Aventuras en salsa haciendo :Part 1

Happy Tuesday wonderful people!

How was your weekend? Mine was pretty awesome! But first off I just want take a minute to remember all those who lost their lives due to the tragic events on 9/11. I'll never forget waking up that morning and wondering why the tv screen was showing only smoke. I also send a big prayer out to those who lost family members and those who are dealing with major health concerns from the event. You will always be in our hearts!!

As I mentioned in my last post, I was off to my mom's place this past weekend for some serious salsa making! We started off our crazy Saturday with an early morning walk to grab a tea! We walked down town and grabbed some Starbucks while snooping at the farmer's market. They wouldn't let us buy anything as I guess it was vendor's only buying time...bummer! As we had a million peppers/onions/tomatoes to chop, we needed to skidaddle.

I started the day with a cherry bomb shake - Kristen's recipe minus the hemp protein but with some romaine lettuce and coconut water added.

Take out my primrose oil, and you've got yourself a day job!

We chopped everything by hand as our food processor just not giving us the consistency that we wanted. Basically, it was making soup LOL!

From the bottom to the top - orange pepers, roma tomatoes, yellow peppers, and onions.

Mmm...the house was smelling pretty amazing:)


The goodness waiting to seal!

This bowl of salsa was from one of our last batches..and since this was at the 10 hour mark of our marathon of salsa making, we forgot to add in the vinegar LOL! We will have to mix a good batch with this one!

All was well in Nemo sleep land while the insane chopping, and cooking and canning
was happening!

Half-way there! We ended up making 70-something jars!

And this is what happens when you have been canning for 10 hours..nothing makes it into the jar! ...and you forget the vinegar LOL!

And then the wine came out! Unfortunately it was horrible. I didn't read the year on it and discovered it was only 2009 so it haden't fermented enough yet! Oh well. I slept like a baby anyways!

I'll be sharing part 2 of my weekend adventures tomorrow plus the recipe for our "secret" salsa and a tomatillo salsa that is out of this world!

Have a wonderful day!

Dealing!

Hey All!

Happy Friday! Hope you are all doing well. I'm doing..okay. There are some inner demons or "unwelcomed guests" that I'm struggling to deal with. So this week I was feeling pretty low.

I overthink many things...and this overthinking can be destructive to my self esteem.

Yet, I want to share with you something that happened this morning that showed me the universe is listening. I received my email from The Daily Love, as usual, but I felt like this email was MADE for me at that particular moment.

PS to me the universe means something that relates to my beliefs..but I like the word universe because I feel more people can connect with that. Just a thought of mine anyways:)

"I found that every single successful person I've ever spoken to had a turning point and the turning point was where they made a clear, specific, unequivocal decision that they were not going to live like this anymore. Some people make that decision at 15 and some people make it at 50 and most never make it at all."

- Brian Tracy, is a best-selling author and speaker.

THIS IS ME!!! I want so much more out of life. I know I can get it if I just take a leap of faith and put myself out there.

So here are some goals I'm working on..I need to say them out loud, release them to the universe, and get working!

1. Set up a kombucha-brewing community in my house. Yes folks..I want to make tons of my new favorite drink and I want to sell it at my local market/craigslist...and whatever comes after that! 3 months

2. Meet people who share my passions. I have made such wonderful friends through blogging but I need that face-to-face connection too. I haven't spoken much about this topic..but moving to a town where you don't have a buddy to just talk about life with..well, it's hard. People aren't going to come knocking at my door either so I need to find some local groups and get involved!
3 months

3. Kick some serious booty in my course! What course is it? organic chemistry! I know, I know why would I re-take such tortuous-wanna-peck-your-eyeballs-out course? I need to get over the belief that has tormented me since I was little - YOU ARE NOT SMART ENOUGH, YOU DON'T HAVE WHAT IT TAKES. So, basically, I'm taking a hard course to teach myself the hard lesson of believing 1,000,000% in myself. This ties in to the whole applying for naturopathic school thing. 6 months to complete

4. Experiment more and more in the kitchen. I love to cook but I am not confident in whipping a meal up without a recipe. I know a little about which flavors combine well but not enough. I had 2 recipe failures this week...well 3 if you count the half unedible cookies LOL! I was bummed but I need to get right back in there and tweak that recipe. I think I'm also going to take some courses to up my knife skills as they are ...umm...non-existant?
Ongoing...classes next month

There you have it my beautiful bloggies!! My goals for the rest of the year and onward! I feel better already that I wrote about it. I want to share with you my struggles because I feel less alone that way, I want to be as real as possible on my blog, and I feel like I can make a connection with others who are possibly facing something similar. So I hope you don't mind:) The poem below was from the same Daily Love email and it's quite amazing!


The Guest House
by Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.


So, my dears, have an amazing weekend. I'm headed to visit my mom this weekend for a very special event- salsa making! My mom used to make tons of it when I was in university and now that I have a more keen interest in the goodness of homemade foods, I'm rolling up my sleeves to help out! I'm SO excited as we ran out of our last years batch in March! We love salsa in our household and I put it on everything from quinoa to baked squash to sweat potato fries. Ahh bliss! I'll be sure to share the adventures with you all. I picked up local bell peppers (no-spray), organic onions, and organic cilantro to take along.I filled a whole shopping cart with produce yesterday. I had many people ask me what I was up to lol! My mom and my aunt picked roma tomatoes at an organic farm in Oliver this week so we are ready to rock and roll. Oh how I love local food!!

What are you preserving this year? Any yearly family traditions involved?

Me and this guy(plus mouser!) wish you a fantastic weekend. Yes, he's sleeping in a cloth grocery bag LOL!

Dinner In

Happy Tuesday everyone,

Hope everyone had an awesome labour day weekend! Sorry for the absence! I was on the move a lot and I also started my course which I'll tell you about it in another post. But today I wanted to share with you a very special dinner that the hubs and I had last week:)

Before dinner I made myself this amazing juice! My next round of wheatgrass was just screaming "JUICE ME" so I agreed:)

I picked this beet out of my garden just minutes before I juiced it. Love that!

The beautiful end result! wheatgrass-carrots-beets-beet tops

Mmm so good!

I was enjoying my juice out on the patio when this crazy guy spoiled my view LOL!

Pet me already!!!

As for dinner, I had this idea come to me at the last minute. I quickly cleaned off the table that was quickly become scrap paper/business receipts/school info central! Then I placed some mason jars and candle holders on the table! Last but not least, I put the glass jar out that contained the sand from the ceremony of our wedding.

My thought was to make a non-special order-in-meal....a special event where I would even dress up for the occasion. I find I don't take the opportunity to make something we do everyday...FUN!! The best part...I just cleaned off my kitchen table...took me 10 minutes!

I got dressed up in a fun dress and surprised the hubby when he came home with our favorite Indian cuisine! He was really surprised and he even played along and got all dressed up!

I find in relationships you can get caught up on constantly creating new excitement where you have to keep doing/buying new things (yes, I'm guilty!). But the simple things in life can and NEED to be fun too!

What simple things do you do to add fun to the mundane?

The beer..I mean bouch! Yes, we had kombucha in martini glasses. Classy, hey?


Mmmm so, so good!

Dinner was served! Naan bread, mixed veggie korma, rice, butter chicken (hubby), and a salad!

It was so much fun to dress up at home and have a candlelight dinner! I was smiling from ear to ear:) We don't eat dinner at the table very often so it was a nice change and one we will need to do more often.

Have an AWESOME Tuesday and I'll be back soon with some sort of adventure. Maybe some zucchini bread making as my last attempt wasn't the greatest!!!

XOXO

cherr-bouch-sammieee!

Yo-Yo everyone!

How are you? We are inching our way to the weekend and I'm excited! Anyone else get a long weekend? I have a bunch of plans in the works but that could change at any second..lol! We are planning to go to the island as the hubby may end up looking at a truck out there. Then we are hoping to have some people over for din-din one night which will be fun. I'm already thinking about the food..lol! Does that surprise you??

I know my title makes no sense...kind of! I didn't want a long title so I smooshed the words together..and the outcome is rather French-like wouldn't you say mes amies?

First up are the cherries! And not just A cherry....it was a cherry BOMB!!! Yes, I finally made Kristen Suzanne's cherry chocolate bomb shake and hot damn! It's fantastic. I made mine using the most amazing coconut water I have ever tasted, hemp seeds instead of the protein powder, and dutch cocoa because I'm out of the raw stuff. All I can say is...YUM!! I didn't even put any greens in it..GASP! I was in the mood for something different. Do not fret, I made it again the next day and added some lettuce:) I think what really made it over the top for me was the use of coconut water instead of filtered water.

Mmmm..frosty!!

I love this photo!

I swear these zucchs grew overnight. I was checking my garden every day or so and I didn't see anything. Then after a few days of not attending to my garden due to torrential down pours, there were 4 huge zucchs!!! YAY!! I was feeling pretty down because they would grow for a bit and then shrivel up. Apparently this is normal behaviour from the zucchini though:)I have big plans for these beauties! Ryan has already claimed one..or two for zucchini bread:) I plan to make my fave raw hummus from the amazing Nikki! I know I rave about this stuff over and over..but I just LOVE it! I also plan on roasting some:)

I'm sure you already figured out the "bouch" part of my title...you guessed it...my second batch of kombucha is ready! Unfortunately it's not very good because of my forgetfullness of the sugar. I added some in later on but I think that screwed up the process a bit and it's very tart. Live and learn!

bubble, bubble, toil, and trouble!!!

I borrowed this seedling heat mat for my little ghosts here because my house is cooling down with all this fall-like weather we are having. I tell ya, it works like a charm!

I'm starting batch #3 this weekend! Plus I have some BIG plans with this crazy concoction coming up..I'm just getting in some research and laying some ground work!

Nemo was quite the snob and would not have anything to do with the kombucha! LOL!

My sammieee was amazing! I don't what it is about the tomato-cucumber combo that gets my mouth watering. I added in some kale my greenery and for the piece de resistance, some of my sour cream and onion cashew cheese.

Oh this was good!!

I hope you all have a fabulous rest of your Thursday:) I'll be back soon to share with you the course I'm taking and why, my okanagan bounty, and many more musings I'm sure!

PS Alisa of One Frugal Foodie has put together an amazing recipe e-book...and it's FREE! It's called Smart School Time Recipes and there are contributions from a ton of bloggers. So, go check it out:) Thank you Alisa for your hard work!

2 years

Happy Tuesday everyone!!

Hope everyone is doing well:) I'm pretty good and keeping busy as I've taken on another person's job this week while they are away on vacation. I had a fun time on the weekend getting my last stash of blueberries picked. I ended up picking 36lbs of berries and I'm finally able to freeze some even though the blueberry monster (hubby) is catching up! Ry and I also had a fun time walking around down town looking at designs for our tattoes:) More to come on that later! On Saturday night I watched Sex and the City 2 as I hadn't seen it yet. I thought it was pretty good and more applicable to me as a married lady:)

Speaking of marriage...It was my (our) 2 year anniversary yesterday! 2 whole years we have been married and together for 5. WOW!! Where does the time go. I went to the mall after work hoping to find these jeans that the hubs has been wanting (he is pickier about clothes than me!). I was on the phone with my mom while I was getting out of the car and because it's habit, I locked the doors. Well, my keys were inside:( So, I had to wait around the mall for over 2 hours. Ps I don't like the mall haha! I bought Ryan some jeans (which I will be returning..told you he was picky lol!) ,picked up some bananas and raisins as I was out, then headed to Starbucks for tea. It actually was nice and relaxing plus I got to talk to Annette as she had called to wish us a happy anniversary. She is so awesome! After Ryan came and bailed me out, we went for din din and then I grabbed a rice milk ice cream on the way home (Ry got DQ). Dinner was ok but I wasn't too impressed by my pasta dish. I'm thinking I'm going to cook up a big meal this weekend to celebrate again because a Monday celebration isn't the same as a Saturday one (on a long weekend:).

I thought today I would share with you some photos of our wedding and such! Hope you don't mind:) I LOVE our photos as they capture who we are completely! My beautiful friend Erica did our photos and I'm so glad she did!

The vows! We each wrote our own vows. I was BLOWN away by Ryan's vows..so amazing!

My beautiful flowers that my bestie made! She is so talented:)

Yes, it takes this many ladies to do up a dress..the next picture will tell you why!

I really wanted a lace-up back...and I sure got it:)
tie lesson!

This is "the truck"- Ryan's first love lol!

One of my favorite pictures!

These handsome guys are my second cousins and they did a fantastic job greeting everyone walking into the garden!

Another second cousin! This little cutie was my ring bearer. I think it's so awesome that we used a piece of wood to hold our rings because it's a very profound piece of of our lives.

Did I tell you I was a crier?

My grandma and my mom:)

The rings!

The Kiss!

The hubby's family

My family!

This was right before we were to enter for dinner! Nearly forgot to take photos with my mom!!

The lanterns the guys put up! The drapery that I found in a thrift shop!

The yummy cake!
The first dance! I was telling Ry to move around the dance floor but I should have just let it be because now I only remember bossing him around lol!

What an amazing two years! Albeit with many bumbs along the way, yet I wouldn't have it any other way!

Here's to never stopping to dream! Love ya babe!