Going to the Fair!

First off, THANKS to all of you who responded to my Christmas food drive “challenge”!!  It truly doesn’t take a whole lot to make a difference in another’s life.  A few of you asked if you could send one “big” photo at the end of all your food items and that is absolutely fine!  I can’t wait to put a post together showcasing everyone’s stash.  Also, feel free to jump in at any point!  Don’t worry if you’ve missed a week or 2…remember; every little bit helps.  For those of you reading about this for the first time, you can see the deets at either the link above or by checking out the new “Thanks & Giving” tab at the top of the blog.  Don’t forget to spread the word!!!
We finished off our Thanksgiving weekend by going to a fall fair in a small community down the road from us.  
My in laws had some horses there over the weekend and some other relatives of my hubby were involved in a tractor pull.
There was typical fair food of which we had none!  We all had late breakfasts and weren’t hungry.
We saw some super cute farm animals:
LOVE the Llama!!  There were rides, of course:
Are you surprised that DS made a beeline for the bumper cars?  Maybe you’ll be more surprised that he ended up at the hockey shooting area?
LOL!!!  And lastly, check out some of this prize winning produce!
Holy beet and pumpkins, eh???
Back to breakfast for a second…. Saturday night I put steel cut oats in the crock pot for no fuss meals this week.  I simply put 1 cup steel cut oats,  4.5 cups of water, 1 tbsp cinnamon, 1 tbsp of vanilla and a wee bit of salt in the slow cooker and let it go for 8ish hours.  A quick stir in the morning and it was ready to go!  I got 4 portions from the batch and here are the first 2:
I think I’ll be preparing oats like this more often.  What a huge timesaver on weekday mornings!!
In other news from the weekend I decided it was time to cook a zucchini from the garden that was as big as my arm.  I kid you not!
I diced the whole thing and saved half for another night.  The other half was sautéed with about a ¼ cup of thinly sliced pancetta (Italian cured bacon).  I ate a big helping of it at dinner along with some quinoa salad (recipe to come):  Here’s some other noteworthy food from the past few days! This was a very simple jambalaya.  I simply sautéed a red and yellow bell pepper, an onion, mushrooms, spices, a can of diced tomatoes, chicken breast and shrimp together in a big pan.  Then I served it over basmati rice.  SO GOOD!!

We also “baked” cookies yesterday and I admit that I totally cheated!

LOL!  The kids had a blast.  Even if we only had Christmas colours to decorate with.
And finally, more treats.  We placed an order with the high school bakery for ginger cookies and a pumpkin pie:
All delicious.  Also, we stopped by the bakery on our way home from the fair and chose a few treats:
The donut was for DS, the lemon cupcake for my hubby, the brownie for DD and the raspberry coconut square pour moi.  The cookies went into the kids lunches today.
And that’s all I’ve got for today!  Off to watch The Biggest Loser!
Bye for now!!