Holy Humous

There is a brand of humus made in Victoria called "holy humous." It is hands down the best humus I've ever had, except possibly for the humus at Andrea's restaurant in Langley.

Humous is so easy to make at home that I normally scoff at buying it, but I have never gotten my humous to taste quite this good. Anyhoo. Today I made a wrap for lunch with the humus, spinach, tomatoes, and a bbq'd veggie dog (which I have also become a big fan of). Super yummy lunch.

And I think that's all for today. Except that I am possibly in danger of becoming a nerdy aerobics fanatic. I just love the classes. Maybe I'll get a body suit, head band, and start feathering my hair . What do you think, pink leotard? lol! Anyways...after a couple of weeks now I'm starting to get the moves mostly down, and my body is moving more easily so they are even more enjoyable. I've been to 2 classes this week in addition to 1 hour long work out at the gym itself. So good! I have not lost 1 pound, but am not too concerned about that, as I am feeling much better and can tell my body is getting stronger :-).

I heart summer

I made pasta with fresh basil, oregano and parsley from my patio tonight. Fresh bread from Cobbs and a glass of wine and it was lovely. I love fresh herbs and veggies in the summer.

We have lots of tomatoes, 2 peppers and a couple of squash growing in our little garden! Can't wait for them to be ready to eat. Our summer squash plants have SO many blossoms on them - seems they will be producing a lot!

Organization

Well well. This afternoon, we got quite a bit accomplished. D. and I sorted through piles and piles of bills and documents and filed them all. Every last one. The filing system isn't exactly pretty, but everything has it's place. We re-organized a chunk of the office - I used some baskets to store books in to make my desk more manageable. And, D. set up my old old laptop (seriously, like 7 years old) on my desk so I can use it for word-processing (thesis/work) with my flash drive. This is SO good, as I have been having a very hard time working in D.'s space, on his desk on my thesis, school and work stuff. The old laptop is painfully slow for internet, and if more than one application is running, but for just straight-forward word documents it's okay. This will help me SO much during this "blip" while my laptop is in the shop. I just keep telling myself that when it comes back it will be shiny and new, and have a new battery and other things.

I made an "interesting" dinner tonight. It turned out okay. We had prawns in the freezer, so I made a cliantro/oil/garlic/etc marinade/dipping sauce for them. Marinaded them, then grilled them on the bbq - so good! I also made a red cabbage salad of sorts, loosely based on a couple of recipes I found online. Just the cabbage with a dressing made with garlic, lime juice, coconut milk, salt and pepper and I can't remember what else. It was good though. I then attempted making a wacky curry-coconut rice dish. Had it occurred to me before starting that really what I was making was risotto, I'm sure it would have gone better! I just dumped rice, half water and half coconut milk and a scoop of curry paste into a pot and put it on to cook like normal rice. Of course, it dried out due to the coconut milk (needed more water if I did that) and burned. However, I was able to salvage it by adding lots more water, carefully stirring (so as to not disturb the burnt rice), and adding at the very end some (I know weird) maple syrup. What I came out with was a pretty yummy curry/coconut risotto of sorts. Anyhoo, it was a make-it-up-as-you-go meal, with all the expected side trips. In the end it was pretty good though :-).

My August

I am having anxiety about my August. I just emailed a friend with our schedules for August so she can plan when to visit and there really isn't much time. Here it is :
August 9 - wedding on the mainland.
August 10-14 - I am out of town for work
August 15-16 - we are likely both going to be out of town.
August 23-24 weekend - Probably going to be the bachelorette party weekend for my Brother's wedding.
August 25-29ish - Likely I will be out of town for work again.
August 31 - Another wedding to go to
September 5 - my brother's wedding!

How did it get so booked up? How is there already not one weekend in August we can go camping or something; and not one weekend we'll even be home I think!? Let alone taking a few days off. And there's only 2 weekends left in July and they are the only ones in July we'll have been home!

CRAZY. Maybe we'll have to try for a few days off in September after the wedding. Holy Moly.
I shouldn't whine - we scheduled all this stuff (okay, I scheduled all this stuff) and It's all good stuff, so....I just know the summer will be over, and we will have done no kind of holiday or even weekend activity the whole time. That makes me sad. The last time we had a full week off was our honeymoon I think.

But, everyone goes through these crazy times. There will be an end, I'm sure :-)

Back at it

I just joined up a gym for the first time. It's an all women's gym, which is nice, and it works out cheaper than going to drop in at the rec centre. This membership includes gym stuff of course, but also a full fitness/nutritional assessment, and I can go to any of the 20 different classes, including some yoga, aerobics and step, weight training, and spinning. I'm most excited about the inclusion of the classes, as at the rec centre these always costed extra. And I really like going to classes.

So, yay! Hopefully I can make full use of it :-).

Gardening

This was our garden before...well this is actually after D. weeded it. Unfortunately, we let it sit long enough that the weeds grew back and we had to weed it again! But, now, we have a garden:
We planted tomatoes, red, yellow and green peppers, cucumbers, yellow summer squash and spaghetti squash. We also got a good selection of herbs that are in a pot on the patio. Yay! We had a nice day going around to three different nurseries, and then for lunch at Fish on Fifth. Fish on Fifth is a great casual restaurant! They have a great menu, including.....wait for it....deep fried mars bars, cheesecake, ice cream, pickles, macaroni and cheese and many other things! We only tried the pickles (kind of like zucchini sticks), but I'm thinkin' we'll have to return for the mars bars and cheesecake ;-).
This is not my doing - this is one of my landlord's plants - there are several stalks like this and it practically glows! It's gorgeous!