Garden

It's that time a year again where I get to have my garden! Two friends came over and we went shopping for what we needed for our gardens. It was a lot of fun and great seeing them. I really love having herbs on hand, and I started to include veggies as well, here's this year's garden that I just did yesterday, and finished up this morning, since the storm stopped me from finishing it yesterday.

The top photo is my herbs, and I have cilantro, thyme, chives, and in the front is mint, rosemary, basil and parsley. Next photo is my veg pod with the cover removed but it's back on to help protect my garden. In the back on the left, not sure if my blueberry bush will survive, I planted it last year, and it's looking sad, so we will see *fingers crossed*. Next to that is kale and a mix of lettuces, towards the front on the left is lettuce, all in the front is romaine, towards the middle is spinach and the long green things are green onions. The last photo, is a jalapeno plant, and what I thought was a strawberry tree, is actually raspberries, and the other also raspberries but they are two different kinds. I'm excited to see how the raspberries do.

Last year I did tomatoes and peppers but they were just too big for my veg pod so I kept it more simple. I love salads so it will be nice to have fresh greens on hand.

My hubby also surprised me with a gift, and we tried it out last weekend. I love doing a charcuterie boards and loving this one that he got me

This board had blueberries, watermelon, boursin cheese, plain and blueberry goat cheeses, crackers, apricot and red pepper jellies, and a mix of dry sausages.

Since my brother was moving far, he was selling and giving away a lot of things and two of the things I got was two hammocks to lay down in, and one that is a chair. The chair they gave me with the frame wasn't comfortable enough for me to sit in for a long time to read so I got a new one, and I'm loving it!

 

Baloo does come out with me sometimes to enjoy some fresh air. The book I have (Death of the demon), I finished reading it. My youngest niece gave it to me and it was a very good read!

 

Now time for me to be patient and wait for my garden to grow more, so I can start taking enjoying the fresh herbs and veggies. Well I can use some of my herbs right now but they aren't very big so I can't use a lot. The only other thing I need to work on is my front flower bed. I need to clean it up and I need to find a few flowers to add, since all I have is returning plants in the front right now which are just green, so I want to add color.

Last night the stormed passed us, which we are fine, but I have heard other parts of Ottawa got it really bad, so I hope everyone is safe. Since it was nice again, we were able to cook our spatchcock chicken on the BBQ, it was marinated with chimichurri and it was delicious! We had potatoes roasted on the BBQ as well and a delicious salad. We do have leftover chicken, so the plan for tonight's supper is nachos!

Hope everyone is enjoying their long weekend!

Great healthy recipes!

I just have to share what I have been up to this weekend. Yesterday I prepared a beef stew and let that cook low and slow for several hours for us to enjoy for supper. I also took the time to do some prep so that our week is easier at eating healthy. I chopped up some carrots, celery and pepper, and then made a very delicious dip for those veggies.

I got this recipe from Eat better, Fell better by Giada. So glad I decided to try it, cause it's really good! She says to put the entire sweet potato in the oven and bake it for like an hour, and I didn't want to take that long to get the sweet potato soft, so I cut it into chunks, and instead of pan cooking the garlic, I added 2 cloves into foil and baked it with the potatoes. I put it in the oven at 400 for 20 minutes and the sweet potatoes were soft enough and the garlic was nice and roasted as well

 

 

 

The ingredients did go in the food processor and I did try it and it was delicious! I cleaned up my mess after and I was done for the day, I was feeling quite tired, so today I finished my fun in the kitchen.

This morning I made a quiche, which we of course enjoyed for breakfast this morning

Yes mine got a bit burnt but it still tasted really good! I got this recipe from the Clean Eating magazine. It took a long time to prep and get it cooked but it was really good. Once I added everything to the pan, it said to put it on medium heat for 15 minutes. Well I put mine on medium low, and only for 12 minutes, so I'm glad I made that adjustment. I used a cast iron pan and I know it holds it's heat really well and warmer so that's why I made that change. We flipped it like it suggests, yes hubby helped in the flip cause a cast iron pan is heavy, and then let it cook for 5 more minutes and we both really enjoyed it.

I did take a bit of a break to eat, and then not long after I got the next recipe going, which started with baking 2 bananas. Which is a first for me, but the recipe is really good! I started to watch this new cooking show called Simply Giada, and when I saw these cupcakes, I had to try it and glad I did. We both really love it.

While the bananas were baking I got to relax for a while and then once I took them out I had to let them cool for a bit. Then I got the other ingredients together. You can get the recipe here.

I have been wanting to try making vegetarian sandwiches. I love sandwiches but meat doesn't like me too much cause of endo, so I finally tried a recipe, which you can get here on Joyous Health.

This mix is really tasty, I got to try it for lunch, along with some veggies with the dip that I made yesterday. The quiche did need some grated jicama, so the rest of it I sliced up to enjoy with the other veggies and dip.

It was a perfect and delicious lunch cause it also ended with half a cupcake, and gave my hubby the other half to try it out. For supper I want to try out another new recipe that I also got from Clean eating magazine, which is a mushroom stroganoff. I'm excited to try it, and glad I have some healthy food on hand for the week.

Hope you are all having a wonderful weekend!

Update

 It's been quite some time since I last posted! I thought of it yesterday, not having thought of putting a new blog post in a while. I have been busy. It started with me twisting my wrist somehow, and we were going to an engagement party, and I still helped set up/decorate but not as much as I could have since I couldn't use my left hand. The party was a lot of fun though! I also had to shop for Christmas, which I started later than normal, but got it done, and everything wrapped in time. Covid got worse so we made the hard decision to stay home. Which is the first time ever we have stayed home at Christmas. It was still fun though, we went to my brother's on Christmas Eve and it was all about appetizers, games and chatting! We were suppose to go to my mother in law's on Christmas day but weather wasn't nice at all so we went a few days later.

Then came the new year, and I had a few things lined up but it all got cancelled, again thanks to Covid. We did get our third vaccine and like the second one, I was sick. I had chills, achy everywhere, headache and very tired. The third one, my arm was crazy sore though! They are talking about a 4th one and I'm not looking forward to it, especially if I get sick again.

We haven't been eating as healthy, but we will be getting back on track. I have plans for some healthy meals. One breakfast I made last week, which was a delicious warm bowl

It's a mix of 1/2 cup oats, 2 tbsp chia seeds, 1 tbsp protein powder, 1tbsp flax seeds, 1 1/2 cups almond milk, 2 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp coconut oil, 1 tsp maple syrup, and a pinch of salt. You just warm everything up in a pan and it's ready. You can top with a lot more than just strawberries, but this was a big bowl and I only ate about half of it, it was very filling. You can add granola, other fruits, some nuts, you can even add some almond butter, or any nut butter, I added a bit of almond butter to mine. It was very good.

Tomorrow I will do groceries and I have plans to make these shrimp bites that look really good. I got the recipe from Clean eating. I also want to make a beef stew, I haven't made one in a while. We will try this another new recipe from Clean eating, a mushroom stroganoff. For breakfast, or can even be for lunch or supper, I want to try this potato and apple quiche. For lunches I want to try this vegetarian sandwich that looks really good from Joyous Health. I do want to make something for dessert, and I'm thinking maybe try out this recipe I saw on Simply Giada on the Food Network. They look really good and are healthy which is great.

When I did see she had a new show, Simply Giada, I had to check it out! I got her new cookbook a while back, which provides a lot of great information and healthy recipes. The show is amazing, so I'm always excited to watch it on Sunday's. 

Last weekend was also our 27th anniversary, so we did a board with a mix of delicious food and enjoyed it with some wine

Sorry can't seem to be able to rotate the photo. We watched a few movies as well and it was a nice quiet night at home since we couldn't go out anywhere.

In terms of working out, I haven't been doing as much but this week I am back on track. I'm quite muscle sore too. Feels good to be back on track though. 

Hope everyone is having a great week!