Green P, saves the day.

So I definitely have not posted in a couple days. I was going to post last night, but then I got caught up watching Sex and the City (ugh..yes I am one of those girls..BUT only recently). In any case, my life has not been that exciting the past few days other than the odd walk to Starbuck's and batting golf balls in the park with some chums. 

I guess today was a little more interesting. The mom and I decided to go down to St. Lawrence Market, which is a little (well not really little) market in downtown Toronto where vendors sell everything from meat to cheese, to jewelry and more meat. Can't complain, I do love my meat and cheese. But anyways before actually being able to go food shopping, we needed to park. Luckily (or so we thought) there was a parking lot right across from the market asking for flat rate of 7 dollars. We decided it was a pretty alright deal, so we parked the car and went to the window to pay. There was a woman who was in charge..and well I can only describe her by one word: Bleep. That's right. Feel free to interpret that bleep in anyway you wish, as long as it has a negative connotation. I thought it might be more fun and creative for you to decide on the bleep then me saying it right out loud. But anyways, here is how the conversation went:

Me: "How much is parking?"

Her: "9 dollarz"

Me: "We'll I only have 7"

Her: (shrugs) "9 dollarz"

Me: "Well your sign says 7, its deceiving"

Her: "It iz not dezcieving. How zee hell is it dizcieving?" 

Me: "Um.. well your sign says 7 dollars and you're asking for 9"

Her: "Noh. The zign zays 7.46 plus tax. Where you go where they charge no tax? NO WHERE. Maybe you can go to zee other parking lot if you have a problem"

Me: "Maybe I will."

And I did. And I only had to pay 4 dollars. Thats right lady, if you're reading this, which you're probably not cause you're trapped in your stupid little box with your stupid little attitude, I went to the other parking lot, and paid less than half of what you decided you wanted to charge, thank you very much. 

Anyways, so the other parking lot is Green P, which I now love. I felt pretty good too cause there was a lady whose credit card wasn't being accepted by the machine, so I gave her change, a whole 3 dollars.  I'd say it was a pretty good Samaritan act. So, we were parked, happy and now it was time to go shop for meat, and cheese, and more cheese. Final tally was 50 bucks worth of food. But let me tell you what we got:

Herb and Garlic Havarti: totally melts in your mouth. 

Brie Cheese: mmm..so smooth. 

Cream Cheese with Chives: delicious. 

Olives stuffed with red pepper and feta cheese: Also VERY good. 

Capriollo: haven't tried that one, but dad loves it. 

Rosemary Ham: One word: heaven.

Sundried Tomato Turkey:  also heaven. 

4 hazelnut Truffles: worth the money.

All in all it was a pretty good fetch of food, definitely gonna dig into it tonight, as a midnight snack. Also, I've decided that when I move out of the house my downtown location will be around that area. I wanna be able to wake up in the afternoon, and go get some fresh fruit and cheese. I'll go every week and be recognized by all the little vendors who will know my "usual." That is my plan. OH and also, I've decided that when I do graduate, Im going to Australia to work (my Australian blogger of a friend will like this part). SO excited. 

Well I think thats all the interesting things I have to stay.."interesting." But if all of you are in the Toronto area (which first means you would have to be in Canada) go to St. Lawrence Market for some good fresh eatin.' OH and then go to Kensington Market for some good deals on original jewelry, clothing, oh and yes, there are more cheese and meat shops there too. 

Until the phone rings, go drink that glass of water and bake a pie. 

Cheers mates .

A treat, you'll want to meet.

Thought I would do something deliciously different. Dads been diagnosed with diabetes recently, so he's joined me and the rest of the girls in the health conscious eating plan and therefore we've of course been making him convert to the whole wheat pasta's, breads, crackers, cereal, low-fat junk food etc etc. This means that we've been eating a lot of salads, which I have to say I am ecstatic about. So today I am showing and giving you the recipe, forwhat I made for my lovely family for dinner, though we did have some steak on the side...but shh. (So, not my style of blog, but Im too proud not to share it = ) )

Summer Spinach and Pasta Salad 

This is what you'll need:

A box of Whole Wheat Pasta (you can do white pasta if you want)

4 ounces of feta cheese

1 handful of mushrooms, diced. 

1 red pepper

Black olives (as much or as little as you like)

1 bag of baby spinach, chopped up (makes it easier to mix in with the rest of the stuff)

3 table spoons of diced almonds

Balsamic Vinegar

Mayonnaise

Olive oil

Salt 

Pepper

1 garlic glove

Boil a pot of water and then pour the pasta in. While the water is boiling, wash your vegetables and begin to chop up the baby spinach leaves. Chop up the mushrooms and throw them in the bowl with the spinach. De-Seed your black olives and throw in the bowl as well, crumble your feta cheese into fine chunks. Strain the pasta upon completion and run under cold water to cool down, since this is a cold pasta salad. Once the pasta is cold, throw it in the bowl with the rest of the ingredients. Next, get a small pan and pour a dash of olive oil, and throw in the almonds, with the stove on medium. You just want to slightly roast your almond slices to give a little ZING to the pasta salad. Once they're roasted, throw them on top of the salad bowl. 

For the dressing, I found that a balsamic glaze works best with the combination of food. So you can use your discretion on how much or how little to use of Balsamic Vinegar since it does have a strong taste. But either way you want to mix olive oil (more olive oil than balsamic), with the balsamic, salt and pepper, 1 teaspoon of mayonnaise (to give it a nice creamy coating ability) and a glove of garlic (or garlic powder). Blend it all together, taste it..and you have your dressing. Throw it in the bowl, mix and enjoy!! 

Update...again?

So I've been pestered by all of these updates my computer has been demanding me to do. I figure they might be why my computers been running slow, so I also figure its a great opportunity to clear up my computer, maybe do some defragmentation (which I am very happy to have learned about, all thanks to one button). I thought perhaps I'd run an anti-spyware program, the one I never run..came up I had 200 critical objects. Tsk tsk. Can't let it get that big anymore. So after I do all that computer junk, again done easily by the click of a couple buttons, I figure I'll get cracking on those updates. Let me tell you though. I never knew how many god damn updates I actually had pestering me. The first was Windows asking me to do some computer updates...Microsoft updates I think. So I'm thinking heck why not. After a couple seconds I see

"....initializing update...1/3 ....complete!"

"....initializing update...2/3...complete!"

Just when I think I'm in the clear, and ready to finish this update, it goes on bitching about how I have to insert a CD..something about...an XP service pack. I mean c'mon, I'd say I'm relatively computer savy...but I can't even find this one CD? I know I have it somewhere, but where, I definitely couldn't tell you. I go on asking my dad about it and hes nagging on about how I can't take care of my own business.. (I thought to myself..when did my computer become a business) anyways he goes on giving me some of his "wisdom" and "advice"...and says "look for it, it'll be in the last place you'd look i bet." WELL DUH. If i found it, then I wouldn't have to look anymore. Wisdom? I call that common sense, thank you very much dad.

Anyways, so I have this update bothering me about how I don't have the CD and I figure it can't be that important, so I continue along and they tell me "In order to complete the update process you need to restart your computer: Restart Now or Restart later." God damnit, all I want to do is finish this update ASAP and get back to my itunes listening. Course I wouldn't care about the restarting, but my laptop takes about a century to shut down. So whatever, I figure I'll restart. 20 minutes later Windows is up and running again ..only to warn me now that Adobe reader (when the hell am I gonna use that? ) wants to update. So I'm thinking, fuckin eh, I've been putting this one off on ignore for a couple months now, I GUESS I'll get it over with. So I wait and wait....10 minutes later, success...its updated. Oh but wait, they want to bother me again..and make me restart my computer AGAIN! I figure I might as well take a 20 minute nap this time.

20..minutes later.

Im thinkin alright, I've got them out of the way, time for some good o'l facebook and some itunes. So naturally I open up facebook and go to this "Who has the bigger brain" game, which is ridiculously addicting, and that of which I've of course played several times. Today though, they're like..."You need to install the newest version of Flash player. Easy enough. Two down, what is one more. I go to the link they direct me to, click on "install" , click on, enable Active...bleh bleh...and wait. They say it'll take a couple minutes and then you'll see a movie, and that's when you'll know its done. So I wait, and wait some more. No luck. 10 minutes..20..minutes...30 minutes..it is still installing. Im thinkin "seriously?" So i decide I really want to play that game..maybe it'll work if I uninstall the current Flash Player on my computer and then re-install. So thats what I do, but now I've gotta restart for any changes in my computer to be effective..says Windows. So I do as they follow..20 minutes later...computers up and running..10 minutes later Flash is installed. HO YEAH! Success!

Course I play the game for a while now, gotta get back in that 4th place I was..figure I deserve it after all that hard hard work installing. But i decide that I want my itunes music instead of the games music, so I open up itunes excited to play some Kate Nash and The Shins..but I'll be damned, itunes wants an update. Isn't that surprising. Course I install it hoping it'll be the last thing I'll have to update. I never knew a computer could have so many gosh darn updates They should just have a whole "update package." Though it makes me wonder how cool it would be to be able to update all parts of your life.

"update my car"

"update my dog"

"update my house"

"update my job"

"and god damnit update my spouse"

If only eh?

Well Im sure I'll be back tomorrow, hopefully with no more updates to mention, unless of course they're about my life ; ). Until then, leave the cheese in the fridge and grab the jerky!

Cheers.