Chicken Brie Sandwich with Avocado and Dijon

Whenever there's leftover roast chicken, the best thing ever (aside from maybe attacking the cold carcass like a ravenous tyrannosaur the next day) is having a cheese melt sandwich. This is one of my favourite things to bring to work (we have a toaster oven and it makes my day so often!) or just have on a lazy Saturday brunch.

Tips:

- If possible, use a loaf of bakery bread instead of pre-sliced sandwich Wonderbread 

- Spread a generous slather of dijon mustard

- Cut thick slabs of chicken, but cube before so it warms easier

- Use brie. Any kind. Cut thin so it melts quicker

- Slice avocado into thin-ish crescents - the bigger the piece, the less likely it'll slip out when you bite into it

- Grind some fresh pepper over the avocado

My one regret about today was that I toasted the crap out of my bread by putting on the wrong settings (damn you broil vs. bake!) Anyway it still tasted good after scraping the darker patches off, but it fell apart and my dignity was compromised while attempting to eat it.

Garden Slug

I tried to pick up a stick when I was outside one night and almost picked up this...

Tuesday Relief

Back at school today. Andrea and I rented a kiosk from school (illegally it turned out, as the woman contacted us after our formerly approved slot of tabletime to say it was under no circumstances possible for us to sell books at that time (....lol, Concordia)). I also finished off all editing for the Rebetika book I'd been working on - it's been sent off to the press to be printed!! So happy and relieved, words can't even cut it.

Anyway, ran around for a while photocopying posters, buying cream puff pastries from Harmonie, hanging up posters, drinking juice, forgetting our original poster in the photocopying machine, returning to pick it up... Eventually we got back to our table, just in time to put everything away with the help of our fellow volunteer who had stayed to guard everything in the meantime.

Before heading off to study, we went to Voyages Campus to see about a trip to Cuba during reading week. We found an excellent one for $640, all inclusive - meaning flight as well as bungalow, food, drinks, disco, and snorkelling. I'm tempted to book it immediately. First we'll see if we can gather up some women to join us and make it even more of a blast.

So then, with spirits high and heads in the sunny Cuban clouds, we went to go study - only to get distracted with thoughts of shopping. I convinced an all-too-eager Andrea to skip her class, and we went to HMV for an hour and a half and eyeball-raped every single individual piece of merchandise. I also convinced her to buy the fourth and fifth seasons of Six Feet Under, because being the good friend I am. We also found the most wonderful thing: the first two seasons of That 70's Show for only $12.99 each. Needless to say, we bought them - one each - in preparation for our weekend in the city (we are hijacking Andrea's friend's apartment while she's away for deviant cooking endeavours and cat-sitting duties).

Yup. Then class, missed bus, went to library, found books, came home, ate late, fell in bed, and talked to my Australian lover for about 2 hours while falling asleep. OH and I also got my USB key in the mail that I'd forgotten at my other Australian friend's house - plus a wonderful note! It made my day, particularly because on my USB key was around 10GB of music that I'd been craving a terrific amount. Lately I've reached that stage where none of the music on your iPod, despite how awesome it is, is in any way aurally appealing. So now I'm looking forward to some good trance music indulgence.

Jungle

So while I was at work today my room was busy growing a jungle.

I now have a giant potted fern to care for, and I'm not sure how it got there.

Herbert

For some time I've been wanting something living in my room of the horticultural kind, and the other day I found just what I was looking for. I had to go to the Mount Royal area to meet with the graphic designer of the manuscript I'm editing, and they have a really lovely farmer's market just outside the metro. Aside from selling the anticipated assortment of farm-related produce, they have branched out to include exotic plants such as living stones and cacti. I must say, whenever I pass by this market in summer, I always admire their spiny collection of mini cacti because they're all just so damn cute. I never got any though because, well, I either didn't have any money or I didn't like any of them enough or I just couldn't carry around a cactus with me for the rest of the day. In this instance, I had only enough money for lunch/dinner, and I wouldn't be getting home until 9pm, meaning I'd be starving and carrying around a plant that wouldn't hesitate to stab me for the next 8 hours. But I don't know, I saw this cactus and fell in love. I bought it and have no regrets (although I'm still nursing a couple of tender puncture wounds on my hands).

His name is Herbert.

Tea, Toast, and Trees

So I'm sitting in my kitchen, editing a manuscript while drinking chai tea (so delicious) and gnawing on a piece of overly crisp Vegemite toast, and suddenly realize there's some really annoying chainsaw noises coming from outside. I look around to figure out who's being obnoxious in the early hours of the day and suddenly realize there's a guy right outside my window trimming the maple tree. All I can say is thank God I decided to put on some clothes after my shower.

Also I'm in the process of writing about the Comic Con. It deserved a proper post and so I've been trying to finish it. But yeah. Just found out that the book I thought only needed to be edited for the 12th of October actually needs to be done by the 26th of September, aka Monday. *Turn on kamikaze editor mode!!!*