From Zero to Three in No Time Flat (and a product review)

Hola Bloggies:

Boy has this last week been a mad house!!! So much so that I posted a ton while actually on vacation and none since my return! Ayyaaa!!!

Rest assured Boise was totally awesome and I had a blast (I’m even planning a return trip for a possible race in June) but then I came back to work and got slammed. Our usually understaffed office of five lawyers is down to just about 2.5 for the next couple of months. That means that yours truly is putting in some long hours and trying to keep up. Hence why my work-life balance got a little thrown off for the last week. The difference is that this time, unlike last fall, I am determined to carve out “me” time. It won’t do anyone any good for me to end up burnt out. Besides – I like working out and getting away on random trips. And I intend to keep doing just that!

A Product Review

For this post I thought I would feature a product that was sent to me a while back to sample for the blog – honibe! Honibe is made by a small family owned Canadian company (woohoo!). What is it? Well 100% Pure Dried honey!

The product is packaged in individual tablets of solidified honey. I thought maybe there would be ingredients mixed in but nope! It’s pure P.E.I. honey.

The packages contain exactly one teaspoon of honey. The caloric damage? 20 calories per pop. And what about carbs? Just 5g of carbs (4 of them sugar) in each serving. The package seems to suggest that the honey would be ideal for putting in your tea. In fact it even claims to melt in about 30-60 seconds. Since I’m not much of a tea drinker and I take my coffee black I can’t attest to that – what I can attest to is the yummy flavour of the product! It definitely tasted better than your average grocery store brand of honey. Almost like something you’d buy at a summer farmer’s market.

My favourite way to eat the honey drops was to just pop them in my mouth! They calmed my sugar cravings and did absolute wonders for my sore throat!!!

Bottom line: I would completely recommend this product!! If you’re interested in trying honibe it’s available at a whole pile of stores in both Canada and the U.S. Alternatively, you can buy the product on the company’s online store.

 

From Zero to Three in No Time Flat

Like most people, the first time I tried sushi I didn’t like it at all! To be honest I’m not so sure it was the taste that didn’t appeal to me so much as the fact that I was in High School and I thought that was the way I was supposed to react to raw fish. I spat out my first ever roll (futomaki). Then about a year later I decided I had a sudden craving for sushi and there has been no looking back ever since!

When I was in undergrad at the University of Toronto, I would eat sushi at nearby Yorkville several times a week. It was a trendy area with great restaurants that just so happened to have fantastic lunch time deals. From there my love affair with the raw stuff intensified, reaching it’s apogee when I lived in Victoria (I moved there for law school) and was such a regular at Tamami that I had my own pair of special chopsticks. In need of a snack? Sushi! Trying to watch what I ate? Sashimi! Craving something spicy? Spicy Tuna Roll! Wanting to go where everyone knew my name? Tamami!

About a year and a half ago I moved to a small Rocky Mountain town with no sushi to be had at all!!!! I know it may not seem like a big deal but I didn’t feel at home in the Rockies and being a three hour drive away from the nearest sushi didn’t make it any easier. Imagine, my surprise when earlier this year two sushi restaurants opened almost simultaneously! And now I hear there is a third one opening in the next two weeks.

Of course the Fiancé and I have checked both places out. One of them tries to be more traditional and up-market. It’s housed in a location specifically designed to be a sushi restaurant and attracts what I would refer to as a slightly less adventurous crowd. I’m not a total fan of their sushi (they like to drizzle sauce over everything rather than let the sushi speak for itself) they have some outstanding cooked food!

Funny thing about this place – not only are they experiencing a mini-boom of sushi restaurants but two of them are actually located right next to each other! lol It’s the kind of thing that would make the average visitor believe that sushi is a big thing around these parts. Not so much . . . although clearly there’s a change a foot! Neither of the restaurants have closed yet and that’s a very good thing!

The second of these restaurants is my favourite although I will admit it’s a bit unorthodox. It’s located inside an old hotel – the kind you find in Rocky Mountain railway towns. Up until a year ago the restaurant functioned as part pub part down-home cooking establishment. Long gone are the $5 all-day breakfast specials, replaced by surprisingly affordable and delicious bowls of sashimi!

These two restaurants have made a HUGE difference in my life! Besides feeding my insatiable hunger for raw fish they’ve also made me feel more at home here in the mountains. As much as I love the spectacular views my city girl self often feels like a fish out of water around these parts. But with the opening of these two places I can pretend that I have a bit of the city here with me. And I love that!!

Who knew some pieces of raw fish could make a girl so happy!

If you were to move away from your home town what is the one thing you would really miss!?!? What food could you not live without!?! Do you love sushi!?!