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!!!