Christmas

Well, it's been a ride. Family's in and all that, for five days. I've picked up extra shifts and done zero workouts. I'm now in Sudbury, for Invisalign, round number two.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, can we please talk about the fact that I made pies. Because I'm pretty damn proud of my pies. I made two lemon meringue pies, from scratch, for the very first time in my life, in my wayyy under-stocked grand mother's kitchen, using unfamiliar and old equipement and they turned out pretty rad. Pics or it didn't happen, you say? No problem :)

 This is the dough. I thought I had a picture of it rolled out somewhere but I can't find it anywhere. Which is a shame, because that ball of beige stuff turned out to be a gorgeous, white, thin dough for my pie.

 Here is the first crust, you can see where I messed up and filled it in. I didn't know the sides had to be pinched so it's a little thin on those but I managed to not rip it.

 I ended up not making enough holes in the dough on the side of the plate, so there were air pockets. This is attempt numba one, and the crust is full of air pockets but it was flaky and delicious, so I decided to use it as a shell anyway.

 Here is one pie full (the first one, with the air pockets) of delicious lemon curd (made from scratch, which was a suprisingly entertaining and easy task) and the second attempt. Still some air pockets but I'm starting to get the hang of it.

 Here it is, with meringue. In the confusion of christmas and eighteen eager cooks (I'm barely exaggerating, here) in the the kitchen, it got slightly burnt, but apparently the inside was perfectly gooey and the outside was lightly crisp, so that turned out ok. I'm pretty damn proud of it, and I'm also hoping that it wasn't just beginner's luck. There's only one way to find out (who wants pie? ;) )

I had a bit of dough left over, and a project I saw on Pinterest (praise that site) sprung to mind. I've never done apple pie before and I don't know how to make an apple pie mix so I kind of stuck butter, brown sugar, white sugar and cinnamon in the microwave, took it out and rolled my apple slices in there, lined my apple with crust, put the apples in, and topped it with more dough (as seen above) and ovenned it. It was disgusting. But then again, I don't like apple pie. and I also improvised. So there you have it.

Peace out my friends, as I am about to go see The Hobbit; Part 2, (which I will then write a rant and review about, don't you worry your pretty little minds) and I can't wait.

Veronik

Pre-Christmas

So many things have happened since my last post. For one, I went back to Sudbury, which was a twelve hour long journey (I wrote a post about it on the bus, that I will maybe post later on) and three days of whirlwind-like coffee dates, sushi dates, tim-bit dates, study dates and phone dates, as long as trying to cram as much study time (study dates, you see, do not count as studying, because even though your books are open in front of you, you'll be damned if you can't beat that level in candy crush for your study partner) as I could, since it was the weekend before finals. Of course, that wasn't my best move, and I did pay the price for it when I was forced to cancel a movie with my group of best friends when I realized I wasn't going to be able to tackle three chapters of bio on two hours of sleep (I need a minimum of four per night if I want to stay semi-fonctional). At this point, my body had already slipped into zombie mode, where even though I was running on three hours of sleep, I was still able to appear like I was doing useful things, but when my friends texted me that there had been a mix up and that, long story short, I'd be getting home around 1 am, I was absolutely unable to face it and canceled the whole thing. My best friend, Sarah, joined me for the afore-mentioned timbit date, and stayed until 11 pm while the rest of the crew followed the original plan and caught the movie before presenting Jen with her birthday gift. Said birthday gift was tickets to Hedley, and I gave money to Sarah so that she could pass it on to Kelsey, who had bought the gift. Later, I learned that there had been a definitive cold  (definitely a frenchisism here) that passed between the girls, and it had nothing to do with December weather. I'm supposed to be going back to Sudbury for Invisalign, round two, in late December, so I'll see if I can fix it since I won't have the stress of exams pressing down on my shoulders.

Speaking of, I've apparently survived my first final exams in university, although half my hair and my dignity haven't. I have seriously thought of dropping out of school, and at least 1/8th of the time I had to be studying for chemistry was used for considering serious options that had nothing to do with school. Free lance writing, for example. And then I remembered most of my hits were 140 characters long and I dropped that idea.
My grades, honestly, aren't the best, and I am thinking of taking that semester again, but we'll see what the school tells me after I finish this one, where I intend to bust my ass, even if it kills me. Hopefully it gives me better results, as I have a calculus class, physics, organic chemistry and evolutionnary biology, which is far from a walk in the park.

I've been unaccustomly quiet on social medias lately, and by lately, I mean after exams, where every fifteen minutes, my followers could read a short, but not sweet message about school. I managed to keep my frustration down and not set half the campus on fire through panicked texts to Dee, always there to tell me to shut up and study (what would I do without her), and frustrated tweets. Thankfully, my facebook friends did not have to suffer through this with me, because Dee had switched my password, effectively stopping me from using facebook as a procrastinating device.
Since, in my genius stupidity, I've managed to trick Google Nanny into letting me see my Procrastinating Sites (herefore called PSs), I've also blocked them. Definitively. No time slots, no timer, nothing. I'm not sure how many of you use it, but if you do, you know how much of a pain it is to change it back and I have therefore not been on my PSs since the beginning of my exams, even though I finished four days ago. So far, I've cleaned the house (who really needed it), did the laundry and somewhat regulated my eating schedule (Friday, the day of my last exam, I had a bagel, officially the first non-caffeinated thing I'd had in four days in a row). I've also started the huge stack of books that I had been longingly drooling over for four months now and I've just returned from an exam jury, signifying my semester is officially done and over with. I've been picking up extra shifts while I can, though, so I'm not exactly on vacation. I also have to find myself a dentist and a doctor in Montreal, so I definitely won't be sitting by the fireplace this winter. 

However, I leave you before I write an entire novel, but I'm sure I'll be back with more adventures as Christmas with the family starts (I intend to be at the gym most of the time) and also when my new semester starts.