More soup!

I really love soup in the winter, it's so comforting and delicious. I decided to make like a minestrone soup. The recipe I got was from Joyous Health in one of her cookbooks, but the closest recipe I found online is this one. So the only difference is instead of butternut squash, it was sweet potato, and added in a can of beans, which I chose black beans for ours, and a few leaves of kale with stems removed, and I chopped it up so it wasn't huge leaves in the soup. The recipe also called for chickpea pasta, which I did add in. I didn't put in the zucchini cause he's not a fan, so I omitted that. I did use vegetable stock to keep it vegetarian for me. I unfortunately did not take a photo of the soup, but I have 2 mason jars in my freezer to enjoy another time, and kept some in the fridge which we enjoyed some for lunch today, and I had a bowl over the weekend as well. 

I did also make the banana caramel sticky buns, which I have made before on a previous post, so you can find the recipe here. I don't remember the last time I made them so it's been far too long and so glad I made them again. They are so yummy!

We celebrated our anniversary on Saturday, 28 years that we have been together. Normally I make a more fancy supper at home, but it's been a long time since we have had a date night. We have been to restaurants, but it's been forever since it's just been us two, so I suggested we try a new place close by called Browns socialhouse. I went once with work for lunch and the tiki tuna bowl that I had was so good!!! So I really wanted to go again and since he has never been, we decided to go there. We took our time, started with a drink, which I had a sangria, and then we got an appetizer, their cauliflower bites, which were very tasty with this spicy ranch sauce

After we had those we waited a while, then finally ordered our supper, which we both enjoyed.

He had the fish and chip, which I tried a bite of his fish and it was delicious!! Mine was called the dragon bowl, and I had it with tofu. Very yummy! And as you can see our drinks as well, I went with red wine, and he had a beer. Once we were done our drink and eating, we left not long after and we went to check out a place next door called Chocolats Favoris. We both never been in there, and we did get a few things to try out, some dark chocolate covered almonds, dark chocolate covered blueberries, milk chocolate cashews (cause they didn't have dark chocolate), and this small bar with rice crispy and like a caramel sort of coating on it. We tried a bit of each and all very tasty, and we do still have some left to enjoy. It was a really great date night for our anniversary.

I am a huge fan of bowls, we do tend to sometimes get bowls from Mad Radish, but they also do make very good burritos, so we switch it up. I have made some at home, but not much, and I would like to make more of them, cause I love the variety in there, so yummy! 

Tonight's supper I took out a chicken breast for him, and salmon for me, just not quite sure what I will make yet. I'm tempted to create a bowl, or just a salad, but I'll see what he's in the mood for. This morning I did workout, and got an added workout at lunch by going out to help shovel. He did use our snowblower, but still had to use a shovel a bit. Looking forward to winter coming to an end, I miss seeing the sun a lot more, and having warmer weather.

Hope everyone is having a great day!

Butternut squash soup!

So it's been over 7 months since my last post. I have been feeling a lot more tired and low in energy so I have been keeping things more simple. I'm starting to feel less tired, so I'm working on getting into the kitchen a lot more. 

So a bit of an update. Almost 2 years ago I think, I started to take a small dose of progesterone, cause it's been a few years that I keep getting major pains from an ovarian cyst, and when it hit, I was folded in two and crying cause the pain was so intense! In talking to my gynecologist, he suggested a progesterone pill (small dose) to see if it would help. I have to say it has been helpful, the pain from an ovarian cyst, when it hits, hasn't been as frequent and not as painful, and it actually has helped my endometriosis pain as well. I haven't been eating as I should be (no meat, no dairy) but I haven't had pain. The downside, I think it's causing me to lose more of my hair. There's a possibility that I now have PCOS and the reason I think that is because there's a high possibility that my hormones are not in balance since I did get a hysterectomy and only have 1 ovary remaining, and in reading up on PCOS, every woman that has it, has a hormone imbalance, I have some of the symptoms which is ovarian cysts, tiredness and loss of hair. I just got a call from my doctor's office and I see him next week, so I will bring it up to see what he says. I think I recall reading something on a way you can find out if you do have PCOS, so I'll see if I can do that and it would explain things. Last I saw my doctor I did stop taking the progesterone, as he suggested, and I don't seem to be losing as much hair, but I am still losing a fair amount. I have always had thick hair so it being this thin is a very new for me, and I really don't like it!

So, since I stopped that progesterone pill, I am getting more endo pain again. I do enjoy vegetarian meals and I do love seafood as well so it's going to be a nice change to cut back on meat. In terms of dairy, we have been eating a bit more cheese lately, but that too will be a good thing to cut back a lot on as my stomach doesn't like cheese very well either. 

So to start eating healthier and get back into eating more like I should be with endo, I made this delicious soup

I really do love butternut squash soup, and next to it is a biscuit, which I used the package from Epicure, so all I had to do was add the wet ingredients to make them, and they are delicious as well! For the soup, here's what I did:

I bought 1 butternut squash, peeled it, took the seeds out and then cut it into chunks and roasted it in the oven at 400 for 15 minutes which I also added an entire garlic wrapped in foil. After those 15 minutes, I took it out of the oven and added in a chopped onion, and sliced carrots (2), tossed everything and put it back in the oven for a half hour. Once I got those out, I added it to a pot, with a huge handful of spinach, put in some vegetable broth (entire carton), added a little water, then added some fresh herbs, thyme, rosemary and parsley all minced. I also added a little salt and lots of pepper. I let that heat through for about 10 minutes and then I put it in my blender until nice and smooth, I had to do it in sections cause it was too much soup for my blender. My hubby and I had some for lunch, then it filled up almost 3 mason jars, so 2 are now in my freezer to enjoy another time and the other I kept in the fridge and enjoyed it for a few more lunches. 

Yesterday I tried a new recipe, but forgot to take a picture of it, it was this kimchi, cucumber, noodle with shrimp salad, and it was really good! The sauce was delicious, it's tamari, rice vinegar, honey and some siracha sauce. You cook up some noodles, I used ramen noodles, but you can use spaghetti noodles or even rice noodles, chop up some green cabbage, green onions, and cucumber, add it in a bowl with the noodles once cooked, and also pan fry up your shrimp for a few minutes with a little of the sauce, then add in your shrimp and sauce and toss, and enjoy. It was very good. Got the recipe from the Clean eating magazine. 

I also have been trying to exercise more cause over the holidays I barely worked out. I do have plans to make a fish burger as well, I will try to remember to take a picture and share that. 

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday, and Happy New Year everyone!

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!

Pasta!!

I made something really good last weekend! I found a recipe in my clean eating magazine and I made a few changes, but it turned out really good, and it's something I will make again!

There is no pasta in this dish, the recipe called for spiralized zucchini, however my hubby doesn't like them too much so I swapped it for spaghetti squash. I used to use spaghetti squash pretty often instead of pasta, but it's been quite some time since I have done that, so it was great to have in this dish. The recipe for this is: 4 slices of bacon cut into pieces (I may omit next time to keep it meat free for me), and I added that to the pan to start cooking it, then chopped 1 onion, some mushrooms, I used cremini, and I used more than what they called for, they said 8 white mushrooms, but I used about double that, we really do love mushrooms. In the same pan I sauteed the diced onions and mushrooms for a few minutes, then added in 4 garlic cloves, minced, and sauteed that for a minute, then took it all out of the pan. I then added in some shrimp (instead of chicken), I used about 12 shrimps, and I cut them in half unless it was a really large shrimp then in three. I sauteed those a while, they were frozen so I wanted to make sure the water evaporated as well. I added everything back to the pan and added in a small can of tomato sauce, and 1 cup of coconut cream (put a can of coconut milk to the fridge for a while and when you open the can all the cream is on top, so you just scoop the creamy part, and not the coconut water at the bottom). Coconut water is great to add in a smoothie or to just drink like that. I already had some coconut milk in the fridge, so I just added it to that, which I use to make a London fog tea. So I made sure that the coconut cream melted and incorporated into the sauce, and let that cook for a bit while I minced up some parsley, and added that to the pan, then grabbed some fresh basil and roughly chopped that and added it. Oh I also added a touch of salt and a lot of pepper!

For the spaghetti squash, I just cut it in half length wise, and scooped out the seeds, and then added a bit of olive oil and added the squash cut side down to a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. I put it in the oven at 400 for about 40 minutes. I got that in the oven first while I got things set up for the sauce, so that the squash had some time to cook before I used a fork to scrap out all the spaghetti squash and I added it to the sauce. Spaghetti squash isn't thick so even though I added a full squash, it like disappeared into the sauce. It was still very tasty but it was almost like eating a vegetable tomato sauce lol. Even though, I would still make this again as is, maybe adding a larger squash or two small ones to have more in there, or even just adding some pasta, which we always eat brown rice pasta. I'm thinking a sweet potato spiralized and added to this dish would be delicious as well but like the squash it would probably get lost in the sauce, so maybe two large sweet potatoes would go well and would still be very tasty!

Today I was in the kitchen again and I made a banana bread, and my plan was to make vegetarian burger patties, but in reading the recipe from Joyous Health, she also said you can turn them into balls, like a falafel and bake them, so that's what I decided to do. We don't make as many burgers at home in the winter, and lately I have been in the mood for bento box type lunches, so I thought forming them into balls would be perfect.

They turned out great! This is very easy to make. I first took out my food processor and added in one large carrot and 1/4 onion to get that grated by turning on my food processor for a bit. Then I added in a can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed (she says 15 ounces, but mine was 19 oz), and in went some fresh parsley, and basil. I added 2 tbsp of olive oil, 2 eggs, a touch of salt and some pepper, and a tsp of chili flakes. I also added in 1/2 cup of almond meal and 1/2 cup of a mix of ground flax and chia seeds, and turned the food processor on until everything was combined. I then used a cookie scoop to get them on a parchment lined cookie sheet and in the oven they went at 350 for 15 minutes. Once cooled, I kept a few in my fridge to enjoy this week, and I put the cookie sheet in my freezer to get them to freeze up before adding them to a Ziploc bag, this will prevent them from sticking together.

It made a lot so when I want some I just have to take them out of the freezer and warm them up to enjoy. These would be great in a salad, eat as is, or even in a wrap.

For bento boxes, I have put two together so far, yesterday and today, but I'll be making more next week as well. I will be making them all different, and hubby is interested in having some as well, he just hasn't had any yet. The mix of foods I have for my bento boxes are: Lentil/cranberry/almond salad, coleslaw, mix of veggies (sweet peppers, snap peas, cucumber, and carrots with humus), kimchi, the vegetarian balls that I have now made, and I plan to boil a few eggs for some hard boiled eggs. I was thinking to also do half sandwiches, with either tuna salad or eggs salad, I also have a few fruits that we can have (prunes, pears, nectarines, blueberries or apples). I also have some healthy seedy crackers that I can put either blueberry goat cheese on them or cashew cheese. We can even enjoy a small slice of banana bread in our bento box. I will see what I'm in the mood for, and just add a few different things and get to enjoy a nice mix of different foods for our lunches.

I haven't been doing so good with exercise this week considering we are fighting off a cold, but I'm almost all better, so I'll be getting back on track. Tonight's supper will either be the sweet potato pad thai, or a vegetarian fried rice, with this cucumber salad that I saw watching Girl meets Farm on the food network. The cucumber is spiralized, and you saute a few veggies, and she added a bit of ground chicken but I will skip that step, I try not to eat to much meat since it causes me endometriosis pain. I may add some shrimp, but then you also make this sauce, I know there's soy sauce to it, but I don't remember what else, but I have the recipe written down. I'll see which once he wants to have, and go from there.

Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend!

Fall cooking/baking

 As I have mentioned, I love fall, and here's why

I love the colors and leaves on the ground, and it's a bit cool so makes walking/running nicer. There's not a lot of color with the leaves here but it's still pretty.

My friend and I also got together to do some cooking/baking and we were very tired by the end of the day, but we had so much fun! It started with cinnamon buns

They turned out amazing! They were so delicious! We shared one to try it out, and split the rest between the two of us. The guys also enjoyed them. Then we got busy with some turkey pot pies

We got a small turkey with no wings or legs, and put that along with some red wine, stock and herbs in her pressure cooker, and 15 minutes later it was ready! The stock was very flavorful so we of course used that for our gravy. We added in some onion, celery, carrots, mushrooms, peas and potatoes to our pies. The turkey was shredded with forks, and let that cook a while. We did have to add more stock, some milk, and more herbs/spices to help get more flavor. We added it to a single size serving containers and topped it with puff pastry. They turned out really good! We each got 7 of these single servings, so I kept two out and the rest I put in my freezer for another time. Both my hubby an I enjoyed some for supper a few days later along with some salad.

We were suppose to make apple strudels next, but we used more puff pastry than we thought we needed for the turkey pot pies. We didn't feel like going out to get more puff pastry so we did some research and found our next recipe to try out. We made some apple, butterscotch and oatmeal cookies

These turned out really good as well! It made a lot of cookies too! The following day I was going to my dad's for Thanksgiving supper, therefore I kept a few cookies for my hubby and I, and brought the rest to my dad's. They almost all disappeared, everyone loved them. My dad also had a mix of desserts which I couldn't resist on eating a brownie, which was delicious!

Thanksgiving supper was so good! It was so nice to spend it with family as well. I hope everyone else had a wonderful Thanksgiving.