What's Up Wednesday

It's been so nice out the past couple of weeks, so I have taken advantage of the gorgeous fall days, and gone on some walks around the lake.

I find I sleep better, and feel more energetic on days when I have a long walk outside.  Nature is so nurturing, and fall in Saskatchewan is beautiful.

Recently we made some perogies and cabbage rolls to stock the freezer.  We had one package of store-bought cabbage rolls to use up, so we had those with out homemade borscht perogies for a quick dinner last Thursday before our class.

Other eats lately have included a warm salad:

Fish with rutabaga and zucchini:

Meatloaf, carrots, mashed potatoes, and gravy:

Rice pasta with pumpkin sauce, and garlic bread:

A big bowl of spaghetti squash baked with cheese:

And a turkey dinner:

We made the turkey on Sunday evening so that we'd have dinner that night, as well as leftovers for the next couple of days.  It was pre-stuffed, and then we made mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and gravy to have with it.

Turkey salad last night with juiced veggies:

In dessert news ... 

We were craving something sweet the other night, so I whipped up a small batch of six oatmeal, chocolate chip cookies.

Dessert for Two is a blog that I often go to when we want just enough dessert for a day or two, without having leftovers.  Christina, the blogger behind Dessert for Two, is also a sweetheart.  I met her years ago at the Foodbuzz Festival in San Fransisco, and spent some time touring around the exhibits with her.  The cookies were excellent; I'll definitely make them again, but probably double the batch next time 😉

Our Halloween tradition is to order in pizza.  Since I knew we wouldn't be having too many fruits/veggies for dinner this evening I made sure to have about five servings this morning.

My smoothie contained a couple handfuls of spinach, 1 banana, and a handful of blueberries, along with coconut water, and coconut kefir.  I also had about six strawberries on the side.

 After work today I got ready for the trick-or-treaters 🎃

We put on a scary movie, got our pizza delivered, and got cozy.

Twenty-seven kids so far - I think that's an all-time high for us!

Happy Halloween everyone!

What did you do for Halloween?  Did you go out on the weekend?  Hand out candy?  Dress up?

Our Birthdays

My birthday was on Monday, and Christopher's was on Wednesday.  To celebrate we went out last weekend to a classy tasting event in town, where we got to sample a whole bunch of delicious food and beverages.

We had a fun time, and it was nice to get dressed up.

Last weekend we also made a delicious twist on eggs benedict, with a latke base, smoked salmon, poached egg, and beet hollandaise.

And I made an incredibly moist and dense chocolate cake that would be perfect for celebrating!

Christopher spoiled me with fabulous gifties on Monday, and also picked up Indian food from my favourite restaurant in town, Caraway.

On Tuesday evening my dad took us out to a new restaurant in town called The Rotisserie.

It's a buffet that has different themes each night.  Now, we have eaten at many Vegas buffets, but we thought this place was better than any of those.  We were really impressed with the quality of food.  The fried chicken was excellent, and the fries were some of the best I've had in the city.  Everything was perfectly cooked, and tasted fresh.  The workers are on the ball, and are constantly refilling things like the tasty coconut shrimp, the salmon, perfectly cooked medium rare steak, etc.

These were my two helpings:

We will be back to this restaurant to try their other theme nights.  It was Caribbean night when we went and in Christopher's words, the "jerk chicken [was] legit."

For Christopher's birthday I picked up a bit more Indian food from Tamarind to add to the leftovers we still had from Caraway.  We both wanted to just have a lot of relaxing time on our birthdays, so take-out was perfect, and then we snuggled up on the couch with movies, TV, and cake.

It warmed up a lot this past week, and got to around 20 degrees C on Christopher's birthday!

On Thursday night we had our Spanish class, and then on Friday Christopher's brother Steve and his wife Mel took us out for sushi for our birthdays.

 

It was nice to catch up with them, and we had a lot of laughs, as we always do when we get together with these two.

We sure feel spoiled (and full) after a wonderful week of celebrating!

How was your week?  Weekend?  

Magical Butter Melting Chocolate

I have bought a lot of melting chocolate for making cake pops over the years, and the only real option I found were those waxy discs that usually melt well, but don't taste that great.

Magical Butter contacted me about a higher-quality melting chocolate that they make, which has the flavour of a high-end Belgium chocolate, but that melts like craft store chocolate.  The chocolates come in dark, milk, or white, and are perfect for dipping cake pops, or making candies and other confections.

We decided to use candy molds for our first try with this chocolate.  I melted the chocolate down and easily poured it into the molds, then simply let it harden in the fridge.

 

They popped right out of the molds after hardening.  These chocolates were really creamy and had a great flavour - much, much better than the candy melts we're used to.

Magical Butter also makes their chocolates out of ethically traded ingredients, which is important to us.  They are gluten-free, peanut/nut-free, kosher, egg-free, and contain no hydrogenated oils.  These chocolates are easy to use, and require no tempering.  

I've found that trying to flavour the melting discs from the craft store or bulk store doesn't always work too well, as the chocolate often separates.  Magical Butter chocolates are specially formulated for adding herbal butters and oils, so you could make flavoured chocolates and other treats.  I instantly thought of mint chocolate, as I love that combination, and it would be perfect with a white chocolate to make some Christmas treats, or festive cake pops.  When in Vancouver Christopher and I came across a chocolate shop that had really interesting combinations of flavours in chocolate.  There were chocolates with basil in them, and even cilantro, which totally had me intrigued!  The possibilities are endless.

Do you like flavoured chocolate?  Mint?  Orange?  

Do you ever melt chocolate for anything you make?

Full Disclosure: The chocolate, molds and spatulas were provided to me free of charge from Magical Butter.  All opinions are my own.

Last Week's Eats

On Monday evening when we got home from Saskatoon, we threw some stuff in the slow cooker, and then put it in the fridge for the next day.  On Tuesday at lunch Christopher plugged it in and turned it on to low, so that it would be ready for dinner that evening.

Breakfast on Tuesday morning was a smoothie with kefir, coconut water, banana, pineapple, a dash of vanilla, cocoa, and a large handful of spinach.

I also had a little bit of yogurt with raspberries and pomegranate arils.

We came home from work that evening and made rice to go with our Mediterranean chicken that was smelling amazing in the slow cooker.  There was a lot leftover, so we took it for work lunches.

Wednesday morning started out with a smoothie (kefir, coconut water, banana, strawberries, vanilla, spinach), and yogurt with raspberries, cashews and cacao.

Coffee and grapefruit juice too!

Dinner on Wednesday was spaghetti squash and chicken cordon bleu.

Another green smoothie on Thursday morning, along with avocado toast (with salt and pepper, and a drizzled of balsamic):

Dinner on Thursday evening was a big salad topped with tempeh.

 
On Friday morning I downed a smoothie and some raspberries before heading to work.

And then off to the in-laws for dinner that evening.

After sleeping in for a bit on Saturday morning, we had this breakfast:

We ran errands all afternoon, and then had a late lunch of cauliflower "rice" and miso chicken.

We went out on Saturday night - more on that later.

How was your weekend?  What did you do?

What have you been cooking lately?