A Day of Eats

Here we sit at Monday again!  I hope it's a beautiful and sunny where you are as it is here. The temps are still pretty cool, but after a pretty drab and sunless winter, I welcome the sunshine!  I'm just coming off a 3 day hockey tournament weekend; the last of the season and finally have some time to post a day of eats.  I took these photos last week so it's about time I get on it!

I find that I've been mixing my breakfasts up quite a bit lately.  If you've been reading for a while you'll remember that I ate oats every. single. morning for years.  These days oats are reserved for weekend mornings.  Not sure how that happened, but it did!  Through the week I've been enjoying GF toast with PB & jam, waffles and this Nature's Path Coconut Chia Granola with Almond Breeze Coconut Almond milk:

 So, so good!  You know I'm crazy for coconut!  LOL  I try to eat some fruit in the morning, say around 10-10:30 as a light snack.  These grapefruit sections in a little cup have been going down real easy the past few weeks:

I love me some grapefruit but am so lazy about actually peeling one for myself!  I just hate all the pith and usually can't be bothered which makes these "all the work is done for me" cups perfect!

I still hit the gym on my lunch hour, but that has switched up, too.  I use to be all cardio, cardio and more cardio, but since I injured my back last May I've been focusing a bit more on stretching.  My time in the gym is usually split like this; 25 mins either walking on the treadmill or the elliptical, 10 mins of light weights and 15 mins of stretches.  My body appreciates the variety!

On this particular day I went out for lunch with my boss.  On my plate was a roasted red pepper & goat cheese sandwich on GF bread with a side of the best ever sweet potato fries!

Most afternoons (while at work, anyways) you can find me sipping a hot tea.  This Stash coconut mango is a regular in my tea rotation:

Lastly, dinner!  My kids love pasta so I'd say we eat it once a week for sure.  I always make myself a gluten free noodle, but the sauce is the same for the four of us.

These were rice noodles, but I like corn and quinoa versions, too.  Parmesan cheese and lots of hot sauce are a must on any pasta dish of mine!

Those are all the photos I took although I can pretty much guarantee that I also ate either an Activia yogurt or a handful of corn tortilla chips before I went to bed!

So there you have my eats for a day!  I'll been getting a post up soon about a little DIY that we tackled not too long ago.  For now, here's a sneak peak:

Bye for now!!!

**I wasn't asked to review any of these products.  All have been bought with my own money.  The opinions are mine, as well!**

Homemade Condensed Milk & Macaroons

I am a magazine junkie.  At any given time I have 3-4 laying around the house for me to read.  One of my favourites is Chatelaine and it was this magazine that I was reading the other night when I came across a recipe for homemade condensed milk.

Say what???  You can make that stuff at home? I was sold.  There's only a handful of ingredients which is a plus for me (I tend to disregard recipes with a long ingredient list) so out came the magic bullet and I got right to it!  This is the skim milk powder I used:

Carnation Instant Skim Milk Powder.  By the way; I *really* wish I could figure out how to rotate photo's in Blogger!!  D'oh!  After literally 5 minutes of getting the goods into the Bullet and 2 minutes of whirling, I had myself a nice cup of rich, sweet, creamy condensed milk!

SUCCESS!!!  But now what to do with it,right?  Never fear, Chatelaine attached some handy little recipes, too!  (These are at the bottom of the recipe in the link above).  I love me some coconut so I picked the macaroons:

So incredibly easy; 1 cup of unsweetened coconut and 1/2 a cup of the sweetened condensed milk.  Stir together, scoop out 2 TBSP, roll into balls and bake 10-12 minutes in a 350*C oven.

These were a big hit.  Fluffy clouds of coconutty goodness.  I never realized how easy it was to make macaroons!  LOL  One of the other ideas for the condensed milk was to mix it with equal amounts of water and freeze it in ice cube trays and use it in iced coffee.  That would be a good summer time treat!

Is condensed milk something you use?  If so, what do you make with it??

Bye for now!!

Camera Randomness

Good morning!  Is everyone enjoying the weekend thus far?  This is a 3 day weekend for us thanks to Monday being family day!  Looking forward to NO alarm tomorrow morning.  LOL  Anyways, the kids are busy watching movies this morning so I decided it was high time to clean up the pictures that have been lingering on my camera.  Thought I’d share a few with you!
First, last Friday we went to Casey’s for dinner and I was (happily) surprised to see that they now have a gluten free menu!  I haven’t had pasta in a restaurant for ages so I dove right into a bowl of Jambalaya with corn penne.  The flash went off when I took the picture so I took another of the leftovers that I ate for lunch yesterday:  Nicely done!  I also enjoyed a PB ice cream/brownie “mini” dessert. I’m not a fan of whipped cream so that went to Jason’s dessert, but I was all over the brownies!!  YUM!
Speaking of pasta, I’ve collected a few noodle-y meals on the ole camera: The above was from a bit ago, but I remember it because I had made a wicked seafood sauce!
^^^Pad Thai; also from Casey’s back in the summer…^^^
^^^Rice noodles with homemade clam sauce^^^
  ^^^Rice pasta bakes with ground turkey, spinach and provolone cheese.
I’ve also seem to have collected many breakfast pictures over the last few months: And eggs!  I seem to eat more eggs than I thought!  I’m a little quirky with my eggs in that I really don’t like them for breakfast.  I mainly eat them for lunch or, on occasion, for a quick dinner.  
Here’s a coupla kitten pictures! What a face!!   :)  I think I’ll leave the photos at that.  There’s plenty more, but I’d like to get them in some sort of order for a proper post!  :)
Before I go I wan tot remind you to check out the House of Tsang giveaway I’m hosting.  There’s still time to enter!!
Bye for now!!

Alarm Free

Happy Sunday, all!  Has everyone been enjoying a great weekend?  Mine’s been more low key than usual which is just fine by me.  Yesterday and today I actually got to wake up naturally, read; NO ALARM!  I seriously can’t remember the last time I was able to go to bed without setting my alarm.  It’s not even that I sleep late, it’s just SO nice wake up on my own, ya know?? 
It’s definitely been a lot cooler lately, this weekend in particular.  Only 6*C right now!  I was hoping to go another few weeks before starting the furnace up, but we cracked yesterday and started it up.  I’ve also been using the oven as a heat source.  Yesterday after groceries but before Noah’s hockey game I baked another batch of granola from Quinoa 365:
I love that this makes such a massive amount (7 cups) of granola!  And we all like it, so it never goes to waste.   Sarah helped me out with another recipe from the book: She seems to be developing a real interest in the kitchen, so I let her do most of it for me.  I only had strawberry jam so we used that instead and the bars turned out GREAT! The quinoa flour *almost* makes it taste like there’s peanut butter in the crust.  Noah actually thought this and I didn’t try to change his mind.  ;)
Breakfast yesterday was a big stack of pumpkin pancakes topped with blueberries; How absolutely delicious does that look?  I could go for another stack right now!  HAHA  I had one rice tortilla left in the fridge so I decided to fill it with some eggs.  I cooked a big handful of spinach, added some turkey deli meat (GF) then poured in about a 1/2 cup of Egg Beaters. When it was just about set I added some goat gouda w/ chilles: Then wrapped it up!
I don’t know that I’m too fond of the rice wraps.  They taste fine, but tend to get awful hard which in turn makes them crack.  Hmm….For dinner I made a BIG batch of homemade butternut squash soup which was served with plain Greek yogurt and grated mozzarella: Soup just never photographs well, does it?  I had some toasted rice bread on the side for dipping.  YUM! 
Sarah is trying out for a volleyball team here in town so a few tryouts have been taking place. 
I know; just what we need right?  Another competitive sport in the house!  But I firmly believe in giving my kids every opportunity out there that they show an interest in.  This may make for a busy life right now, but when you think of it, at 12, I really don’t have many more years left with her before she leaves for school and what such so it’s a small price to pay. 
Let’s see….not much more to report.  The gluten free thang is still going well.  Like I’ve said before; I’m sure there is still some gluten in my diet, but the bulk of it has been removed and I’ve been feeling better.  It’s really only been 7ish weeks and I was told to give it at least 4 months to *really* see results, so I’m gonna stick with it for the time being.  On that note, I have a delicious salad waiting for me to eat for lunch!  Talk soon!
Bye for now!!!

Coconut Crazy (Cookies)

***I tried to post this last night but Blogger was down…***
We stopped by Starbucks on our way home from one of Noah’s practices last night and boy, oh boy was I ever STOKED to see the addition of coconut to the menu!! 
I could hardly contain my excitement and all but drilled the poor barista on all things coconut.  Was it here to stay?  Could I add it to anything I wanted?  What would he think it’d be best in?  And on and on.  Going in I had intended to by an iced green tea, but I walked out with a NF Coconut Crème Frap!
Heaven to my taste buds, to be sure!   As we arrived home I was hit with a strong urge to bake something involving coconut.  I “borrowed” one of my own recipes and tweaked it to suit my coconut desires!
Coconut Dark Chocolate “Cookies”

• 1.5 cups oats
• 2/3 cup Bisquick
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 4 tsp light margarine (I used Becel)
• 2/3 cup unsweetened vanilla almond breeze
• 1 tsp coconut extract
• 1/2 cup unsweetened coconut
• 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

Pre heat oven to 400*

1. combine first 7 ingredients
2. Fold in coconut and dark chocolate chips
3. form into 10 “balls”, flatten slightly and place on greased baking sheet
4. Bake for 17-20 minutes These babies are a neat cross between a cookie/biscuit/muffin top.  In other words…AMAZING!!!'

If you like coconut, these are a must add to your next baking extravaganza!! 
Bye for now!!