If you're like me, water is your liquid of choice 98% of the time. The other 2% of the time you're either drinking orange juice or Pepsi when the craving hits. But of course, just like everything else in your life, the same flavour can get a little boring and since water has no flavour, it can get very boring, very easily. If you're also tired of added lemon, lime and/or cucumber slices to your water, here's a fancy alternative that requires one real ingredient (mint) and just 90 seconds or less to "make."
"Fancy" Mint Ice WaterIngredients:
- water
- ice
- mint leaves
Directions:- Get yourself the biggest mug or glass in the house.
- Fill it with ice cubes. Seriously, fill it up.
- Bruise four mint leaves. If you're fancy and you have chocolate mint that just happens to be growing in a small pot outside your front door, go ahead and use that. (I do have some chocolate mint growing in a small pot outside our house but I was lazy; the regular mint was in a mug of water right by the kitchen sink.)
- Place bruised leaves in mug.
- Fill mug with cold water.
- Drink up!
That's it. You can also use other herbs such as lemon verbena, which I have also tried and that was also very nice and refreshing. Let me know if you come up with any other "fancy" water combos that you like.
FYI: my favourite water is actually Evian. I know, I know, many of you will scold me and scoff at me but that water really does taste different. I've tried quite a few different bottled waters in my day (Fuji, Life Brand, Aquafina, Dasani, Smartwater, Vitawater, etc) and Evian is still my bottled water of choice--when I used to drink bottled water. Now I realize the tap stuff is just as good but it's got to be ice cold.
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Do you miss my food recaps? Well my blog does, so let's have a quickie, shall we? Oh and apparently during my food poisoning, I also had a major brain fart and missed two consecutive days of recaps--oops!
19th...WednesdayWho knows what the heck was for first breakfast because it a week ago and I can't remember that far back unless there's photographic evidence and apparently there wasn't. I'm guessing it was milk or a banana. Lunch was a little bit more exciting (thank goodness):
Spring mix with two hard-boiled eggs, cucumber, mushrooms and kidney beans (below). I use the organic blueberry and St. John's Wort dressing that I keep in the work fridge but I realized that as much as I like mushrooms, I don't like them raw in salads. They taste too much like styrofoam. Snacks included two mini earl grey muffins, blackberries and strawberries:
Those are seriously the best blackberries I've had all year. My dad bought four 1/2 pints and I easily finished two of them on my own. More snackage included Popchips in BBQ flavour.
I really like Popchips but the flavour is so pronounced that I can't eat more than a handful. After that my point my tastebuds go into flavour overload and I have to set the bag aside--even with the smaller bags. Ah well.
Sean picked me up after work (it's kind of being a regular thing...Wednesday and Friday night "dates"). He had dinner for me waiting at his house--score!--but we made a quick trip to Walmart to pick up some necessities (cat food, blue corn tortilla chips, etc). Dinner was roast duck (from the Asian store near my house, funny enough) and basmati rice. After that we watched
The City and then
The Aftershow and
TMZ. Oh guilty pleasures!
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20th...ThursdaySame deal with breakfast...who the heck knows what I ate that far back. Oatmeal was definitely involved during second breakfast though. Lunch was a bunch of leftovers from my family's own dinner:
Stir-fried broccoli, basmati rice, some Chinese veg, baked salmon with lemon slices. Fruit included more yummy blackberries and strawberries. Dinner was a little on the light side since my stomach was on the fritz a little bit:
On the left we have blue corn tortilla chips and strawberries and on the right is black bean soup with basmati rice. I was supposed to make this sort of "salsa soup" with black beans, tomatoes and corn with tortilla chips crushed on top--obviously I changed my mind. My stomach makes me do all kinds of things. Or rather, my stomach makes me NOT want to do a lot of things.
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24th...Monday (Victoria Day)Despite being home from work--it being a public holiday and all--and having all the time in the world to take photos of my food, for some reason I have no photos from the 24th. Either I was just being lazy or my camera decided to call it quits with me for the day. No matter though, because my iPhone came to the rescue when I needed it. Take that, Canon! The only thing worth mentioning on Monday was that Sean and I went to
Cold Stone Creamery for the first time and we didn't even have to leave the province to do it!
Yep, that's right...CSC made its way to Canada--finally! But why it's attached to Tim Hortons, I'll never know. Actually I do know and you can too if you read
this. So that article is a little bit old, almost a year old actually, but basically Tim Hortons and CSC were doing a co-branding test last summer in six locations across Canada. Obviously it was a big hit because there are numerous locations across Canada where you can now find Tim Hortons in conjunction with CSC. Kind of like Taco Bell and KFC.
Anyway, because I had been reading about CSC on various food blogs and because I had JUST read about them on
Caitlin's blog, I knew I had to go. Sean agreed to pick me up after work and take a trip to check it out. Thank goodness they were open on a public holiday! After much indecisiveness, I chose the Strawberry Banana Rendezvous (sans white chocolate chips) and Sean got the Berry Berry Berry Good. Check it out:
All done:
Sort of. I couldn't finish the rest of my waffle bowl. Sean and I decided to roll with our usual MO (aka be totally gluttonous) and get the "Love It" (medium) size each. It was a big mistake; too much ice cream!!
Our experience at CSC was pretty entertaining though. The guy who helped us out was enthused about my enthusiasm and let us sample a couple different flavours. He even said that Sean looked like Dallas Green (which Sean kind of does) and even sang to Sean! Pretty hilarious and awesome customer service. I just hope they can keep the high energy up when it's hella busy.
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25th...TuesdayBreakfast of champions...half a cup of almond milk and a
raspberry cinnamon muffin:
Lunch was courtesy of the hot food section of a neary Asian grocery store. Look at what $2.99 will buy you:
RIce with BBQ duck and seasoned edamame. This was a LOT of food though. It was a little bit busy at work and I was famished when lunch rolled around. I maybe finished half the rice and 2/3 of the duck. I finished all of my edamame. I don't know how it was cooked but it was good--IBS be damned!
Other lunch foods included watermelon (I saved some for the car ride home):
and strawberries (ditto for the car ride home):
Dinner was a requested fave from me: Steamed free-range chicken with green beans and basmati rice. I made sure to fill up on the greens and keep my protein and carbs in check.
I go a little overboard with steamed chicken because we no longer have it as often as we used to. It was one of my favourite things...
upside-down bowl, if you will, because I don't know how you spell the
Mauritian-Creole version. The dish consisted of rice, steamed chicken, Chinese sausage and a pouring of "sauce" which was basically the juice from the steamed chicken mixed with soy sauce. Apparently there are some versions floating around the internet that suggest you serve your upside-down bowl with mushrooms and/or a fried egg. While I would normally jump at the chance to add mushrooms to something, there's something about the simplicity of my family's
upside-down bowl that I love so dearly. I'll consult with my dad in the morning and see what he has to say.
A little while after dinner I was craving something sweet. I wanted something cold and I wanted it now so I decided to whip up some
banana soft serve! I had four ripe bananas in the freezer just itching to be used. I put two into the small container of the Magic Bullet and with a little effort and some cacao nibs, I had dessert:
But I still wanted a little something extra, so I had a
raspberry cinnamon muffin while I was at it:
Then I decided to spread some banana soft serve on the remaining half:
Best idea ever! Dessert craving, satisfied!
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26th...WednesdayThe insane heat has made me really grumpy and because I've been grumpy and cranky (because it's hot and because I haven't been sleeping well), I haven't been in the mood to cook either. Who the hell wants to turn on the stove or oven in 35C weather with NO air conditioning? Not me! As a result, the Magic Bullet has been getting a lot of use lately. I'm making up for lost time when I thought it was broken but it really wasn't. I think that's when it was telling me that I had overused it and it needed a break. It was wrong. Now I'm making up for all the time wasted.
Anyway, first breakfast was almond milk. Second breakfast, oatmeal. Lunch: olive hummus from 28 Cooks (recipe here) with carrot and cucumber sticks:
I'm proud of the fact that I actually cut my own carrot sticks and didn't resort to buying those baby carrots. We didn't have any in the house and it was 8 or 9pm and I'm certain my dad was not heading out to the store to get me baby carrots. These carrot sticks were actually really sweet and crunchy and just what I look for in carrots. Definitely worth the effort. And no chlorine!
So I ate that along with an Italian herb sandwich thin and my last slice of prosciutto (sad!):
and strawberries and peaches:
Yum!
I'm currently feasting on this dinner:
Spring mix, watermelon, cucumber slices, crumbled feta, leftover strawberries and peaches with steak and stir-fried broccoli. Delish!
And afterwards I will be digging into this piece of Snickers-inspired chocolate cake:
Chocolate cake, peanuts, caramel sauce, cookie crumbs. Normally I'm not a huge fan of this kind of sugar overload but it was a co-worker's birthday (the one who hooked me up with my current job) and I felt like celebrating too.
Okay well that's it. Plans for the evening include...nothing!
Next up was carrot sticks and cucumber slices with olive hummus:
Along with a sandwich thin with leftover thinly-sliced steak:
Fruits included strawberries:
Once at home I dove into a bowl of grapes and peaches while making myself some pasta to go with dinner:
Eventually my dinner was ready. I had rigatoni with free-range chicken, tomatoes, asparagus and mushrooms:
It was excelllent! It was so excellent that the third "l" is really necessary. I'm going to be sad when the asparagus from the garden is gone. It will be a sad day in my house.
Second breakfast was the usual oatmeal which you've seen like 35 times already. Lunch wasn't much more exciting because it involved a lot of leftovers. Cucumber mint soup:
With olive hummus with cucumber slices and carrot sticks:
And leftover rigatoni with asparagus, mushrooms and free-range chicken:
And least the fruits were new! Fruits included watermelon:
and frozen grapes and strawberries that had de-frosted by the time lunch rolled around at 2:30pm:
Dinner of course, was pizza at the Unionville Pizza Co. which I already blogged about, which included the epic fail cupcake from Old Firehall Confectionery.
In my bowl of spaghetti was sliced beef, mushrooms, iceberg lettuce and green beans. It's kind of what you get when your mom decides to empty out the fridge of some of the older produce.
Dessert #2 was an oatmeal strawberry muffin
with a mug of milk:
And then snack #139 was a sandwich thin with goat cheese, dill and smoked salmon:
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Closer to dinnertime I decided to have some water with verbena and watermelon while my dinner was cooking away:
along with cucumber mint soup:
and strawberries and watermelon:
I spent the evening at Sean's house and we decided to have homemade pizza for dinner. Sean made the dough while I was at work so after he picked me up and headed back to his place, all we had to do was roll out the dough and top it off. Here's our dough ready for its toppings:
With cheese:
The initial plan was to follow Smitten Kitchen's recipe for shaved asparagus pizza but Sean and I couldn't locate the asparagus in my backyard so we improvised instead. I started topping my half with prosciutto:
While Sean was cooking up some homemade lardons:
Here's our pizza ready for the oven:
After 10 minutes at 500F:
It was really delicious. The homemade crust was fantastic even though we didn't activate our yeast properly. Sean's half with the lardons was the winner of the evening. I was jealous but didn't want to take any chances with the pink salt in his bacon.
along with watermelon:
and strawberries, pear and grapes:
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along with pineapple:
and the same sad fruits from the day before (strawberries, pear and grapes):
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For lunch I had a leftover slice of pep pizza and a sandwich thin with prosciutto and roast zucchini and eggplant:
Fruits included pineapple:
and watermelon:
Tonight's dinner was shaved asparagus pizza which you'll soon see.
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