Category Archives: Suite Life

Healthy Eating Strategies from Someone Who Does Not Enjoy and is Not Particularly Good At Cooking

As my time at UBC is quickly drawing to a close, I thought I would try to impart as much of my wisdom as possible before I’m gone.

Over the last three years I have successfully cooked for myself, without dying! And without eating KD and ramen every night. Now, as the title suggests, I am not great at cooking. And I don’t really like it THAT much (I’m more of a baker), so as you can imagine I didn’t eat super healthy every single day. Especially at the start. But I think I’m sort of starting to get the hang of it, so here are my suggestions for when you are attempting to eat healthy on your own:

  • When you first start cooking after you move out, if you’re like me and never cooked at home, it can be very daunting. At the beginning, focus on just getting yourself fed without breaking the bank without stressing out about if it’s healthy or not.
  • Make a list of all the meals you can already make. At the beginning, this might just be quesadillas and pasta with sauce and maybe a few other things, but if you have a list, when you’re stuck on what to make you can reference that.
  • Try new recipes. If you aren’t sure if you’ll like it, MAKE A HALF RECIPE! So many times I’ve had to eat some disgusting casserole for a week and then chided myself for making the whole recipe. Don’t be me.
  • When you are looking for new recipes, look for ones that feature vegetables. Or at least include a vegetable side dish or salad in with your meal.
  • When you’ve made a recipe a few times, are good at making it, and know you like it, add them to your list of meals you know how to make. There’s been plenty of times I didn’t know what to make in a week and went to my recipe binder for ideas! And once you’ve got some healthy recipes in there, it can make picking a healthy meal to cook a lot less overwhelming.
  • Obviously, unprocessed foods > processed foods. But, frozen meals are fast and easy so in my opinion, if you eat them now and again, it’s not a huge deal. Plus, if you pair say, a frozen pot pie with steamed frozen peas and cooked rice, that’s not really so terrible, right? Not all frozen foods are created equal, so look for ones with less sodium and try to pair partial meals with unprocessed veggies.
  • Most people who eat a western diet tend not to get enough fruits and veggies. (I don’t have source on hand for this but in my experience this tends to be true.) If you’re having trouble implementing more veggies into your diet, start with small goals: for example, make sure you eat something green (eg. spinach, romaine lettuce, kale, brussels sprouts) every single day.
  • Make your snacks healthy. Fruits like apples and bananas make great snacks, and if you cut up carrot sticks at the beginning of the week you’ll have healthy snacks for days! (For the record, the Canada Food Guide recommends at least one dark green and one orange vegetable per day!)
  • If there are days where you eat cookies and chips and pizza and beer, don’t freak out. Guilt is not productive. Just as long as that isn’t your habit every single day, you’ll be okay.

The two things I would like to stress the most is keep a list of your favourite recipes for reference, and incorporating fruits and/or vegetables into all of your meals and snacks. At its most basic, eating healthy comes down to eating more fresh ingredients, less processed food, and drinking more water, although even figuring out how to do that can be overwhelming! Hopefully these tidbits of advice will help you get organized and get you on your way to eating a little bit better. Let me know in comments if you have any more tips!

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The Grown-Up Life: Getting My Bank Fees Waived

So earlier this week I did a thing that made me feel pretty grown up, so I thought I’d share it with you.

Last weekend, I put the finishing touches on my website for when I graduate (See? So grown up!) and I needed to buy a domain name. I decided on http://www.littleharpontheprairie.com. Side note – if you click on that link it will help me rank higher on Google searches :)

So anyway, I tried to purchase the domain, and the transaction failed. I got a message saying that I was refunded. I decided to try again, to see if it was a one-time thing. Still failed. I decided to wait until Monday, when finally it worked.

Fast forward to Thursday, when I get an email from PayPal saying there were insufficient funds in my bank account. My heart stops. What? I log into online banking to see that those two first failed charges were processed and the refunds didn’t come in time, so I was looking at two NSF charges of $45 each. Yikes! My PayPal has always automatically paid with my credit card, not my chequing account, so I was shocked and upset that this happened.

Cue an hour of being really upset and feeling really, really dumb. “Isn’t there any way to fix this?” I cried. So naturally, I Googled it. Turns out if you just phone your bank and ask, they’ll waive a fee for you. I did just that and got one of my $45 charges removed. They could only remove one, they said, and maybe if I was a pushier person I could have gotten the other one removed too, but I was just happy that I got anything at all.

I’m still out $45 dollars, but that’s a lot better than $90! And I felt pretty smart that I figured out how to do that, so my ego was soothed too. The main lesson I’ve learned here, though, is that I should always double check my payment method when using PayPal!

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Routine

Hey, you. It’s been a while. A longer while than I care to admit.

The thing is, lately I’ve been feeling like I’ve got nothing to say. The first two years of my degree, I felt like everything was new and worth sharing, and now, well, it all just feels routine. Uninteresting. Not worth reporting. I’ve got my good times and bad times, fun times and boring times, but I sort of feel like I’ve got this university thing down and sometimes I forget that maybe the everyday life of a university student might actually be of interest.

A quick update, then. My room mate has decided she will be moving out next year. It’s not that we got into fights, or can’t stand each other’s habits, it’s just that at the moment she’s sleeping in the living room and doesn’t like it anymore. Can’t blame her, but I’ll definitely miss her. I’ll either be getting a new room mate or a cat next year, depending on if someome I know gets in to UBC and wants to forgo res.

I’m leaving for Belgium in about two weeks (OH MY GOSH!) and I’ve got a lot to do before then. Sign up on the registry, photocopy my passport, get foreign currency, inform the back I’ll be using my credit card overseas, pack, practice practice practice…

There is also a bunny living in my place right now. It belongs to my friend whose landlord doesn’t allow pets. It’s very cute, but also pretty messy… I don’t think I’ll be too sorry when it leaves.

I’ve also been eating out a lot this year. There are a lot of cool places in Vancouver that are pretty cheap, so you should get out there and try some!

Oh, I also have a Work Study job as an usher for school of music concerts, did I mention that? I should make a post about it some time.

Well, it’s been nice catching up with you. Hopefully I’ll be talking to you again soon!

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Some Fun Things

It occurs to me that I haven’t been blogging much this year; I think that once you’re in the third year of something, everything you do becomes somewhat commonplace and I’ve forgotten that this stuff might be interesting to people outside of my own head. That is, everyone. I promise there is no one else inside my head.

This term I’ve gotten to do some pretty fun things because of my coursework! Here are a few:

  • Trying out songwriting in my creative writing class.
  • Playing a concert at the Vancouver Convention Centre with the UBC Symphony orchestra and broadway star Elaine Page.
  • Arranging Silver Bells for a brass ensemble for my instrumentation class – and then actually getting to hear it performed.
  • Playing a percussion piece which involved hitting trash bins.
  • Playing electro-acoustic music which involves waving my arms around and hearing cool noises that I control.

I’m not actually taking that many courses right now, so here’s some fun things I’ve done outside of class:

  • Meet a world-class harpist from Belgium and attend her workshop.
  • Be a MUG leader for Imagine Day.
  • Man a booth at Clubs Days.
  • Work on campus – have I mentioned that I love my job and all my coworkers and my boss? I’ll write a post about it some time.
  • Try out a new restaurant in Vancouver pretty much every week.
  • Learn how to play Settlers of Catan.

The UBC life is a good life; the challenge now is not to get complacent about it!

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Budget Bytes

My room mate Christie is a beautiful and wonderful person for many reasons, but today it is because she showed me the gift to mankind that is Budget Bytes. (http://www.budgetbytes.com)

This is going to be my new favourite place to find recipes. Easy, quick, and cheap, and the photography on that site makes everything look absolutely delish. Now I have to decide what I want to make for dinner next week, because I want to make everything all at once!

I think maybe the first thing I’ll make are these Egg Florentine Quesadillas. Nom nom nom.

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The Suitcase Battle

I feel like everyone moving into residence this weekend can relate to this: How do I fit my life into a single suitcase? When did I acquire this much stuff? Why do I feel like all of it is necessary to bring with me? For people moving into residence, lots of people drive and have their entire cars to fill (aka jam with as much stuff as possible). For those of us flying into Vancouver, in most cases you only get one checked bag with your ticket price.

So, once I narrow all my possessions down to everything I can cram inside my purple suitcase, the darn thing is over the weight limit. Nooooo. Cue trying to narrow it down some more. Unfortunately, taking out a few pieces of clothing and a cookbook or two isn’t going to take the weight down by fifteen pounds. (Yes, I know.) Then I proceed to try to spread everything out into my carry on as well, but naturally it doesn’t all fit.

Having lost the war with my suitcase, I move on to the next solution: Check a second bag. Yes, it only costs $20 extra, but it will be difficult to carry with my carry-on luggage. (No one is coming to meet me at the airport.) Well, I was probably going to be taking a taxi anyway. Thank goodness I have a wonderful room mate who will help me carry my things into the building.

Even with the problem solved, I am still astounded at how much stuff I have acquired. I’m amazed at how much clothing I have, and how I can’t seem to let myself leave much of it behind. (Though I still don’t have nearly as many shoes as my room mate.) It’s weird, isn’t it? How our lives become an accumulation of possessions? Somehow this suddenly became philosophical.

How about you? Did you have an epic battle with your suitcase/trunk/moving boxes? Let me know in comments :)

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Life Lesson Learned

Namely, do not try to have someone to come install your home internet the week before school starts and expect them to be available by the end of the week.

To clarify, I’m getting back to Vancouver on Friday and thought hmm, I’d better get the internet put back in my apartment before the weekend or I’ll have to wait until Tuesday! Then it turned out that they won’t be coming til Thursday. I’ll have a fun week without internet… (Isn’t it amazing how dependent we are on internet? Seriously though first week comes with so many emails!)

Probably I’ll become an annoying patron of Save On Foods, hanging out in their restauranty area using their free wifi. Any blog posts from next week will probably be coming from there. And I will have so much to blog about! My first time as a MUG leader, and -hopefully- an interview for a Work Study position.

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Second Year in Review

It’s hard to believe I’m already done the second year of my university degree. Heck, it’s hard to believe that it’s nearly June!

Looking back on the past year, I can see that I have grown immensely in many ways. I feel like first year was for dipping my feet and testing the waters and trying to get comfortable in a totally new environment, whereas this year has been about exploring and expanding in my now-familiar community in Vancouver.

I have become a much better harpist and musician this year; pieces that would have given me headaches trying to learn before I can pick up in a few weeks! I learned a lot about how to practice properly and how not to become sabotaged by stage fright. I successfully played an opera (and the maestro said we were the best student harpists he’d ever worked with!) and greatly improved my ensemble playing skills. I was also able to join the Gamelan Ensemble and experience the music of another country while learning from of the best gamelan players in the world.

Academically, I learned a lot about the various subjects I studied and kept my grades high, and also about myself. For example, I realized that I  absolutely detest writing papers. I would rather go learn Wagner’s Magic Fire Music with a bazillion pedal changes than write another paper! I rejoice at the fact that I don’t actually have to write any more for the rest of the degree! (This is also a reason why I feel that pursuing a Masters degree might not be for me…)

This year I also gained a lot of responsibility and maturity while living on my own. I can buy my own groceries, cook, clean, pay my hydro bill, set up home internet, and unclog the toilet all on my own, while also balancing school and my social life! I’m quite proud of myself for this, actually. I really enjoyed having that kind of control over my daily life, and it feels a bit weird being at home where most of that control is in my parents’ hands. Not bad, exactly, just kind of strange.

The friends I made in first year became even closer friends this year. It was slightly more effort to see each other since I had to hop on a bus to see most of them instead of walking down the hall, but we made it work. My friends and I also started playing Dungeons and Dragons in second term (because yes, we are nerds, although I prefer the term “awesome”) and it was a blast – it’s like playing pretend for grownups and it meant that we got together regularly to hang out!

One of the best things I did for myself this year was take Mindfulness classes through counselling services in Brock Hall. It helped me a lot in how I deal with stressful situations (no more meltdowns!) and has actually improved my general outlook in my day-to-day life.

In terms of involvement, I feel like I slacked a little. I was part of the Knitting and Sewing Club and I also joined the Yoga Club (which has helped my fitness in no small way), I took part in some promotional photo shoots, and attend the Student Leadership Conference, but I feel like I could have done more. I didn’t feel quite as connected, so next year I plan to try to find another involvement activity that will make me feel more of a part of the UBC community.

Overall, this year was amazing. It passed in a blur that simultaneously felt like an incredibly long time and just a few weeks.  It was not without challenges, but when we are challenged is when we grow the most and realize how strong we actually are. This year was rewarding and special, and I can’t believe I only get two more of them.

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Living With a Room Mate

Having successfully survived the year without killing my room mate (or being killed by her :P), I feel like now would be a good time to reflect upon what it’s like to live with a room mate.

I think it’s important to say that Christie and I don’t share a room, so I can’t comment on what it’s like to have that kind of room mate, but we do share a kitchen, living room, and bathroom.

Christie and I have gotten along very well over the past eight months, which I attribute to two main factors: a) we were good friends before moving in together, and b) we have similar personalities.

Both of us are pretty quiet people, so noise has never been an issue. She likes to shower in the morning, I like to shower at night. We’re both good at having open lines of communication so that things which could potentially turn into problems are dealt with before it gets to that point.

Living with another person has also made me learn about myself: I never new how neat I was until I was sharing a space with another person. Christie is… not as neat as I am, but she’s been doing a really good job of being as neat as she can manage, and I’m doing a good job of letting it go if things aren’t always as pristine as they could be. Originally, we had a cleaning policy of “clean up the mess right after you make it,” but that didn’t always happen, so we made up a simple cleaning schedule, which meant one of us cleaned the counters and the other cleaned the floors on alternating weeks. We both found that a schedule was a good motivator for cleaning.

One thing I loved about having a good friend for a room mate was that if I ever wanted to talk to someone, I could just stick my head out my bedroom door, and then I could go back to studying. I loved the impromptu trips to Menchie’s or outings for Mexican food, evenings spent baking, and afternoons spent lying around and talking. I loved having a place that actually felt like home (the dorms never quite did that for me), and I loved having someone who was waiting for me to get home and caring where I was.

Overall, it’s been a great year and I’m very excited for the next one!

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A Year of Cooking

After successfully not starving for a year, I thought I’d talk a little bit about my experience with cooking during my first year with a kitchen of my own.

Item number one: startup. I don’t have exact numbers of how much I spent or the exact items I bought, but I can give you a few ballparks. You’re probably going to spend a couple hundred dollars in “startup cost,” filling up your cupboards with staples like flour, sugar, butter, rice, pasta, salt, cooking oils (things you’ll use in a lot of recipes), and some ingredients for your first few weeks of cooking.

Item number two: maintenance cost, aka how much you’ll spend continuously throughout the year. I mean, food doesn’t last forever, so you gotta keep spending. I’ll be honest: my first term was pretty cheap for me because my parents bought me a LOT of food before they left me here. However, here are a few things I’ve noted:

  • Lots of things might seem expensive when you buy them, but if they last a long time then it’s money you’ll be saving later.
  • Sales are the greatest things! Save On Foods even has an app so you can hunt through their flyers. Expensive items such as cheese become a lot more affordable when sale time rolls around.
  • Eating out/buying coffee or snacks is not an all-the-time thing. Sure, it’s convenient, but spending $4 on a latte every day is gonna kill you (financially). A lesson learned the hard way by many. Pack a lunch and save your dollars.
  • Buying brand name is not necessary. Every little bit adds up on grocery bills, so if the no-name is cheaper and the quality is practically the same, save yourself a few bucks and get the store brand. Do this on a lot of items, and the savings add up.

Item number three: actually cooking. There are a basically four ways which I acquire food: easy/instant meal, frozen food, more involved cooking meal, and eating out. As I said before, eating out is a once-in-a-while thing, as it’s very expensive and usually not very healthy. Stuff you can put together really fast without much thought is really great, you just have to make sure you’re eating healthy as well. Quesadillas, hot dogs, scrambled eggs, frozen pizza, and pasta with tomato sauce are all yummy and fast, but it’s important to get some kind of green in there as well. (Canada’s Food Guide recommends you eat at least one dark green and one orange vegetable per day, plus two more other fruits or vegetables.) I also find that easy and fast meals can get pretty old pretty fast.

This brings me to more involved cooking and frozen food. The two go hand in hand. Pre-cooking, one of my favourite things to do, involves putting aside an hour or two on a weekend to make a bigger meal which will last all week. Usually this results in healthier meals, more variety, saves time during the week when you’re busy, and a lot of the time costs less than buying individual meals. Or if you don’t want to eat all of it in the same week (or if it won’t keep in the fridge), you freeze that bad boy and it’s ready to go.

Some of my favourite pre-cooked meals include: risotto, tacos, casseroles of many varieties, and stir fries. Next year I plan to venture into more cooking adventures; I meant to try pulled pork this year but I bought so much frozen food that I’m trying to eat it all before I leave Vancouver for the summer!

Do you have any cooking ideas? Leave a comment!

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