Desserts!!!

It's been a great long weekend for me. I had Friday off, so I got the chance to clean up the house and I even went shopping for a new computer chair and found one. Ours are falling apart so we needed new chairs. He will be buying his online. I got a chair similar to the one I have at work, it's mesh so it's nice and breathable. What made the weekend even better is a really good friend of mine from high school came to visit along with her daughter. It was a short visit but long enough for us to catch up.

I wish I would have taken a photo of our supper but I cooked an entire chicken on the bbq. The breast bone was removed so it was flat for it take less longer to cook. I also added potatoes on the bbq in foil packets with a bit of butter, onions and the 3 onion seasoning from Epicure. We had a delicious Greek salad with that. The chicken had Jamaican jerk spice on it. Dessert was Joyous Health's double chocolate muffins which you can find the recipe here. The only thing I didn't add was the cranberries, I added a bit more chocolate chips instead.

To help digest our supper we went for a nice hour and a half walk outside. Started off on the side streets, we hit a small trail along the way, and ended up close to where I work and then back down more side streets. It was such a beautiful evening! In the morning I made my mom's famous pancake recipe. It calls for apples but we often added blueberries instead and that's what we went with. I haven't made her recipe in a while and I have missed how good they taste! Not long after they had to leave, to visit another friend and then head home, so I took some time to do things around the house. I also made a potato salad. I cooked my potatoes in the oven with some bacon, I chopped up green onions, radishes and celery to also add in. I mixed it with some grainy dijon mustard, lots of mayo, some pepper, paprika and cumin.

Today I also got busy in the kitchen and been really wanting to share this book that I got for my birthday from my brother and sister in law. It's an amazing book!

So the nice cream I made was with 2 frozen bananas, 1/4 cup of peanut butter, I used all natural, and a tsp of vanilla extract and I added the suggestion as well which was 1 tbsp of dark chocolate chips. Add everything in a food processor and mix. I had to scrap and separate the mound a few times but then it became just like soft ice cream and it was delicious!! They have so many more great recipes in this book and it's a great way to have ice cream without the dairy, which hubby and I don't do so well with. This was a great little treat as an afternoon snack. That's the portion it made so I divided it in two.

I also found this recipe online, through facebook, and it's this flour-less peanut butter and chocolate chip mini muffin and you can find the recipe here. They turned out great

The recipe says it makes 17 mini muffins but I ended up with 22 of them. It was so simple to make and they are good! Took no time at all also.

Now I'm all set in snacks for the week cause we also have some banana bread. Supper tonight will be chicken with some of the potato salad that I made and will saute some veggies.

As always, the weekend goes by to fast. Another thing I did yesterday was do some weight exercises. Felt good to get back into it. I kept it light so I'm not to sore today and I am not which is nice. Now time for me to enjoy the ending the of the day before starting another work week. Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend!

Obsessed with lunch containers

I did some shopping over the weekend with some friends and we went into this organizing type store. They had all sorts of great things to help keep things more organized, and they had this sale on all sorts of lunch containers. Here's what I bought

The green ones is for salads, so the green part with the three dividers and then the small container in the middle can be frozen to help keep everything cold. So this is for salad. The picture they had was to put salad at the bottom (white container), some more vegetables in the dividers, but I'm thinking you can put nuts, fruit, whatever you want in those, and then your dressing in the white little container.

The blue one, you see white and blue, that's for your yogurt, but I'm thinking more chia pudding. It can be frozen as well to keep the container nice and cold, and the lighter blue in front you can add granola, nuts/seeds, fruit whatever you want to add. This way your granola stays nice and crunchy.

I'm quite excited to use these, just like I was excited when I got my bento boxes. It's a great way to pack up a lunch, and with the lunch bag I got for my birthday from my brother and sister in law, it will all help keep my lunch cold.

After shopping around, my friend and I went to this fancy restaurant near her place. It was really good. We shared the main cause it was to much food, well we got a side of potatoes so we both had a good amount of that, and the rest was divided

The ribs were amazing! They were just fall off the bone, and the veggies were roasted zucchini, pepper and beets. Yum!!  The potatoes were amazing! They had some bacon in there and cheese and double baked. There garlic bread that they also give everyone was absolutely delicious!! We decided to share this lemon, blueberry cheesecake and it was also delicious!!

On the left is roasted marshmallows. Yum!!! In the morning and part of the afternoon I had to do some overtime at work. The nice thing is that I won't feel so stressed on Monday cause it really helped me catch up. So the shopping with friends and delicious supper was a great way to end the day.

Friday night was great to. A friend came over and he and I cooked up a delicious supper. He brought over some really huge steaks, I wish I would have taken a picture of our supper but the marinade he prepared for them (olive oil, balsamic vinegar and salt and pepper) was perfect! We let them rest in there a while and got baked potatoes ready and on the BBQ to start cooking. He took care of most of the food on the BBQ, and I prepared a side salad for us. Supper was amazing! Ate to much but it was so good!!

Today has been another busy day. Been working on some laundry, and I baked up a banana bread. I also started a new batch of kombucha. It's been a while since I have made some so it was time! I attempted to go through some of my mom's clothes as well, and I did decide what I want to keep and there's a few that don't fit me well but they ended up back were they were. I thought I could do this but it's really, really hard. I will keep trying to, so that I can offer the things I won't be keeping to family but for now I did enough for today. I do want to keep working on de-cluttering and organizing my things and I know I will get there.

Well it's soon time for supper, so I hope everyone is have a wonderful weekend!

Spartan!!

So I accomplished a Spartan race!!  Although not really a race, it took my friend and I, 4 hours and 44 seconds to accomplish it. Online they say 13 km but a few people with watches to track, said it was 14 km. Here's a few photos that I was able to get online cause there was no carrying anything on you with getting wet and dirty

So to the left I'm carrying a 30ish pound bag that I had to walk up and then down a hill. To the right, yup a bit of swimming. It wasn't to far but this is towards the end. And here is the start

Yes that hill you see off in the back, is what we had to climb, then we had to walk back down and repeat a few more times. We were not expecting to walk up and down such a steep hill, so my quads were so sore for a few days!!  Even my feet hurt cause it was just as hard going down cause it was so steep that you had to be careful. At one point we were walking through a trail which had a lot of rocks and tree roots so it was quite the bumpy hike in the woods, which also included a lot of hills. We had many walls to climb up and over and back down, we had to crawl under a barb wire, there were a few monkey bars type set up, and even walls that you have to walk along with either just upper body strength or on very little feet and hand grips. Also a few more heavy objects to carry, one was a container that was awkward to hold, and it was about 35 pounds, again up and down a hill, and the other was a 60 pound cement ball to walk across the grass, drop it, do 5 burpees, then lift it back up and walk it back. If you didn't do an obstacle or couldn't accomplish it you were doing 30 burpees. It was tough!!!  I am so proud of us for accomplishing it though!!!

The medal is amazing! It's heavy and it's got two parts to it. We also got a t-shirt at the end as well

Samantha is the only one that took a selfie of both of us at the start, which I'll have to ask her to send me a copy of that. I do also have some of her photos online since a few of them include both of us in it, but don't want to post those in case she doesn't want them posted on here.

It was a lot of fun, but also very tough! Happy to say that I did accomplish a spartan race! It's a very good challenge, a way to really push yourself, and an insane workout! Would I do another? I think I may but I will need to train harder next time because I was very sore for several days. I also did get a few bruises, and tiny scrapes, mostly on my knees from crawling, and I got a really big bruise under my right arm, and a smaller one under my left, my left elbow was also bruised up, and I have this really big bruise on the right side of my left knee, and another light one on my shin. No big injuries which is a good thing. I will keep working out, which I really do need to keep up with weight training to help me get stronger instead of only doing mostly cardio.

I haven't done to much cooking lately, just the usual, but I do want to try to make more new things, and I am also wanting to plan ahead for lunches, so it's easy for us to grab in the morning instead of spending time in the morning figure out our lunch. A while ago I did make a stir fry with chicken for 2 lunches. I had cooked some quinoa with lentils so I used that for the rice portion, and I cooked up the chicken and veggies in a pan in the oven, and did a teriyaki sauce with it. I do need to get more groceries cause we don't have a whole lot at home. For supper I plan to make pasta with ground turkey, tomato sauce and also add in some pesto for a nice basil flavor to the sauce. I don't even have much veggies right now so I'll add in some carrots, onions, and I think I'll do spinach since I don't have much else on hand.

We went out of town over the long weekend. Left Friday afternoon and came back late last night. Giving us some time today at home to get some things done before starting work again tomorrow.

Will try to post more recipes soon