THREE CHEERS FOR LOBLAWS

I made another trip down the natural/organic section of a chain grocery store today and thank goodness it did not cost me $75. This time the store of choice was Loblaws and the cash out of my pocket was a measly $33, thanks to a $30 cash bonus from my dad. Thanks dad!

Today's buys were not as plentiful...I think partially due to the fact that the natural section of Loblaws is in one section and not spread out like Sobey's and it was far busier than the last time I had been in there. It was actually very surprising! I could not believe the amount of people looking at natural/organic and alternative dairy. One guy was looking at at a soy cheese product, another guy was buying organic frozen meat for him and his daughter for dinner that night. Another woman was checking out rice milks and cereals. Overall it was very refreshing.

The variety of stuff available at Loblaws has also greatly increased as I was able to get my hands on Earth Balance! Yeah, that's right bloggies...I'll now be able to partake in the vegan butter goodness! I can't wait to try it out. I think I'll wait for some bananas to ripen and then hope that my mom's cold has gone away by then so that she can make some of her famous banana bread. Nothing in my mind is better than spreading butter on some freshly baked banana bread. And no one does it finer than my mother.

Other things that made it into today's shopping cart were three boxes of Carr's water crack(ers), a pack of prosciutto (sans sodium nitrate--woot!), Nature's Path Rice Puffs (for some granola bars I'll be making later), Garden of Eatin' Crunchitos (another form of my crack), Wonder+ whole wheat English muffins, organic 2% milk, Olympic organic probiotic yogurt in Green Tea and Vanilla flavour (I can't wait to try this out!) and random stuff my dad bought (a couple salmon fillets on sale, Kashi cereal, Kashi PB granola bars and basmati rice).

After today's super duper lunch with Sean and his folks, I figured a little health and wellness would do me some good. Nice segue way huh? Sean and his parents picked me up and we headed into the city to grab some grub at, you guessed it...Caplansky's! Or maybe not since Sean and I had eaten there just a week ago, hahaha. Funny thing is that once again, I managed to not take a single photo the entire time we were there! I had remembered to charge my batteries and clear up my memory card and pack the camera before I left the house, but for some reason, once we were seated, I just plum forgot...oops!

It was still a good lunch. Sean's parents both had the smoked meat sandwiches while Sean had the Leo (lox, eggs, onions) and I had the smoked meat hash. I was smarter this time around and only consumed half of my all-day-breakfast menu item and packed the rest to-go. I also snagged a bite of Sean's sour cherry pie (I think it was better this time compared to the first) and a piece of Mama Sean's dark chocolate bread pudding (yuuummmm!!!!). The pickles were also extra crunchy and sour this visit and a second plate just had to be ordered. The food definitely made up for the lengthy wait. It took an extraordinarily long time for our food to arrive. Actually, scratch that...it took an extraordinary long time for Papa Sean's soup to arrive. So long in fact, that I had completely forgotten that he had even ordered the cabbage borscht. It looked really good though and both he and Sean seemed to enjoy it. I didn't bother with a taste just in case it was made with chicken stock.

The rest of the day was spent vacuuming my room and cleaning my drum set. It was the first time I had cleaned my drum set since I got them over 11 years ago. Pretty pathetic right? I mean, I've cleaned them rather quickly, like a quick wipe down with a cloth here-and-there, but this time I wanted to do a really thorough cleaning. I ended up Googling how to properly clean my cymbals and the drums and while I didn't have any furniture polish or Windex around, I did have some safe and nonabrasive metal polish for my cymbals so I got to work. I put a LOT of effort into and man, my wrist was killing afterwards. Sadly, I wasn't even done! I wasn't even halfway done when I realized that I was going to finish off my dad's bottle of metal polish so I opted to stop and pick up my own bottle in the city in a couple of days. I know that a trip to one of the city's musical instrument stores will result in a lecture about keeping my drum set in tip-top shape (which I know I should have been doing), but I'm hoping it also results in a giant bottle of drum set cleaner. I have to get my drum set ready for the summer--details later!!

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Saturday eats...I did manage to get something into my stomach:Buckwheat cereal and Optimum Slim with unsweetened vanilla Almond Breeze. It was my first time tasting the unsweetened vanilla version. It's going to take some getting used to, hahaha.

I did some intense weight-lifting Saturday night and decided to replenish with this:

A purchase I made at Sobey's a while back...Metromint Lemonmint water. And that was it for Saturday's eats.

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For Sunday, this is all I've got...I have photos of my leftovers, which I decided to eat as an appetizer to dinner earlier tonight...Leftover smoked meat hash (smoked meat, potato matchsticks), one egg, half a slice of rye with butter) along with two garlic dill pickles and a small but very full glass of OJ (unpictured).

Proper dinner was eaten not too much later than that because my dad was in the midst of baking the salmon filet you see below but I was too hungry and needed something to nosh on anyway:Second dinner (oops) was 1/4 of a salmon fillet on top of beans, with a side of sauteed romaine lettuce (don't knock it 'til you try it) and orzo cooked in organic chicken broth. Tasty but too much food. Now I feel a little bit ill.

BAKED PENNE? MMM MMM GOOD.

I hope there isn't a copyright on the "Mmm mmm good" part because if there is, I'm in trouble. Earlier this evening I was reading my usual list of blogs and came across Soap & Chocolate's latest post. Oh heck, who am I kidding...I knew it was Sunday night and that Diana would be posting something new since I know her regular posting schedule runs from Sunday-Thursday.

Aaaanyhoo, I checked out S&D and wouldn'tcha know it, there was a fresh new post--yay! So...long story short, with no eggplant to make the recipe that Diana provided, I decided to improvise! Here is the result of my baked penne with "crap I found in the fridge that I really needed to use up":

I really had no intention of blogging about this in length. It wasn't until about halfway through, when I mixed the par-boiled veggies with the sausage did I realize that hey, this is looking and smelling kind of good. When I added in the garlic powder and Mrs. Dash and then finally the 365 Organics Roasted Garlic tomato sauce, I realized I should have taken in-process photos. Oh well!

What I do have are photos of the baked mess pre-oven:And after 20 minutes baking and 5 minutes under the broiler:I cannot tell you how happy I am with how this turned out. It was a great way to use random veggies in my fridge and a bunch of cheese that I just had around. (It's very rare that I have cheese in my house. We're not big cheese eaters...unless it's brie and then I eat it as if the world's about to end.)

Anyway, since I was making this pasta bake casserole rather haphazardly, the amount of ingredients is rather dubious but I'll list 'em anyway:

Use-It-Up Penne Pasta Bake (inspired by Diana's Bad Ass Baked Ziti from Soap & Chocolate)
- 1/2 box of Catelli Smart penne rigate (I don't have the box handy so I don't know how much that amounts to but whatever amount you think will fit a medium-to-large casserole dish will do. Wow, that direction is just awesome. Not.)
- 3/4 of a head of broccoli, peeled and cut into bite-size pieces
- couple handfuls of baby carrots, cut into thirds
- 5 maple pork breakfast sausages with the casing removed (I know this sounds really excessive but these had been in the fridge for far too long so instead of just using two or three, I just went with all)
- 1 organic pork patty (again, I know this is a lot of meat but it was in the fridge defrosting for a few days and I didn't think it would last much longer)
- 1/2 jar of 365 Organics Roasted Garlic tomato sauce (or whatever your favourite tomato sauce is. I used this one because I had it on hand and it doesn't contain evil sulphites.)
- parmesan cheese
- 1/2 large ball of fresh Buffalo mozzarella (this may seem really excessive and fancy but I only used this specific type of cheese because again, it was in the fridge and it's Best Before date was coming up)
- garlic powder, to taste
- Mrs. Dash, to taste (or other seasoning powder)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F. My oven is faster at preheating than I am at cooking so I tend to preheat my oven later down the line. You can do this now or do it later like me :)
   
2. Boil pasta according to directions on box. Mine said to boil for 11 minutes for al dente. If you have more than one working burner, halfway through your pasta would be a good time to boil/steam your broccoli and carrots for about 3-5 minutes. (I currently only have one working burner so I waited until after the pasta was done. A waste of time but I had no other choice.) Once cooked, set veggies and pasta aside.
   
3. Heat up some olive oil (I always use extra virgin olive oil for my cooking but that's rather long to type out so I always type olive oil.) Add in sausage sans casing and pork patty. Cook until well done though you don't have to cook it all the way through since you'll be sticking it in the oven. I'm paranoid so I cooked it until brown anyway. This took about...7 to 8 minutes?
4. Add in veggies and stir.
5. Add in garlic powder and Mrs. Dash and stir.
   
6. Add in tomato sauce and stir.
   
7. Add in pasta and stir.
8. Add in cheeses and stir. At this point your arm will be tired but do not give up--the results will be worth it.
9. Dump everything into a 9x13" casserole dish and bake for 20 minutes. Then broil for another five minutes.
10. Dump a huge piece on a plate. Grab a fork and dig in!

Now go make some for yourself, whether you use eggplant or not!

HELLO WHOLE FOODS, GOODBYE $75.17

I can't believe I've spent almost $150 on groceries this week. That is insane--to the MAX! Fo' shizzle. I don't think I've ever spent that much money on groceries. Damn!

The Staples:Artisana Coconut Butter. Now I've never had this stuff before and at $15 a jar, I was really reluctant to purchase it. But as I looked at it longingly in the aisles and held it up to gaze at its coconut wonderfulness, Sean told me that if I was going to use it sparingly (like, not eat it as quickly as I do with popcorn), it probably would be a good food investment. So I took that as a sign to buy it. (Heck, I would have bought it without Sean's prompting since I almost ordered it online from Hamilton.) And then we have Madhava agave nectar (a great alternative to white sugar or other sweeteners--aspartame I'm looking at you!) and Nativas cacao nibs, which I typically add into my oatmeal. Oi, there goes $35.

The Boxes O' Goodness:Barbara's Bakery Puffins cereal (PB flavour). I first came across Barbara's Bakery cereal in the US. Yeah, that's right...I brought a box of cereal across the border. It was the cinnamon flavour and totally worth it. I poured that cereal into milk, ate it on top of yogurt, stirred it into oatmeal. That cereal and I had some really good times. Then I read all about other bloggers' experiences with PB Puffins. I had to get some.

It has been AGES since I've eaten cookies...ones that I haven't baked myself anyway. I typically peruse the cookie aisle in whatever grocery store I'm in, looking at what new sugary delights there are and if my mom is with me she'll say "are you getting anything?" but then I remind her that no, I'm not getting anything because all these cookies contain at least 2-3 ingredients I can no longer consume for whatever reason (usually a migraine is the trigger reason). But not at Whole Foods! At WF there are a whole bunch of cookies I can eat and so Sean and I settled on a box of Late July organic Vanilla Bean with green tea cookies, which are very similar to Oreos. The thing is that I'm not a fan of cookies in the first place (I prefer mine soft and chewy), so I had to ask Sean if he'd eat most of these before their October 2010 due date and he agreed. We had one each on the ride to the concert venue (Wrongbar, anyone?) and they were great! Not too sweet and just the right amount of vanilla bean and cocoa. There really is a huge difference between regular and organic eating. I'm all for the latter. You can consider that my Late July cookie review. Oh and of course, 365 Organic water crackers, which I'm obsessed with so I got two boxes just because.

The Indulgences:Vita Coco coconut water (the left with pineapple and the right, original). Two Kind bars and some dried mango from the bulk bin without all kinds of nasty stuff like sulphites--yay!

So that plus a carton of organic chocolate milk (which Sean consumed) and a bottle of organic blueberry St. John's Wort salad dressing is what you get for $75.17. Now, to defend the green space of goodness--despite my claims, I do love WF--I did buy a lot of stuff so that I could stock up. The coconut butter, agave nectar and cacao nibs were really pricey (each $15, $10 and $10) but each of those will last me a really long time and any subsequent trip to Whole Foods will not require the purchase the coconut butter, agave nectar or cacao nibs and so, $35 will be saved--or used for other things, hahaha.