davids tea

Hello everyone! Happy Saturday and Labour Day Weekend. It is a beautiful sunny day here and I am enjoying it immensely. I’ve realized in the last couple of weeks that summer is basically over, fall is upon us and winter will be here much too soon… so I’ve made getting outside a priority! As a result I’ve gone for some lovely walks around Wye Lake Park, and I’m pleased to announce that I can make it around the whole thing WITH Shasta strapped to my body! It’s about a 45 minute-1hr walk and it took me 6 weeks to work up to it. Every day I feel a little more “normal,” though it’s hard to remember what normal is since I’ve been recovering/pregnant for the last 11 months. Having a baby is a HUGE process!! Holy moly! It’s kind of ridiculous but also really wonderful. I am enjoying motherhood more every day. Shasta is such a little sweetheart. He is smiling lots now and interacting with us more, especially when we change his diaper. He can be crying and screaming but once you put him on the change table he calms right down. I love blowing on his face, blowing raspberries onto his stomach, and kissing his chubby cheeks! His reactions are so cute. We took a video of it yesterday actually. Maybe I’ll put it on here on of these days.

One exciting thing that happened this week was that I received my order from Davids Tea. If you don’t know about Davids Tea, I am here to make your life a little bit better. It is seriously the most heavenly smelling stuff. And it tastes amazing too, of course! They have so many creative varieties of every kind of tea(black, green, white, oolong, mate, rooibos, herbal, etc!!). There was a store in Guelph so I got to try a bunch of them when we lived there. I would love to open one in the Yukon. Better yet I would love someone else to open one so that I could go there all the time. Since that’s not likely to happen in the near future, however, I’m glad I can order online! I’m trying not to drink caffeine because of breastfeeding so I’ve been trying a lot of rooibos flavours. They are all amazing. I ordered one called Creme Caramel Rooibos and holy moly. Is it ever tasty. I served it with a chocolate zucchini bread the other day and it tasted like it was covered in butterscotch. YUM. So if you want some tasty tea go check out the stuff David makes because it is GOOD!

I continued on with my vegetarian meal planning this week and we discovered some more great recipes. I really enjoyed the butternut squash soup, creamy lentils (with goat cheese), and Moroccan Chickpeas with quinoa. If you would like any of these recipes just leave me a comment and I’ll send it to you. I also made these quinoa oat bars and this chocolate banana quinoa… really good! Hmm, we ate a lot of quinoa this week!

ALSO here’s something else that may change your life in the kitchen. This is gonna seem a bit random, but stay with me. Have you ever wondered why Brazilians are so beautiful? I don’t think I’m biased. They truly are attractive people. Anyways, if you’ve been to Brazil you’ll know that they eat a LOT of beans. Like, every day, at least once a day. So I’ve made the connection. Beans = beauty. Yes. I know it’s a little far fetched but I’m going with it. Now you may be asking yourself how they can possibly stand all of the soaking and cooking involved in preparing beans. They DON’T! They have this wonderful little thing called a pressure pan(you’ve probably heard of a pressure cooker before which the same thing, I think – but I had never heard of it and had no idea what it was for… until I lived in Brazil for 2.5 months!) that cooks beans from their dry state in 45 minutes or less! My mother in law and grandmother in law gave me one in Brazil and I’m so glad they did because I have been using it A LOT. Don’t know what to have for dinner? Throw a pot of rice on, put some beans, veggies and meat(or not) in the pressure pan, and wait 45 minutes. Pronto. This week I made black beans with moose meat, sausage, yams, onions, garlic, crushed tomatoes… it was good. I only decided to tell you about this because I found out this week that you can order these magical contraptions online at Amazon.com. They’re worth every penny, as long as you like beans(and you should. We Canadians don’t appreciate their awesomeness enough).

And now for my favourite photos of the week!