Goodfood Recap #37

It sure feels like a while since the last Goodfood recap. We’re back to monthly instalments of these. To be fair, we only get the ones that we think we have time to cook and also the meals work to our liking. This week has two repeats and two new ones so it’ll be interesting to see. However, we took this box mostly because it was the week after some crazy work schedule and just needed time to not think about groceries and the like.

Let’s check it out!

Seared Steaks
with Lemon-Oregano Potatoes & Roasted Zucchini

A word of the wise to fellow cooks, at least for myself, I’ve learned that any meal with zucchini (or other leafy vegetables) should be the first to go in regardless of when the meat expires. I’ve experienced too many times of bad zucchinis due to my not getting to it quick enough. With that said, its why the random time that steaks got put forward. This meal is actually pretty good. The roasted zucchini is nice and I’d definitely try to do that again. The potatoes were a nice blend. We don’t like eating seared anything and like this cooked completely so the husband, who is almost always responsible for cooking meat, made sure to have it well done. That’s our personal preference, of course.

Chicken Yakitori
with Roasted Carrots, Chinese Broccoli & Miso Butter

The first repeat meal is Chicken Yakitori. I’m going to say right now that starting from this meal, the husband took care of most of 90% of the cooking and I only helped with small prep work and stuff due to work and whatnot. His first attempt at Chicken Yakitori and it still tastes fantastic. I love all the elements of this meal from the sauce to the chicken and the spices and the miso butter on the roasted veggies. I would redo this one on the grill any day in the summer. Works well because its one I’ll consider for the next Battle which is coming up in just a few weeks.

Fried Eggplant Sabich
with Mango Chopped Salad & Red Cabbage

Every box has a meal that we just add in to try out and this time its the eggplant sabich. The husband isn’t a big fan of eggplant to start and I’m not a big fan of this type of eggplant but I’m hoping to find an eggplant recipe which I can like and eat more of because eggplant is a healthy addition to our diet. This is supposed to be put into the pita as a pouch sort of meal but the pitas turned out to be too crispy so we just put everything on top of it. I think the meal still works because its like pita chips with hummus and then the freshness of the mango chopped salad meshes well with the flavorful fried eggplant slices. This was definitely a pleasant surprise.

Pork Chops
with Honey-Glazed Cipollini Onions & Shaved Asparagus Salad

Last meal of the box is also a repeat, one that I was a bit more than lukewarm towards and the reason why it made it in. Under the helm of the husband, I actually think it tastes better than the first time. It could be the potatoes are seasoned really well and finally not burnt as it usually turned out for me when I put it in the oven. The sauce is done really well and I liked it so much that I ended up making some toast to eat the rest up. It all goes well with the pork chops.

That’s it for this Goodfood recap!

Gardening 2018 #2: Garden Center Haul

2 weeks or so has past since the first Gardening 2018 post!

Time sure does fly by. I’ve been working hard on weeding and setting up the garden with what I have so far. There is still a ton of stuff to do but Victoria Day long weekend is the staple weekend where I go to the garden centre and pick up at least my first big haul! This year, I went back to Les Serres Jean-Francois Dauphinais.

This place is still one of my more favorite places to go to. I actually also made a quick stop over at Pepiniere Auclair.

Here’s a lovely mosaic of what I did pick up at the center as a starter and after, we’ll take a look at what I’ve planted and other garden updates as a follow-up from the last post.

Lettuce, Bok Choi, Zucchini, Marketmore Cucumber, English Cucumber

Clematis (3rd try)

Basil, Curled Parsley, Lavender, Lemongrass

Geranium Citronella, Kale, Marigold

Water Lilies

Its the first year that my husband was fully awake to go to the garden centre with me and ended up leaving feeling like he enjoyed it. That is the difference of being on graveyard shift and normal shift (at least for him). It was a very different experience and he was a real champ and kept me company and helped me out a few times with the whole gardening thing. A different experience in some ways. This is definitely just the first batch and the two flowers are the only ones currently not planted in ground yet. We have a few little gardening clean-up areas left but my husband has been working on a few little things helping me open up some more of the garden this weekend as well.

Let’s take a look at how everything looks now!

First Part: Front Yard

The flower patch in the front yard definitely has grown a lot more since the last update. Amazing what two weeks could do. Crimson Star still doesn’t have any buds so I’m wondering if it will since its already much later than usual. The tulips are all blooming now and giving some beautiful colorful life to my front yard. Once these end, the yellow flowers in the back should bloom if things go well. Aside from that, it seems that my middle area is not coming back so I’m going to be moving something over that has been cramped up in a corner of the garden forever but I just never found a home for it. Update on that next time for sure!

Moving along, the Bleeding Hearts are looking spectacular. I’ll be posting some cool pictures of it over on Avenue of Daydreams over the next week or two. Its scheduled but I can’t remember when.

Honestly, this sad patch along the front facade of my house did get a nice trimming and yet again, I forgot to take a picture of it since the last time but the Dianthus seems to be coming back. This patch seems like its not having much perennials come back, however, as I walked around this week, I saw, what I believe is, the cone flowers coming back. Its the little leaves in the top right area. I remembered i had moved one there and it was shadowed by the hydrangeas but this year I trimmed the hydrageans so hopefully it’ll successfully come back.

Part 2: Strawberries & Raspberries

Enough said about this area. Its just growing out of control as usual. The strawberries are getting perkier and stronger every year. There are a lot of blossoms. Hopefully the bees are dropping by to pollinate it. As for the Raspberries, I’m trying to keep it under control but it sure looks like, its not exactly making much of a difference. I waited two weeks and already my lily is hidden in these raspberry shrubs already.

Part 3: Container Gardening

On with the container gardening! We are actually have quite a few of these this year despite saying that we’d have less. As usual, the planter for the ledge of the patio full of marigolds. Marigolds naturally repels mosquitoes so that is the purpose of them being at the edge. Talking about mosquito repellent, here is my mosquito repellent container.

Geranium Citronella, Lemongrass and Marigold makes up for my mosquito repellent container. I read somewhere that if you walk by the plant and brush your hands over it, it will help keep the bugs away. I did it on one arm and it didn’t get me but the other arm caught a mosquito bite. Even if its not effective, it still looks pretty nice. One of my prouder planting moments 🙂

A little change here as well. Usually I get a few herbs and plant them in a container garden. This year, we got the lavender that went into the ground right away (at least I chose to do that), leaving these two so I put them into a smaller pot. I’m hoping there’s enough space but the strong one will survive, right? It’ll make it out! *positive thoughts*

Others may hang flowers in their hanging pots but since 2 years ago, we’ve been planting lettuce in hanging pots and let me tell you, they are quite successful usually. This year, we are changing it up and putting 2 lettuces instead of three. Three always ends up one being scrawny and sad so hopefully two will work out for the better. With that said, the lettuce this year was slightly weak and when I was taking them out, two broke off from their roots. I’m currently trying to revive them in water to hopefully sprout back some roots but don’t know if it will work.

As you can see, lettuce and cucumbers are dominant in the garden this year. With limited garden space as the expansion is still in progress, we are doing two cucumbers in containers this year and I did some companion planting research and paired them up with lettuce. Kale makes no difference so I just put it in since they don’t take a lot of space and we harvest them fairly quickly as we like to make kale chips and cook it.

The final two are just individual kale and my variety of lettuce containers. The highlight here is that I’ve rigged the top one with a watering system. To be honest, I don’t think the system works as well. The water goes down a little too fast for it to be useful. The wine bottle method in the bottom is definitely still doing the trick. I’m going to compare the two and see at the end of the season, which works better. Who knows before we observe for a little while longer.

Part 4: Vegetable Garden

The echinacea is back! I’m really happy about that. I did lose one of them but at least one came back so I’m already fairly satisfied with it.

We put up the same fence as we had last year. Its to prevent bunny attacks on my lettuce. This part is the general informal entrance of my patch since you pretty much need to straddle the front trellis to get in. Its not tall but can still be hard to do. As you can see, my blueberries are growing well enough. The green onions are bursting with harvest and there in the middle is a cucumber plant. We needed to keep them near the mesh side and I’ll be getting a trellis to link it to the side.

Continuing to the other side and the full extension. The far left is all herbs. Lemon Mint and Oregano came back and in the center, I planted the Lavender. As for the rows, The first row is Marketmore cucumbers and Kale. The reason for this is to swap things around. I’ve planted zucchini in the front for a few years and its normal to change things around to help the soil replenish nutrients. Second row is all the Bok Choy. And the final row is English Cucumbers and Zucchini.

Part 5: Water Lily/Water Garden Debut

Water Lilies

What can I say? I grew up with a pond in my backyard. Water gardens remind me of my dad. A part of me has always wanted a water garden so I made the effort to get a water lily and try to make it grow especially after my mom gave us these giant clay pots last year which was my dad’s. The water lilies was pretty pricey but I believe if you put them under soil over winter, its supposed to make it through every year. My mom is the expert on that so I’ll get more info from her soon.

And that’s it for the garden!
We have an idea of opening up a few more patches so my husband has been helping me a ton with that!
He makes the progress go a lot faster especially when opposite from my scattered mind of wanting to do everything at the same time, he actually focuses on one task.

Still some research! I’ll update with the flowers being planted in ground.
I just want to make sure that I open a big enough plot so that I can see the Clematis and it will give it the best chance of survival and blossom.
And a few moving plants about the garden coming up and pruning of a few trees.

Seems that this Gardening thing will be a biweekly deal as it currently stands.
I’m just a beginner gardener so its a journey all on its own.

Gardening Update #5: Harvests and Other Thoughts

Its been almost a month since the last gardening update. I honestly just got back to do another grass and weed clearing session and it went relatively fast. I’m still frustrated that it seems to be a problem that won’t go away but I am hoping with enough frequent clearings, I will beat this.

Over July, we had more sun and more rain and last week, we had a huge thunderstorm. It was really a mix of both good and bad weather however, it might have been to my advantage. The rain helped me out a lot so I didnt have to worry about watering too much and still we got a ton of harvests. Last time we talked raspberries and they were still the star of July.

Latest update as of a few days ago…

Pineapple Sage has grown up!

If you recall, the last storm knocked out my entire pineapple sage except for a little baby stem. Well, its not a baby anymore and yet again proves what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Eggplant

This eggplant has been growing forever. I am about to harvest it. I really don’t think it will get bigger for the container grown eggplant. Hopefully, we will get another one before the end of the season.

Cucumbers & Zucchini

Zucchinis doing well is almost always a guarantee. My three are doing great. We have harvested two zucchinis so far and three more in the garden.

As for cucumbers, we were a little worried about the in ground ones. It seems that all it needed was time. In fact, it has surpassed the container cucumber and we have had harvests already.

Container Cucumber seems to be doing okay, I guess. I mean, there is this one right now and it looks like we have a few growing right now as well.

Fresh from the garden yesterday are three cucumbers and one zucchini! We’re set for dinner tonight. 🙂

Ground Cherries are a Success!!

It only looks like foliage on the picture. I should have taken a closer shot. Either way, you can see the harvest below. And we still have a lot on the branches.

Actually this is only part of the batch. At this time, I had already given some to my mom. I’m thinking about making some fun dessert with it although I don’t mind eating these just like that. They are more tart but I enjoy them.

Gardening Thoughts

Thought #1: In terms of gardening, I’ve seemed to have found a good system between container and in ground vegetable and fruit areas. As time goes by, I see that only a section of the vegetable garden will be annual replants. Right now, already there is mint on one end and ground cherries and blueberries along with green onions on the other side which are perennial. I’m slightly worried about the blueberry plants right now because the area should expand however, I’m not quite sure how because the other part is just a grass area now and I use it to put my hose. Maybe I’ll just turn it into tiled grounds to make it easier to put stuff and add more containers there since it gets a lot more sun there. Some research to be done there. My parents had tiled their walkway one year by themselves so I think with the right research and buying stuff myself, I can take care of that small patch of land myself. If not, I’ll hunker down and turn it into a perennial garden or something filled with medicinal plants or herbs. Something to match with the edible garden that is going on right now.

Thought #2: I had wanted to recycle one of the pickup truck tops left by the previous owners and turn it into a flower garden. It would help minimize the weeds in that area since that area really would be near impossible to get it weed-free. Plus, I wanted to plant in some annual flower gardens, targeted mostly towards being a bee and butterfly garden with bee baths and different assortment of flowers appealing to them. I’m excited to get that going. Right now, I’m just waiting for my husband to have a moment to drag out the thing from behind the shed. Its pretty heavy and lots of obstacles to do by myself. Then I can get the soil bought and get cracking on it. I probably won’t start on it this year but I would like to have it set up before the season ends.

Thought #3: This thought has been on my mind ever since the first summer we’ve had the house. Its an ambitious plan and one I haven’t felt like I have the time or abilities to put together yet. However, this summer, one of the houses that I walk by when I get off the bus had done that by themselves. They have it on half of my scale. The idea is that I have a slope on my garden and I want to turn that into a landscape thing. Get some boulders or larger rocks, buy some shade and partial sun required flowers and get a nice landscape going on. Before all that, the most painful part will be getting all the grass out. I’ve been researching here and there on this and its a whole idea of conceptualizing what to plant as well as what to keep and what to remove.

That’s it for this gardening update!
How are your gardens going? Any harvests?

My Weekly Adventures: Festival Season is Here!

I did it again! There was supposed to be vlog but then I got a little intimidated of putting it up. Anyways, it was not so great since I recorded super late at night and was all rambling and stuff.

Summer festivals are here and its just the start of a lot of fun stuff here. The weather is hot and humid and while I did recap a lot of the stuff in actual full posts. I’ll talk a little a them here and I’ll have a little update of little life stuff.

Before we start, I guess the most important is that I want to address the crazy weird schedule here. I usually do have a schedule but I’m seriously thinking of going back to a five posts week and leave a break as optional days on the weekends. Especially during festival season as I need to find some time to work on some other projects. Nothing changes here but rather I think I feel a little burnt out. It could be because of the heat that kills a bit of the motivation for everything. However, I feel the energy coming back now that it isn’t 40 degrees Celsius outside. What I’m saying is that 5-7 posts from now on. I’m still working on some backlog for my upcoming vacation in a good few weeks so it’ll be fun! 🙂

I’m skipping the rambling so I’m going to just get going! 🙂

Trying Out Miss Fresh

I’m huge about being efficient as mentioned in my post unboxing the Miss Fresh meal service subscription. You can find that HERE. I think this is such a great idea. Obviously, its still a little expensive to have every week but its a nice treat when its a busy week. I won’t be unboxing my later ones since I don’t think it’ll have anything new to offer except different recipes. However, I did manage to make one of the recipes and still mix up the ingredients a little. It was a Tuna Bake. In the end, here’s how it turned out.

For a good idea of what it is, the ingredients are on the top pre-portioned for what your plan is set at. This makes for two people. However, my husband was the only one that could eat this meal and it served three meals for him.

Montreal Comiccon

 Montreal Comiccon was last weekend. I only made it to the Friday but it was a ton of fun. I did a general coverage earlier this week HERE! I chatted with some cool indie game developers and tried out games, saw the Outlast 2 live demo and more. I didn’t get an autograph but walked past the autograph booths and saw a ton of celebrities from afar. I’m not sure if I mentioned in Comiccon recap post but I specifically wanted to see Bob Morley, unfortunately I had to skip Saturday so I didn’t get to his Q&A but I did walk past his autograph spot which was at the side so I got a really close look at what he looked like in real life. I was pretty happy about that.

Overall a very cool time there. I’m going to try to get a media pass for next year or simply get a 3 day pass and check it all out. Something to think and plan for in the coming year! 🙂

Song of the Deep!

With Game Warp comes great responsibility! Song of the Deep is one of my most anticipated for this year. I ended up preordering this one even if I kind of knew there really wasn’t a point but I was just so excited for it. Plus, its the first time I pre-ordered a game! Kickstarter projects don’t count. I’m still waiting for most of those to see the light of day. You know I love shameless plugs for Game Warp so maybe you’d be as excited as I am that Song of the Deep is August’s featured game!

We have a new episode for Game Warp coming up next week and we’re getting ready for the episode of the featured review for this month’s game, Oxenfree! 🙂

Garden & Harvest!

We had our first harvest! The crazy rain grew my zucchini plants so much that after two days of intense rain, my plant was like 40% larger and the zucchinis were ready for harvest. Well, two of ’em. Look at it! They are huge!

We even had some delicious lettuce to cook with it, all from the garden. It just makes me so proud that I didn’t manage to kill anything else and that the fence reinforcements have been fantastic. I’m going to probably be harvesting more lettuce and kale this week. I don’t have pictures yet but raspberries and some strawberry harvests are happening also! 🙂

Fantasia Festival!!

Fantasia Festival is here! It started on July 14th and runs till August 3rd. Unlike most years, I actually have it really easy for the first week so so far, only one movie! This was from the first film that I attended on Friday night. It started in delay so I guess its cool I was standing in line next to some cool people that I striked up an interesting conversation about everything. If some of you don’t know, Fantasia Festival usually means at least 45 minutes to an hour of line-up, at least if you want decent seats. Since I go to this alone a lot, its really nice to meet people at least for line-up company. Regardless, this was also the first time I’ve ever experienced delay at Fantasia Festival but the movie ended up starting half an hour late but I think its alright even if it meant that I couldn’t stay for all the Q&A since I needed to catch the last bus home. Thank goodness, my schedule doesn’t usually hinge on these crazy moments this year mostly.

I’m pretty excited about the rest of the movies. You can see my line-up HERE! And usually expect the review about two days later to give some time to think about what I’ve seen and gather my thoughts. Which means that my first one I saw, Rupture’s review will go up tomorrow (Monday!).

Calypso Water Park

While the heat is getting me super tired and just not want to do anything in general, I’m also loving it because it means that I can go in the pool and cool down. Last week, I actually did and enjoyed some outside reading time and Netflix time and even got in a pool workout session which was really great.

However, the thing I looked forward a lot was going to the water park with my girl friends. We’ve been trying to plan it for two summers and we’re finally going. The weather threatened us a little but we decided to give it a go. It turned out to be the perfect weather. We ended up going to Calypso Water Park near Ottawa.

Great company, nice weather, and a ton of fun! We weren’t all about doing the super adrenaline rush stuff but we ended up doing the wave pool which was definitely a winner since we went back four times. We also did two times of the Kongo Expedition (which is something like a lazy river concept). There was a part in there in a dark cave that kind of tapped into my fear of the dark but still it was really fun even if I got capsized by some stupid kids on purpose. It was more unexpected than that I got angry or scared. We also went for two rounds of the Jungle Run which is like balancing on a paddleboard and letting the current push you through the course and it was done really well. There was also the Canyon Rafting that was a ton of fun to get drifted along the sides of the tubes and then we had the fancy idea of going up one of the tallest rides thinking it wouldn’t be intense and it freaked me out. It was a ton of fun actually. Its the double-edged sword of amusement parks in general for me.

After that, we headed back home and had dinner….

Trying Out a New Restaurant Jerry Ferrer

What’s a perfect day without having a great meal at the end as well. I told you all about Jerry Ferrer on opening day and just trying a few things but we went to try it out.

We ended up sharing a fried calamari.

Fried Calamari

I loved the texture of this so much! It was super delicious!

While all the girls got burgers, I was really craving a pulled pork sandwich so I got exactly that!

Doesn’t that just look scrumptious? It was so awesome! 🙂 I think this place might be a new fave spot for me. At least I’m definitely coming back to try out a few more things. Plus the decor and service was nice and that is always a plus.

A perfect way to end a fantastic day out with friends, even if I got home and realized that I forgot sunscreen on my chest area and super sunburned…haha!

Cute Kitty Pic

Some of you that follow me on Avenue of Daydreams would have seen this pic but this is just so cute I couldn’t let you all miss out on it! 🙂

Upcoming:

• Fantasia Festival Movie Reviews!!

That is the recap of the last two weeks!
What have you been up to? Any festivals, summer heat, activities, etc? 

My Weekly Adventures: Hangouts, Adventures & New Projects!

We’re a little behind schedule for this time’s Weekly Adventures! Summer is here. Events and outings are being more plentiful. Some are still tentative or being planned. This summer is already pretty busy but a happy busy since its all fun stuff!

This time’s Weekly Adventures will have a ton of stuff from event recaps to outings with friends and some gardening update. I’m probably forgetting something.

Let’s start! 🙂

Our First Winery Visit

I’m a huge fan of wine especially as I’m getting older. I’m far from connoisseur and this is not exactly wine. Its ice cider, very specific to the Quebec region because there are rules in Quebec apparently that specify whether it can be considered that. Neige from La Face Cachee de la Pomme is one of my favorite brands and when they had this tasting I bought the deal on Groupon right away. It did take us a few months to actually book a time to do the tour and tasting but it was a lot of fun.

The full post is right HERE if you’d like to check that out!

Movie Night

I actually don’t talk about this a lot but I am a patron for two Youtubers that I love a lot! One of them is Mr. Kravin and one of the perks of the lower tiers that I’m in (because that’s all I can afford) is that we got a movie night with him. I never knew that was a thing. Usually its anime night and I tend to skip out on those a little but then he went on this site called Rabb.it and put on Halloween to watch together. I own Halloween and I mean like the entire franchise because I had to the Halloween marathon three years ago, I think. Its a pretty neat idea to actually have someone watching a movie together while being in different places.

It makes me wonder if the movie bloggers of our community should try to do something like that since it has voice and facecam so it would be like instant discussion. Haha! It was a ton of fun. I don’t really care much about the perks since when I contribute to be a patron on Patreon, its because I really want to support the content creator. Being a recent content creator myself (kind of?) on Youtube for Game Warp Podcast, it definitely puts into perspective how important it all is.

Grand Prix

Last weekend was the Grand Prix weekend in Montreal. Like the past few years, I went out with friends to hang out and look at some awesome cars and join into the festivities. There really isn’t much to say that I haven’t said in my post HERE.

For those that recently dropped by, Weekly Adventures aren’t usually like this post. Summer means I do more event coverage around Montreal (and vicinities) so those are my adventures and all I can do is recap them here in case between summer blockbusters and your fun summer that you miss some cool posts. 😉

Dinner with Friends

Fruit Platter at Allo Mon Coco

Two Eggs with Sausages and Bacon, Allo Mon Coco

Tropical Sangria at Barbie’s

Nachos

Soup of the day: Tomato and Vegetables Soup

Garlic Shrimps with Rice

More fun time with friends! I had nice brunch at Allo Mon Coco.  My friend is preparing for his next marathon so he took the healthy route with a fruit platter and of course, I’m not, so I took my normal with eggs, sausages and bacon. Its awesome! Breakfast food is my absolutely fave.

At night, I had a nice hangout with my girl friends. Its been forever since we’ve got together.  We’ve been busy with home or work stuff but now, we finally got together for dinner then afterwards went to Starbucks to have a nice chat and catch up some more. And, we might even be planning a little outing soon plus, a movie together is coming up soon as well! The summer is filling up and I’m super excited! 🙂

Game Warp: June News Blast!

If you saw this post the past week, you can skip ahead unless you know, you didn’t check out the episode then consider this a reminder. Our News Blast is a rather short one but with some good content. Game Warp is a part of my life now and Elwood and I are working hard to build it so excuse our shameless self promotion. The gaming world is well-established right now and we are trying everything possible but the only people that can help are the lovely people we already know from our lives and our blogs. That is you, my friends! If you have friends that like gaming, share our Facebook page with them or the video or whatnot. Everything little bit helps us out. I promise you that we work super hard and to make it better, we were supposed to be once a month and now we are getting three shows in a month, starting this week with the June News Blast. Each one has a bit of different content talking about new releases and then our featured review will appear as well. There is a video to go with it as visual aids or gameplay. Give it a look and help us spread the word!

By the way, if you ever need to retrace videos, you can head to either That Moment In or I’ll also have the posts for Game Warp on the menu set up some time this coming week.

Hope you enjoy the episode and the next one is coming up soon! 🙂

E3 Press Conference Coverage

Game Warp is my life now. I just mentioned that. It would be hard to pass up on the biggest event in the year for gaming. That’s right! E3 happened and ended yesterday! However, we’ve been checking out the live press conferences and put together some recap highlights in case you want to get a quick look at whats coming up for whichever console or gaming company. Here are the links. Its been super busy but just so much fun! Check it out! 🙂

EA Press Conference
Bethesda Press Conference
Microsoft Xbox Press Conference
Ubisoft Press Conference
Playstation Press Conference
Nintendo Treehouse

Gardening Hurdles and Updates

This a quick update on the garden. For one, I am officially feeding two rabbits in my garden. They started, as captioned above, with eating my lettuce. Starting this week, they’ve been having a tasting of all my kales and a few days later, they went to test out the broccoli as well. Operation Rabbit Prevention is now on! I am going to put up a fence of some sort this weekend to make sure that rabbits will not access the garden before its too late.

On a happier note, I think the few strands of catmint are attracting cats to the strawberries and raspberries area to sit once in a while so rabbits haven’t eaten my strawberries and we even managed to get one harvest which I need to bake something soon.

And also, the best thing in the garden is zucchini. They are strong and looking great. No picture of the eggplant but as of this morning, it had one blossom, meaning at least one eggplant. Awesome!

That’s really it for now. I’m getting materials later today and then getting to work on the garden for Operation Rabbit Prevention. I love rabbits and maybe I’ll grow a lettuce garden just for them in some corner but I also like seeing harvests so consider me selfish for now as I work on this gardening project. I’ll have an update next Weekly Adventures!

The 3 Brewers Beer Launch Rhubiscus

I’m not beer connoisseur and in no way will I ever be. In fact, I can’t even drink that much beer. However, my darling friends thought about me when they saw a beer launch which they had an invitation for a beer sample for at this restaurant called The 3 Brewers called Rhubiscus. I love rhubarb desserts and hibiscus drinks so this is right up my alley.

Now, thats a sample, right? Look at the size of that drink. I only took a few sips for my own health reasons. While I can’t say that I love the beer, it isn’t bitter which is a good start. I couldn’t figure out what the aftertaste was but I guess it had a little bit of hibiscus flavors. Hibiscus is a tough flavor to master. The one place I’ve been completed pleased with was in Egypt and then recently was last year at Aux Vivres during Just for Laughs for their Hisbiscus lemonade. Not a huge fan. One of my friends likes it more. I’m guessing her husband was okay with it and not excited. Its a new experience, right? Plus, we had great company for dinner. Fun times! 🙂

Cute Kitty Pic

Upcoming:

• Netflix A-Z: C & D Selection
• Baking & Cooking
• Game Warp: next  two episodes for June
• and more…

Zucchini Fritters!

I’m on a cooking thing right now.  I promise you baking will happen soon.  I really miss it but I’m just so indecisive when it comes to what to make.  There are so many choices and just not enough time (or ingredients).

I’ve had a pack of zucchini waiting desperately for me to cook.  The plan was to make zucchini chips but I never got around to it since I made those bacon avocado fries (if you missed that, check it out HERE).  Thats the plan for this weekend (or at least some time this week).

When I searched up Pinterest, the first thing that popped up at me was Zucchini Fritters. Don’t know why. Maybe its the good balance of veggies and protein from eggs so it seemed like a good choice for dinner.  Regardless, I love Pinterest and all the ideas its offered me.

You can find the recipe for this right HERE from Damn Delicious!

I did mine in 3 different batches testing out the heat and whatnot.  The first time turned out in a disaster…

First try—fail

Well, it still tasted good and not burnt even but it did not look appealing…at all!

Second try was a little bit better…still needed a little bit of patience to get the flipping over part better.

Second try

Actually, this looks pretty nice, no? Its too bad that the flip side is not so good.

And then the third one, testing with a big one because I’m lazy and impatient at this point. I’m a pretty lousy cook mostly because I can have impressive amount of patience for baking (and crafts) but with cooking, I just really find it so difficult.

Big piece is not a good idea.

Now, there is one big change I made for this.  The link to the recipe is up there if you want to take a peek before checking this part out.  I didn’t grate the zucchini as I should have so thats why it was harder for it to stay together in one piece.  I just absolutely loathe grating and I couldn’t find where mine went. It always seems to disappear on me.

Other changes:

• All-purpose flour was gluten-free
• Omit parmesan (next time I will try with lactose free cheese)

Another baking adventure done 🙂 This one I’m definitely going to revisit.  It was so good! Sure, it didn’t look too pretty and dicing those zucchini in little pieces was incredibly tiresome and long to do but it paid off and thats what counts.

Next goal: Zucchini chips!

How do you like to  make zucchini? Have you done fritters before? Any tips you’d like to share?

Is Summer Already Ending?

How’s weather for you lovely bloggers? This weekend has been ridiculously chilly in Montreal.  Its dropped to about 10-15C during the day.  Thats a huge difference to the beautiful weekend we had last week.  The sun is gone, the rain is falling hard and the wind is coming in a little also. At least Sunday afternoon warmed up a little more and I managed to do help with some painting and then went outside to scrap up the leaves from our trees that already started shedding in the front yard.

I’m struggling to find things that happened this past week that happened so I’m going to see what little bits I can come up with.

1) Guardians of the Galaxy and A Month Full of Anticipated Movies!

I’m definitely behind with all these movie reviews but truth is, I max out a little with writing these reviews so my brain is demanding a break.  Its the reason why I took so long to have the last review to wrap up Fantasia Festival (which I completed yesterday) and I saw Guardians of the Galaxy last week and totally forgot to mention it, even if the stranger next to me was super abnormal.  Thank you Cineplex for armrests that go up so that I could scoot closer to my boyfriend and enjoy the movie 😉 Review for that coming up!

August is a beautiful month FULL of movies that I want to see: Expendables 3, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, If I Stay, The Giver.  I’ll have to make choices.  It looks like I’ll be giving up The Giver for now and I’m still on the fence for If I Stay.  It all depends on how much time life is going to give me 😉

2) Week 1: Nike Training Club- Getting Lean Program

Last week, I started getting back into yoga.  On Monday, I seriously didn’t want to even think about starting the program again.  However, I thought about it and you know, its all in my head: If I believe I can do it, I know I can push through. 100% mental so its time to push.  I slacked off for 4 months, its time to pick up the pace and get back into the beat of things. Tuesday, I pushed myself to start  the program.

I’ve done the Getting Toned program before and that was pretty intense.  Somehow, I don’t know if its just that I haven’t done intense workouts in a long time but every single one in this Getting Lean (even the Dynamic Yoga) made me sweat buckets.  Its disgusting but at least I know my body is working hard and I’m being super nice and trying to rehydrate myself a lot.

Plus, did I tell you that I’ve been doing a 30 day detox from alcohol? I’m at my 3rd week and its been pretty awesome 🙂 Its really just a personal thing since I had a bunch of parties and wedding and whatnot in July and I drank a lot more than usual.  I felt that my body needed a little break from it all.

3) Garden harvest

As the weather is slowly getting chilly and reminding us that fall is getting closer, the upside is that we now have constant harvest.  Sure, I was really  just testing the waters this year so nothing seemed to be in abundance but although not shown here, my raspberries are getting ripe every few days and we always have 4 or 5 to try whenever we go harvest.  Then, I finally got fed up of my boyfriend not harvesting the lettuce so I went ahead and did it. Maybe we will have one more batch before it gets cold? Who knows.  A leaf stunted the growth of my Zucchini so I had to harvest it.  I did so some pruning of the leaves to give room to the four that seem to be growing 🙂

Gardeners, what are you harvests?

4) More TV!

On Friday night, I realized that Netflix is going to expire Pan Am in September so since it only had one season, I gave it a watch.

Pan Am gave me a few little surprises. One was that I was hooked and ended up watching it till 3am and then woke up and continued watching for another few hours.  After going out to take care of stuff for the house, I came home that night and finished it up. Second was that it has my absolute favorite French-Canadian star Karine Vanasse and she is absolutely lovely.  I adore her character. Third is the very handsome Mike Vogel, who reminds me that I need to catch up with the current season of Under the Dome 🙂

Then, I ask why did they cancel this series? It was so awesome! Classy and so much fun.  All the characters were great and the story was fantastic.

Of course that doesn’t end there.  On Friday night, I hung out with two friends watching TV and chatting.  We ended up watching reruns of Shark Tank and it reminded me that I hadn’t seen Dragon’s Den in ages and Netflix has it.

So there I was on Sunday starting to devour the 3 seasons available to me 🙂 Still watching Season 6 right now but its pretty awesome!

Aside from that, the other series to expire is two seasons of Justified and a movie called Like Crazy.

Any series you’re catching up with now?

5) Ready to start the eventful months + Planning!

I always try to keep my blog busy and I’ve slowed down a little in the last 2 months just in general to not burnout from everything.  With life in full blaze and picking up the pace with my new house (painting, furniture, arranging and the garden) and work, its really hard to balance. These few months have given me time to think up a few little things and refocus.  I have a few projects I want to start by 2015 but whether you are new or not, I’m personally very proud of my little recommendations month and I’m happy that I’m extending that FINALLY to books.  I already made the official announcement on Friday but just in case, till the end of August, the primary focus will turn to books on my ebook reader from independent writers.  I actually have a perfect timing for the first author I’m about to talk about 😉

Moving on, I hope to continue into September with this and add on movies but seeing as I already did a Recommendations month earlier this year, I’m still deciding on that.

A little glimpse at whats coming up also is possibly the most popular month:

– October and Halloween month 😉 I have an event ready and I’m deciding on what marathon to do.  I think I might have promised Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th BUT, that comes with the condition that I have to have finished moving and ALL my and my boyfriend’s DVDs have been organized.

– December and Christmas month..also wondering how to approach that this year since I’ve burnt through A LOT of Chrismas movies already.

Still, it’ll be busy and there will be lots of planning 🙂

6) ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

By now, a lot of you would have heard of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.  My friend nominated me on Sunday evening for it so I asked my boyfriend to freeze up some ice and came over to help me film this last night.  I nominated three of my girl friends and hopefully they’ll carry forward with it 😉

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10154501204580504

I’m not very saavy with this so I’m hoping the link will work for you as well.  If not, I’ll figure out how to embed the video right after my boyfriend sends it to me.

Have you been called out to this challenge yet?

7) The Power of Music

I’ve always connected to music strongly so when I saw this quote, it has stuck to me.  Sometimes, I go back and look for music to commemorate a certain time in my life.  At times, I even subconsciously would do it for a renowned singer or just go back to music my dad and I would listen to when I was young.  Sometimes, it just the meaning of what the music meant to me back then.  Every relationship (not limited to love) can be related to at least one theme song and thats what makes life so awesome 🙂

 8) Epic Patty Cake Song

Looks so fun! 🙂

Thats all for me today! Its already taken me a few days to put this together!

HAPPY TUESDAY, MY LOVELIES!

*Late Night* Pinterest Therapy & Life’s Randomness :)

Its pretty fitting to have one of these every 3 months mostly because if you haven’t known, I work in the lovely accounting field and well, every 3 months, I have a huge quarter and life gets immensely and overwhelmingly busy.  With Fantasia Film Festival lingering about at the same time, I’ve been pretty exhausted.  4 more movies to go before it ends and I’m learning how wonderful life in movies are. I’m taking a little time off today from reviews although I have 3 more festival movies to cover in the next few days.

I felt like a little Pinterest therapy is where I always go to when my mind is overloading.

Before we move forward, I didn’t get a chance to put some interesting stuff that happened during the last week..

1) SURPRISE PLANTS!

Sunflower? We didn’t plant that 😉

I think some squirrels were trying to hide away some seeds and didn’t manage to find them because somehow this year, we sprouted some sunflowers in the front yard and one of them actually bloomed into this lovely thing that brightened up my day 🙂

2) SURPRISE VISITOR

Young Fearless (maybe naive) Robin on the deck

This robin doesn’t even have all this orange belly grown in yet, so I’m guessing its pretty young.  Plus, my cat was sitting behind the screen door staring at it.  And without zoom, I was right next to it taking pictures and it didn’t even fly away. So yes, fearless or maybe naive, whichever you choose works but it was hilarious to see my cat get all worked up over it.

Did I tell you that our backyard has a robin’s nest and our front yard has a cardinal’s nest? So lots of visitors 😉

3) FIRST VEGETABLE HARVEST!

Cooked yellow zucchini

If you saw last week’s update, my yellow zucchini was growing at intense speed so this week, after some research to make sure if it was ready to harvest, I did harvest two of them.  My boyfriend seasoned it and here’s what we had for (part of our) dinner. It was delicious 🙂

4) HAVING LAZY TIME WITH MY CAT!

Sunday morning with my cat

Its been a while that I haven’t had to jump out of bed on the weekend mornings and go do something but since I had a Fantasia Festival movie that overlapped with piano, I pushed it to the evening, giving me more time to just stay in bed.  It was needed because I had a few sleepless nights and my body needed to recuperate. There really is nothing more heavenly than sitting around in bed relaxing and doing nothing and just watching my cat. She dreams almost as much as I do so its pretty entertaining 😉

Like I said, short updates so lets move right along to some pins that I found on Pinterest which made me all happy.

First pinning goes to gardening…

5) MY DREAM INDOOR GARDEN

Vertical indoor garden

Now, doesn’t that look cool? Imagine the variety of fresh herbs, right?

And my realistic self comes in and says, its a good idea and looks decent but think about bug infestations…why are there cons to everything, right?

6) ONLY A WRITER…

I’m not really a writer but it makes me think…

Awkward of me to put this? Well, I’m not really a writer but it encourages me to think about the potential of it.  I’ve been having this really great idea for a novel but I just couldn’t figure out how to start it.  I have a lot of the middle part drafted in my head.  You know how I do that? I talk to myself in the shower..well, I pretend to be in the story and I start working it out there with different characters.  It sounds weird but I can’t be the only one who does that, right? Some people brainstorm in their heads and some do it out loud…I just happen to be the latter.

By the way, earlier today, I actually managed to get the beginning down on paper for the story I wanted to write for a while 😉 Its not for publishing or anything so just something I want to do for myself.  Still, I’m pretty happy about it!

7) TV & HOT GUYS!

Pretty Little Liars- Caleb (Tyler Blackburn)

Pretty Little Liars – Ezra (Ian Harding)

Pretty Little Liars- Jason (Drew Van Acker)

True Blood-Eric (Alex Skarsgard)

True Blood – Alcide (Joe Manganiello)

I’ve recently been on track with True Blood and Pretty Little Liars. I don’t usually search up pins on hot actors but I happened to land on one and then it lead to the next one and trust me, I’ll keep going not hat I made a board just for it 😉

So, remember this when you watch Pretty Little Liars, these are not actually teenagers 😛 So I can enjoy them for who they are and that doesn’t stop me from thinking they are hot.  Honestly, I don’t think its possible to have that many hot guys and girls in one city but apparently it happens in fictional places like Rosewood.  Its definitely not limited to those up there.  I just totally love the character of Caleb and his short hair and new look for this season is totally hot. Plus, I’m increasingly liking what they are doing with Ezra’s character and although I find it attractive in pictures and not as much in the show, he’s leaving an impression all the same. My favorite has to be Jason though.  He brings a mysterious vibe to the show whenever he shows up and Drew Van Acker is just ridiculously hot and sexy.

True Blood’s new season hasn’t been all that impressive but I’m still missing the one that just passed by and I just keep thinking they ‘ll just kill everyone off and end the damn thing. Who knows, right? Still, Alex Skarsgard’s Eric look is totally delicious and Alcide is just so manly with those muscles.  I tried to keep it tame with the pictures 😉

Yes, yes, superficial. I get to do that once in a while…

8) DESSERT NACHOS

While I was using the words “delicious” to describe the guys, I started thinking about sweets. There is absolutely NO WAY that I’d do a Pinterest Therapy session without some sweets and this one looks scrumptious. I’m literally drooling and thats a comforting thought and a reminder that I need to get back to baking.

I’m definitely going to try to figure out some gluten free option for making this 😉

BEFORE I GO…

Late night session is getting a bit overboard and its past 2am so I should be trying to get some sleep although stress is stopping me from it.

How about a little song from Jack and the Cuckoo Clock Heart (review that I posted yesterday HERE)? Its really cute! There’s also an English version and I believe reading that its Samantha Barks that does the girl’s voice. You can find that version on Youtube, if not just ask, I have it in my playlist and I’ll send you the link. But here’s the original French version. Sorry, I couldn’t find english subtitles…

And then a little electronic music song that mellows me out all the time.

Good night my lovelies! I’ll get another review up tomorrow 🙂

#FantasiaFest, Friends, Date Night and Fun Times! :)

Wow, this week went by really fast!

This week wasn’t exactly eventful but it did mark a few things happening and so much to be grateful about. I’m really enjoying this busy weekends and not so busy weekdays.  Its nice to finally regain some form of balance in my life and any sign of negative and I just dodge it and bounce right back to being happy and positive 🙂

Next step: getting back to my working out more regularly 😉 Maybe I should do my workout posts again.  What do you think?

Before we get ahead of ourselves, lets see what things I have to be happy about this week 🙂

1) FANTASIA FESTIVAL!!

Fantasia Festival has started and as I write this, I’m back from the third movie.  I’m happy because I managed to get tickets for all the movies I wanted to see except one (other than the ones I had to skip because of scheduling problems).  Things always work out in  the end and you’ll see why.  If you missed my post on the movies I bought tickets for, you can check it out HERE!

There is one movie not on the list.  After Joseph @ The Cinema Monster dropped me a comment after seeing my lineup, he told me about two movies.  One I couldn’t put into my schedule but I looked into The Harvest with Michael Shannon and decided to add that one in.  Here is the trailer on the Fantasia Festival page:

http://www.fantasiafestival.com/2014/fr/films-et-horaire/80/the-harvest

A funny moment for you: I actually didn’t watch the trailer before getting the tickets and just read the plot.  Lets say, I have a feeling I’m going to be pretty creeped out…  I’ll tough it out though! It does look quite good 🙂

Final tally is now 11 movies and 14 tickets! 🙂 One more movie than I expected because I just couldn’t let go of That Demon Within.  Nick Cheung has really grown as an actor and anything that he’s in cannot be bad so I just couldn’t resist, what else can I say, right? I still remember him when he first started taking up stupid roles in ridiculous movies that I didn’t laugh at.  He’s really changed and does more sophisticated roles and its works out a lot better (at least I think so).

I have a good space between each group of movies so expect the reviews for Open Windows, I Origins and Cybernatural and tonight’s in the next few days 🙂

2) LEMON VERBENA & its flowers

I may or may not have talked about before in my many gardening posts but my lemon verbena had little bug issues and thats why its now living outside for the summer.  It bloomed some cute littler flowers in the middle of the week when I went for a miniature gardening maintenance run 🙂 Bug issues are completely gone and the leaves are perfect.  These little victories (and some that will follow) makes me slowly grow more and more interested in this gardening business.

3) BIKE RIDE TO OLD MONTREAL WITH FRIENDS

Old Montreal from the Concord Bridge

Downtown Montreal from Concord Bridge

Saturday was a busy day and it all started at 9:30am in the morning when me and two friends started getting ready for our Old Montreal bike ride.  I do one of these every year at least once.  Its a really nice ride with amazing scenery that reminds me of why Montreal is actually a beautiful city when you put all the stupidity aside.  This year, I had company, making it so much more fun 🙂

Lobster Roll

And we even got to enjoy some of those pretty famous and extremely tasty lobster rolls!

4) ATTENDING A WEDDING FOR A LONG-TIME FRIEND (that I haven’t seen in a long time)

Weddings are a super happy event. I haven’t seen this friend in ages and being at her wedding (and the bachelorette party last weekend) makes me really honored that she thought about me enough to invite me to the happiest moment of her life. She was a beauty and a princess all  night in the most elegant manner.  The wedding was beautiful and it was so much fun.  I saw a few people and reconnected with them, and even hit the dance floor all in good fun! The restaurant even had a window and terrasse facing the fireworks.

The couple themselves was just the symbol of love.  It was also an honor to be there to witness two people completely in love with each other, go through all that they’ve gone through and finally get to this step in their life.  I was so deeply moved by the event itself 🙂

5) COMPLETING THE FIRST FLOOR

Office done with new lights also 🙂

Suffice to say that I talk a lot about my new house, but I think it comes with being a homeowner.  I’m almost all moved in except for a few things but I figured that as we get things in room by room, we’re getting every step closer.  The first floor is all done! We bought some new ceiling lights last week for the office (brighter than the previous owner’s) and with the natural light and everything, the office is looking lovely.  Next weekend will be spending time arranging how all the furniture goes while my boyfriend will take care of the painting in the main floor and basement.  The main floor will be the hard part as its a bit more colors and more tricky.  Progress, my friends! That makes me happy 🙂

6) SUCCESS WITH THE SELF-WATERING SYSTEM

Raspberry is happily hydrated

Raspberry plants are like overly demanding and easily dehydrated babies. It wasn’t happy with one wine bottle full of water so I added another one. Then it still guzzles the water in exactly the same speed. At least, my baby here is blooming some flowers at the top and maybe it’ll be a champ and grow me some raspberries 😉

Miracle squash/zucchini growth

My mom says these are yellow zucchini so I’ll take her word for it. This baby went through a lot.  Its grew from a snapped stem repaired by green tape. And then I put in a self-watering system about 10 days ago and unlike my raspberry up there with a tantrum, I came back to a sudden growth of this zucchini right there.  Its telling me I love you. And I love it back because its has so many coming out.  I just hope it doesn’t get tangled in its own growing vegetables.  I guess when that time comes, it means it time for harvesting! YUM! 🙂

7) THE STAR OF MY GARDEN: PURSLANE!

Purslane in full bloom

Coming home yesterday to tend the garden, the happiest sight is to see everything going well and then my Purslane is looking very beautiful with its little pink and orange flowers brightening up my deck! 🙂

I’m still trying to figure out what I can do with these purslane because apparently it is a herb or edible plant.  I’m interested to know what use I can do with this.  I’m taking it easy though.

8) LITTLE VISITORS IN MY GARDEN!

Bumblebees hard at work!

I haven’t put my work into my front yard.  But thats starting soon.  However, the previous owner’s left these rather bland looking flowers from afar but along with the fluffy fern things and my flowers and whatnot in the backyard, its attracting a lot of bees. I took a neverending weeding break to try to capture them hard at work.  This is the best picture I’ve taken in a while 🙂

9) DATE NIGHT WITH MY BOYFRIEND

Evening sky in Montreal

My boyfriend and I work opposite schedules so we don’t see each other very often and we don’t spend too much quality time either.  With the Fantasia Festival, its my way to just not sit at home and stare at my walls and just go out and have fun.  Although I saw two movies by myself already, I was happy that my boyfriend agreed to see 3 of them with me.  The first one starting at 9:30pm on Sunday.  We drove out and was welcomed by lovely weather and a beautiful evening sky as we drove over the bridge.  Romantic, eh? And made our way to see Cybernatural.  He is my best movie viewing buddy because he always automatically discusses the movie with me afterwards. Its fantastic to ponder on it in my head by myself or even talk out loud to the walls or my cat but its also nice to have an answer some times.

Joking aside, we really needed a date night! He gets a break next weekend and the week after, he’s back on double duty for being my movie date 😉

10) FANTASIA LUCK!

Live Skype Q&A and hosted by director Leo Gabriadze and executive producer Adam Sidman

I love Fantasia Festival ever since I went last time.  This time, my biggest worry was to not choose the right movies.  I mean, I only chose one that sold out and it didn’t even sell out on the screening I’m going to.  Either way, I remained confident with my choices. I honestly have to say that, although there was some small issues, overall, I enjoyed all of them.  3 for 3 sounds like a good track record and it has be all hyped up. Last night’s was the first one where it was hosted by people related to the film.  Director Leo Gabriadze and I actually think the other man was the executive producer Adam Sidman.  There, they also had their supposedly first live Skype Q&A session.  The first to join was the writer Nelson Greaves and producer Timur Bekmambetov.  After 10 minutes or so, they even brought 3 cast members (which is pretty much half of the lot).  First was the two girls, Shelley Hennig and Courtney Halverson and later, Moses Jacob Storm joined in after he resolved his technical issues.  Its a pretty ingenious idea and matches how technology has really changed how certain things are done.  I’ll talk more about it when I review them.

To be absolutely honest, I’m just feeling so lucky! Luck isn’t normally on my side often but I make the best of what I can. It is now and I’m enjoying every moment of it!

Things are going great, my friends! I’ve been having a blast this summer!

Before I leave, here’s a lovely quote I found and here’s the article you might want to check out for 15 Quotes about Life from Children’s Books!

Happy Monday, my awesome friends!

Gluten-Free Zucchini Loaf! :)

I’ve been planning this for a little while and I feel that there is no better time to launch a new little focus here in terms of baking.

There’s been a little bit of research going on after my uncle and aunt came a few months ago and talked about the benefits of gluten-free lifestyle and suggested that maybe it was the hidden cause of the sudden downturn of my health from the relapse of lactose intolerance to caffeine sensitive among the many other stuff.  Generally, my sensitive digestion system.  I have accepted and worked around to how to live with all these foods that I can’t eat but it sure would be nice to not have to go out and worry about it one day or just at least not feel bloated all the time.

After taking a little time to adjust, I’ve decided to slowly go on the gluten-free path.  Its going to be hard to find alternatives and from the look of it, might even be more costly but nonetheless, my health is the most important and I want to be sure to feel better.

With that, here is my new little focus in baking & cooking: Gluten-free meals and desserts 🙂

Of course, I’m only doing this little by little and my first step was to cut bread out of my life.  Plus, I picked up my first bag of gluten-free flour from Costco a month ago so when I had an an abundance of zucchini stacked up in the fridge, I decided to finally try my hand at making a Zucchini Loaf.

Here’s how it turned out 🙂

I got the recipe in the Butter Baked Goods by Rosie Daykin.  The recipe itself is called Grandma Daykin’s Zucchini Loaf.

Here is the original recipe, however I halved it to make one loaf only.

Ingredients

Makes 2 loaves, about 8 to 10 slices per loaf

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
2 large eggs
2 cups grated raw zucchini
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1 tbsp pure vanilla

How to make it:

1. Preheat the oven to 325F.
2. Onto a large piece of parchment paper, sift together the flour, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, salt, baking soda and baking powder.  Set aside.
3. With an electric mixer, beat the eggs on medium speed until light and fluffy.  Add the zucchini, sugar, oil, and vanilla and mix to blend.
4. Turn the mixer to low and slowly add the dry ingredients and mix until just blended.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
5. Pour the batter evenly between the two prepared pans.  Use a spatula to spread the batter smoothly across the pan.
6. Bake in the preheated oven for about 60 minutes or until a wooden skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.
7. Remove from the oven and allow the loaves to cool slightly, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Use a serrated knife to slice the loaves, then serve.

Other than halving all the ingredients to make one loaf, I also had a few modifications.

• The all purpose flour was replaced by the Cloud 9 Gluten Free All-Purpose Baking Mix. Its one to one cup replacement so it makes the whole process easier.
• I don’t have pumpkin pie spice so I had to do a little rough blend of ground cinnamon, ground ginger and ground nutmeg.
• As for zucchini, my grater miraculously vanished.  It could have gotten mixed up in my packing somehow so I spent some extra time to finely chop it.
• In terms of vegetable oil, I used canola oil since that was the closest I had (the other would’ve been olive oil and I’m not sure that would do so good).
• I didn’t have enough vanilla but I did pour all the remainder I had left.

This recipe is pretty much in the awesome area.  It had the right amount of sweet to balance off the zucchini.  Plus, I’m not sure if it was the flour or just the entire recipe itself but every bite melted into my mouth literally.  I fell in love with this more than I expected. If this is what zucchini loaf tastes like, sign me up for more 😉

Have you tried eating gluten-free foods? Do you have any suggestions as to how to slowly get into it? Have you tasted zucchini loaves before?