, a UFO (also made by my coworker), Sputnik, and about a million sparkly stars I punched out of a corrugated glitter sheet.  This time, I decided to go with the Deep Sea.  First, here it is in all its glory:

Way down there in the right corner, I've got part of a giant squid lurking.

Hi there!

A little further along are some of his tentacles waving around.

Those are some pretty fine tentacles, if I do say so myself!

I hope things go ok for that whale!

Hello.  I am a whale.

Up at the top, we've got a school of creepy jellyfish.

They actually look kind of awesome from a distance.

The first of my coworker's contributions to the wall is this absolutely fantastic submarine:

Followed by some perpetually angry angler fish:

And my faaaavorite thing that she made based on an offhand comment of mine:

Her reward from me was a copy of Bioshock for her very own.

And finally, a somewhat smaller giant squid that I made:

Hello.  I am a squid.

I think I'm pretty good at making squids!  I'm sure I will find endless uses for this talent throughout my career.  Now I need to start coming up with ideas for the next display, which will go up a few months down the line.  Anyone have any ideas?

Meatloaf

This week, we're doing meatloaf!  No, no, wait!  Come back!  Contrary to what sitcoms tell us, meatloaf, if done right, can actually be very good.  For this one, you'll need: 1/2 C plain bread crumbs; 1/2 C milk; 1 lb ground beef; 1 lb ground pork; 1 egg, beaten; 1/2 C grated Parmesan cheese; 1/4 C chopped parsley; 1 tsp minced garlic; 1/2 an onion, chopped; 1 pinch dried sage; salt and pepper; 4 slices bacon.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and greased a rimmed cookie sheet.  In a large bowl, combine the milk and bread crumbs, letting the crumbs soak up the milk for about 5 minutes or so.  Now add in the beef, pork, egg, cheese, parsley, garlic, onion, sage, and some salt and pepper.  Mix it all together with your hands just until it's all pretty evenly distributed.  Don't overmix or you'll end up with a meat rock instead of meatloaf.

Turn your meat pile out onto the greased cookie sheet and mold it so it's kind of loaf-shaped.

Drape the bacon over the top, tucking the ends underneath the meatloaf.

Bake this in the oven for 45-60 minutes.  It'll be done when it's browned and no longer squishy and a meat thermometer will read 160 degrees. 

Let it rest for about 5 minutes, slice it up, and you've got yourself dinner!

Nutella Knots

I've had a request!  Thursday my sister sent me an email telling me about these Nutella Knots that her friend Amy (purple dress) makes and asked if I would kindly make them and post the results (and yes, she referred to her as "Amy (purple dress)" with no picture or context.  Therefore, that is how she shall be referred to here (I figured out (all on my own!) a while later that she was referring to the fact that Amy (purple dress) wore a purple bridesmaid dress at her wedding)).  Anyway, I had taken the day off Thursday and needed something to bring to a friend's house later that evening, so this seemed perfect!
For this recipe, you'll need: 2 cans of crescent roll dough; Nutella.  Somewhat fewer ingredients than the recipe I made last week.

Yup, this is all you need.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees and grease a mini-muffin pan.  Pop open one of the crescent roll cans and spread out the dough, keeping the other one in the fridge until you're ready to use it.

See all those seams in that picture up there?  You're going to want to pinch the dough to close those so it's all one piece.

Spread a thin layer of Nutella on top of the dough.

Cut the dough into twelve strips.  Now here's where things get a little tricky.  The recipe that my sister sent me from Amy (purple dress) just says to "twist the nutella and dough strip together and place in a mini-muffin pan".  I have no idea in what way I'm supposed to be twisting these things, so here's what I ended up doing: First, kind of twist it around so the nutella is (mostly) inside the dough.

Like so.

Then, roll that up, so it looks kind of like a snail shell.

Thusly.

Now just put that into your mini-muffin pan.  I eventually got sick of doing it this way since it does get super messy, so I also did about half of them just rolling the strips up kind of like a jelly roll. 

Once you're done with this first can of crescent roll dough, get out the other one and do the same thing.  You'll wind up with 24 of these little guys.

Bake them for about 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.  Let them cool for a couple minutes and remove them from the pan.

So how did they taste?  Holy crap, they were fantastic.  I tried one just to make sure I wasn't going to be bringing something horrible over to my friend's house and was then very sad I'd given up sweet stuff for Lent.  Especially when I then had to smell them in the car all the way to Virginia Beach.  I will definitely be making these again (probably on Easter).

Have a recipe you want me to try making?  Let me know!  It saves me trying to come up with something on my own!

Seafood Casserole

It's Lent, and for many people, that means no meat on Fridays.  Normally I just have a peanut butter sandwich (or a grilled cheese and peanut butter sandwich if I'm feeling ambitious!), but this week I figured I'd go a little fancier and decided to try out a seafood casserole recipe one of my coworkers found a few weeks ago.  To make this dish, you'll need: 2 Tbsp butter; 2 Tbsp flour; 1 C milk; 1/4 tsp salt; 1/2 C sharp cheddar cheese; 1/2 C sour cream; 1 lb fish fillets cut into chunks (I used tilapia); 1 C crab meat; 1 C scallops; cooked wide egg noodles; 1/4 C toasted pecans.

Preheat your oven to 325.  In a medium sized skillet melt the butter over medium heat and mix in the flour and stir in the milk.  Cook this, stirring constantly, until it's thickened up a bit.  Add in the salt and cheese and stir until the cheese melts. 

Set it aside and when it's cooled a bit, stir in the sour cream.  Spread the cut up bits of fish on the bottom of a greased 9 x 13" pan.  Mix the crab meat and the scallops into the cheese sauce, then pour into the pan over the fish.  Stick in the oven for 20-30 minutes, or until the fish is cooked (it won't be translucent anymore).

Serve it over some wide egg noodles (or regular noodles, or rice, or whatever you want) and sprinkle some toasted pecans over it.

And you've got dinner!  This was pretty tasty, but I'll be honest: it was kind of bland.  What I did with the leftovers (and it warms up pretty well, by the way) and what I'll do the next time I make this, is I added some Old Bay seasoning.  It's also a kind of pricey dinner, what with the crab meat (though you can substitute shrimp instead).  I'd definitely make this again, probably for the folks, but it's really a once-in-a-while kind of thing.