Snow day snow day snow day!

What? Look, sometimes you have to make your own fun.

and THAT was the moment I decided "Fuck the earth, I am driving EVERYWHERE from now on."

At left: Mind bleach NOW, please.
All in all today was interesting - saw a rainbow, brought home a sack of chili/ lavender/ bergamot chocolates (and a cappuccino on the house!) from my new favourite shop and oh yeah - SOME DUDE HAD HIS DICK OUT on the train home. He was quickly bounced at the next stop (thanks, Green Ballcap Guy!) and it sparked some fascinating conversation about the weirdest thing you'd ever seen on SkyTrain. (The guy behind me won hands down with a sighting of a dude tearing off his own ear.) Transit is a harsh and often crazy mistress. Like, burn your shit on the front lawn crazy.

Octoberfest

Wow, October was busy. Wallowing in new movies for the first two weeks at the Vancouver International Film Festival, college applications, milestone birthday and Halloween (BEST. HOLIDAY. EVER.) Basically a whirlwind of weird cinema, cake, stress eating and costumes – why can’t every month be October?

Happy Halloween

Badder Homes & Gardens: Supernatural's Guide to Demon-Proofing Yer Humble Abode

...using only a Sharpie. As cool as it would be to have a devil's trap on the ceiling, for a renter, painting a pentagram & sigils is a great way to lose your damage deposit AND scare the neighbours. But transforming a cheap rug into a stylish trap for evil sonsabitches is a fun way to spend a rainy afternoon. And practical! I mean, you just never know.

Step 1: consult Supernatural Wiki. Check!
Sharpie? Check! OK, go!


It helps tremendously to use a bit of string as a guide for the pentagram and circle; you can get a bit freestyle-ish with the sigils, but you want nice tight corners on your pentagram. (And make all your sigils look like happy sigils.) I don't have to tell you to draw on the BACK of the rug, right?


It also helps to let each stage (circle/pentagram/sigils) dry for about 10 minutes in between each one; Sharpies are permanent, but can be a bit smudgy when fresh, and you are a) walking on this thing to draw it because it's too f'n big for the table, and b) going to put it INK SIDE DOWN on the floors you are renting. Do the math.


Ta-dah! The living room is now way more demon-proof than when you started. Zombies, though...that's another matter. Let's just say there's work to be done.

A dark day for us all

Last night I met Miss M & Brian at Hon's with plans to share lettuce wraps, potstickers, and a chicken-and-prawn potato nest (a crispy "bowl" of shredded potato, deep-fried and filled with broccoli, prawns, chicken and savoury brown sauce for about $10). We were gobsmacked to learn it was no longer available; apparently the fried "nest" (the best part!) is too time-consuming to make.
Sads. I will be spamming their comment box with pleas to bring it back.

Let me eat cake: sugar-free pot brownies

I had a tightly wrapped 1/2 cup of the BC Compassion Club's sativa butter in the fridge and a jones for a sugar-free dessert that wasn't fruit-based [Fruit crisp, I love you, but sometimes a woman needs some alone time with her chocolate. You understand, right?]
I tweaked this recipe which was originally from a Splenda recipe booklet. The single review mentioned the resulting brownie's "flatness", but I figured an extra scoop of baking powder would help. That, and doubling the recipe. And using pot butter.

When baking with cannabis butter ["cannabutter"], it's a good idea to go half cannabis butter, and half regular butter. Partly because it's potent and that's all you need, and partly because pot-infused butter tastes like, well, pot-infused butter. It can be overpowering if used straight [why I usually use the cannabutter in a garlicky bruschetta; to hide the taste, and because I love garlic. Pervertedly].

These turned out great; when cooled, it was a moist, dense sugar-free cake - and the applesauce and walnuts make it practically good for you. The cocoa masked virtually all taste of the cannabutter. I was so focused on getting to the end product ["whee, pot brownies!"] it wasn't until I had the more-cakey-than-chewy brownie moist chocolate cake with walnuts cooling on a wire rack that I realized I had made my first cake from scratch! Go me!
Best of all, I still had 1/4 cup of unused cannabutter in the fridge for the next attempt; I'm thinking of using darker cocoa, omitting the walnuts, and spooning preserved cherries over the cake. Oh my.

I tweaked the recipe from Food.com and doubled their version. My doubled, tweaked, pot-infused version [which can be halved and/or made with plain butter only, if that's the way you roll] is below:

Ingredients:

• 1 ^1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
  
• 1 ^1/2 cup Splenda granular, sugar substitute
  
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
  
• 1 cup walnuts, chopped
  
• 1/4 cup plain unsalted butter, softened
  AND
  
• 1/4 cup cannabis butter, softened
  
• 1 cup unsweetened applesauce
  
• 4 eggs
  
• 2 tablespoons vanilla extract
  
• 4 tablespoons mini chocolate chips
  

Tip: butter will soften quickly if cut into small cubes [pictured]. If you want to make this without cannabutter, make sure the total amount of regular butter you use is 1/2 c. for the doubled recipe shown here, or 1/4 c. if halving the recipe.

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a 8" x 8" baking dish with butter
  
• Combine flour, cocoa, Splenda and baking powder in a large bowl
  
• Stir in walnuts
  
• In another bowl, combine butter(s), applesauce, eggs and vanilla extract mixing well with a wire whisk [I went to town with my newly-acquired $20 electric mixer...the power! No more sore wrists! Mwahahahaha!]
  
• Add wet mixture to dry mixture and mix gently to combine.
  
• Fold in chocolate chips.
  
• Spread batter in dish and bake for 35 minutes.
  
• Cool on wire racks.
  
• Nom with a cold glass of milk. Enjoy smallish portions until you know where you're at; overdoing it on cannabis edibles can be uncomfortable. Just FYI.