The Amazing Shrinking Woman

Ah yes, it’s that time of year again, that one day in the year where we show our Canadian pride by waving flags, wearing red and white and watching fireworks. How is watching fireworks patriotic? I have no idea, it’s just somehow become associated with Canada Day, shrug. They aren’t even red and white fireworks, or shaped like a maple leaf or sponsored by Tim Horton’s so really, how patriotic can they be? 😉

That’s one big flag!

I had planned to go hiking today, get out there, enjoy the beautiful summer weather, be one with nature an all that but I am still coughing (been coughing for over a week now, lame!) and oddly enough I had no desire to have a huge coughing fit in the middle of some trail on the side of a mountain, I know, I’m so weird *rolls eyes*. Instead I slept in, cuddled with the cat, read a bit, watched some tv and then went to go hang with KL.

The first part of my day may seem lame, although I enjoy staying at home doing whatever but just so you don’t think I’m a hermit or anything I’ll tell you about the social part of my day. 🙂

KL and I made dinner at her place, I love her place, it’s so cute! I had this brilliant idea that we should do burgers and some sort of side dish, maybe even bbq it…it seemed like the perfect summer dinner idea. However, the lack of a bbq was an issue, though not as large of an issue as you might expect since I’ve never actually cooked on one and would probably have killed the burger patties lol Instead we cooked them in a frying pan, well technically I cooked them, yup, that’s right, I cooked. Me. The one who sucks at cooking actually cooked. Oh and get this, not only did I cook the burgers I also made them, from scratch! Anybody fall down from the shock of reading that? Oh wait, you’re already seated cause you’re reading my blog so phew, you are all safe! 😉

It is a dead easy burger recipe but one I very much enjoy. Each patty is 4oz of lean ground turkey meat, 2 tblsp salsa, 2 tblsp diced red onion. That’s it. No, I’m not kidding, that really is all you need. The amount of turkey I bought was enough to make three patties so I just tripled the amount of salsa and red onion and voila! I had these…

home made turkey burgers

Three oh-so-lovely but omg-icky-I-touched-raw-meat turkey burgers. The salsa adds flavour and moisture, the red onion helps the patties to bind. Once cooked the burger is moist and yummy. You have to be careful to not overcook them, after they have been flipped you can tell when you need to stop cooking them because a bunch of moisture starts releasing in to the pan, seriously, it is like the burgers are leaking or something, it’s weird lol, take em off the heat then and they will be perfect-o! 🙂

Normally I eat them with the normal everyday burger toppings but I had an inspired idea (don’t ya love how I’m tooting my own horn over here? lol 😉 ) and topped them with goat cheese and diced jalapenos. Mmm! Mmm! Mmm! Well, if you like goat cheese and jalapenos it’s a good idea lol We also used the more normal toppings, garlic mayo, ketchup, relish, mustard, lettuce, sauteed mushrooms and sliced tomato. The burgers were messy, as a good burger should be, but really tasty. KL, who is an amazing cook, really liked them so yay! I cooked something, for someone else and not only did I not food poison us or screw up the recipe but they really liked it! *happy dance*

KL’s contribution was a super delish salad! It had, hmm, lemme see if I can remember, spinach, apple, blackberries, poppyseed, home made dressing, sunflower seeds um, shoot…I can’t remember the rest. Oh, and so you don’t skip over what I wrote there, she made the dressing, from scratch! I’ve never even thought of doing that and she did it amazingly well! After her hard work the end result looked like…

KL’s amazing salad

Look at that! Not only delish but beautiful too. That picture is before the home made dressing was put on – in case you were wondering lol

So the end result of dinner looked like…

A tasty dinner. 🙂

Not only tasty, and pleasing to the eye buuuuut healthy too! Yay! 😀 Always nice when you can make a healthy dinner also taste good lol

After dinner we went to watch the fireworks. There was a live concert and during the earlier part of the day there had been all kinds of things going on but being the people that we are we waited to go until later in the night so we could avoid all the little kids and families lol. The band we were near was actually really good, they were doing covers of all different sorts of music, people in the crowd were dancing, the band was funny between songs, overall a good choice by whomever picked them.

The fireworks show lasted a half hour, started at 10:30pm. It was kinda funny, KL and I had a great seat, on a log on the beach, it was still warm, you could hear (and see) the water lapping up against the sand, see people standing on the pier to our right, see the bridge to our left, it was really quite a beautiful night. So, this great atmosphere is happening and right on time to our left the fireworks start, then boom! To our right more fireworks start. Turns out we were between two different fireworks displays so everyone for the first little bit was turning their heads quickly from side to side trying to watch both shows and not miss anything – the crowd must have looked like one of those cat videos on youtube…

After about five minutes or so, yes, it took that long! the realization dawned that both shows are identical, yup, identical. So really you only had to pick which one you wanted to look at, or really, which direction was most comfortable for your neck, and you were set. The fireworks were pretty, and I would show you pictures but all my pictures of them suck, they either look like this…

that little red blob is what was actually a big beautiful firework, I swear!

or this…

again, looked waaaay better in real life, honest!

I don’t know why my pictures of fireworks never work, sigh, guess you’ll have to take my word they were good but you can do that, right? 😉

After the fireworks I came home and watched the movie Crazy Stupid Love and am now crushing a bit on Ryan Gosling. He looked yummier than my dinner lol 😉

I have no words. No. Words.

Tags: canada day, crazy stupid love, fireworks, food, friends, healthy eating, made from scratch, ryan gosling, stat holiday, turkey burger