I'm sure you guys know this dish from the infamous movie... :)
Eggplant was on sale so I had to buy some. I'm not sure if this is a "real" ratatouille recipe, but my mom said it was so I'll take her word. Serves 2 because I made some for lunch tomorrow.



Ingredients: (serves 2)
1/2 onion
1/2 eggplant (those large bulbous ones)
1/2 zucchini
1 large tomato
salt, pepper, basil, oregano to taste
1/4 bouillon cube (optional)

Directions:

1. Dice onions, eggplant, zucchini and tomatoes into bite-sized pieces. In a medium-sized pot, sautee onions on medium heat.
2. Once onions are clear, add in eggplant, zucchini and stir. Add tomatoes last, cover and let simmer. At this point you can add in all the spices.
3. Once the vegetables are tender, do a taste-test. I found it kind of bland so I added 1/4 bouillon cube dissolved in a bit of hot water. Serve!

Prep time: under 30 minutes

I also figured some protein would be good so I roasted a wiener and put it on top. It's a quick and hearty one-dish meal that's filling and low in fat :)

Decided to go Asian today. Needed something with green onion to make my throat better D:

vegetable fried rice with tilapia

Ingredients: (serves 1)
1/2 cup (100ml) rice, uncooked
1 fillet of any white fish (tilapia, cod)
2 stalks green onion
1 bunch baby bok choy
flour
vegetable oil
garlic & ginger, small amounts, minced
soy sauce, salt, pepper, sesame oil to taste

Directions:

1. Cook rice in a rice cooker with 3/4 "cup" (the one that comes with the rice cooker) water.
2. Coat the fish fillet with flour, shake off excess and put on a skillet at medium heat with vegetable oil and a little bit of butter/margarine if desired.
3. While the fish is cooking, finely slice the green onions and dice the bok choy. Once the fish has browned on both sides, set aside. In the same skillet, add a little more oil and sautee the ginger and garlic first, then the veggies at med-high heat.
4. The rice should be finished by now, so dump that into the skillet and fold swiftly with a spatula or that rice-scooping-thingy (what's it called?) to get the crumbly texture. At this point you can add the fillet and 'chop' it with the spatula to blend with the rice. Or you can leave it for later.
5. Add about a teaspoon of soy sauce or however much you like to taste, and a pinch or two of pepper. Just a tiny bit of sesame oil gives it a nice aroma. Add salt if your end result isn't salty enough.
6. Empy into a bowl and serve.

Prep time: 30 mins

I've never tried fried rice with fish but I found that the spiciness of the green onion and ginger cut the fishiness by a good bit.

... I don't wanna do homework D:

Winter is on its way and I'm pretty sure all of us have started "coming down with something" at one point or another until now. For those days when you feel under the weather and need something simple but hearty to make for dinner...

(just because I haven't been doing much lately so there's nothing to write about here)

Easy "Real" Chicken Noodle Soup

Ingredients: (serves 1)
spaghetti (a bunch about the size of a quarter)
1/2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 small chicken thigh (drumstick, w/e)
1/2 carrot
1/3 zucchini
1 leaf kale
up to 1/2 bouillon cube to taste
pinch each of pepper, basil, oregano, rosemary

I used 1 skillet to cook everything. Hurray for no dishes!

Directions:

1. In a skillet, bring water and a pinch of salt to boil. Put in your pasta and let cook at medium-high heat until soft.


2. While the pasta is cooking, chop chicken, carrot, zucchini and kale into bite-sized pieces. When pasta is done, drain and dump into whatever bowl you'll be eating out of. In the same skillet, heat vegetable oil and lightly sautee the chicken at medium heat (no need to cook all the way through). Drain excess fat. Add vegetables, turn up the heat a bit and sautee for a minute or two.


3. Add just enough water so that all the ingredients are about half-covered. Bring to a boil at high heat, then turn it down to medium-low.


4. Add bouillon cube. These tend to be really salty, so I just shaved off little by little until I got my desired saltiness. I used about half a bouillon cube. Sprinkle in pepper, basil, oregano and rosemary. Mix and let simmer until vegetables are soft (about 5 mins?).


5. Pour contents out into your bowl (that already has the pasta in it). Give it a little mix and serve.

Prep time: 30 mins

I think it's 30 minutes. I rarely cook anything that takes over 30 minutes to make because I'm lazy. This is just a recipe I pulled out of my ass and what I had in the fridge (I know, appetizing, isn't it?) It's pretty filling and I think it's low fat. Plenty of green veggies though, and not as much MSG as the canned stuff :) If you really wanna go no-MSG, you can use consomme instead of the bouillon cube and water. I don't think consomme has MSG...

I have nothing to write about these days. Maybe I'll turn this into a cooking blog.

I'm getting a cough D: I'm craving Halls.

Somewhat having been settled back into school, time to post an entry! I went to Stanley Park with Rhiannon, Fiona and her exchange student friends from Japan this weekend. The weather was absolutely beautiful and the scenery was stunning! But I don't have time to post up pictures yet so I'll just post up some pictures of the sky.

One thing I give Vancouver credit for is its skies - they're always changing and (if it's not raining) they always make for a nice postcard.

All pics taken from my apartment on the 17th floor
at Walter Gage Rez (woohoo for being close to the bus loop!)

    




This one was taken from the walkway on the ground floor.

Latin is awesome because it makes everything sound profound.
One thing that sucks though is how we can't carry out normal conversation with the vocab we learn. Whereas normal langauge learners learn vocab like "Hi my name is __, in my spare time I like to __ and __" and such, us Latin students learn things like "If a man is greedy and desires much money, he shall pay the penalty" or "The poets were giving many roses to the girls" o__o

But I finally found something I can translate into Latin! I was listening to the first chorus of Utada Hikaru's "This is love" and realized I actually knew the vocab to translate it. So here goes.

Japanese
予期せぬ愛に自由奪われたいね
Oh 一目で分かったの
冷たい言葉と暖かいキスあげるよ
This is love, this is love

Latin Non desiderasne caperi amore qui non expectatur? O, primo tempore vidi, intellexi. Tibi verbis acerbis et basiis dulcibus do. Amor est, amor est.	English translation of the Latin Do you not want to be captured by a love that is not expected? Oh, the first time I saw, I understood. I give to you harsh words and sweet kisses. It is love, it is love.

Everything sounds so romantic in Latin... Maybe soon I'll be able to finally understand the Latin lyrics in Lamento. <_< >_> Of course, that's not the only reason I took this class... of course not.

I didn't realize I had so many pics... heheheh


Canada's first Chinatown.

( image heavy yet again )

I went to Victoria over the weekend for my friend's concert! The fog cleared up instantly as soon as we got there, which was great. But UBC was fog as always...


It started with a bus stop that was impossible to find...

( image heavy! )

Stolen from kuro_yuki to ease some winter blues from the god damn fucking fog that never seems to lift. I think I'm getting Seasonal Affective Disorder ;__;

1. How do you feel about your drawing?
Sometimes proud, most of the time never satisfied. I wish I could improve faster. Faster!!!

2. What kind of paper do you usually use? Please differentiate between your doodle and serious drawing.
I usually draw in my sketchbook (cheap Canson) but since I can't carry it around to class anymore I doodle on whatever I can find. Agenda, scrap paper... lately it's mostly the computer. Cards and watercolours I do on thicker, grainier paper or manga paper.

3. Can you easily overcome slumps?
Depends on how I feel at the time. Most of them never last too long, thank god. :/

4. Have you ever been seriously troubled because of drawing?
Yes, over not being able to, more like. Jealousy gets me down a lot :/

5. Please draw a picture quickly and post it up. (Doodle is okay, too.)

P3 rocks!!! Still can't forget him even after P4 came out... <3

( more under the cut )

I bet you anything Vancouver is going to shut down the city tomorrow!!
So I spent the evening frolicking in the snow instead of studying Columbus' journey like I should be.


W0000t!!!


( White Christmas? I think so! )

You know my residence is ghetto when:





✓ you have to page the Residence Advisor twice to get the guys in the courtyard to stop yelling and pointing laser pointers into your window at 1 in the morning
✓ you wake up in the morning the next day to the smell of burning... something
✓ you find out someone's blown up your lounge microwave, not to mention 4 other ones in your House and a couple in other Houses in the same complex
✓ and they've also cut the wires to a couple TVs and smeared syrup on people's doorknobs
✓ at presumably 4 in the morning (and you get this info via an RCMP who's been called to the scene)

It's so exciting.

I should've posted this first. Random pictures that might or might not represent what we see around campus!



Imagine Day at UBC. Look at all those Arts faculty people! Biggest faculty! Represent!!

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About 10 minutes walk away from the campus, there's a nude beach called Wreck Beach. We went there the other day and saw... well, lots of naked people. I took a few pictures but I tried to get let as little flesh get into the photo as possible.

It all started with a long, winding walk down a set of steps into a forest...



I tried not to think about climbing back up the steps afterwards...

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Yes, I should be doing my History readings but instead I'm writing a blog. The other day shira0 and I went to the Rose Garden on campus and took a lot of pictures. We went around Vancouver on the way grocery shopping and took pictures too, though I don't remember what day it was...



Some roses. I love the orange ones!!

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