A Tested Til Perfect Recipe: Roasted Salmon Bacon and Spinach Salad.

   

  Another great recipe.  I usually make our salmon with maple or brown sugar giving it a nice glaze but I thought it was time to try out a new way of making it.  Another shout out to Canadian Living I pulled this recipe off of the net http://www.canadianliving.com/food/roasted_salmon_bacon_and_spinach_salad.php  It was super easy and took no time to make.  The vinagrette  had a nice kick and even appealed to Thomas who ate his first spinach leaf today and liked it.  The boys didnt fully embrace the salmon (it wasnt as sweet as I usually make it) but they loved that there was bacon on top.

Rainy Wednesday Craft

It was a super lame day out yesterday so we inevitably got into the craft drawer.

 The boys decided what we should all wear and added the googly eyes.  Left to right:  Daniel, Thomas, Daddy, Mummy, Auntie Niska.

The sun and the moon

What do you craft for a rainy day?

Our first attempt at growing our own food

My brother and sister and I had our own little garden plots growing up I dont ever remember actually getting much out of them either from kid memory or because we likely stopped caring for them and they all withered up and died.  Either way I figure growing some fruit and veg is a great way for me to financially contribute (through savings), teach the boys a few good values as well as improve our diet with our own non pesticide food.  To start our little endeavor i went to one of the little dollar stores on our strip and bought some large popsicle sticks.  We spent part of an afternoon painting the sticks and planting a few seeds in our old egg cartons and yogurt containers.  

 
 Daniel was very focused during this craft and very carefully painted both sides of the sticks completely.

                    My guys with their pile of popsicle sticks and paint we had in the craft drawers

Finished project.  They also pulled out a plaster dinosaur kit that we had so we made those to paint another day.

Our phase 1 little garden, there are zuchinnis three types of beans, bell peppers and strawberries in the egg cartons.

our little painted tags

It didnt take long for the beans to start growing!  The boys are so excited to see how its changed every morning.

Little Free Library

                     

          As I have discovered, this little free library is made to promote literacy by having these book exchange libraries speckled about the world. This one I couldn't find on the Little Free Library site when I looked it up.  I found it by chance :)  what a fun little gem to discover!

This one is on Ridley Gardens 

http://www.littlefreelibrary.org/

Lego Ville

So this is what I spent my evening working on monday night. In an attempt to clean up I started to organize the lego...then build with the lego...

                                             winnie the pooh and friends, picnicing and fishing

                            A looks way less impressive shot from above of the whole scene

                       The supermarket, complete with scale, food display and cash register inside

                                                               Police station

                                 Farm, complete with exotic animals like a lion cub, elephant and giraffe

                                                   
                                                      Campers around a camp fire.

My genius use of the train to use up the last of the lego blocks hehehe.

I would like to say that the kids were bowled over but truth is Danny didnt care too much, he just drove one of the cars around and Thomas thought it was cool, played for a few minutes then procceded to make one of the vehicles fly and crash into everything.  Totally worth it though because i love lego :) 

First time making Duck.

A big thanks to Jamie Oliver for making my life a lot easier and richer in food.  Last night I attempted my first Roast Duck.  I have always been scared to try to make it I guess because you always hear that its hard to do and always turns out so fatty greasy.  Not mine last night!  while I had a few issues with the gravy, which was totally my fault in not following the recipe/getting the timing right, the meal was a big hit with JM and Daniel.

                              Heres the recipe that I used, also an advert for a really cool oven!
                                        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTQMtQ1USAM