weekendy goodness
Goodies from Villainess (villainess.net)
Originally uploaded by madylynrose
These days, I am walking around all bouncy and giddy. Life is GOOD. I have come to the conclusion that I have pretty much found my dream job. Work is going great, and I love it here.
I had a great mail day on Friday... my first Villainess order arrived! This is what I'd ordered myself to celebrate my new job. So far it's been awesome stuff, but I'll be doing a more detailed review at some point in the future. Here's a pic of what I ordered. There is also a bunch more photos from my weekend over on my Flickr page (and feel free to add me as a friend over there!)
I had a very busy but also very wonderful weekend. On Sunday, Ian came over in the late afternoon with a big hunk of meat (minds out of the gutter, people! it was a top sirloin roast) which he proceeded to coat with a rub made from brown sugar, coffee, cinnamon, cardamom, and a couple other spices, I think. Once that was in the oven, we relaxed with a glass of wine for a while before putting together the rest of dinner. The rest of dinner consisted of crab, chevre, dill and red pepper-stuffed phyllo triangles, stuffed mushrooms (made with the stems chopped finely and sauteed with onions and toasted pecans and then sprinkled with parmesan cheese before baking), and a risotto made with chicken stock, peas and parmesan. It was absolutely lovely.
That afternoon, I had put on a loaf of foccaccia bread with roasted garlic and parmesan in it, and also made a batch of chocolate chip banana muffins. The foccaccia recipe calls for instant yeast, but I was out, and figured I could just use regular yeast if I pre-proofed it and let it rise longer. I just didn't expect it to take 5 hours to rise enough to bake! Sheesh! It wasn't until after we had completely finished dinner and cleaned up afterwards that the bread was ready to go in the oven. So I put it in, turned the timer on, and then we headed for the bedroom... and I completely forgot about it until probably at least 2 hours later. All of a sudden I looked up, went "oh shit the bread!" and of course by then it was hard as a rock. Oh well, lesson learned... keep more instant yeast in the house! ;)
On Sunday, I packed up some projects and headed over to songstress1973's house. Turned out that instead of it just being her, gates_apco and I, she had also invited over morag_gunn, who is someone I knew of and recognized by sight (and I know her SO), but I hadn't actually met before. She's a lovely woman and very interesting and I'm glad I got a chance to get to know her... hopefully I'll see her at some SCA events in the future. She also brought over her absolutely ADORABLE dog, Finnegan. Finnegan is half shih tzu, half miniature pinscher, and is the second cutest dog in the world (the first being the dog belonging to my landlords). And he's SO well behaved.
We sat and stitched and watched the movie "Australia" which was really good, and had munchies and then songstress1973 cooked us dinner which was really yummy. The fig balsamic vinegar she got down at Granville Island the weekend before was TO DIE FOR. At some point mid-afternoon, it started snowing again... great huge fluffy flakes that immediately started accumulating on cars and the grass, which is absolutely crazy weather for her at this time of year. It continued long enough that morag_gunn got worried and headed home early, which was too bad, as I was really enjoying chatting with her.
I didn't end up going home until just after 10pm, so it was quite a long day.
This week, I am anticipating some more good mail days (I have a couple things ordered that should hopefully be arriving soon), but otherwise not too busy of a week... and then another fun day with Ian next Saturday.