Miracle Berries and Harry Potter

Friday, January 6, 2012.  My friend, Heather, started the ball rolling for a few of us soccer girls to get together to watch Harry Potter (the last movie).  She and Sam are major HP fans, while the rest of us attended for other reasons (I thought that I could convince people to play a game of Catan with me, it was at Ada and Tonia's place so they didn't have much of a choice, and Lauren was told that there would be a ton of food).

Heather and Sam were running late so I managed to get the other 3 to play Catan with me.  It was the nicest board game I've ever played: if someone wanted a card Tonia would offer it up immediately, if someone rolled the robber they would put it on a square that would have the least impact on anyone else playing, if two people were building roads in the same direction one would divert to avoid conflict.  You can't be competitive when everyone else is so agreeable!  It was nice but weird.  Oh, and Lauren, who had refused to play with me for a whole week by this point, ended up winning.  Argh.

We had Western-style Chinese for dinner (I insisted on the ginger beef), then moved right onto dessert, which mostly consisted of testing out these "Miracle Fruit Tablets" that I ordered a few days earlier.  I meant to get them for our party on December 31st, but I didn't order them in time - oops.  They react with the sour tastebuds on your tongue - if you eat something sour, it tastes sweet:

Before we ate the tablets, I made everyone test out the sour foods for reference.  Turns out that Sam (far right) likes sour-tasting things so she was fine eating her lemon.  My mouth is puckering just thinking about it!

After the tablets, people had very inquisitive/surprised/pleased looks on their faces:

Especially Heather who was amazed after every bite she took:

I've used frozen Miracle Berries before, and they work better than the granulated tablets that we used on this particular night.  On this night, the lemons were still a bit sour, the limes were alright, but the grapefruits were like they were candied.  YUM!

After testing out all the foods (which also included some freeze-dried strawberries and sour candies), we headed downstairs to the big TV where we rocked out to some Glee Karaoke, the Harry Potter... during which we ate even more - Twizzlers! - and yapped throughout about how Daniel Radcliffe's eyebrows are so much more pronounced when he's not wearing his glasses, about whether or not Ralph Fiennes' nose was just pushed down or was CGI-removed, about how it would be hard to move in a cloak, etc.

Ugh.  After writing this post and remembering how much fun we had, I miss my Calgary soccer friends so much.  We have such a good time every time we get together :)

Nando's in Calgary

Friday, January 6, 2012.  Mmmm.  Nando's.  There is only one in Calgary and their chicken is to die for.  Since my parents were going into the northeast to apply for their India visas, Lauren and I decided to get up early and suffer through waiting for them to apply (which really wasn't very hard or long.  LT brought her new Martha Stewart Cupcake recipe book to 'read' and I brought my iPad to play Catan on), just so we could go to Nando's for lunch after.

We got an entire chicken to share between the three of us (it was small, so you don't need to judge as harshly!), which we doused in Peri-Peri sauce:

Haha.  Now that my mom has a phone and can check her email anywhere, she's just as bad as my sister about pulling it out at inappropriate times (i.e. see above).

Thank you (again) to my friend, Erin, who introduced me to Portugese chicken.  My life would not be complete without it.

Pink Mountains

Friday, January 6, 2012.  Maggie and I were out for her morning potty break when I noticed the pink sky towards the west.  Usually, I'm too tired and lazy to walk all the way down the hill first thing in the morning, but this day I felt unusually inspired.  We walked down, then I let Maggie off leash.  I guess she wasn't digging the extended time outside first thing in the morning either because she just plopped her butt down, and cooperated as the subject of my photos so we could head back to the house asap:

Pink mountains!

Jackie's Promotion Dinner

Thursday, January 5, 2012.   Jackie recently received a promotion at work and offered to take us all out for dinner.  We decided that we'd go for sushi at a new place in the south, Izumi Sushi.  I went to this place a few weeks earlier with my friend Angie and thought that it was good so I convinced the family that we should go there instead of our usual place, Misato.

JT and Jackie were hard to convince since they love the Calgary rolls, but I've been hating more and more on Misato because they raised the prices a 3ish years ago so those massive Calgary rolls aren't a deal anymore.  It was still alright because the rolls were still big and filled with a lot of good quality fish.  Then, in the past 1.5 years or so, I think that they've been cutting back on the amount of fish in those Calgary rolls and have been increasing the amount of rice.  ACK!!!!  I can handle upping the price as time goes on, but I definitely can't handle cutting back on the quality.  I assume Justin and Jackie haven't noticed the difference in quality, because I can't understand why they still love going there so much ;)

So before the meal, my parents needed to get their passport photos taken so they could apply for their India visas.  Blacks Photography is usually a total rip-off, where you get something like 2 pictures for $20.  Turns out that Superstore also does passport photos ($6 for two, I think), which was a better place than Blacks for Lauren and I to waste time while our parents were doing their picture thing:

We then went to the restaurant and each picked something different, despite my warnings that the plates and rolls were ENORMOUS!!!!  Even with Justin, my dad and I, we weren't able to finish it all.  We can jam a ridiculous amount of food down, so this is sort of a big deal.  Sorry, Jackie, you are too tiny to play in the big leagues with us (although Justin would say that I've fallen off my game too):

Chugging away at it...

After dinner we all went to the movies to see Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.  Justin's friend, Russell, ended up meeting us 10 minutes into the movie.  We had these Movie Night Out passes that came with pop and popcorn - thank goodness Russell came hungry because we were all too full to eat any of the popcorn and the piles of candy that we snuck in :)

Thank you, to Jackie for treating us to a fantastic dinner.  We are so lucky to know such a generous person, and congrats on the promotion!  And, we might have even found a place in the SW that rivals Misato as a 'favourite.'