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Japanese Treats

19 Jun

A friend from my dragon boat team was in Japan recently and brought the team back some treats! 🙂

They were so cute I just had to take pictures lol

Cheesecake KitKat

Cheesecake KitKat

This first one is a mini KitKat that is cheesecake flavoured. When you open it the chocolate around the wafers is white which makes sense when you think about cheesecake lol It was okaaaaay, it didn’t really taste like cheesecake, or KitKat lol

It's fuzzy, and squishy and filled with caramel!

It’s fuzzy, and squishy and filled with caramel!

I don’t remember what this second one is called, it looks sorta like a giraffe though lol The outside was fuzzy, I actually petted it once I opened it 😛 It is also quite squishy and when you bite in to it there is a caramel like filling. I think it was banana caramel flavour…I quite enjoyed the picture of a bow on the packaging that makes it look like the giraffe spotted fuzzy treat is wearing a bow teehee

a banana brownie, I think...

a banana brownie, I think…

I don’t remember the name of this one either, oops! It was a cake texture, a little dry, the bottom half is darker in colour, actually, if you see in the picture how there are darker patches on top, see them? The bottom is the same colour as those patches. It is like a mini banana bread brownie type thing. Again with the bows on the packaging, cuteness!

I don’t know if these are typical treats in Japan or things sold to tourists, ya know, like how people come to Canada and always seem to end up buying mini bottles of over priced maple syrup lol but no matter what they are they are cute and its always nice to try something new. 🙂

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My Own Recipe

17 Jun

Normally when I cook I use a recipe, I tend to follow the recipe quite diligently because I suck at cooking and I am not good at winging it, at least not when it comes to cooking.

Well for some reason I decided to create my own dish, mostly because I was sick of googling recipes lol but also because I had some random things in the fridge I wanted to use up.

When I was growing up my mom would make this thing called Mom’s Amazing Mixed Up Mess…basically it was her version of what I did, or I should say what I did was my version of what she perfected. My mom can look at a bunch of random ingredients and somehow make something that tastes good. I look at a bunch of ingredients and see nothing except the individual ingredients, sigh.

The only thing I bought was some ground turkey, which I proceeded to brown in a frying pan along with some garlic and chopped up white onion. I then added a whole lot of mixed frozen veggies, they are from a stir fry blend that I have had in my freezer for over a year, yes, I know that is ridiculous. They were starting to not taste as good as they used to, I’m thinking because of the freezer burn, so I wanted a way to cook a lot of them at one time. I then moved everything in to a large pot, added 1 cup of pasta sauce (it was how much I had left over in the jar), 1/2 cup of salsa (it was how much I had left over in the jar), 1/2 a jalapeno chopped up (because it was how much I had left…detecting a theme yet? lol). Once it was all mixed together and cooked I put it in to a casserole dish, spread it out, sprinkled some shredded cheese on top and tossed it in the oven until the cheese melted.

It was originally meant to be a sort of stew/casserole type of thing but there wasn’t that much liquid in it so I don’t know what I should label it as, not a stew though…

Whatever it is called, I liked it! It was a good ratio of meat to veggie, it was just spicy enough, the veggies cooked up well and bonus points because it is healthy! Woohoo!

When it was still in the pot

When it was still in the pot

Just out of the oven with the cheese melted on top.

Just out of the oven with the cheese melted on top.

My first bowlful.

My first bowlful.

In the land of Weight Watchers Points Plus, if you split the entire dish in to 8 portions each portion is 3 points, if you split it in to 6 portions each portion is 4 points.

Even if I wanted to I don’t think I’d be able to recreate it perfectly since it was basically a dish I created specifically to use up what I had in the fridge and freezer lol Oh! I forgot! I put in a bunch of Mrs. Dash Seasoning as well, I didn’t measure it though, just shook the shaker thing until what came out looked about right…something else I won’t be able to duplicate.

I know it is a ridiculously easy meal to make, not fancy, not all that inspired or impressive, but I am proud of it anyways. It is the first time I cooked without either following a recipe or the instructions on the packaging my food came in. This is, weirdly enough, a big step for me cooking wise. 🙂

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Nachos!

16 Jun

I looooove nachos! Haven’t had them in ages though. I generally think of nachos as a great pub food, something you order when you’re out with friends because you can share them. But when you’re actively trying to lose weight eating nachos is not exactly a great idea.

Well, a couple weeks ago I made a dish that used black olives and corn (among other things) and I had left overs of both those items. I immediately thought “oh those would be perfect to put on some nachos” but of course I didn’t have any of the other ingredients needed for nachos, except for salsa because I always have salsa lol

Not wanting to put those leftover items to waste I bought other necessary items to make nachos the following week and voila! Healthy nachos! Well, healthy-ish lol 😉

Before they went in to the oven...

Before they went in to the oven…

Fresh from the oven, Mmm! Melted cheese!

Fresh from the oven, Mmm! Melted cheese!

I had some light sour cream and some salsa in little dishes for dipping but I figured you don’t really need to see pictures of that lol

I can claim they are “healthy-ish” only due to the portion size I made lol

There are 16 chips, I used the Compliments brand bite size rounds. For toppings I used Cheddar & Part Skim Mozzarella cheese (1/3 Cup), black olives, jalapeno and corn. You can use whatever measurements of olives, jalapenos and corn you would like. I used less that 1/4 Cup of corn because that is how much I had, I used 18 black olive slices (again because that is how much I had) and the quantity of cheese used was because I was wary of using too much and making the nachos ridiculously high in Weight Watchers points.

All in all the entire thing (including the sour cream) was 8 Weight Watchers Points Plus points. Which is a lot considering the portion size wasn’t large enough to be a stand alone meal. But meh, I made and ate it on a day I had exercised so I had the extra points available to me and I’d been craving nachos for weeks so I feel the points were well worth it. 🙂

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Hawaiian Turkey Loaf

15 Jun

No. Just…no. This did not turn out well at all! Partly because I made mistakes, partly because the recipe calls for too much ginger and partly because, well, I dunno, it just isn’t good. 😛

I like meatloaf, no, scratch that, I love meatloaf, my mom’s meatloaf anyways. Nobody makes it better! I always intend to try duplicating it but haven’t gotten around to trying. Well, in my hunt for healthy recipes that I can make on Thursdays so I have food to last me through my working days (Fridays through Mondays) I came across a Weight Watchers recipe that looked easy and interesting so I thought I would give it a try.

It is called Hawaiian Turkey Loaf but in reality it is a turkey meatloaf with a pineapple chutney for topping. The original recipe can be found here.

In theory the recipe is an easy one, you make a puree using orange juice, soy sauce, onions, peppers and ginger. You then pour the puree in to a bowl, add ground turkey, bread crumbs and an egg. Once it is all mixed together put it in a loaf pan that you have liberally coated with non-stick spray, toss that sucker in to an oven that has been heated to 350F and about 45 minutes later you have turkey meatloaf. While it is cooking you combine crushed pineapple (and the juice), sugar, vinegar, onions, peppers, ginger and pepper flakes in a microwave safe bowl. Microwave for 3-5 minutes, add raisins, microwave for a couple more minutes then let stand for a couple minutes. You can use the chutney when it is warm or cold, serving it on the side or on top of your turkey meatloaf.

See how easy all that sounds?

Well…things did not go according to plan when I was cooking that night, sigh.

Thinking how smart I was being I chopped the onion and pepper needed for the puree in advance and left it in the fridge. Well, I didn’t chop the correct amount, somehow I read the 3/4 red pepper as 3 tablespoons red pepper and well yeah, those two quantities are so not the same. Oops!

Then the big screw up! When I was shopping for the ground turkey I was so worried about buying the correct quantity, because once again the recipe is american so it told me I wanted 18 ounces of meat and I was translating that in to kg and trying to find something close. And yeah I know that doesn’t seem too hard but I suck at math and I don’t really care for being surrounded by raw meat so I wanted in and out of the meat section as fast as humanly possible lol Once I’d found the package of ground turkey that was as close to 18 ounces as I could get I tossed it in the cart without double checking the label. Stupid move. It turns out that I bought turkey cutlets, not ground turkey. In my defence it kinda looked the same and it was in the ground turkey section so I just assumed it was what I needed.

So there I am with my puree in a bowl, trying to open a package of raw turkey without touching any turkey liquid or meat and then putting it in to the bowl with the puree only to realize the meat is not ground, it is solid. Aww shit. I tried mixing it up with a spoon, thinking it might break in to pieces. It didn’t. I tried hacking at it with two knives, hoping I could chop it in to small pieces. I couldn’t. So I did the only logical thing I could think of…I poured the entire concoction in to the blender.

FYI, don’t put turkey cutlets in to a blender…

My blender is now dead. 😦

It blended a teeny tiny bit but all of a sudden the blender stopped. Didn’t make any scary warning noises, it just stopped. I think maybe it blew a fuse or something, not an apartment fuse but a fuse inside the blender, if that is possible…is that possible? I now think that is possible…

I was so incredibly mad at this point, mostly at myself since it was my fault but a little bit with the universe cause well, I can only yell at myself so much before I stop listening to myself lol 😛

I took the meat out of the bowl I had poured it back in to, plopped it on to a cutting board and proceeded to cut it up in to itty bitty pieces…I also took this opportunity to remove some ribbons of fat that were running through the meat cause yuch! Once it was as chopped up as I could manage I put it back in the bowl with the puree, mixed, added the egg and oatmeal (I used oatmeal instead of bread crumbs because 1. it is a healthier option, 2. I already owned it and 3. I checked with my mom and she said it would be ok), threw it in to the oven then proceeded to clean and then bleach everything in the kitchen because I was paranoid due to the raw turkey.

I made the chutney according to the recipe, well, almost according to the recipe lol I didn’t add the raisins because I don’t like raisins, shrug, why add something I know I don’t like? Oh and I couldn’t find crushed red pepper flakes so I bought red jalapenos flakes and used that. The chutney was meh, nothing amazing and I won’t make it again cause it made a huuuuge batch that for the most part ended up in the garbage.

This is what it looked like in the end…

2015-06-05 00.09.52

2015-06-05 00.13.18

I’m sure it would have had a better texture if I hadn’t screwed up and bought the cutlets instead of the ground turkey but even if I hadn’t messed that up I still wouldn’t have liked it. There was too much ginger in it and the overall flavour was one that was kind of musky, it was gross.

Despite my not liking it I had to eat it, I can’t afford to throw food out. I tried eating it with light sour cream, ketchup, brown sauce, anything I could think of really. I did discover one thing that made it ok, I put it in a sandwich and disguised the flavour with cheese and pickles and mustard which sounds gross but I really enjoyed lol

So yeah, I wouldn’t recommend this recipe, it didn’t taste good, in my opinion anyways.

If you are following Weight Watchers Points Plus I cut the loaf in to 6 slices, each slice is 4.192 points, so 4 points. At 6 slices per loaf each slice is quite thick so don’t worry that it isn’t filling.

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Runaway Cheese

5 Jun

This past Tuesday I was running late when I left my place, usually when that happens I forgo eating opting to grab something when I reach my destination or wait until I am done whatever I am going out to do and eating afterwards. I didn’t have either of those options this time so I made some toast and grabbed two Babybel cheeses to eat in the suv while I drove.

I put the two Babybel cheeses in the side pocket of my backpack and basically ran out the door.

Mmm cheese!

Mmm cheese!

As I was driving (aka speeding) a bird decided to play chicken and landed on the road right in front of me. It didn’t seem to care that a suv was baring down on it, it just stayed there, standing there in the middle of the road, looking death in the face. Stupid bird. sigh.

I can’t hurt an animal. Can’t do it. *shakes head* I’ll swerve and hit a tree before I will hit an animal. So I did the only thing I could do, I slammed on the brakes and begged the universe to give the bird a nudge and get it moving in case I couldn’t stop in time.

Because I slammed on the brakes my backpack and my water bottle went flying off the passenger seat and settled with a loud thud on to the floor space.

I was able to reach the bag and water bottle so I dragged them back up to the seat and got back on my way. I reached over to the small pocket on the side of the bag to get my Babybel cheeses and found only one. Not two. I put two in the pocket but now only had one. My best guess was it went flying out of the pocket and was loose in the passenger foot area of my suv.

I was thinking very uncharitable thoughts towards that bird! lol

When I got to my destination I searched the front of the passenger section and couldn’t find the cheese anywhere. I did however find a pair of sunglasses that somehow ended up under the passenger seat…in surprisingly good condition so yay for that! But still…no cheese…where did it go?

I didn’t have endless time to search for the Babybel cheese so I gave up figuring I’d find it later, if not visually than possibly by smell if it turned out to be a hot day…

It has been days since that happened and I still haven’t found the runaway cheese, nor have I smelled it. So either Babybel cheese doesn’t smell when it is left out of the fridge for extended periods of time or I lost it before I got in the suv but if that happened where did I lose it? And how?

That cheese has run away, to places unknown, I hope it is happy, and not smelling up my suv!

Oh, and just so you know, the bird very casually moved out of my way after I came to a screeching halt, unfazed, confident it won the game of chicken.

Stupid bird. 😛 lol

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Pineapple Upside Down Cake

4 Jun

A friend from my Dragon Boat Team got a job offer in Switzerland and since she’s no dummy she said yes. This past Sunday there was a going away bbq being held in her honour and lucky for me it started mid afternoon and didn’t end until well after I was done at work so I got to go. Yay!

The invite said everyone was to bring whatever they wanted to grill and drink, a variety of salads would be provided. Well, I didn’t know what to grill, I haven’t ever grilled so while I know I could take some chicken or a burger patty or a hot dog with me to pop over the fire I would have probably made it inedible while trying to cook it. Also, who carries around just one burger patty or one hot dog? That’s just awkward lol

Instead I took a Pineapple Upside Down cake and hoped that would be an awesome enough contribution that I could eat enough salad for it to be a meal. See how my sneakiness works? lol 😉

Well, the cake turned out to be a hit! Thank goodness!

I forgot to take a picture of it when at home so the best I have is this one, not great but at least you can see what it looked like…

2015-05-31 18.38.47

The pineapple slices weren’t placed very well, my bad, sigh. And in the above picture the end of the cake closest to the camera looks darker but it wasn’t burned, honest! It just looks like that in the picture, shrug.

People really liked it, or they were lying about liking it lol but I’m gonna lean towards being optimistic and say I think they were being honest and liked it. 🙂

It is a really basic recipe, there are some super complicated, have a billion steps versions online but that’s crazy, who has time for that? *rolls eyes*

So here is what I did…

Make a basic white cake.

Melt 1/4 Cup of butter in the baking pan by putting it in the oven while it is pre-heating to 350F.

Once the butter is melted take the pan out and spread the melted butter around, I used a silicone brush to not only spread the butter around the bottom of the pan but also up the sides.

Spread 1 Cup of brown sugar on the bottom of the pan, the butter will melt the sugar in to a dark gooey yummy mess.

Spread pineapple circles in the bottom of the pan, I bought the smallest can of pineapple circles so I had 8 slices, if you wanted more you could always buy a larger can, cut some of the slices in half and fit in more, up to you!

Put a maraschino cherry inside each pineapple circle as well as between them, try not to nibble too many of them because whoa! so addictive lol.

Pour the white cake batter on top of the whole shebang.

Pop in to the oven for 42-48 minutes.

Once the cake is done immediately run a knife around the edges, you’ll notice the cake comes away from the side super easily.

Place a heatproof serving plate upside down on to the pan and flip the plate and pan over together. Try to center it when you do that because the cake doesn’t like to be moved which is why mine is nowhere near centered on my cake platter, oops!

Leave the pan over the cake for 5 minutes or so, allowing the brown sugar topping to drizzle on to the cake, Mmm!

Remove the pan, scrape any drizzle that didn’t drip on to the cake and put it on the cake, or eat it, whichever you prefer.;)

Quick Tip!

When making the white cake use the pineapple juice from the can, however much liquid your white cake recipe calls for, measure out the pineapple juice first then top it up with water, or milk or oil or whatever your recipe uses. You’ll infuse the cake with pineapple flavour, making the whole thing just that much better.

Baking info:

If you are using a glass pan heat oven to 350F and bake for 42-48 minutes. If you are using a dark or nonstick pan heat oven to 325F and bake for 44-53 minutes.

The cake serves 12, if you cut it to serve 12, I’m certainly not going to judge if you choose to cut it in to larger pieces lol 😉

Having said that, if you are following Weight Watchers Points Plus and cut the cake in to 12 pieces each piece will be 11 points. So yeah, not a healthy cake lol but sure is tasty! (fyi, that is the points for my version of the cake, depending on your white cake recipe the points might be different, shrug)

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Southwest Vegetarian Bake

31 May

I cooked! Again! This is becoming a habit that I am not sure I am comfortable with lol

Since I had success last week with making the Vegetarian Lasagna, mostly to be used as meals for work, I thought I would try again. I don’t mean try the lasagna again, I mean try making something in a large quantity that I could use for meals at work again and voila! I did it! 🙂

I found a recipe on food.com called Southwest Vegetarian Bake that looked like it might be good. I then read a variation on the recipe and liked parts of that version also. So, I combined the parts of both that I liked and made my own version – always good to customize!

My biggest problem is that the recipe is from the States so measurements sucked. It was all “use a 15 ounce can of black beans” and I’m all “canned goods in Canada are in milliliters!” sigh. Even when I converted the can sizes used in the recipe I was still screwed because apparently the size of cans used in the States is different than in Canada, lovely. double sigh.

If you want to see the original recipes I stole from click here.

I did attempt to get the correct amount, which involved way too much math in my opinion and in the end I’m pretty sure I ended up using wrong numbers according to the recipe, but right numbers for me since it turned out ok. 🙂

My Ingredients:

2 Cups Black Beans (canned)

1 Cup Corn (canned)

3 Cups Diced Tomatoes (canned)

1 Cup Salsa

1 Cup Shredded Cheese (I used Cheddar and Part Skim Mozzarella)

1 Cup Light Sour Cream

1 Can (114ml) Green Chilies

5 tbls Black Olives

1/2 Cup Red Onion (diced)

1 microwaveable Minute Rice – Whole Grain Brown (125g)

Mix everything except the black olives and the brown rice in a large bowl. Cook the rice, once cooked add it in to the bowl. Mix well. Pour in to a 3 Quart baking dish. Sprinkle the black olives on top. Bake at 350F for 30 minutes. Sprinkle extra shredded cheese on top (if you want), put back in to oven for 10 additional minutes. Take out of oven and let sit for 10 minutes before serving.

Easy peasy!

It looks a funny colour in the middle but that is because of lighting, in person the middle looked the same as the edges.

It looks a funny colour in the middle but that is because of lighting, in person the middle looked the same as the edges.

Fairly runny looking here...

Fairly runny looking here…

Mmm, dinner!

Mmm, dinner!

Some explanations though…

The original recipes said to use 3/4 Cup uncooked brown rice. I only buy the single serving brown rice cups from Minute Rice, the ones you stick in the microwave for, you guessed it, a minute. I wasn’t about to go buy more rice just so I could measure out 3/4 of a Cup and cook it. Instead I cooked one of my rice cups (each serving is 125g), added it to the rest of the ingredients and gauged how I felt the rice to other ingredients ratio was. See, I didn’t want to use a lot of rice because I am on Weight Watchers and rice is high in points, I would rather have less rice and more veggies, heck, even more beans since they have protein. I tend to view rice as nice but a waste of food, which is too bad because I actually really like rice. Ah well, the sacrifices a girl makes to get thin! lol

This recipe is a vegetarian recipe but I had intended to brown some ground turkey and throw that in there, however, my memory failed me when I was at the store and I forgot to buy any, oops! I think some ground meat would be a nice addition to the dish, especially since it would soak up all the flavours but I am still happy with it being vegetarian.

The original recipes wanted me to use Mexican Blend Cheese. When I went cheese shopping (which fyi, the cheese was the most expensive ingredient! What’s with that??) there was no Mexican Blend, or anything similar sounding so I opted for a Cheddar & Mozzarella Blend. Why did I pick that blend? Because it was on sale. 🙂

The final result ended up a bit runnier than I anticipated, I think because my ingredient ratios were all wonky. I wish I had put in the kidney beans I had bought, they would have tasted great in the dish, added protein and helped make it a little less runny. I suppose I could have also added more rice but we all know how I feel about that lol. 😛

This was a ridiculously easy dish to make since it mostly consisted of opening cans, dumping everything in to a bowl, mixing and cooking lol I did measure everything as I poured it out of the can so I would know exactly how much I was putting in, I did this mostly because I needed to be able to calculate the points per serving for Weight Watchers but I think its a good idea in general, otherwise you might put in more of a higher calorie ingredient than you realized and inadvertently make the dish not as healthy as you wanted.

I was super upset about the Light Sour Cream, even with it being Light it was crazy high in points for the quantity used, not cool! It tastes good, obviously, I mean c’mon, it is Sour Cream, of course it tastes good lol but I think I’d have rather saved some of it and used it as a topping, you’d taste it more and would have the option of saying no and saving the points (or calories, or whatever you track).

If you are following the Weight Watchers Points Plus Program your point information is as follows:

If you divide it up in to 8 portions, each portion is 8.125 points (so 8 points)

If you divide it up in to 6 portions, each portion is 10.833 points (so 11 points)

I chose to divvy it up in to 8 portions. Each portion is a fairly decent size, I find it is not quite enough to be a stand alone meal so I add some toast on the side or have some fruit for dessert afterwards, just a little something to help top me up. 🙂

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Stupid Move

30 May

Last Monday I got home from work, got changed in to comfy clothes, put my hair up in a messy ponytail, filled the kettle to boil some water for tea and then turned to open the fridge, only to find the fridge door open about two inches.

Crap.

Since the only other living soul in this apartment is a cat who, to my knowledge, hasn’t figured out how to open the fridge door yet, it was a safe bet that I had not closed it properly that morning when I was getting my lunch for work and that it had been open for oh, eleven hours or so.

Double crap.

I yanked it all the way open and hoped that miraculously my food was still ok. Who says optimism is dead? 😉

The first thing I checked was the milk, because I needed it for my tea lol The carton was room temperature, and not inside of fridge room temperature but when I touched it there was no difference between the temperature of the milk carton and my hand. Not the best of signs, but I still tried to be hopeful. I pulled it all the way out, hoping to find a cool part somewhere on the carton but alas, there was none. 😦

I started checking other items and they were all the same, all room temperature.

My optimism that my living in a basement suite, a suite that is always a little chilly, might have kept the food at least a little chilled was fading fast.

You may be wondering why I was fighting so hard to stay optimistic that my food, ok ok, fine, my milk, was ok, and that is because I was already in comfy clothes and didn’t want to have to get dressed and go out again to buy more milk but I can’t survive without tea and I like milk in my tea. Oh the dilemmas a girl faces! 😉

I decided to chance it and put some of the milk in my tea. It wasn’t the best tasting tea in the world but I’ve had worse, and hey, the milk didn’t curdle so that is all I cared about lol.

Once I deemed the milk an acceptable risk I started looking at what else was in my fridge. Unfortunately for me I had juuuust gone grocery shopping a couple days prior so I had all sorts of lovely cheeses, some greek yogurt, deli meat, and other temperature sensitive foods in there.

Triple crap.

I don’t know why but some food items I decided it was too chancy to try and they got thrown out, others I am more willing to keep and see if they are ok as I eat them over the coming days. Selective freaking out I guess lol.

The greek yogurt ended up on the “not happening” list, whereas I kept all the cheese. Hey, cheese is ridiculously expensive (even if I did buy this on sale) and I’m not willing to just throw it all out because of it potentially being bad, I need proof before I throw that money down the drain, er, in the garbage.

What can I say, I’m cheap! 😛

The next day, when I was well rested and thinking a bit more clearly, I decided the milk should go, sigh, such a waste…but I still kept the cheese! lol

I hated throwing the various food and drink items away, all because of my own stupid move, and hopefully this will teach me an important lesson, to make sure the fridge is closed!…and to not get in to my comfy clothes until I know for sure I won’t have to go back out again cause the battle between going out on what would have been a 15 minute errand and staying in and potentially getting sick from bad milk was brief and brutal and won by the tired/lazy side of me. Best to just avoid that battle if possible, no need to be faced with just how lazy I am anymore than necessary! 😉

lazy 2

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This Is Why…

27 May

This is why I can’t have nice things, sigh.

My non-stick frying pan decided it didn’t want to be classified as “non-stick” anymore so it killed an omelette. My revenge was to kick it to the curb and replace it with a nice, shiny, new non-stick frying pan. When I bought the new frying pan I also picked up a new flipping thingy in that pretty teal colour that has overtaken everything –  I swear you can’t look anywhere without seeing that colour anymore *rolls eyes*. My new items look like this…

My new kitchen stuff

My new kitchen stuff

Well, the new look of the flipping thingy lasted until the second time I used it, then I accidentally rested it against the hot part of the frying pan and melted part of the handle, oops! See, the part you can see in the picture is silicone (I think!), whatever it is it doesn’t melt when touching the hot frying pan, a little farther up though the handle changes and is made out of rubber and that part isn’t quite so immune to heat, sigh.

Not only did I melt part of the handle but the melted part then become one with the edge of the frying pan. It was like two worlds merging in to one.

Luckily the melted plastic came off the frying pan when I washed it and the melted part of the handle doesn’t affect the usability of the flipping thingy (I really need to figure out what that thing is actually called lol) so I can still use both my new kitchen tools. The flipping thingy just doesn’t look quite as nice as it once did, ya know, two days ago *rolls eyes*.

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Fix It Girl

23 May

A little while ago my vacuum stopped working properly. Every time I would use it there was this nasty smell, like something electrical burning, and it barely picked anything up from the carpet, making my vacuuming attempts a complete waste of time, ugh. I noticed that when I took the carpet attachment off the vacuum worked fine, and didn’t make that horrible smell so I used what little logic I have to deduce the problem lay in this part of the vacuum…

2015-05-14 16.09.16

Figuring I couldn’t screw up the vacuum anymore than it already was I took it apart to see if I could figure out how to fix it, and go figure, I did! Crazy huh?

There is a belt inside this piece that had snapped, also, I have long hair and it was wrapped around the bristle part to the extent I thought my hair was trying to strangle the inside of the vacuum lol

I went to a vacuum repair shop, got the new belt, put it in, closed it and voila! working vacuum that no longer smells like it is about to explode, yay!

It works so much better now, so well in fact I accidentally sucked up one of the cat’s toys, oops! Luckily he has lots of toys so I don’t think he has noticed yet…

The cat was traumatized from the vacuuming I did once I got it fixed, to him the only thing worse than the vacuum is the vet so my pulling it out, fixing it, then using it basically meant his day was ruined. Poor little guy, all his spazzing after the vacuum was put away resulted in his eventual collapse…

2015-05-17 18.46.29

While I was trapped under his dead weight I enjoyed a little treat a friend of mine brought back for me from the Philippines. He is from there originally and he and his family went back to visit other family members. He brought me a keychain and these cute little cakes…

Winter Melon Cake

Winter Melon Cake

They are Winter Melon Cakes, which mean nothing to me lol There are 4 in the package, they are covered in toasted seeds and the center is soft but firm, hmm, that doesn’t make sense, it is soft without being gooey, that makes a bit more sense, I think…lol

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They have a distinctive flavour but since it is like nothing I have eaten before I don’t know how to describe it. I think most of the flavour was coming from the seeds, the center was a subtle taste of what I can only assume is Winter Melon.

I liked them, they aren’t like anything I’ve had before, which is partially why I like them, switching things up is good for you, and keeps the taste buds from getting bored lol 😉

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