Woman in Real Life

Before I get to my meal plan for this week, I would like to review some highlights from last week's plan. I deliberately made it a pretty simple cooking week. Although it's still cold here and we had some snow yesterday, I like to pretend it's spring. Once warmer weather comes, we will have lots more simple meals, like our Friday night treat, above.

We enjoyed Sol veggie burgers, Alexia waffle cut fries and rapini sauteed in olive oil and garlic. I also tried a  (tasty) vodka beverage called Sucking Lemons. I can only have one though, because I find this type of drink hard on my stomach.

I couldn’t help but notice that my photos this week are very much centred on treats. Not just treats of the edible kind—although you know I love those—but little gifts geared to bringing small pleasures to otherwise “ordinary” days.

This week was a good reminder that I have a lot to be grateful for, including the wonderful friends, family and readers who voted my blog one of the Top 25 Vegan & Vegetarian Mom Blogs. You guys are the best!

My little one has been begging for a fancy art set like the one her brother got from my mom a while back. Her wish came true for Valentine’s Day.

A couple days before Valentine’s Day, my daughter told me that my gift came from the health food store. She later told me that my gift smelled really good. In her mind, this still maintains secrecy. In any case, I was pleased to get a couple of shiny new notebooks, a delicious-smelling candle, incense, bath salts, soap and some vegan candy bars. Of course, I love the sweet card that my daughter made for me best of all.

I was skeptical about the Titanic book my husband chose for my son—but he was instantly intrigued. Father knows best. The video game went over well too.

These are my husband’s little treats—record and CD wall frames for his basement office, some little edibles, lip balm (which he always seems to need) and a men’s fitness magazine for his lately renewed interest in exercise.

I wasn’t about to cook a big meal on Valentine’s Day, so we ordered something the whole family enjoys—sushi. I feel like I am getting a bit repetitive with this one! As much as I love the vegetarian maki set, I added some fried rice this time—a little bit of warming food to make us feel good. Oh, and some wine helped too.

For dessert, we enjoyed the chocolate peanut butter fudge that I told you about earlier in the week.

This week, we also enjoyed a colourful spinach, beet and orange salad, with ginger-agave dressing, which I made from a recipe in The Get Healthy, Go Vegan Cookbook, by Dr. Neal Barnard. We served it along with some delicious waffle cut fries from Alexia. Yes, we also had some breaded tofu, but I’m not going to show you another photo of that!

I participated in a fun Valentine Swap hosted by Alissa and Caroline. They paired me up with talented singer-songwriter and proud mommy Alle, from Chasing Eden. The swap was all about getting a little treat via snail mail, because who doesn’t miss that experience? Alle knew just what I needed at this rather dreary time of year.

She sent me this lovely Burt’s Bees set to nurture my skin.

She also sent me this pretty lip gloss and nail polish in shades of pale pink that say “spring is coming.” I can use this 4-in-1 foot tool right about now, too! Thanks Alle!





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