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Hey, I made it through the last couple of very busy and stressful weeks without even coming close to tears or nervous breakdown. Yay! Granted, last week I depended heavily on Nyquil to sleep, vanilla lattes to wake up, and chocolate to get me through the days but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

Like everyone else, I've been enjoying the sneak preview of spring we're getting. We used the opportunity to fire up the barbecue and have a couple of our favourite summer meals: beer can chicken and shallot-rosemary-garlic marinated flank steak. Deeelicious. We also made corn muffins and a chinese sponge cake. Deeelicious.

I go into every winter with a sense of dread, knowing I have a tough several months ahead. But it's wonderful to come out the other side feeling none the worse for wear and maybe even a little wiser. I've got plenty to look forward to in the coming weeks and months, starting with a week off work with Arun in two week's time. Can't wait!

A list of disconnected news for you today. I'm up to my eyeballs in work these days. I've got a ridiculously long to do list that seems to be getting longer by the hour. The next few weeks are going to be bruuutal.

In happier news, Arun got his cast of yesterday. His hand is still far from healed but the surgeon was happy with how it was progressing and decided it could come off. He has to be careful with it and keep his pinky and ring fingers taped together. He's also got some exercises he needs to do a few times a day but I think life will be a lot easier for him now.

We had a wonderful dinner with Craig and Jessica at Fraser Cafe the other day. I had a super tasty tomato and goat cheese salad to start and had sea scallops with lentils, parsnip puree and seasonal vegetables as my main and it was delicious. I highly recommend checking it out.

I'm feeling ready to start thinking about getting a kitten. We seriously considered getting a dog but I don't think I'm ready for that much structure/responsibility so a cat it will be. I've been researching breeders (we're going to get another cornish rex because they're much easier on our allergies) and have been in touch with a couple of them who seem quite reputable. They're both having litters in March so if all goes according to plan we'll have a new furry family member in July.

Arun got Thomas Keller's new cookbook, Ad Hoc at Home, for christmas and we've been wanting to make something from it ever since. Even though it's supposed to be full of "recipes that you can make any or every day," most of them are far from what I would consider weeknight recipes.

We decided to try his recipe for short ribs, which you have to make at least a day in advance. So we spent our Saturday night making the red wine reduction sauce and cooking the short ribs. The plan was originally to grab a quick dinner at Imperial before heading to Hartman's for groceries but we ran into some neighbours on our way out and they kind of invited themselves along to dinner with us, which was fine but delayed things somewhat. We didn't get started until 10 and were up cooking till 1:30.

We spent about another hour on Sunday making celeriac with caramelized onions to go along with the short ribs. It all turned out to be well worth the wait, though. Everything was deee-licious.

We also had a nice brunch with friends on Sunday. Back in the fall we established a standing date for brunch with friends on the third Sunday of each month. We try a different place each month, this time we were at Fresco on Elgin. It's a great way to get everyone together more regularly, I really enjoy it—and not just because of the eggs benedict.

I realize eating like this isn't congruous with my plan of getting in kick ass shape for my birthday. I have, however, been working out regularly the past couple of weeks and will be upping my workout intensity this week (and every week from here on out). Long cardio sessions, negative reps and intervals, here I come.

We had a fun three-day weekend. Not surprisingly, food featured prominently. After a bit of shopping on Friday, we treated ourselves to lunch at Play. I whipped together some dough for a loaf of no knead bread Friday evening so we could have it for lunch Saturday. The deal with no knead bread is that it's super easy to make but you have to let the dough sit for 12-18 hours (the longer the better) plus another two hours for the second rise so advance planning is very necessary. But it's well worth the wait, you end up with a delicious, crusty, rustic loaf like this one:

Saturday night we went to bSide for dinner. I enjoy eating there, there's always lots of new and interesting things to try.

In non-food-related news, we saw Youth in Revolt yesterday. I had started reading the book a few months ago but couldn't get through it because it was a little too intimate a look inside a teenage boy's mind than I cared for (i.e. nonstop talk of erections and masturbation). I liked the movie, though. It's no Adventureland but still worth checking out.

Things are starting to come together for the holidays. I've made a dent in christmas shopping and have also completed this year's quest for a new parka and warm, waterproof boots just in time for the temperature drop. Also, the new shower curtain arrived:

The next couple of days will be focused on finishing a few odds and ends at work, more christmas shopping, tidying up and baking for our party on Saturday. This year I'll be keeping things relatively simple and baking red velvet cupcakes, Toblerone fudge, and my favourite christmas cookies.

I watched the Charlie Brown christmas special last night. It's one of the few things I'm still sentimental about around the holidays, despite it's overt religiousness. I'll pull out our tree for Saturday, though it's not going to be the same without Starla around to chew on it:

The massive project that I've been managing is coming to a close. My days of endless conference calls, testing, managing bug lists, multiple to-do lists and schedules are pretty much over. (That is, until the next big project hits but that won't be till January so I'm going to enjoy this while it lasts.) I hereby intend to start gearing down for the holidays. Yay!

In other good news, we had a really fun time DJing at Zaphod's last Wednesday. I didn't have any fun on Thursday morning, though—remind me to just say no to Jagerbombs. Ugh.

The weekend was pretty quiet. We didn't venture too far from home, our main outing was a giant meat-filled breakfast at Imperial on Saturday followed by a jaunt out to Elgin Street. We thought about going to see The Road but decided we weren't in the mood for post-apocalyptic so we stayed in and watched an old Jacques Tati Monsieur Hulot movie (Mon oncle) instead.

I'm starting to think about what to bake for the holidays this year. I'm planning on whipping up a batch of cookies with vanilla icing like I do every year but aside from that I haven't seen any recipes that have really caught my eye. What are you baking?

It was a good weekend. We started it off with an amazing (read: big and boozy) dinner with Kerry at b/Side on Friday. The rest of the weekend largely revolved around food as well (as usual): Arun made some delicious tomato soup while I was at my trainer's on Saturday morning so we had that with grilled cheese for lunch; we slow cooked a lot of meat for dinner Saturday and Sunday; and we had tea and crumpets Sunday morning while watching Liverpool beat Manchester United (yay!).

We saw the new Cohen brothers movie, A Serious Man. I don't know what to say about it other than that it is very Cohen brothers-y.

I finished reading Dracula and, well, it's was alright. I found the ending a bit of a letdown. Like, there's almost 100 pages of buildup to the final scene—they're racing on trains and in boats and on horses racing to beat Dracula back to his castle for AGES—and then (SPOILER ALERT) the actual Dracula-killing bit is, like two pages long. And because they get to Dracula before sunset and he's sleeping, there's no fight or anything, they just open the box and kill him. The end. I guess dramatic final fight scenes are a more modern convention?