Meatless Monday - Falafel disaster......

This is our first Meatless Monday. Why are we doing it? Well 3 reasons really...

1.) To be healthier
2.) To reduce our carbon foot print
3.) To expand our horizons!


I first read about this organization in this months Macleans... Funnily enough it coincided with a lunch at Island Chill and new vegetarian eatery in Gore Bay. Now I don't consider myself narrow minded by any means... I have traveled all over the world and LOVE food, so I will try anything! (unless super spicy) I was amazed though when I went to Island Chill that I had no idea what to order on the menu... I had no idea what Tofu tastes like, or a hemp burger? I mean if I am in a restaurant and I have a choice between a hemp burger or an 8 oz steak.. I pick the steak! I felt really silly... I ended up having a Panini filled with home made roasted red pepper hummus, red onions, olives and feta and a bowl of the most amazing veggie barley soup. All tasted amazing, full of flavour and of course fresh yummy veggies! AND HOME MADE!! Doesn't get any better than that!

I decided for my first Meatless Monday to make Falafels. Should be easy right? Grind up the chick peas, fry them stick in pita bread with salad... tadaaaa!!! Not so much. So this is what I ended up with... sludge in the bottom of a pan filled with oil. I tried breading them because I thought maybe they were too wet and needed something to dry them out... (those are the ones with the more golden brown coating - still sludge in the middle) No luck. My cooking skills do not extend to bread or falafels. Luckily however I live across the street from the grocery store and I was determined not to give up on my first Meatless Monday!!!!

Blue Menu Veggie Lasagna it was!!! So I invite you to follow me on Mondays.. I am going to do a 'meatless' post and discover vegetarian cooking! I'll post my triumphs and disasters and I am determined to stick to it!! Even if it means more Blue Menu!!! I am also open to any great vegetarian recipes you may know of that I can give a whirl!

Lights out???

I was going to blog yesterday about Earth Hour 2010 and remind everyone to turn out their lights.... Last year I also posted pictures of houses in darkness. I wasn't feeling too great, my head was pounding and I basically spent all day on the couch... BUT I did turn out my lights for Earth Hour.... Did you??

Canadian Cancer Society Relay For Life! Make a donation!

My work colleague Nancy is doing the 'Relay For Life' in June in memory of her mother, Marina Sloss that passed away just before Christmas. The Canadian Cancer Society Relay For Life is an overnight non-competitive relay that celebrates cancer survivors and pays tribute to loved ones. It's a night of fun, friendship and fundraising to beat cancer.

You can click on this link to make a donation by Visa, MasterCard or American Express. It's easy to donate online (it took me two minutes) and you get a tax receipt emailed to you. Nancy and her team members of sisters and family members have a goal of $1200.00 to reach so lets help them achieve it!

http://convio.cancer.ca/site/TR/RelayForLife/RFL_ON_even_?px=3417421&pg=personal&fr_id=5440

Green velvety heaven???

With St Patty's day being tomorrow I thought I would make something green! I am not really into (green) beer and green wine somehow doesn't seem really appealing... we have company coming and I am making Irish Stew so green cake it is for desert! Caleb decided today that he wanted to stay at the baby sitters, now that he is in school I guess he is not getting enough Jeanie time! With Caleb gone for supper it is the perfect time for me to do something fun with Mason just the two of us! A little while back I made a shamrock cake for someone's birthday so I had the cake pan already. Perfect!! A few posts back I made red velvet cupcakes and they were amazing ( so when I was blog surfing the other day I noticed Bakerella had made green velvet cakes substituting the red food colouring for green. Look familiar??

So I decided to make a green cake for supper and a batch of cupcakes for the kids at Jeanie's tomorrow topped with cream cheese icing and of course (the best part if you are a kid) green sprinkles!Get ready to drool Nat!!........

One last post before bed...

I have to share something else yummy with you!! I just baked a warm gooey apple pie.... It's not for me though, a birthday treat for someone else! I never even liked apple pie before I met the Laing family at Cidermill Farms. They make the best pie ever and I am always trying to create it just the way they make it! It is piled high with apples and topped with a brown sugary crumble. I worked for the Laings on their farm, they are now my closest friends, family and I miss them like crazy. Whenever I visit I always say... 'I only came for the pie'. I stuff my face with it when I am there and make sure I bring some home too! (and I wonder why I am so fat!) I have two huge apple trees in my yard so I tried to pick, peel and cut as many apples as I could (before I got bored) to freeze so that I could make some pies. I always do this very ambitiously picking crates of apples which I then end up giving away as after peeling 2 Ziploc bags full I am kinda over it.

Apple pie the way I make it is really easy... I think the worst thing about making pie is fiddling with pastry. So buy the crust.. just get a frozen tenderflake at the grocery store. Next I pile in the apples with sugar, cinamon, fresh lemon juice and little flour and at this point I either freeze it or load it into the pie shell.

Crumble topping - super easy..... 3/4 cup brown sugar, 3/4 cup flour & 1/3 cup butter. Pile on top! No fiddly pastry on top... see? super easy!!! and super yummy!!!


Bake and that's it! It's not quite a Laing pie... But it's as close as I am going to get until my next visit!!Ok now I am going to bed!! Goodnight!

Dinner with NO KIDS!!!

I love my boys dearly... let me just say that but do you know how great it is to get some 'grown up' time?? We went to Todd & Perry's for dinner on Saturday night.. just the two of us!!! Walkin' down the street, holding' hands... and not screaming "don't touch that" "come back here" "do I need to count to three??"... it goes on and on you know the drill right? 3 hours of dinner, wine, buzz quiz and more wine in peace :) And... Perry made my fav.!!! Chinese food!!


Check out the funky 'beginner' chop sticks!

And... I am sure he knows by the amount of photos I took that I am going to blog about it! LOL Have you see the latest Food and Drink magazine?? It's got to be the best ever... It's got some yummy cupcake & desert recipes made with Baileys, different liquors... I spent hours drooling over it with my coffee on Saturday morning thinking up events and dinner parties that I can make all these yummy deserts for.... my sister would be in cupcake heaven!


The one recipe that stuck out in my head was a drink with ice cream, Tequila Rose, vodka and blended with ice.... Soon as Todd and Perry happened to have all those ingredients I promptly went about making it....
Hmmm I have a whole new love for Tequila Rose... See even my hubby traded his manly beer for a girly drink!!


Getting back to the night with no kids, we are very blessed to have two wonderful friends and even when we don't realize it, they know that we need some time away to kick it & relax with the 'grown ups'! Thanks guys :)

Boys will be boys...

Just had a major disaster.... Sean got up and lit a fire in the wood stove, we're sat watching TV and I thought that it smelt funny in the house.... I went over to one of the wood stove vents and it really smelt funny! Sean couldn't smell anything at first but finally he realized what was going on! There are two vents in the floor for the heat to come up from the wood stove, the kids have been dumping their toys down them, the one had pretty big holes to fit things in... He realized that there is actually something on top of the wood stove (which is encased) burning. As soon as he realized that the smoke that started coming out of the vents in the floor was crazy. I can now imagine what it would be like if your house was burning down... Just as all this madness is going on Todd walks in for a coffee and thinks we have a chimney fire.. we are now all in panic mode!


They rip the metal off on the front wood stove off and there melting away - an offending golf ball. Not only had the little shits been dumping toys down there but all my OPI nail polishes, I now have one left and a colorful pile on the floor in the basement....

This one's for you Nat!!!

My sister, after 4 1/2 years of blogging just discovered my blog.... She read the entire thing and is now bugging me for a blog post for her to read. I have a huge headache and am not feeling terribly inspired to write anything so I thought I would post a few pictures from hunting season on the Island. Luckily I had my camera as I was running into the grocery store this day and I thought as I snapped this shot "only on the island"!! So Nat this is for you.. Just to gross you out (and I know it will)!!!!

P.S. Someone did give me a venison roast to try out so I am going to cook it and I will post about it when I do. I have never had a venison roast or tried to cook one so it will either be great or a disaster!! I saw a Jamie Oliver show on TV where he cooked a venison tenderloin and it looked amazing so I made sure I got my hands on one!

RIP Tugboat

Wednesday is hockey night!!

Wednesday is hockey night.. I have to post some videos because these kids are so cute!! This one is an exercise they do where they line up and have to shuffle sideways... I love this one because you can see how little they are with all their hockey jerseys almost at their knees!! So cute! FYI Caleb is #3 and he has blue socks on! May help you recognize him!



I laughed my head off when I caught this one on camera. They are doing a squatting exercise but I think when it was demonstrated Caleb thought he wanted a hug (?).. what can I say he is a love!! But the funniest thing is that all a few of the other kids seemed to think it was a good idea and joined in on the hug fest! SO funny!!



Ok so the last one is Caleb shooting the puck in the net.. Too cute!!!

A Tug Update.....

So we went back to the vet on Friday... The vet thought he looked like a completely different dog. She thinks he may have been having muscle spasms or a pinched nerve the other day which is why he was howling in pain as he is now moving around better. She thinks he still has cancer and he still has blood in his stool. She gave us some medication to try for a week to see if he has an ulcer that is causing the blood in his stool. If we can fix that good news, if not then bad news and we may be saying goodbye to him. It is going to happen soon, but for right now she said he is not ready to go and is not in pain or suffering so he gets to get spoilt and pampered before we have to say goodbye to him. Either way it is going to happen and probably sooner than later.. I guess we will see what the end of next week brings....

Red Velvety Heaven...

I decided tonight to make Red Velvet Cupcakes with the boys for Valentines Day. Usually we would just make sugar cookies so that they can go crazy with the sprinkles but I have been DYING to make a red velvet cake! Cupcakes are always easier with the kids, the perfect size for them to eat and decorate. Also I don't have a huge cake staring at me in the kitchen begging me to eat it. Cupcakes can be handed out to Grandma and Grandad, the Uncles and anyone else leaving less for me to eat in the kitchen!

I looked on the Internet for a recipe to use and found a ton... so I picked two trusty ones, a Martha recipe and a Paula Deen recipe. I figured you can't go wrong with one of those! I was feeling pretty brave to bake cupcakes with the kids and an alarming amount of red food colouring!

Isn't that colour great!! I read online that you can substitute the red food colouring with beet juice... I might try that next time.

The best part about baking - licking the beater!!

Mason making sure that he doesn't miss any of the cake batter, good job the stove top isn't hot!


Out of the oven and ready to cool for icing! I made the bream cheese icing but I also found another recipe online that had a meringue icing that looked good.

Here are the cupcakes... I have a ton of cream cheese icing left over so I may have to bake another batch tomorrow!! :)