Tag Archives: food

UK Trip Day 3: July 16/14

12 Aug

My first two nights in Wales I stayed in the YHA Llanberis hostel, here is their website: http://www.yha.org.uk/hostel/llanberis

I can not say enough amazing things about the people that work there and the location. It may have been a bit tricky to find (due to bad road sign placement) buuuuut we do have to keep in mind I have a poor sense of direction lol. I conversed with the staff a bit more than I normally would have due to my lost luggage debacle (thanks British Airways *rolls eyes*) but they were so friendly I’m glad I did. 🙂

My first full day in Wales I woke up early and was fed a lovely Full Welsh Breakfast, Mmm! I didn’t take my camera with me to breakfast cause uh, who does that? 😉  so I don’t have a picture but a Full Welsh consists of: bacon, sausage, fried egg, baked beans, toast and fried tomato. Because I don’t eat pork I got the vegetarian option which meant no bacon and sausage and instead I was given this batter covered something…I’m still not sure what it was lol I think it was supposed to be a vegetarian sausage option but that’s a guess. It wasn’t good, whatever it was lol The lady serving the food also gave me some sauteed mushrooms, yum! If you didn’t want to pay for breakfast there was free toast, cereal, juice, tea, coffee, yogurt, continental type breakfast foods.

The day prior at the airport British Airways had told me my luggage would be delivered to me the next day between 8a-4p, the hostel reception area and front doors are locked from noon to 5pm daily. If you are staying there you are given a code to unlock the door otherwise you’re outta luck. This meant that I had to stay inside and wait for the delivery of my suitcase all day. It sucked.

I was supposed to be climbing Mt. Snowdon that day but even if reception had been open and I didn’t have to be there to receive the suitcase I still couldn’t have gone because my clothes and water-backpack were in the suitcase. So yeah, no gear for the climb, bummer. The only up side was that the weather was crap that day, and I mean serious storm weather! Pouring rain, strong winds, absolutely brutal. It wasn’t cold though, which was odd. Even though the weather was horrible I was the only person staying in. I waited until a minute after the British Airways call centre opened and called them to discuss the luggage situation, it was once again confirmed I would have my luggage delivered sometime today. I stressed to them that was very important because I was leaving the next morning for a different town and would no longer be in Llanberis to receive the luggage. The lady was nice, said she understood, said she put a rush on it, she said a lot of things which would later prove to be lies, sigh.

The only place in the hostel I could clearly see the driveway from was the dining room so I made some tea, grabbed my backpack and claimed a table.

 

Where I spent most of my first full day of vacation - exciting huh?

Where I spent most of my first full day of vacation – exciting huh?

Luckily I had a book, a notebook to write in, a deck of cards and a bottle of water. I also had my ipod if I wanted to listen to music and my ipad if I wanted to play games…no wifi connection sadly but oh well. Oh, and I also had the phone a friend of mine let me borrow. She is from the UK so she had her old blackberry and she let me use it so I wouldn’t have to worry about roaming fees with my phone or finding a converter for the plug, nice huh? 🙂 I found it funny that I used to have a blackberry and for the life of me couldn’t figure out how to do a bunch of different things on that phone, drove me nuts! But at least it gave me a way to call British Airways and get updates on my suitcase lol

While I was writing in my journal I kept looking out the window hoping to see a delivery van, here is what I saw instead…

The driveway

The driveway

There be horses in that field!

There be horses in that field!

This sheep was baa-ing the whole time I sat inside, it was so cute! and sorta soothing...who knew?

This sheep was baa-ing the whole time I sat inside, it was so cute! and sorta soothing…who knew?

Close up of the sheep. Why? Cause I can lol Sheep are a bit of a novelty to me lol

Close up of the sheep. Why? Cause I can lol Sheep are a bit of a novelty to me lol

Around lunch time a girl came in to the dining room and asked if I was staying in all day. I explained why I was stuck inside and she commiserated, said BA is known for losing luggage and when they lost hers it took 4 days to get it back, ack! She then did the nicest thing! She said she was staying in for the next couple of hours so she could stay in the dining room and watch for the delivery if I wanted to go in to town to get some food or walk around or even just to look at things. I was oh-so-grateful! I was going stir crazy just sitting there, plus, I had no food for lunch and the hostel doesn’t serve lunch so I was looking at a loooooon wait till dinner. I left her to keep a look out and I dashed in to town. I didn’t want to take too long, I was paranoid about what if they brought the suitcase but wouldn’t leave it with her cause it wasn’t hers, thoughts like that…so all I did was hit up this super tiny grocery store called SPAR, walk the main street rather quickly then drive back to the hostel. Even though it was a short trip it was nice to get out. The rain had stopped by then and the air was so fresh smelling, it made me want to stay out for longer.

I didn’t get anything fancy but what I got made a nice little meal…

 

My lunch, a turkey and apple sandwich with the rest of the apple on the side, along with a rice pudding cup, two jaffa cookies and of course tea and diet coke lol

My lunch, a turkey and apple sandwich with the rest of the apple on the side, along with a rice pudding cup, two jaffa cookies and of course tea and diet coke lol

At 4pm on the dot I called BA back since the suitcase was supposed to be delivered by 4pm and it had yet to arrive. I was informed that whoever told me earlier I would get it today was wrong and I wouldn’t get it until the day after or maybe even two days after. Grr! So I spent all day inside waiting for the suitcase and it wasn’t even on the way! I was pissed!

I figured since no way I could miss the suitcase now I might as well go out for a walk. I walked in to town than wandered. I found a slate mine museum type place but didn’t really want to go in. Then I found a little mountain that when I got to the top I found an old castle that used to be a prison, exciting! I’m putting all those pics in the next post, enjoy! 🙂

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Happy Canada Day Eh?

1 Jul

Ah yes, it’s that time of year again, that one day in the year where we show our Canadian pride by waving flags, wearing red and white and watching fireworks. How is watching fireworks patriotic? I have no idea, it’s just somehow become associated with Canada Day, shrug. They aren’t even red and white fireworks, or shaped like a maple leaf or sponsored by Tim Horton’s so really, how patriotic can they be? 😉

That's one big flag!

That’s one big flag!

I had planned to go hiking today, get out there, enjoy the beautiful summer weather, be one with nature an all that but I am still coughing (been coughing for over a week now, lame!) and oddly enough I had no desire to have a huge coughing fit in the middle of some trail on the side of a mountain, I know, I’m so weird *rolls eyes*. Instead I slept in, cuddled with the cat, read a bit, watched some tv and then went to go hang with KL.

The first part of my day may seem lame, although I enjoy staying at home doing whatever but just so you don’t think I’m a hermit or anything I’ll tell you about the social part of my day. 🙂

KL and I made dinner at her place, I love her place, it’s so cute! I had this brilliant idea that we should do burgers and some sort of side dish, maybe even bbq it…it seemed like the perfect summer dinner idea. However, the lack of a bbq was an issue, though not as large of an issue as you might expect since I’ve never actually cooked on one and would probably have killed the burger patties lol Instead we cooked them in a frying pan, well technically I cooked them, yup, that’s right, I cooked. Me. The one who sucks at cooking actually cooked. Oh and get this, not only did I cook the burgers I also made them, from scratch! Anybody fall down from the shock of reading that? Oh wait, you’re already seated cause you’re reading my blog so phew, you are all safe! 😉

It is a dead easy burger recipe but one I very much enjoy. Each patty is 4oz of lean ground turkey meat, 2 tblsp salsa, 2 tblsp diced red onion. That’s it. No, I’m not kidding, that really is all you need. The amount of turkey I bought was enough to make three patties so I just tripled the amount of salsa and red onion and voila! I had these…

home made turkey burgers

home made turkey burgers

Three oh-so-lovely but omg-icky-I-touched-raw-meat turkey burgers. The salsa adds flavour and moisture, the red onion helps the patties to bind. Once cooked the burger is moist and yummy. You have to be careful to not overcook them, after they have been flipped you can tell when you need to stop cooking them because a bunch of moisture starts releasing in to the pan, seriously, it is like the burgers are leaking or something, it’s weird lol, take em off the heat then and they will be perfect-o! 🙂

Normally I eat them with the normal everyday burger toppings but I had an inspired idea (don’t ya love how I’m tooting my own horn over here? lol 😉 ) and topped them with goat cheese and diced jalapenos. Mmm! Mmm! Mmm! Well, if you like goat cheese and jalapenos it’s a good idea lol We also used the more normal toppings, garlic mayo, ketchup, relish, mustard, lettuce, sauteed mushrooms and sliced tomato. The burgers were messy, as a good burger should be, but really tasty. KL, who is an amazing cook, really liked them so yay! I cooked something, for someone else and not only did I not food poison us or screw up the recipe but they really liked it! *happy dance*

KL’s contribution was a super delish salad! It had, hmm, lemme see if I can remember, spinach, apple, blackberries, poppyseed, home made dressing, sunflower seeds um, shoot…I can’t remember the rest. Oh, and so you don’t skip over what I wrote there, she made the dressing, from scratch! I’ve never even thought of doing that and she did it amazingly well! After her hard work the end result looked like…

KL's amazing salad

KL’s amazing salad

Look at that! Not only delish but beautiful too. That picture is before the home made dressing was put on – in case you were wondering lol

So the end result of dinner looked like…

A tasty dinner. :)

A tasty dinner. 🙂

Not only tasty, and pleasing to the eye buuuuut healthy too! Yay! 😀 Always nice when you can make a healthy dinner also taste good lol

After dinner we went to watch the fireworks. There was a live concert and during the earlier part of the day there had been all kinds of things going on but being the people that we are we waited to go until later in the night so we could avoid all the little kids and families lol. The band we were near was actually really good, they were doing covers of all different sorts of music, people in the crowd were dancing, the band was funny between songs, overall a good choice by whomever picked them.

The fireworks show lasted a half hour, started at 10:30pm. It was kinda funny, KL and I had a great seat, on a log on the beach, it was still warm, you could hear (and see) the water lapping up against the sand, see people standing on the pier to our right, see the bridge to our left, it was really quite a beautiful night. So, this great atmosphere is happening and right on time to our left the fireworks start, then boom! To our right more fireworks start. Turns out we were between two different fireworks displays so everyone for the first little bit was turning their heads quickly from side to side trying to watch both shows and not miss anything – the crowd must have looked like one of those cat videos on youtube…

After about five minutes or so, yes, it took that long! the realization dawned that both shows are identical, yup, identical. So really you only had to pick which one you wanted to look at, or really, which direction was most comfortable for your neck, and you were set. The fireworks were pretty, and I would show you pictures but all my pictures of them suck, they either look like this…

that little red blob is what was actually a big beautiful firework, I swear!

that little red blob is what was actually a big beautiful firework, I swear!

or this…

again, looked waaaay better in real life, honest!

again, looked waaaay better in real life, honest!

I don’t know why my pictures of fireworks never work, sigh, guess you’ll have to take my word they were good but you can do that, right? 😉

After the fireworks I came home and watched the movie Crazy Stupid Love and am now crushing a bit on Ryan Gosling. He looked yummier than my dinner lol 😉

I have no words. No. Words.

I have no words. No. Words.

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My Foodie Weekend

16 Jun

Mmm! Such amazing food at work this weekend. Made it hard to follow the new rules I was attempting to implement to fix the damage I learned about from my weigh-in on Friday but I don’t think I did too badly…course I could be deluding myself! Who knows? lol

Friday and Saturday were normal, I took food Saturday so that day was healthy, I forgot my food on the Friday so I ate at work but I was careful. Dinner was a fish dish with veggies and potatoes. I had about 3 bites of the fish (I didn’t really like it), I did however eat all the veggies (I love veggies, Mmm!) and I ignored the potatoes (unnecessary carbs). Oh and for dessert I had an apple instead of a cookie, I was kinda proud of that swap out, I love those cookies, swapping out for an apple was harsh lol 😛

Sunday, oh Sunday! It was Father’s Day so we had a bbq at work for lunch. We had to move everything indoors due to rain, lame! And one of the poor cooks got drenched cause he was the one who had to brave the elements to dash to the bbq, cook the steak, then dash back in to the building, all while keeping the steaks dry cause obviously the food is more important than a mere person 😉

one just makes the chef stay outside while everyone else is inside

one just makes the chef stay outside while everyone else is inside

Lunch was steak, prime rib if I remember correctly, corn on the cob and baked potatoes that were double baked with cheese an stuff on top. That would be the second time I have had steak and I’m still not sure what I think about it. Because I am staff and not a resident I didn’t get a prime piece of steak I got a less than prime piece I guess you could say, shrug. It was kind of fatty and I didn’t like that. The last steak I had wasn’t like that so I’m not sure which way is normal, the fat or the not fat…anybody? It was red inside when I cut in to it, I checked with one of the other staff to make sure that was ok, I’m used to chicken where that would be all kinds of bad, she said it was all good and for her would be perfect so I decided to ignore the red colour of the meat and give it a go. It was tender, tasty, there was a green drizzled sauce on top, not drenching it or anything, it was artistically placed on top and that was where the flavour seemed to be coming from. Otherwise all it would have tasted like was meat and what’s with that? That’s not good, ugh. See? This is why I never order steak (that and the cost lol), I prefer to not have meat be the overwhelming flavour, shrug. I don’t remember what dessert was but that is because I skipped it, I figured I’d just eaten steak, and half a baked potato and corn on the cob, that should be enough to keep the tummy happy for a while lol

Today (Monday) was our company’s two year anniversary so we celebrated! 🙂 There was a fancy lunch and oh man, waaaay better than the steak lunch! There was a butternut squash soup, easily one of my favourite kinds of soup, cedar wood planked salmon and cheesecake with a raspberry sauce. The fish, oh the fish! My taste buds were so happy! I’ve never had salmon cooked like that, who knew that putting salmon on to a piece of wood and cooking it that way would make it so much better? The flavour had a depth to it that I had never experienced and will miss the next time I eat salmon. The sides were halved baby tomatoes and spinach cooked in a pan with some sort of sauce drizzled in there…they really like to artistically drizzle sauce at my work lol and some baby potatoes, also halved, cooked in some way I have no knowledge of and seasoned with, um, something? lol There were herbs of some sort on the potatoes but I am not sure what they were. Since I never plan on attempting to recreate the dish I didn’t feel the need to find out what they did with the potatoes, shrug. As for the cheesecake, it has been a ridiculously long time since I have had cheesecake and as I savoured every bite I was reminded of the knowledge that a person could definitely survive on cheesecake exclusively and be super happy about it. Yum! Yum! Yummmm!

cheesecake!cheesecake!cheesecake!

cheesecake!cheesecake!cheesecake!

So there we have it, my foodie weekend. 🙂 I wish I’d taken pictures of the various dishes so I could show you but I didn’t, I know I know, I suck 😛 Next time, promise! 🙂

Oh! I forgot the champagne! We had champagne today and hey, you can never go wrong with being allowed to drink alcohol while at work -especially when it’s the big boss who hands you a glass of it lol

champagne-toast

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Race Day: DZ 500m

7 Jun

This weekend is the DZ 500m Dragon Boat Race Festival! 🙂

My team. :) We didn't all realize there was a camera looking at us lol

My team. 🙂 We didn’t all realize there was a camera looking at us lol

It is a two day event but each team races for only one day, there are three races per team per day. In the grand scheme of things it is a fairly small festival, mostly used as a qualifier for the Rio Tinto Alcan Dragon Boat Festival (the largest North American dragon boat festival). It’s a good festival to gauge where your team is in comparison to other teams, and a great chance to see how your team does in a 500m race since you most likely haven’t competed in a 500m race since last season.

Racing during practice, either against a stop watch or other teams that are on the water practicing is a completely different thing than racing in festival, obviously lol.

We had an early start, we met at 8am and our first race was scheduled for around 9:30am…I think…I know it was around there but these things almost never run on schedule lol When we were getting ready for warm-up we were told they (the race officials) were running behind then in an almost magical turn around they were running early *rolls eyes* Ah well, keeps things interesting! 😛

We had excellent race times for all three races! 🙂 Yay!

First Race: 2:15

Second Race: 2:14

Third Race: 2:11

wOOt! wOOt!

Even though we are racing against other teams we are also racing against ourselves, we always want to do better than our previous race and we are oh-so-happy that we got faster with each race!

Plus! Not only did our times get better with each race we came in first place in our division! FIRST PLACE! *happy dance*

This is an excellent way to be heading in to our next race festival and talk about a boost to team morale, what a truly awesome way to start the race season!

Oh and on a vain note, we have new jerseys this year and we all looked amazing! 🙂 Last year we kept having jersey issues and we ended up going the whole season without a jersey, it was really nice to actually look like a competitive team this year lol One of my teammates designed the jersey and wow did he make them look sweeeeet! I didn’t take any pictures during the day, our races were back-to-back so there was no time during the day and afterwards when we were hanging out it didn’t really cross my mind but next festival there will be more time between races and we’ll probably take a team photo so I’ll post one then so you can see the jerseys, we all love em! 🙂

I’ve been pretty good about eating healthy today, well, except for a cookie I had earlier after our third race as celebration for doing so well lol Yeah yeah, I know! I shouldn’t celebrate with food but those cookies were staring at me all day and I’d just done three races, gimme a break lol 😛 Other than that cookie I did ok, oatmeal, banana, babybell cheese, salad, turkey bacon, egg, toast with peanut butter, tea, water…I think that’s all of it…that’s not sooooo bad, right? *nods head* Right!

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Admitting The Truth

6 Jun

I didn’t think I was that person who lost weight, then gained it back. After all, I’m nowhere near the size I was at the beginning of my weight loss journey buuuut…I’m also not the smallest I have been on this journey.

I haven’t wanted to admit this to myself, let alone to anyone else, but it is time I faced the truth…I rebounded a bit. Does this mean I am now a yo-yo dieter? I dunno. Does it mean I am doomed to gain back all the weight I lost? I dunno. Does this mean I am destined to gain and lose and gain and lose for the rest of my life? I don’t know that either…sigh.

Seems there is a lot I don’t know.

I know that I have to get back on track, but I feel lost and not sure how to do that. I keep thinking I am not going to go back to Weight Watchers because I plateaued so badly on that program. Don’t get me wrong, I am super grateful for Weight Watchers, I lost 35 pounds with them, I learned about proper portion sizes with them, I learned I can happily swap out junk food for fresh fruit and enjoy healthy eating but I also feel there are limitations to that program and that I outgrew it. I don’t feel like going back to Weight Watchers is the right choice for me but that doesn’t mean that I know what the right choice for me is.

I also know I am not good at extreme programs. I can only maintain eating paleo, or the bodybeach program, or super restrictive low calorie eating plans for so long before I cave. Even if I like the food and am getting good portion sizes it is more about all the foods I am not allowed to eat. Knowing that on an extreme program having even one spoonful of peanut butter could be considered cheating messes with me. I need a bit of wiggle room, space so I don’t get all down on myself when I step outside of the food rules that I am following.

I need something realistic, and affordable!

My scale has been tucked away for over a year and I am scared to pull it back out, I am scared to see what the number will be when I step on it. I’d rather be back in boxing class getting hit during sparring than stand on that scale again. How pathetic is that?? I originally put it away because I was building muscle and the scale number was no longer an accurate way to measure my progress. It was sloooowly going up as I was getting more trim and it was messing with my head. For so long I relied solely on the number it gave me every week to know if I was doing well and to see it go up, even though I knew it was because of muscle gain, made me feel like a failure. I started gauging my success/failure by other means, how my clothes fit, what size I could now buy, every now and then I would check my size with a measuring tape. For a while these methods of tracking worked but then they didn’t work so well anymore and I was left with no solid way to hold myself accountable.

I’m thinking that is around the time I started to slowly go up in size. For a while it was easy to ignore, my clothes still fit, just maybe a bit tighter, I could still reach the same levels at the gym, even though I wasn’t at the gym as often, I was eating roughly the same amount calorie wise but the calories were coming from more processed foods than fresh healthy foods.  The pounds snuck up on me and now I have to face reality that I have gone up an entire size, so that’s what, ten pounds? That’s depressing. All that work I did to lose weight and I have gone and gained some of it back. What was I thinking?! 

What’s twisted is that even with the weight gain I am more active then before, just in different ways. Instead of going to the gym daily I will swap out gym visits for a hike, or a run or my dragon boat practice. I am still active just not in a regimented gym equipment kind of way, and I guess the activities I am doing now aren’t as good for weight loss or weight maintenance as following a gym program is. Kinda sucks cause I enjoy the hikes an such but if I have to choose between enjoying the activity and getting results from the activity I will choose results every time…well, except for dragon boating, I will always choose dragon boating lol.

I don’t want to be writing this, I don’t want to be that person that gained weight back. But ya know, I follow a lot of other blogs that deal with weight loss, healthy lifestyles etc and I’ve noticed over the years I don’t seem to be the only one this happens to. It seems a lot of people, before they reach their goal weight have a slip up and gain some of the weight back. Most take a while to admit it to themselves and the longer you take to admit it the more weight you have gained back. I know with me part of it was the way I was thinking about food, I started getting cocky, thinking I didn’t have to be as strict cause I’d lost so much, I could let down my guard a bit. Well, proved that idea wrong! I let down my guard and look what happened! 😛

Even though I’m feeling down because I am facing the truth about my weight gain I am glad I am facing this truth now rather than a couple more months down the road when I will have possibly gained back even more weight.

I don’t have a solution for this, I wish I was concluding this post with some great awesome plan that would get me back on track but I don’t have one…yet! For now I am going to aim to get a new battery for my scale (mine died) and I plan to stand on that scale Tuesday morning. I also have a 4 week eating plan that I am going to research a bit more, see if it is doable on my budget, and I am going to schedule exercise into my days instead of leaving it as an up-in-the-air thing that happens more sporadically then it should. Hopefully I can get myself back on track within 5 days or so and huh, look at that, I may not have a solution yet but it seems like I actually do have a bit of a plan, at least a plan in the making…I’ll cross my fingers it works!…Uh, anybody wanna step on that scale for me? 😉 lol

Must remember this

Must remember this

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Food For A Friend

28 May

I don’t invite people in to my place often, the main reasons are:

(1) my cat doesn’t like people

(2) I only own one living room chair so that means only one person will get to sit comfortably

(3) I don’t own a table so there is nowhere to sit and eat

(4) my place is super small, having two people in it makes it feel crowded

(5) I am a sucky host

Despite all these reasons I decided to invite a friend of mine over for dinner, a dinner that I would be making!  I was happy with making the offer, even happier when she said yes but as the day of the dinner got closer I started to get a bit stressed. I was trying out two different recipes and I was freaking out about messing up and giving both of us food poisoning, or about the food tasting horrible and having to order emergency take out or about any other possible ways to screw it up that I hadn’t thought of yet lol.

I chose two random recipes from online, spoke to a chef friend of mine for some tips and explanations of things in the recipes that confused me, bought ingredients I would never normally buy and next thing I knew I was prepping food, in my kitchen, while listening to music, and kinda enjoying myself. Go figure.

I felt so domestic! 😛

The appetizer was Crusty Parmesan Herb Zucchini Bites. I rate them a 5 out of 5 for ease of making but I didn’t like them, my friend did though so I think it was just that I’m not a huge fan of rosemary but that’s in the recipe, a little less rosemary and I might like them better. Also, I kept them in the oven a bit too long so the cheese was browner than I cared for. shrug. Personal preferences, whatcha gonna do? 😛

washed, ends chopped off, halved, coated in oil

washed, ends chopped off, halved, coated in oil

drizzled balsamic vinegar

drizzled balsamic vinegar

mixture of parmesan cheese, rosemary and thyme

mixture of parmesan cheese, rosemary and thyme

cheese and herbs sprinkled on top

cheese and herbs sprinkled on top

I put the zucchini in the oven at 350F for 15 minutes, the last 5 minutes the broiler was on which was theoretically going to make the cheese a nice golden brown buuuuuut it turned out like this…

not quite how the picture with the recipe looked, sigh.

not quite how the picture with the recipe looked, sigh.

Like I said, I didn’t much care for them but if I try them again with different herbs I might. I normally love zucchini so despite this recipe not working out all that well I might try it again with different toppings, see how my tastebuds like it then. 🙂

The main course was a One Pan Pasta dish that I kept seeing floating around facebook. You put all the ingredients in the pot at the same time, add water, get it to a rolling boil, boil with occasional stirring for the length of time it takes to cook the pasta and boom! Pasta dish! It is really pretty looking at the beginning, at least I think so…what do you think?

See? Pretty!

See? Pretty!

There is whole wheat spaghetti pasta, washed and halved baby tomatoes, one thinly sliced red onion, salt, garlic, red pepper flakes, fresh basil and extra virgin olive oil. Not shown is the 4 1/2 cups of water you add. Once it is all cooked according to the recipe there will be a small amount of water at the bottom of the pot which you shouldn’t worry about because it will thicken up in to a sauce. Um…hmm…small amount of water?? I don’t think so! More like whole whack load of water! I was worried I’d somehow screwed up since there was way more water than there was supposed to be but I used tongs to serve it and it was ok, actually better than ok, it was really good. I especially liked the addition of the red pepper flakes, they made quite the difference – in a good way! I also give this dish a 5 out of 5 for ease of making, there is a bit of prep work needed which to me seemed like a lot of work but that is probably because I never cook, I think compared to most recipes the level of prep work needed wasn’t that big of a deal.

The recipe said it would make 4 servings but it made way more than that…course most people eat larger portions that I do so that probably has something to do with it lol It would be a good dish to make then portion out in to servings and freeze for future meals, well, I think it would be, do baby tomatoes freeze ok? *confused face*

The final result was this…

not as pretty looking lol topped with parmesan cheese, Mmm!

not as pretty looking lol topped with parmesan cheese, Mmm!

Since I don’t own a table I put two tv tables against each other, kinda ghetto but hey, it worked lol The final look was…

my "table"

my “table”

My friend brought some fancy bread and she put together some balsamic vinegar and oil for dipping. The little mugs were filled with strawberry daiquiri , I don’t own glasses meant for alcoholic drinks either…I feel like I should start making a list of things I don’t have but apparently should lol.

All in all it was a good meal, with great company and I’m glad the evening happened. 🙂 Turns out my stress was about nothing cause even with the cheese getting too brown on the zucchini everything worked out alright…maybe I should invite people over more often…maybe lol 😛

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Grocery Store Guilt

21 May

Today after a nice 10.45 km walk I stopped at a grocery store I don’t usually shop at to buy eggs, exciting huh? 😉  Eggs are a ridiculously important part of my daily food intake and I ran out yesterday. Payday isn’t till Friday so I couldn’t technically afford to buy the eggs but after careful deliberation I decided I had to find a way to get them, I’d be fairly screwed food wise if I didn’t buy them today so in to the store I went.

I wandered a bit until I found the eggs and this is what I came face to face with…

2014-05-21 15.46.39

The small print on the sign is hard to read in my picture, what it says is:

Cage-Free: hens roam indoors and outdoors

Cage Eggs: hens in cages, behaviours restricted

Um…don’t tell me that right when I am about to buy eggs!

It’s not like I don’t know that chickens have sucky lives but I am on a ridiculously strict budget and even if I wanted to buy cage-free organic eggs I wouldn’t be able to afford it so don’t try laying on the guilt at the crucial picking-the-eggs-from-the-shelf-stage of my shopping trip. That is just…mean! 😛

Every single egg carton had a sign letting me know if the eggs were from Cage Free hens or Caged hens so not like I could even buy a different brand and keep my ignorance about the happiness levels of the hens that produced the eggs I will be ingesting, sigh.

In the end I did what I always do when buying eggs, I bought the cheapest, shrug.  Then I did what I always do when confronted with something that makes me feel sad in regards to animals, I went home and hugged my cat, at least I can make sure he has a happy life.

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In Pairs If You Please

16 May

Sure everyone knows about food rules that are about calories, or cheat days, or good vs bad foods to eat but what about food rules that are about portion? And no I don’t mean portion like half your plate should be veg, a quarter of your plate protein and a quarter or less some sort of starch. I mean something weirder than that, I mean things like…

…certain foods are always eaten in pairs

Yup. Pairs. I don’t know if this is just me but certain foods I always eat in pairs. shrug. It’s such a habit now I don’t even think about it.

The two most common foods I do this with are toast and cookies lol 😛

Mmm carbs!

Mmm carbs!

When I make toast I always make two pieces and if I am grabbing a cookie I always grab two.

Every now and then I will make one piece of toast in an attempt to be healthier but I inevitably go back to making two pieces in a day or so. And well, I don’t think I ever try to take just one cookie, that would be weird an un-natural lol 😉

I’ve got some other random food quirks, for instance, if I am drinking a cold drink not from a bottle or can I use a straw. Foods like grapes, or pieces of cheese or anything that is individual like that I always eat in even numbers…um, I chew food an even numbered amount of times before swallowing…hmm, I can’t think of any others right now but I’m sure there are more!

Anybody else got any odd food rules? I can’t be the only one…right?

 

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Food Baby

27 Apr

Oooomph, foooood baby! Right here! Right now! OMG so much food in tummy, ugh.

Why the hell do I over eat like this? There is absolutely no need for the amount of food I ate for dinner tonight, and yet, I ate it! Sometimes I irritate myself, sigh.

A friend and I went out for dinner, we met in my neighbourhood which was awesome cause that meant I walked to meet her and then we walked to the restaurant. I am trying to walk more just in general and it also meant I didn’t use my suv which meant I didn’t use the oh-so-expensive gas that is in the tank (currently $1.53/litre, lovely huh?). My hope is by walking whenever possible I will sneak some extra exercise in there all under the guise of saving money on fuel and parking lol. 😉

We ended up going to Burgers Etc which is a burger/bbq place. Neither of us had been there before and I’d been dying to try it since I moved to this area, that’d be, hmm, a year and a half ago?

burgers etc

We decided to split an appetizer, we almost always do, we wanted the onion rings with bbq sauce but they ran out of onion rings, meanies! lol So we ended up with the pulled pork cheese fries. As soon as they arrived I knew we were in trouble because the plate was huuuuge! Enough for 4 people to share easy! They were quite good though, loved the bbq sauce. There was grated cheese, pulled pork, bbq sauce and I swear some chili on there. Quite the combo. I forgot to take pics so the image below is one I found online, ours was served on a very nice white, fancy serving platter (not the dorky plastic basket shown in the pic) but the food looked the same. 🙂

burgers etc pulled pork cheese fries

Then we each got a burger. You choose beef, chicken or veggie burger, all options automatically come topped with mayo, ketchup, lettuce, tomato, onion and dill pickle. Then you choose any other topping you want, an extra dollar per topping, I chose mushrooms, cheddar cheese and jalapenos. The burgers are more tall than wide so you really have to squish it down to be able to fit it in your mouth lol You can choose from a list of sides: coleslaw, potato salad, macaroni salad, garden salad, fries, corn, soup or baked beans. I chose the macaroni salad, my friend got the coleslaw and we shared. Both were good but I preferred the macaroni salad. According to the server the macaroni salad, potato salad and coleslaw are made fresh in-house, yay!

burgers ect burger

Again with an image from the internet since I forgot to take pics. The above burger isn’t mine but I wanted to give you an idea of what mine looked like. Mine had mushrooms and jalapenos not only on the burger but spilling out all over the plate. Oh! I forgot, I added bbq sauce, so don’t forget that, it made my burger messier to eat but I love bbq sauce, Mmm!

The whole experience was great, the staff were nice, patient, answered all our food questions. The food tasted good and was suitably messy – c’mon, we all know certain foods taste better when they are messy lol 😛

I really enjoyed the macaroni salad, seems weird that the side dish was my favourite part of the meal lol wonder if I can just order that one day as take out…something to think about…

As soon as you walk in you start to drool, the place smells amazing! Well, as long as you like bbq it smells amazing lol I’d really like to try the ribs I think, just to get some more of that sauce lol The sauce is what made the burger stand out, otherwise it was pretty much like any other burger, but taller.

I couldn’t eat the entire burger but didn’t leave thaaaaat much of it behind. I’m really regretting not cutting that sucker in half and bringing half home. The macaroni salad side was small-ish so no way any of that would have made it in to a doggie bag, shrug. Normally I’m semi-decent at bringing food home from restaurants, partly so I don’t overeat at the restaurant and also because eating out generally isn’t cheap and I’d rather the money I spend cover the cost of two meals if possible. Not this time however. Next time though, I swear! Next time I’ll bring half that burger home and heat it up the next day! 🙂

Oh, and if you were wondering, the walking I did to meet my friend, get to the restaurant and get home was not an impressive amount at all and in no way helped to offset the meal lol 😛

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Chocolate Madness!

21 Apr

For the love of gawd, stop with all the chocolate! Just…Stop!

I don’t do the whole Easter thing but the amount of chocolate I have somehow ended up with is ridiculous! It is all gifted-to-me chocolate and I have done my best to re-gift some of it but I still have a whole bunch of it. And before you say something silly like “why don’t you throw it out? or give it all away” please remember that I am a girl and therefore love chocolate and some things you just don’t throw out, I mean c’mon, what a waste! It’s bad karma to waste food I’m sure of it! lol 😉

Just today I got given an adorable little basket with lots of chocolate eggs in it. It was given as a thank you gift and while she was giving it to me she was apologizing for it being a day late, I loved her reasoning, she said the Easter Bunny got lost and couldn’t find me but he kept trying and voila! he found me today, well, found me via her lol

cute little basket

cute little basket

with chocolate inside, Mmm!

with chocolate inside, Mmm!

There’s actually a lot more chocolate in there then it looks like in the picture and just by looking at it I can feel my ass getting bigger, sigh.

I also have a Lindt chocolate bunny, he’s got a cute little collar with a bell on it. I fully intended to give it away Easter weekend I just didn’t know who to give it to so it is still here, with me, staring at me, judging my willpower against chocolate. Thing is, I can’t eat that, and not because I have some semblance of willpower, it’s too large for me to eat in one sitting but if I eat it’s ears (which seem the most logical spot to start) and then set it aside I am leaving the poor bunny maimed and deaf and that just seems cruel…

awwww, such a cute little bunny rabbit

awwww, such a cute little bunny rabbit

Oh and get this, in some weird twist of logic I don’t want to give the bunny to someone I care about because it’s basically giving someone a present that is super bad for them, I wouldn’t give someone a pack of cigarettes so why would I give them a chocolate bunny that has the potential to make them fatter, increase their BMI and entice them away from a healthy food choice? sigh, pathetic huh? I’m gonna turn in to that lame person that thinks bringing raw veggies without dip is an acceptable potluck snack…oh wait…I already think that, crap… 😛

I also still have the care packages from England that I am making my way through, Mmm! I opened these tonight…

omg sogoodsogoodsogood

omg sogoodsogoodsogood

The bottom is crunchy, like a cookie, then the soft gooey traditional Cadbury Creme Egg centre all surrounded by milk chocolate. Holy hannah! Cadbury is a genius! I usually buy myself one, yes that’s right, One Cadbury Creme Egg for Easter and thoroughly enjoy it. I don’t eat the chocolate though, I open up the top, use a finger to scoop out the yummy gooey centre then throw the chocolate away…one of the super rare times I won’t eat chocolate lol. These don’t give you the option, you kinda have to eat the chocolate but they taste so good I don’t mind. These will not last long, of that I am already certain lol

I have loads more chocolate around here but don’t want to bore you with pictures of all of it lol

On top of all these ticking-chocolate-timebombs I also ate an incredibly large quantity of food yesterday at the Easter brunch my work held, my stomach may never recover, omg all so tasty, all so fattening, all of it in my tummy…or at least that is what it felt like yesterday lol When I make food I plate it not on a dinner plate but on the small plate that comes with your dish set but at the buffet they were using large dinner plates so I had one of those and I, get this, actually covered the entire bottom of the plate with food! Normally you can see a good chunk of my plate when I use the little plate but yesterday I covered the entire bottom of a large plate! How is that even possible?? I didn’t eat all of it but truth be told, the food I didn’t eat was left behind only because I didn’t much care for it, so I can’t really take credit for resisting some of the food on the plate lol Then there was dessert…let’s not go in to details about that k? It’d just be embarrassing. Let’s leave it at there was dessert, I ate it. 😛 What amazed me was how there I was, silently appalled at how much food I had put on my plate but most of the people there had pyramids of food on their plate, towers of food, basically a whole lot more food than I, and they ate it! People *shakes head* we are all gluttons at times lol

So here I am, someone who doesn’t generally do anything for Easter and I over-indulged in a huge meal and am surrounded by Easter themed chocolate. It’s like I crossed over to an alternate dimension…

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