Welcome Home Zamboni!

On Sunday am, Zambo got the all-clear to leave the hospital at NorthWest Nuclear Medicine & boy, was she happy.  As soon as I came in the room she was meowing and rubbing her face on her cage door.  We were also so happy to see her!

Since she's been home, life has been pretty uneventful for her.  Most of the time she looks like this:

I guess she needs to catch up on some Zzzzz's after her stressful time in Vancouver.  I'm sure she'll be back to her normal trouble-maker self in no time!

Bringing Zambo home was definitely the highlight of the weekend.  We did a lovely walk on Saturday, & thanks to Derek accompanying me, I actually did a walk of appropriate length.  It was so nice to get home and not be limping, that I wisely kept my walk to 20 mins today too!

The waterfront is not far from my office, so I used to run there at lunchtime.  Today I drove there, then walked the loop.  Having grown up in Victoria, I will say that Nexen is not the most picturesque beach, but it's still nice to have a little piece of waterfront to enjoy.

Belly-shot of the week: 32 weeks!
Walking along the Squamish River

Lunchtime walk today: Nexen Beach

In the food department, we had a great success with CBC #10.  I did a double-header out of my WhiteWater Cooks with Friends.  We will call it:

Cookbook Challenge #10: Visions of Roy's, from WhiteWater Cooks with Friends

This is the 3rd Whitewater cookbook and I love each one.  I've enjoyed most things that I've made out of any of these 3 books.  On Sunday night I made two new meals from this book.  They both sounded to me like something you would order off the menu at Roy's, an amazing "Hawaiian Fusion" restaurant.  Everything is great, but the chocolate lava cake is practically enough to convince Derek to hop on the next flight to Maui!

Though I don't have a Roy's cookbook, these recipes would fit in at Roy's no problem.

CBC #10a) Macadamia Nut-Crusted Halibut with Lobster Saffron Sauce from Whitewater Cooks with Friends

Here is what I learned from this recipe:  If the recipe tells you TWICE that it is "worth the effort" to find a random ingredient that you've never heard of, you can assume that ingredient will be hard to find.  In this case, it was recommended that significant efforts be made to find "lobster base."  This was not an easy task.  Now, before you laugh and state the obvious (I live in Squamish, home of three very run of the mill grocery stores), you should know that I also took my search to Vancouver, where neither Whole Foods nor Seven Seas Fish Market could provide me with lobster base.  Back in Squamish, I found a can of lobster pate, which is not the same thing.... but I used it anyway, and I think the result was good.

I even tried to make my rice look cute like Roy does!

A Roy's inspired dinner must be followed by a Roy's inspired desert... Lava Cake of course!

CBC #10b) Chocolate Lava Cake from WhiteWater Cooks with Friends

Actually the recipe also includes sour cherries & calls for some kind of cherry liqueur, but I knew that would not go over well with Derek.   So I adapted slightly and ended up with a heavenly chocolate lava cake.  It was actually too rich for me to eat!  

It's enough to make a grown man cry:
chocolate lava cake, chocolate ice cream and chocolate milk!