Menchies Fro-Yo!

So I (we?) have a co-op student for the summer. He’s super helpful during our busy time at work, implementing new things that I probably shouldn’t discuss on my blog. Meet Patrick! Today I walked into his office and he and I randomly decided to go on a drive during lunch. He forgot his at home so since he lives super close to my own apartment, I thought I’d just drive him to get his lunch.

When we were driving up on one of the main streets I noticed that we now have a Menchie’s frozen yogurt place!!!!! . . .  !!!!!! yes it deserves that many exclamation marks. I’ve seen so many bloggers write about these frozen yogurt places before, I’ve never been in one! So fun. Patrick and I had to make a pit stop in there and grab a snack. Neither of us had been inside before, and since it’s quite new the girl at the cashier explained to us how it worked.

There are a variety of flavors from plain ol’ vanilla and chocolate to coffee, watermelon tart, peanut butter and even cookies n’ cream. They allowed us to self-serve our own samples of any of the frozen yogurt and even toppings. Oh I was so excited.

You’ll notice that there are three levers per 2 flavors. The chocolate and vanilla are on either side, and in the middle is a mix of the two! Brilliant. I went for that.

Sugary/chocolate toppings.Fruity toppings.

My brain is confused! So many toppings, I could hardly choose what to get. I mean, cereal were even options as well!(left: Patrick‘s fro-yo // right: mine!)

Finally I decided on what to put with my fro-yo. I went with kiwi, strawberries, cherries, skor bar bits, rainbow sprinkles, caramel sauce and those pink balls on the bottom of my photo are called ‘popping bobbas’. They were great. But when I first tried them in the sampler, I couldn’t get my teeth to chomp down on them. They were sliding all around my mouth. Is that weird? Sorry.

The place was so colorful inside. It was a fun vibe for sure, with photos of celebrities who were inside previous Menchie’s around the world.

Well, time to dig in. Mmm. The kiwi was surprisingly good in my frozen yogurt.

Oh, and the spoons? The spoons are to die for. Soft but hard plastic, no hard edges around the spoon part to cut your mouth. I sound like a spoon-pro. Get your mind out of the gutter. I even kept mine to have at home, heh.

Super cute, right? I’ll definitely be back.

Are you more of an ice cream fan of frozen yogurt?

p.s. I feel like everyone and their BFF is pregnant lately. Which isn’t a complaint of mine. It’s probably my age bracket, right? Anyway, they’ve all been talking about listening to their babies at home with their very own fetal doppler. Neat hey? Man, technology has come a long way.

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Feeding a carb addict

As most of you already know, my boyfriend of almost 7 years is a Triathlete. A hardcore Ironman competitor.

This will be his fourth year in a row competing at Ironman Canada. You can only imagine how hard and long he trains for such an event. Or what kind of appetite he has.

I rarely see him on the week nights as he’s always gone swimming, at the gym on the treadmill, or even on the bike trainer at home. He is constantly on the move.

Fueling up his body for all the exercise he does on a regular basis requires a lot of food on hand to gorge on when he’s finished.

As you can imagine, coming home from a full day’s work, I don’t always feel up to cooking a huge feast every night. When that happens, my Boyfriend usually gravitates towards a snack before we settle down to have dinner. He keeps two quickly accessible snacks to tide him over because he’s like a bottomless pit. Never has a full stomach. The first things he goes for are peanuts, and the second is white bread (often with peanut butter and jam). Both are filling, but the white bread gives him more quick carbs.

I don’t eat much bread in general. I’m just not huge on sandwiches (unless it’s paninis….yum) and if I did, I’d make luncheon meat sandwiches because those are delicious! But we don’t have that meat at home because it’s not the best for you. However, I will never say no to a good ol’ homemade grilled cheese sandwich. The boyfriend is a pro at making those, so on occasion we have resorted to those kinds of suppers when both of us are too lazy to cook.

Dempsters doesn’t only make sliced bread. They make those delicious tortilla wraps too. We always have piles of that at home, because I love making chicken wraps, and especially chicken quesadillas with them.

Sure we have the healthier bread options available to us at home and make other things out of it. But some things just taste way better on white bread than whole wheat. All in moderation, I say. Right? Plus, the reason why the boyfriend picks out Dempsters white bread is because is made with enriched wheat flour. So it’s kinda got a little hidden whole wheat bread disguised in there.

Fun facts about white bread:

  • Over 60% of Canadians think sandwiches taste better when someone else makes them. (Heck yeaaah, get that boyfran of mine in the kitchen and make me a sammich!)
  • Canada’s favourite way to eat sliced white bread is toasted (40%) followed by grilled cheese (16%) and peanut butter and jelly sandwich (14%).

I gotta say, I’m with the 16% who placed grilled cheese first. I’d have grilled cheese over a bitta toasted bread. How about you? How do you eat your white bread?

Dempsters has given me twelve coupons in total for free bread, 2 for me and the rest to share with friends, family members and even you guys out there — my blog readers! So be sure to leave a comment below telling me how you pair up your white bread and how you eat it!

I am a member of the Maple Leaf Foods Connects program. As part of my participation, I have been compensated both monetarily and with free product, however, all opinions and ideas share on this blog remain my own.

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You must go make this

One of my favorite meals that I don’t eat all that often because the meat can be expensive, is pork tenderloin. For the past number of years I’ve been making my cousin’s marinade and completely fell in love with it and haven’t changed it up for that very reason.

That is, until I saw Julie from Peanut Butter Finger‘s post about the dry rub recipe she found on the Food Network, she mentioned she couldn’t get enough of it and from that I was sold. 

Well, those were my exact thoughts too. It was delicious and will definitely be linked to the Food Network’s site when I post it up on my recipe page. It looks a little burnt on the top. I followed the directions properly, but I think the first step in cooking it in the pan, I had the heat up a little too high.

Don’t worry about the amount of butter on those potatoes. We rarely eat baked potatoes. Oopsie.

My mouth is watering just looking at that meal. I kinda want to make it again really soon.

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