Daily, FitFluential, Health, Photos

Weekend recap + a recipe!

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Occasionally you’ll see a weekender re-cap pop up on my blog. I usually try to take a break from updating on the weekends and focus on topics for the upcoming week. I did take a hankerin’ of photos this weekend so let’s get right to it!

I had two coupons both valued at 20% off my purchase for H&M and Sally’s. Here I am at H&M on Saturday. I thought I wanted yellow jeans. Until I tried these on. Then I tried on the colored cords. I’m still thinking about them. I ended up buying a nice cozy sweater, and pants for myself along with a few things for my nephews. They have the cutest kids clothes.

I decided to take my car off the road and arrive in style, in my beast-mobile. Do you like my new ride?

I drove over to Guelph to visit my Great Aunt.  We hung out for a bit, until we had to evacuate her building due to a minor fire! We ended up going out to supper at 4pm (oh 80 year olds!) and then I was asked to drive home so I wasn’t out after dark. Ha!

Sunday was race day at Ironman Canada (IMC). My boyfriend raced in his 4th year in a row, at IMC on a freshly healed broken foot. I was tweeting all day about it, so I apologize after the fact if I clouded up your tweet feed.

I logged into the live feed of Ironman Canada and was glued to the laptop! The bike portion of the race is 180km and takes a good few hours to complete. Rather than sit around in our apartment all day I ended up doing some shopping. I had to check the walmart flyer first, to see if there were any good sales on.

I went to Walmart food village as we call it. Because it has a full on produce and grocery section. I parked far away because I didn’t want beast-mobile to get any scratches :)

My grocery list, treats for Alfie, some sales I spotted and holy moses, they still make Pert Plus shampoo?

Pretty basic math that doesn’t add up. $2.00 for 1 bottle with 35 sheets of Lysol wipes, or $6.67 for 3 bottles of the exact same stuff. I’m confused as to which one to buy ;)

I had almost everything I needed, and was searching around the store for my favorite soy sauce by VH, they make some pretty #DeliciousSauces. But the only thing I could find was this mini display of random VH sauces. I went up and down each aisle for what seemed like 20 minutes. I decided to pay closer attention to what I was doing and not get distracted by all of the Newfoundland purity candy (great name for it, hey?). Low and behold, of course the VH sauces were just adjacent to this display. Then I had to decide on whether or not to get the low sodium, or regular soy sauce.Low sodium it is! Even that is pretty high for just one tablespoon. No wonder I’m always so thirsty after I make lemon pepper chicken stir fry. Oops.

Have you ever tried kale or baby kale? It’s a super food that is very good for you. It’s from the cabbage family and it’s very leafy! Apparently people massage kale leaves to make it more tender. I’ve only had it once or twice before, and I enjoyed it so I decided to pick it up with some other things.

When I arrived home, Alfie immediately sniffed out his treats so I gave him one and he went right to town on it, out on our balcony. Once he was content with that I decided it was time to check in on the Boyf doing his Ironman and maybe eat some nachos. Heh heh. Note to self: Montana’s chicken nachos are still way better!I even had a mini-tweet-convo with the famous Jordan Rapp who was announcing at IMC, it actually made me giddy when he replied. 

Between cooking supper and waiting for the boyf to finish the race, I was dying to go for a pee TMI! I know! For some reason, I sat by the laptop an 3 extra minutes longer and there he was. My boyfriend shown right below, coming in on a newly healed broken foot. In a finish time in under 11 hours, what a guy. The people down on the balcony below me, definitely heard me hootin’ and hollering at Scott on the screen, I was clapping like a baby seal I was so happy, ha ha!All the excitement was over with and I could finally focus on not burning my supper. What did I make? Oh, chef’s own Lemon Pepper Chicken Stir Fry. Actually, it’s not my recipe. My brother came up with this random concoction that tastes amazing and it’s a staple in out household now. Thanks broski.

Finished product, right there. Want to know how to make it?

What you’ll need:

  1. Garlic
  2. Oil
  3. VH Soy Sauce
  4. White Vinegar (my brother uses rice vinegar, does that taste the same? I don’t know sorry!)
  5. Lemon Pepper seasoning

That’s it. 5 ingredients, and then your food. Assemble it all together and you’ve got supper in no time. Especially if you’re smart like me and cooked the chicken before hand and chopped the veg!

My veg and meat:

  1. Bell peppers
  2. Carrots
  3. Broccoli
  4. Cauliflower
  5. Cooked chicken

I use the tube garlic that you just refrigerate and about a teaspoon of oil, just to get things goin’ a bit. The garlic is already minced, so it’s perfect. I always put the firmest veg (that being carrots) in first to cook it down a bit, and once the carrots have been cooking in the pan for a few minutes I add the broccoli and cauliflower (which I forgot to purchase).

After everything is a bit tender, it’s time to add the VH soy sauce! I always eyeball how much goes in. So, just for you guys today I ended up measuring 2 teaspoons of soy sauce.

It’s not supposed to be a lot of it. Just enough to give it some flavor. It’s not a soy sauce stir fry, it’s a lemon pepper stir fry.

At this time you can now add in the vinegar. I’m not entirely sure what the vinegar does to the recipe, but you can notice it, when it’s not in there. Put in 1/2 a capful of vinegar. Not much at all.

Now that everything is mostly cooked. Add your cooked chicken, and bell peppers. Top with a few large pinches of lemon pepper or 2 teaspoons and keep stirring, because you don’t want a mouthful of straight up lemon pepper. It’d be way too salty/peppery.

I love to eat the stir fry with noodles. So go ahead and boil some water and cook as many packages as you’d like of these Mr. Noodles. Keep on a boil for 3 minutes total, and strain. Serve your dinner immediately and it’s going to be SOOO tasty!!

For more photos of my weekend, go ahead and view my Google+ story.

For more information about VH, you can find them on twitter @VHSauces, VH Facebook, and the VH Sauces website.

This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias, all opinions are my own. #CBias

 

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Daily, FitFluential, Health, Photos

The day I nearly got kicked out of Yoga

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First of all, I want to genuinely thank you all for entering into the Fossil watch giveaway that I am hosting. Holy fiah cracker, I can’t get over how many new blogs there are for me to read, and how many people have already entered. I think this has been my biggest giveaway yet! Moses. I really do appreciate you taking the time to checking out my website, and leaving friendly comments. This has made my week!!!

Onto a little story for you all. The day I nearly got kicked out of Yoga.

The instructor that I had for yoga on this particular night was an older lady with a full face of makeup. Not that her makeup matters. But I’m trying to give you a visual. This should do it:

(source)

I’m not entirely sure that she’s taught many yoga classes, because she was a little too light-hearted about it all. Stumbling over poses, rephrasing her words to back track on our poses, and then “Okay, never mind let’s do it this way instead” Nevertheless it wasn’t a very focused yoga session.

I made many quick glances at my co-worker and I could tell that she could read my mind. That, or it was the grin I had on my face the entire class.

At one point I looked over at L while the instructor was trying to explain how to get from a low lunge on the floor, to a deep lunge. Most of us understood the concept already and was in the pose before she finished her sentence. As I glanced at L, I must’ve made a questionable face.

Which then got a little smirk and chuckle out of her.

I then thought of what my face must’ve looked like, to get a rise out of my coworker, that I couldn’t help but silently laugh. Which, of course got more of a giggle out of L, and so the ball got rolling and I started laughing … uncontrollably. Those laughing fits in which you have absolute no self control over. I was trying so hard to stop, but I couldn’t. Thankfully it was one of those silent laughs, oh but only for a little while until I let out a squeal or two trying to gasp for air, which made me let out a not obnoxiously loud “HAHA”, but enough to stir attention.

Oh why do I do this to myself. As I’ve stated in my About Me section, I love to laugh (occasionally at the wrong time). So brutal.The  laugh probably lasted no more than 30 seconds but trying to quiet down while at yoga is a workout in itself. I just couldn’t look a at L, had to keep my thoughts away from the faces I was making, and focus on what the instructor was telling us to do next. It was like the instructor was inflexible and making light of the situation.

I could hide my laughter since we were in the child’s pose for most of my laughing fit. Thanks to my wonderful camera skills, I took these shots just for this blog post!

Some of the poses the woman had us doing was really quite strange. It was more of a stretching sort of class rather than actually working muscles. Which was fine. But not what I was expecting. Especially doing The Bow pose. That was just completely asking for someone to let out a fart. It was fart-inducing, if I may. Thankfully I didn’t let one go….but I could tell, if there was one that needed to come out, it woulda.

L said it well, after we left the class. It was a different instructor than what we’ve been used to the past week or so, the one we had for this class was good for stretch holds, but the other one who got me totally hooked on yoga, was good for getting in deep muscle stretches and felt like I actually did a workout, instead of feeling like I just stretched for an hour and lay like a corpse at the end.

Speaking of Corpse pose. That always weirds me out. They need to rename it to relaxation pose. I don’t want to visualize me as a corpse, as I try to relax.

Alright, so I didn’t exactly almost get kicked out of Yoga. But it makes for a better story this way, am I right? I certainly felt like a school grader, trying to keep her giggles to herself.

Have you ever had a laughing fit at a place where you really should not have?

What is your favorite Yoga pose? I have a few!

Downward Dog

Plank

Warrior (I think having the arms up in the air is correct?).

Save the best pose for last, my absolute favorite, the Chaturanga. I want to say Cowabunga every time it’s mentioned.

To finalize things off, I thought I’d leave you with a great quote (click to enlarge):

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Daily, FitFluential, Health, Photos

Only a few more nights on the patio

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There’s only a few weekends left of our beloved summer. To be honest, I think it’s completely over up here in Ontario! I’ve actually cranked the heat in my car in the mornings, when it was 18ºC outside. Isn’t that ridiculous? Who am I? I’ve become accustomed to the 40º heat I think.

What did everyone end up doing this weekend? Up until a few moments ago, the Boyfriend and I were drinking some tall boy drinks and having some snacks before supper.

That was what our weekend looks like. A lot of chilling out at home on our balcony, listening to some music (audiobox live!) and enjoying our last few weekends of the warm summer sunshine.

Speaking of music there’s a Canadian Club Mixed & Ready Cover Challenge program. If any unsigned Canadian bands interested in sharing your talents and unique sound there’s a few days left to enter.

Deadline for submissions & voting is August 27  and judging will happen shortly after. The winning band will receive recording time, new gear and a flight upwards to $3k to Toronto.

If you’re interested, find out more details on the Canadian Club Canada Facebook page.

Have you guys ever tried these Canadian Club drinks? We had some with popcorn and peanuts. I feel like a university student, or a frat boy drinkin’ with the boyfriend. They’re really good. I had the “Cola” one. Which tasted like a rum & coke.

Popcorn is my favorite snack, next to candy. But I loved breaking open the peanut shells.

I ended up doing a few loads of laundry which I air dried out on the balcony. Browsing the net for some chunky knit wool scarves (and will be posting my favorite links + photos in the near future. I’ve also planned out our meals for this week — something I haven’t done in months it seems, and writing the Broski of mine a funny Happy Birthday card, since his birthday is this week!

So we’ll sit back, relax while taking artsy shots of the alcoholic beverages we’ve consumed and enjoy the last few days of summer.

Has anyone else been reading up on people’s blogs talking about the HLS12 (Healthy Living Summit 2012)? So jealous of the people who ended up getting some really amazing swag from Reebok, one of the sponsors this year. They gave everyone some minimalistic Reebok CrossFit sneakers! Amazing right?

Cheers to endless summer nights!

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