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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.

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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.

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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!

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I did some Christmas baking today. Double chocolate peppermint cookies. Mmmmmm. I made them in the morning so I could at least try one.

My breakfast tomorrow is going to be all chocolate!!!!



We made sushi last night. To be honest it wasn’t our best effort. The ill-formed salmon ones above were made by me, and the slightly nicer veggie ones were made by Rosemarie. We had so much there was enough for all three of us to have sushi for breakfast!!

Scott should be home from work any minute, and I need to put the turkey in the oven NOW!! All for now.

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Check out that delicious looking pizza.

I tried out a new dough recipe yesterday, and it turned out really well. I wish I made the pizza bigger, or made two pizzas, because the crust was way thicker than I like. It was still amazingly soft and nice though.

I made it about 75% whole wheat. I also did pilates three days in a row so far. I think I’m turning into my mom!!!!!!!!

Our friend Rob helped Rosemarie move all her stuff over here yesterday. We invited him to stay for pizza and to play Agricola. He is the first outsider that we attempted to teach this game and it went really well. It helped that he actually watched the whole half hour video about the game on Youtube.

Yay for four player Agricola for the first time!! It was interesting. I came in last place. I have no idea what went wrong.