Christmas cooking

We already got quite a bit of snow so far, but it helps put me more into the Christmas spirit. My friend and I got together Friday night to get started on some Christmas cooking.

Friday we picked up the groceries we would need and went to her place to get our dough ready, and stored them in the fridge. The next morning we were set to get started. We got our meat and potatoes cooked up, and while they were cooling down we got busy with rolling our dough

Made a mess but we did pretty good with cleaning after. The below are our potato pies, the two closest are mine and hers are the two further ones. She adds a bit of the juice from the meat to hers, but I kept mine like my mom makes it, mashed potatoes into a pie

 These two are our tourtière (meat pies). We did 2 each, although would have been nice to have one more of each, but we got more time to do some desserts as well.

We made an apple pie each, and one apple crumble each. Then we of course had to make some pet de soeur, which I forgot to take a picture of these. At work we are doing a cookie exchange again and last year I made my mom's famous oh henry bars. The bad part with that is I had to make 2 batches and the mixture is thick, so I had to do it by hand and it's hard to mix so my arm was dead at the end of that. Plus once the melted chocolate cools and it's time to cut, that to is hard to do so I want to make things easier on me this time around. I found another one of my mom's recipes that simple and delicious, but since I haven't attempted to make it before I brought the recipe with me and I made it to try it out. It was simple to make and turned out really great so buttertart squares is what I'll be making for the cookie exchange.

Everything is nicely stored in my freezer now except the buttertart square which is now in my fridge. I'm thinking it's freezable but my freezers are on the full side at the moment. So it will be a yummy dessert for us to have. I'm thinking to maybe bring some at work to cause it's a lot for just the two of us. My friend wasn't interested in keeping some but we did split on everything else that we made.

It was so much fun, but we were both very tired by the end of the day. Glad those are ready though! Now time to figure out when we will celebrate Christmas here before we are off to Sudbury. Although first I really need to get started on Christmas shopping. Well I bought 2 things so far, but still so much more shopping to do!

Still enjoying the fall!

Been quite busy lately, so I have a few things to catch you all up on. First I'm still running and enjoying it

 This is a bike trail along a few main roads close to my work. I ran 5 km that day and took me a little over 32 minutes. It was such a beautiful day!  Last Monday I was sick and Tuesday I still wasn't feeling the greatest but Wednesday I was feeling better so I went for the run and I shouldn't have cause I didn't feel so great again after, so I decided to take a break the rest of the week to give my body time to rest. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be ok for my run.

Last weekend I also got busy in the kitchen. A friend at work told me about this recipe so I had to try it out and I must say it's really good. It's butternut squash mac and "cheese".

Looks like mac and cheese but there is no cheese in it. I got a butternut squash, took the skin off and de-seeded it, and cut it up into bite size pieces and boiled it until soft (you can roast them as well till soft). I drained the water, put the butternut squash in my vitamix blender and added a dab of butter and a big splash of almond milk (can use milk of choice). I pureed it till it was a good consistency, not to thick or to liquidy. Add it to the cooked pasta, which I cooked up shelled brown rice pasta and add some pepper, a touch of nutmeg and to have a cheesier taste add in some nutritional yeast. Not only is nutritional yeast healthy for us it does have that cheesy taste. I didn't add enough but you should add a good 1/4 cup or so. It doesn't taste like mac and cheese but it is really good!

I also met up with a good friend at the Keg. We were long overdo to get together and catch up. Here's the supper I had

It was so good!!  We went to do a bit of shopping since she needed new winter boots and than went next door to Chapters and checked out a few cookbooks we were interested in. It was a fun night!

On Friday I had the day off so I did my house cleaning and the stove was in need of cleaning as well so got that done to. Since I couldn't go running and it was a beautiful fall day, I went out for a nice walk

I found this trail around this time last year. It's close to my place and although it's very small it's still a great opportunity for me to be surrounded by nature. Especially with the colors of the leaves, and the sound of the crunching leaves at my feet when walking. If I had the choice I would always walk or run in a trail, but now a days it's hard to feel safe when you go into trails alone cause you never know who's around, and I rather stay safe. This is a great way for me to still enjoy a trail but feel safer cause it's surrounded by houses.

I haven't done bento box lunches in a while so thought that this week should be, and I'm quite excited about lunch now. I have a nice variety of things, which also includes options for breakfast as well. I boiled 6 eggs to enjoy with some oatmeal, which the oatmeal is from Stoked Oats. Two posts ago, for the army run, I posted a picture of all the food we got after our race, well one packet is stoked oats and it was really good! It's all natural, it's gluten free oats, and it has natural ingredients in them. No added sugar or anything. I looked online and saw that the health food store at the mall sells it, so when I went to see my hubby play hockey yesterday I stopped in to get some, along with a few other things (barley, nori sheets, and Made Good granola). I bought two kinds, one is mulberry, currant, apple and cinnamon oatmeal, and the other is almond and dark chocolate. I also have an avocado, to enjoy a toast smothered in 1/4 of the avocado with a boiled egg which I tend to add cucumber as well with a bit of salt and pepper. I also have some ham that I can also enjoy for breakfast, or Greek yogurt with some of that granola I bought.

Here are my options for my bento box lunches. Today I made a tuna salad

So I thinly cut up some celery, with leafy tops, broccoli, and red onion. In herbs I have some basil, and yes that's the flours, which I found out are edible. I tried one and it's sweeter and milder than the basil leaf. You can leave them on your plant which helps them grow faster, or you can cut them off to slow down the growing process, so I cut one off cause my herbs are growing like crazy! I also have some parsley and chives which I also minced up. I added two cans of water packed tuna, removing most of the water, added some pepper and just a touch of salt, and a bit of smoked paprika. I then added quite a bit of Dijon mustard, and some mayo. If your not a fan of mustard you can add more mayo. I mixed it all with a fork.

I also bought some whole wheat naan bread so I can top the tuna salad on that, or I do have ham or left over chicken as well. I have carrots, celery, cucumbers, red peppers, and broccoli, which I can enjoy with some humus or on their own. I also made a potato salad, and I have regular salad as well. So quite a few options for lunches this week. I can't wait!

So I told you about my herb garden. I have moved it indoors cause it's to cold out there, I actually saw a bit of snow this morning coming down but doesn't look like it's going to stick, which I'm ok with.

So yes it's growing really well indoors so far. Last year and the year before I brought them to the basement and connected two lights to act like the sun but I think it was to cool down there and dark. Yes I had the lights for them but I don't think they were big enough nor created enough heat for the herbs so they didn't last. So now that it's by the side window and patio door I hope they will do better indoors. It's nice having them close to the kitchen as well, makes it easier to grab some when needed.

I am also officially signed up for the half marathon in May, the Ottawa race! This will help motivate me to keep training. I am feeling 100% better so tomorrow I should be fine to run again and I really can't wait!

Fall

Fall is my favorite time of year. I love the comfort it brings, with weather being a bit cooler, you get to wear a comfy sweater, and can bundle up under a blanket while reading a book. I absolutely love the colors it brings outside as well

If I can find a path like this one to run along, I'm so happy! I also do like walking and hiking, especially if it's with someone else so you can talk, and enjoy the beauty. Summer tends to be way to hot to exercise outside, and winter way to cold which is why I love the fall as well. Spring can be pretty great as well but it's messier cause you have snow that's melting.

I have been getting out there more often to run and I'm really enjoying every minute of it. I plan to go out for a run today. Thanks to a compress work schedule I had Friday off. I spent the morning cleaning the house and than went out for a 7 km run. It was my best time in a very long time and felt great!  Today I just plan to run 5 km. Can't over do it or else I will cause an injury. It's also the long weekend so have today off for Thanksgiving. We celebrated last night with my dad, brother, sister in law, nieces and nephews. My dad cooked the turkey, my brother brought salad and pumpkin pie, and I brought the potato dish. We did make a stop to so hubby can get a few beers and also grabbed a new wine to try out and it was really good. I decided to make something different and it worked out cause everyone really liked it.

I did forget to take a photo, but I did a mix of butternut squash and sweet potatoes. I grabbed one butternut squash, took the peel off and the seeds out and cut the squash into bite size pieces. I peeled 3 medium size sweet potatoes and cut those in bite size pieces as well. I added some coconut oil and baked it in the over at 400 for 12 minutes. I gave them a toss and put them back in for 14 minutes. While that was in the oven I took 3 small onions and cut them into small pieces, and grabbed a few mushrooms and cut those into small pieces as well and cooked them in a pan on medium low heat until they were cooked up nicely. Towards the end of the cooking process I added 3 minced garlic cloves and added some fresh herbs from my garden which is now moved into the house cause herbs don't like to cold weather. I grabbed some rosemary, and minced that up, and added it in. In an oven safe pot I added all the potatoes and squash, added a splash of almond milk, some pepper, and mashed them up. I evened it out to add the onion/mushroom mix on top and than sprinkled some fresh minced chives on top. Once we got to my dad's I put it in the oven at 200 until we were ready to eat, which was about an hour later.

Supper was delicious!! I did a gravy with the pan drippings from the turkey. My dad had garlic butter so used that with some flour to create a rue and than added the juice of the turkey and I ended up having to add a splash of water. I added a bit of salt and some pepper and some Worcestershire sauce to add some color, but it was still missing some flavor so I looked to see what my dad had in his cupboard and found some Epicure turkey gravy so I added 2 tsp of that and it was perfect at that point.  We got to play some cards, and had a lot of laughs. Such a great night with family.

I  hope everyone is having a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Army Run

Last weekend was quite the weekend. I had Friday off thanks to my compress work schedule so I dropped off my hubby at work, went across the street to park and ran along the bike path by the river. It's one of my favorite places to run!  I did 5 km, then went to towel off a bit and changed and went downtown to meet up with a friend. We had breakfast, did a bit of shopping and walked over to city hall so I can get my race kit. We had lunch then he was done work and lunch so I picked him up and we went home. I had enough time to get ready and went to pick up a friend and met two others at the Heart and Crown for supper. It was nice catching up, and had time to pay and not long after the power went out and stayed off for a long time.

Unfortunately 6 tornadoes hit Ottawa/Gatineau and surrounding areas. It was unbelievable to see how much destruction it left behind, but it's nice to see how many people helped one and other. That night Guy and I kept busy by playing cards by candle light

That picture was before we played cards, we put them off to the side so we could play. We went to bed early and the next morning we still didn't have power. A friend of ours offered for us to bring our stuff from the fridge and freezer to avoid things from going bad since we weren't sure how long till we would get power back. We had the opportunity to have breakfast at his place and charge our phones as well. We left at noon so hubby can get ready for hockey but it was cancelled since the ice wasn't ready. They did get power back at 11 am but it needed more time. We still went so we can have some lunch and hang out with the guys. I did walk over to the other side of the street to do a bit of shopping. Went to the book store and checked out the health food store. We got home a little after 6 pm and our power was back on which was nice. So many others around us did not though. My dad and a few friends only got power back late on Sunday night. My work is close by and still had no power so we were told to stay home on Monday. Most people in the government were told to stay home or work from home since there was so many traffic lights still out.

On Sunday morning though I got to do the army run with a close friend. We signed up for the 5 km, since we decided about a month or so before the race. Glad we were still able to sign up. It was a lot of fun and we ran the entire way!

From their website and my watch we made it in a little over 32 minutes. So proud of our run and it was the perfect weather! They fed us well at the end also

We did only eat most of the oatmeal they had for us. The rest we brought home. It was a great race for a good cause, and I love the shirts we got. They always have amazing shirts

So now our plan is to do the half marathon in May for the Ottawa Race. I have done many races but never the Ottawa race so I'm excited to finally go. Well we haven't signed up yet but I will soon. It's so great getting back on track with running. I have really missed doing races and running. I did run but only here and there for the past few years so it's nice getting back into it.

This weekend has been pretty great as well. I did do some overtime yesterday to get a little more caught up, I did however burn myself. Did a pretty good job to. I was cooking up a steak for myself for supper to eat with a salad and I put a bit to much oil apparently cause when I turned it over the oil went flying and hit part of my hand and arm. It burned for a long time! Better now but I do have some good burn marks. Today though my niece treated me to a free manicure at her new job, and also a free eye brow clean up and also removed my small mustache lol   I do love purple so I picked a dark purple for my nails and I love it!

As usual, the weekend went by to fast, but we do have a nice long weekend coming up, and it will be nice spending time with family for Thanksgiving.

Mud Girl Run

Today started off great! Samantha and I went to do the mud girl run, and it was so much fun!

It wasn't to far from my place so she made her way over for 7:30 am and we were off!  We got our race kit which was a bag, headband, tattoo (above) and a $40 gift card for hello fresh (groceries are sent to your home with the recipes so your meals are set for the week). It was a bit cool in the morning which was great.

We had to take a few pictures before getting started

We wanted to be sure to be at the start of the run, so we went right to the front before it started. They had some great music playing and a guy was working on getting us excited to start. We did a count down and we were off! We did run but we also walked quite a few times. It was mostly grass that we were walking/running in and it was tall so it was harder to run, especially since the ground was uneven. We did good though! Apparently there was 20 obstacles, some that you had to go over and some you had to go under. There was water pits with a bit of mud, but since we were the first wave going it wasn't quite as muddy yet so we didn't get overly dirty. There was a slide, nets to climb on, rope and wood to walk on, which the wood was more of a teeter totter. There was a spot that we had to walk in bubbles, a blow up tube was had to crawl through, a few pits with cords low to the ground that we had to crawl, and one part that had a heavy brick type of thing that we had to use our arm muscles to lift it to the top and lower it back down. It was so much fun!

I find this one didn't have quite as much going on then the other mud run I did, but it was so great that it was girls only, and that it was also going to a good cause, breast cancer. They did have a pretty good set up, but more food around would have been good, and more things to buy. I did buy a pink tshirt and I really wanted the hoody but all they had left was x-small and small, and we were the first wave to go and they were already out of the bigger sizes, that makes no sense!  I'll see if I can get it online. It was a great way to start a beautiful day, we had such a good time and we finished it in 50 minutes.

What's next on the agenda. Well we were talking on the way back home and she's interested in doing a half marathon with me so going to check out to see when we can get our ticket for the Ottawa race. It's been on my bucket list for a while, I mean I live in Ottawa and I haven't done the Ottawa race yet so it's time!!  I haven't done a half marathon in quite some time, so it will be a good push for me to get back into good shape. I really do miss running! I still run but not as much as I use to and I miss running. Now that I have a treadmill at home, I don't have an excuse of bad weather to stop me. I told her about the army run as well, it's a must! They have amazing shirts and it's a fun run to do.

I haven't been blogging as much but I do want to change that, I miss it. I for sure need to get back on track with healthy eating and keep up with exercising, which I definitely need to run more! I do eat pretty healthy  most of the time but I need to do better so I can get back into better shape.

Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend!

Summer

It's been a while again since my last post. It's been a busy summer. With working quite a bit of overtime, we went to bluesfest and got to see a lot of amazing bands like Bryan Adams, Greta Van Fleet, Foo Fighters, Dave Matthews Band, Beck, Colin James, Dear Rouge, Three Days Grace and Rise Against. It was a lot of fun but we were so tired and exhausted. We had taken the first week of July off, and we did things around the house. I did a lot of de-cluttering, we did a bit of shopping, and the Thursday night it was Bryan Adams, the following week we were back at work and saw all those bands so it was a bit of a tough week.

My cousin came down our second week we took off over the summer, the week of August 6th. We went to the Highland games, and went to check out the Mosaic here in Gatineau

The highland games was a lot of fun, but it was very hot outside, so we went into the shade as much as possible. My cousin's daughters and a friend of theirs were with us as well. The Mosaic it was just one of her daughter's and the friend, and it was amazing to see, it was so beautiful there. Again a very warm day but it was harder to find shade. We went to cool down in the Rideau mall after and did some shopping. We went to visit my brother, did more shopping, saw a few movies, and they headed home, than I took some time to do more de-cluttering and doing things around the house.

I went to my brother's on Friday night for game night. I love that they have game night every Friday. It was a lot of fun and my niece did my nails as well, I have a light pink and I love it! Yesterday I had to do some overtime at work and did a few things at home and relaxed. Today I spent most of my time in the kitchen. I started off with making a potato salad, I love cooking the potatoes in the oven, they are a bit more crisp. I added green onions and celery, along with some cumin, paprika and some pepper. I did use mayo and a bit of dijon mustard.  The next thing I did was try out a recipe I saw on Facebook, although I changed it up a bit.

I first started with my mandolin to slice the zucchini but it was to thick and didn't work as well so I than switched to a carrot peeler

It worked a lot better! So I greased the muffin tin with coconut oil, than added zucchini strips in each one like that first one I did, so it's kind of like the crust for the quiche.

Than I stuffed each one with a bit of red onion, tomato, mushroom, and some fresh basil. In a bowl I whisked 10 eggs with a big splash of almond milk, some salt and pepper and a bit of smoked paprika. I filled each cup with the egg mixture

Than topped it with a bit of herb goat cheese and put it in the over at 400 for 30 minutes

They turned out great! I haven't tried one yet but I'm sure they will be delicious! They really did smell really good!  The rest of the zucchini, I cut into bite size pieces and I'll be able to add them into salads. This  past Friday I put together a delicious bento box for my lunch

The Quinoa crackers were really good, well they were extra crispy but tasty. I topped it with the peppered goat cheese (top right container), just below that it was a mix of chicken and kielbasa, to the left of that a kale salad, and above cucumber and blueberries. It was a delicious lunch!!  I haven't had kielbasa in so long and it was on sale so thought why not.

So for the week, my muffin quiches will be my breakfast with either fruit or toast, lunch I am thinking more bento boxes with some potato salad, veggies, I'm thinking shrimp, or fish, and a salad. I am also still exercising, I'm doing spinning, some running, weight exercises and walking. Next weekend is the mud girl run, so I'll post something after to let you know how it went and share a few pictures.

The summer has really gone by fast, I know it's not done yet but we are getting towards the end of August already so going to keep enjoying the beautiful weather as much as I can.

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!