MIA Again

I seem to have made another disappearing act yesterday! I’ve been spending a lot of time with family and haven’t had much time to post. Although the past 2 days haven’t been crazy busy, I haven’t been at home a whole lot. DD had a friend sleep over Monday night so I made the fam a big bacon, egg, toast hash brown breakie Tuesday. I had planned on eggs, too, but changed my mind at the last minute!

• 3/4 cup Rice Dreams “eggnog”
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/2 cup Quaker oats
• raisins
• hazelnuts

I did some much needed housework for a few hours then settled in for a small lunch. Small because we had early dinner plans with my family. I went with a smoothie:

• 1 cup kefir
• splash of USAB
• handful each of frozen blueberries, blackberries & pineapple
• 1 tbsp of honey

I’m not a big beverage gal, but this was bang on! I loved it. Once I got myself all dolled up DD and I headed out to Walmart to buy a George Foreman grill. They were 50% off and I’ve been wanting one for some time now. By the time we got back it was time to head out for dinner. I grabbed this baggie of almonds to eat on the way because we were going to a buffet style restaurant and I didn’t want to arrive famished.

So the place we went to is called The Mandarin and has some pretty decent eats. I usually only go once a year so it’s one of those places that remains a treat. I started off light with some sushi, cold noodles and mango salad;

My main plate had a little bit of everything that I don’t have easy access to. That’s sort of my game plan at these types of restaurants….only put on my plate what I can’t/don’t eat daily.

I didn’t finish everything you see. Some I didn’t end up liking. Most of it was fantastic, though. Especially the snap peas. I had a nice sampling plate for dessert and loved every bit of it! :D

Once we left we made our way straight to a hockey game with my parents. Even though our city lost 4-2, the actual game was pretty exciting. We all pretty much crashed upon arriving home. ;)

On to today, shall we? It was a great one! DD and I had plans with Mom to go shopping in Toronto. Seeing as we had to pick her up by 9:30, I went the fast route with breakfast having a bowl of one of my favourite cereals.

This is some seriously good stuff! Here’s my serving.

YUM! The 3 of us shopped for 3hours before stopping for lunch. I didn’t buy a whole lot. A new gym bag and some running shorts from Lululemon. To be 100% honest, the main reason for hitting the mall we did is because a Panera opened up across the street from it! HOT DIGGITY DOG! And I was more than thrilled to see that everything was exactly the same as any Panera I’ve been to in the USA. I went with the soup sandwich combo. Turkey artichoke and Fuji apple, with a gala apple that DD ended up eating;

Love, love, LOVE!

We got home by 3pm at which point I settled in to get some serious blog reading done. Then we headed back out again at 4 to hockey practice. Ye Haw! Back home by 6:30, I made good use of the new grill with some chicken breasts. That baby rocks! The meat was done in 10 minutes! I served it with broccoli and quinoa. My chicken also had some leftover cranberry sauce spread on top.

My bestie came over for a visit this evening as well. She lives 3hrs away and is home visiting for the holidays. It’s SO great to see her! She’s going to stop by for a longer visit tomorrow, too.

Well, I thin that’s all for this post! I have a feeling that I won’t be back until Friday evening so HAPPY NEW YEAR to each and every one of you! I hope you’ll all be doing exactly what you want tomorrow evening. Please be safe, though!!!

Bye for now!!