It's all about the mindset!

A few weeks ago, I heard about 2B mindset, it's through beachbody, and what I love about this is it's not a diet, it's just about changing your mindset about food, and I have to say it's exactly what I needed to learn. I have never been a big fan of diets, they are just to hard to stick to.

I'm not here to try to sell you on it, but show you some of the meals I have been putting together.

Another bento box lunch, I love having variety, and this helps. So the Quinoa has a bit of soy sauce to it, and it's a sliced turkey sausage above that, and a mix of vegetables (cucumber, red pepper and snap peas), and a kale coleslaw.

Also just want to mention about endometriosis, I am suppose to avoid meat except seafood, and also avoid dairy and gluten, but since my big surgery, pain isn't as bad so now I do variety. I do still have some vegetarian meals, some meals with seafood, which is usually fish, shrimp or scallops, and I do avoid dairy a lot because overall it doesn't like me to much, especially cheese. So I do still drink almond milk, and I'm ok with goat cheese so I have that and feta from time to time. I do love cheese so I have some once in a while, then the occasional treat of ice cream. I am ok with yogurt so I do have that sometimes as well. As for gluten, again once in a while I'll have it, but most of the time it's gluten free cause I really do love brown rice and quinoa. As I have learned, it's all about balance but it doesn't have to be complicated at all. There's no calorie counting, it's all about balance.

I really am a huge fan of salad!! Year round I include a variety of salads. The first one is thank you to my mother in law, we had gone to see her for mother's day and she gave me a container of left over salad that she had put together for supper, it's lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, green onions, and radishes, all from the market where she went shopping. She even called before to see if I wanted her to buy me some and I of course agreed. She gave me 2 yellow and 2 red tomatoes, green/purple lettuce, and a bunch of small cucumbers. I did add some quinoa and I sliced up a turkey sausage to make it more of a balanced meal and the newman's own dressing. The salad below that is a kale slaw that I sometimes buy, but I also added a bit of romaine lettuce, cucumbers, red onion and tomatoes, and topped with lemon and herb shrimp. The dressing is a creamy feta dressing but I thinned it out with the juice of half a lemon. Both were delicious!

Thanks to being able to do a compressed work schedule I get every other Friday off, so this past Friday was my day off, so I dropped off hubby at work and met up with a friend downtown. Since it was an early start, we met at Starbucks and had breakfast there. The unhealthy part was the chai tea latte but breakfast was nice and healthy. They have a wheat wrap with egg whites cooked with spinach and topped with a bit of feta cheese!  Then since nothing was opened yet, we took an hour walk along the canal. It was perfect weather for a nice walk. Then we did some shopping, and was happy to see that the market was open. I picked up a bunch of green onions, and some radishes. I was tempted to buy more but I already have lots of vegetables and some fruit on hand.

Over the winter months I bring my herb garden in the house and I have light that acts like the sun but they didn't do well at all so decided to start over, so here's the herbs I picked up in the  market to then plant into my boxes I have at home, which I did pick up more dirt to get them set up

Starting at the top left, is lemon thyme, to the right of that is cilantro, and keep moving towards the right, then it's basil, and chives, at the bottom left it's regular thyme, parsley, rosemary and dill. Yesterday it rained all day so I hope to get out there today and get them planted and outside. I love this time of year where I can have herbs just outside my patio door so it's an easy grab when I need herbs, and not to mention a great way to add flavor to meals.

The above pictures is a "pancake". The ingredients are, 2 eggs and one banana, that's it!  So you just smash up the banana with a fork in a bowl, then add in the two eggs and mix. You can make pancake size portions, but I decided to pour it all in and make a crepe. the filling is chia jam. I first started by making the jam so the chia seeds had time to do their magic. I mashed up 4 fresh strawberries, added a splash of maple syrup, two heaping tsp of Greek yogurt and about 2 tbsp of chia seeds and mixed everything together, then let it sit while I prepared the crepe. It was a bit tricky to flip but I managed it pretty well. Once it was cooked I put the jam in the middle and folded in the ends to make it look like what you would see in a restaurant, and it was delicious!!

Yesterday for lunch I made BLT's using one of the red tomatoes from the market, it was so good!! So excited to be in that time of year where I can pick up some fresh fruits and vegetables from the market. Also happy that it's the long weekend!! I will be getting back into the kitchen to prepare lunches for the week either later today or tomorrow. I'm really enjoying this new lifestyle, I get to pick what I want to eat, as long as I balance my plate, I'm all set to go. Yes there's room for treats because it's also important. My mindset has for sure changed, and as someone else mentioned, and it's so true, never knew it could be this fun to lose weight!

My 40th birthday

I'm way overdo for this post, my birthday was on April 19th when I turned 40! It all started the weekend before my birthday. My hubby prepared a not so secret birthday party at the Heart in Crown close to our place. He invited friends and family, and it was a really fun night. The fun started the night before that though, I picked up my niece at school and she did a manicure for me, then the Saturday morning we went downtown and she was working at one of the booths (Arbonne) at the National Woman's show, and what was really great is she was able to get me and 4 friends free tickets to go. She had to show up earlier so I met up with two friends for breakfast, we then went to line up and ran into my friend and her daughter in line. We didn't stay with them long, it was so crowded in there that it was hard to all stick together. We did check out the whole thing and got to try some wine, try a few foods, and bought a few things. Then once my niece was done we went out for a late lunch and then my niece and I came back home to take a nap and then get ready for the party. We were fashionably late. My niece did my makeup and we headed to the party. Had supper there, lots of drinks and had a really great time. My brother and his family put together a really great box of things to help me into my 40's

It was amazing, laughed a lot!  I got a lot of great gifts, some Pioneer woman bowls from my friend, her daughter got me the smaller bowls and a cookbook holder. My in-laws got me a gift card to Chapters, which I of course already spent, I got 2 cookbooks from Clean eating (it's a magazine but they came out with two books), and a book called Into the Forest, I saw the movie a few weeks before and it was really good so I really want to read the book. My mother in law and aunts and uncles all chipped in and gave me cash which was perfect for the gift my hubby gave me, which was train tickets and hotel for us to go to Québec City.

So the following weekend started early, we both took the Thursday and Friday off (April 19-20) to head to Québec. The train ride was awesome, so comfortable in business class, and they fed us a late breakfast

It was really good!  Then we got to have a late lunch

Again very delicious, and that is red wine with my lunch. I had a glass before that to. When we got to Québec City, we walked over to our hotel, it was just a few blocks away. We settled in a bit and then since we sat for so long we decided to walk around to see what was close by, which was a lot. Here's a rink we saw

We also went into a bookstore that I saw. I really do love books and when I see a really nice looking bookstore I love to check it out

It was called Librairie Pantoute, it was beautiful in there! The picture doesn't really show how amazing it was. We then found a place to eat and have a few drinks.

Pub St-Patrick was a nice little bar to sit, chat, watch the hockey game and the food was so good!! We both had the same thing but mine was salmon only and hubby got a mix of salmon and beef, it's a paté,  with toasted bread, salad and some fries. He got a beer and I got a sangria.

Day 2 in Québec was a lot of fun, we only went to McDonald's for breakfast, then walked around. It was raining a bit but nothing to bad. We stayed close by to check out the Plains of Abraham

It was pretty cool to check out, beautiful views around as well

The boardwalk was cool to walk along, we saw boat, and there were a few other people walking as well. We then stopped in for some lunch

It was a very good pizza! We hung out there for a while, checked out a few stores and then went to the hotel to take a nap and then get ready for our supper. We did a reservation before going to the pub the night before, and we went to an Italian restaurant. It was our fancy night out to celebrate my birthday. I wore a dress, and he had dress pants and a nice shirt and it was really nice and the food was delicious! I know I took a picture of our food but for some reason my phone lost those photos so I'll just tell you what we had. I had the lasagna cause it's my absolute favorite food, and he had a spaghetti. We also first started with the bruchetta for an appetizer, it was so good! Here is the dessert that we shared

It was really good! We shared a bottle a wine with our supper. We then went to a pub to have a few drinks, chat and watch the hockey game.

3rd day of course started with some breakfast. We went to a really small restaurant. There weren't many places to sit and it was crowded but the food was really good. It's a buckwheat crepe with bananas and chocolate!

The above place is called Morrin, it started off as the very first prison, then it turned into a school, then they built the very first English library. I'm in love with that library, it's so beautiful!!

They even had a book that you can sign, and of course I did

We then got a tour of the prison

The above cell me and a few girls that were also there for the tour went in and she closed both doors, so the bars, and that redish door. It was really dark in there, there was just to say a bit of light going in, but not much. The rooms aren't very big either, but that was for the really bad prisoners when they would put them in confinement. I know I would go crazy being locked up in there for a long time. We also got to see a class room they had in there

It was a very interesting tour and found out so much information. Something to she shared with us is the library that they have, has 25,000 books. The ones on the second floor are very, very old, so if you want to look at them, you have to ask, and then you are supervised and have to wear gloves and everything. You can bring it home, it stays in the library. It was an amazing tour!

Not far from Morin I saw another library I wanted to see, this one was a lot more modern, but it was still really nice, especially the huge windows

It was so bright and beautiful in there. They had a round table in the center also where people can sit and connect their laptops and work. We also went to check out the market, so many little stores there.

There was one that was Christmas stuff only, I made sure to take lots of pictures to show my friend, I know she would love to buy the whole store. She would also love the kitchen store I saw, but my favorite part in that store was this

I wanted to buy it all! I didn't buy any but I was so tempted to though! We wanted to head back towards our hotel so we can eat supper and rather then walk all those hills we took the tran

Never been on one, and it was pretty cool. Scary a bit cause I don't like heights to much but it was a cool experience. For supper we went to a pub and shared their poutine and nachos

For sure something different as a poutine but it was really good. It's baked small potatoes, some ground beef, an onion ring on top and some gravy and cheese curds. The nacho was really good as well.

Our last day there, we just took our time getting ready. I stepped out to go back to the first library I found to buy something, and for breakfast we just picked up a drink and muffin from Tim Horton's and we checked out and walked over to the train station. We didn't have to long to wait and they fed us again

It was delicious! They were more generous this time around with the wine, and I was starting to feel quite good so I drank some water, and the food helped as well. It was an amazing trip! We would love to go again but in the summer when there's more things open, especially the patios. Best birthday present!!

Since then we have been keeping busy with work, volleyball, and a huge thank you to my friend and her friends, I got to go to the Bon Jovi concert for free. It was amazing!! I've been making simpler meals and snacks so still in the kitchen, but just not as much as I use to. Summer is coming though and I'm looking forward to going to the market to get fresh fruits and vegetables. Here's a lunch I made the other week

Still really loving the bento box. So my lunch was potato salad with some bacon, carrots and celery with humus, some pineapple, and a brownie cupcake I got from the woman's show, it's made with healthy ingredients, including black beans, and the made good is my new favorite snack, I got to try it at the woman's show and ended up buying one of each kind, they are so tasty! Today I prepared a few things in the kitchen, I chopped up a jicama, it's been a while since I have had one so I cut them up into bite size pieces, and I'm thinking maybe guacamole on top or a salsa, and I pre-chopped some red peppers and last night I cooked up some sausages on the BBQ and I cooked extra, some turkey sausage to also pack up for my lunch this week. I'm thinking to cook up some quinoa to have with the sausage.

Well it's almost supper time now, so I should go do that, which I'm making pasta. I'm using brown rice pasta with a vodka sauce and ground spicy sausage with onions and mushrooms. Haven't made it in a while and it's one of our favorites. I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend and to all the mom's out there, hope you all have a wonderful Mother's day tomorrow! I wish my mom was here so I can celebrate with her xo