Sweet Potato Veggie Pad Thai

My last post I talked about the new Joyous Health cookbook that I got, well I made a lot of recipes from that book. My favorite one was the Sweet Potato Veggie pad Thai.

  

 Mine is on the right with lots of cilantro! Hubby hates cilantro so I put a bit of parley on his. You can find the recipe here. The recipe on the link calls for grapeseed oil but you can use olive oil, which is what I used, as per her recipe in the book. Either one is a great choice. I did not miss the pasta in this one, it as very tasty! My hubby is a meat eater, but he really enjoyed it as well. Lots of great flavors.

I tried a bunch more recipes from her book and they were all delicious!

The top one is the buckwheat chocolate chip banana bread. Unlike it's name, buckwheat is gluten free, which I love. With endometriosis, gluten is something that is good to avoid. The second photo is the minestrone soup, which made a big batch, but I'm ok with that. I froze 3 mason jars of the soup and it will be great to take out if I don't have much time, or craving some soup. The noodles are spelt, so not gluten free, but I have never tried that type of pasta so decided to follow the recipe. The only item missing in the soup is kale. The last photo is the one-pot paprika chicken. Those who know me, know that I'm not a fan of olives, but I'm trying to build a liking to them since they are healthy. I'm slowly getting there but in this recipe I didn't mind them at all. There wasn't a lot and with the other flavors it was really good.

The chicken I made on a Sunday, and then the Monday I went vegan to detox from diary and meat to avoid pain from endo. I did get some pain but doing better now.

First photo is baked salmon with a dill pesto, and the side is garlic green beans with tahini lemon sauce. Very tasty!! The pesto has capers as well and instead of the usual basil pesto, it's with dill and it's very good! The green beans were delicious as well. Not only do you top them with the sauce, but also some pomegranate seeds, chopped almonds and nutritional yeast. The last photo is veggie and shrimp green curry. This to was very good! We had some left overs for a few lunches.

This is over a span of 2 weeks, and it's been really great to try out new recipes. Tonight's supper will be fajitas! Mine will be shrimp and his will be chicken. I already have guacamole ready. I also took the time to prepare our lunch for tomorrow which will be a bento box. I will try to remember to take a photo of it and share it with you.

The weekend has been great. My goal for this year is to de-clutter, and so far it's going pretty good. I cleaned/de-cluttered our end tables and dressers in our room, I went through all the bathroom stuff and got rid of 2 very full grocery bags of things that expired or we weren't using. This past Friday I went through my clothes and I got rid of a large garbage bag full of things that don't fit or I don't wear. It's in my basement for now but I will donate it.

A friend of mine at work gave me 2 tickets to go to the Ottawa Home Show, so we went Friday late afternoon to check it out since we would like to reno our house. It was interesting but some are really after you to get your attention, like sharks, it's crazy! It was interesting, but the best part was getting to see Bryan Baeumler on stage

He was funny and provided a lot of great information and tips. He also talked about the Island he has, and I'm really looking forward to the second season which starts towards the end of February. Wish I could have met him in person to get a photo and autograph but it was cool to see him fairly close. Thanks to my friend I got to sit with her and her hubby in the 4th row. The rest of the weekend has been pretty good except for this wet heavy snow we have gotten. Thankfully we have a snowblower to help.

If you haven't had the chance or taken the time to try a new recipe, I recommend it! It's nice trying something new instead of always going for the same meals. I'm glad I decided to try all these recipes, especially that pad thai which is a must make again, and again!

There's a few more recipes in her book I want to try out, which I have plans to make one tomorrow. I'll be sure to take a picture and share it with you. Hope everyone else has had a good weekend!

The holidays and family

I hope everyone had a wonderful Holiday. Can't believe that we are in 2020 already! 2019 flew by so fast!! My holidays were good except for one thing, my aunt passed away on December 22nd. She will be greatly missed!!

She is now with my mom, grandparents, and aunt. I love how close our family is, when my aunt went into the hospital, we all kept in contact through Facebook, and it was amazing to see all the messages. From making sure she was warm enough, to making sure the family knew what was going on, and who was going to visit her. I unfortunately did not get the chance to see her. With her feeling better the Saturday I thought I would have time to head down on Monday and go straight to the hospital to see her, but unfortunately on the Sunday she passed away. The family took it really hard, and she will be greatly missed. She was one amazing and caring aunt.

We spent a week in Sudbury, and it was nice spending that time with family. This past week we have been at home enjoying our second week of vacation. I had a few physio appointments, hubby had to go for allergy shots, we went to visit his mom, and I took some time to de-clutter, clean, tidy up,  spend a bit of time in the kitchen, and made sure to take time to rest up as well.

I have been going to physio because I thought I had tennis elbow. My left elbow hurts to bent and extend. I have been doing some stretches, wearing a band, and trying to rest it up as well and it wasn't getting any better so my doctor recommended I go to physio. She doesn't think it's tennis elbow, she believes the source starts at my neck, cause I'm really tense there, and I have more tense muscles down my arm to my elbow. She's working on massaging and doing acupuncture in those areas to help. During the week in Sudbury it actually did get better, but now it's about the same again. I think I need to work on spending less time on my tablet and phone. I think the looking down and holding them is what isn't helping. If I am on my tablet or phone I try to keep it eye level, and try to rest my tablet on something so I'm not holding it with my left arm since I need my right hand to click. Hopefully with more time and appointments, it will get better.

While I was in Sudbury, my cousin and I did our ritual, which is hit Chapters. We both love that place! We love books and it's my zen place. I saw the new Joyous Health cookbook was out so I had to get it!

I put it in my recipe book holder cause I tried the very fist recipe in her book, the Applesauce spice breakfast muffins, and they turned out amazing!

The recipe says it makes 6 muffins but as you can see I filled them quite a bit and I still had a lot more batter left, so I made 8 muffins. The second photo is them all baked. We took a bite of one to try it and it's delicious!! They will make a great breakfast/snack for the week. We are off tomorrow as well, but we have a few errands to run, and then Tuesday we are back to work, so these will be great.

I also made the jambalaya, which instead of a mix of meats, I only put spicy sausage. It's one of our favorites, and I also bought a whole chicken to cook in the oven. I added spices to the chicken, and we had a nice salad with it. With the bones, I made a broth the following day and used that broth to make soup. I added some of the left over chicken as well to the soup. It's not the healthiest soup but I love making it once a year. It reminds me of my mom, and it always turns out delicious. We have more left over food to enjoy this coming week, but then the following week, I want to do a Joyous Health diet. It's not a diet, but it is about eating healthy, and I need that right now. Every recipe I have tried, is so delicious! I just got her third cookbook, which the first two I was able to get her to sign them for me, so I hope to get this one autographed as well. So with 3 cookbooks, and all the recipes she has online on her blog, will allow us to eat healthy for a long time. I often make the same recipes, or same sort of meals/snacks, so with trying out more of her recipes it will allow us to eat healthy and try new meals and snacks instead of eating the same things all the time. I'm excited to get started!

Over the holidays, I have been eating a lot of meat, and dairy, so it's one thing I will avoid for a while. Joy has a variety of recipes, from vegetarian, gluten free, dairy free but also some with meat. For those I can either omit the meat to make it vegetarian, or I can add seafood or tempeh instead. I'm surprised I haven't really had any endometriosis pain with all the meat and dairy I have been eating, but I don't want to get to that point of getting pain so it will be good for me to avoid meats and dairy for a while. I will then add in some meat but not to much to avoid pain.

This week we will have the time to empty the fridge, and other snacks/food we have, it will give me time to pick out recipes and get my grocery list ready to go get what I need towards the end of the week to try out new recipes for the following week. I will try to document it as much as I can and share it with you.

                                          Happy New Year everyone!!

More delicious food!

Since I had yesterday off, I took advantage of that time. I cleaned up the house, decorated for Christmas, and also made a banana bread with walnuts. It's been a little while since I made one and we both really love it! I also made guacamole, another favorite thing of ours to snack on.

Since it was black Friday as well I went to see if what I wanted was on sale, and unfortunately I was not successful in finding it on sale. I did find one a while back at a decent price and decided to go for it and bought it. As per the email I got, it's already shipped and should be delivered on Monday and I'm quite excited!

It's a medal hanger that goes on the wall. The top part is to put my bibs or photo's and then under that all my medals. I have them spread out on my bookcase and TV cabinet but it would be nice to display them well with this hanger. I did keep my bibs, not really sure why but glad I did cause I'll get to show them off as well.

Today I also got busy in the kitchen and I made these BBQ spiced nuts. The spices are from Epicure, they are new to the catalogue and there was 3 different kinds. I got one of each to try them out. Knowing my hubby would prefer the spiciness first, I decided to try them out. They turned out really good!

They will make a very good snack! To the right is some veggie muffin quiches. I sauteed some onion, mushrooms and spinach in a pan. I added some garlic, and for spices I added some smoked paprika, pizza seasoning from Epicure, turmeric and a tiny touch of salt and some pepper. I needed an egg white for the nuts so I put the egg yolk for the quiches. I added another 4 whole eggs, mixed in the cooled veggies and added two tbsp of nutritional yeast for more healthy goodness and it adds a cheesy flavor as well. I put them in the oven at 350 for 20 minutes. I haven't tried them yet but I'm sure they are delicious! They will be great for my lunch along with some vegetables and some banana bread as a dessert.

At the start of the week, our group at work went out for lunch at the Heart and Crown. They took off my favorite thing from their menu, the smoked salmon sandwich, so I had to find something else. When I saw the cod cakes I had to try them out, and glad I did cause it was delicious!!

So the two cod cakes were over some dill mashed potatoes, I had this sauce to go with the cakes which was very tasty, and some asparagus. It was a delicious lunch and glad it wasn't to much food.

Last weekend I made these

Carrot cake cookies from Joyous Health. I have made these before and they are so yummy! I don't add the raisins though cause hubby hates raisins, so I always add walnuts instead. These are nice and healthy, and so good! You can find the recipe here on her website. Hope you decide to try them cause they are very good!

Lentil Salad

I had a very busy weekend, but it was so much fun! I went with my dad and brother to Chatham to celebrate my aunt and uncle's 50th anniversary. It was a great turn out and wonderful to spend that time with family. I don't remember when was the last time we all got together and danced the night away, so it was a really great night! Since I have today off, I thought I would get a few things ready for the week and it started with a lentil salad.

In a pan I put 1 cup of lentils, and 1/4 cup of barley with 1.5 cups of vegetable broth and cooked it until tender. In a food processor I added half a red onion, 1 carrot, 1 clove of garlic and a bunch of cauliflower, I basically did a nice layer on top around the food processor.  I pulsed until it was small like rice and then I added it to the lentils/barley with a tsp of herb and garlic spice (Epicure). Once completely cooled I added a splash of basil olive oil (or put olive oil and fresh or dry basil), 2 splashes of apple cider vinegar, and 2 tbsp of honey mustard. I added a small dash of salt, some pepper and a half tsp of turmeric and mixed it all. I always eye ball, don't really measure, I taste and add more of whatever I feel is needed. I also took the time to put a bento box together for my lunch tomorrow

So I have my lentil salad, regular salad, a few slices of cucumber and some kimchi. I'm still trying to avoid meat as much as possible (except seafood) to avoid pain from endometriosis, and I'm also working on eating more vegetables since they are very healthy for us. This will be a delicious lunch and I can't wait to eat it!

Note that if you don't have Epicure spices, you can easily just add ground or minced garlic, some herbs of your choice, or omit it and just do a simple dressing that you really enjoy. 

I also did some baking today, and decided to have the Orange blueberry muffin tops from the Pioneer Woman. You can find the recipe here. I did make some minor changes to the recipe. I didn't have an orange to zest so I added some almond extract (about a tsp), and the only "milk" I have is almond milk so I used that instead of the buttermilk. Everything else was the same but instead of the juice of the orange, since I didn't have one, I added a bit of orange juice. They turned out great and will make a really great snack during the week. Her recipe says it makes 12 but I ended up with 18 of them. They are pretty big to so not sure why I had more but they are great and can't wait to eat them!

One thing I would like to do is try to come up with more interesting bento box lunches, keeping it healthy of course. I don't have to many ideas right now but I'm sure I will end up finding some.

Fall and soup

It's been a very long time since I have posted, so thought it was time I did. It's been quite busy with the mud girl run which I did with a bunch of ladies at work and my cousin. It was so much fun! I also prepared these two bento boxes at the end of August

I had made this lentil salad which was very tasty and up above is a chia pudding.

On a sad note, we had to put our kitty down about a week and a half ago (damn cancer!), and we still miss her so very much! She was an amazing cat! Tama was so friendly, cuddly and chatty

She will be greatly missed!!

Just after the long weekend (Thanksgiving), we headed up to Sudbury to spend some time with family/friends. The reason for the trip was to bury my mom's ashes. It's been over 6 years since she has passed away and I do still miss her very much! It was time though to have her buried in Sudbury so family and friends have a place to visit her as well. The service was really nice, and we all gathered for supper at our favorite spot in Hanmer. Then 4 cousins and I drove off to Sturgeon to do a haunted walk through a corn maze and haunted house. We had a lot of fun and did a lot of screaming, well most of us did lol   

It's been a busy weekend with working some extra time at work, spending some time with a friend to celebrate her birthday, and today been doing some house cleaning and of course spending time in the kitchen. Here's what I made:

It's a Carrot ginger soup that I made from Gwyneth's cookbook. I have had her cookbook for a while but decided to take it out again. Last weekend I tried her recipe of carbonara, and it was delicious! This soup was also amazing! We enjoyed it for lunch, and I have some left to bring for my lunch. It has a nice quick to it with the ginger and spices but nothing crazy. It has cumin, oregano and garam Marsala. This soup will be a must make again! There's more recipes in her book that I haven't tried yet but would like to at some point.

I also have stew cooking up in my cast iron pot. The house smells so good right now! I am still mostly following my endometriosis diet, but I am including meat here and there. I do love the taste of meat, so it's a once in a while treat to avoid pain. So far meat free today so the stew will be a great treat, and hubby can enjoy some left overs for his lunch.

I think I may be coming down with a head cold, I haven't been feeling that great all day, so the soup was great, and glad I have more to eat up. Hoping the ginger helps me feel better.

Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend!

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!