My Weekly Adventures: A Little Bit of Everything…

Welcome to the next Adventures post!

First of all, if you do drop by here frequently, I’m sorry for the sparseness of the posts, I’ll have a general explanation of what went down and kind of took over my life. I feel like I’ve said that a lot in 2018. While there were a lot of things that have been fairly cool in 2018, overall on a personal sense, 8 months in and I’m sure my husband and I are quite over it and ready for something incredibly great to balance things out. Anyways, we gotta stay positive to hopefully attract some more positive things..at least thats the concept in my mind.

Let’s see how the second half of August went!

The next Battle of Ingredients

We skipped a month of Battle of Ingredients in July because well, its busy in July for myself. However, we got things set for mid-August and had it all ready to go for our Take 2 of BBQ. This time, we each made some nice twists and there were a lot of success. Some recipes are ideas for other cooking methods in later challenges for non-BBQ and others, we learned from its not so perfect execution. Overall, it was a fun little time together to hang out and catch up and explore some new recipes. Its hard to imagine we just did the 9th Battle of Ingredients and the next is the 10th!

You can check out the full post HERE.

Lachine Half Marathon – Spectator

No pictures for this event. I’ve grown so accustom to doing half marathon support for my friend that I just kind of chill out a lot. It was a super hot day and I got a mini sunburn. Honestly, my bad for choosing to sit on a bench under the blazing sun catching up on reading. It was a super nice and honestly, I kind of miss it because the weather’s slightly cooled down and after that race and going home for a pool session, our pool motor is dying but as its the end of the season, we are only replacing everything next year and closing the pool early for the year. However, in terms of the Lachine Marathon, it was a tough one because the heat came in fairly quick. My friend did finish it within the time he wanted but so close. This season has been a tough one for him. A few more races to go for the season and with the heat ramping down a little, I’m hoping that its gets a positive turn for him. However if you haven’t been to the Lachine Half, its set in a pretty cool pier/park area with some stuff set up to look at and nice little sitting areas and all that fun stuff.

The 15 Hour ER Adventure

Life takes us for some crazy time. Don’t freak out! I didn’t go to the ER personally however, my husband did have some pain that he was enduring and we had chalked up to maybe indigestion or stomach flu until he had pains on his side which because just very unbearable by the time we hit the end of the work week. For those who don’t know about Canada’s free healthcare, it just means that there is an incredible wait time more so because in Quebec, medical professionals and the whole system is fairly messed up so we ended up doing a 12 hour wait time in the ER then got sent to the room to wait for the doctor another hour before he saw him, took tests and proceeded to round out another 2 hours or more waiting for test analysis, results and diagnosis. It turns out it was something of the beginning of a stomach ulcer and its time for meds to stop it before it gets more serious and well, the pain still showed up every once in a while so further test is in the horizon at the moment. Quite the stressful time and honestly, after my 5:30am arrival to home after the ER adventure and staying awake to make sure the husband was okay and being over 30, the all nighter and sleeping 2.5 hours just kind of murdered my entire week that followed and with it, any energy or motivation to process thoughts on movies and reviews. I spent most of the time after work sitting in my chair just resting and relaxing this week.

Either way, with that little scare…we are officially enforcing…

A Transition to Change in Eating Habits and having more Balanced Meals

Not sure why that’s a section in itself! But I’m totally grasping for straws for something to talk about. Anyways, I’ve been getting back to working out as you can see. As I’m typing this up, we just literally finished binging Ultimate Beastmaster Season 3 and boy, am I excited to talk about it in the next TV Binge! Yes, its moved forward in priority because I’m so hyped by it. However, that is good because Ultimate Beastmaster usually gets us super motivated to train again. We are already working on the eating healthier thing and for that reason, I’m decreasing Goodfood boxes to help get into a groove of making food from scratch on our own and not always relying on boxes because the reality is that the boxes were meant to help support the crazy weeks and not so that we could get lazy and that is what we’ve been doing a lot, which results to some bad eating habits whenever we don’t get boxes. Either way, transition going on already and I’m probably not going to share that except perhaps on Instagram or if I try out any cool new recipes.

We did make this recipe today as a little throwback: Basil Avocado Bacon Pasta. The post is HERE. We found this recipe 5 years ago and we still make it a few times a year. Its actually the first time we made it this year so like I said, we’re off our game a little.

If you have any healthy and tasty recipes, do share it in the comments below. We’re always down for suggestions!

New Dairy-Free Food Discovery

View this post on Instagram

So happy to see @breyers joining into the #dairyfree #icecream alternative with this #cookiesandcream #flavor. #sweettooth #desserts #food #tryingnewthings

A post shared by Kim (@tranquildreams) on Sep 1, 2018 at 9:22pm PDT

Upcoming:

• TV Binges
• Book Reviews & Blog Tour
• Restaurant Review/Recap

Kitty Cute Pic

If you are following me on Avenue of Daydreams, you already saw this pic!
A silly kitty cat moment as she pulls down our towels that was hanging to dry on the railing to the ground to improvise a bed.

Thats it for this Weekly Adventures!
Its a little short but its just what happens when life gets taken over by more serious things!
On a side note, I am more avid on Instagram when I’m not posting or adding random posts on Facebook, so be sure to follow me there.

What adventures have you been up to?

My Weekly Adventures!

We’re back on track! These coming weekly adventures should be more tame and back to my normal updates. Festival season is coming to a close and while there are a few events scattered around, its definitely focusing back onto the house stuff.  I can’t believe that closing the garden is coming up really soon.

First of all, I’d like to apologize on a little issue I had with emails. The beginning of the week, I realized that I wasn’t getting any emails linked to WordPress forwarded to my own personal email. Which is how I do things since I can’t manage to many accounts and remember to check them all.  Apparently, that is the case because I didn’t delete for years anything in the account linked to WordPress, it was full so nothing came in.  When I realized that 2 days later, I finally managed to empty it out and 500 emails (approximately) poured into my email.  So now, I’m back to catching up with posts.  Deal with me as I manage this little hiccup.  My mind has been rather preoccupied and I’m falling behind all over again. I’ll be back on track soon enough 🙂 At least its resolved, right?

Now, lets see what adventures I’ve been on!

1) Meeting new friends & trying new places!

Its great how upcoming weddings are the perfect opportunity to meet lots of new people, like my fiance’s co-workers, at least two of them.

They live relatively near to us in the suburbs of Montreal and one of them lives near this restaurant called Poutineville. This actually happened the week earlier but this last post was already so packed that I ended up shifting it to this one instead.  If you don’t know, poutine is this fries, gravy and curd cheese fast food.  Obviously, I’ve had to give it up since my lactose intolerance gained control of my life again.  Still, this restaurant is pretty awesome.  Other than the fact that the A/C broke that day and I was dying of heat, adding on the fatigue of dress shopping all day before this, I wasn’t all too hungry, but the guys were and I had a little something also of course.

Regular-size Poutine with Pepper sauce, extra cheese, pepperoni, philly steaks

2 Hot dogs and fries

And then we headed off to Boucherville to try out this ice cream place called Chocolat Favoris (translation: Favorite Chocolate) which is owned by a popular day time TV host called Gino Chouinard in Quebec.  Its special because you can order 5 different sizes of ice cream and they coat it with whatever coating you’d like which comes in 12 different flavors (5 milk chocolate, 3 dark chocolate, 2 white chocolate and 2 surprise flavors in rotation). Its pretty amazing.  The guys took hazelnut milk chocolate, I think.

Chocolate Favoris: Medium size with Hazelnut Milk Chocolate coating

They also served sorbets with a decent selection and other candies and chocolates.  Its a pretty nice place. Plus, Guy Chouinard was standing at the door to greet us after a block-long lineup.  It was super crazy! But it was worth it.  We even took a stroll around the neighborhood and chatted a little.  It was a nice little evening out with friends and that’s what counts 🙂

And since I wasn’t feeling great enough to try the lactose-free cheese poutine, we have another dinner out coming right up.

2) Garden update: A new perennial

The garden isn’t all doing well.  I made a few bad choices in plants this year but I think next year should be better.  I’ll hopefully get the vegetable garden plot ready before winter arrives. I’m just waiting for the day that its not 40C with 90% humidity.   We don’t have A/C so its a little crazy.  We did makeshift something that worked.  Thank goodness the weather is more bearable now.

However, last week, while doing some pool and plumbing shopping, I found a new perennial that fits perfectly in my side plot on the front lawn.  That plot is seriously almost all my own creation now from spring bulbs to summer flowers to fall blooms.  I’m pretty proud of it.

3) Wedding planning update

This is kind of my life now.  Between a balance of house work, blog, actual work, wedding planning and working out.  Its kind of a crazy schedule.  I have to say, my friends are phenomenal in helping me right now. All my girls have helped out tremendously especially at finding those details that I forget to think about.  The list just keeps growing and the time is drawing closer and closer.  Less than 2 months and we still have cake and centerpieces at the top of our list to take care of.  At least this weekend, we managed to narrow down what to do for the centerpiece and got most of the little accessories, shoes, guest book, decorations and the likes.

I can’t show you everything but here are the lovely shoes that I got at Call it Spring! 🙂

4) Running/workout update

Good news in workout updates is that I’m back out running.  Between two times of Zumba a week, spending some time with my mom and going out shopping on at least one day of the weekend for wedding planning duties, its been hard to get in.  I usually try to do one evening run and one Saturday morning run.  Its the goal and sometimes it doesn’t work out but I try my best. At least, if anything, I’ve cut out a good bit of unhealthy snacks replacing it with lactose-free yogourt, fruits and healthy granola bars.

Nothing too much to say, I just need to get back into the toning exercises instead of getting mostly cardio in to balance it a little.  A short update this time around.

5) Matsuri Japanese Festival

Two years ago, I talked about the Matsuri Festival.  Last year, because of the house, I skipped most of the festivals but hey, we’re back this year.  Yay! It was a steaming hot day right in the middle of our crazy heat wave and we baked under the sun while lining up at these crazy long lines. I don’t remember last time being so intense.  It seems to be the trend this year.  Everyone loves to get out of the house when its scorching hot.  But its normal.  We do only get like 3 months of “summer” where one month actually feels hot and that varies every year 😉

I was so hungry when I got there that I totally forgot about taking pictures of the food.  I had some Imadaki, Takoyaki, Okonamiyaki Hot Dog, Cold Noodles and Kakigori as well. It was a fantastic day with some cute performances.  Up there is this activity where they are trying to do a dance with the audience along with some super kawaii music.  Thats the extent of my Japanese so yeah…it was cute.

6) 1000 Islands Cruise

This past weekend on the Sunday, my fiance had gotten ourselves and his parents and my mom tickets off of Groupon for a 1000 Islands Cruise at Brockville.  We did the one at Ganonoque a few years back and he loved it.  This one was 90 minutes (a step down from the last one) and in a city we hadn’t been to so it was a new experience all around.

I’ll be doing a full post with more pictures but here’s a few that I liked.

7) Podcast and upcoming on Tranquil Dreams

If you haven’t caught it, I was part of my first podcast EVER over as a guest at That Moment In.  It turned out pretty good 🙂 David and I talked about Jack and the Cuckoo Clock Heart and we dived a little into the characters and themes, the music and whatnot.  It was so much fun! I was a little nervous when it started and settled in a little more.  Point is: it all worked out 🙂

As for upcoming posts:

• Continuing the new segment Netflix A-Z: Next letter is D. Remember double feature and a huge thanks to all of you for commenting so much.  Those posts are possibly one the ones with the most comments.  I appreciate it SO MUCH!!!
• Recipe for Disney Baking Project & move along with the next feature: This is now one of my priorities. Last two weeks was just too hot that I couldn’t do any baking without having some form of heat stroke in my own house.  So I have everything at least, just need to get it done some time this week!
• Alaska Cruise on Norwegian Jewel: Continuing the vacation posts
• Music/Youtube Obsessions: Comedy edition 

I’m keeping it short for those since that’s already a lot on my plate. Plus, I have some posts I owe to you lovely people.  You know who you are 😉  I have everything set up to take care of business! Plus, I’ve already started compiling the Halloween marathon (did I talk about this before?) but still, I’m pretty excited about it even though, I doubt it’ll be as plentiful as previous years since wedding date is in October so lots of crazy already happening.  It might end up being a half a month thing unless I get everything done in advance.  Which is what I’m trying to do now but the most I can get ahead with is 2 days.  I need to channel that pre-vacation energy…

To wrap it up, here’s  a little music!

That’s all for now! Happy Wednesday, my lovelies!! 🙂

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie!

This week’s star is rhubarb! I love rhubarb to bits! Right now, my garden has one plant of it and its growing like mad. Its probably from all the rainfall that has fallen in the past 2 weeks…NOW, I’m in emergency baking mode.  My mom has put down orders to get rid of ’em all this coming week!

First up had to be my first trial for a Strawberry Rhubarb Pie! Who else loves it? Because I am obsessed with the store-bought ones…of course, its always more natural to make it at home.  PLUS, I had a pie shell that needed to be used for baking.  Usually, I’d make my own but hey, lets take it easy for once…especially since I’m owing another blogger a recipe to go up that has to be postponed just a little bit while I get rid of the rhubarb.  Next week, it’ll be all about chocolate..but today, it’ll have to be about rhubarb!

I usually venture onto Martha Stewart‘s site to find some recipes but her site (at least on my tablet, haven’t checked on my laptop) is ridiculous to understand how to make the damn recipe so I gave up and googled it which led to a recipe on the Food Network! C’mon, that’s gotta be sure fire, right?

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

For the recipe, you can find it right here: http://www.foodnetwork.ca/recipes/Dessert/Berries/recipe.html?dishid=4042

Topped with Ice Cream!

We all had rather different opinions on this pie actually.  My boyfriend started it off and ate it without the crumble topping and thought it was SUPER SOUR! With the crumble and after a few bites, he slowly adapted to it.  Because he said that, I went off to the freezer and topped mine off with a scope of Maple flavored Soy based Ice Cream.  I found it still a little sour but when you eat it as a whole experience, it tasted pretty good.  Rhubarb is supposed to be a bit more sour in taste so, it makes sense.  My mom was the only one who said that it wasn’t sour and she said that she liked the fact that it was just the crumble topping that felt like it was sugary to balance the taste.

Other than that, the texture turned out great plus, it looks and smells awesome! I might still search up another recipe or modify this one a little bit the next time I make it. In the meantime, I’m going to search up what to make with the rest of the rhubarb.

Last year, I made it some Baked Rhubarb (HERE), Rhubarb Crisp (HERE) and Strawberry Rhubarb Crumb Bars (HERE) which were all quite delish! Check it out if you’re interested! 🙂

Any suggestions for what else I could make?