best pasta of my life

 i made some yummy pasta.  the fresh kind stuffed with italian sausage.  i sauted some crimini mushroom halves in butter and garlic and a little bacon fat.  when the pasta was cooked i sparshed some of the pasta water into the mushrooms before i drained it and added a little olive oil drizzle, a double shake of liquid smoke, a splat or two of chipotle hot sauce, some grated parm, and finished it off with a drippy drab of apple cider vinegar and a little s+p.  oh my. it was the pasta of my dreams.  after the second shovel into my greedy gaping maw, i realized that i didn't bless my food.  "thank you for making food so delicious" was one of the things i said with my mouth full of melted parmesean pasta and shroomies.  like really.  what a gift.  i never thought of it that way.  he made this world and the mortal experience so incredibly pungent.  flavours and feelings and sensations. there is so much to experience and so much intensity of joy and creation.  so much FLAVOUR.  our capacity to experience is exquisite.  the more i think about it the more deeply amazing it is.  

anyhoo...wow, intense laura.  take it down a notch.  i refuse to water myself down for you laura! whatever laura.  whatever you laura!

today is bell let's talk day. we did a little campaign on our tiktok.  every video on tiktok with the hashtag #BellLetsTalk is 5 cents donated by bell to canadian mental health initiatives.  so we did 12 videos... .60 cents!  haha but it's obviously not just for the money it's for talking about mental health.  as they say in the schools, "10/10 people have mental health".  j9 and andi are my tiktok instagram girls.  they had some plans for our campaign.  i just went around with j9 today and made people participated in our videos.  my approach is, ok we are doing this, then i give a choice.  like you can answer this question or this question.  it's pretty effective.  i start out with the assumption that the person is already on board.  if they don't want to do it they tell me and we move on.  but most people do it.  tooting my own horn.  toot! toot!

j9 makes friendship bracelets.  i saw her doing it on some zoom meetings.  i've been to enough girls camps to recognized the posture without even seeing the threads on screen.  naturally i asked her to make me one. she gave it to me today.  i asked her to tie it on in a ceremony formally uniting us in friendship.  it's turquoise with pink hearts.  "it's laura colours" she said.  ya, i can claim those.

i left work 4ish.  the light was golden and low as i rounded the corner to my stairs but by the time i fed izzy and had some 'toilet time' (wink wink) the sun was sitting.  i sat on the stairs wrapped in my plushy blanket from heather and watched the sky.  there is something about the winter sky and the tree tops, all lacy and bare.  i grabbed my camera and took a few clicks.

on saturday heather and i met at my beloved bao down for some flights of bao.  i say that i don't have a favourite food, but bao come very close to that favoured distinction for me.  which bao did i get?  i'll tell you!!  

1. spammy--panko spam with nori, tamari, sriracha mayo and slaw

2. brb--crispy lemongrass chicken, lemon butter sriracha, lettuce, thai ranch and crispy shallots

3.fili chino-- housemade chorizo, lettuce, crispy onions, salsa verde

4. vevo 90210--tempura avocado, mushrooms, housemade vegan mayo, tamari, slaw

5.  2 worlds collide--crispy pork, braised pork belly, chicharron, carrots and daikon, hoisin glaze

by far the best one is 2 worlds collide.  it is SO good. my next fave was brb, then spammy and vevo and fili chino tie for last--not too flavourful.

heather had her bao without the actual bao steam bun, but in lettuce cups instead.  we had a fun time eating our bao and discussing them.  bao down is in olympic village.  it was a beautiful day and we wanted to find a place to sit and talk and people watch near the water.  it was very busy and we almost gave up on finding a parking spot on the street. i took one more turn through the streets.  when we turned on to ontario street i said that heather's home province might bring us luck.  sure enough someone left their spot and we got it.

we found a nice bench.  a cute young couple on a little picnic date kept the bench dry. we eagle eyed them and nabbed it when they left.  we sat and talked and enjoyed the view and a trio of ducks.  there was a glass building in the skyline with a copper colour that i found quite striking.  we stayed until we were good and chilled and then went in search of hot chocolate.  it's the hot chocolate festival time again.  the night before we went through all the possible vendors and all the flavours and chose 2 different possibilities.  we couldn't decide which one to go to, so i said let's let google maps decide.  whichever one is closest to our lunch place that will be the one we go to.

the bench bakehouse on commercial street was the winner.  they had two hot chocolates available.  one was a milk chocolate with passionfruit.  it came with a passionfruit marshmellow and a croissant dipped in chocolate filled with passion fruit curd.  to be honest the passionfruit curd is what sold me. that sounded divine.  the other hot chocolate was a dark chocolate with rosemarry and maple.  it came with a treat that i have no idea what it is by it's name but it had maple cream in it.  sounds delighful right?  

commercial was hoppin.  the traffic was full on if you know what i mean.  i parked on a side street and heather hopped out and went to fetch our hot chocolate delights.  true to our gluttony natures, each got one of each.  plus heather bought me a bag of the passion fruit marshmallows.  but we didn't realize until she was back and we had driven to a park that the bench bakehouse didn't give us our promised treats!  i could not let it go.  "don't make me go back there" groaned heather, or 'helen' as the girl had called her.  but back we went only to hear that they ran out.  no explanation.  no substitutions offered.  not even telling us that they were out.  that's a black mark against you bench bakehouse! those are expensive hot chocolates.  you are paying for the treat as well.  bad form! bad form! (what movie is that from?)

as to the hot chocolates themselves, the passion fruit one tasted like tepid milk with some after taste of something fruity.  the rosemary maple one was delicious.

when i was dropping heather off we were kind of figuring it out as we went.  first we thought she could get out at science world, but there was nowhere to stop and then we were by the olympic village sky train station and she just jumped out at the red light.

i didn't know she left her phone which was charging in my cup holder until i got home.  so we ended up meeting again the next day at bridgehouse station in richmond.  heather got her phone and i got a charge cord for my kobo so it worked out well for me!

ok.  i'm going to bed early.  i'm going to try and get up for shakey shakey tomorrow.