Sounds like a weird combination? It sure is. Yes, in this blog post I will be writing about cooking and food… and aquarium fish. Weird.

This past weekend we hosted a dinner party for our friends Liv and Rob, who we always have a fantastic time with. We decided to make a three-course meal, but didn’t try anything new since we were under some time constraints for cooking.

It’s strange, I’ve gone from being a cocktail-only person, to being a maybe-sometimes-champagne person, to appreciating both wine and champagne now. I guess I have my friend Crista to blame for that! We had quite the array of drinks on Saturday, and I was surprised the next morning to see how much we had really consumed.

I prepared the tiramisu the night before, but everything else we cooked fresh the day of. It wasn’t quite dinner theatre… we were scrambling around the kitchen in front of our guests. But I think overall it was a success!

For the appetizer we had a roasted creamy butternut squash soup with fresh cream, shaved parmigiano reggiano, chopped chives, and freshly grated nutmeg. Click here for my butternut squash soup recipe.

For the main we had beef shortrib braised in Barolo red wine, served over a bed of fresh pappardelle pasta noodles with pine nuts, spinach, chanterelle mushrooms, and parmigiano reggiano cream sauce. Click here for my braised beef short rib and pappardelle recipe.

For our sweet finish, we had my cheesecake tiramisu with strawberries and espresso wafers. The tiramisu had lady fingers soaked in Kahlua, coffee, coffee liqueur, and chocolate liqueur. Click here for my cheesecake tiramisu recipe.

The dinner party was probably a little too fun.

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On a completely other note, we bought some new discus for our aquarium! I am really as I have always wanted more discus in the tank and finally was able to convince Allan over the past year or so to be open to more discus.

We bought four new discus fish, for a total of five now in our tank. We got a Golden Master, Red Melon, Red Turquoise, and Tiger Snake Skin to add to our Red Dragon (the larger one we’ve had for almost a year now). I absolutely love them! Now we have to name them…

What did you get up to over the weekend?

Last week, Allan and I finished eating the last of our Halibut fillets from last year’s fishing trip in Tofino. It reminded me I hadn’t put up any pictures of our fun fishing trip.

Warning: If you don’t like seeing where your food comes from, then this probably isn’t the most appealing post for you to read.

Last summer, a group of us got together for a fishing charter with Jay’s Clayoquot Ventures in Tofino.

Halibut is one of my all-time favourite foods, and Allan and I eat it just about every time we go camping in Tofino, so it seemed appropriate that we learned how to catch what we eat out there… and have a supply of our own, since Halibut is quite expensive to buy.

I put “fishing” in quotes because it really isn’t fishing when you go with a charter. Our guide was absolutely awesome, but I’ll be honest with you… he did pretty much all the work for us. All we had to do was reel in the fish. So it’s pretty much lazy man’s “fishing”. That being said, it was a super fun day to spend with friends out in the sun and the ocean, and try it out!

Allan’s sister Jessica came out to Tofino with us, all the way from Alberta! I think she had a blast. The boat was really nice, and fast! It still took us about an hour to get out of the marina in Tofino into the deep ocean. It was choppy and there were definitely one or two people feeling quite sick *cough* Allan *cough*.

Our guide was amazing. He would see a rod twitch and then got the rod started so the fish couldn’t get away. Here’s a picture of Trevor reeling in a fish.

A huge Halibut! I think Trev’s was the biggest (and first) catch of the day.

Allan reels one in…

Good catch!

Jess catches some too.

We caught our limit that day! 2 Halibut each for a total of 8 Halibut. Here I am looking very fish-like.

Our guide also cleaned and filleted all the fish in front of us on the dock. We had two whole coolers full of fish. Allan was a happy Birthday boy.

It was definitely a fish feast when we got back to camp that night!

I’d highly recommend it if you love to eat fish and are curious about fishing. Allan and I got our fish vacuum-packed at Trilogy Fish Store in Tofino, and we’ve basically been eating fish for the entire year! Delicious, Pacific Halibut… mmmmm!

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Plans for the weekend:

Time Traveler’s Wife tonight with Amy and Alissa… Golf Saturday morning with Allan, and then off to the Horse Races on Sunday with a big group of people with box seats, and getting ridiculously overdressed for the occasion with big hats and fancy dresses! Woohoo!

What are your plans for the weekend?