Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Festive Weekend

This past weekend was just lovely.  We woke up on Saturday morning and made some festive coffee and breakfast.

 
 

We've both been eating 1/2 a pomegranate a day lately (at least 2/3 cup arils each).  We are hooked.


After breakfast we lit a Woodfire candle (which smells ahhhhh-mazing), and started decorating the house and Christmas tree.


It didn't take long, and we were soon enjoying peppermint lattes.


The Christmas tree sprinkles made them even more fun!

After relaxing with our lattes, Christopher sipped almond nogg, and supervised my cookie baking.  We decorated them together - nothing fancy, just a quick flood with royal icing, and some sprinkles.


So yummy!

The rest of the day was spent watching movies and having snacks.


Olive tapenade is our new favourite addition to a snack plate.

On Sunday morning Christopher cooked up breakfast ...


Then we spent the rest of the day wrapping gifts, relaxing, and snacking instead of cooking.


We liked our weekend of snacking so much, that on Monday evening we also had snacks for dinner.


Tonight we're cooking spaghetti and meatballs, but I'm thinking that there will be a lot of snacky days in December.  We always have fun shopping for goodies at the end of November or beginning of December and stocking the fridge, pantry and freezer with tasty treats that we don't usually eat throughout the rest of the year.  The weeks leading up to Christmas are always tasty.

How was your weekend?  What did you do?
Do you buy different snacky foods around this time of year (cheeses?  nuts?  chocolate?  frozen goodies?)

Saturday, November 26, 2016

Happy Weekend

It seems like the week just flew by, and we're pretty excited for this beautiful weekend.  The sun is shining, there is no snow on the ground, and we're stayin' in all weekend.

During the week we had a lot of good eats.  On Monday evening we cooked up some salmon, with a beet/potato side, and some salad.


While that was on the go, Christopher prepared some chicken/broccoli/ginger noodles to take for our lunches for the start of the week.


On Tuesday evening we had a delicious Korean dish, dak galbi:


Wednesday's dinner was beet perogies, before we headed out on the town to do some Christmas shopping.  Christopher went south, and I went east, and we met back at the house around 8:00 p.m.


On Thursday evening we pulled a pizza from the freezer and cooked that up to snack on between cleaning rooms all throughout the house.  After cleaning and scrubbing from top to bottom, we hit Costco, Bulk Barn, and the grocery store, getting all of our errands done so that we could just enjoy the weekend with no responsibilities.

On Friday evening we had haystacks for dinner.  It had been ages since we had this Mexican-inspired comfort food.  We layered rice with cheese and taco-spiced ground beef:


We then topped that with all our favourite taco fillings (green olives, black olives, cilantro, salsa, sour cream, jalapenos, crushed tortilla chips):


We also made some granola while the meat and rice were cooking ...


This weekend we're having a festive weekend at home, complete with decorating, snacks, bevvies, and baking

How are you spending the weekend?  
How was your Thanksgiving my lovely American friends?

Monday, November 21, 2016

Last Weeks Eats

Last Monday evening Christopher cooked up a Thai green curry, with shrimp and ramen noodles. 

 

While he was making that, I whipped up a very moist banana cake, with a lightly sweetened, cream cheese icing.  I will definitely make this cake again.  I used this recipe, but did a different, less-sweet icing.


This made a great dessert for the week.

Other dinners last week included chicken salad:


Bee bim bop:


And spaghetti with meatballs:


Breakfasts looked like this most of the week:


We spent time with family this weekend, including Sunday dinner at Christopher's parents' house.  They had snacks out when we arrived:


Then we enjoyed scrumptious seafood chowder:


And a hearty beef stew:


I forgot to snap a picture of dessert, but there was strudel, ice-cream, and fruit.  I just had a bit of fruit. 

We had a lovely, relaxing weekend, and the week is already off to a good start (still no snow)!

How was your weekend? 

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Weekend Things Part 3

Now that the week is almost over (already!?), I'm almost done posting about the long weekend - ha!  We had such a nice, relaxing long weekend at home, and cooked a lot of new dishes Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

On Sunday morning we roasted some plums, and used them in a quinoa bowl.  We cooked 1/2 cup quinoa with 3/4 cup light coconut milk, 1/3 cup water, 2 tsp vanilla, and a pinch of nutmeg.  We topped the warm quinoa with the roasted plums, some slivered almonds, chocolate chips, and toasted coconut.


For dinner we made lamb korma, and after simmering it for a long while, the smell in the house was incredible, and the pieces of lamb just fell apart.  We used a lamb leg that we just cut into stew-like chunks.


It was lovely served over basmati rice, and garnished with mint.


The leftovers the next day were even better, as these types of dishes tend to be.  I think we could live on Indian food.  And Korean food.  And Mexican.  Okay, give us all the food!

And just like that, it's almost the weekend again ...

Any fun plans for this weekend?
Do you ever cook lamb?