Sunday, February 27, 2011

Mexican Wedding Fiesta!

I've been absent. But for good reason. I was in sunny, hot Mexico! And while it's nice to be back in my own bed, I half cried myself to sleep last night. Mainly because I was so tired (got home at 3am), but also because the week was that spectacular and I was sad to see it end.

The purpose of the trip was my brother's wedding. Secondary was I got to hang out with my best friend Amber and have a big ole family vacation! Just what a girl needs to re-energize.

Here are a few fave photos:






Friday, February 11, 2011

Holy Crap!

I'm a big fan of the show Dragons' Den on the good ole CBC. Last year the Dragons heard a pitch from a small company in British Columbia that sold a healthy breakfast cereal. The company = HapiFoods Group. The product = Holy Crap.

The Dragons loved it and bought into the company.

Recently my boss, another Dragon's fan, was talking about it at work. She had ordered some a while ago but recently ran out. So we decided to share an order. If you order 6 bags or more, the shipping is free – so we split and bought 3 each.

I had my first taste this morning. It tastes amazing! So delicious and chock full of goodness in the form of dried fruit, hemp hearts, chia seeds, buckwheat and cinnamon (that's it folks, that's all the ingredients!). The directions say to add one tablespoon to some yogurt or two tablespoons to some type of milk. I added it to my overnight oats and it added a wonderful sweet nutty flavour. So, so good. Tomorrow I'm going to try it on it's own.

Oh, and it's named Holy Crap for a reason... hemp hearts will make you regular... :)

You can order it via their site or recently I was in Rainbow Foods in Ottawa's west end and found it there in the granola/cereal aisle! By buying 6 bags directly from the company I paid $10.95 per bag. Rainbow's price, if I remember correctly, was $11 and change. However, to save from buying in bulk and waiting two weeks for it to arrive by post, it might be worth it to buy it at Rainbow.

P.S. Sorry about all the food posts lately, but that's what's on my mind!! Good, healthy, fresh food! Yum!

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Overnight oats

So maybe I'm new to the party, but I just discovered overnight oats, thanks in large part to Angela at Oh She Glows. What a yummy, easy morning breakfast routine!

You can check out the recipe over on her site, but the gist of it is this:
  • 1/3 cup of oats
  • 3/4 cup almond milk (I'm on a real almond milk kick these days but I suppose you could use milk of any kind)
  • a small banana (I freeze all my banana in chunks to use in smoothies, so I tossed in a few of those and it was fine)
  • 1/4 tsp vanilla extract (again ran out of vanilla over the weekend, so had none to add... still tasted ok -- mental note to self: add vanilla to shopping list)
  • 2 tbsp chia seeds 

Here's the before shot:


Wake up the next morning and it's formed a nice gloopy bowl full of deliciousness. Add some sweet to it in the form of a nut butter and maple syrup for maximum deliciousness!

After the overnight hours in the fridge, magic gloopyness occurs. It's hard to see the difference in the photo, but believe me, the liquid has all been absorbed into the oats and the chia seeds are all plumped up.


Try it! It's yum and requires little to no effort, which is of the utmost importance for my morning routine.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Brunch with the ladies

This past Sunday I had some of my favourite Ottawa gals over to my place for a special brunch. All but one wasn't aware of my plan of going back to school and thus I prepared a menu to help tell them my plans.

What a great day! I was so happy with how everything turned out. If you know me well enough, you'll know that I love to entertain! So the night before I set my table and found a neat new way to fold my napkins.



The menu was served as follows:


Here are a few pics that I captured of some of the dishes. I have to get better at taking more photos. When I went to find my camera to take these the previous photos on the camera were from over a year ago... terrible, I know!


Suffice to say that everyone went home happy, full and healthy! And in return I got the support of my some of my favourite and closest friends for my new endeavour of becoming a Registered Holistic Nutritionist.

Bonus for all!

Friday, February 4, 2011

Me and my Amberlina

Do you have a friend that you can't remember your life without? I have one. She's my Amburger. We met on the playground in grade one, or maybe we met in playing in the neighbourhood. I can't remember because I was only a 5 year-old a the time. That's right, Bambs and I have been friends for 25 years! And while we don't hang out on the playground anymore, nor do we live 3 houses away from each other, she's still my bestie and always will be.

I've lived in Ottawa since the 2002/2003 time period. Up until late 2009, I would always get to see her when I went to PEI. However, in 2009 she took up and moved her life out to Calgary – and I haven't seen her since October 3, 2009! That's a really long time! So I'm thrilled that she will be my date to my witness my lil brother get married in just over two weeks from now in the sunny, sunny Mayan Riviera.

My smart, funny, lucky-to-have-him-as-my-brother brother is getting married to an amazing, equally-smart, lovely woman and members of my family are all going to be together beaching and partying for a week together in the sun, but in all honesty, I'm most looking forward to hanging out with Amber.



Love you and miss you!