Best Omelette I've Ever Made

Hello all! I have to share this with you - this is yesterday's breakfast, and the best omelette I've ever made. 

It turned out so perfect it almost looked like a taco, not an omelette!

I know this sounds like a bizarre accomplishment, but you see, usually I'm omelette-ly challenged. Honestly before this puppy, every omelette I've ever attempted to make has burnt, fallen apart, been mushy on the inside, or anything else bad that could happen to an omelette! 

I whipped this little breakky up with fond memories of Aunties and Uncles still lingering in my mind, so I did a little recreation of the roasted vegetable omelette I "oohed" and "mmm'd" over in Toronto! We were very low on groceries yesterday, so mine only consisted of: roasted asparagus, broiled roma tomatoes, roasted garlic, and extra old white cheddar. But it did the trick! Mmm.

xoxo

Mariel

Valentine's Day in Toronto

Hello lovelies! Get ready to read aaall about my wonderful Valentine's Day spent in Toronto with two lovely women! It was such a good first day in Toronto, from start to finish! Us girls started off our day fairly early, and went out for a nice little Valentine's breakky! 

Tatomme took us to the cutest, and busiest little breakfast/brunch spot/hole in the wall I'd ever seen, Aunties and Uncles. We got there at the perfect time as we just missed a HUGE line that formed, practically curving down the street.

See what I mean? This place does NOT look like it would serve incredible breakfast...but looks are deceiving! The line was way past the little white golf you see there at one point!

After a not-too-long wait, we got to enter this adorable little spot! As we fought our way through the crowds of major hipster/scenesters to crawl up the most dangerous set of stairs I've ever climbed, we walked past the tiniest little kitchen I have ever seen! They were whippin' out the food (gigantic servings and all) in this place too! I was impressed.

The interior was a perfectly eclectic blend of bizarre art, 50's/60's diner and just...knick knacks really!

We got a table on the 2nd floor of this two level little restaurant. It was so cozy, you actually felt like you were at your aunty and uncles!

Tucked away in the corner of the upstairs was a cute little sink/counter area where the waitress served up our coffee from. So homey.

Pretty quickly, our food arrived! It looked incredible! All three of us ordered the same thing...because it just sounded too good not to order (I know, we must have looked SO boring).

What we picked was: the omelette of the day which was roasted vegetables and goat cheese, which came with incredible, sweet challah toast, amazing home-made hash browns and "greens"(a yummy little breakfast salad). We ordered some fruit too, which was stewed pears.

I can honestly not get over this toast! It was so, so, melt-in-your-mouth delicious.

To make things even more incredible, they make their own home-made ketchup at Aunties and Uncles. Mmm.

After breakky we went for a brisk stroll down to the Kensington Market area, which I fell in love with.

There were so many adorable vintage shops, unique restaurants and great little health food stores and bakeries!

We wandered into Wanda's Pie in the Sky, which Tatomme told us we "had to see".

This packed little pie shop reminded us of what day it was with adorable little conversation heart sugar cookies!

Loved them.

The pies were so pretty!

Then on our little adventure, we came across the most incredible little kitchen store ever, Good Egg. Stores like this are really detrimental to my wallet...

They even have all sorts of classes going on all the time! This one looks so tempting and right up my alley! I wish I was here for this! 

Also, here's a little fact for you! Apparently Rachel McAdams took some knife sharpening/cutting classes at this spot! I liked her even more than I already did after hearing that!

Before I knew it, we were in what I'm sure was "little mexico"...which was filled with dried fruit stores and graffiti-ed alleyways. Don't I have such gorgeous cousins??

After our slightly chilly walk through Kensington, we headed to a grocery store to pick up a good load of groceries for the week!

We got home and were all majorly cravin' some nachos...so we whipped up a large batch. 

We made yummy guac with the avocados that Chloaye did end up bringing, and a black bean dip. The salsa we bought...

After we filled up on chips we headed out to a little pub not too far from Tate's place, which had 35 beers on tap. It was difficult to choose!

I finally ended up deciding on a chocolate cherry stout, because it was Valentine's day after all, and I hadn't had any chocolate all day (which is so wrong)! It was a good choice...

It was Sunday evening though, so we packed 'er in fairly early and headed back to Tatomme's place on the trolley. 

Such a great, noms-packed day though! I absolutely loved spending Valentine's with my two wonderful cousins! I am really loving my first taste of Toronto. Look forward to many, many more food adventures from over here!

xoxo 

Mariel

Sugar-Free Week: Day 4

Hello folks! It's day 4 of the sugar-free week...and surprisingly, is getting easier! I did not think this day would come, but here she is! However I also have a brief correction to make regarding yesterday's post. It turns out that Day 3 may have actually been a big old fail. In my morning rush yesterday, I seemed to have forgotten that the ketchup that I drowned my scrambled eggs with is loaded with the sweet white stuff... Oops.

So here we are on day 4, making adjustments. I had eggs again - but this time I topped them off with a sugar-free alternative - salsa! Not only did this substitution not contain any sug (I checked the label), it was way tastier too! Gave my eggs a little kick. I have a bagel soaked with butter (well, margarine actually) on the side. Here's something else I realized...I'm sure there's a hefty amount of sugar in pretty much all bread products, but I can't live without bread, so I'm just going to pretend that there isn't any sugar in bread... This is my challenge to myself though, and I get to make up the rules...right???

With breakfast I had a double shot of my newfound (newly remembered) savior - espresso. Goes down quick and easy and keeps me going for the day!

Then it was out the door to head to school to try and finish up a whole 1/2 semester's worth of design in 1 and 1/2 days. I love life right now...thank you, past self, for being such a perfectionist and not wholly finishing any one project in design thus far.

 :)

I realized when I got to school that I had forgotton my camera! Which I guess wasn't too much of a loss because I didn't eat anything all that interesting at school. One especially pathetic nom that I indulged in was a little can of tuna that I found in my backpack. Upon realization that I was also without fork, I was in no mood to venture far and wide to find one - so I made do. What does this mean, you may ask? Well let's just say if you were wandering the Rutherford library 4th floor on Thursday, you may have seen a girl sadly spooning tuna out of a can with the tuna can lid... It wasn't even a normal can lid. You see...Clover Leaf tuna has apparently switched up all their lids to "easy peel" tops. Good for the difficulty of removal situation. Horrible for the "I forgot a fork" situation. Oh, and I "made do" with the camera situation also...

As you can see. It was one of the most pathetic lunches/snacks ever.

Then, the only other thing I ate this day was a measly little 6" sub from Subway (cold cut combo on Italian herbs and cheese, extra pickles, mustard, mayonnaise, ranch, salt and pepper) mid way through the evening! OH, and I had a late night black coffee with soy milk from Starbucks too (no sugar)! It was so, so much better than Folgers.

So...success? I feel bad calling it a success when I barely ate anything all day! Hopefully I nom a little more tomorrow.

xoxo

Mariel

Sugar-Free Week: Day 3

Hello everyone! So I hate to admit it...but this sugar-free thing is getting harder and harder by the day! Why did I do this again??? Anyways, as much of a challenge it was today...I was still successfully sugar-free (added sugar free, at least).

My day started off with a nice big plate of scrambled eggs (4 eggs, to be exact), and a piece of rye toast with almond/cashew butter (probably the driest thing I've ever eaten).

After breakfast I settled into my little workspace to try and make some progress on my final essay that's due on friday. 

Let's just say that didn't go so well... It was really hard with THIS:

Beside me all day...seeing this little cutie snoozing so soundly all day just makes you want to do the same thing...

After a fairly brief nap in the nice afternoon sun, I was hungry again! And desperately craving something sweet...I raided the cupboard to find something that would tide me over for a while, and was very happy to see these:

I had totally forgotten that we had a little stash of "no added sugar" fruit bars. I told you...I love Superstore.

As naturally sweet as the fruit leathers were...it just didn't quite cut it for me, and I ended up nomming on a gigantic handful of dates (boring, I know, but that's as sweet as it gets for the no added sugar world)!

Early in the evening I fixed myself a bizarre "dinner" of Sunny Boy cereal (I diversified from oats)!

I whipped this bowl up in the microwave, and added some chopped dates in as I cooked the cereal.

On top I sprinkled on: hemp seeds, unsweetened shredded coconut and spooned on some almond/cashew butter. Then I doused my Sunny Boy with unsweetened soy milk!

It was okay...a little bland...but filled me up. 

Since I can just not bring myself to finish a cup of black coffee in our house (Folgers, I realized we use), I have turned to another source of caffeine that I had totally forgotten about! Espresso!

I poured myself a shot and downed it before I headed out the door to accomplish some mad studying at the university tonight (so much to do, so little time to do it...before TORONTO)! Oh yeah, I'm going to Toronto! I can't wait. Me and Chloaye are going to go visit Tatomme for reading week. Will Toronto be able to handle three Flanagan girls all together? I'm not sure...

Anyways, that was my day in food. Succesful, again (I find it hard to believe myself)!

xoxo

Mariel

Sugar-Free Week: Day 1

Hello all! So it's the end of my very first sugar free day, boy was adjusting difficult! First of all, I have to say how this is making me realize how much sugar I really do consume on a daily basis...every time I went to reach for a meal or a snack, it was so tough consciously picking something with no sugar in it!

It all started with breakfast. For some reason, at the time, I didn't remember that eggs exist...which would've been the obvious choice. But, with my lack of memory, I whipped up a pretty dry breakfast of white cheddar rice crackers topped with cheddar cheese and cucumber slices, dusted with salt and pepper. With this I had an apple cut into slices, which I dipped into almond/cashew butter. This natural sweet treat is actually so delicious! I was very happy when I read the almond/cashew butter label and saw that there was no added sugar. I don't know if I could live without that stuff!

The worst part of the morning was the black coffee...I just couldn't handle it. I think we may buy really cheap coffee...I guess it does come in 3 pound cans... Anyways, I just couldn't stomach the horrible bitter taste and couldn't finish my morning cup.

Later in the morning I was hungry after my light breakfast, and still a little groggy due to my lack of morning caffeine. A snack was in need! I nommed on a banana, a piece of rye toast with butter and cinnamon on it, and a mug of chai tea with milk only. I needed to get that caffeine into my system!

I love Superstore...

Then came lunch. I was busy working away on my essay that was due at midnight tonight, so I just had a yummy little sandwich that Dad had made for me this morning. I think he used sopressata salami and provolone cheese. With this, I had a big glass of water. By the way, this is another thing I'm going to challenge myself to do during this week of no sugar...I am going to attempt to drink 8 glasses of water a day!

After a day full of fairly light noms all around, it was finally dinner. I could barely wait for dinner tonight! We had an Indian rice/vegetable dish and chicken quickly baked in the oven. It could not get on the table fast enough!

We used a nice mix/paste for the rice and vegetables, it was really good! A little spicy...but tasty.

The package came with a little pouch of  a bunch of whole spices and dried herbs to "season" the pan before cooking up the vegetables, I thought that was kind of neat! The pack included a bit of cinnamon, some gigantic bay leaves, anise, and cardamom. It smells wonderful cooking up in the butter!

Then we added in the vegetables that had been marinating in the paste that came in the package. We used green beans, cauliflower and carrots.

When the vegetables are all cooked after a good simmer in the pan, you mix these flavorful veggies with some rice:

And soon enough the chicken was done, too, and dinner was served!

I did it! No sugar today. It was difficult, but it definitely is do-able...I can do this! I even drank the 8 glasses of water today, too! Now only 6 more days to go of this sugar-free lifestyle...

xoxo

Mariel