Two GREAT Recipes

I wanted to put up a quick post to tell you about 2 kick ass recipes I’ve made in the past couple of days.  The first is one of Erica’s muffin recipes called Vegan Chocolate Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Muffins. Just check that baby out!  I followed the recipe pretty much word for word but added about a 1/4 cup of cinnamon chips and 3/4 cup of dark chocolate chips.  
I also found that I needed an extra 1/4 cup of water to thin the batter out a bit.   These chocolaty delights are absolutely scrumptious!  I groaned in pleasure after each mouthful.  Try these.  NOW!!   This is the cocoa powder that I used:  
I found it the last time I went to Winner’s.  Yum, yum!
The second recipe I made was for dinner tonight and it was Clean Eating magazine’s Butternut Squash Lasagna.  This is what the photo in the magazine looked like: And here’s mine!  
Who cares that it’s not as pretty when it tastes SO damn good???  Again, I followed the recipe pretty close except that I didn’t have time to make my own marinara sauce so I used a bottled tomato basil sauce.  The dish was rather labour intensive….or had the potential to be, but I pre made some of the elements throughout the week in anticipation of making it tonight.  First, I roasted the b-nut squash Monday night.  Second, I sautéed the onions on Tuesday night.   Really all that was left for tonight was mixing the filling and assembly.
DS was on the ice for hockey practice until 6:10 which gave me time to get home from work, put it together and cook it for the hour and a bit.  I also had a dense piece of fresh whole grain bread from the bakery with hummus on the side.  
I am SO satisfied right now!!!
I have eaten some other goodies the past few days! We’ll be out of town for hockey tomorrow night and I’ve got a busy weekend so I’ll see you back here Sunday where I’ll reveal item #2 for the Thanks & Giving food drive!  YAY!!!
Bye for now!!

Easter Day & Tea

Greetings! Did everyone have a good Easter? Add the beautiful weather with seeing family and our day was a good one. The kids were awake early to see if the Easter bunny stopped by so I got up to watch them open their gifts. Along with a few individual treats I bought them the new Chipmunk movie to share so that’s what I watched at 7am :/ They loved it, though! When I finally got around to making some breakfast I was hungry so I made my bowl a bit bigger than I normally would.

• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup Quaker oats
• raisins
• thawed strawberries
• kefir

After eating we went out to the farm for a visit. There are 3 horses that are due to have babies this month and the one I saw looks pretty heavy. Maybe when we go out there next week there’ll be a surprise!

I ate a light lunch because we were doing dinner at my parents place and they always eat at 4:30.

This is one cup of Kashi U cereal with USVAB. Love this stuff! I spent the afternoon on my deck soaking up the sun and reading magazine after magazine. I’ve come to the conclusion that I have way too many subscriptions. I also squeezed some baking in in the form of Pineapple Oat Bran Muffins:

(I ate one for an afternoon snack today with coconut butter. Heaven)

I started getting munchy by 3:30 so I ate a small handful of nuts and carob chips to tie me over.

Dinner was awesome as usual. Mom made lasagna but I started off with with some salad and a bun:

Then came asparagus, sweet potatoes, grilled steak and pork Wellington:

My Uncle brought 2 pies from a local bakery; lemon and pear rhubarb. Seeing as pear bothers my belly, I went with lemon which was AMAZING!

Watched The Amazing Race (go cowboys!!!) and Undercover Boss before hitting the sack-a-roo.

It was raining when I got up at 7:30, but by 9 the sun was back. The wind was still high, though. While digging out the Nutella jar for DS I came across a box of oats that I bought in Buffalo and forgot about:

That turned into this;

• 1.25 cups of water
• 1/2 cup Mother’s rolled oats
• cinnamon
• 1/4 cup crushed pineapple
• granola

I think these are my new favourite oats! They were dense and chewy….just how I like’em.

The kids watched the Chipmunks again and then we went and got the grocery shopping out of the way. Next we hit the craft store because both the kids have projects due for school in the next few weeks. By the time that was done it was lunch time. I mixed a vanilla Chobani with strawberries and Bare Naked granola.

More running around happened after lunch. We went to Chapters were I bought the new Hungry Girl cookbook!

Then we spent over an hour at the park where we happened to meet up with one of DS’s teammates. Although I brought some reading material along, I was quite happy to have the Mom to chat with while there. Adult conversation (aside from that which occurs at work) is always welcome! When we got home there was a package waiting for me. I was happy to see it was the Celestial Tea kit that I won over at Coco’s blog.

I love all of it! HA! The bear is way cute, no?

Dinner was a grilled spinach & feta sausage with some steamed veg and hummus.

This is the hummus I used:

I’ve never tried the Summer Fresh line before. It was really good! Thick and creamy, lots of flavour. I’ll be buying it again!

I’m about to sign off for the night and go back outside for a bit. It’s suppose to rain all week so I want to get as much of the nice weather in as I can! I’ll leave you with a picture that my hubby took of DD yesterday with his phone:

Model material 100%!!!! LOL!

Bye for now!!

A Bunch of Randomness

Oh, it was an early morning! Being up and out of the house before 7 is just odd to me. I made egg sandwiches for DD and I to take along with us…

Mine was made up of a toasted Ezekiel 4:9 English muffin, a LC wedge, pomegranate jelly is a ¼ cup of egg whites. Tasty and portable. Good thing the rink was across town because it took me that long to eat this!

I packed a Super Charge Me cookie from ED&BV as a little mid morning pick me up. Trust me when I say I knew I would need it!

DS really digs these cookies. He calls them energy cookies which I guess is what they are. He’s been noshing on them before and after hockey.

We had a crazy day at work because tomorrow is a bank holiday for Remembrance Day and Wednesday is when we usually do our bank transfer for the payrolls. That got bumped to today so the heat was ON. Prior to hitting the gym, which was a Godsend today, I ate a coconut cream pie Lara bar;

I forgot how much I liked the jam packed coconut texture of these bars. YUM!

Watching Racheal Ray today took my mind right off of running. I’m a sucker for animals and she had a segment on a lady who is running an animal shelter from her farm for abandoned and/or abused fur babies. I learned that choking back tears and running do not go hand in hand. Wow. At least it was a happy (ier) ending!

Time: 45 minutes
Avg Hr: 160
Max Hr: 203 (not sure what’s up there!)
Calories Torched: 459
Distance: 4.63 miles

Lunch was quick, easy and completely satisfying. I mixed about 1 cup of Aztec grain blend with the last of the raw sunflower seed pate and called it a day;

Then I polished off the raw chocolate pudding with cashew cream for “dessert”;

This pudding is incredible. If I was at home I would’ve stuck my face in the bowl to lick it clean. Note to self: ask Manon for that recipe.

And now a few photo’s of Pepper with his string;

This is Peppers favourite toy. He plays with it for hours every night. Just saying….

Back to food! Dinner strayed a bit from the menu plan, but that’s OK. First off, I could’ve sworn that I bought turkey. Apparently it was chicken thighs. And I didn’t make any couscous. I just ate extra veg. So, here’s my plate.

There’s also some mango chutney for the chicken and raw hummus for the veggies. I was quite full after this so no sweet end….yet. I do plan on a mug of orange pecan hot chocolate while watching the Biggest Loser.

We got to watching some videos after dinner. DS loves to shake his booty. Check it out;

I advised him to stick with hockey!! :D

I didn’t really eat any Halloween candy today. Just one little coffee crisp. Thank God it’s almost all gone!

And I think that’s all I have for today. Tomorrow’s Wednesday!! Can’t wait.

Bye for now!!

Just A Really Good Day

For some odd reason I was wide awake at 6:30am. I always thought getting up that early on a Sunday was against the rules! It did look pretty cool outside what with the thick fog we had. Check this out;

By 8 it had all burned off and the sun shone bright and beautiful for the rest of the day.

I wasn’t anywhere near feeling hungry so I decided to get some baking done. First up was a batch of Allie’s WW Pumpkin Raisin Scones;

These turned out GREAT! I used a 1/4 cup of raisins and a 1/4 cup of chopped walnuts. I also sprinkled some cinnamon sugar on top pre baking. Then I set to work preparing a batch of Super Charge Me Cookies from ED&BV.

Another hit although I feel badly for DD because she hates raisins and both these recipes have them. I promised her some non-raisin cookies this week. Speaking of the kids, they were actually well behaved while I was busy in the kitchen. DS had a word search going;

And DD was rocking the Nintendo DS with some tunes playing;

Breakfast was a good one when I finally got around to eating it.

• 1 cup water
• 1/4 cup BRM 7 grain cereal
• cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice
• dried cranberries
• pumpkin puree
• chocolate honey
• almond butter

This ended up being a really big bowl of food! YUM!

Out at the farm the kids had their last hurrah on the trampoline before we took it down,

It was the perfect day weather wise to get the job done. Last year it was so cold that I stayed in the house while it came down!

Lunch was an omelette made with some sautéed red pepper. I also toasted up an Ezekiel 4:9 English muffin and spread some raw hummus on top.

Then I indulged in a super charge me cookie. I spent some time on the computer before hitting the shower to freshen up for the hockey game. We left the house about 2pm for DS’s 3:30 game. Although they lost (again), they played a strong game. The other team had a terrific goalie and we just couldn’t get many past the kid. One of the Dad’s drives a taxi part time and gave DD a camera that someone left in the cab a few months ago. I’m jealous! It’s better than the one I have!!! Here are a few shots that she took using it;

I LOVE that shot of her!! :D It’s going in a frame for sure.

Me and my little man. Me in a hat = BAD hair day! I don’t often wear a hat because my ears are shaped weird. Meh, at least they work, right?!

DD and her BFF, “K”. All the girls do at the games is take photos of each other and together. Some of them are a real hoot! K actually did some scrap booking with them and it turned out awesome. Now that DD has her own camera she’d like to do the same.

We grabbed Subway for the drive home. I got a little crazy tonight and tried the flat bread. If you haven’t tried it yet, DON’T!!! I was extremely disappointed. I had all my regular fillings (turkey, Swiss, lettuce, tomato, grn pepper, cuke, blk olives and sweet onion sauce), but the bread ruined it. It was just like pasty white bread that gets all stuck in your teeth like glue. Blah. Live and learn, right? Next time I’ll be going back to my WW bread. Anywho, here’s the beast :

Looks pretty innocent, eh? Do not be fooled! Once we got home and settled, I warmed up a scone and enjoyed it with a mango apple tea.

Candy confession time! I did really good today. There’s not much left in the bags that turns my crank, so I may be done with the junk real soon! I did munch on an unpictured mini Wonderbar at the game as well as a French cap that my hubby bought me. Here’s the Skittles I ate;

Before I go, I wanted to try something that I’ve seen a few bloggers do that I think is really neat. If there’s anything you would like to know about me or my life, please ask me in the comment section of this post. I hope to get enough questions to put together a Q&A post for you all. Don’t be shy….I’m not! :D Looking forward to seeing what you would all like me to spill the beans about.

Hope you’ve all enjoyed the weekend!!! Here’s to a fab Monday, right?!

Bye for now!!