by ·0 Comments


I tried another Budget Bytes recipe yesterday. Slow cooker non-fried refried beans!

I don’t have any pictures (not very photogenic) but they turned out awesome!!! SO much nicer than canned refried beans, and way cheaper. Also they must be pretty healthy because the only ingredients are dried pinto beans, water, onion, garlic, jalapeno and some spices! No oil whatsoever, they just cooked in the slow-cooker for 8 hours and then I mashed them.

The recipe made about 5 servings of beans for less than $2. I bet I could even get cheaper dried beans if I bought a bigger package or got them in bulk. We ate yummy shrimp burritos last night, and we froze the remaining four servings for another time.


Scott did end up making the choc ripple cake. He whipped the cream by hand!!


It was tasty. I ate it with breakfast….. I’m still off chocolate after the morning. Actually speaking of sleep I’ve been pretty good at it lately! I fall asleep much quicker than before, although I still do have the occasional insomnia night when I’m really anxious/nervous but it’s really way less frequent than last spring/summer.


Dinner last week. Quinoa with shrimp, avocado, butternut pumpkin, corn, red pepper, green onion, lime. I made the quinoa in the rice cooker, stir-fried all the vegetables, removed them and seared the shrimp, then mixed everything together, added avocado, and doused it all with the juice of one whole lime. YUM YUM.

I’ll be back with another awesome gift post later today.

by ·3 Comments

Holy moly, that dumb video of me in the aqualoop has 81,000 views. I’ve made more than $30 from it! Youtube videos are pretty lucrative compared to blogging, at least at the amateur level.

It’s Australia Day today! Well over there it is. Here it is tomorrow. Confusing.

Perhaps it’s finally time for Scott to make choc ripple cake? I’m not sure entirely what it is, but every Aussie I mention it to seems to get pretty excited. Choc ripple biscuits on their own are pretty good…. they’re kind of like the outside of a crunchy fudge sandwich cookie? I just tried to find the ones I’m picturing in my mind but no amount of image searching chocolate and fudge and cookies is bringing up what I want.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to the cake!

Now he has to make it, cuz I blogged about it. Muahahahahha.

School is going really well. I haven’t had that much work yet, which is nice. I’m feeling pretty good about this semester.

by ·0 Comments

Gahhhhhhhhhhh.

This morning I woke up to an email that said that the other dude that replied before me would go bobsledding with another person, and that I would go bobsledding with the original girl. Of course I was happy to read that and got really excited again.

I get to school, tell all my friends, and we postponed our class skating trip that we were planning on doing after school tomorrow. Then an hour later I check my email again and turns out the girl actually had someone all along. :((

As of 6:35 PM, I am not going bobsledding. We unpostponed (preponed?) the skating trip. Who knows what is going to happen though, everything is seriously up in the air still.

Skeleton and bobsledding is a ROLLER COASTER OF EMOTIONS.

ON THE PLUS SIDE: last nights dinner was extremely tasty!!


Pulled pork sandwiches and Greek salad. I cooked the pork shoulder with onions and a cup of ginger ale for 9 hours on low, then drained off all the fat and shredded the pork. Then I mixed in the BBQ sauce (Kraft Garlic BBQ Sauce) and cooked it for another 4 hours on low. It was suuuuuper tender.

Mmmmm. I thought the sandwiches needed vegetables but we didn’t have cabbage so I decided to just put a few cucumber slices. I had a slice of cheese on mine. The salad had spinach, tomato, cucumber, black olives and feta. No dressing was necessary.

by ·4 Comments

What else have I missed.

  • Rosemarie and I went over to our aunt and uncle’s house and ate yummy thai food. I would love to have that soup recipe HINT HINT HINT.
  • Rosemarie left Ottawa to go to Toronto and I got lonely. It is weird being home without her.
  • Went out for a girly lunch with Cassia and her mum and Jane and Brenda. Our burgers were enormous.
  • I went to Ikea with Leslie and Cassia, and had meatballs for dinner.
  • My flight back was delayed and longer than usual because of headwind.
  • School starts on Monday. A 5 month long semester of 8:30-3:30 school. This one is going to be tough, I can tell. I am going to work really really hard though because although I did very well last semester, I want to do BETTER!


I know that is not the most appetizing picture in the world, but I just wanted to share that cooking macaroni and cheese in milk, instead of water WORKS. It was creamy and delicious. I followed this recipe.

Rosemarie left her syrup in the fridge so this morning I made pancakes. They were very fluffy. Who needs pancake mix!!

Today I am trying out my new slow-cooker that I got for Christmas. I’m making slow-cooker jambalaya. We’ll see how it goes!

by ·2 Comments

I’m having a nice lazy morning after two action packed days in a row.

On Friday I was really really tired. I had a third bad insomnia night in a row. Anyway we were having people over so I spent the day tidying up a bit, and preparing food for 11 people. I made butter chicken, and saag aloo (potatoes with spinach), and Rosemarie made cheesecake, and Kate made an enormous salad. I think everyone enjoyed the meal.

After dinner we started our gingerbread houses. My family and the Monnon’s family have a big tradition of decorating gingerbread houses together. We must have been doing it for maybe 8 years? This year we had Rose and I, Natasha and her bf Richard, Sam (Eric’s gf), and Callum (Kate’s son).

We also set up the computer so we could Skype with Bill and Suzanne who are down in Florida. They saved their gingerbread house to decorate at the same time with us and we left the cameras on for an hour! It was really neat that they could almost be there with us.

This years gingerbread houses were pretty epic. Jane brought over all of her extra candy and we just had so much it was ridiculous. I covered every surface of my gingerbread house and so did everyone else, and we still had bags and bags of candy left on the table. We ate so much candy we all felt sick, and people even got hiccups. It was like we were drunk on candy. It’s three days later and I still haven’t touched my gingerbread house because I STILL feel like I never want to eat candy again! AND I REALLY LIKE CANDY!

The finished products were so good. We were all very creative this year!!

I made a board games house. Can you recognize it?? I hope so!

I tried to make the other side like Carcassonne, but it’s a little more abstract.

Rose also made an epic nerdy gingerbread house. She made a rock climbing wall!!! She says those are the real knots and everything. She also marked out a couple different routes. I love it!!

Nerdy sisters.