Butternut Squash Soup with Curry and Roasted Banana

This soup all started at Thanksgiving hosted by our Aunty Michelle and Uncle Shannon. Michelle was talking about the wine night she had just gone to and that she really enjoyed the food. Especially this soup, it was some sort of butternut squash, coconut curry and roasted banana thing. If I could have a picture of my face when she described that soup it would have been priceless. That sounded SO GOOD!! I grabbed my phone and wrote down the key ingredients she just mentioned and could NOT wait to go home and try this. 



My first attempt at this soup was pretty good, , and by good I mean my husband ate it all. I had one bowl of this soup and he had the rest of the pot. I couldn't believe it! I come home from work the next day after making it and was so excited to have a bowl. I go to the fridge and the bowl is gone. GONE?! "Devon where is the soup I made?" ....silence... "Ummm I ate it..." Instead of being angry, which he thought I might be, I was quite proud. I honestly didn't think he was going to like this soup (he isn't a fan of curry) so I was all prepared to bite the bullet and eat most of it. But I guess I was proved wrong, and happily so. 



Another reason why I posted this today is because I had a negative comment thrown my way. I know that these are a daily occurrence in everyday life and they are unavoidable. But I just wanted to put a positive spin on a woman's negative comment, because thats all we can really do when someone puts us down for our life choices. So I really hope you enjoy my soup, its gluten free and vegan so there is a huge group of people that can eat this, so please share this with your friends and family. 

Butternut Squash Soup with Curry and Roasted Banana

1 large Butternut Squash
1 ripe Banana
1 large onion, diced
3 stalks of Celery, diced
4 large carrots, diced
1 tbsp of Coconut Oil
1 clove of Garlic, minced
1 cup of Vegan Broth
6 cups of Water
1/4 cup of Coconut Milk
1 tbsp of Cumin
1 tbsp of Corriander
1 tbsp of Curry
Cilantro, garnish

Cut your squash in half and remove the seeds, place face down on a cooking sheet, along with the banana (still in the peel) and bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes. While this is baking, chop up all of your veggies and put them in a pre heated pot and saute with the coconut oil and garlic. Once the veggies are almost fully cooked, add in your vegetable broth and the water. Bring to a boil and then add the coconut milk and spices, stir in. Continue to simmer until the squash is done. Once fork tender, remove the squash from the oven and let it cool down so you can handle it. Chop the squash into bite size cubes and add to your soup, let cook for 10 mins. In a blender, add half of the contents of the pot and the roasted banana, blend until smooth. Pour back into the pot and simmer for 15 minutes. Garnish this with cilantro and serve! 

Thanks for reading!

xoxo - Nikki


**I have posted at the bottom of the page my Facebook post I made this morning in regards to the negative comment, just in case you were more curious about it. 

My Facebook Post:
I love the fact that I work everyday with the public. I get to see some of the same people everyday and I get to meet some new ones. Sometimes these people are interested in my new lifestyle and inquire about it. They will ask me what new recipes I have come up with lately and even some tell me how they just made my chili, spring rolls, or my curry soup. That makes me SO HAPPY! For those of you who read my blog and experiment with my recipes, I want to you know that I appreciate the love and support. It means a lot to me that you take interest in what I have to share. Thank you!

Unfortunately, there are some Nay-Sayers out there who just don't understand this way of life. For example the woman who said I lead a boring life because I was vegan, who now today told another woman that she looses her appetite when ever I talk about the food I eat. I didn't comment when I heard her say this, because I didn't feel the need too and I was already talking with a woman who has always been very supportive and interested in the things I am cooking up. 

Now, I fully understand that there are going to be people who don't agree with me and that's totally okay because life would be boring if we all did. I just think its amusing that she probably didn't consider that I loose my appetite over the things she eats too.

So to end on a happy note, I am going to post later today the recipe I was talking about that "made her loose her appetite". Its my Butternut Squash soup with an extra surprise! Keep a look out for it because I think its FANTASTIC!!

One Hot Salad feat. Sauteed Mushrooms, Onion and Corn on Kale and Quinoa

We just had a lot of snow here in Moose Jaw, like A LOT. So naturally, on Friday night I felt like staying in because a) it was too cold outside and b) my car was buried under a huge pile of snow. 

Devon was going to the Alice Cooper concert so I was by myself for supper, which meant I could do some experimenting.  I love mixing textures and temperatures with my food. I can eat almost anything hot or cold. I would say that Chili is my favourite food to mix temperatures with, hot chili with fresh zucchini and tomatoes on top. Or topping it with more cold quinoa is really good, becuase you can never have too much quinoa. I also love doing this with salad, yes Salad. Some people (like my husband) do not like doing so, they find the temperature differences a little weird. 

With him being out, I decided to do a warm salad. When I was at work on Friday I was thinking that I could really go for something comforting for supper that night, yet I was craving a kale salad. So my mind got to work on what would taste good for a warm salad. My first thought was sautéed mushrooms, these are one of my favorite things to eat. Back when I was a meat eater, Devon and I would sauté mushrooms and onions to put on top of our steak. These would most likely be done before the steak, so I would just stand by the stove eating them from the pan. Which meant of course there would be barely any left for supper!

So I had my first ingredient, mushrooms. Then of course I would add onions and garlic to the mix because, because to me the dish would have not been complete. But, I didn't just want those three, it need more color and I wanted to add something sweet to the mix. Corn! Perfect! I had some frozen organic in the freezer that would be a great addition to my salad. 
Next I thought, what about quinoa? It would be another hot element to the salad and would be great texture to add to the mix. Finally, I thought to top it off with zucchini, tomatoes, and sprouts and a garlic lemon dressing to finish it off. 

When I was taking the pictures of this dish I actually hadn't tried it yet and I thought to myself..."you might be taking these pictures for no reason because you don't know if its going to work out..." But let me tell you! It was one of the best salads I had ever eaten. There is the perfect balance of hot and cold in this mix as well as sweet and savory. I really hope you like it as much as I do. I told Devon that the next time I make this, he had to try it even though he was a skeptic. And surprisingly he agreed. Looks like I get to make this again sometime really soon!























One Hot Salad
Ingredients

• Kale
• Quinoa
• 1 tsp of Coconut Oil
• Mushrooms
• Corn
• Tomatoes
• Zucchini
• Sprouts

Dressing

• 1/4 cup Olive Oil
• 1/4 cup Balsamic Vinegar
• 1 clove of Garlic, minced
• 1 Lemon, juiced

Strain and cook your quinoa, then set aside. Saute, mushrooms, onions, corn and garlic just unitl they are browned. Dice up your tomatoes and zucchini. For the dressing I always make more than I need so I can store it in the fridge for later. Just put all of the ingredients in a jar with a lid and shake until well mixed. Then layer your dish like so:

• kale
• sauteed mushrooms, corn, and onions
• quinoa
• tomatoes 
• zucchini 
• sprouts
• top it off with the dressing

There you are done! Enjoy!

Thanks for reading!

xoxo -N

Confession of a Salad Eater...

I'm not going to lie to you guys, my confession is I LOVE FOOD. Oh right I already stated that... crap. Well I will say it again. I love food. I love the different combinations, flavours, colors, textures, ect ect ect. It really is something I am constantly thinking about during the day. What can I make for lunch, or supper, or my second supper?? I take a lot of joy in creating great tasting meals for me and Devon, and even greater joy when they turn out.

Some days however my stomach has ADSHD (Attention Defecate Super Hyperactive Disorder). I literally cannot decide what to eat for supper, I want too many things!

Last night was one of those nights...

I started out during the day with cantaloupe for breakfast, a great salad for lunch, a couple apples for a snack at work, then a second snack when I got home of blended apples, grapes, dates and a little bit of spinach, just to tie me over until supper. I guess I should just clarify that my breakfast is at 7am, my ‘lunch’ is at 9:30am my snacks are between noon and 1pm and my second snack is at 3:00pm. It’s a really messed eating schedule, but I have found a way to work around it (‘It’ being my angry, hungry stomach.)

The Raw Vegan Wraps I picked
 up at Alternate Roots

So last night we ended up going to the mall to pick up the new HALO for my husband and we stopped to get some things at Zellers. Unfortunately one of those things was a bag of plain, ripple Ruffles chips. I can see all of your heads shaking, I know I know, chips are bad, but honestly, to me, they taste so good. They are my one craving that will be very hard to crack. I originally thought dairy was going to be the hardest, but sadly no, chips are.  So I sneak them home, from whom, not too sure, but I feel like I should hide them or something. I set them on the table and start to make supper. I have decided I am going to make Raw Vegan Wraps, using these new Coconut Curry wraps I picked up on Tuesday from Alternate Roots. I sliced up tomato, cucumber, zucchini and added some leafy greens, wrapped them up and gave her a try. They were really good!! Unfortunately my ADSHD stomach was like, nope you want something more... so I opened the chips! Yup I did it, eating my super healthy wraps with a side of potato chips. I should have felt the irony, but I just couldn’t muster it up. Maybe it was all the crunching....  After a couple of trips to the bag of chips, I sit down at the computer and get to work on my Harry Potter post. After 20 mins, my stomach literally shouts at me, YOU WANT A GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICH!! Damn, I thought she was asleep. I already gave her something healthy and something greasy, What more does she want? Apparently she wants a grilled cheese.

So off to the kitchen I go to make myself a vegan grilled cheese. Basically it’s the same thing as a regular grilled chhese, you just use coconut spread, like Earth Balance in place for your butter, Daiya Cheese in place for the cheese and make sure your bread is Vegan. BAM. Grilled Cheese. Which of course turned out quite yummy.

So now I have given my stomach 1 healthy and 2 unhealthy things tonight. She MUST be done now.... NOPE. Not done just yet. Because of the 2 to 1 ratio, she thought it was time to end on a good note. She wants a salad now (recipe at the bottom of the page). One of the really good ones with tomatoes and dates on it.  Fine! FINE! I will make one last meal but that is it! No more..... Haha who am I kidding.

So that is my confession. Yes, I really do love my healthy food, I think it tastes amazing, its satisfying and is better than most junk food out there. But sometimes your crazy ADSHD stomach just won’t shut up and so you give in. And that’s okay. Now, right now is where I would probably say, “as long as its in moderation its okay!” but I won’t. Why? Because my mother in law brought it to my attention that NO not everything is good in moderation “Heroine isn’t good in moderation, Crack isn’t good in moderation, killing people isn’t good in moderation.”
There is one thing that I do believe. If I can continue on this path of eating more Raw food, I know my cravings for the other junk will subside. It’s just a matter of wanting to get there, because if you don’t truly want to do something you will never fully follow through.  

My Go To Meal #3

"The Salad"

6-8 cups of leafy greens, I used Kale and Romanie

2 medium tomatoes, diced

1/2 of a cucumber, shredded

1 small zucchini, shredded

1 yellow pepper, shredded

5 dates, diced

1 lemon, juiced

If you wanted to put other ingredients in it like mushrooms, carrots, beans or even QUINOA (which I do when ever there is left overs) by all means do that. These are just my staples that I always have on hand. Throw it all together and you got yourself a great meal. Yes this is one meal, not to be shared between four people! Enjoy!

Thanks for reading!
xoxo - N

Harry Potter and the Order of the Quilters

Yes its a Fabric Post!

It finally had arrived, the Quilt Patch Quilt Retreat!! This is something I look forward to all year long and now I cant believe I have to wait a whole year for the next one. I have had people (who are non-quilters) ask me “ what do you do at a quilt retreat?” I'm pretty sure I gave some sort of weird look and replied “I quilt”…”All weekend long?”, and with a huge smile on my face I say “Yes ALL WEEKEND LONG!” It’s really a quilters dream. At home you have all of the everyday distractions, like kids, housework, pets, husbands, ect. Here you have none of that! Well except the constant snacking and roaming around you do when you are fed up with that stupid seam or those 200 little 2’’ squares you have to cut out. (that Irish Luck seemed like a good idea at the time right Chris?) Those are the interruptions that are fun, because they include talking about quilting with likeminded people and there is always a glass of wine in hand.

Honestly this is clean for me.

The retreat is located at Wood Acers here in Moose Jaw, so I have the added bonus of being able to go home and make my own food to take back to the retreat. I could also choose to I could sleep at home, but I like the fact of sleeping there. Being able to go to bed and get up whenever I wanted was really handy. The thing that was a little time consuming was having to go home each morning and make the meals. But I think if I was more organized and enlisted the help from my amazing husband it would go a lot smoother.

This is only half of the sewing area we had.
Loved having those windows!

Thursday night kicked off at 4:00 with setting up of our stations, followed by supper and show and tell. For supper that night I brought 8 spring rolls, yes eight!! And as I am sitting down to eat the lady sitting across from me asks what I brought, I replied “Fresh Rolls! I live off these things!” She then takes a look at my rather large container and says “Oh so that’s your weekend supply?”.......”Nope, this is my supper” .... “You’re going to eat ALL of those tonight?”... “Yup, I can eat a lot of them!”

I think the women there were amazed by how much food I actually brought and ate while I was there.

My light in my sewing machine burnt out  :(

Jeanne (sitting) and Jo (with her face covered) from the Quilt Patch 

Jo's quilt from 7 years ago that she just finished!

One of the hardest things about going to a retreat is trying to decide what to work on while you are there. There I was looking into my bag of UFO’s (Unfinished Objects), which is quite full, and didn’t see anything that really wanted to be finished. So to me the logical decision is to.... MAKE SOMETHING NEW! Yes to me this is logical, I have all of this fabric just waiting to be made into something beautiful. So what if my UFO’s sit for just a little bit longer. Next was trying to decide what to make........ then it hit me. HARRY POTTER QUILT! I am pretty sure I yelled this to my husband. DONT YOU THINK THAT WOULD BE AWESOME! I think he just shrugged and said “Ya, sure.” My mind was made up, I was going to do this... except for the pattern.
 
I started to sketch a couple ideas and ended up with something that was fairly simple, to my I guess. I then hit the internet in search of some images I could use for appliqué (I really love appliqué, you can do so much with it) and found some awesome minimalistic prints that were perfect. I did end up drawing a couple of the images, the castle, the wand, the book shelf and the letters flying into the chimney.  Other than that they are not my images so I will not take credit for their awesome work. 

I was so excited to start this quilt. It was going to be a bit of a challenge but I was so determined to finish as much as possible before the weekend was over. So much that on Saturday night at around 11:30pm I ran home to print off more appliqué letters, seeing as the ones I originally had were too big to fit onto the border. I ended up staying up until 3:30am ironing on letters and cutting them out, I am proud to say I was the last one standing :)

I had such a great time, it was really hard to leave on Sunday. In some ways I wish I could do this once a month, think of the projects I could get done!! On the other hand, my wallet and my back thank me that its not! 

Thanks for Reading!

xoxo - N

Starting to applique around the shapes

Laying out the blocks trying to figure out what looks good





 

Sashing done!



The first letter Harry recieved from Hogwarts going down the chimney.

I learned this weekend how to print on fabric using your ink jet printer! So easy.



Cutting out all the letters that I ironed on at 3am.



Almost done! Just have to applique around each letter.
That shouldn't take too long.....



Halloween Puking Pumpkin Dip

TIS THE SEASON TO BE HAUNTED!! 

This past Friday we got to host our annual Halloween party, which is one of my favorite parties to plan. I love all the decorating, the costumes and the food.

For a costume I decided to dress up a Katy Perry this year, the candy themed one. NOT the ET one. She is a little too scary for my liking in that video. So I went to You Tube and searched for the video California Gurls and put it on repeat! I probably watched this video 10 times, just to get a her outfit seared into my brain. If I was going to make this costume, it was going to look great. Next was to the closet to see what I had that was Katy Perry-i, and I had.... a white tube top! Perfect, that's all I need! Well except for rhinestones, felt, dog chew toys (the cupcakes!), stickers, pipe cleaners, a headband, satin fabric (skirt) and a pair of tights. I am truly happy I had that white top, because its fricken hard to find one in October!

So I started to sew and hot glue gun the crap out of that top; which lead to burning myself with said glue gun and then sew some more to make the skirt. 8 awesome hours later...TA DA! I'm Katy Perry!

For the food I decided to do the typical munchies, chips, popcorn and something new: The famous Puking Pumpkin. I have always thought he was kind of cute and gross at the same time, which I think is perfect for a Halloween Party.

Ingredients

5 large Avocados
3 large tomatoes
1/2 cup of Cilantro
1 lime, juiced
1/2 large Onion
1 Garlic Clove, minced
Salt to taste

Dice it all up, throw it in a bowl and mix it unit it gets a smooth consistency. I like to leave some chunks of avocado in the mix to add more texture! Enjoy!



Me and my sisters, Chelsea is a Dinosaur and
 Ashley is a Banana!



Yes I Glued each one of those rhinestones on!





Thanks for reading!

xoxo - N