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

Training and in the kitchen

Now that the half marathon has come and gone, now it's time to train for Spartan which is at the end of July. I'm varying my workouts more so I can handle different obstacles for the 13 km race with 25 obstacles in between. This week I started the Liift4 workout from beachbody. It's tough and exactly what I need. It has a mix of lifting weights, cardio and core exercises. The cardio part is a variety of things like running with your knees up, doing mountain climbers and a bunch more tough moves. I'm also going to add some running, spinning, and walking. I do play baseball as well so it's a pretty good mix of exercises.

Today I ran 3 km and then did the 4th workout of Liift4 for the week. It is 4 workouts each week for about 30-40 minutes. Today was legs and core, so I will feel that later!

Last weekend we went home to Sudbury to celebrate 3 birthdays. So when we showed up Friday around 3 pm, we hung out for a while and then went out to celebrate 2 birthdays since it was that night for both, and we went to Milestones. We shared their bruchetta

Yes there's one missing cause I grabbed one right away and then thought oh I should take a picture lol. It was delicious!! I had a chicken dish with mushrooms and a white sauce. It was really good! We got some dessert to.

The next day I got to do some shopping with the girls and we went to check out a yard sale downtown. They closed a street and there was a lot of people! We went to Chapters after for a while, went to lunch at Kelsey's and then I hung out with my cousin for a while and then went to the birthday party. It was a good turn out, and the cakes were delicious!

It was a great day! We had a BBQ, burgers, and hot dogs, with different salads, and there were games. The kids had a bouncy castle to play in, they set up a few games, and there was texas horseshoes, and some other game that I don't know what it's called.

Later at night we got a fire going, but there weren't many people left and we didn't stay to late. The mosquitoes were really bad!









On the way to Sudbury we also got to see this guy

The week was busy, and I went to the health food store the other day in hopes I can get more hazzlefluff from the veg fest, but unfortunately they didn't have any. I did find some delicious crackers to go with my vegan and dairy free dip, and also decided to buy some kimchi. If you don't know what that is, it's fermented vegetables, which tends to be with cabbage. Never tried it before until my brother pointed it out when we were together for lunch at sushi. It was spicy and different so took a bit of getting use to but I do like it. The one I bought is also spicy, but here's the bento box I put together for my delicious lunch on Friday

So top left is the crackers which you can see the bag there on the right. They are tasty and completely healthy! Next to the crackers is the dip, then some ham, and under some cucumbers and carrot, which the carrots I enjoyed with some of the dip as well, and then my kimchi. It was such a tasty lunch!

Yesterday was more of a relaxed day and now that my workout is done, I will get busy in the kitchen. I want to prepare a dip, chop up some veggies and cook up some fish to make more bento box lunches this week.

Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend!

Half Marathon and Veg Fest

My half marathon went really well. We didn't hit our goal time which was under 2 hours and a half but we came close. Here I am at the start of the race

I finished in 2 hours, 36 minutes and 53 seconds. Samantha finished about a minute and a half faster then I did

Very proud of us! It was a beautiful day, and it was tough but we made it!

The medal is really nice! The center (Parliament) does spin. Happy that I have finally done the Ottawa Race! We went to an Italian restaurant after, close by and it was nice to sit and relax. My quads were sore for a few days, so I have been taking it easy this week.

Yesterday I did have a great time with 2 friends at the Veg Fest at the RA center. It wasn't huge but it was a good turn out. I got to try some really good vegan food! I of course bought a few things

The muffins I made today, they are the caramel sticky buns. I am pretty sure I shared the recipe a few posts ago, they are so good! It's with lots of eggs and some coconut flour, coconut oil and maple syrup. The topping has some cinnamon and walnuts. So to the right is Blue pomegranate kombucha and I also bought a beet lemonade one as well. I love the glass jars they came in. On the blue lid is a hazelnut chocolate mousse, to the left of that is a carrot caramel. I haven't tried the caramel yet but looking forward to it. I also fell in love with Le Grand, they make "yogurt", dips and pesto's that are so yummy! I think the yogurt was made with almond milk instead of cow milk. The dips, which I got two of the chive and onion is dairy free as well and so delicious! All natural and healthy ingredients. Apparently they sell them at Costco but not their yogurt yet. I may have to make more trips to Costco with my dad so I can get more cause it is really good! The pesto I got tastes just like eating fresh basil! It's so good!!!! The chimichury is also very tasty! I also bought a chocolate cupcake from another vendor there, which I also bought the caramel from and it was really good. I only had a bite of it, and hubby had the rest. I wanted to get him something from the event since he didn't come. It was a great girls day out though. We went to eat at Lonestar after, then walked around and shopped a bit. Got home in time for supper and relax. I also had the opportunity to donate for animal rescues. I am always happy to help animals.

It's been a nice weekend although today it's rainy and gloomy. I have been relaxing at home and giving me a chance to spend time in the kitchen. I boiled a few eggs as well, and I was going to make some homemade crackers but I noticed I have some healthy ones in my cupboard that are going to expire soon so I will eat those up first. After my race last weekend, my dad and I went by the market, I needed to buy some potatoes and my dad decided to buy some homemade bread. She offered him to buy a second one for only $2 so he did, and he gave me one. I did get the chance to eat some and it's really good bread! Thinking maybe to make an egg salad sandwich with the eggs I boiled and with the fresh bread as well. Will make a good lunch. I do plan on doing bento boxes with the dip and crackers, and of course I'll pack up a muffin and some vegetables. Looking forward to lunches this week. Hope everyone is having a good weekend!

I have my herb garden back!

Today was my Friday off work, and so glad that it was! It was a great day! Hubby took it off as well so we got to sleep in a bit, had breakfast and relaxed and then I decided to tidy up a little and got ready and I headed downtown to meet up with a friend. It was lunch time so we walked over to Mad Radish. It's really healthy there and it's a nice little place. There's not a tone of tables but there's a few and we got lucky with the two remaining seats so we can eat. We got their already prepared salad, it's nice and small so we can then get their chicken shawarma pie which isn't to big either

The drink is a smoothie, mine was almond milk, banana, peanut butter and can't remember if there's anything else but it was really good! It was a good amount of food. She got the same as I did but she had the berry smoothie which she said was really good as well. The salad was with tofu, greens, chickpeas, and a vinaigrette.

We then walked over to the Shaw Center so I can get my race kit. I got a bag with my t-shirt, bib which has the chip attached to it and of course pins so I can pin it to my shirt. I also got a gift card to hello fresh. Since the bag went nicely behind my back and we were next to the canal, we went for a nice hour walk! It was a beautiful day out today! The walk was really great and then I got to pick up my herbs in the market. I also grabbed some carrots and radishes. I would have liked to get more but I already have enough veg in my fridge but next time I do want to buy a lot. I came home, had supper and then was busy putting my herb garden together

The top photo is my chives. In the background is my plant that smells like lemons, then the bottom photo I got basil, thyme, mint, rosemary, dill, parley and cilantro. They aren't to big right now but once they do start growing it's going to be amazing to have them on hand. Really excited and happy to have my herbs again, and I got a good deal, well I think anyway, I got 9 herbs for $20, and it's something that will last me until weather gets cold. My chives look big cause I got two of them. One didn't seem like enough.

Now that I have had a busy and wonderful day, it's time to relax! I do have my race Sunday so rest is important so I'm in top shape for the half marathon. Oh I also had another wonderful bento box lunch this week

So top left is green beans, carrots and cucumber, the last two cucumbers I cut didn't fit so I put them on top of my coleslaw, which is a kale, carrot and broccoli slaw, and the top right is shrimp that I had cooked on the BBQ and then under that, one of the balls I made from my last post and two raw balls. It was a very tasty lunch. It's a pretty simple bento box but was still really good.

My next post will be about my half marathon that I'm doing with a friend in 2 days. I really do hope we reach our goal time of under 2 hours and 30 minutes. Wish us luck and I'll tell you all about it soon!

No bake balls

I love it when I have a long weekend, I always get more done and also more time to relax before starting a new work week. Yesterday I watched a few cooking shows and it gave me an idea on something to make for a dessert/snack, and luckily I was off to do groceries so I can get what I need to make them. We went to a friend's place for supper yesterday as well and she bought me this for my birthday

I'm so excited to check it out. I only glanced at it really quickly but I saw a lot of delicious looking pictures. I will have a closer look and I do want to try some recipes. She is on the food network, and when I discovered her cooking show I fell in love with her show. She has some great ideas on twists for recipes and she makes some really amazing food!

It was a beautiful day yesterday so we sat outside to eat supper which was a delicious burger with all the fixings and a potato salad. For dessert she made an amazing key lime pie from scratch, courtesy of a recipe from Ricardo. It was so delicious!! I didn't think to take a picture of it, but I do want the recipe! She also had me try this drink she made, which was also very tasty! It was simple syrup, so 3/4 cup sugar with 3/4 cup water and then some lime juice and a lot of water, I think she said 10 cups of water. It wasn't sweet, it was just a nice refreshing drink, which I plan to make as well.

Today I did try my dessert/snack idea that I got from the pioneer woman but I made it healthier, so in this saucepan

I mixed up 1/2 cup each of coconut sugar, maple syrup and all natural peanut butter with a splash of vanilla extract and melted it all together, which didn't take long. I took it off the heat and in a bowl I mixed in some homemade granola that I made from a recipe I got from Ricardo and you can find the recipe here. Then added about 1/4 cup of hemp seeds, about a cup of the granola I made with a cup of nature's path brown rice crisp. I also added about 1/4 cup of dried cherries and half a small bag of dark chocolate chips 71%.

I rolled them into balls, and I put a layer of parchment so I can add more on top and put them in the fridge for about 2 hours so they can firm up. I tried one a little while ago and they are delicious! Maybe a bit to sweet for my liking, I think because the granola also has maple syrup, so I may try either cutting back on the maple syrup or try a different granola recipe or just mix in some nuts/seeds instead of granola. They are very good though! I did use natural peanut butter cause with the coconut sugar and maple syrup it was sweet enough. With natural peanut butter the only ingredient is roasted peanuts, instead of the one you find in store with added sugar.

I was tempted to make more caramel sticky buns but my fridge is on the full side and we do have quite a bit of no bake balls. Plus I did also make some guacamole that we can snack on with salsa and some chips.

So there's exactly 1 week left until my friend and I are running the half marathon. Part of me doesn't feel ready but I'm sure we will do great. I ran 10 km on Friday after work and I plan to run 5 km tomorrow and do some lunges and stuff for a great leg workout, including core exercises. Baseball season has arrived and I play Wednesday and Thursday so I'll get more running done there. Then it's all about allowing my legs to rest up Friday and Saturday so they aren't tired for race day. I get to pick up my race kit between Thursday and Saturday, which is exciting! I'll be sure to take some pictures and let you know how we do.

Hope everyone is enjoying their long weekend!