Five on Friday

1)  The other day I went out for lunch with my buddy Bonnie.  We went to Caraway, and we each got the lunch special.  She'll be able to have long leisurely lunches whenever she wants now, as she recently retired!

2)  On Wednesday evening we cooked up some scallops for dinner.  It had been ages since we had scallops.  On the side we had salad, and rice with a homemade cilantro, jalapeno sauce.

3)  When Christopher came home for lunch yesterday I had a homemade pizza ready and waiting.

4)  Dinner was salmon with Greek salad.

5)  Christopher's mom's birthday is next week, but since she was off today, I picked her up, and took her out for breakfast, and then for pedicures.  We had a wonderful morning!  I love my mother-in-law!

It was a great way to start off a lovely, relaxing weekend.  Other than a dinner out tomorrow evening, we're looking forward to a weekend of relaxing and BBQing in the backyard.

What are you up to this weekend?  How was your week? 

ProactivCHIA Seeds: Chia Seeds with Probiotics

I've eaten chia seeds for years; I love them!  They are such a cool food, and they can even be used to replace eggs in baking recipes (mixed with water).  When the people at Prana offered to send me a free sample of their new product, ProactivCHIA, I was so excited!  These chia seeds have probiotics with them - 4 billion live probiotics in just one spoonful.  Prana is also a Canadian company, which is important to me.

These chia seeds can be used just like you'd use any regular chia seeds.  I usually throw them into my yogurt, add them to oatmeal, toss them in smoothies, or add them to dressings.  I made steel cut oatmeal the other day and stirred them into the oatmeal when it was done cooking, along with some PB and toppings.

The neat thing about chia seeds is they absorb liquid, and become gelatinous and expand when in liquid.  You can make an easy pudding with them by adding 3 T to 1 cup chocolate milk or vanilla almond milk, or another milk-like beverage.  You can then add vanilla, cocoa, or any other flavouring to your pudding. 

I mixed 1 cup sweetened chocolate almond milk with 3 T of the chia seeds and let it sit for a few hours in the fridge.  Then I topped the pudding with coconut, nuts and chocolate chips.  It was a healthy, delicious dessert.

I've been wanting to add probiotics to my diet, and since I eat chia seeds anyway, this is an easy and convenient way to do it.  I'll definitely buy these in the future. 

You can purchase chia seeds and other products from Prana on their website.  They have free shipping within Canada!

Have you ever used chia seeds?

(I sort of really want a chia pet ... have you ever had one?)

Dinner Last Night & Tips for Cream Pies

Yesterday afternoon we sat out in the backyard and enjoyed the heat wave we're having.  Eventually dinner rolled around, and we BBQd some curried potatoes, portobello mushrooms, and mini farmers' sausages.

Dessert was the chocolate cream pie that I had baked up that morning.

When baking cream pies, you have to blind-bake the crust, which just means that you bake it before you put the filling in.  In order to prevent shrinkage, and the crust falling down from the sides of the pie pan, you need to put something heavy in the middle while it bakes.  If you don't have pie weights, which I don't, you could use dried beans, rice, etc..  I used buckwheat that had been in the pantry forever. 

Just roll the dough out and place it in the pie pan, trim, and pierce with a fork along the bottom and sides.  Line with the shiny side of tinfoil (you could give the tin foil a quick spray to ensure it doesn't stick), and then fill with something heavy to hold it down.

You could also line the pie dough with tin foil, then put another pie plate on top to hold it down.

Once the crust is done, and cooled, you can cook up the filling on the stove and pour it in.  You'll refrigerate it for a couple hours to set the filling.  If you want to prevent a nasty "skin" from forming on the top of your cream pie, cover it with plastic wrap, pressing it down to touch the filling:

This will keep it nicely until it's chilled and you cover it with whipped cream.

Perfection.

How is your week going so far?  

Are you having a heat wave where you are?

I'm currently running two giveaways for my Canadian readers. 
- You can enter to win a journal here.
- If you visit Menchie's before the end of the month, Tweet or Instagram a photo of your creation with the message/hashtags you can find here.  You could win 7 free Menchie's treats!

GIVEAWAY!! Start Where You Are: A Journal for Self-Exploration

I love making lists, filling things out, writing down goals, etc..  I've always found it fun to fill out surveys, and other questionnaires that make me think, question, prioritize, and plan.

Growing up I was always a creative kid.  I kept journals, and wrote poetry, and so on.  The funny think about journals, is you never know what will turn out to be the important moments, the turning points, or the snapshots you wish you could go back in time to see.  For instance, Christopher and I went to the same elementary school, and knew who each other was since we were kids ... however I have no recollections of our interactions as kids, or teens.  I remember seeing him, and knowing who he was, but that's it.  We both have little snippets of memories of each other and short exchanges as young adults, but not really much from before that.  How did I not know as a 12 year old journal-writer to pay closer attention to that little 10 year old cutie in the hallway?  We never know what will turn out to be important ... but it's still fun to look back at old journals and see how far we've come from who we once were, and who we thought we were going to become.

The publishers at Tarcher and Perigee/ Penguin Random House sent me this journal free of charge, and they also want to give one to my lovely readers! 

This beautiful journal is full of quotes, and creative writing prompts - some of which are challenging and mind expanding.

There are places to write, draw, doodle, reflect, make lists, and explore many aspects of the good and bad in life.

And, the book is also really pretty, with the beautiful artwork done by the author/artist Meera Lee Patel from Brooklyn, NY.

You can buy the book here, or here.

But, one of my readers is going to get a copy free!

Journal Giveaway

Open to: Canadian residents

To enter: Just leave a comment telling me one goal that you have for your future :-) (and your email address so I can let you know if you won)

The winner will be chosen by random draw.  The giveaway closes Sunday August 16th @ 7:00 p.m., and I'll contact the winner after that time to get mailing information.

CONTEST CLOSED:  The winner is SUMMER!! 

Beautiful Weekend

We were very much looking forward to this past weekend.  The two previous weekends were spent in Saskatoon, and before that, we were just getting home from Vegas, and unpacking, etc..  We were so excited for a weekend of relaxing in our own backyard.

On Friday evening it was a bit rainy, so we made bee bim bop and put on a movie.

Comforting and cozy!

We slept in a bit on Saturday morning, which was so nice, and then cooked up eggs in a hole and bacon.

We then spent the rest of the day in the backyard.  We listened to all sorts of music from Miles Davis to DeadMau5.   

We snacked ...

Admired our homegrown peas ...

And saw something very frightening ...

For dinner we BBQd some tasty homemade burgers.

Christopher loaded his with blue cheese ... and I ... didn't.

We loved it outside so much, that the next morning we were right back out there cooking our breakfast.

I found the bacon stand thing at Home Sense recently and thought it was genius!  It catches the grease on both sides, so that it doesn't drip into the BBQ.  It worked perfectly.

It was such a beautiful morning, and so nice to eat outside.

Later in the day we made a big bowl of pico de gallo and snacked on that, and then used it to top our hotdogs.

We had a pretty great weekend - just the two of us, in the backyard.

We ended it off with some beetniks from the farmers' market.

How was your weekend?  What did you do?  Do you ever cook breakfast outside?

Korean Day & Everyday Foodie is Six!

I've been on the scene for six years!

Everyday Foodie turned six years old yesterday, and like any good foodies we celebrated with Spam:

Okay, stay with me.  There's more to it!  I haven't gone off the deep end.

Since Korean is our favourite type of ethnic cuisine we decided to have a couple Korean meals yesterday.  For lunch we had tteokbokki.



Then for dinner we decided to whip up budae jjigae.  Budae jjigae (army or soldier stew) became popular after the Korean war when food was scarce in Seoul.  Many people made use of canned surplus foods from army bases (Spam, ham, beans, etc.) and mixed them with Korean flavours such as gochujang and kimchi.  This dish is still popular in Korea, and it is a mixture of modern American ingredients such as instant noodles, American cheese, macaroni, and hotdogs, with tofu, a Korean broth and spices, rice cakes, and vegetables.

It starts with making and then straining a simple, quick broth.  In the broth are dried shitakes, dried shrimp, dried anchovies, onion, and kelp.

Then you saute some onion, carrot and garlic.  Once softened you top the vegetables with sliced Spam, sliced hotdogs, sliced tofu, rice cakes, and kimchi.  You can add different things too - Google a few recipes if you're interested.

You pour the broth over everything, and bring it to a boil ...

Then you add a spice mixture of gochujang powder, gochujang paste, soy sauce, and rice wine.

After cooking that for about five minutes, you add some instant ramen noodles, and cook until those are done.

Then, in case this hasn't been strange enough for you so far ...

You add a couple processed slices of cheese.

Stir that in and then dig in!

The verdict = It was too Western for us to be honest.  It tasted fine, but almost a little bland compared to what we're used to with Korean food.  We like to tell people that we're part Korean, and although this is a popular Korean dish, the addition of all the Western ingredients made it taste not Korean enough.  It could have used way more spice too.  We had fun making it though!

It's hard to believe that I created this blog six years ago.  I remember it perfectly, sitting in the spare room, on a desktop computer at a corner desk.  I had started blogs before, but never stuck with them.  This one I wanted to commit to.  I bought the domain name that day, and got started, never imagining where it would end up.  Within the past year alone I've partnered with some big names, such as Canadian Living Magazine, Sobeys, Circulon and Menchie's!  What a blast!  I'm so excited to see what the future holds for Everyday Foodie.

I'd love to learn more about my readers!  

If you have a minute, leave a comment (you don't need an account or anything like that - anyone can leave a comment) and tell me:

1) Your name
2) Where you're from
3) What keeps you coming back to read
4) What you're up to this weekend!