Tag Archives: recipe

Here’s to a special day dedicated to honouring some very special women:

Happy Mother’s Day

to my dearest Mom & best friend,

and to all the wonderful mothers of the world. You have the most important job there is :)

[Last year pic. I think we need an update!]

We had a nice little day of quality family time, starting with French toast babies for breakfast.

Mumsy insisted on adding a strawberry for a visually aesthetic pop. Mom gets what Mom wants on Mother’s Day!

Mom and the Bro reheated their wee toasts after my drawn-out photo session. Apparently they’re not quite as accustomed to the food photographing ways of consuming cooled off meals.

Post-toast food coma, Mom and I headed to Costco – the highlight of the day, of course. Our fridge is now jam-packed with spinach, tomatoes, snap peas, apples, hummus and Greek yogurt.

My lunch was jam-packed with some of the same plus cabbage slaw, carrots, mushrooms and leftover rice and chicken, compliments of the plain old grocery store, only half as exciting as Costco/food heaven. This meal is noteworthy, though, in that it was the first meal of the year enjoyed outdoor-style!

Today was gorgeous – sunny and warm, the perfect gift for sun-loving mothers. We all spent a bit of time this afternoon soaking up some rays and Vitamin D, and I experienced the most relaxing moment I’ve had in a long time during a short but perfectly perfect backyard half-nap. Oh my gosh I never wanted to get up again. It was glorious.

But alas, a sweat session and some homemade pizza dough were calling.

We’ve been wanting to try pizza from scratch for ages. Considering Mom had mentioned wanting pizza for dinner only a couple nights before, seemed like an opportune time to make it happen.

So decorate-your-own-pizza night it was!

This recipe served as our dough.
Never mind the fact that I used one year expired yeast.
It was good regardless. Fresh yeast likely would have made it awesome. A very first attempt at homemade dough that turns out ‘good’ is a-okay in my books…

…and I will be picking up fresh yeast next round.

My lovely little pizza pie was topped with pizza sauce, garlic powder, oregano, a sprinkling of mozzarella and feta, baby and sundried tomatoes, and a few dabs of pesto.

Mom and Bro eagerly cut into their pizzas.

Check it out, Mom’s on the left is a <3. Cute.

We finished up the day with an evening jaunt to soak up the last rays of the day and to help settle the pizza stomachs.

It’s now about time to conk out and my stomach is still pizza-stuffed. Now that’s a pizza!

Happy Mother’s Day!

I hope all of you mothers out there enjoyed your special day :)

How to Get Through That Essay

April 8, 2011

Uncategorized

11 Comments

You know how you have that essay* (*insert relevant dreaded writing task here) just sitting there waiting to be written but you can’t seem to bring yourself to do it. You want nothing more than to just not do it at all. You will it to write itself…but it doesn’t happen. The one and only option left is to suck it up and do it. But it’s just so unappealing…

What to do, what to do…

How do I get through it?

Clear out the Google Reader. I took breaks between writing probably every…10 minutes? For the first time in what felt like months I finally managed to get mine to below 100 unread. That only lasted for about a day. But that aside, those little frequent breaks help me stay sane. Sometimes it’s great to just pound as much out as you can all in one go but for those tasks you’re really struggling with (This was the last essay of my undergrad career… I just was not feeling it!), little doses of blog sunshine make it a little less dreary.

Greens, greens, the magical … vegetable. The more you eat the more you’re…stable. The more you’re stable the better you feel, so eat your greens at every meal.

Greens = Brain Power!

Mocha Green Smoothie. Love the addition of an instant coffee packet. This tastes like a liquid chocolate-covered coffee bean.

Hence why I had it two days in a row.

+ Lots of Sanitea

Feta makes all greens 10x better.

Taking last sips of leftover very green spinach smoothies and adding them to plain yogurt and frozen mango is also pretty darn good.

Greens topped with TUNA = super combo.

Fish Brain Fuel.

Clearly greens are the ultimate base. Seriously, what can’t you top them with?

Cottage cheese, mac & cheese, salsa…minus cheese.

And when you finally get sick of the greens…bake some Banana Pumpkin Muffins. A taste bud and essay break in one.

Along with some sanitea, add a hot water bottle into the mix to ensure maximum comfort and warmth while trying to write that darn essay.

(weheartit)

Do NOT, however, attempt to let extra air out of the water bottle over top of your lap after you’ve just added the boiling water in mere minutes before. This is likely to result in massive leg burns, some sobbing and being stuck with a bag of frozen peas glued to your leg for the next hour, defeating the purpose of having the hot water bottle to warm you up in the first place.

(weheartit)

Trust me on this one.

I also recommend cereal breaks… if you have any willpower. If you’re like me and you don’t…burn your cereal boxes! If you think you see a lot of greens up above, they’ve got nothin’ on my cereal intake.

(weheartit)

And when you’re done, you’re DONE.
Read it over, print it, hand it in, get that dirt of your shoulders. Celebrate!
Then start studying for exams.

Hope you’re all doing wonderfully with your essay writing, exam studying, working lives and/or whatever else might just have you all tied right now.

TGIF

Hello April!

April 1, 2011

Uncategorized

18 Comments

So who got a prank played on them today?

(weheartit)

My friend sent out a mass text late last night telling everyone he won a car in Tim Horton’s Roll Up the Rim gig. Everybody’s obsessed with Roll Up the Rim around here so this would be a big deal. I almost fell for it but I was skeptical. Not because it was April 1st (definitely didn’t even realize at that point) but because he’s just the type of person to say something like that to be funny. I demanded a proof pic. This was his Facebook picture today:

Hardy har har.

The only other prank I experienced today was People Style Watch magazine trying to tell me that Snakeskin is in this Spring. I’m down with my animal print but snakeskin is one trend I highly doubt I’ll be wearing on my body any time soon.

While reading about strange fashion trends this morning, I ate a Julie-fied egg white omelette (egg whites mixed with cinnamon, vanilla, pinch baking powder) stuffed with peanut butter hummus and SF raspberry jam.

So.

Darn.

Delicious.

So we’re here at Friday already. So we’re here at APRIL already!
This week flew by.
This MONTH flew by.
Heck, this whole SEMESTER flew by, this is the last full week of classes of winter term! I don’t believe it. I do have one last class Monday evening but other than that, dunzo. Well, minus the essay I have due next week (should probably get on that sometime soon…) and the 4 exams spread throughout the month.
But otherwise… Adios Undergrad?!? What?!

Aside from finishing up most of my classes, what else went down this week?

A bit of Hair Curling Action.
For those of you interested in how the Sultra curling iron works (just got it for my birthday), here’s what came out of my second hair curling attempt:

It does take some getting used to and I’m still no pro but the whole head of hair took about 10 minutes to do.

Word of advice though if you ever get one for yourself, or any high heat styling tool for that matter– Use as directed & BE Careful.

Aka if they give you a heat glove, use it. Not that that protects forearms…

I got this burn the first time I used it and it is still very much unhealed. That thing is HOT.

Along with unsightly burns, I also suffered a case of pink eye this week. I looked ~~very much~~ not at all like this.

(weheartit)

It was much uglier and nastier. Who gets pink eye, seriously? I’ve been putting drops in all week but the whole top half of my eye is still a bit yellow and red. The never-ending pink eye? Or something worse… I don’t know if I want to know.

Now that we’ve got that nasty body talk out of the way, no better way to follow it than with some appetizing foods, am I right?

Along with trying out my birthday prezzie curling iron, I also tried out my new peanut flour…by making an Inside-Out Peanut Butter Cup Cake.

If you have access to a bag of peanut flour, you must make this right now. Just do it. I demolished half of this while it was still piping hot from the oven.

And somehow managed to save the rest for later.

And speaking of flours, I also played around with some coconut flour using this gluten and dairy free muffin recipe as a guide.

Except mine were definitely not muffins. Introducing the Coconut Blobs.

1 cup coconut flour
2 T coconut oil, melted
1 T agave nectar
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 egg whites
dash sea salt
Roll into blobs. If you want to be like me, throw them into a muffin tin. Totally unnecessary though. Just a baking sheet would do.
Bake at 350 for ~15 minutes. Make 10-12 blobs.

Coconut flour is really hard to bake with. I think I’m sticking with pancakes for the remainder of the stash.

In order to try to fix my messed up eye, this week I’ve been eating my weight in roasted squash, cereal, and hummus.

Oh wait, that was just to fix my appetite.

I hate this cereal. It’s only in my life because my brother likes it so it has to be in the cupboard at all times. I do not like it but somehow my hand finds itself in this box nearly every day. Rude.

Costco hummus stash just about fully demolished.

I roasted the biggest buttercup squash of life this week and ate it at almost every meal. Along with a lot of spinach apparently.

I’ve been a bit squash deprived lately. So glad it’s back in my life.

What’s the Best April Fools Day prank you’ve ever played or experienced?
I don’t think I’ve ever actually played one. Goal for future years? Oooh yeah.

Would you wear Snakeskin? The fake stuff of course.

Do you LOVE April? Heck yeah Spring. Now if only the rest of the snow would take a hike…

Midterms No More

March 9, 2011

Uncategorized

26 Comments

As for about 6:00 today, I finally finished all of my midterms. Done, adios, sayonara. I hardly even know what to do with myself now that I don’t have piles of notes to highlight and textbook chapters to read.

Oh wait. I should probably get started on that research proposal paper and visual analysis project that are due in the next few weeks…School sure knows how to keep you on your toes.

But not tonight. Tonight I shall:
Blog
Paint my toenails
Catch up on Jersey Shore
Go to bed before midnight
The small luxuries that I haven’t been able to enjoy since reading week ended.

I should probably stretch too, since I’ve been sitting/idle for about 90% of the past two weeks. Bump on a log represent.

Not gonna lie, I don’t have a ton to say or anything exceptionally special to show since I’ve literally just been studying for days.

A sampling of my eating on a midterm day – Today I ate:

Spinach tuna wraps with an orange for BREAKFAST. Why not right…
Tuna was mixed with a little light mayo, a little light sour cream, a little dijon mustard.

This was after a small bowl of Vector cereal.

Yeah lunch definitely came early after that “meal”.
So what was LUNCH?

A small piece of toast topped with hummus and tabbouli

A bowl of unsweetened applesauce, cottage cheese, Multigrain Cheerios, a few soaked cashews and a blob of peanut butter dessert hummus.

And several bites of this rendition of Carrie’s Chocolate Tofu Brownies. Rendition meaning I halved it, arbitrarily measured ingredients, didn’t add quite enough sugar and didn’t cook it quite long enough. I’m pretty sure I could have devoured the whole thing pre-baking though. This dough was basically pudding. Mmm.

I also had a big, crunchy apple at some point.

Oh and a ~~spoonful~~ fingerful of peanut butter probably after every single “meal” and snack throughout the day. I’ve been doing this a lot lately… no wonder I feel cushy, that’s a lot of peanut butter!

After writing my midterm I came home to the smell of chili. I’ve never been a huge chili fan but despite this fact I couldn’t keep the spoon out of the pot. Eventually I scooped it onto some steamed broccoli and spinach and topped it with Frank’s. Ballin.

And then I was back to the peanut butter. After a mini bowl of yogurt, muffin and more dessert hummus. Among other things.

I feel like I need expandable pants. Sweatpants time.

I’m pretty excited not to have to be completely glued to my chair anymore now that midterms are done. I’ve been getting pretty antsy. My legs hate me! So does my body in general. Stress just does a number on the body, doesn’t it. I have the worst cold I’ve had all winter. Hence the extra need to get to bed before midnight (as mentioned atop in my small luxuries list).

But first, I have a date with the Jersey Shore crew.