Monthly Archives: January 2015

Jan27

Lemon Pie Cheesecake

Posted on by
Standard

Oh my, this came about because of my craving for something lemon flavoured, and me just being lazy.

I’ve made a pumpkin pie baked into a chocolate cake with homemade frosting once and it was marvellous! When it came to wanting a lemon pie built/baked into a vanilla cake, with cream cheese frosting I wanted to do it, but I forgot to buy a pre-made pie crust, so I said eff it and I mixed them all together and got something that looked like this…

2015/01/img_2066.jpg

So I also forgot to take my cream cheese brick out of the freezer, so I chopped it up while still frozen and shoved the pieces randomly into the batter.

The batter was a PC Vanilla Bourbon Cake, and the Pie filling was any standard Lemon pie filling, I think I had Sherrif.

I’m glad I shoved the cream cheese in instead of making a frosting out of it, it had way less sugar that way!

I baked it at 350 degrees for about 40 mins, but basically until I stuck a knife in the middle and it came out almost clean.

I was like a loaf or pudding cake, very dense consistency. For me it was perfect with a cup of Chai, not too sweet, with a little lemon and cheese flavour, yummy! Oh I sprinkled some powdered sugar to hide all the cracks in the cake!

2015/01/img_2068.jpg

Oh I just remembered if you use a springform pan like I did line the bottom with parchment or wax paper, and grease the sides of the pan with butter. You can also just pour evenly into muffin tins for individual portions!

Enjoy!!

Jan26

One pot chicken and veggie pasta

Posted on by
Standard

Wow so this turned out wonderful

2015/01/img_2075.jpg

Ingredients:

– Lean Ground chicken 1.2 lbs
– 1 box gluten free elbow macaroni (I used the PC Brand)
– 2 cups of homemade tomato sauce, or any thick brand
– 1 and 3/4 cups of milk (I used one percent)
– 1 and 1/2 cups of stock, whatever flavour
– 1 medium red onion almost puréed
– 2 tbsps of minced garlic
– 3/4 if a bag of washed spinach mixed with Kale
– PC Black label Zataar seasoning to taste, I used 2 tbsps. You can also use any sort of fresh herbs, Italian or Greek seasoning pouches would be a great replacement

Directions:
Here comes the easy part; brown the meat, onions, garlic, and seasoning, at a medium heat, if you have an induction cooktop like me I do it at 6.
(I also hardly ever cook with oil, because I find meat has enough when you cook it slowly)

Then once everything is browned and cooked through add the spinach mix, cover and lower heat to a simmer, for 5 mins or until soft.

Last step: add the pasta on top of the meat and spinach mix and fill up the skillet with all the liquid. I find if you put the tomato sauce in the middle last it seeps into everything else. You cover the pot and cook on medium low, until pasta is cooked, it took me about 10mins and it was ready.

I sprinkled Romano cheese on it for the kids and hubby, and chipotle hot sauce for me! Seriously this was to die for on a super cold Monday night!

I also paired it with a small glass of red wine so if there are any errors in this article I blame the food coma that I am in!

Jan20

Pumpkin, banana,chocolate chip, oat flour muffin

Posted on by
Standard

These were yummy!
I found the recipe from here:
http://freshfitnhealthy.com/2014/01/pumpkin-banana-breadmuffins-with-protein-chocolate-chips/

I used semi sweet chocolate chips, and more pumpkin that I had left over from a pie I made that was in the freezer. Also rather than making a loaf or a full batch of muffins I used these little silicone baking cups to get the shape and have less dishes! My son put his in hearts and gave me one, swoon! He also ate two muffins for dinner, none the wiser that it was a healthy treat!

2015/01/img_1969.jpg

Jan19

Mustard glazed salmon over udon noodles

Posted on by
Standard

1/4 cup butter
1/4 honey
2 tbsp of low sodium soy sauce
1/4 horse radish grainy mustard
2tbsp of minced garlic
Udon noodles pack (T&T brand is already portioned controlled)
3 heads of Broccoli

Whisk it together and pour over 4 salmon pieces bake in oven for 20 mins at 425 degrees

Cook udon noodles and steam broccoli at the same time if you have a steamer basket like me for your big pasta pot, which I Love! Less dishes are always a good thing!

Drain noodles and toss with broccoli and pour sauce of fish over all noodles and then place the fish on top so that the noodles soak up the yummy goodness!

As a side note if your salmon pieces are bigger, you can double up the sauce recipe or just add water to the sauce to have enough sauce to cover your fish in the baking pan. I used a banana loaf pan.

The whole point of this recipe is to make one family meal, that is relatively healthy, and you can always use rice noodles or buckwheat soba noodles whatever floats your boat! Enjoy, and remember if I can make it anyone can. Seriously I only began cooking, regularly, when I moved to the burbs!

2015/01/img_2011.jpg

Jan18

Cheapest trick for clean dishes

Posted on by
Standard

Ok the cheapest way to clean your dishes is by hand, but this is basically the best way to clean dishes in the dishwasher. I know everyone likes those pods, but they aren’t that great for the longevity of your dishwasher. Anyway the use of Cascade liquid, regular price is like 2.99 and you can find it on sale for like 1.99 for the big bottle, and then the rinse aid which is about 5.99 regular price, or on sale for about 2.99. But the secret is to actually put a drop of the blue DAWN dishwashing liquid and you have just made your own platinum pod solution minus the plastic that damages your dishwasher! Spot free wonderfully clean dishes!

2015/01/img_2005.jpg

Jan16

IKEA hack sandbox

Posted on by
Standard

My older son loves sand, but when he plays with it it drives me crazy so I looked for a sandbox, but they were expensive and ugly, seriously who wants that? This sandbox is cheap and pretty!

So I found an ikea hack for it online and I couldn’t be happier with the results. 1 Komplement drawer, 1 Lack table, some hard as nails glue and spray paint to match the drawer.

The drawer took forever to put together, mostly because of the basically cardboard backing, so I put the adhesive in every nook and cranny to seal the sandbox. You just assemble the table and drawer and put a whole whack load of glue on the bottom of the drawer and position it over top. Also I purposefully chose a drawer that was smaller than the table so that if he was finger painting or doing another activity he would have a ledge to rest stuff on.

Side note I didn’t spray paint the glue over yet because I haven’t had the chance, it is like -15c here most days.

The first picture is the front of the box, the other is from the side that will face a wall!

2015/01/img_1988.jpgI

2015/01/img_1989.jpgs

The key to keeping things clean and interesting I’m noticing is having multiple containers to have different sand and sensory toys. I have coloured rice in one box, kinetic sand, and sandsalive!

Jan15

The best flat iron EVER

Posted on by
Standard

Tuft titanium flat iron 1 1/4

I’m not getting paid for this, so it is entirely legit, I have long hair. Like passed my bum and it is naturally curly/wavy, which I Love dearly, like dearly I love my hair. I cut it once and I still regret it.

Anyway today I had 15 mins between picking up my older boy and feeding the baby, so I wanted to see if I could straighten my hair in that time. I began at 2:33 and was finished at exactly 2:44! Awesome!!!!! And it is quite pretty too boot!

Go find this and get it, if you have to save for it, do it, it’s worth it!

2015/01/img_1970.jpg

Jan14

Stay at Home Mother’s schedule

Posted on by
Standard

I’m writing this for my husband along with others that really wonder what I do.

12am – nurse baby for long stretch
Very rarely will I sleep between 12-6 usually one or both kids wake up and are crying about something. My 4 year old is going through night terrors and growing pains and my little one is teething.

6am- nurse teething baby again

8am- entertaining baby while the older one gets 20 more mins of sleep

823: older one gets up, usually very grumpy, he’s not a morning person

830-9- clean up after my husband from his morning routine and put baby in his chair to do his poop.

9-930- make breakfast for kids from scratch change baby and get them fed by 10, also attempt to have one coffee, and go pee myself.

10-1115- wash my face brush my teeth, change a diaper, get kids dressed, make lunch, clean dishes, get them dressed in winter gear and pack bag and get them in the car. It is winter here so it is about -10 here so I have to pack the car after I get them dressed and with one hand throw everything in, put the baby in the car, then the older one and strap them into car seats, turn the alarm on, turn on their music, check the mail, drop my older son to school. I know that is a crazzzzzy run on sentence, but as soon as I park at school, the days when it is minus 15, I then have to unstrap both kids and take them both out to drop my older son to school, because I can’t leave the car running and leave my baby in their.
Someday my mom will meet me at the school to wait in the car with the baby.

1130-245- come home,feed baby, put baby down for a nap(if he isn’t super clingy. Then start cleaning, organizing, laundry folding, upkeep of the house(this can include hanging a picture,fixing something that broke) begin dinner,feed baby again, teach baby things (think, “where’s your nose?” Or say Bhai-ya (brother in Hindi)). Then pack him up and back to school to pick up Bhai-ya, then take him out of the car to get the older brother, one handed! Bring both kids with knapsack back to the car in minus 15 degrees and ice outside, pack them both into the car, one handed, and Finally they are in!

3-330-345-4- TRAFFIC!
4 finally home

4-6make dinner, entertaining, cooking dinner, putting baby down for a cat nap, after having a snack and a bottle.

6-730-8- eat dinner, with the Slowest eater in the world, my love, my darling 4 year old, most of his food ends up on the floor in the form of little rolled up balls of crumbs, I can’t stand this! He always wants to eat everything with his hands and it kills me a little every time he does it.

8-845- bath time when Papa gives him a bath. If I am alone and am doing it things would end here, the kids would be washed and sleeping by 845 at the latest, my husband is the SLOWEST MOVING HUMAn being in the WORLD!

845-10 watch some shows and clean up, and have some chai, plan tomorrow’s dinner. Workout if I have the energy, while my husband has been asleep and is still sleeping with the kids.

10pm- baby wakes up for night time snack and bottle. The end time for this is closing down because now I am trying so hard to get him back down at

1030 or 11 so that he doesn’t need to nurse anymore, but regardless he still gets up at 12am to be nurses and I have to put him back down without being nursed.

Anyway this may sound like a crazy schedule and it may see like I forgot food, usually I only have time for coffee and snacks until dinner, it is terrible but true, when I do eat it is all pretty much healthy with snacks.

Also by no means am I complaining this is MY job and I wouldn’t trade it, I embrace it, I’m just run down a bit and tired, but I’m especially tired of dumb fucks who think I sit on my butt all day a la Peg Bundy eating bon-bons all day.

2015/01/img_1968.jpg