Farro Risotto

I had heard of a grain called Farro (also called emmer), I believe it's an ancient grain, but had never eaten it until we were in Seattle a month ago and I had delicious farro risotto.

I am hooked.

I finally picked some up at the local Planet Organic. I soaked it overnight in water with a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar (breaks down the phytic acid, which blocks mineral absorption and protects the seed from predators). Yesterday I made a new batch of chicken stock. I got smart this time and stored it in 1L, 250mL and 125mL jars instead of the nearly-two-litre buckets I have. Much more usable for the freezer!!

Anyways, faro is lovely. It is not gluten free, but like spelt it is much lower in gluten content than regular wheat. It has quite a dense texture, very nutty. The other benefit of soaking it, is that it makes the grains really soft after you cook them. 

It's small, like rice (farro on the left, brown jasmine rice on the right). But tastes almost sweet and quite nutty.

I used a standard risotto recipe (1 cup of rice, 1 litre of stock, 1 onion, salt and thyme). I added mushrooms, because I love the creamy mushroom taste. I also added bok-choi from the farmers market.

I used full grown bok choi, next time I'll use baby bok choi, since it's a more neutral flavour. But super tasty!

Fish Tacos!

For dinner last night, J requested fish tacos. Since we visit Mexico (specifically Puerto Vallarta, since J's dad lives there half the year) every year, we are taco junkies. When we're in Mexico, we are purists, but at home its a mish-mash of whatever we think is good on that particular day.

Last night, they were exceptional.

The fish we used is rough-eye, which I then covered in a paste made of mexican chilli powder, garlic powder, salt and olive oil, and baked at 350 until it was cooked.  The marinade is optional, you could just cover it with salt, pepper and a little bit of oil.

Rough-eye is a white fleshed fish, we were trying it out because of the price point (it's cheap!), but you could use any fish at all (however, I'm not a fan of salmon tacos).  The marinade will go on any white fish.  Try to buy local and by people whose livelihoods you are actively supporting, farmer's markets are *GREAT* for this (which is where our fish almost exclusively comes from!).

The rest of the ingredients are as follows:
-Sauerkraut (either homemade or store bought, the stuff we used comes from the farmer's market, since the stuff on the counter is not ready yet.  I should mention this is REAL fermented sauerkraut, not the fast version where you cover cabbage in vinegar!)
-"guacamole", but it's not really (just avocado, lime juice, salt, and garlic and cumin powders)
-diced bell pepper
-carrot sticks (soaked in apple cider vinegar and water, with a few onion pieces).
-fresh cilantro

So delicious.  The corn tortillas come from the 7 Seas trading co on Granville Island (right across from the Granville Island Tea company).  It's also an insanely quick meal, since you can pre-marinate your fish and the carrot sicks, so all you have to do for dinner is heat the tortillas (wrapping a clean dishtowel in a steamer is my preferred way, and I have tried them *all*) and make the guac, which takes about 2 minutes.  The fish cooked *really* fast.

We also split a Delicata squash, which I sprinkled on some sea salt and tossed it in the oven with the fish, took about 20 minutes to cook since it's such a thin skinned squash.  But YUM, it's a tasty tasty squash.  Sadly I forgot to take it's picture.

This meal will not travel well (unless you're happy to put in the work of heating your tortillas and assembling all your ingredients).  It also tends to be messy.  I shy away from messy foods at work because I eat on my lap and tend to get food all over me.  

Kombucha success!

I'm still on my cleanse, now up to day 5 of week 2.  My eczema is slowly slowly healing.  The kombucha will help, since it's re-populating my gut with good bacteria!  And I finally succeeded!  My first batch when mouldy, but I very fortunately was given another scoby by a lovely friend (hurray social media!).

The recipe I used is here.  I flavoured mine with pomegranate juice, and I've got 500cc sitting on the counter in a jar testing the carbonation.  It tastes absolutely fine on it's own, so I put the rest in the fridge in case I botch the carbonation portion of the program.

Here's the finished kombucha, SCOBY is already removed (it's in a jar back in the fridge, since it finished yesterday and I didn't have time to make a new batch again as I was in the middle of night shifts). 

I seeded 3 pomegranates, a test run last week gave me 1 cup of juice per pomegranate. Yum. 

Juice!

The kombucha on the left is mixed with pomegranate juice. It all looks so pretty in its glass jars!! :)

Reset

I had a pretty rough week last week, a baby I've been working with for 10 months died (expectedly) and I'm surprised at how difficult I'm finding it.  The day after she died, I was at a (REALLY REALLY AMAZING) workshop all weekend with an adorable baby, who was crawling around and thought my water bottle was the best thing ever (he pushed it over and then all over the room).  I didn't think anything of it until I noticed he was snotting on Sunday afternoon.  Uh oh.  

So, of course, with my lack of sleep and feeling tired and sad, I get a cold.  Right at the same time as our Christmas party, so I felt like a jerk calling in sick the day after.  Oh well, what can you do...

So, I'm taking this opportunity to start my 21 day raw food reset, through the Young and Raw company.  I did a lot of thinking over this one and decided that it would be good for me.  There's no supplements (I did a Wild Rose cleanse several years ago and was so sick during it, it was awful!).  Just lots and lots of unprocessed food.  

Not a lot of blogging about that will happen, since it's a paid-for program ($40), and the material is all copyright.  

Last week I did make a couple of REALLY good meals though, I didn't manage to get pictures of either of them, so you get real live links instead.

I made a really good red lentil carrot coconut soup!  I used chicken stock instead of veggy stock, and added some zested lime, since it felt like it didn't have enough depth.  Oh, and used tamari instead of salt to season it later in the soup.  It was good!  

I also made chana masala, which was *amazing*.  I was epically lazy with my spices though, so just used the curry powder we have on hand.  And cumin.  Because there's never enough cumin.  Served it with rice or quinoa.  Really filling, will make this again.  There was lots leftover and I brought it to work with me one day.  

Hope everyone is having a good weekend/work week/etc.  :)

Busy-ness

Life has been insane! Too busy to blog (never mind that the blogger app doesn't let me do a couple of key things, which prevents me from posting more often). So, in the name of posting pictures, here we go!

Over the Remembrance Day long weekend, J and I took a short trip to Seattle, to hang out together and do a little bit of shopping. I sadly didn't take enough pictures, since we were too busy enjoying each other's company to document the occasion. Since I'm building up to my raw food cleanse, I tried to have a solid balance of whole foods vs foods I knew would make my tummy hurt. We had a juice each on Sunday morning from Whole Foods (conveniently located a block from our hotel). This meant that we went to Le Panier in Pike Place Market and stuffed ourselves with all manner of flakey, buttery, perfect pastry. We had an almond croissant, and then 3 pastries whose names I have forgotten, but one was a dauphinois, a broccoli and cheese, and a sundries tomato (which tasted more like pizza sauce). She also bought a vanilla slice (aka a Napoleon) for later. Absolutely delish. 

 

We had a late lunch back at Whole Foods courtesy of their salad bar. For dinner, we found a local-food-serving-local-sustainable-farming-supporting restaurant called Local 360. Yum!!! 

A lovely charceuterie and cheese plate for an appy, and then this amazing faro squash mushroom dish, which we added extra mushrooms and some brussel sprouts. Absolutely excellent!! 

For dessert we had these deep friend, tasty apple fritters with house made ice cream. 

Sadly I didn't think to take pictures before we devoured it.

We got home after 45 minutes in the border line up on Monday evening, starving and kinda broke. J wanted quinoa broccoli cheese casserole. So I obliged.

Um, hello yum!! I usually make my cream soup from scratch, since most canned stuff is a chemical shit storm. And I can't really eat it anyways. We ate this for lunches all week, since it makes such a huge portion.

On that Wednesday, I made black bean brownies for my knit night on the Friday. They are SO good and SO easy!! They also last forever. Plus kids would never know they are actually made with black beans instead of flour. Has. Really fudgy texture. Yum!!

 

Both recipes came off Pinterest, so if you follow me there you can find them easily. 

Other things I made this week off Pinterest, the Chana Masala chickpea curry and an amazing carrot curry coconut soup. Absolutely perfect for the weather we've had (cold, rainy, blustery). I'll post pictures of that in my next post!

Dinner, things you learn at farmers markets, and special friends

Last night we were privy to our amazing wedding-photographer-turned-friend joining us for dinner. She was in Vancouver shooting a wedding the day before, so came for dinner before heading back home.

(Picture from our wedding!!)  If you are looking for an amazing, intelligent, hard working, talented and artistic photographer (for anything, she climbs mountains for fun), we highly recommend Melissa Welsh Photography.  Each picture turned out perfectly and we were so impressed by the high quality and professionalism!  Also, she was so much fun to work with!!

We were much too busy having fun to take pictures, so instead you get leftover shots (guess what I'm having for dinner tomorrow!!).

Winter chanterelle risotto. Winter chanterelles are slightly different than regular chanterelles, smaller, more mushroomy taste, but just as buttery and delicious.

Kale and brussel sprout salad. Delish. Recipe below.

I also made chicken and roasted a kabocha squash. Yum!! 

Sour cherry pie from Her majesty's pie company, purchase at the farmers market! Aaaaaamazing! We served it with vanilla ice cream from Rocky Point Ice Cream company.

So delish.  

30 day green smoothie challenge

So, I decided to do this raw cleanse. It's not vegan because I am allowed to eat a very small amount of raw local honey if I need to.

It's a company called Young and Raw. It appeals to me because I'm kind of desperate to heal my eczema. Also I eat a lot of raw stuff to begin with, so going fully raw for 3 weeks isn't that much of a stretch. I'll post about it when I get going on it.

In the meantime, they're hosting a 30 day green smoothie challenge. They posted day 1 last night, so I prepped everything for this morning. This is a fun challenge for us because we already drink smoothies almost every day (and the same smoothie), but it's a bit boring, so 30 new smoothies sounded appealing!!

Today was day 1. It was cucumber and ginger and parsley and more, and it was pretty good! Although a little... Leafy? I added too much water and our blender couldn't blend it fine enough (it's not a vitamix).

But look how pretty it is!!

It didn't have much staying power, but it was tasty.

Tomorrow is day 2! If this interests you, look up the Young and Raw 30 Day Smoothie Challenge on Facebook. The pinned post at the top has a 5-day-at-a-time grocery list as well as the smoothie recipes (which are posted in 3 day chunks). 

In the meantime, I'm going to bed!

Lentils

I love lentils. I really do. I made my favourite dish last night for dinner (and this leftovers for my dinner at work today): baked lentils with cheese. Except I swapped out the cheese for yam tonight. Yuuuuummmmm.

This is a really great recipe that's quick to put together and you can toss it in the oven and mostly forget about it for awhile. The original recipe comes out if the More with Less cookbook, put out by the Mennonite church (association?). While I am not a Mennonite, the philosophy of this book hits the nail on the head. Mostly. But if you google it, you'll find the following recipe!

1 3/4 cup green lentils, rinsed and picked over

2 large onions (and they do mean Large)

2 cloves of garlic (yah right, try at least 7)

2 cups diced tomatoes***

2 cups water***

Salt (salt until it tastes salty, tomatoes take quite a bit of salt)

Pepper

2-3 sprigs of thyme

2-4 sage leaves

Bay leaf

(Original recipe suggests marjoram and rosemary, but I hate the latter and we never have any in our house).

Preheat oven to 375. Find a large baking dish (9x13 or larger). Mix all the above in a bowl, pour into the dish. Cover with a lid or tinfoil, bake for 30 mins.

Then add:

2 large carrots, sliced into 1/8" pieces

2 stalks of celery, diced.

Bake for another 40 mins.

Check for doneness, then top with grated cheese (2-3 cups) and broil until melted.

OR

Peel and chop 3-4 medium sized yams and steam them until they're cooked. Mash them with some butter and salt, spread on the finished lentils and toss em back in the oven for a few more minutes to dry out a bit on the top.

The secret to this dish is the insane amount of onion. No kidding. I made it once with less onion and it wasn't as exciting.

This also freezes well.

I would've taken more pictures, but alas I was too busy eating. ;)

Soup

We have had an exceptional fall. Sunshine, warm temperatures, beautiful sun which makes all the leaves glow. It's been wonderful.

I'm doing house chores today so pulled a container of tomatillo soup out of the freezer for my lunch. Chicken, tomatillos, cilantro, lime, black eyed peas. Yum!! 

Here a vague recipe... If you google it, you can get a more accurate ingredient list.

I soaked dried black eyed peas the night before.

Onion

Garlic

Black eyed peas (either canned or pre-soaked a min of 6 hrs)

Chicken or vegetable stock

1 bunch cilantro

At least 2.5lbs of tomatillos.

2 limes (or less lime, depending on how sour you like it).

2 chicken breasts (or equivalent in whatever chicken meat you have).

Cumin

Dice your onions and toss them into an oiled, heated pot. Season with salt. Dice your garlic. Remove the leafy covering from your tomatillos and rinse them (they're sticky). Cut them into half and then run them and your cilantro through the blender (you may need to add stock to help it go, or you can chop up stuff moderately fine, they do cook down quite a bit). When your onions are translucent, add 2 cups (ish) of the soaked beans to the pot, add your chicken stock, the chicken (whole is fine, you can shred it later) and the green mix out of your blender. Add some cumin. Check your seasonings and adjust as necessary. Put the lid on and let it simmer until the beans are cooked.

When the beans are cooked, pull the chicken and shred it, return to the pot. Add lime juice. Serve!

Yes there are things growing in my kitchen....

I have been fascinated with fermented things for most of the summer. Have I actually gotten to it yet? No. A couple of weeks ago one of my FB friends have me a SCOBY, which is essentially a symbiotic culture of mold and bacteria used to ferment drinks. Yes, you heard me.

No, I am not making wine on my kitchen counter.

I am (hopefully) making kombucha, a fermented tea drink.

So, in the next 7 days, hopefully this massive jar on my counter will turn into a fermented drink of goodness.

You can see the SCOBY floating around like some kind of alien creature (it really does look like an alien creature).

Why eat/drink fermented things? Well, there's lots of science behind it and far better explanations out there than I can give. Mostly it has to do with the way of eating that we have followed for our entire existence, that the bacteria produced in fermented foods is required by our guts for healthy living and helps protect us from getting sick. I have very annoying eczema which presents mostly on my hands, as well as multiple moderately annoying GI issues (bad teeth, sensitive and often upset tummy and intestines). My eczema is directly related to my gut issues. So this is part of working to heal my guts. I'll get into the other parts later. 

In 7 days I will start tasting it to see if it's ready. Then I'll mix it with some fruit juice and pop it in the fridge to drink whenever and make a new batch. If it's successful, I'll post another picture. If it moulds off and dies, the whole thing goes in the garbage. Ick.

Catching up

Shift work and general business makes your brain squishy.

Here's what I've been up to in the past few days (have finished a day and a night, have 1 more night tonight).

J wanted egg muffin things with bacon around the outside for breakfast one day, so I happily obliged since the last 2 pieces of bacon needed to get used up. These are a brilliant breakfast! I put very finely diced potatoes and peppers in the bottom, and then poured about an egg per muffin tin. I meant to add spinach but forgot. Topped with a little bit of goat cheese, and then into the oven for you!! These are a perfect breakfast to-go, since they can be frozen! I won't post a recipe since there are a million in Pinterest.

We made chicken salad rolls for dinner. Lots of veg, homemade peanut sauce and some baked chicken. J told me what she put in her sauce but I can't remember. These wrappers are square, they're also a good brand!! We've become partial to the square ones.

These take a fair amount of prep, but it's not totally obnoxious. Plus, people can customize their own rolls so there is less whining. We use mung-bean noodles. 

Any my awesome salad for my day shift! I had an overwhelming urge to consume sprouts, so I added those. Lettuce, pepper, cucumber, carrot, kohlrabi, sprouts, avocado, sunflower seeds, almonds, chickpeas and dried cranberries. With our homemade dressing. I made 4 of these, since yesterday we had a daytime event and needed a lunch. I added the rest of dinner's chicken to J's salads. 

I usually post my entire lineup of multiple-day lunches, but instead I thought I would just post one day. Left to right, top to bottom, B = breakfast and so on:

Granola (B), diced pear (B), apple-pumpkin crisp (D), squash chickpea curry with quinoa (D), salad (L), almond milk (B), apple, chocolate zucchini muffin, water bottle. 

Now that I've posted a whole week, including all my prep, I can see how much work I put into my meals, all the different elements that I made separately that come together. It does require forethought and planning, but it's not terrible.

Anyways, that's all I have to say for today. Dragging myself out of bed to get ready for night shift #2 tonight, which of course I woke up at 1430 and haven't fallen back asleep!

Loading up

Last week was international curry week, and I missed it! Alas, there is a lot of curry being eaten in this house.

I made a squash chickpea curry for dinner with quinoa. I made it this afternoon and then J was late coming home from school. By the time I actually got to eat it, I was so excited I forgot to take pictures. *sigh*

So you get leftover pictures instead.

But this squash, it is amazing. Red Kuri. I'm pretty sure this is the one Shannon gave me out of her CSA, as she had no plans for such a splendid gourd (my gain!). Looks like this:

(This is not my picture)

It smells amazing. It also completely disintegrates so you're left with this sweet, creamy taste. So good.

Red Kuri pumpkin curry with Chickpeas

1 very large onion

3 cloves of garlic

1 red Kuri pumpkin 

1 can coconut milk

1 can chickpeas, rinsed and drained (or if you make them from dried, just keep tossing them in until the quantity is sufficient)

Curry powder

Spinach

Salt

Heat a large pot or pan on low-medium heat. When its at temperature, add your oil (I use coconut oil), then add your onions. Throw down some salt. Stir them and leave them alone.

Peel, remove seeds and chop the squash into cubes. Crush your garlic. When the onions are translucent, add the squash and garlic. I covered it with a lid to keep the moisture in.

Add curry powder. No, I don't know how much, eye ball it. Tsbp?

Once things are starting to disintegrate, add the coconut milk. Stir everything and taste/adjust seasoning as necessary. Add the chickpeas. Cover and check on it/stir as needed until the squash is cooked. Before serving, throw in some spinach leaves until they wilt. Serve over rice, quinoa or noodles.

I didn't find that the squash mushed down all the way while cooking, but once I had containered it, it continued disintegrating into this gooey delicious mess. Yum. It's really not pretty, but so good. And easy. Also made enough for lunches for the next few days (and really, surviving shift work is ALL about the leftovers).

And then I got cocky and made dessert, which involved making something up. Pumpkin apple crisp. Here's a picture to make you drool. I have no idea what I used, and I sort of used 3 seperate recipes to make this, as I lack the gene which allows one to follow a recipe unaltered.

 

Recipe (as best I can remember)

4 large apples (peeled, cored and cubed)

2tbsp honey (use sugar if you don't want to use honey)

Cinnamon. Lots.

1 cup canned pumpkin

1 cup milk (almond for me)

1 egg

Pumpkin pie spices (cloves, allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon).

Dash of molasses

2 cups oats

1 1/2 cups Flour (GF flour here)

1/2 cup brown sugar

Cinnamon

1/2 cup melted butter or coconut oil

Preheat oven to 350.

Mix everything except the apples together in a bowl. Dump in the apples. Pour it into a large baking dish (I believe mine is 9x13).

Mix all the topping ingredients together. Pour overtop of the apple mixture. Pop into oven. Go crazy while you wait for it to cook.

I think mine took close to an hour.

So delish, and now I have a giant pan of this stuff for work/school! Yay!!

Easy dinner

So I made this *fabulous* item off the Budget Bytes website (love love love her food, it's *so* good, and I can so easily sub in different things).

YUM YUM YUM YUM

Salsa chicken casserole.  Seriously, I was eating this at 10pm with a spoon.  Dangerous stuff.  Except I made it without chicken.  And now I'm defrosting chicken to add in because my wife wants chicken in it.  *sigh*  I even added extra beans (she likes teasing me about my undying love of rice and beans).

I used brown rice, added an extra 1/2 cup of water, didn't add the chicken, had a small accident with the chili powder (so it's got way more kick than I intended).  I also forgot to add cheese.  But OH LORDY is it good!!!  Definitely a good freezer meal choice.  My wife refuses to allow me to own a slow-cooker (she says that after 6 hours there's zero nutritional value left in the food), so I have to settle for slow-cooker modified dishes. I will probably buy one eventually to spite her (who else can one spite except their spouse??)

In the meantime, here's a picture of the finished product.  I plan to send this to school with J in the AM for lunch, along with some chicken (currently in the oven) and some plain yogurt (we lack sour cream in this house).  I think it will be quite delicious!

Older stuff

I hemmed and hawed over making this blog, and then it took me another 2 weeks to get going. In the meantime I started taking pictures of everything.  Sooo, here they are!

Kale and brussel sprout salad.

GF pumpkin scone with spiced glaze

Granola! That's a nearly 3L jar too.

Baked root vegetables. Before.

After

Happy Birthday, Shannon!

My dear fellow shift worker friend, Shannon, was deprived of her traditional Black Forest cake for her birthday on Friday. We had a knit night coming up, and my other lovely bestie told me we were going to pull an impromptu birthday shindig, which to me translated as an excuse to make and eat cake. You can use your logic to realize I made the cake for Shannon.

I ran into a problem with scheduling. Black forest cake is a "intensive process cake "(I totally don't agree with that).  I finished my set on Sunday morning, had a fundraiser event that lasted from 4-8pm (that was a mercy that it didn't run longer) that night, and then had a dentist appointment on Monday morning (knit night was Monday night).  Not a lot of time for cake making.

My wife, very kindly, inquired when in god's name was I going to have time to make this cake.  Fortunately I am stubborn and willful.  She suggested I use chocolate cake mix instead of making it from scratch.  Done.  I used a betty crocker mix and regretted it, since I'm supporting those stupid GMOs by buying this product.  Oh well, I won't do that again.

I used canned cherries we had made from the summer previous (2 x 1L jars) and cooked them down with some of the liquid to make them squishy, then used corn starch to thicken it.

I sliced the cake into 4 layers with sewing thread (thanks, Pinterest).  I used the cherry juice (ie, sugar syrup) to moisten the layer, then plopped on some whipped cream, then cherry goop, then another layer, repeat.

My ever intelligent and experienced wife suggested a crumb layer to seal it all in.  A crumb layer is the secret to having perfect crumb-free icing.  You smear your cake with a thin layer of icing, then let it harden (ie, dry out), then you can ice to your hearts content without worrying about crumbs.

Hilarity ensued when I tried to get the sprinkles on the side (I had an audience too, thanks Jill, who was ever so supportive as I flung "chocolate flavoured decorations" on the side of the cake).

Fortunately this cake turned out REALLY well, and we ate almost 2/3 of it with 6 people.  The effort into this cake were well worth it, and it wasn't even that hard!  If you were EPICALLY lazy you could use cherry pie filling, but don't skimp on the real whipped cream (oil products masquerading as whipped cream are disgusting!).  In making the cherries and the whipped cream myself, I was able to cut down on the amount of sugar which was in each, which made this cake just sweet enough but not so oversweet that we were all sick by the end of it.  Also, cake mix is PLENTY sweet.

Easiest way to freeze overripe bananas

Peel. Bag. Freeze.

It makes picking only FOUR bananas out a little more exciting, but it's worth not having to deal with the disgusting skins once they defrost. Ick. If you're lazier and less squeamish than I, freeze them whole. They defrost pretty quick. 

Also, pre-peeled frozen bananas are good for smoothies... If your blender doesn't hate frozen things the way mine does...

Excuse the dirty counter, I defrosted some frozen fruit this morning and made a mess, and no I haven't had time to clean my counters because I had to be a grow up and go to the dentist.

Also, note the dried out and slightly moldy habanero pepper in the background, part of my wife's desire to cook with this thing (I won't eat it, since I am a spice wuss) but her lack of follow through.

Breaking the glass ceiling

Just so you all don't think I'm Martha Stewart incarnate, this is the state of my kitchen at the end of my set. The dishwasher is ALMOST fully unloaded thanks to my not-putting-anything away.

Post night shift breakfast.

Going to bed after I eat. I love breakfast food.

Spelt bread (from A Bread Affair) with a thin layer of cream cheese, avocado (with a little bit of salt and garlic powder), poached eggs (with a little salt and pepper).

Intro

I'm a shift worker.  I work in a high-stress, fast paced environment where my break times are not always guaranteed.  I believe in whole foods.  I'm not one of those people who terribly enjoys cooking, but I like it enough to make enough food to feed myself and my wife (who actually IS a chef, but is absolutely buried in school for the next 2 years).  I can't bring myself to eat most processed foods.  I still eat *way* too much sugar.

I'm trying really hard to like kale.  So far, we're still not very good friends.

I struggled for the first several years as a shift worker of what on earth to eat while running around during a 12 hour shift.  Tweaking things helped my body cope with the physical and mental rigours of my job, for example I lay off the simple carbs in the morning and at lunch time to help prevent that 2pm crash (if I'm lucky enough to get my lunch before 2pm), however a sweet thing in the late afternoon helps propel me through the last hurdle of my day.

I blog mostly from my phone.  The pictures I take aren't food porn quality, so don't expect that.  I use my iPhone.

This blog was inspired by my lovely co-workers, who think I should give up my job to make lunches professionally (haha, you guys are funny, here's a blog instead).  They are the reason I smile at work and love my job as much as I do.  So <3 to you guys.