Weekend recap + a recipe!

Occasionally you’ll see a weekender re-cap pop up on my blog. I usually try to take a break from updating on the weekends and focus on topics for the upcoming week. I did take a hankerin’ of photos this weekend so let’s get right to it!

I had two coupons both valued at 20% off my purchase for H&M and Sally’s. Here I am at H&M on Saturday. I thought I wanted yellow jeans. Until I tried these on. Then I tried on the colored cords. I’m still thinking about them. I ended up buying a nice cozy sweater, and pants for myself along with a few things for my nephews. They have the cutest kids clothes.

I decided to take my car off the road and arrive in style, in my beast-mobile. Do you like my new ride?

I drove over to Guelph to visit my Great Aunt.  We hung out for a bit, until we had to evacuate her building due to a minor fire! We ended up going out to supper at 4pm (oh 80 year olds!) and then I was asked to drive home so I wasn’t out after dark. Ha!

Sunday was race day at Ironman Canada (IMC). My boyfriend raced in his 4th year in a row, at IMC on a freshly healed broken foot. I was tweeting all day about it, so I apologize after the fact if I clouded up your tweet feed.

I logged into the live feed of Ironman Canada and was glued to the laptop! The bike portion of the race is 180km and takes a good few hours to complete. Rather than sit around in our apartment all day I ended up doing some shopping. I had to check the walmart flyer first, to see if there were any good sales on.

I went to Walmart food village as we call it. Because it has a full on produce and grocery section. I parked far away because I didn’t want beast-mobile to get any scratches :)

My grocery list, treats for Alfie, some sales I spotted and holy moses, they still make Pert Plus shampoo?

Pretty basic math that doesn’t add up. $2.00 for 1 bottle with 35 sheets of Lysol wipes, or $6.67 for 3 bottles of the exact same stuff. I’m confused as to which one to buy ;)

I had almost everything I needed, and was searching around the store for my favorite soy sauce by VH, they make some pretty #DeliciousSauces. But the only thing I could find was this mini display of random VH sauces. I went up and down each aisle for what seemed like 20 minutes. I decided to pay closer attention to what I was doing and not get distracted by all of the Newfoundland purity candy (great name for it, hey?). Low and behold, of course the VH sauces were just adjacent to this display. Then I had to decide on whether or not to get the low sodium, or regular soy sauce.Low sodium it is! Even that is pretty high for just one tablespoon. No wonder I’m always so thirsty after I make lemon pepper chicken stir fry. Oops.

Have you ever tried kale or baby kale? It’s a super food that is very good for you. It’s from the cabbage family and it’s very leafy! Apparently people massage kale leaves to make it more tender. I’ve only had it once or twice before, and I enjoyed it so I decided to pick it up with some other things.

When I arrived home, Alfie immediately sniffed out his treats so I gave him one and he went right to town on it, out on our balcony. Once he was content with that I decided it was time to check in on the Boyf doing his Ironman and maybe eat some nachos. Heh heh. Note to self: Montana’s chicken nachos are still way better!I even had a mini-tweet-convo with the famous Jordan Rapp who was announcing at IMC, it actually made me giddy when he replied. 

Between cooking supper and waiting for the boyf to finish the race, I was dying to go for a pee TMI! I know! For some reason, I sat by the laptop an 3 extra minutes longer and there he was. My boyfriend shown right below, coming in on a newly healed broken foot. In a finish time in under 11 hours, what a guy. The people down on the balcony below me, definitely heard me hootin’ and hollering at Scott on the screen, I was clapping like a baby seal I was so happy, ha ha!All the excitement was over with and I could finally focus on not burning my supper. What did I make? Oh, chef’s own Lemon Pepper Chicken Stir Fry. Actually, it’s not my recipe. My brother came up with this random concoction that tastes amazing and it’s a staple in out household now. Thanks broski.

Finished product, right there. Want to know how to make it?

What you’ll need:

  1. Garlic
  2. Oil
  3. VH Soy Sauce
  4. White Vinegar (my brother uses rice vinegar, does that taste the same? I don’t know sorry!)
  5. Lemon Pepper seasoning

That’s it. 5 ingredients, and then your food. Assemble it all together and you’ve got supper in no time. Especially if you’re smart like me and cooked the chicken before hand and chopped the veg!

My veg and meat:

  1. Bell peppers
  2. Carrots
  3. Broccoli
  4. Cauliflower
  5. Cooked chicken

I use the tube garlic that you just refrigerate and about a teaspoon of oil, just to get things goin’ a bit. The garlic is already minced, so it’s perfect. I always put the firmest veg (that being carrots) in first to cook it down a bit, and once the carrots have been cooking in the pan for a few minutes I add the broccoli and cauliflower (which I forgot to purchase).

After everything is a bit tender, it’s time to add the VH soy sauce! I always eyeball how much goes in. So, just for you guys today I ended up measuring 2 teaspoons of soy sauce.

It’s not supposed to be a lot of it. Just enough to give it some flavor. It’s not a soy sauce stir fry, it’s a lemon pepper stir fry.

At this time you can now add in the vinegar. I’m not entirely sure what the vinegar does to the recipe, but you can notice it, when it’s not in there. Put in 1/2 a capful of vinegar. Not much at all.

Now that everything is mostly cooked. Add your cooked chicken, and bell peppers. Top with a few large pinches of lemon pepper or 2 teaspoons and keep stirring, because you don’t want a mouthful of straight up lemon pepper. It’d be way too salty/peppery.

I love to eat the stir fry with noodles. So go ahead and boil some water and cook as many packages as you’d like of these Mr. Noodles. Keep on a boil for 3 minutes total, and strain. Serve your dinner immediately and it’s going to be SOOO tasty!!

For more photos of my weekend, go ahead and view my Google+ story.

For more information about VH, you can find them on twitter @VHSauces, VH Facebook, and the VH Sauces website.

This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias, all opinions are my own. #CBias

 

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[IMC] Ironman Canada recap

We went to British Columbia for the Ironman Canada race that my Boyfriend has competed in each year for the past three years. IMC  is (and is always) held in sunny, beautiful, hot ass weather Penticton. Race day was really warm and it was also the first time that I went out to volunteer. I usually like to stick around and scope out the best places to cheer on my Boyfriend, but since his sister was also with us — we decided to volunteer. We got to keep those fabulous orange shirts as well. Flattering. :)

We were at the water station for IMC and rather than myself handing out water, I decided to ask the competitors if they wanted to get splashed… and I threw cups of water on their chests / over their heads / on their back, all while wearing the Newfoundland flag as a wrap-around skirt on my bottom half. It was fun interacting with all the runners and obviously I went ballistic ringing my cowbell and running along side my Boyfriend when we saw him on the run course. He took another half hour off his time from last year, he did the same thing in 2010, so since 2009 he’s an HOUR faster. :) !!

Volunteering at the aid station for 4 hours definitely made the entire day fly by. I’ll be definitely thinking about re-signing up to volunteer again next year.

I’ll be back later with a recap of the rest of my vacation with the Boyfriend. Here’s what’s coming up: We rode a tandem bike around Vancouver, I did a hike that I didn’t like (see below / crank face) and saw some old friends from Newfoundland! I really need to get my computer fixed to show you more photos. Maybe I should just take utility knives to it and have at’er. Til next time!

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