Creamy Avocado Pasta

Last night my Mum was over and as we are known to do we tried a new recipe for dinner.  We have been looking for new healthy recipes to try and this one was delicious and easy so I thought I would share it.  It comes from Angela Liddon at Oh She Glows.  It's a neat blog full of vegan recipes and gorgeous pictures.  We tried her recipe for 15 minute  dairy free creamy avocado pasta.  Since I can't eat cream I am always on the look out for ways I can fake myself out.  Anyway, this was amazing and I will keep it on hand to make on the regular.

Ingredients:
• 1 medium ripe avocado, pitted
• 1/2 lemon, juiced + lemon zest to garnish
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1/4 cup fresh basil, packed
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1/4-1/2 tsp kosher salt, to taste
• Pasta

Directions:
1. Bring several cups of water to a boil in a medium sized pot. Add in your pasta, reduce heat to medium, and cook about 8-10 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, make the sauce by placing the garlic cloves, lemon juice, and olive oil into a food processor. Process until smooth and scrape down sides of the bowl. Now add in the pitted avocado, basil, and salt. Process until smooth and creamy. You can add a touch of water or oil if necessary.
3. When pasta is cooked, drain in a strainer and place pasta into a large bowl. Pour on sauce and toss until fully combined. Garnish with lemon zest and black pepper. Serve immediately.
Please note: This sauce does not reheat well due to the avocado.

 

***  That served Mum Garret and I and it was amazing!!! If you weren't worried about the vegan part it would be phenomenal with some chicken.  And you could add other sautéed veggies as well.  yummy, quick and healthy...trifecta of awesomeness in my book

A Watched Phone Never Rings

Our best friends Erin and Steve are expecting baby #2.   In fact every time Erin has called or texted me in the past two weeks I have been thinking "baby time". And every time she is just calling to say hi and catch up.  The funny thing is that she isn't even due until next week, but their first baby came several weeks early so we just assumed this would be the same.   Poor baby... we are already telling her to hurry up and she is actually on time.  I am hoping that this one comes with perfect timing like her older sister did. (technically it was just perfect timing for me cause I got to be there when she was born)  It feels funny to love someone you haven't even seen. I can't wait for her to get here so Uncle G and I have another tiny girl to smother with love and snuggles!

Sampling Wedding Wine

We had Charlene and Terry over to my mum's tonight to do a blind sample test of wine for the wedding....delicious and fun!




I think that this is Garret's favourite wedding task to date!

Salmon Sliders

During our post Christmas purge I finally went through a bunch of our old magazines and ripped out all the recipes I wanted to try, articles to read etc.  One of them from I believe Canadian Living (where I get a lot of my yummy recipes from) had some ideas for quick and healthy lunch options.  We tend to have two plans of attack when it comes to lunch...leftovers from dinner or sandwiches, or occasionally I make my MIL's pasta/tuna salad yummyness.  So I was intrigued by  the promise of an easy lunch.  This was delicious! And after I made it, my friend Nat thought they were so tasty that she made her own and tweaked the recipe a bit.

Salmon Sliders

1 tin of salmon

1/4 cup of breadcrumbs (I used a wee bit less)

1 egg

*can add various yummy things like dill, green onions, grated zucchini  etc

mix it all together.  form into little patties.  Pan fry for a few mins per side.  You can eat them hot or cold.  I grabbed some of the little slider buns from Zehrs and made little burgers, but Nat brought hers to work on top of some veggies.  Easy, quick and delicious!

 

Mr. And almost Mrs. Angry Elf

A few Christmas Eve's ago my sweet brother Elliott had a wee bit too much to drink and was not too quiet coming home from a party. In fact he was so not quiet that he woke G and I up at 4am. We were tired and gave him an earful...to which he responded by calling us Angry Elves (mostly cause it was Christmas not so much our elvish appearances) This year at Christmas we all got Santa hats for Christmas Day, but G and I got Elf hats. (ooh long running family jokes)
We decided to take a pic to prove what delightful little elves we actually are:

Weddings, Weight loss and Working oh my

I think I also need to add "School and life in general" to that title. But I was digging the alliteration and couldn't think of more 'W' words!
We have been busy...like waking up early in the morning with thoughts of guest lists and money saving techniques kind of busy. Well at least I am. My beloved had been beautifully clueless about all of this but I'm working on educating him quickly. Last night we sat down with a checklist of wedding planning things I found online. I think he has a better idea now...so time to crack the whip! Aaand that's just wedding stuff.
Our new years resolutions for January have been going ok. We've been bringing our lunches and I've been meal planning like some sort of organized meal planner (yay me) It's been difficult now that I've thrown school into the mix, but I think we just need to make a plan of attack and stick to it. It's mid January and we have done pretty well, but I really want us to step it up a notch for the second half of the month. Go Team ShWalsh!

The conclusion of the Wed night supper club

Tonight we had our final dinner with Tara and Stephen before they head back to Argentina (sob). It's been so nice to have these few weekly meals together and get to catch up and feel more connected. We haven't lived near each other in over 10 years (maybe more, am I aging myself here?) And our visits are usually really quick visits over lunch at Christmas when both families are trying to jam a years worth of stories into a few hours. I think once the wedding is over we are going to start a serious savings account so we can go waaaaay south and visit them. Tara keeps telling me about a tango club and this girl's gota tango!

New Year New You/New Us really

Every New Years Day for the past 4 years, Garret and I have had a mini tradition of discussing our goals and hopes and resolutions for the coming year.  Generally they consist of the same few things.  Sometimes they are specific and sometimes more general, but usually they have gone the wayside by March as we go back to familiar habits.  This year we decided to make some more general resolutions and focus them each month.  We have three main areas we are looking at this year:  Health/Fitness,  Finances, and Organization.  As we have been looking more in-depth at each topic, it has been interesting to see how intertwined each one is.  So perhaps as we start getting on track with one, the others will follow suit (wishful thinking perhaps?)

Health/Fitness--working out minimum of 2 times a week (this can include: gym, yoga, workout videos at home, snow-shoeing etc) cooking healthier meals (although I do have a good grasp on this already, trying to do more is always better!), getting in better shape so we can feel awesome at our wedding and start out newlywed life in the best shape possible (ps yay wedding!!!)

Financial--putting aside money from each paycheque to save for the wedding as well as general savings, making a plan for aggressively paying down our insane OSAP loans, paying closer attention to where money goes and  stop the funnel effect (as in it funnelling out) Quit eating out so much (see, this links in with the health/fitness one too)

Organization--in our home, in our life, with our jobs.  Be better about cleaning, meal planning, organization of stuff so we are less stressed (ie. Getting organized the night before so we aren't running around like nutjobs in the morning hunting for keys and missing iPhone earbuds.)

Behold; our January plan-

1) Only eat out once every 2 weeks (this will be a toughie)

2) Gym 2-3 times a week plus trying to do something nice and outdoorsy on the weekends

3) Only snoozing once so we have more time in the mornings Mon-Fri

4) Get some automatic money transfers happening on paydays to go into different accounts

5) Meal plan and work to use up all the random ingredients that have started filling our pantry (why do I have 3 bags of split peas/9 tins of tuna?!)

6) Pack a lunch at least 4 times a week (I have to give us some leeway!)

7) Every night spend 30mins each cleaning/organizing something in the house..I have started a list of the various areas to tackle...we are starting with the basement (shudder)

....I read it takes 21 days to form a habit, so hopefully by the end of the month we will have mastered these and can move on to some other life altering tactics!

Does anyone else have troubles sticking to their resolutions?  Anyone bothered to make some for 2012? Party hard in case the Mayan's were right? ha

Baby it's cold outside

Nature has done a little winter decorating on the outside of the house! We have a number of icicles hanging down around our porch which catch the Christmas lights and twinkle.

Sometimes.....

Sometimes knights don't come in shining armor....sometimes they come wearing flashlights on their heads. But they are doing the barbecuing in minus 20 weather and you think "hey...I'd take this over horses and armor any day"

Winter has come to Barrie

The view from our living room window:


It's been snowing like crazy all day! Garret got sent home early from work since it wasn't busy. (yay) So we are currently sitting on the couch drinking tea and watching a documentary. Driveway's been shoveled, dinner is ready to go in oven, kitchen is clean and so is the rest of the house. It feels so good to be starting off the new year organized! More about New Years and resolutions later. I hope everyone had a safe and fun New Year and got to spend it with people they love.



This was our last picture of 2011!