Over the weekend I got really domestic. I mean really domestic.

I baked brownies, muffins, and cookies and stuffed them in my freezer. The brownies weren’t my recipe, and they were a bit dry. The muffins were a recipe I’m tweaking (Lemon Earl Gray!), and while the flavour was yummy, they didn’t fluff up like I wanted… and the cookies were my usual coconut oatmeal raisin cookies. I added a pinch of cinnamon and used coconut oil this time. #winner

I’m still figuring out our oven and that could be part of the baking problem. It’s gas, and while that’s considered great by lots of people, for me, it’s kind of a pain. I can never tell when it’s ready, things don’t heat evenly… it’s just a pain in the butt. I mean, really, it’s probably that I’m not a stellar baker, but I like to blame it on the oven. It’s easier that way.

In any case, I didn’t stop at baking! No, I continued on my domestic endeavours and I also decided to fill up our freezer with stuff to make cooking on busy nights even easier. I soaked and cooked TONS of beans (chickpeas, lentils, black beans [brought from Canada]), and I also was smart and made some frozen burritos for those nights where things are especially cray cray. You know, when you have 6 commitments and you’re late for all of them and three of them overlap? Or when you’re just super lazy and don’t want to cook dinner? The latter happens to me more than the former. Nevertheless, frozen burritos to the rescue!

I bought extra ingredients of everything on our weekly Friday grocery trip. I cooked up giant batches of rice (some for the burritos, some for during the week), giant batches of beans (as mentioned above!), and I set to making a burrito buffet. I loaded them up, rolled them in tinfoil (we were out of saran wrap), and put them in my freezer! They’re super delicious. Here’s what I did for our burritos…

Ingredients:

• olive oil
• diced onions
• hot green chile
• minced garlic
• spices (salt, chili powder, cumin, cinnamon – to your liking, but roughly 1 tsp. of each)
• diced green peppers
• corn
• kidney beans
• Arabic flatbread (obviously tortillas are the regular option, but over here the flatbread is waaaaaay cheaper and works just as well, and is way easier to find!)
• plain rice
• diced fresh tomatoes
• plain yogurt (similar to Greek yogurt)
• salsa
• shredded mozzarella cheese
• tinfoil or saran wrap

How To:

• I heated up the olive oil and dropped in the onions.
• When they were all starting to caramelize a little I added in the green chile, garlic and spices.
• After a few minutes, I added in the green pepper until they softened and then added in the kidney beans, corn.
• Once everything had mixed together I set it aside.
• I set up my burrito station with all of the ingredients ready to be piled into the flatbread/tortillas. I had to do this on my table because we have little to no counter space in our kitchen. Just pick a space that’s big enough to do it all together. It’ll make your life easier!
• Lay out your tin foil/saran wrap first, and then put your flatbread on top. Load ‘em up and then roll up, and cover in the tin foil.

I’m not about to give you measurements for everything because a.) you’re smarter than that and b.) it doesn’t really matter. Just make as much as you think your family will need, and taste test to see what you like. Add more hot chiles if you like it spicy! Take it out if you don’t want any heat. If it’s too salty, add some honey. If you like more cumin, load it on! Just taste as you go to find your perfect mix. Want them to have meat?  Sub out the beans for ground beef or shredded chicken.  It’s totally customizable.

Honestly, these are a total life saver. Just remember though: if you wrap yours in tinfoil, and you plan on heating them up in the microwave, remove the tinfoil first!!! Safety first, guys, safety first.

Howdy Y’all.  Our stuff arrived here in Ontario last week, and in a miraculous 24 hours we had everything fully set-up and ready to go!  It definitely feels like home now, and we’re super happy with it all.  It’ll be nice to live in a real “home” for the next 3 months before we head to Kuwait (and have even less to set-up house with!!).  Here’s a little tour for you:

When you enter our apartment, the first thing you’ll notice is that you’re immediately in the middle of our apartment.  You’re basically entering into our kitchen/living room.

One of our favourite things is our matching artwork from our Frienaissance (remember, that??):

My parents are super awesome and painted this whole apartment as a surprise to us.  In case you missed the details, this is a basement apartment in my parent’s home.  My grandmother lived here for the last 18 years but has recently moved into a retirement complex.  The walls used to be pale green and pepto-bismal pink…not so cool.  My parents would still like to switch out the carpet for hardwood and change up the countertops at some point, but for now, even with the walls painted it makes a huge difference!  You might not be able to tell the colours from the pictures, but the walls are mostly a nice neutral beige and the wall with the fireplace is a chocolate brown.

Just past our kitchen is our bedroom and bathroom.  And yes, you’ll notice there’s no bathroom door.  It was intended as “nanny suite,” so basically when we have company we have to close our bedroom door so they can go to the bathroom in private.  haha.  It’s actually more funny that annoying to us.

So there you go!  That’s our home!  Actually, we like to joke and call it our “summer home” seeing as we’re living here for this summer and next summer (at minimum, depending on what we feel like doing in life!).  :)

Guys, this past week/weekend has been delightful!  We met up with friends, slept in, went for glorious walks, watched movies, went to Church, I worked at a funeral reception (my dad works in a funeral home), we went shopping…okay – that wasn’t as delightful…4 hours and 6 zillion stores to find 1 pair of black dress pants?!?!  How are should that be?!  Apparently quite hard.

Anyway, all in all it was a great week/weekend and it was nice because we know that this week will be busy.  Peter’s in class all week taking another graduate-level course toward his Masters, and our boxes arrive this week, plus I’m hoping to meet up with a few friends who are around town.

Because Peter will be in school each day we are back in the habit of prepping lunches rather than just grazing from the fridge/cupboards when we feel like it.  And it’s not like when we worked in Victoria where we could bring leftovers to heat up.  This time he needs to be able to eat in a cafeteria and to munch during class!  So here’s what he’s packing for lunch:

• Trail mix made up of almonds, cashews, pepitas, dried apples and prunes.
• Cherries
• 2 homemade banana cranberry muffins (courtesy of my mama!)
• Sliced cucumbers
• Cheese
• Leftover chicken leg (in the tinfoil)
• Quinoa salad (made up of quinoa, red pepper, apple, raisins, onion, crumbled feta and a mayo/yogurt/curry sauce) – we use this recipe as a basic guide.
• Rooibos tea

It means that he can just grab bits and pieces throughout the day.  We’ll start with this “medley” of food and see how the day goes and then we’ll know what to add/take away for the rest of the week.

Besides his kindle (equipped with the text book!) and his Bible, he also needed a note book with which to take notes (duh), and so my dad dug this gem out of storage for him.  How classic is it?!  Check out the computer codes on the back:

hahaha…awesome.

What do you usually eat for lunch?  For more lunch ideas, check out this post.

Well, the movers came yesterday to take all of our possessions away!  This room sums up all that we own (plus a baby grand piano, rocking chair and bbq that aren’t pictured).

We’re now living off of the clothes that will fit in our suitcases and borrowed items (our house comes furnished so we’re good to go that way!).

While I supervised the movers, Peter and Dan got rid of our field.

The hardest part for the movers was definitely getting our beast of a piano disassembled and onto the truck.

 They did a super job!  Heck, they even rolled out the red carpet… :)

I guess it’ll be another couple of weeks until we meet our stuff again in Ontario!  Then we’ll set up our semi-permanent residence there for the summer before heading to Kuwait.

Here are a couple of packing tips from me and my wonderful husband (who graciously did all the packing…):

1. Saran wrap is really helpful in securing items within smaller boxes (like serving dishes that go together in a box within a large packing box) or larger items that go independently on the truck (like a fire place poker set).
2. Use extra rolling luggage to pack up additional clothing you don’t need with you right away (like winter coats, shoes, heavy sweaters, etc.).
3. Sort through all of your linens ahead of time and decide which items you can pack up right away and use those to pack up dishes, knick knacks, art, etc.
4. Choose a designated room or spot in your house to keep all of the boxes and packing materials.  We chose a spare room and we brought all items into there (over a period of a couple weeks) for Peter to pack.  We knew that once they were in there they had already been sorted and he could pack from a variety of sizes and shapes.  Plus, it kept all of our moving stuff out of the way and we didn’t have to have boxes all over the house.
5. Figure out what you’ll need once your stuff is gone and borrow it ahead of time (i.e. dish towels, cutlery, plates, bath towels, etc.).  For us, since we’re downsizing so much we’re using stuff that we already own (for the most part) but won’t be keeping so it’ll be taken to the thrift store by our friends the day we leave.
6. Portion out any spices or herbs or other food items that you might need in the final days.  I used small jars we weren’t packing to keep some olive oil, spices I use regularly, oatmeal, etc.
7. Once your stuff is gone, clean from room to room and once you’ve fully cleaned it, close the door so that you don’t re-use it and it stays clean.  If you need to, make a check list so that you don’t forget anything.
8. If you have friends and family help you pack or clean up make sure that you say “thank you.”  That will likely mean a lot to them for giving of their time generously to bless you.

Have you ever moved?  What did you like most/least about the packing/moving process?

I’m back from Chicago, and I purchased a couple of fun little treats for the blogiversary giveaway…

I decided to get two items, each from stores that I don’t get to frequent here in Canada!

The first item is a dark chocolate, caramel and sea salt bar from Trader Joe’s!  I’ve taste-tested one, and I can promise it’s delicious!!  The other item is veggie-themed page flags (perfect for marking recipes!) from Anthropologie.

I had fun picking out the items, and I hope the winner will enjoy them!

So who is the winner?

As chosen by an online random generator, commenter #4 is the winner: CJ – Food Stories

Congratulations!!

CJ, please e-mail me at alublink (at) gmail (dot) com with your name and mailing address and I’ll get your prize sent off to you!

*This giveaway is not sponsored by the above named companies.  It’s simply me buying and then giving the winner a gift of some treats from my trip!

In our quest to save money and be better at budgeting for groceries, we were on a mission this week to break the record!

{this is not a recent pic of groceries – it’s from last summer}

What we’d like our weekly budget for groceries to be is $60.00.  This should be no problem in a lot of towns/cities, but in Victoria groceries are SUPER expensive.  Keeping it under $60.00 means that we need to a.) not buy meat b.) not buy cheese and c.) not buy any random snacks.

However, we’re committed to doing it not only for the health of our budget but also for the health of our bodies!

So this past weekend we were very excited when our entire total came to just over $40.00!!!!

So what did we get for $40.00?  Well, I will tell you!  (Please keep in mind that we already had all of our grains and legumes purchased at home, so none of those were needed on this shopping trip.)

TOTAL: $43.57

SAVINGS: $16.43

We went to a local produce place first where we had already checked their online flyer to see what was on sale.  That determined what our menu would be and what ingredients we would purchase.  After we bought our produce we decided what exactly we needed from the rest of the list.  Some ingredients weren’t essential to this week’s menu so we left them aside and purchased only two other things we needed beyond produce: toothpaste and eggs.  Yes, we spend more on toothpaste than many usually would, but it’s a personal preference for knowing exactly what’s in it and feeling safe about our choice.  But ultimately saving on our produce really allowed us to have freedom to spend a bit more in that area.

All in all we’re happy with this past week’s purchases.  How do you save money on groceries?

We’re kind of in a phase of trying to cut down our grocery costs and eat up what we have in our fridge/pantry/freezer.

Not to mention it’s Lent and we’re not buying any “luxury” items such as: cheese, meat, fancy ingredients (like stuffed olives, etc.), and snack treats (chips, salsa, chocolate, ice cream, etc.).

SO, keep that in mind, and keep in mind that I just went shopping on Saturday and that I won’t be shopping again until this coming Saturday, and that I have to feed us 3 meals a day for the next 3 days including creating two potluck dishes…

Scary, huh?

That’s our fridge…it’s running a little on empty.  Clearly I didn’t plan things out well for this week.  This is what we have in there going from L-R, top-bottom:

• water jug, leftover curry, leftover peanut sauce, almond milk, blueberry yogurt & plain yogurt
• pickles, leftover beans, one of my no-bake chocolate peanut butter truffles thawing for a snack, strawberries, butter, half a can of pureed pumpkin, 1.5 dozen eggs
• 1 lone homemade tortilla from dinner the other night
• 1/2 of a potato, a lemon, two apples

HOWEVER, it gave me a fantastic challenge in feeding us basically out of nothing (well, nothing “fresh”, that is) for the rest of this week.  I took inventory of our freezer and pantry (which is better off than the fridge!), and here’s what I came up with:

• Wednesday Breakfast: Oatmeal or Eggs or Yogurt (we still have plenty of all of those)
• Wednesday Lunch: The only two random leftover items in our freezer: curry and some peanut sauce which I’m mixing with frozen snap peas from our garden and some brown rice pasta.
• Wednesday Dinner: Noodles, frozen snap peas and black beans all mixed together with some soy sauce and Asian-inspired spices.
• Thursday Breakfast: Same deal as Wednesday.
• Thursday Lunch: Hopefully leftovers from Wednesday’s dinner.
• Thursday Dinner: Lentil and Rice Pilaf with garlic, shelled peas and spices (I don’t have to make this a well-rounded meal b/c it’s a potluck!)
• Friday Breakfast: Same as the other two days.
• Friday Lunch: Out for a lunch meeting
• Friday Dinner: Vegetable soup for yet another potluck.  We have a giant bag of pureed vegetables from our garden stored in our freezer: tomatoes, herbs, zucchini, etc.  I’ll add rice, beans and some tomato sauce I have to make it a soup!

It’s kind of a lame menu plan for someone who likes cooking, but I think we’re doing awesome at using up what we have, saving money and still eating pretty well!!  We certainly won’t starve, that’s for sure.

How do you handle weeks when your house seems empty and you still have meals to cook?