Exercise and camping

I know it's been a while since I last put up a post, but we have been busy. Last weekend we went to a friend's camp and spent the weekend there. We were surrounded by beautiful trees, and the lake wasn't far away.

We enjoyed lots of good food, had some great laughs, but also got eaten badly by mosquitoes. They are horrible this year!  I counted around 120 mosquito bites on me. At night we did sit around the campfire.

I've also been exercising a lot. I'm up to 5 km for running, but I do still have to stop a few times to walk, but I am getting there. Been doing weights, and also going on hikes

I love nature, it's so beautiful, peaceful and relaxing. I could of course do without the bugs, but I do still love it. I have to say that hiking is my absolute favorite thing to do, then it would be running. I don't have any issues with being active, I get more energy and I feel so much stronger and healthier. I am also still biking to and from work, and sometimes get onto the bike at the gym.

Friday after work started off with baseball. Our game was at 6:30 pm and we were short, quite a few of our team mates weren't able to make it, therefore I did a lot more running out in the field to get the ball. We didn't win, but we had fun. We then met up with some friends that we haven't seen in about 2 years, so it was a lot of fun to catch up and listen to a live band. Yesterday I went downtown to restock us on some meat, and to get downtown was crazy! Traffic was really heavy, and there were a lot of people downtown, thanks to the beautiful weather. Today, my dad should be here soon, and we are off to do some shopping, then we are going to my brother's to celebrate some birthday's. My mom's birthday was on the 21rst, she would have been 65 years old, I still miss her so very much!  My nephew's birthday is coming up in 2 days, and my niece is on August 3rd. I'm really looking forward to seeing them all and celebrating together.

Next weekend is a long weekend and I'm planning a trip with a friend of mine to go to Montreal and I'm really hoping I get to meet Ricardo (chef on the food network). And I do plan on buying some of his wine. The rest of the weekend, I hope to get into the kitchen because I haven't made much lately. For the camping trip I did make some guacamole, and potato salad, and I also took the time to use up a few old banana's and made a walnut, chocolate chip banana loaf. During the week I made my own pico de gallo, which turned out really good. We enjoyed that on some halibut. So my next post will be about my long weekend and hopefully I will be able to show off a picture of me with Ricardo.

Hope everyone is having a good weekend!

Happy Canada Day!!

I have been keeping myself very busy these last few days. I did pick up more strawberries, and I kept some on hand to snack on, but froze the rest of them. You must freeze them separately first before putting them all into a bag or container. If you put them together and into the freezer it will freeze as one big block and it will be difficult to separate them. I put them on a cookie sheet, covered with parchment paper, cut side down, and leave them in there for about an hour and then put them all in a zip lock bag (bottom left). I have a second bag in my freezer, and might pick up more to have another bag or two, to be good in strawberries until next season.

As you can see from the above picture, I did a lot of baking. Well next to the strawberries is the raw blueberry icebox dessert, which I have made before, and doesn't involve any baking, you can find the recipe here. Next to that is a banana loaf that I make from time to time. I found the perfect recipe from Ana Olsen's back to basics, but I tweaked the recipe. I use spelt flour instead of white flour, and I use coconut sugar instead of brown sugar. Above is another from Ana Olsen, it's chocolate chip cookies, and next to that is banana chocolate cupcakes from the Chocolate Covered Katie cookbook.

So why all this food, which it doesn't stop there, I also made a potato salad, guacamole, I have a lot of chicken marinating (one is Jamaican jerk sauce, and the other is a beer and chipotle BBQ sauce), we have sliced potatoes, onions, chive, salt and pepper and some 3 onion spice mix from Epicure all ready in foil with some butter, and later I'll get asparagus marinating in a bit of olive oil, balsamic vinegar and some pepper.

Yesterday we had a friend over for supper, and she brought over different flavored sausages that she got in Montreal (maple, Jamaican, and chipotle) So I prepared a potato salad that we can enjoy with those. A while later we had dessert which was the blueberry icebox, which is why some of it is gone from the picture, then even later into the evening we snacked on a bit of salsa and guacamole with some corn chips. So yes lots of food yesterday but it was all very good!! She also brought over a bottle of red wine, which we opened up and enjoyed with our supper.

Today since it's Canada Day, we are having lots of friends over for supper. My hubby will get the BBQ going and will cook up the chicken, potatoes and asparagus and I'm really looking forward to it!  For dessert, we will get to enjoy some cookies and cupcakes, and if anyone wants, they can have some of the blueberry icebox. The banana loaf is for snacks, which we had a piece for our lunch a while ago. We still have lots of potato salad left, so I'll take that out in case anyone wants some.

Now that everything is mostly ready, just the asparagus left, which won't take long, I'll get to relax and enjoy the rest of the evening. Which won't be to late of a night since we work tomorrow. I rather have a long weekend but having today off, has been nice. I hope everyone has a wonderful Canada Day!!!