Sunday Brunch

I LOVE brunch!  I love it so much that when my husband and I got married, we had a morning wedding so we could serve brunch for our meal at an afternoon reception.  Yeah, yeah, there were other contributing factors, but it does not diminish my love of brunch!  I think it’s the flexibility of it that I like.

This Sunday we invited a couple over.  It was my friend’s birthday a few weeks ago and I didn’t get to see her so this is her celebration brunch.  I had a tough time coming up with something to make though.  She doesn’t like eggs. Or tomatoes.  So, eggs cooked in tomato cups was off the menu – but just as an fyi, they are delish.  I needed to come up with something easy and not too heavy since I baked her a Peanut Butter Chocolate Cake for dessert – and it is rich!  Stuffed French Toast was a serious contender, since that’s one of her favorites, but the meal had to be uber easy since mornings can be pretty crazy around here at the best of times, let alone when we have to prepare for company too.

Finally I settled on

Hamburgers … wait, cupcakes?

Listen, being healthy isn’t all about eating spinach and running.  It’s about balance in life and, in my humble opinion, a good balance includes dessert.  So, I’m sharing with you one of my favorite fun desserts.

I made this for last year’s annual summer bbq as dessert for all of the kids.  I got the idea through one of my favorite websites, Cake Wrecks (a very funny site!), who, in one of her ‘Sunday Sweets’ editions, featured Bakerella who had done a remake of something Smiley’s Sweets & Creations had done who had seen it … you get the idea.  Even Loves To Eat did a version.

All kinds of people have done these and I’m here to tell you, if you don’t already know, that they are SO much easier than you’d think!  The hardest part, for me, was trying to convince the local New York Fries to sell or give me some of their fry cups but I think that was a great finishing touch – some of the people at the bbq had to look at these three or four times before they realized they weren’t actually sliders!

Today I Ate A Rainbow – Star Fruit

So, in my goal of getting my family to engage in a healthier lifestyle I have begun to implement a few strategies in addition to using the Today I Ate A Rainbow nutritional chart.

I actually take the kids grocery shopping!  Seriously.  And 98% of the time, it actually goes well!  My daughter still hasn’t got much choice in the matter but she still does me a huge service just by sitting in her bucket and quietly chatting to herself.  My son on the other hand, well, he HAS a choice.  We went through a phase where I had to stop taking him, it was just far too frustrating for everyone concerned.

That all changed when I began to include him in the shopping.  I let him walk beside the cart now, or he even, sometimes, gets to step on the lower rack of the cart and ride on it.  I let him pick out our usual fruits & veggies and put them ‘carefully’ in the cart.

Of course, I have to hold up my end of the bargain.  

I’ve fallen. But I’m going to get back up again!

I’ve been doing SO well lately.  Eating a bit healthier.  Not snacking.  As much.  I’ve even lost a few pounds.  But this afternoon, I fell.

I have to say, I don’t even know what caused it. I don’t remember feeling particularly stressed or anything. I do, however, remember hearing my name being called. Very clearly. From the freezer. Of course I had to go investigate, right? Well, upon closer inspection, the sound was coming from inside an unopened package of Grasshoppers.  Eat me.  What else was I to do???  I ate one.  And another one.  And one more.  And … well, I stopped.  Eventually.

So we had a friend and her son over for dinner and my son was playing shy.  So we decided to go play, knowing that he would join us eventually.  I could hear him rummaging around.  And then I couldn’t.  And I think we all know what that means.  But it was far more serious than I thought.  He had found my stash!  My precious Grasshoppers.  {Seriously, check out the link!  You know it’s a damn good cookie if it’s got a Facebook page, right!?}  

Cakes, cakes and more cakes

This past weekend was my daughters baptism.  In honour of the occasion, I decided to bake her a special cake.  Please don’t tell my son, for his baptism I baked a plain old carrot cake that didn’t live up to it’s potential at all and turned both my husband and myself off of carrot cake ever since!

Lions & Tigers - Oh my!

Elephants & Monkeys too!