Tibb’s Eve Brunch

Yesterday was definitely a character building kind of day. With a stiff lip, I let myself mull over the situation for an hour or two, then go about my evening. The Guy came home early, and decided to take me out to get some Subway and check out the festive Christmas lights around Santana Row. He sure knows how to cheer me up! With that being said, thanks for all your comments regarding yesterday evening’s post. I do need to thank WestJet for their impeccable customer service.

This morning I got up and made us a brunch, and shortly after I finish proof-reading through my post, I’m heading over to Jessica’s house to make some cookies with her!

Brunch-headerI can hear you asking yourself what the heck does Tibb’s Eve mean. It’s a celebration to kick off the Christmas Season as you do in Newfoundland (where we’re from). Tibb’s Eve is the Eve before Christmas Eve and can often be referred as Tipsy Eve if ya catch my drift.

To start our mid-morning Tibb’s Eve, I made us a huge breakfast as we can finally sit back and relax with the two of us and Alfie. We had three sets of visitors throughout December, my parents in law, my sister in law and my husbands best bud all came down for a visit. It was great! I love entertaining, and showing people all the sights and sounds that California has. I will never tire of the Golden Gate Bridge, let me tell you that much!

I’ve been lucky that Walmart Delivery is taking a liking to my food posts, this is the third instalment of me working with them. Once again, all the food shown in the post (ok minus the grapes, they were gross anyway) were from Walmart and delivered right to my doorstep. The delivery guys and I are getting to know each other pretty well. Alfie still doesn’t like them — wouldn’t blame him really, they’re strangers.

I do have to say, I’m getting bolder in the kitchen and expanding my cooking skills to making a ton of things at once, instead of baking muffins and some scrambled eggs. I’m doing it all. Fryin up the bacon, making blueberry muffins, egg bagels with tomato and cheese, fresh fruit with whip cream, and having a side of apple juice, hot chocolate and then peppermint tea! Whoowee.big-brunch

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peppermint-tea-santa-mugI stocked up on the Celestial peppermint tea and now have a couple of boxes, there’s nothin’ better than peppermint flavoured treats at Christmas. After breakfast or even before bed, I like to sit in my chair and have a little chit chat with The Guy about our day ahead, or unwinding after a long day. My Santa mug has a few cracks in it, I think it can’t handle the heat of my extra hot drinks. Hopefully it’ll last a few more seasons!

So, it’s two days until Santa Claus arrives on his sleigh, and for those that celebrate the Misters visit, I sure hope you’re all ready. Are you? I have to admit, I need to wrap a couple of more gifts and I am set. We have a modest amount of presents under the miniature Ikea tree this year, but I’m really excited to celebrate our first Christmas as a married couple. This year has been so different for us, and believe it or not (I probably keep repeating myself) I’m the happiest I have been in my life. I’m content with where I am in my/our life right now. With that being said, I will be taking the next week or two off blogging to spend time with my new little family. See you in 2015, stay safe and Happy Holidays!

But before I head off until the New Year, here’s $15 toward your first order with #WalmartToGo, an online grocery pickup and delivery service and if you spend over $50 delivery is free.

Disclaimer: Walmart-to-go provided me with a gift card to use their delivery service.

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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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Stocking up on @EqualCanada & groceries at Walmart #cbias

We usually stock up on groceries on the weekends and go quite late at night so it’s less busy. But yesterday we ended up starting our shopping trip at Walmart at around 7pm.This winter has been phenomenal. I think I had a long sleeved shirt underneath my lightweight coat, and I was totally comfortable. Its been so mild out that you just don’t need to dress like a Sasquatch!The Easter stuff is out an in full swing. Cadbury cream eggs, I’m a ready for you! I’ve always been a fan of Easter since it’s close to my Birthday. Did you as kids ever get little wicker baskets full of toys, candy and Easter candy when you woke up Easter morning? I think I went for Easter hunts way beyond the appropriate age. Nothing can stop me from hunting down my chocolate candies!Alright let’s get serious. We have a list, and we have to stick to it. It’s too easy to get off track in here. So many things I want to buy.First aisle was in the Pharmacy section to pick up another canister of Equal Canada since it’s still on Rollback here for $7.97 (as compared to $9.97). Always like to save a bit of cash. The new yellow canisters of Equal is great because you can bake with it and it can be substituted 1:1 for sugar. I’m thinking of making some chocolate chip cookies from a recipe I found on #EqualCanada Facebook page.I know a few people who asked me where they could find Equal products, and they’re usually in the Pharmacy section/health food area of Walmart. I could never find it in the sugar or baking aisle of the grocery store part.This is so random. But I didn’t notice this until my boyfriend pointed it out. I always fuel my belly on Saturday’s with Kraft Dinner! I’ve been doing this for a while. Time to stock up on more!There’s plenty to go around.I always like to double check the prices to see if they’ve rung up properly, especially if they’re on sale or Rollback. I’m checking the toothpaste here.

The checkout line went pretty quickly. Here I am placing the last remainders of the things in our shopping cart onto the belt.Waiting in line to pay for the groceries.

Hope you had fun “shopping with me”! Don’t forget you can check out my Google+ story that I also wrote in conjunction with this blog post. You can also find Equal Canada on Twitter, and Equal Canada on Facebook.

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

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