Quick Day

So, I’m a little slow but I finally realized that it’s still dark out when I get up in the morning. Isn’t that a sure sign of the seasons changing?! That and I noticed that there are leaves all over the lawn now. Time to rake a big pile to jump into!!

I prepared a nice warm, soothing bowl of oats this morning and served it in my leaf bowl to commemorate autumn!

-1 cup water
-1/2 cup Flax Seed Porridge
-1/4 cup pure pumpkin puree
-lots of cinnamon & pumpkin pie spice
-drizzle of agave



Again, this bowl had the perfect consistency. I’m quite certain that the trick to it is not adding any dairy/non-dairy milk and cooking it almost too long (if you know what I mean!)

The morning zipped right on by! I looked up at the clock at one point and was already 11:30am! I like when the work day zooms by, but I wish time would slow down when I get home! I don’t want to be wishing my life away!

I bought these cool Ryvita crackers over the weekend...



Are they ever light and crisp! They also have a nice gentle saltiness to them from the sunflower seeds. And an impressively short ingredient list to boot! Check out the texture on these guys! Mmmmmmmm......



I snacked on one around 11am with a cup of Stash Holiday Chai and the other around 2pm. Here's my Chai. This flavor is great! It reminds me of the scent of cloves.



I made it home at lunch today to dust off my treadmill! Geez, I haven’t been on it in 4 days! It seems like lately the tail end of my week becomes unexpectedly busy. I should be able to get home at lunch everyday this week but Thursday. Anyways, it sure did feel good to run today. I was having a “stretchy” morning. For some reason I kept feeling the need to stretch my back out. My 3 mile jog took care of that! Phew!

I’ll warn you right now…my lunch today was very boring. I was lazy last night and the end result was me scrambling for something to take at the last minute this morning. I ended up with the last 2 pieces of baked tofu and a bunch of grapes, plus the 2 Ryvita crackers.



Even the picture is uninspiring! I also sipped on a Stash Apple Cinnamon tea. Oh, the scents of fall! Unfortunately, a good smell was all this flavor had going for it. To me, it just tasted like sweetened water. Very disappointing. My husband has been drinking it, though, so he must enjoy it.



Although tonight was dance night, the kids had a PD Day and spent the day at the sitter's house. What this boils down to is that I got to cook dinner instead of us fending for ourselves. I must brag for a moment because my dinner creation turned out wicked awesome tonight! I had pulled pork chops out but didn't want to BBQ them so here's what I created....

Apple & Pepper Porkchops

-1/4 cup water (or broth)
-1 onion
-1 each red & green pepper
-3 celery stalks
-1 gala apple
-1 cup marinara sauce
-5 pork chops
-cinnamon, coriander, cumin, basil, salt & pepper

Combine water and veggies in a large sauce pan and cook down for 10 minutes. Stir in all spices and cook for a few more minutes. Spread veggies to either side of the pan and line chops down the centre. Let cook for 3 minutes and then flip over for another 3 minutes. Spread veggies around chops, add marinara sauce and cover. Cook over low heat another 10 minutes and then serve.



The pork chops were butter knife tender and the veggies had a smooth, almost creamy feel to them that hinted at a buttery sauce....with NO butter at all! The kids not only liked it, they asked for seconds! That's a sure sign to me that I made a great dinner! I truly love when a meal comes together so wonderfully. For me, that's what I love most about cooking.

My sweet end was a pumpkin muffin and 2 chocolate chip cookies.

One thing I need to figure out with this blogging business is how to create a link to my recipes so that I can display them in my side bar. Can anymore help me out??

I plan on spending the remainder of the evening with my Chatelaine magazine that came in the mail today and Dancing With The Stars on the tube. My husband decided to make a loaf of bread in the bread maker so I should have a tantalizing scent wafting through the house very soon! I'm glad that by the time it's done it'll be too late to taste test. Warm bread can be a very dangerous thing! Enjoy the evening!

Bye for now!