BEHIND AGAIN...

OMG, Sean had another three consecutive days off? Yeah, that's right.

21st...Monday
Monday's lunch was leftovers from Father's Day dinner. We went out to Mevame and it was the first time our water had been refilled without having to ask for it--SCORE! Anyway, I ordered the lamb skewers (medium) with rice. My family also got the fried calamari as an app and I took the seafood sauce to go:I also had watermelon:and strawberries and blueberries:
Monday was kind of a heinous day. I had a massive migraine. I have no idea what it was due to because I had been eating fairly clean and healthy and all-natural for weeks and besides this one incident, have been migraine-free for nearly 5 weeks. It was an all-time record for this year. I think it was the marinade that they used for the lamb or it could have been the seafood sauce that I'm pretty contained MSG (I did think it was ridiculously tasty--something I haven't eaten in years). I tried to make dinner as natural as possible. I ended up having baked salmon with millet and a little bit of Chinese veg:I then turned my millet into a salad for the next day's lunch:Millet featuring white kidney beans, asparagus, button bushrooms, portebello mushrooms and my dad threw in some roasted plain peanuts to his late-night snack portion you see above.
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22nd...Tuesday
First breakfast was instant oats with the usual fixin's but this time in a paper bowl:Surprisingly, I ate my oatmeal a lot faster in a bowl than in my usual mug. For some reason down the hatch it went. Usually it takes almost my full 30-minute morning break to finish off my oatmeal or sometimes I don't have enough time at all but this bowl of oatmeal was gone in about 15 minutes. I didn't even feel more hungry than usual once 10:30 rolled around. I don't know if it was the bowl or what, but I ate it all! I was a happy camper.

Lunch was millet salad:along with two hard-boiled eggs:
and mulberries and strawberries for fruit:Sean picked me up after work and we went out for dumplings and rice cakes. After that we walked around the plaza and came across a cute new bakery, Ruelo Patisserie, where we picked up a couple of macarons each. Sean got the blueberry lemon:and praline:
while fleur de sel caramel:
and pistachio raspberry:

They were a little bit pricey for non-Nadege macarons. The filled ones were $3 and while they were good but I don't know if they were quite worth $3. Maybe, considering the amount of time that probably went into them. The fleur de sel caramel was actually a little bit bitter so I think they might have cooked the caramel for just a tad too long but it was nice to be able to pick up macarons without having to drive all the way to the city. The shop itself is also really cute, with a lot of tasty-sounding cakes. The Green Apple Caramel is calling my name and I'll have to try it out next time.

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23rd...Wednesday
Lunch was more millet salad, this time with the remainder of the white kidney beans that I just plopped on top. I also had a couple hard-boiled eggs (unpictured). Fruits included more mulberries and strawberries:along with watermelon:
Sean picked me up after work and we went out with another couple to watch Toy Story 3. We had dinner at Sun's Kitchen, our favourite place for noodle soup, featuring hand-pulled noodles in soup made fresh to order.

Toy Story 3 was totally awesome. I only saw the first two just about a year ago when I was home for a week because I'm pretty sure I had swine flu. I had to go to the emergency room and everything but the doctor didn't actually confirm it. She just told me that I couldn't leave my bedroom for a week--boo!
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24th...Thursday
Sean and I spent Thursday evening at Jessie's house making cupcakes. Before that though, Sean picked me up from work and we had dinner at my house. Here's Sean's dinner:
And here's mine:They vary quite a bit, don't they? Sean had the dinner my dad cooked for everyone (fish and tomato sauce with basmati rice along with soybean soup, salad and water), while I had dinner that my dad cooked for myself: 6 organic chicken drumettes and salad. I also had some watermelon along with that.

Earlier in the week, Jessie and I had settled on a recipe from Cupcake Bakeshop for 3 vanilla cupcakes, found here. We tweaked the recipe a tiny bit by reducing the amount of sugar and increasing the amount of vanilla used. Jessie and I are vanilla freaks; there's no such thing as too much vanilla. I'm not even sure we used the right amount of milk. To be honest, there was a time when I wasn't paying attention to the recipe as Sean was reading things aloud and Jessie was doing the measuring. I was busy using the stand-up mixer (yes, I brought the Kitchenaid to Jessie's) and not paying any attention to the two of them. There were a LOT of photos from the evening but here are a few highlights. Sean's purpose for the evening was to grab anything that Jessie and I couldn't reach:Here are our cupcakes ready for the oven:Raspberries I snacked on:Here's Jessie putting the frosting into the piping bag for me:Here I am piping the vanilla cream cheese frosting onto the cupcakes:===
25th...Friday
First breakfast of champions...triple vanilla cupcake with vanilla cream cheese frosting and vanilla sea salt garnish:Second breakfast was oatmeal and lunch was Catelli Smart macaroni with dad's leftover fish and tomato sauce:Fruits included strawberries and golden kiwi:I'm staying in this evening, obviously to catch up on my blog and to get some other stuff done...mostly chores like laundry. Fun times for a Friday night!