Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Easter Highlights

Hola bloggies!

Like most Canadians, I returned to work today after a four day weekend. It was glorious to have so many days off but boy was it hard to get back into the roll of things! I felt kind of slow and sluggish. Plus it seems someone neglected to tell all my files to take a vacation too. No worries though - this is a short week! :o) Then I have just one more week of regular work before I'm off to Whistler and Vancouver Island for over a week! Yaaayyy!!!

Anywho - I do believe I owe your an Easter weekend recap. A couple of times I made loads of something and ate it more than once. So as to avoid boring you I think I'll hit up some of my highlights!


I obviously indulged in several Green Monsters this weekend. Here I am on Saturday morning indulging in my favourite green friend while checking out the comments on my giveaway post!

PS: You have until 12noon EST tomorrow to enter my giveaway! I promise to announce the winner tomorrow night!


This Easter Monday also saw the return of my breakfast cookies. I haven't eaten these in a while and I didn't realize how much I missed them. They're basically what I used to eat in my oatmeal but baked up. Really low in sugar but totally portable. That's why I love them - I just grab them and go!


As a special treat I cooked up the last of the lovely plantains my mom sent to me in my Easter package. With this last batch I boiled them up in a little bit of water with a cinnamon stick. As a result of being boiled (until very soft) they got all puffy. They were quite good but I think I prefer them being lightly pan fried.

These plantains will be sorely missed but good news (!), I just discovered that one of my local groceries store just started selling them. So I never have to be plantain-less again! :o)

Easter weekend turned out to be a weekend full of new discoveries for me - like this beauty pictured above - tempeh!! Never in a million years did I think I would be the kind of girl to enjoy tempeh. A soy based product packed full of grains? Eaten instead of meat in a stir fry? lol The me of a couple of years ago would have thought that very suggestion crazy! Boy am I glad I'm open minded because it was delicious. In fact I was sorry when it was all gone. So sorry I bought two more packages during my weekly grocery haul! :o)


At one point this weekend, the fiance got stuck at work for a really long time. As in he didn't come home in well over 24 hours! :o( The fiance's job is such that when emergencies come up he really can't leave. He also works in the middle of nowhere so if he doesn't pack something to eat he really has no access to food.

Needless to say he hadn't anticipated such a long work day. So I had to wake up early on Easter Sunday morning, cook up a bunch of food (some of it pictured above), and drive more than 2 hours round trip to feed the fiance. He was thrilled to see me and I felt so bad for him that I didn't mind the drive.

I don't know what he thinks but I say I should win fiancee of the week! :oP



Don't worry though bloggies - I still found time to sneak in a few Easter chocolates here and there! On the whole, however, my Easter was pretty low key. The fiance and I don't have any relatives or friends in this city so our Easter celebrations were snuck in here and there when we were together. But we did manage to squeeze in the important stuff, mainly some quality church time and a lovely Easter meal:


The star of the show was a roasted leg of lamb. This particular leg came already butterflied and pre-seasoned with rosemary. I made sure to add some things to up the yummy factor! :o) For starters I studded the lamb with slivers garlic. I then rubbed the entire lamb with good quality dijon mustard. To that I added a good rub of salt and a solid coating of coarsely ground black pepper. I then seared my lamb to seal in the flavours and create a crust. To finish the lamb off I put it in the oven at a very high heat until the desired doneness. When it was done I pulled it out and allowed it to rest (so the juices would settle back into the meat). While the lamb was resting I de-glazed the pan using red wine. To that I added some mushrooms and seasoning to taste.

Voila! My lovely Easter lamb dinner! :o)

There you have it bloggies - the highlights of my weekend. That's it for tonight bloggies but don't forget to enter my giveaway! I've been thrilled by how many entries I have gotten and I can't wait to announce the winner!

Hasta pronto amigos y amigas!

10 comments:

Run Sarah said...

I love your oatmeal cookies idea! I need to try those. Looks like your easter was fun, too bad about your fiance being stuck at work though :( Hope your week has started off well1

Jocelyn said...

wow...now i'm hungry! thanks for all the food porn :D

A Toronto girl out West said...

Run Sarah,

Yeah it kind of sucked he was at work for so long - but we did get two really good days together during the weekend! :o)

Hailey,

Thank-you so much for dropping by and commenting! :o) Keep on coming back!!

Jocely,

lol You are most welcome! :oP

Sharon said...

Everything looks so amazing!!!

A Toronto girl out West said...

Sharon,

Gracias! :o) I hope your Easter was good too!

Julie said...

girl's gotta have her green smoothies right!

Erin said...

Oh, I love plantains. We have a Cuban restaurant nearby that serves fantastic plantains with nearly every dish!
I ate them a lot on our honeymoon in Costa Rica.
Yum!

Unknown said...

Erin,

I'm so glad someone understand my complete love for plantains!!! You can see then how I was so sad when I thought I would have to live the rest of my days plantain-less! :o) lol

Julie,

lol Yeah I saw your post today and it cracked me up! I strayed this morning and had a protein smoothie. It wasn't the same thing - I was crazy hungry by lunch and I missed the psychedelic green colour! :oP

Marianne (frenchfriestoflaxseeds) said...

Wait a second...you will be on the island soon? In the Victoria area perhaps? Do I see a blogger meet up in our futures?! Email me! :D

PS - you lamb looks pretty freakin' awesome.

A Toronto girl out West said...

Marianne,

I am not going to be able to make it to the island (Boo!) and I'm sad about it. You see I was going to take an extra day off after my Whistler thing, the fiance was going to pick me up in Whistler, and then we were going to head to Victoria for a couple of days.

But I have to come back because of a crazy week with way too many trials!

But next time I'm around we should totally meet up - in fact once you move back to Van (when are you doing that again) we could meet up and bring Run Sarah along too! :oD