Happy Turkey Day!

I had a terrific long weekend! It was relaxing and fun all wrapped in one.

I started off Friday night by making alfredo sauce from scratch. I've only had alfredo a few times before (usually as part of the pre-packaged frozen Skillet Sensations dinners) but I was seized by the urge to make it. After a slight hiccup at the grocery store (I couldn't find the heavy cream needed for the sauce - instead I found English Cream, Whipping Cream, Table Cream, Cooking Cream, Coffee Cream... Every cream EXCEPT for Heavy Cream) I nabbed all my ingredients (and a bottle of wine) and went home.

The sauce turned out surprisingly well. I ended up using Cooking Cream (with 35% fat). I added a lot more garlic to the sauce than called for, and I also added salt and pepper because it was looking really bland. I'm glad I did. I fried up some veggies (carrots, zucchini and peas) to serve on top of my pasta and it was divine!

The next day I started the day off with a jog and just puttered around my apartment for the morning/afternoon. That evening I had agreed to go out for a Chinese buffet to celebrate Double-10 Day. Apparently it's Taiwan's National Day. I had a terrific time at the dinner - there were 4 other women and we had a ball chatting and stuffing ourselves. It was a nice change because since I moved to Montreal, I've been hanging around with mostly guys, so it was delightful getting a dose of estrogen. I was amazed at the one Chinese girl who joined us - she at SO MUCH! My stomach hurt just watching her. That being said, it was also a pleasure watching her - there's nothing more infuriating than going to a buffet and have someone just nibble here and there and making you feel self-conscious about eating. Well, this certainly was not the case for our group. We ate. And ate. And ate some more.

The next day I went to Old Montreal to go for a walking tour organized by one of the members of Meetin.org. It was really interesting! And it was just a nice change to go to Old Montreal and not look at the same buildings - we took some different routes than I normally take, and I got to learn both some modern and old history (including architectural laws from the 1900s on how to build "sky scrapers", and why old row houses were built the way they were.). The only problem with the walk was the bitter wind that was whistling around. I had to take off my big dangling earrings because they were flapping around in the wind so much. And my Chinese friend (the one I met last night and who decided to blow off a date in order to come to the walk instead) was freeeeezing. She only had a light jacket and no gloves. Yikes!

After the walk I signed up for a movie membership at Club Videotron and rented some films. The plan was to make some homemade cannelloni for dinner and indulge in some more wine. Well. Not only did I make cannelloni, but I also whipped up a caesar salad (with some homemade croutons!) and while I was baking the pasta, I also decided to whip up a batch of chocolate chip cookies. I was a veritable domestic goddess!

While enjoying the fruits of my labour I started watching the first of my movies. I rented "My Life in Ruins." It was a cute movie, not excellent, but amusing. It's a bit of a shame because the woman's first movie ("My Big Fat Greek Wedding") was so amazing. This one was full of clichés, stereotypes, and bad dialogue. It had so much potential but flopped. My favourite part of the movie was the portrayal of Canadians. :) We're such a cute nation!

Yesterday morning I forced myself to go for another jog again. I like my neighborhood jogs because I get to see all the side streets and learn the street names. Well, this time I learned to not try to jog on Cote St-Luc again. Ugh. Uphill. With no side streets to go down. Yup. Definitely avoiding that street again.

After cleaning myself up and having some lunch I forced myself to go out shopping. (It was nearly 1PM and I was rapidly losing incentive to go out.) I'm happy that I did go out though because I managed to buy 2 new pairs of pants (I recently admitted to myself that my last pair of black dress pants were too worn out to wear to work anymore). An even happier event was that I successfully got $50 back from a coat I bought last week! (I bought the jacket last week at regular price, but this week there was a 25% sale on it.) I then managed to postpone buying a cute pair of heeled boots I found and wandered around Walmart instead.

Now by yesterday evening all my incentive too cook deserted me, so I just had grilled cheese sandwiches and wine. I watched my second movie, "Fighting." It wasn't a bad movie, but again, the plot wasn't very well developed, the romance aspect was very poor, and you couldn't really sympathic with most of the characters. The only good thing about it was Channing Tatum. He's cute.

And thus ended my weekend. It was just really great and I enjoyed getting out and about!