1. Where could someone find chestnuts in Ottawa?  The closer to Centretown the better.
2. Can I get over the fact that chestnuts look like mini brains?

We went to our first ZenKitchen dinner last night and really enjoyed ourselves. When we arrived, we were served ricotta and pesto appetizers which were delicious. I asked the husband with a puzzled look, “isn’t all the food supposed to be vegan?” I don’t know a lot of vegan food, but I was pretty sure ricotta was cheese. Only later did we find out that it was actually tofu! Crazy! I was completely fooled

Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos – but you can check out some Flickr photos from the event. First, there was the harira soup, then the caesar salad, a fancy mushroom cannelloni and finally, the chocolate mousse.

The local mustard greens were a particular highlight. Nice and peppery. Like arugula, but um.. stem-ier.

We’ll definitely try these dinners again because I get the feeling it may be even more awesome when there’s an abundance of local produce.

Slowly, the apartment is starting to look a little more festive. Today I made these gingerbread ornaments using this recipe. My ornaments look a little… rustic. Maybe it was because I didn’t have white glue to make the normal recipe. Or maybe because I didn’t have a rolling pin to properly roll out the dough.

At any rate, they baked for 1.5 hours and made the apartment small like spice world. Mmmm.

When the Ladyfest Craft Sale wrapped up, we high-tailed it to Shanghai for dinner.  I had been looking forward to this dinner ALL DAY LONG.  It’s turning into a bit of a tradition for me to celebrate craft sales with a large order of General Tao’s Tofu.  So, off we ran in the snow and ordered my favourite tofu and the Shanghai Chow Mein (because sometimes it’s good to try something new and live on the edge).  By 8pm, I was home wearing fleece pajamas and fell asleep by 9pm watching a movie.  Age is catching up with me.

My plan for Sunday was to “do nothing” – and by nothing I mean, get groceries, bake bread, make muffins and plan dinner.  Some mini-disasters ensued: a broken bottle of maple syrup (tragic!) and cracking an egg on the floor.  (Hello Betty Butterfingers) Aside from that…  nothing.   Orville hid in the bedroom on the duvet – far away from me and my kitchen drama.

In the afternoon, I picked up a couple of DVDs (Hairspray and The Namesake) and curled up on the couch with the laptop, some cookies and tea.  And essentially “did nothing.”  To say it was the best day ever might be a stretch, but it was pretty awesome.