Woman in Real Life

Happy Wednesday on this important day for Canada, as we swear in our new prime minister, Justin Trudeau, and his cabinet ministers, 15 of whom are women (16 men). Clearly he's not just good looking, he's smart too. My only complaint is the Canada Goose coat he wore on Halloween. Is fur a thing again? I hope not. Do people know these coats have coyote fur collars? Here's an article about the true cost of these fur-collar coats.

On to What I Ate Wednesday. My son requested lentils and rice for dinner one day and I was happy to comply, as it is one of my fave recipes of all time. I also smashed some potatoes with minced garlic, olive oil, salt and fresh parsley. This pic, above, is my next-day lunch leftovers. I made eight potatoes but this is all that was left. The kids said they prefer mashed potatoes over smashed but that didn't stop them from eating the potatoes up!

It seems that spring is truly (finally!) here! The kids and hubby have been joyfully planting seeds by a window in the spare bedroom. They are so thrilled to see the plants starting to pop up. It will be fun to plant them, I guess about the end of May. I am not a gardener by any means.

But I do love to eat! And I love fresh produce. I saw a package at the grocery store this week containing all of these lovely orange, yellow and red tomatoes, above. How could I resist? So pretty and I love the look of the different colours in salads and on sandwiches.

I'm writing this on Tuesday night, having just this evening consumed an all-you-can-eat sushi dinner. My son is away on a school trip for the night and my daughter is at dance classes, so the husband and I decided to visit a fave sushi restaurant. And gorge ourselves to the gills. And then we went to Costco. Where I found it difficult to even look at food, nevermind buy it. But we still managed to spend beaucoup de dollars. Costco is magical that way.

Needless to say, I'm having trouble looking at these food pics, especially the sushi ones that follow. But I will endure. This morning I made some delicious blueberry pancakes using a recipe from Chloe's Kitchen. I love pancakes, but don't want to discuss them for the moment.

As I said on Instagram, working from home has a number of benefits, one of the most important being I can break to make pancakes or French toast at any time if I so choose. Not that I do it often. But one day this past week I did in fact break to make delicious vegan Coconut French Toast from a recipe in Isa Does It. It's so simple and the coconut makes it absolutely scrumptious. I could have this for dinner, it's so good!

It's a little bit summer, a smidgen fall and a whole lot I'm-scared-of-winter around here right now. Which means a mix of warm weather foods and comforting fall soups. Distinctly in the summer category - the fruity ice pops we made recently in the Zoku. I took my recipe for Strawberry Peach Green Tea Ice Pops and changed it up a bit. Instead of green tea, I used water (I was rushing). I also added half a banana into the mix, and included slices of strawberry and banana to perty it up a bit.

In last week's What I Ate Wednesday post, there was soup and curried chickpeas as well as a barbecue meal and some asparagus/potato salad - the week's menu reflecting our changeable temperatures. As of this week, we are solidly into the warm weather (I hope!) so our menu has begun to change. Until that air conditioner goes on, I'll be saying "It's too hot to cook today!"

On the last What I Ate Wednesday, I forgot to share a picture of the vegan tofu lasagna I made using a recipe from Chloe's Kitchen. Since I complained about the lengthy lasagna-making process on Instagram, I thought I'd share some photos this week.

As I said in last week's What I Ate Wednesday post, I am trying to be on my best eating behaviour lately. I want to eliminate any painful IBS symptoms. While I am avoiding refined sugar as much as possible, I am certainly not cutting out maple syrup. For some reason I just can't get enough pancakes this week!

My son stayed home from school last Friday because he was developing a cough. So I whipped up some vegan blueberry pancakes from Chloe's Kitchen for the two of us. The ingredients are so simple and yet the recipe produces surprisingly delicious pancakes.