Pumpkin Chili!

Been meaning to write a post for a while but life got hectic! So here's a little of a catch up post. Been busy in the kitchen again, and we were craving some chili. I've cut back a lot on meat so he was ok with a vegetarian chili. I made this one before but it's been quite a while and I should make it more often, it's so good!

I got this recipe from my cookbook called Thug kitchen. I found the recipe online as well, and I absolutely love their cookbook, and their website is just like their book and I love it. Check out the recipe here.

I also saw a post on Facebook from Joyous Health about a London Fog latte and I had to try it, and glad I did, it was so good!

I did use my frother for the almond milk but I find when using almond milk it doesn't froth up very much but still turned out delicious! I had that with sprouted bread toasted with peanut butter and banana, it was one really yummy breakfast!

We also had a beautiful Saturday a few weeks ago so I went for a nice long walk and it was great! We have some snow now so trails would be wet so I'm glad I went when I did

 Last weekend, my friend and I decided to do some baking. We made biscuits and sugar cookies

The biscuits are two different recipes. The ones on the left turned out better. Not that the ones on the right are horrible, they just taste a little doughy.

For the sugar cookies, we are not experts in decorating them but they are delicious which is what counts! lol

 

This weekend is great so far. Last night, Friday, my dad and his girlfriend came over, and we did a little shopping in stores, of course wearing masks and being as careful as possible. My dad is almost done his Christmas shopping now. I only got a few gifts, so I finished my shopping a little in stores, just hit 2 stores quickly and the rest was online. So now just have to wait for a few deliveries, and wrap up gifts and I'm all set! I usually don't wait this long to shop but with Covid I wasn't sure how to go about things. I'm hoping I won't get gifts delivered late, but we will see.

So after our shopping yesterday, we came back here and I got supper ready, we had roasted chicken, which the chicken was spatchcock so it would cook faster, and I put the chicken and rib rub from Epicure with some white white at the bottom and it turned out delicious! We also had a garden salad, mashed potatoes and gravy. We played some cards after, so it was a great day. With more shopping today, and I did some laundry, now time to relax tonight, and glad we still have another day to the weekend.

My kitchen

In my last post, I mentioned about ordering a moveable island cause my kitchen is small therefore not a lot of counter space to work with. Here's what it looks like in my small kitchen

Yes I have a lot of stuff on my counter top as well, but I love to cook and bake, and I don't have a lot of cupboard space either.

 I have used the island a few times but yesterday was the first true cooking and baking day that I did. It was a lot of fun and it helped out so much to have more space to work with. So the first thing I got started on was chopping up some veggies to roasted them in the oven. I used an entire butternut squash and chopped it into chunks, and then a small yellow onion, 3 shallots, and 2 carrots chopped as well. I took an entire garlic and roasted that in foil in the oven as well. I added just a touch of salt and lots of pepper and olive oil and roasted them at 400 for a half hour. In a pot I added 1 cup of lentils with an entire carton of vegetable broth and once it was boiling I turned off the heat and let it cook completely. Some of my herbs are still surviving outside so I grabbed some rosemary and thyme and chopped that up finely. I added some grated nutmeg and put that aside. In my food processor I added the roasted veg with the lentils and broth in two batches to get that all pureed. You can do this in a blender as well, which would probably turn out more smooth, but I had my food processor out so why not. And then added my herbs and some pepper and warmed it all up along with another carton of vegetable broth. Here's how my butternut squash soup turned out

It turned out really good! We both enjoyed it for lunch, along with a sweet potato biscuit, which I found the recipe on Joyous Health, and you can get the recipe here

Mine turned out darker then hers cause I used buckwheat flour. These turned out really good as well. Buckwheat flour is quite strong in flavor so I would love to try these with spelt flour or whole wheat flour to see how they taste. All the herbs/spices in these are delicious! I used fresh rosemary for mine since I have lots in my herb garden.

I also wanted to make a healthy snack for us, and I saw another one of her post's a while back and I have been wanting to try it. So I made her chocolate chip banana bread. This also turned out really good!

I made the recipe exactly how she has it, however instead of just chocolate chips, I also added in some walnuts for a bit of crunch. I skipped the slices of banana on top and shredded coconut. I do love coconut but wasn't feeling like having any in this. I never thought either to put cinnamon in a banana bread but I like it. We both really enjoyed everything I made, and we of course have left overs for the week. I plan to freeze a jar of my soup to have at a later time, and I do still have some for this week as well.

I have been doing horribly in staying away from meat and dairy lately, and I have been getting some endometriosis pain, so I'm going meat and dairy free for a while so I can feel a lot better. I do fine with seafood so we have some salmon we will enjoy for supper tomorrow, and we have some shrimp in the freezer as well. Tonight's supper will be the sweet potato pad Thai, which I have already shared this recipe in a past post, you can view it here.

Hope everyone had a safe and wonderful Halloween

 

Fall

Today is the first day of fall and it's my favorite time of year! Just love the beautiful colors outside from the trees. To bad that it means winter is coming, but I do love Christmas. Since it was such a beautiful day out, I took a break from work and went for a walk

No beautiful colors here but our tree in our front yard is already completely red and leaves are falling already. I also had more fun in the kitchen and I finally made the carrot cake cookies from Joyous Health.

They are good as usual. I again omitted the raisins since hubby hates them. Over the weekend I went to a friend's place to have a cooking day, and we make some maple, pecan scones, and our own bread (Whole wheat/oat and honey). I have to admit though she did most of the work for the bread since I got there late. 

 

 

The scones turned out really good! We put a bit of our spin on the recipe and it's delicious! The bread is so good as well! Hubby and I had a slice yesterday for breakfast. We toasted it, then he had it with just peanut butter and I had it with peanut butter and a bit of homemade caramel sauce. I had my chai tea latte as well and it was a perfect breakfast. 

Those who know me and have been here, have seen how small my kitchen is. I don't have much counter space but I had an idea, thanks to HGTV shows lol Our kitchen nook does have a table with 2 chairs, which we don't really use, so had the idea to get a moveable island, to replace the table, and when needed I can wheel it to the kitchen to give me more counter space. When I don't need it, we can still use it as a table, which we already bought 2 bar stools. I got an email today that it's been shipped! Expected delivery date isn't till mid October, but hoping it shows earlier cause I can't wait to get it!

More breakfast!

 I love eating breakfast! Lots of options to choose from and a great way to start the day. I was able to get some fresh peaches and strawberries so decided to include them in my breakfast. First morning, I put together a smoothie bowl

My smoothie is a frozen banana, some vegan fermented protein powder, flax seeds and a big handful of spinach and some almond milk. I then added a sliced up peach, a few strawberries, chia seeds and granola. It was so good!!

The following morning I was craving pancakes, so we had one pancake each topped with fruit and of course maple syrup

I wanted to eat up more fresh strawberries and hubby wanted bananas so we went with both! Very delicious combination!

The other day I wanted to try a golden turmeric latte, and it did not disappoint! Normally I just have it in tea form but glad I decided to try it as a latte

But just a latte isn't much of a breakfast so had a toast with peanut butter and banana with it and it was so good! This morning we had a sausage patty on a toasted English muffin, another favorite of ours.

It's nice to switch things up for breakfast. My plan for tomorrow morning is eggs with toasted sprouted bread. I also have in mind to make some carrot cake cookies. I haven't made any in a while and they are so good, and healthy ingredients, therefore they could make a great breakfast or of course as a snack.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend!

Cooking day!

I had a cooking day with a friend of mine, not this past weekend, but the one before, and we had so much fun! We started our morning with making sticky buns. We got the recipe from the Pioneer Woman, and it turned out really good

 

Above is in the cast iron skillet, and to the right is when we flipped it over, out of the pan. It's a sweet dessert, but so delicious!!

Next we made lemon poppy seed scones

These were pretty simple to make and turned out really good as well! We got the recipe from the Pioneer Woman cookbook. Her recipe was with rosemary, and we decided to swap it for poppy seeds. Another twist is for the icing we added some lemon juice but also some limoncello, Yum!

The next recipe we tried out was the Tex-Mex pulled Chicken, another recipe from the Pioneer Woman. So yes it was a day of her recipes, but they all turned out really great.

The only thing we forgot in this recipe was the onion, but it still turned out really good. My friend had fresh tomatoes in her garden so we used those. We enjoyed some of it for supper in a wrap with some cheese and sour cream. It was really good! There was left overs and she told me to take it all home so this is what I put together to use up the rest

Chicken Nacho's! It turned out really good! I just put a layer of chips, topped with the pulled chicken, added some chopped up onion, green pepper, tomato and a few slices of a jalapeno pepper, then topped with cheese and I put it in the oven to toast up the chips and warm everything up and melt the cheese, and we enjoyed it with some sour cream, salsa and guacamole!

We wanted to make Enchiladas as well but it was getting late and we were really tired, so we will just have to get together another day to make some. 

This past weekend was more fun in the kitchen, I made a sort of jambalaya, but with spicy sausage only, and yesterday we did beer can chicken with roasted asparagus on the BBQ and I also prepared some mashed potatoes with gravy, it was so good! 

I am going to have to cut down on the meat however so I don't get endo pain, but tonight we are having steaks for supper. It's been a while and I'm really craving a nice medium rare steak.

More Budha bowls and homemade almond milk!

I have been wanting to post this for a while but life has been busy. I did create a few budha bowls, and they were all delicious!

This one was for my hubby and I for lunch. I put in greens, quinoa, lentils fennel, onion, beets, sprouts, radishes, sliced almonds, goat cheese and strawberries, with the homemade dressing I made. We both really enjoyed it.

I had made some guacamole so I decided to add some to my salad along with greens, sprouts, fennel, red onion, tomatoes, quinoa, lentils, beets and some kimchi.

I did make more but I didn't take a photo of them. Today's salad I had a mix of cabbage, kale, carrots, sauerkraut, cucumbers, feta cheese and some tuna with a vinaigrette. It was delicious! Since I had bought a lot of fresh strawberries I also made my banana with 2 eggs pancake and topped it with the fresh strawberries

Another great breakfast item that I made is an avo toast, I decided to add some sprouts, cucumber slices and topped it with a egg with a touch of salt and pepper, it was so good!

I also decided to finally try to make my own almond milk. It was pretty simple, just had to soak the almonds overnight, throw it into my Vitamix blender and then strain it

The bowl in front is the remaining pulp of the almonds. I was thinking to add it to a cookie recipe but I haven't tried making any yet. Maybe this weekend since it's a long weekend. The almond milk was very delicious!

One recipe I recommend you try is a flourless chocolate chip cookie, I was watching the Rachael Ray talk show and she had him on the show and I decided to try out the cookies yesterday and they were delicious! I forgot to take a photo of it, I do still have some left but you will see from the video here what they look like. The recipe is very simple. The only thing I did differently was I mixed everything and then added in the egg and mixed again then folded in the chocolate chips which I am pretty sure I added more then a 1/4 cup lol. As well instead of flattening them out before baking I kept them round, they turned out a bit more fluffy and still very delicious!

Have a great long weekend everyone!

Salads and dressings!

I absolutely love salads! Unfortunately lately I haven't been eating many of them so when I did groceries yesterday, I decided to get a lot of different veggies to make some different salads, more specifically, Buddha bowls! This was my lunch today

So this Buddha bowl has a nice mix, there's lettuce, a mix of quinoa and lentils that I cooked up. I also added some orange pepper, alpha sprouts, pea sprouts, cucumber, kimchi, flax and pumpkin seeds. I added the Italian dressing I made, which I will share the recipe below. It was a nice mix, it was absolutely delicious!

I will be creating a lot more Buddha bowls this week. Other veggies I have on hand are radishes, fennel, which I have already sliced up so it's ready to add. I bought some spiraled beets, red onions, carrots, a mix of greens (kale, spinach and collard greens), not to mention my kale in my back yard, and I do have my herbs that I can add in as well. Don't think I forgot anything. I do have fruits as well that I can add for some sweetness. I got this yesterday as well

I tend to get a few baskets every year. I saw that they have been there for a while selling baskets but I haven't taken the time to stop but yesterday was a must! They are so good!! This was my breakfast this morning

My omelette has chopped red onions, mushrooms, the mix of greens, with 2 eggs, and I also added some goat cheese for creaminess, and had a few fresh strawberries along with that. It was a very tasty breakfast!!

Back to the Buddha bowls. So I do have the strawberries that I can add, I have nectarines, and apples that I can also add in. Of course there's always nuts and seeds for some nice crunch, and I have a variety of them so I plan to mix and match to make every bowl different. I also have some avocados for more creaminess, and I still have some goat cheese and some feta cheese as well. The cooking show I watched, she suggested adding some fermented foods to Buddha bowls, and it's a great idea since it's great for gut health. So that's why I added kimchi to my bowl. I bought more yesterday since I was almost out, and I also have some sauerkraut.

Now for some tasty homemade dressings that I made

These two I found the recipe online and they sounded delicious so I gave them a try, and they both turned out good!

First one is Greek Style Vinaigrette. In my Vitamix blender I added the following ingredients

3 tbsp white wine vinegar
1/4 cup fresh basil
1 tbsp green onion
3 tbsp Feta cheese
salt and pepper
1 tsp fresh oregano leaves (they didn't have any in store nor do I have it in my garden so I used dry)
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

The other is an Italian dressing. Also all done in my blender, here are the ingredients

2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
3 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
1 tbsp Fresh parsley or 2 tsp dried
1/4 medium onion (about 2 tbsp or 2 tsp onion powder)
Juice of half a lemon
1 tbsp fresh basil or 2 tsp dried
1 tbsp fresh oregano or 2 tsp dried
1 clove of garlic or 1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp honey
salt and pepper

I had everything fresh except the oregano. Also instead of using Parmesan cheese I used Pecorino Romano cheese, as it's sheep's milk instead of cow's milk for the parm cheese.

I'll be sure to take photo's of my other bowls I create this week. Have a great weekend everyone!

Platters!

I've been having some fun creating platters. Now that we can gather up to 10 people, we have had a few people come over for a visit. We kept it small, 2 people at a time, and it was nice to see family/friends. Here are my creations

Some similarities but I made sure to make each one a little different. They turned out delicious! We still have some left over so I created a bento box lunch today. I didn't think to take a picture but we had a little bit of macaroni salad that I made, 1 slice of ham each, 1 slice of kabasa each, 3 crackers with cheese (boursin and goat cheese) and I also included some kimchi. It was delicious!

Been watching a few videos on FMTV, now known as Gaia, and it's been all about salads, and she made a Buddha salad which one restaurant makes a really good one, and I haven't gone there in a long time, so I'm thinking next grocery trip I'll be buying ingredients to create different Buddha bowls. For those that don't know what that is, it's a salad, but you get to mix and match whatever you want. The one I have at the restaurant tends to be quinoa, mix of greens, strawberries, apple, goat cheese, chicken but I tend to ask for shrimp instead of chicken, spiced pecans, onions, and peppers. I think that's it. It's a delicious combination with a vinaigrette, so I'm thinking I need to create my own. The video I saw, she added herbs, and kimchi, and she did a rice and can't remember what else but it's all about mixing things up with veggies, fruit, nuts, seeds, grains, cheese, and protein. You don't have to include it all but you can, and even legumes would be good to add as well. It's a chance to just have fun in combining whatever you want. I love the idea of adding fresh herbs and fermented foods. The herbs would add a lot of fresh wonderful flavor, and to add fermented food, is really healthy for us. You can add in kimchi, sauerkraut, tempeh, or miso. With creating each one differently, it will be something new and delicious to put together and eat. You can also have fun with different dressings as well.

Supper tonight is left over fajitas! Mine is shrimp and he has chicken. It's going to be just as delicious!

Breakfast!

I love breakfast! With working from home, it's giving me the opportunity to vary my breakfast more. Normally when I go in to work, I keep it quick and simple with a smoothie. I do still make some smoothies, cause they are delicious but I'm having fun putting together a few other things to enjoy for breakfast

I had some delicious fresh strawberries on hand and decided instead of jam, why not fresh strawberries! I toasted my fermented grain bread from Silver Hills, and then added some almond butter, but I'm sure natural peanut butter would be just as good. I sprinkled on some chia seeds for extra nutrition, and then put sliced strawberries on top. It was so good!

I also decided one morning on another smoothie bowl

I put in some frozen bananas, some fermented vegan protein powder, frozen cherries and some almond milk to get everything to blend up in my Vitamix. The granola I made on the weekend, I used gluten free oats, 1 cup, with 1/2 cup of quinoa, 2 tbps of ground flax seeds, and some almonds and walnuts chopped up. In a pan I melted 2 tbps each of coconut oil, natural peanut butter, chocolate chips and maple syrup. I then I toasted the dry in a pan until lightly golden, then mixed in the wet ingredients to combine until everything was well toasted.

Another delicious breakfast is pancakes!

I like to make this version of pancake once in a while. All it is, is 1 banana with 2 eggs. You mash up the banana first, and then add in the eggs and whisk them up and then cook in a pan like you would pancakes. This makes more of a crepe, but it's still so delicious! I added chia seeds, they are just hiding under the pancake, and topped it with fresh berries and of course real maple syrup. Yum! The Eeyore mug you also see in the picture is a chai tea latte, my fav!

It's been a good week of breakfasts! This morning I had some cereal with brown rice puff, sliced almonds, remaining of the blueberries, and some chia seeds with almond milk and some maple syrup to sweeten it up a bit.

Another thing we tried this week is to make our own homemade shawarmas. A while back we had a pot luck at work and one of the girls I work with made these small shawarma bites and I asked her about it cause it was so good! She ended up giving me her recipe for the garlic sauce. Very easy to make, just takes a while to peel up the garlic cloves. It's 2 whole heads of garlic put into a food processor with a touch of lemon juice, touch of salt, and one small baked potato (for starch and to help cook up the garlic a little to tone it down). Turn on the food processor and slowly stream in some vegetable oil, although I used grapeseed oil instead, which is still mild like vegetable oil.

It turned out great. This picture I didn't add enough oil, so I put it in a bowl and whisked in more cause the garlic was way to powerful, like clear your sinus and feel it going down powerful! Once I added more oil, it was perfect! I got some whole wheat pitas, opened them up, added in some shredded lettuce, sliced tomato and onion, and some pickled turnips. The chicken we marinated with a lot of spices, and cooked it up on the BBQ. Hubby found a recipe online for a chicken shawarma marinate and it was a good one, very delicious!

Yesterday we had burger's, mine was a meat free burger, and I was still a bit hungry so decided to have some dessert

This is an "ice cream" type of dessert. It's all done in a food processor. I added 2 frozen bananas, with 2 heaping tsp of natural peanut butter, and about 2 tsp of dark chocolate chips and blend it up until smooth. You have to stop to scrap the sides here and there, but it's worth the effort, it's so good!

I didn't workout out yet today so time for me to go do that. Supper tonight is salmon with some salad!

Pie!

I decided to go through my Chocolate Covered Katie cookbook for some desert ideas and decided to try one of her pies, it's all raw

It turned out really good! I made the chocolate crust with lots of almonds and a bit of walnuts, using cacao powder for the chocolate and for sweetness some dates. Then on another page I saw this raspberry filling but since I didn't have any I chose to go with blueberries since I had a lot. This to had some cacao powder for more chocolatey goodness. This pie is delicious!! I do recommend her cookbook, it has a lot of great healthy deserts. She does have more recipes online as well, but she doesn't have the recipe for either of these online.

We also did some BBQ'ing and cooked up some shrimp and salmon skewers, along with some potatoes and asparagus

It was so good! For the shrimp I made the Epicure garlic aioli dip. Yum!!

I have also been on a little Soul Surfer kick lately. I have seen the movie many times, it's so inspiring! I finally got the book and I started to read it Thursday and finished it up last night (Friday). It's not like the movie, but a very good read! I actually got curious to see what she's up to now so I did a search online and found out that she has another movie she came out with called Bethany Hamilton Unstoppable and saw it was available on Netflix so that's what I did today, and it was really good. It's her actual story from when she was a kid to fairly recent (4 years ago) of her life. This one is also very inspiring! When I need some motivation, I'm sure I'll watch one of them for some inspiration.

Today I did some speed walking for 5 km, and yesterday I did another 5 km but a mix of running and speed walking with different inclines.

Supper tonight I'll be trying out this chicken recipe with a basil sauce that I found on Facebook. My herb garden is really growing and we do have a lot of basil so I'm looking forward to trying it out

Fresh Herbs!

It's finally that time of year! I have my herb garden all set up!

So this year's herbs are parsley, curly and leafy, some rosemary, thyme, basil, dill, chives, and cilantro. I also decided to get some Kale. I already dove into the dill yesterday, I put some in our salad. I will wait till my Kale gets bigger before I start grabbing some of it.

About a week ago, I decided to make some bruchetta and put it on some Naan bread

It was so good!! I toasted up my whole wheat Naan bread in the oven to get it crispy, and sliced it up and then topped it with the bruchetta I made. It's so simple to make! I used 2 Roma tomatoes, chopped it up, added about 1/4 cup of fresh basil (chopped), 1 clove of garlic (minced), with 2 tbsp of olive oil, but I think 1 tbsp would be enough, and then 1 tsp of balsamic vinegar,with a touch of salt and some pepper. I let it sit for at least an hour and then I added some feta cheese. This photo is missing the balsamic glaze that I drizzled on top.

We have been keeping busy as well, we did some yard work, and vacuumed up the car, and I also went for a nice run, 6 km

Weather here has been so beautiful! Today's workout I did some fast walking on my treadmill with different inclines, and also did some upper body weights. Tomorrow is suppose to be another nice day so I'm thinking another run outside.