Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Fun fun food

Sometimes food is boring... like the black bean and corn salad we've had for supper every Monday for the past few years. But sometimes new ideas are found and I make them and they're delicious and new (bonus if they only take around 30 minutes!)!

Stuffed pepper deliciousness. Got this one from Ashy Bines. Its ground turkey, shredded zucchini, shredded carrot, onion and cheese at the bottom and top of the pepper. Good AND healthy. And quick too!
Ok maybe this ones not so much on the healthy side (but not the worst!) but themes are fun and this was southern style supper - bbq chicken, green and brown beans, corn and corn bread. Must be served with beer for full experience. This is a weekend kind of supper for us.
After a long time, I finally tried out cauliflower crust pizza. Its pretty simple actually... I think the most time consuming is cutting the cauliflower and food processing it. After its all chopped, I just added egg, parm cheese and some seasoning. It was a good healthy alternative for supper but we decided that if you're  looking for a pizza replacement that it doesn't quite do the "pizza" craving. Pitas would be better for that. But I will add this to our weekday supper line up!














Since the new year, Ive actually managed to make a weekly supper menu and kept to it... every week! It makes it so much easier during the week to know what we are having each night after work... and also for grocery money savings!

Saturday, February 18, 2017

Valentines Day with my Baby Valentine

This post is actually about Valentines day and activities that happened before and after that were loosely associated with the holiday!

The weekend before Valentines day, we had our friends over for breakfast/brunch and a Valentines craft (we were going to toboggan but it was a -10 degree day!). Logan here is doing his heart toilet paper roll painting.

 All the kiddo's creations! Some good hearts... some smudges.
And Logan had a play date with the L crew buddies before Valentines day - Landon, Logan and Levi! Best buddies since they were newborns. They are all eating fruit in this picture. Distracting with food is the only way to get 3 15-18 month olds to sit together!





This picture below makes me smile! Logan being the poop disturber that he is finds some cupboards he wants to open. His buddy Landon joins him to make sure he doesn't miss out on anything good and then Levi crawls his way over becasue he can't be left behind... This is the action shot! So friggin cute. Little boys are never up to any good.

Logan filling out all his Valentines for his friends at daycare! He made his little make on all of them! His Valentines were Peppa pig - it was between Peppa and Paw patrol and we thought we'd go with Peppa because of the popularity of Paw patrol... to be different from his friends (and one of the daycare kiddos had paw patrol!).
Logan with all his cards ready to go on Valentines morning. Also with his dress shirt - looking good for his Valentines at daycare! He crinkled his cards so much before giving them out!
<--- this was Valentines supper. I know.. a bit random. I had this great idea of taking the afternoon off work to make something yummy for supper. Then I worked until about 12:45... then I had to hit the gym. So it left not muc tim so I bought some odds and ends at Angelos since it was right beside the gym. I got the bruschetta, salads, pad thai, and Logan's special chicken pot pie (which he refused to eat... because he's recently given up all foods except yogurt, applesauce peas, raisins and peanut butter, which he'll sometimes take on a cracker or rice cake but mostly on a spoon). Also a red velvet cupcake and rum ball for dessert. Then when I decided we needed some meat to go with, I randomly got some meatloaf and pulled turkey from Remark. Im usually so good at coordinating my foods...
Logan brought home his own cupcake he made at daycare so we gave it to him after supper (and Aleksy and I shared the other half). He really liked the cakey part, but the icing he spit out.. too sweet I guess (is this my kid?)

Logan brought home his Valentines from daycare in a little paper bag that he decorated and he was obsessed! He loved the little cards he got and trying to put them in and out of the bag (with intervention because he was ripping the bag like crazy!). He was so enthusiastic about his little treats (he got some chocolates, Valentines, and some fruit snacks and a pencil!)

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Why April is going to be Awesome

Obviously April is awesome anyways because its my birthday and I really like my birthday, but this year its a little extra exciting because we booked our trip to Vegas!! This is the weirdest vacation to book.. I actually felt hesitation booking it because I knew it isn't a baby-friendly type of vacation :(

My goober is going to be away from us.. for 5 days!! He will actually probably be having his own little vacation at his Nana and Dziadeks... they are going to spoil him no doubt. We are going on a Monday and don't get back until Friday at 6am. There is going to be some serious baby missing when we're there! I have the week after off too though so I can catch up on the time I missed and have Mommy/son playdates.

But... so excited to finally get to Vegas! We have big plans to walk the strip and see a bunch of hotels (with maybe a little casino visiting but honestly not much), see hoover dam and the grand canyon and of course have some awesome quality time at the pool! We chose a hotel with an awesome pool too - Mandalay bay has a lazy river, multiple pools including a wave pool and a sandy beach! 2 months!


Thursday, February 2, 2017

Food and Wine Show 2017!

The tradition continues... drinking multiple glasses of wine with the family all before the supper hour! Sat Jan 21st was the show. The day started off a little unusual. I was all ready to go by around 11:15am and headed over to my Moms - Aleksy was driving us since we couldn't drive home. From there we headed over to my sisters for 11:45am - just in time to make it to the show when it opened at noon. But there was no sister at home! Sister was missing! We waited and even went to the bank and came back and then finally left for the food and wine show around noon to meet up with my Mother in law Lorraine.

We continued to get our glasses and start filling them with wine immediately - the routine. And my Mom found a make up stand with free "makeovers" & she took them up on it! She was very excited about the make up booth. They even had a photoshoot at the end.

All this happened before the sister texted or called back.

It seemed like the sitting this year was much more plentiful than other years - we landed a spot in this big sitting area a few times that day!

Here with our white and some forty creek cream (like baileys... yum!). Lorraine took our Mother-Daughter pic!
And through our wandering, I saw that the Icarus restaurant had a booth at the show and a friend who works there was working it and hooked me up with the goods - spanokopita and meatballs. Acmazingly delicious.

I'm so glad I stopped to eat this when I did too, because even though we absolutely insisted we would be better at buying food this year, we weren't. I only had this and some cheese. I came prepared having eaten breakfast this year though! The wine is so much more readily available!

And shortly after this... during a washroom break.. the call came in: 1:30pm. Steph has woken up and is getting ready to finally join us for the 12pm date! Ha!
We signed up for the first show of the day - the 2pm show at 1pm. We even asked them to save a ticket for Steph... you know in case she showed up.
Then when we got there at 2pm, there were no spots open! They overbooked! So we were lucky enough that we got 4 to the 3pm show, and Steph was able to go too.

Steph came around 2:30 and this was our 3pm wine tastings. These are sweeter wines... not our usual go-to's but good to try something different!
See... she made it!! 

And the filling of the wine glasses continued... we even switched to red for a bit at the end. This was an end of the day picture taken at 6pm just before we left. We found our favourite booth that filled the wine glasses double for the same amount of tickets too - score!

This year we noticed a few of things were different - The sister was only present for 2/3 of the time, Lorraine couldn't drink becasue of a Dr.'s orders, they didn't have the cheese tasting that they have every year (which is something we really look forward to because who doesn't love cheese with wine) and the Girls night out booth wasn't there!! Thats the fav booth - they even give us free softlips every year! Lots of differences this year!
The annual photobooth picture.

I do have to say this year I did a better job managing the wine. I stopped at 6pm, could eat lots of pizza upon my arrival home and hydrated before and after. I think Ive got this down...

Until 2018...