Moving The Blog

Yes. We know this blog has been very much neglected. We hope to remedy that, if only for the summer.

Please find us at our new location: http://danandcarly.wintschel.com.

-dan and carly

Neglect Your Blog Much?

One might wonder if we were dead. Alas, I am sorry to report that we are not.

Neglecting the blog, definitely, but very much alive nonetheless. Can't really say why we've been neglecting the blog. Probably we've been too busy eating, or cooking or something to bother with writing.

As usual, the reason for this post is food-related. Carly and I headed out to Crescent Beach after church yesterday in hopes that it might be sunny over there, and we could go for a walk. We were in luck. It was pouring rain until we got onto 24th Ave, but then the sun began to shine, and we we enjoyed a fantastic walk in sun and light drizzle along the ocean.

No trip to Crescent Beach is complete without stopping at Fieldstone for a Lemon Tart. As Carly said (18 times) - "This is my favorite Lemon Tart in the whole world". I have to agree.

So do yourself a favor, and go get a Lemon Tart from Fieldstone - your world will become a better place.

Relax

Relaxing doesn't seem to be very high on the priority list of 'stuff to do' lately. Well - perhaps it's high on the priority list, but ends up pretty much at the bottom of the feasibility list.

But, we still have time to eat good food, and take a few pictures.

Every now and again I feel like messing around with the camera and tripod (especially with longer shutter speeds) - so I got this shot of our couch, mid-afternoon the other day, with a 6 second shutter.

A symbol of relaxation - something we don't get to do much

Also, I bake apple pie (and yes, it is the best apple pie ever):

Best apple pie ever

After hanging out with John and Becky Dyck for a while on Saturday - we were inspired to cook up some Patacones (aka: fried plantain) - which went absolutely awesome with a bowl of chili.

Fried plantains. The Yum.

We're looking forward to getting the next week or two out of the way. My buddy James (from Ireland) - is going to make it out for a weekend visit in early May, and following that we're going to head to Kamloops for the May long weekend to visit some other friends of ours (Hi Chris and Sarah).

Chris sent me a message saying "Come visit for a weekend, we'll entertain you. And by entertain, I mean we'll eat a lot of good food and won't watch TV." - our idea of a good time.

Other than that, not a lot to report. Carry on.

Iron Chefs

After an inspiring viewing of Iron Chef several months ago, we shopped, cooked, laughed and tasted in our own iron chef fashion.

The key ingredient for all dishes - Chocolate!



The rules were simple: no recipes allowed, use chocolate in everything, and have fun. The last rule was certainly easy considering chocolate was abounding everywhere...even in places it shouldn't have been (some might argue)!

That night, we made 4 dishes with 4 different kids of chocolate.

On the menu:
Asian Acorn Squash Milk Chocolate Soup
White Chocolate, Cheddar and Sour Cream Biscuits
Oh So Chocolaty Glazed Carrots
and
Cacao and Spice Crusted Filet Mignon


Daniel always has a knife


Carly's cooking...or goofing off




Plate it up! Time to taste.

By the way, 2 of the dishes were excellent, 1 of the dishes was passable and 1 of the dishes was horribly wrong. Can you guess which was which?

House Warming Flourishing

Townhome

We have purchased a home. We are home.

Upon a quick dictionary perusal of the word "home", you may find any (and more) of the following definitions, which depending on your lifestyle, phase of life, perspective, or mental state at the time of reading will lead you to be either alarmed, amused, or in some level of concurrence.

in or at the place one lives
to the intended or correct position
denoting the administrative center of an organization
a place where an object is kept
an institution for people needing professional care or supervision
the family or social unit occupying such a place
the place where one lives permanently
the place where something flourishes, is most typically found, or from which it originates


I would have to agree that for now, we would seem quite permanently in this place, which I feel is certainly the intended and correct position. If you were to look at the current state of Dan's office desk (not the misleading photo you will soon find below in which he had plenty of help and advance notice of said photography) you may also be inclined to agree with the part of the third definition that speaks to "administrative center" though you would be quite absurd to agree to the part about organization! And yes, there are many objects kept in this home. Perhaps already too many and yet at times, like the other day when I needed to find a sensible tool for grating cheese, it seems not enough. As for the professional care or supervision...I think I shall refrain from comment at this time. Ah, but I do like the last one here about flourishing. Yes, this indeed is a nice thought. It reminds me of a sign I saw not so long ago that read "Home is where your heart says Ah...."

Without further ado, some photos of home!












Sorry, no upstairs (bedrooms) photos...


Come visit us soon!

Yay House (again)

Things have been a little crazy in Wintschel-land for the past couple months. Unfortunately, I don't think we've had anything too exciting to talk about, and neither of us thought that you wanted to read blog posts about "I'm working" or "I'm doing my taxes" or "I'm going to bed now".

But now that we're moving in a few days, I thought I'd put something up here. We're super excited to get into our new place, and I'm sure we'll be having a housewarming party in the next several weeks. Tonight is the "go to notary to sign papers" night, and this coming Tuesday is the "walk through the house for the first time" day. That's to be followed by Thursday, which is the "holy crap, we now have 35 years of debt to pay-off", followed by Fridays "YAY YAY YAY WE GET KEYS AND A GARAGE DOOR OPENER AND SHAW IS COMING TO HOOK UP OUR INTARWEB". If that weren't enough, Saturday is the "HAH - I get to make my friends wake up early to help us move - time for moving-karma-payback-thinger-or-something."

We'll put up some pictures once we've actually moved our stuff into the place.

Morning Walks

Since I'm lazy, and tend to lock myself in the basement with my computers most of the time, I've taken to leaving the house with Carly every morning when she's on her way to work, and have her drop me off near the Canada Games Pool in New West, where I turn around and walk home.

There are some terrific views on Richmond Street near the cemetery that look down to the Fraser River and Port Mann Bridge (8 lanes that it should be).

Anyways - I brought the camera along a couple days ago, and ended up with a half decent shot of sunrise.


Just two days ago we finally received word that it sounds like our insurance claim from all the stuff we had stolen in Israel over the summer is FINALLY processed. We're hoping to see that come to a close soon - I'm sick of thinking about it and waiting for it all to end.

Tomorrow makes it THREE MONTHS until we land in our new place, we're stoked.