September?!

Wow, where did August go to?  That month went by so quickly.  I've had a health issue I've been dealing with and have become lazy with my posts :o

I'm still up on the Clean Eating and loving the fresh veggies this time of the year :) Fall has long been my favorite season but I'm feeling pretty good with summer right now.  It almost seems easier to eat healthy with the nice weather, cold weather might bring back my craving for unhealthy comfort food.  I need to research healthy alternatives to my favorites like Mac & Cheese, meatball subs, tatertot casserole.  Oh all those yummy choices!

This was dinner last night, Spaghetti squash with turkey sausage, scallions and sesame seeds with an olive oil, balsamic vinegar and soy sauce dressing.  Spaghetti squash is still new to me, I haven't used it much but it's delicious.  Oh, I may have to cook this again tonite, my mouth is watering looking at this picture again.

Lazy weekends are the best :)

I'm loving the Clean Eating!  It's taken a bit to get used to 6 small meals a day but that combined with all the water I'm drinking has me down 6lbs :D  I feel so good too.  I know it's because I'm finally getting properly hydrated, I never drank water before except maybe a sip or 2 to take something for a headache but nothing close to what I'm drinking now.

How's this for lazy...

poor Lucy, she fell asleep watching the driveway for boyfriend to show up, he's away for work for a month. 

I don't have a picture because they didn't last but we ate tomatoes from the garden last night!  yum yum! Little yellow cherry tomatoes.  I pruned the out of control tomato plants as well as a friend assured me it's the best thing for them.  Holy moly was it hard to cut off those lovely green stems. 

Clean Eating Day 1

Today went really well!  The biggest hurdle was eating breakfast, not something I do often plus adding a snack in before lunch :o I'm used to lunch being my first meal of the day. 

A little planning goes a long way.  I make a little time in the evening to write a menu for the next day and I picked up Clean Eating magazine tonight, wow! what a find :)

Oatmeal for breakfast with 2 egg whites then apple slices with almond butter for a mid morning snack, yummy almond butter has quickly replaced peanut butter as a favorite for me.

Spinach salad with tuna, carrots and balsamic vinegar for lunch.  This was a little bland with just balsamic so I added some sesame ginger vinagrette, much better :)  My poor browning banana and plum for a snack.  I miss my grandma's plum tree it just doesn't seem right buying them from the grocery store.

Dinner was tasty!  Grilled sweet potato with ground bison fried with garlic and onion.  I used a little garlic powder for seasoning and added dried cranberries for a some extra flavor. 

The one thing I did today which I also never do is drink water!  I drank 2L plus a nice big mug of green tea.

Eat Clean

So, this is starting Monday for me...

I have 28 weeks until my 40th birthday and have become so ashamed at how out of shape I've become I'm embarassed to say how much weight I want to lose.  My goal is to fit into this dress for my birthday, and I don't care if my birthday is February 1st and this is obviously a summer dress!

Cute right?  I found it here.  I love Etsy!

I saw a picture on Pintrest that said "I wish I was as skinny as I was when I thought I was fat" and then I found this picture of me 3 years ago

Holy schmoly, look how small my boobies are! and is that a waist I see?!  Oh, don't worry that me is on her way back! 

I'd love to try to post pictures and recipes here of good, clean food I make.  This weekend will be spent planning meals and grocery shopping!  (and harvesting my garlic I planted last fall, yay!)

Happy Canada Day! (aka Ogrefest around our place)

Happy 144th Canada!

and Happy 2nd Annual Ogre Fest!

Boyfriends nickname is the Ogre and I figured an annual bbq was in order, especially when our yard projects started to shape up and everything started to look so good. 

I'm hoping next year to have a band and eventually have Ogre Fest be an awesome Canada Day weekend campout/music festival.  Yep, that's me, the believer in big ideas!

There was a ton of food but the Jell-o shots were the prettiest, even virgin shots for the little kids

because really, every little kid need to learn the art of the Jell-o shot.  How cute is Kai? 

s'mores too, Erik's mouth is full of marshmallow or else he'd have one of his adorable smiles on his cute, chocolate covered face!

Here's boyfriend and his buddy who dressed the ogre part :D

Mother Nature had gotten the rain out her system, there were torrential downpours the day before.  This evening was pretty good thou, a little cloudy but no rain.  Certainly not the hot dry weather we usually have on July 1st. 

Now to get ready for Nolan's 16th birthday in a couple week.  Yikes, I'm having a little problem believing my son is almost 16 :o

Garlic Scape Pesto

Oh yummy!  I had used garlic scapes before but had always just fried them up with butter for pasta, I had never tried them in something as wonderful as this pesto!

And it tasted that much better having harvested the scapes off my own garlic.

The recipe called for 9 - 10 scapes.  I didn't know that cutting the scapes off your garlic will encourage further growth of the bulb.  What a good reason to try a new recipe.

Rinse the scapes in cold water and cut off the knobby seed pods (havent found a use for those yet so they ended up in the compost) and chop the scapes into pieces. 

When my mom asked me if I wanted her old food processor last year I almost said no thinking it would sit unused in my cupboard taking up precious shelf space.  It's a great kitchen tool to have, it works great for pie crust too (my nemesis) but somehow with the help of the food processor I can actually make pie crust!

Add the chopped scapes with 1/2 cup slivered almonds and blend until it's fairly smooth, about 30 seconds.  With the machine running, slowly pour in 3/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil and blend another 15-20 seconds.

My kitchen smelled so good when I was making this!

Add 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese with a little salt and pepper and blend a bit more

If you can resist, put this in the fridge for a few hours in a tightly covered bowl.  It tastes good as is but chilled it tastes so much better!

I had doubled the recipe and I'm going to try to freeze some.  It should freeze well for up to  3 months in an air-tight container.

Garlic Scape Pesto

9 - 10 garlic scapes, knobby seed-pods removed
1/2 cup slivered almonds
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Rinse scapes in cold water, chop into pieces.

Put scapes and slivered almonds into the food processor and blend for 30 seconds or until smooth.  Scrape down sides of bowl.

With the machine running, slowly add olive oil and process until mixed well and smooth, about 15 seconds.  Then add the cheese, salt and pepper and blend another 10 seconds or so.

This is yummy freshly made but it's even better when refrigerated for several hours or overnnight.  Place in a bowl with a tightly fitting lid.

These garlic scapes are only available for a couple months a year so if you can, buy lots and make a few batches of this pesto.  It will freeze well for about 3 months.

Snacks

I have this copied onto my phone and check it often at the grocery store.  Finding healthy satisfying snacks used to be hard, just hand me a list of what to eat and I'm all good. 


Greek yogurt and homemade granola has become my everyday breakfast, so tasty.

Lucy our pug

This is Lucy, she's 2 1/2 and just about the best dog you could ask for.  Except when she won't come when called, or get in the car when we want her to, or leave unknown things alone when she finds them in the bush, or pulls hard on her leash when we walk her, or bark at every horse, person, bird, or cloud that goes past the house, or chews on my sandals and runners when I'm at work.

We love her,

and wouldn't want her any different, well... :)

Curry Pork Burgers, you must try!

I found this recipe a couple years ago in Canadian Living magazine and I've made them so many times!  They're simple to make and so yummy fresh but you can freeze them too just wrap them well.

1 lb lean ground pork

1/2 cup chopped scallions (green and white parts)

1/3 cup feta cheese

2 Tbsp curry paste (I use red)

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 tsp minced ginger

1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced

1 tsp ground cumin

little salt and pepper

**the recipe called for coriander which I do not like all that much so I use scallions.

Mix everything together well and shape into patties, you'll get 4 patties.  Oh, and they'll smell sooo good by this point!  I cover them and put them in the fridge for about 10 minutes you can make these the night before but I wouldn't leave them sitting in the fridge any longer than a day. 

BBQ the patties until a meat thermometer reads 160 F

Serve with nice crispy lettuce and soft buns.



Grilled Red Onion

Simple enough to do but I'm often pleasently surprised how grilling brings out a different flavor in something I've eaten for years. 

Peel onion and cut into 1/2" thick slices.  I use a skewer to keep the rings in place.  Brush them with some olive oil, sprinkle with s & p and grill until softened about 10 minutes. 

Enjoy!

I love summer!

First garden party of 2012

Wow, it took long enough but we finally got in our 1st bbq of the year.  Damn weather :o 

We had a Roller Derby weekend with Camp Pivotstar coaches Luludemon and 8meanWheeler from Team Canada coming to coach us for the weekend!  It was a great weekend!  So cool and I learned so much, I am even more motivated to get my ass in gear and get my derby skills up. 

My derby sister Rachel Snyder took some great pictures of the bbq!

Check out her website, http://rsimaginganddesign.com

After the May long weekend.

The plan for the weekend was to get all the garden beds fertilized and planted as well as the fence built.  Once the fence posts were in we decided the pickets would look better if they were made out of driftwood also, so we've left it as is and will continue our driftwood hunting :)

I did manage to get all but one of the garden boxes weeded, fertilized and I added perilite to my clay soil.  I've now planted almost all of my seeds, I just need to build another trellis for more peas (you can never have enough peas!) We're going to build another garden box for corn too, I've never planted corn so I'm excited to see how it turns out.  The last garden box to be weeded will have my pumpkins and squash in it.  It's been pretty rainy and cold here so I don't feel as behind in my planting as I thought.  My tomatoes and hot peppers are all planted in the greenhouse and I'm thinking about planting a peach tree in the greenhouse too. 

This weekend we took a day to go on the garden tour around town.  So worth the $10 ticket to see other gardens and get some great ideas! 

I now want all my garden boxes to be like this...

Can you imagine how much easier it would be to weed and plant in these boxes?!  No more aching back.  I also found out my Mountain Ash tree I was given for free last year is in fact a Laburnum tree.  We have now moved it out of the veggie garden and into the yard as I was told the pods will drop and I'll have little volunteer trees starting in the veggies :o  Certainly glad I was told that before it got too big to move.  I did question why my Mountain Ash was getting little yellow flowers on it!

Oh, and just because she is so damn cute, here's a picture of my neice who was in town for the long weekend...

Planning stage almost done!

Boyfriend and I went to the beach down the road and dragged up 11 beautiful driftwood logs to use as fence posts.  Ok, he did the dragging I did the watching!  The fence posts are in and now I need to decide how I want the fence to look, spacing and height.  I'll post some pictures after this weekend.  What a lovely way to spend the May long weekend, fence building and planting more veggies! 

Maple Springs progress so far

I snapped a quick pic to compare to how the veggie garden has progressed since 2010.  I wanted a picture before I started building the fence around the beds.  I decided to make the fence a lot wider so I can add another row of 3 garden boxes.  I'm excited to get those fence posts in an be able to see how neat and tidy it's going to look!

This was taken in the spring of 2010  Boyfriend was a little hesitant with what I was starting to do to his yard :o

This was taken spring of 2012 just this past weekend.  The fence work will start the weekend hopefully.  Can't wait to post a picture after that's started!

Where the garden started from...

I decided in the spring of 2010 that boyfriend's back yard was a huge unused treasure!  Still renting a townhouse with no back yard or garden I was really excited to get my hands dirty. 

These pics show what it used to look like.  Can't you just picture it full of stone paths, hidden gardens, water features, arbors, cozy hideaways and lots and lots of veggies?  Ok, so my plans are big but over the last few years I've learned it's not going to happen all in one season. 

WOW!  See what happened to the yard after 1 year !?!  My big purchase that year was the Japanese Maple.  (shh, don't tell boyfriend but I spend well over $400.00 at the nursery that day!)  I was lucky enough to be given the name of a local lady who loves to spend her days gardening.  I cant' take credit for these flower beds, those were all Rita's doing :)  The veggie gardens are all our doing, I thought I was starting small with 6 but after year 2 I found it was a lot more work than I ever thought.  Every day I need to remind myself to get out there and weed. 

Here is the sandbox in the back yard that needs some TLC in the worst way.  We spend the weekend weeding it and making it a bit smaller, my plan is to put my new present from boyfriend in the sandbox area.  Wanna see the after pic? 

Well the almost after pic.  We have to find something to replace the logs as they're all rotten.  We chipped the bark off to clean it up a bit but next year the logs will be replaced.  Let me show you what my present was...

How lucky am I?!  I get a greenhouse :D  Dad is going to build me garden boxes to go around the greenhouse so I'll be able to plant sunflowers and sweet peas to grow up the greenhouse.  I'm researching a good climbing vine to grow up and over the greenhouse.  That black plastic is down killing the grass underneath.  The plan is to build a brick patio between the greenhouse and the veggie garden. 

Look what I forgot about until the nice weather came and I ventured outside to the garden,

my garlic I planted in the fall!

One last picture of the seeds I've started inside.  This weekend I'm going to turn the beds over, add compost and a little food and give my seedlings a nice bed to grow up in.

Hello :)

I have two exciting things going on that I want to have the chance to track along the way. 

First is my garden plan.  I'm on year 3 of transforming boyfriends back yard into a garden that's full of lovely colorful flowers and enough veggies to get us through the winter months, saving us money on groceries as well have give us a peaceful, beautiful garden.

Second, is our lifestyle change.  We don't eat too unhealthy right now but definately need to add more veggies and better nutrition to our lives as well as a regular exercise routine.  I'm hoping to remember to take pics of good meals along the way and share tips I've found.