Pineapple Jam

I saw this in the grocery store last night, and was really pumped to try it! Have you ever walked down the grocery isle purposely looking for new things to try? I've never done this until now. I filled my cart with all kinds of weird, random fun things to eat. It was GREAT fun! You should try it. You might end up with a pile of condiments that you may never eat, but who cares!

I decided to try the jam on stone wheat crackers, but I can imagine it would be good on bread, or a bagel too. I found the jam to be quite sweet, maybe a little much so, but definitely tasted like pineapple! After I ate about 3 crackers with jam on it, I couldn't have any more, it was a bit too much. I really craved an actual fresh pineapple more than anything after experiencing pineapple jam for the first time.

Here's a delicious looking recipe using the jam: Roast Duck with Vanilla and Pineapple jam.

http://www.expatliving.sg/article/wine-dine/recipes/roast-duck-vanilla-and-pineapple-jam

As you can see, the jam is not exactly healthy; one tbsp 50 calories. Yikes.

I think next time, I will make my own jam from scratch. It will have less chemicals and preservatives, and I can control the amount of sugar added. Here is a simple recipe to use if you are wanting to try this for YOUR first today :)

http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-make-pineapple-jam

Did you know:

- The word pineapple in English was first recorded in 1398, when it was originally used to describe the reproductive organs of conifer trees (now termed pine cones).

- The natural (or most common) pollinator of the pineapple is the hummingbird.

Merritt Motel

Tonight, we were stranded and forced to stay in a Motel in Meritt with free internet and a free Movie Channel. It was very exciting, I know! You are jealous, and wish you could've experienced it with me. The motel was not a gas station, but I didn't take a photo of the motel, just the emptiness of the town.

I've only ever passed by Merritt while driving to Kelowna and never went in to the town. (I've always wanted to check out Merritt Mountain Music Festival though) Our lovely motel experience would not have happened had our car kept driving as it was supposed to.  So, my first today is about getting stranded in a crap-hole place being forced to sleep in a skeezy motel because of a random, spontaneous car malfunction. Some people might find great joy in this. I did not. It was definitely a crazy experience to say the least; not one of those experiences I want to repeat, but definitely blog worthy. Have you ever been stranded in a place you wish you weren't? Has your car broken down on the side of road- what did you do?

This was the only photo I got of the hotel, and our happiness to be there! We watched many episodes of "Intervention" while eating whatever left-over food we had from our snowboarding weekend.

I am not going to recommend you go out and get stranded in a strange city for something new to do, as that would be bad advice. Since this blog is about celebrating FIRSTS, what I will recommend is that you have some kind of Road Side Assistance, or BCAA coverage when going on a road trip so you don't have to worry if your car does crap out.....

The positive; I got to spend this experience with two lovely people who look at the positive in almost every situation.


This place was deserted, and empty and sort of spooky.

broken down vehicle

Today, is the first time I've been broken down on the side of the road during a road trip. We were only on the road about one hour or so, too. We were driving back from Big White, after a 4 day snowboarding trip. We were coasting along at a reasonable pace as the weather was quite snowy and unpredictable. Kyle, (his parents vehicle), noticed a not-so-good noise coming from the vehicle, but continued on, hoping the noise would stop. Once the oil light turned on, we pulled over to the side of the road and checked out the engine. The oil looked to be at  normal level, but he added a little more just to be sure. It started to smoke, and when he turned the car back on, the noise sounded just as bad and very loud! It was not as simple as just adding oil we discovered. We decided we should probably not drive any further and call BCAA to come and get us. They did not come and get us :(

Since BCAA only insures a car, if the person who owns the BCAA insurance is in the car,  Kyle made the executive decision to just drive into Merritt. It was only 18 clicks away (mostly downhill thankfully) because we didn't want to spend $200.00+ on a tow truck. It seemed that the car was ok if we could cruise downhill, but as soon as the gas was triggered, there was LOUD banging noise that didn't sound good. A few times driving into Merritt, my heart skipped a beat and I was sure the car was going to blow up into a million peices. Tara (my sister who was also in the car) was clearly freaking out as well. We were later told vy a guy from Kal-Tire that the banging noise sounded like metal on metal which is VERY bad and immediatly told Kyle to shut off the engine once he heard the noise. YIKES!

Here's the sound:


As far as I know, Kyle's parents car is still in Kamloops (where it got towed to) .  We took the lovely 5 hour torturing Greyhound bus ride back to Vancouver the next morning at 8am in order to get back to work asap.

Intoxicated tubing

This one is obvious. We had some drinks, we had some more drinks, and then we went tubing. I've been tubing before, but never included alcohol as an added bonus. It was a great way to end our super fun weekend at Big White, and a great first for the day! If you are of legal age to drink, I definitely recommend you try this!  My problem was that I also had some Ibuprofen and Benadryl in my system, so it exacerbated the intoxication!  Oy.



We had a number of drinks, and grabbed some plastic garbage bags and made our way down the hill by foot, to the LARGEST TUBING PARK IN NORTH AMERICA, apparently!



I'm going to post some videos of the night tomorrow, so stay tuned. SUPER FUNNY!!!

Learn Something Every Day t-shirts

While sitting around the cabin up at Big White, with my iPhone in hand, I found this cute little website where you can learn a new fact everyday. I thought this was a cute website idea, and sort of goes with my theme of something new everyday!  I don't know if they are "actual" facts, but they are entertaining and keep you occupied to say the least.


"Learn Something Every Day is a self initiated daily project by UK based design studio Young. We are a studio adept in brand identity development, illustration, print and interactive design. "

If you really like one of the daily facts, you can purchase a t-shirt. http://cargocollective.com/learnsomethingeveryday#341721/April-3

 Today's fact:  

Learn something new today, and go to this website. Or, if you're looking for a random gift idea this might be the place to go?! 

love and snowboarding

I went snowboarding today for the first time with my little sister and her new boyfriend and my lovely fiance. I've never been snowboarding with Tara and a boyfriend. I've actually never been on a road trip with her and a boyfriend before! It was a GREAT GREAT weekend, and we experienced many firsts as two couples on a big snowy mountain for 4 days. I am going to show you some of my fav photos of the weekend! ENJOY.

7 letter scrabble word

We played a lot of Scrabble this weekend, and who doesn't love a good game of Scrabble, really?

This first is simple , but beautiful. I put all seven letters down on the scrabble board! woot woot. I've never done this before, and I actually did it TWO times in a row.  If a player uses all seven of the tiles in the rack in a single play, a bonus of 50 points is added to the score of that play (this is called a "bingo" in Canada and the United States, a "Scrabble" in Spain and a "bonus" elsewhere).

VEGGIES

SERVING

These were the two words used to give me 50 extra points in the game.... 

Side Note:  article comes from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8604625.stm

The rules of word game Scrabble are being changed for the first time in its history to allow the use of proper nouns, games company Mattel has said.

Place names, people's names and company names or brands will now count. ( This is how we play it anyways, haha) 

Mattel, which brings out a new version of the game containing amended rules in July, hopes the change will encourage younger people to play. Until now a few proper nouns had been allowed which were determined by a word list based on the Collins dictionary.

In Scrabble, players try to gain the highest points by making words with individual letter tiles on a grid board. Each letter tile has a points value between one and 10, based on the letter's frequency in standard English. Various coloured squares on the board can double or triple a player's points.