Continuing on...
10th...Saturday!Sean and I had plans to hang out on his weekend off.
We initially had all these great plans but one by one they all fell through until we decided to check out Patachou Patisserie for their macarons. At $1 each, you can't go wrong! We picked up two of each flavour they had on hand. For $10, we got the following:
2 x lemon, chocolate, cappuccino, strawberry and pistachio. My faves were lemon and chocolate while Sean's faves were the pistachio and strawberry. Not a lot of love for the cappuccino. It was good though but the other flavours totally rocked. The lemon tasted like a lemon meringue pie, although Sean said it tasted like those lemon cream cookies. I was totally crazy about the strawberry one since I thought it was a little overly sweet. I do think these macarons are better than Nadege when you compare price and flavour. The range of flavours isn't as large--I do miss the mojito and poppyseed available at Nadege--but for $1 each, compared to $2.25 at Nadege, they totally rock my world. I also found them to be more chewier and less air-pocketed than Nadege's. They also kept better after a couple of days than Nadege's.
After our macaron-tasting Sean and I headed to
Arepa Cafe on Queen St. West so we could finally have a taste of the Venezuelan dish known as arepas. I'm going to be doing a full review of Arepa Cafe later so I'll just show what we had to eat really quickly. We both ordered drinks (Sean had a cafe con leche and I had a chai latte) and then started with some yucca fries that came with a side of guacamole. No photo...camera ate it.
Next up came our arepas. I ordered the Pabellon: flank steak, black beans, sweet plantain and aged cheese
While Sean ordered the Adobe Roasted Pork which came with anatto and caramelized onions:
I only finished half of mine and took the rest to-go. We also ordered the special of the day: fish empanadas to-go but they only had one left. We decided to get it anyway, along with another Pabellon arepa that Sean was going to take home for his dad to taste. Bad news? The servers forgot our empanada and extra arepa. Good news? Arepa Cafe manager will comp us for it the next time we're in. (More on this during the full review.)
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11th...SundayMy breakfast of champions included a whole wheat English muffin with organic roast beef, a slice of processed cheese and sliced cucumbers along with a mug of some kind of tea...which kind, I can't remember:
Sean and I had plans to go to the
Ontario Science Centre.
They are currently running a Harry Potter exhibit featuring artifacts from the Harry Potter films. It was pretty entertaining.
You can play a game of Quidditch, sit in Hagrid's giant chair (in his hut!) and even pull on some fake mandrakes and listen to their awful sound. There's definitely a lot of stuff to look at. It does cost extra to see it and you can't take any video or photo-graphic evidence so that kind of sucked a bit. Other things at the Science Centre included the Human Body exhibit where Sean and I learned about blood and the human digestive system:
And we even sat around for the presentation on electricity. At the end of the 40-minute presentation, we lined up in pairs to get a chance to touch the Van der Graaf Generator, which makes your hair stand up like crazy:
Sean's hair worked better because he didn't have any mousse in it.
After the Science Centre I was famished but Sean had a pick-up hockey game to attend so we quickly hauled it back to Stouffville and dropped by the Metro so I could pick up a spinach and fruit salad and some watermelon chunks. No photos, I was hungry.
After the game, Sean and I went back to his house so he could shower and after a kerfuffle, we decided to save some money and stay in and eat dinner. Sean made us both egg and cheese sandwiches--yum! Everything tastes 10 times better when someone else makes it for you.
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12th...Monday
Breakfast started out all fine and dandy with a WW English muffin with PB and CB along with some grapes:
Second breakfast was the usual oatmeal with chia, flax, strawberries and Lindt sea salt chocolate. Lunch followed several hours later with leftover spinach and fruit salad that I pumped up with some more strawberries and grapes:
along with a sandwich consisting of a WW English muffin, a slice of processed cheese, organic roast beef and sliced cucumber:
Awesome sandwich shot. Not! Snacks included grapes and more strawberries:
Dinner was brown rice with bitter melon and pork and some pak choy:
Followed by a whole mango about an hour later:
Pretty good day for eats. Nothing terribly spectacular though.
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13th...TuesdayI decided to indulge for first breakfast and had half a raisin bun with an overripe banana:
Second breakfast was the usual oatmeal at work. I couldn't wait for my lunch break to start because I had a special lunch packed. What could it be? Well chicken wings of course! I had fried chicken wings that I covered in garlic salt:
I first marinated the chicken wings in a bit of soy sauce and then dredged them in corn starch prior to deep-frying. I made these the night before and it was actually my first time deep-frying chicken wings all by myself. No oil splatter--yay! Along with the 3 wings, I had a spring mix salad:
And a fruit salad that I swear consisted of more than just mango and strawberries:
See there actually are other fruits in there:
Dinner was roast duck with basmati and some snowpea shoots, along with a piece of fried salmon. I wasn't going to take the salmon but my dad was prodding me to try one and it was really good. Too much protein intake though so I didn't finish it all:
I went to bed pretty early Tuesday night, despite the return of Glee. I was just totally exhausted and still felt sick so I went to bed a few minutes after 10pm and didn't wake up until 10 hours later. It was a good night's sleep.
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14th...WednesdayBreakfast was totally awesome although really filling for first breakfast. After 10 hours of sleep I decided on a whole wheat bagel with 1.5 slices of organic roast beef, a slice of processed cheese and cucumber slices:
As you can see, I like my bagels extra toasty. Second breakfast was my usual instant organic oatmeal with chia and ground flax along with two squares of Lindt sea salt. Here's what it looks like before I add my fruits:
Lunch was all kinds of good even though it was all kinds of ugly. I had quinoa with kidney beans and leftover salmon:
After I mixed everything together, it looked like this:
On the side I had a side of spring mix:
And snacks included fruit salad consisting of mango, grapes, strawberries, pear and apple:
Plus this Coconut Cream Larabar:
I only managed two bites. Dinner was recapped earlier but I'll show it here again anyway:
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15th...ThursdayBreakfast was a slice of (what looks to be) pumpernickel bread with PB and CB along with some fruits on the side:
Lunch was another spectacular feast:
Organic roast chicken drumstick with white kidney beans, roast sweet and white potatoes and quinoa mixed with roast broccoli and mushrooms. I made extra so Sean got to take some to work. I also had a salad on the side but didn't get around to eating it:
Fruits were also consumed:
Dinner was a late affair. I started off with some leftover white kidney bean soup that I jazzed up with some leftover duck fat and dried dill:
Since my 2/5 of my family were not going to be around for dinner, I was at a loss of what to do with my salmon until I remembered the lime in the fridge. I wanted to incorporate lime without soy or ginger. I decided to make up my own recipe and ended up with this for dinner:
The recipe is coming later. It was so good it deserves its own post.
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16th...Friday (date night with Sean--yay!)
First breakfast was a slice of pump with PB and CB:
Second breakfast was more interesting! I followed the recipe for
Warm and Nutty Cinnamon Quinoa from
101 Cookbooks. Instead of using pecans I used walnuts and instead of drizzling agave on top, I mixed in coconut butter, which added just enough sweetness for my tastebuds.
I also poured in one of those creamers meant for your coffee at work because it was Friday and I tend to make Fridays a little indulgent at work (sometimes I drink a can of pop or eat a Kind bar). Anyway, this was delicious! The only problem is that I think I might be a little allergic to quinoa because ever since indulging in quinoa over the past week, my face has been breaking out in little rashes here and there--even though I've been rinsing my quinoa thoroughly :(
Lunch was my beloved salmon leftovers from the night before:
Along with more fruit salad:
Yay for mom's who make fruit salad!
Sean picked me up after work and we headed back to Sean's house where his mother was preparing dinner for everyone. We ended up having baked salmon with Greek seasoning and garlic, along with a baked potato, carrots and green beans. As always I ate way too much and was stuffed! Dinner was done earlier than it would have been at my house so afterwards Sean and I had a whole bunch of time to kill. We ended up at the
bookstore, again! where of course, we spent money on books and then watched
Kick Ass, which was a surprisingly hilarious movie! I highly recommend it even though Nicolas Cage is in it. Oh Nic Cage...whatever happened to you. I miss you circa
Raising Arizona. Date night was certainly a success--even though too much popcorn was consumed. IBS-symptoms, commence.
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17th...SaturdayI woke up relatively early but decided to skip breakfast in favour of doing some other stuff like updating my blog--oi! So the first meal of the day was actually lunch and it was cantonese chow mein:
In the afternoon I felt a little peckish after a trip to Michael's for some cupcake decorating supplies so I had a slice of pump with PB and a cup of Starbucks Refresh tea while I read The Omnivore's Dilemma:
Shortly after that I fell asleep--for like, three hours! I woke up just in time to feed the cats and by then I had to make myself something to eat. It was almost 8pm so while my potatoes were roasting, I snacked on some strawberries, grapes and blackberries:
By the time my potatoes were done I was halfway through my bowl of fruit so I decided to call it quits and get eating, for reals:
I had an organic roast beef sandwich with processed cheese and cucumber on pumpernickel bread along with some roasted white potatoes. Simple but delicious and just what I wanted for dinner. It was me all alone in my big house so this was a perfect meal for one.
This is what they look like upon opening:
Here's the biscuit, roughly 2.5" in lengthy. Hahaha, lengthy. I'm keeping it.
And a lovely cross-section: (that bird is everywhere!)
Verdict: It's pretty good. The biscuit don't contain any high fructose corn syrup, or any corn syrup for that matter. It does contain golden syrup but I was told that that's completely different from corn syrup and that my migraines had nothing on me. Since there are no freakish sugars added, it wasn't crazy sweet. One thing I've noticed about organic vs. regular sweets/treats which I've discussed before is the sweetness factor in said products. Like those organic Late July Oreo-type cookies I consumed about two weeks ago. I was expecting something crazy, toothache sweet and was actually quite surprised and impressed when the sweetness that resulted was something milder and nothing compared to a real Oreo cookie. It's sometimes astonishing just how sweet regular snack foods can be and this isn't just me...Sean said the same thing.
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