Crostini with Mango Salsa

Hello! It seems that in the past little while I have taken the time to blog only when it is a way of procrastinating. Clean my room or write a post? Go for a run or write a post? Work on my research study or write a post? I am living the latter right now because talking about salsa and desserts (or lack thereof) is way more fun than reading approximately the five hundredth article on organizational trust, so here we are!!

First things first, I want to tell you just HOW GOOD making your own salsa is! I recently had a bunch of fruits and vegetables that needed to be eaten up so I got chopping and made my very own mango salsa. Yum yum yum!

Side note: Forgive me for the vagueness of these ingredient measurements, I made this roughly a month ago.

Crostini with Mango Salsa & Goat Cheese

Ingredients:
Salsa:
✿ 2 tomatoes, chopped
✿ 1 mango, chopped
✿ 1 sweet potato, chopped and roasted
✿ ½ red onion, chopped
✿ 1 red pepper, chopped
✿ 1 cup of cilantro, chopped
✿ a couple squeezes of lime juice

Crostini:
✿ Baguette
✿ Goat cheese, softened
✿ Olive Oil
✿ Avocado, sliced

Directions:
1. Before anything else, heat the oven to 375ºF to roast the sweet potato. Now you don't need to add sweet potato to this salsa, but I put sweet potatoes in almost everything!

2. If you opt in to adding sweet potatoes, chop them up, mix them with some olive oil and them plop them in the oven on a baking sheet. Take them out once they get soft and golden (about 25-30 minutes).

3. Next, chop up all the fruits and veggies and mix them together with the lime juice to taste. Add a bit of salt and pepper if you're feeling it needs a little something something.

4. This is a pivotal point in this recipe, you can either dig into the salsa with a spoon OR slice the baguette, spread some goat cheese onto the pieces, drizzles said pieces with olive oil, and bake in the oven for a couple of minutes till the edge are just crispy (5-10 minutes). 

5. Then, you can slice up some avocado, add it to the crostini that just came out of the oven, and then top with your delicious mango salsa! VOILA!

Okay, now I guess that was the good news first, now I have a confession to make...

I am not eating desserts for 50 days #fiftydaysofgrey (inspired by this blog). You heard right. CRAZY, I know. 50 days without desserts is a lot of days and especially for me (a.k.a. the cookie monster incarnate). BUT I think it will be good to take a step back and see all the sugar I eat. Since starting on June 1st, it has been insane to see how many times I am confronted with sweets. There are desserts popping up EVERYWHERE and I'm like helllllo where were these when I could actually eat them????

Along with me, my mom, my sister and my cousin aren't eating desserts either which makes it more fun because we can text each other live updates about how we aren't indulging.
Conversations go something like this:
"Look at this double chocolate oreo cheesecake I DIDN'T eat today *includes pictures of cake*"
"Oh yeah, well I didn't eat a four layer brownie/cookie salted caramel thingy at work" and so on...

What I won't look like for fifty days :'(

It was so bad the other day that I stopped in at a bakery just to look. How sad is that? Low point in my life, I know. Okay maybe I'm being a bit dramatic, it's actually kind of nice to eat healthier and who knows maybe I'll actually learn something from doing this. Maybe.

I'll keep you posted!!

xox
G

Veggie Burgers with Beet Hummus

I figured I should post something sooner or later seeing as I haven't shared any recipes in forever!! I tried the best veggie burgers from Oh She Glows last night and I whipped out my camera faster than you can say oh-my-god-did-I-just-make-a-non-soggy-veggie-burger. They were fast to make and Angela goes on and on about how she tested out tons of recipes before she landed on these beauties. So even if you aren't vegetarian, these puppies will have your mouth watering.

In other news, I ran my second half marathon this past Sunday and spent the weekend with my cousins Ali and Moni who always come down to Ottawa for my favourite weekend of the year. There were close to 50,000 runners for Ottawa Race Weekend this year and it's just an overall fun, active, and exciting weekend. Even though it took me about ten minutes to sit down on the toilet on Monday, the race was worth it for all happy faces along the way and the expensive granola bars at the finish line.

Veggie Burgers

Recipe by Oh She Glows

Ingredients:

✿  ½ cup onion, diced

✿  1 minced garlic clove

✿  Flax eggs: 2½ tbsp ground flax + ½ cup warm water

✿  1 cup oats, processed into flour in a food processor

✿  1½ cups bread crumbs 

✿  1 cup grated carrots

✿  1 cup mashed black beans

✿  Heaping ¼ cup finely chopped parsley

✿  ⅓ cup chopped almonds

✿  ½ cup sunflower seeds

✿  1 Tbsp olive oil

✿  1 Tbsp soy sauce

✿  1½ tsp chili powder

✿  1 tsp cumin

✿  1 tsp oregano

✿  Little shake of salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Heat a pan and sauté onions and garlic in a little oil (about ½ Tbsp). 

2. Mix the warm water and the ground flax in a small bowl and let sit for at least 10 minutes to make a "vegan egg" or what looks like egg whites.

3. Mix together all ingredients and then add seasonings. 

4. Wet hands and shape patties. I used a large round cookie cut to make them a perfect patties, but hands work perfectly fine too :) I made 6 patties, but Angela suggests 8. 

5. I cooked mine on the pan I used to sauté the onions and garlic on medium heat. Cook the burgs for about 5 minutes on each side or until nice and crispy on the outside. You can check out the original Oh She Glows post for instructions on cooking on the bbq or in the oven.

Beet Hummus
Recipe adapted from Minimalist Baker

I wanted to add a little something something to my burgers so I threw some chickpeas, beats, and a couple other ingredients into a food processor to make some beet hummus. Isn't it so cute and pink!?

I also topped my veggie-burgers-from-heaven with lemon aioli, crumbled goat cheese, and chopped parsley. Can you say yum??

Ingredients:

✿  A couple (2-3) small beets (Confession time: I was lazy and just used canned instead of roasting my own. #talesofaweeknightcook)

✿  1 15 oz can of drained and rinsed chickpeas 

✿  3 Tbsp lemon juice 

✿  Little dash of salt & pepper

✿  2 cloves of minced garlic

✿  2 heaping Tbsp tahini

✿  ¼ cup olive oil

Directions:

1. Blend together until smooooooth in a food processor!

2. Admire the beautiful pink colour.

Enjoy!

G

Foodie Gift Basket

Happy weekend! 

I hope you aren't all dying in this heat wave that's suddenly upon us. I finished my first week back at my office (in the HR department) and it felt so nice to have such a warm welcome back. It's sad that I can't frolic around town biking and doing yoga mid day anymore, but at least I'll be in good company for the rest of the summer. My calendar is bursting with fun stuff for the next couple of weeks too, so I'm sure I'll have a couple stories to tell you.

Today, I have a little gift idea for you guys! For my 19th birthday, I had a bunch of friends over for a grilled cheese bar and games and I really wasn't expecting gifts but some of my friends gave me the best gift: A foodie basket!! It was perfect because they gave me a bunch of things I would never buy in my regular grocery haul but that were delicious and thoughtful. There were yummy cheeses, crusty breads, vegetable pâté, sparkling cider, and a bunch of other little things that left me with a full tummy and happy tastebuds.

For Mother's Day and for my dad's birthday, which just happen to fall within two days of each other, I decided to go to a variety of grocery stores, shops, and bakeries to pick out a couple of things for my parents (and this way I could dig in too...). I headed to Whole Foods, Thyme & Again, The Ottawa Bagelshop, Art is In, and the Real Canadian Superstore for my treats.

Why food baskets are great:

1) You can customize them with your loved one's favourite treats.

2) They can be as extravagant as you want or can be super inexpensive.

3) It's fun to explain to the recipient of your basket where and why you chose each item. 

Happy birthday dad

&

Happy Mother's Day mom

xox

Veggie Sandwich

Hello! I made a really yummy dinner this evening and I can't help but share it here on B@M. This past week, I have been kind of leaning towards more veggie based meals, I'm not saying I've gone full on vegetarian mode, but I'm definitely being more mindful about how much meat I eat. I watched a documentary about salmon recently (prime example of exam procrastination) and it really got me thinking about what we eat. That, paired with the phrase "is this good for my body" that my mom heard at yoga, has got me thinking exactly what am I consuming?
... How cheesy it that ;)

So if anybody has any good documentaries, websites, or advice about eating less meat I'm all ears!!

This is more of a compilation than anything but please enjoy these recipes I've found because they were MOUTHWATERING (and bonus: meatless)!!

Kale Caesar Salad from A Cup of Jo (the only blog I read daily). I've made this caesar vinaigrette countless times but this was the first time I used a food processor to blend it. It honestly made ALL the difference!

Ingredients
- 2 garlic cloves
- 1 Tbsp mustard powder
- 1½ Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
- 3 Tbsp lemon juice
- ½ cup olive oil

✿ Blend all together in a food processor or mix by hand. Toss into washed, relaxed kale.

Chickpea Avocado & Pesto Sandwich from Two Peas & Their Pod. This mix is also great for eating with tortilla chips.

Ingredients
- 1 can of chickpeas, rinsed and drained
- 1 large avocado
- 2 Tbsp pesto
- 1 Tbsp lemon juice

✿ Smash all ingredients together and spread on toast!

Grilled Veggies
My mom just bought one of these as seen on TV Yoshi BBQ mats and they are AMAZING! I could go on for days or you could watch the informercial. Who's ever tried to fry an egg on a barbecue??? That's my question after watching the "before" part of the video clip. Hahaha!

Enjoy your night! xox

Raspberry Scones

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Breakfast at Midnight!!! It was on this fateful day two years ago that I started my blog and I can't believe I'm still at it! Last night we had a couple of friends over for games and some much needed drinks to celebrate the end of exams (for most of us) and we ate a huge pile of chocolate chunk waffles... at midnight. So we had breakfast at midnight to celebrate Breakfast at Midnight!! I'm so lucky to have friends that put up with my wacky ideas :)

Today, I'm going to give you guys the best raspberry scone recipe, which is fitting because my girlfriends and I just came back from an afternoon sipping tea, munching on scones, and chit chatting at a little old heritage house right in Lennoxville! Apparently they have pictures of our house archived at the museum there, so I'm booking an appointment sometime this week to go uncover some hidden gems. Our house is right on the train tracks, so wayyyyyy back when it used to be some sort of rest stop/little train station. I can't wait to find out more about its history!

Raspberry Scones

Straight from my girl Martha.

Ingredients
- 2 ½ cups flour
- ¼ cup sugar, and then 1 Tbsp for topping
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ¾ tsp salt
- ½ cold unsalted butter grated 
- ¾ cup buttermilk (I never buy buttermilk, I just use Joy's trick!)
- 1 large egg yolk
- 1 ½ cup raspberries. Martha says that you should use fresh, but I used frozen and that was okay)

Directions
✿ Preheat oven to 400ºF.
✿ Mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Grate in the cold butter and mix until pea-size pieces form.
✿ In another bowl, whisk together the buttermilk and egg yolk. Slowly pour the buttermilk mixture into the flour mixture and mix until dough just comes together.
✿ Transfer to a lightly floured surface and sprinkle raspberries on top. Knead three times to fold in the raspberries and then pat down the dough to 1 inch thick. Use a cup to cut circles out of the dough or pull apart pieces. Place scones about 2 inches apart, on a parchment-lined baking sheet and sprinkle tops with one tablespoon of sugar.
✿ Bake until just golden, about 15-18 minutes.

Enjoy!

...and a gif of me blowing out the candles of one giant stack of waffles.

My Dream Smoothie

Hello!

I want to say a BIG happy Easter to all of the people that read this silly little thing!! I am in the middle of exam prep/term paper season but I can honestly not wipe the smile off my face. With the end of the school year approaching faster than a moose in heat I'm spending as much time as I can with my friends. It's so nice to live in a little town where you're a ten minute walk from just about every person you know! Since a lot of my friends are graduating this year, I am giving them extra hugs and convincing them all to just camp out in our spare bedroom for one more year. If I think about it too much I get all sad, so instead of moping around I decided to throw an Easter extravaganza!! If you're a regular reader of my blog you'll know that I absolutely love throwing dinner parties, so that's exactly what I did—a dinner party on steroids. There was a house-wide egg hunt (yes, the basement too...), egg dying, easter trivia, and a photo booth. It was amazing. We didn't have too many people over and it was great because we just sat around our big dinner booth and laughed and ate and laughed and ate. It was exactly where I wanted to be for the holidays. 

Here are a few pictures if you'd like to see:

From waking up in the morning and making myself a dippy egg and soldiers, to going all out preparing for the party and moving the gigantic TV to make room for the photo booth, and then having Al's cake that had about seventeen fire hazards on it, it was a hoot!!!

Now that I have eaten my weight in carbs, cheese, and chocolate I'm more than ready to take a step away from the pile of leftovers in my fridge and eat something a little more low key. In come smoothies!!! 

I love smoothies because they're so pretty and there are hundreds of variations. I never measure out my smoothie ingredients so I get a different flavour and texture every time. Lately, I've been experimenting with toppings and when I was Skyping with my Scottish friend Kate across the pond (hooray for technology!!), she was dying to know what I had done to make the masterpiece in the biggest picture below:

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a tropical smoothie topped with homemade rawnola, greek yogurt, and fresh juicy medjool dates. A.k.a. My dream smoothie.

My Dream Smoothie

Smoothie
- Frozen mangoes
- Frozen raspberries
- 1 fresh or frozen banana (don't forget to take the peel off before freezing)
- Couple spoonfuls of greek yogurt or some type of milk if you like it less thick.
- 1 teaspoon of maca powder*
- 1/2 tablespoon of ground flax seed
- 1/2 tablespoon of hemp hearts

✿ Blend all ingredients and consume immediately!

*Okay, confession time. Last Christmas, my sister Brigitte gave me a jar of maca powder to increase my energy levels (I can sleep on any surface) and balance out my hormones. So, like the good sister I am, I used it all the time in my smoothies. It wasn't until a couple of weeks ago when I was eating banana-only ice cream and trolling the internet for recipes that I came across this quotation "[maca]is known to be 'Nature's Viagra'", the author of Wake the Wolves then proceeded to warn us with immense caution that it is "powerful stuff". So once I realized I had been practically shovelling nature's #1 libido booster into my daily smoothies, I decided to do a little more googling (not a good idea. like ever.) and found out that they sell it in pill form at sex stores *insert shocked emoji face*.  So if you're like me and want a little more balance and want to turn to superfoods to help with your insides, proceed with caution and take it one teaspoon at a time!!!

Rawnola- This stuff is great on soooo many things. Yogurt, smoothie bowls, plain old snacking... you name it! Maggie made it a lot on exchange for day trips and it was so so good AND easy!
- 1/2 cup shredded unsweetened coconut
- 1/2 cups oats
- 7 juicy dates**

✿ Pulse in a food processor and enjoy!

**Dates are my splurge item. I make a special trip into our local health food store—yes, we have a health food store in Lennoxville, but no movie theater or dollar store—and pick up a box of refrigerated dates FOTB. They are so juicy and fresh and they make ALL the difference when compared to the block of dried sugary stuff they call dates at the grocery store.


Other Toppings
- Fresh chopped dates
- Yogurt
- Raw cashews and almonds
- Fresh fruit
- Oats
- Coconut
- Pepita seeds
- Chia seeds
- Goji berries
- Bee pollen
- Raw Cacao nibs
... and many more!

xox G

White Chocolate Pumpkin Cups

Hi!

I'm so excited to report back from sunny Vancouver! Since last Thursday, I've been soaking up every second of this lovely spring weather and enjoying my much needed reading week. I'm on the West Coast because I was awarded a grant from my school to attend the Golden Key Canadian Regional Conference in Vancouver. I'm part of the Bishop's Golden Key Chapter and it was so cool to meet some of Canada's brightest students and be a part of such a fun couple of days. Bishop's University has given me so many opportunities and I'm always amazed at how willing they are to help a sista student out. If you think that getting my flights covered couldn't get any better, well think again! I got upgraded to first class on my way out here because I may or may not have gotten into a slight car accident on my way to the airport (from Lennoxville) which meant I almost missed my trans continental flight. Anywho, even though I risked my life, I got free unlimited wine and a solid cheese platter, so you know you win some you lose some!

While here in beautiful British Columbia, I have been staying with my sister Britt and her boyfriend Jesse. It's been such a treat to be with them for a whole week since I haven't seen them since JULY!!! I've been having so much fun strolling around their hood and eating at all their favourite little spots. I think if I lived here I would weigh ten million pounds because every restaurant, cafe, and smoothie bar has been out of this world! I also got to bike around with my friend Julia because she's also here for a conference.

Now maybe I should talk about a recipe right? Well a little while ago I got invited to the Dean of Arts and Sciences home for dinner with a group of students. I decided to bring something sweet to nibble on after dinner, so I made a batch of white chocolate pumpkin cups and they were soooo tasty!

White Chocolate Pumpkin Cups

Recipe changed a teeny tiny bit, but from Culinary Couture

Ingredients

- 12 oz. white chocolate chips or chunks
- 2 oz. cream cheese, softened
- 1/4 cup pumpkin puree
- 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice (or if you don't have this just a bit of cinnamon will do)
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup powdered sugar
- 1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs

Directions

✿ Place cupcake liners in a 12-cup muffin tin to give your cups that little crinkle that looks like peanut butter cups.

✿ Use a double boiler to melt white chocolate. Stir with a spatula to quicken the process.

✿ With a spoon spread some of the melted chocolate onto the bottom and halfway up the sides of each cupcake liner. Set aside the remaining white chocolate. Transfer muffin tin to a freezer, and freeze liners for 10 minutes, or until completely hardened.

✿ Meanwhile, prepare the filling. Beat (with a mixer or a fork) together cream cheese, pumpkin puree, pumpkin pie spice, and vanilla until smooth and creamy. Beat in powdered sugar and graham cracker crumbs until well-combined. 

✿ Remove muffin tin from freezer. Divide pumpkin mixture into 12 portions. Roll each portion into a ball, place it into the cupcake liner, then flatten it out. 

✿ Reheat the white chocolate if necessary. Cover the pumpkin mixture in each liner with the melted white chocolate and tap the pan against a flat surface a few times to evenly spread out the chocolate. 

✿ Freeze for an additional 10-15 minutes. Store in an airtight container in the fridge or freezer.

Enjoy!

Oh and I can't forget!! I made more gifs, and don't even ask about the context...