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!!

Bar Review and Valentine Day Treats

I had another great sleep last night. That’s 2 in a row! Go me! Actually, the whole day was super productive which leaves me feeling satisfied. I revisited an old favourite for breakfast this morning:
-1 cup water
-1/2 cup Quaker oats
-cinnamon
-chocolate PB2
-carob chips & walnut pieces
I lapped this up with pleasure! :D

I ate a Sencha Green Tea Bar in “Morning Lychee” this a.m. before hitting the gym:
THOUGHTS:
-at first I was very hesitant because I’ve never tried a lychee fruit before and the smell kinda threw me off. I couldn’t quite place it, but it reminded me of some type of alcohol. Not gonna lie, the first bite threw me off, too because it tasted boozy!! But I’m a champ and kept at it. After a few more bites the taste really grew on me. The packaging states “a tropical fusion of lychee berries & sweet coconut”, I couldn’t taste any coconut at all which was a bit disappointing.
-I love the texture of these bars. They’re chewy like a rice crispy square, but there are loads of seeds to give it a great consistency.
-They’re 220 calories but a good size bar so I feel it’s totally worth it. Because they are thicker and denser than a lot of bars, they take awhile to eat so there’s no rushing through it. And they are gluten & wheat free which I appreciate even though I don’t have issues surrounding those ingredients.
-1 bar = 3 cups of green tea. Enough said.

RATING: 4/5
**NOTE: This bar was not sent to me for review. I bought them myself to try. See here for my thoughts on the “lively lemongrass” flavour.

The gym was awesome today! I decided to run and did I ever show that treadmill whose boss. BOOYA!

Time: 45 minutes
Avg Hr: 164
Max Hr: 193
Calories Torched: 501 (!!)
Distance: 4.4 miles

That is hands down the best run I’ve had in a long time; since at least before Christmas. I got into a groove early on and never looked back.

I packed myself a serving of quinoa stew for lunch today:
I always add a little hot water before heating my (thawed) frozen foods in the microwave. It helps to loosen the mix up a bit so it’s not like a glob of paste in my mouth. LOL! I also found a box of cute cookies in the staff kitchen so I helped myself to one:
This was SO freaking good! The base was cracker-like and the chocolate topping was filled with caramel. SO worth it!!!

Just before quitting time I ate a pink grapefruit that I butchered cut up this morning.
Grapefruits are something I’ve always loved, but I hate the pith on any citrus and I find this in particular to be the worst culprit. Cutting and sectioning the fruit, while a pain in the ass, eliminates this problem for me. Oh…I’ve still been eating way to many of these:

My hubby and I put a Valentine’s order in with one of our local high school’s (CHSS) bakery for some treats. This particular school is a trade school so it’s the students that make and decorate all the food. I always support them come “special occasions” such as V-day, Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc and have never been disappointed with the product. Take a look at this stash that landed at my desk this aft!
This is a 4 layer chocolate/banana cake with chocolate ganache. My hubby ordered 2. Yes, you read that right…2! Next is 6 dozen cookies.

One dozen is my hub’s, the other 5 are for the kids classes. Read on to see what we did with those.

I popped a roast in the crock pot this morning because the boys were on the ice at 4:30 and DD had skating lessons at 5:20. Us gals ate first. Along with my meat I ate a few potatoes that were also in the crock and some mixed veggies:

Once back home the kids and I assembled their Valentines using a cookie, some chocolate and v-day baggies. Here are a few of them….

So right now I’m in the middle of baking mini muffins for a “coffee break” my department is hosting at work tomorrow. I used this recipe for blueberry chia muffins and replaced the blueberries with cinnamon chips. I doubled the recipe but only have 1 mini muffin baking tin so the second batch is still in the oven. I’ll take a picture of the finished product for tomorrow’s post.

Needless to say, I’m feeling pretty exhausted right now. I plan on making a tea and settling in to watch Vampire Diaries. The only kind of candy I want right now is eye candy!! ;)

Bye for now!!

Thanksgiving Treats

Hi all! Today’s my Friday! How about that? It’s a good feeling knowing that I get the day to myself tomorrow.

• 2/3 cup water
• 1/3 PC 5 grain cereal
• cinnamon
• 1/3 cup pear sauce
• sprinkle of Dorset cereal

Yum in my tum!

I had another really productive day at work. It’s great knowing that I’m going into the busiest part of next week prepared. Mid morning I ate a piece of apple butter bread;

I hopped on the elliptical today at the gym. I felt a little off my game for some reason, but still managed to get a good workout in.

• Time: 40 minutes
• Avg Hr: 150
• Max Hr: 166
• Calories Torched: 386
• Distance: 4.4 miles

I’d be lying if I said I enjoyed my lunch today. I packed a container of V8 Corn & Chipotle soup and was pretty excited to try it out because it had lots of whole corn kernels in it. I also brought 3 Ryvita crackers;

I can’t pinpoint what I didn’t like about this soup. It was just a strange blend of flavours, I guess. Blah… I chased it with some cocoa roasted almonds.

MUCH better! Just before leaving work my Thanksgiving baking order from a local (trade) high school, CHSS, came in. Check this out!

These sugar cookies are for the kids to bring to school tomorrow to share with their classmates.

The next layer had Mom’s ginger snap cookies, pumpkin pie tarts and mine and Mom’s whole wheat buns. The buns are $1/doz. Can’t go wrong with that!

The bottom layer had my hubby’s pumpkin pie and Mom’s pecan pie. My hubby tore into the tarts as soon as I walked in the door. Here’s what they look like;

While on break today, I walked over to Tim Horton’s and bought myself a box of their Pumpkin Spice tea;

SO, both the the kids were on the ice tonight from 5:30 until 6:20…but at different rinks. :/ I baked up a frozen pizza for them and warmed up some ambercup squash with a dollop of Dijonnaise as a snack for myself;

I took DD to her lesson and popped into the adjoining library while I was there. I found 5 cookbooks that I’ll be going through a bit later. YAHOO! When we got home all I wanted to eat was some comfort food. My tummy’s been a little sour all day so I went with some Windy Hill Farms cremo cereal;

This was 1 cup water, 1/3 cup cremo cereal, cinnamon, raisins, almond butter and fig preserves. It went down real nice!

CSI and The Vampire Diaries are on in a bit so I’ll be shutting down soon. I’m totally hooked on the Vampire Diaries even though it’s kinda cheesy. All the eye candy makes up for that, though! :)

Bye for now!!