There were four cheeses to try this month, and I liked all of them. I’ve signed up for a year and the cost is $30.00 a month. Once your package is ready, they’ll send you an email to come pick it up.
The first cheese I tried was the Havarti. It was a very creamy, semi soft cheese, with a slight bitterness to it. It was okay, but will enjoy it more added to something than by itself.
This next one was a little bigger than this when it arrived, my spouse got into it before I could snap a photo of it. This one had a hint sweetness to it. I’ve never had celery flavoured cheese before. I liked it.
The Apricot Wensleydale was sweet with pieces of apricot in it, I also liked this one. It tied with the celery cheese for my second favourite.
The Gloucester was my favourite. It was creamy, mild, and delicious. It was the kind of cheese you can pop in your mouth and enjoy as is. This one was my favourite, I loved it. It’s my favourite cheese of all time! That’s one of the reasons I love Of The Month packages. You discover new favourites.
Ontario has interesting weather this time of year. Yesterday, I was in a Winter coat, and today it was over 20 and I was kayaking. The weekend started with coffee and a bagel at the Stone Town Café in St Marys. We sat by the river in the sunshine and watched a muskrat swim around in the river, while we had our breakfast.
I felt like decluttering more of the bathroom today and tackled my hoard of a medicine cabinet. It was so overfull, that things would fall out when I would take something out. Half the bottles were empty, or expired.
This is everything I removed. The allergy medication had expired in 2018! It’s good to check on these things. Most of these containers are empty and going into the recycling bin, but the little Rubbermaid container and the glass jar I’m going to wash out and reuse. The Rubbermaid container had corn starch that I was experimenting with using as a dry shampoo. It worked okay, but not as good as the spray on type. The glass jar is going to end up in my crafting room.
I used these masks with my spouse after I finished cleaning out the cabinet. I bought them because people make them look fun online. We watched a TV show while we had them on (Gravity Falls, cute show!). They were really moisturizing, but I’m not a mask person.
It’s still pretty full in there. A lot of these bottles are sample sizes from Ipsy, that I won’t be buying again when they’re empty, same with the brands that use animal testing It’s a lot more functional now and things don’t fall on top of me when I pull something out. Overall, I’m much happier with it.
Sunday breakfast was a bowl of oatmeal with peaches, maples syrup, and pumpkin seeds. I used steel cut oats and they took a lot longer to cook. I like the rolled better, but these keep me full longer. I’m not sure which one is going to win, convenience, or the steel cut.
I made Mother’s Day cards with a new cutting die set. I love these teapot shaped cards. Too cute! They come with a word set that says Tea Party. I LOVE tea parties. I’ll use them again for invitations when we are able to have gatherings again.
I made the one on the left with an embossing folder and used gilding wax to make the pattern stand out. The love birds card is cute, but my love birds look terrified. I need more practice colouring pupils.
The card on the left is my favourite. The one on the right is a little plain, but I love the spa girl cutting die set. I’ll have to play with it more.
This bookworm die set is super adorable. I love it! I’ll post a video with a link to all the supplies I used below.
I’m relaxing on the couch listening to thunder and light rain. I love these sounds, they’re relaxing. I am having cravings for chocolate. It hit me hard near the end of the day. I went to Healthy Planet for vegetarian beef chunks and sprouting seeds, and I left with those things, but I also left with a cookie. I’ve noticed that if I stay up too late I end up snacking, so I’m going to go back to going to bed early.
Except for the cookie, I ate pretty good today. Breakfast on weekdays is always an egg and cheese sandwich on a whole wheat English muffin, with black coffee. My spouse is the one that wakes up and makes breakfast during the week, so he gets to decide what we’re eating. I enjoy those extra minutes for more snoozing. For lunch I had my usual Healthy Choice bowl. Dinner was the above photo, with brown rice, sprouts, broccoli, beefless chunks, and avocado, with squeezed lemon and some toasted sesame oil. I also put sauerkraut on it too. These bowls are fast and easy. I steam enough rice for the whole week and if anything needs to be cooked I usually toss it into the air fryer. Easy peasy.
Shark week is coming and I can feel a raging froth of PMS broiling inside me. My spouse is watching television and it’s killing my peaceful vibe of nature sounds. He’s already turned the sound down and it’s still irritating me. I AM GROUCHY!!!! Murderous rage!!!!!! I must look into sound proofing.
I’m still working my way up the treadmill. Yesterday I was on it for 20 minutes at 3.6mph, it’s come up from 15 minutes. I’m working on lengthening the time, then I’ll tackle speed. I’ve been enjoying it!
As for soapy nuts… I fell down the YouTube rabbit hole and stumbled on soap nuts. I’ve known about them for awhile and have even had them before (I think I had them for laundry), but I don’t think I’ve ever washed my hair with them before. This girl in the video washes her hair with them and her hair looks good to me. I tried them this morning. I boiled 7 soap nuts in two cups of water and applied it on my dry hair. I left in on for a couple minutes and then rinsed it off. I didn’t use conditioner either. It seemed to work pretty well.
My hair was still pretty easy to comb out afterwards and it did clean my hair. As a bonus my scalp wasn’t itchy like it usually is after washing it (I think it’s because I let my hair air dry). Once isn’t enough to tell how they work, I’ll post an update after using them for a month. I still plan on using shampoo and conditioner to wash out my bimonthly hair dye. I seriously doubt soap nuts could handle that nightmare, but who knows. Not this person.
I paid for one of these plants, the other I traded years ago for an espresso maker, I didn’t use anymore. Guess which is which? The large dieffenbachia is the one I traded for. It was half the size and not very happy. Where the trunk(?) stalk(?) curves is how tall it was when I got it and it only had a couple really droopy leaves. I had to move it around a lot before I found a place for this guy to be happy. Turns out it likes a really dark corner. It’s beside a window, but it still doesn’t get very much light at all. It’s taken over a year, but this plant is finally starting to grow. It’s doubled in size and growing a lot more leaves. The leaves are getting big too.
The second plant, the leafless stem, I got on clearance at a big box store a long time ago too. It had a couple leaves on it when I bought it, but it was doing poorly. I decided to see if I could revive it. I also moved this plant to a lot of different places (including a dark bathroom), but I couldn’t make it happy. Eventually it dropped all it’s leaves and I was going to give up on it. Then I saw a video of Harli G on YouTube (she’s a plant Youtuber) and she picked up a stem that looked just like this one and was going to replant it. I thought once a plant lost all its leaves, it was done for. I decided to repot the plant in different soil (I don’t know why I didn’t try this a long time ago) and put it beside it’s sister plant (I call it sister plant because they are both dieffenbachias, but the leafless stalk has much lighter leaves), and try again.
It seems to be working. Something is starting to happen, and this is also why this plant will forever be known as Nubbin. I’m going to keep it where it is and hope it can be revived.
Sunday breakfast satisfied a craving I’ve had for days. My spouse was craving bagels, which got me craving berry cream cheese. So for breakfast today, I made scrambled eggs and bagels and cream cheese, and I loaded that bagel with cream cheese. The coffee was an instant cappuccino that I got as a sample, and I hated it. We both did. It tasted artificial and chemically. We dumped it out and made a regular coffee that was much better.
My healthy eating took a nose dive this weekend. We ordered a pizza last night and I had it for lunch today too. I went on a short hike with my spouse, but it was really cold and the trail was mucky so we turned around. I had another bagel with cream cheese when I got home, followed by a piece of dark chocolate. and I’m currently craving another bagel (I think shark week is coming). I’m going to wait and have a proper dinner, made with much healthier options. I don’t want to get on the scale Monday.
I made some cards this weekend. I like these vanilla bean cards. I don’t know what sentiment I want on them yet, so they remain unfinished. I was thinking something to do with beans, but nah, I’ll probably just stamp a “Hello” on them, or something similar.
I was meh about these two. I would like the autumn one more with a different colour. The green didn’t go very well, and this castle card needs something more.
I liked these two. My favourite of all of them was the girl reading on the chair. I liked the Hello card a lot too, but my glue seeped out at the edges. I can get rid of that with an eraser and a little patience. I’ll post a video of the supplies I used to make the cards, below.
I retried my new sprouting lid and I love it! Alfalfa sprouts worked perfectly in there. The pictured jar is 1L and I used 1 tablespoon of alfalfa sprout seeds. I will only use 1/2 a tablespoon of seeds next, this made a lot. So far the jar has worked great, these seeds are around 5 days old (I can’t remember really). The seeds grow so fast! You can see the difference in size from morning to night. The seeds drained exactly how they were supposed to, they didn’t get gelatinous like the arugula seeds. So far the contents of the jar are fresh with no sign of rot. The arugula seeds sprouted on the paper towel degraded fast and quickly rotted. I had to toss most of the sprouts out. I won’t buy arugula seeds anymore because of that. I’m sure it was more to do with my sprouting methods, but it was a hassle and I like growing sprouts in the jar over the tray. Sprouts are so healthy and this jar makes it easy to have them on hand all the time. All I do is rinse and drain the jar twice a day. Another great kitchen gadget! Or would this be a house plant gadget? It checks both boxes.
I made a healthy dinner last night. On the bottom is a layer of steamed brown rice, then a layer of sprouts. I did the broccoli, , onion, mushrooms, and Gardein Beefless Tips in the air fryer. I flavoured it with a squeezed lemon, toasted sesame oil, and avocado oil. It was good, not delicious, just good. Like healthy food good. I made a lot so I am going to have the leftovers for dinner.
As per my usual, I had gained all the weight I had previously lost back, but this morning I was down three pounds. I’m 5’10 and now weighing 164lbs. It’s my goal to cross that barrier into the 150lbs range, in the past I gained the weight back before I could hit it. This time it’s going to happen for me. I did a 15 minute jog Monday night and hoping to do the same tonight, or hit the weights. I’ve been eating really healthy for the last two weeks (except Monday when I forgot my lunch and ended up having a snack bag of potato chips, and granola bites). Today I had the bean and feta Healthy Choice Power Bowl. I love them and eat them almost every lunch.
My spouse has been the one to motivate me to work out. If he says “Wanna work out with me?”, I go. It’s funny, but sometimes I just don’t think to go and do it. I expect that to change. Tonight, I’ll be the one to ask if he wants to work out with me.
This weekend’s big breakfast was scrambled eggs, papaya, and a croissant. I ditched the home fries. My spouse and I were at the dentist last weekend and they checked his blood pressure, it was high (and I had a cavity). It was not good news. We’re making changes. I’m cutting way back on sugar and he’s cutting down on salt. This past week we’ve been eating a lot healthier. Way more vegetables, whole grains, and less junk. My sweet tooth is still raging, so when I want chocolate, I have dark chocolate. If it’s over 70% I can have it in the home without obsessing about it all day.
I’ve also worked out a few times this week, and not just walking (although I did that too, a 9km-10km walk through the woods). I went for a jog and lifted some weights as well. It’s been a long time since I’ve worked out. I’m really proud of myself.
I made cards this weekend. You might notice I ended up gluing the happy paper upside down on the card above. OOPS! I messed up that one, but the dog is cute.
The butterfly is a 3D one, that is propped off the card, but presses down to fit in the envelope. I wasn’t sure about that one at first, but now I really like it. I made the left one with an embossing folder. It’s pretty. I will make that one in pink too, with black ink.
The left card in this one is a gift card holder. I really like the paper on that one. The top slides off and reveals the gift card. The second one is an easel style card. There were no instructions or score lines to help. I had to guess and I have no idea if I made it right. I like the card but it was a pain to put together. You can use the dies to make a house in the Winter, or a Halloween house too. I really like how they all turned out, not so much the upside down gumball machine, but the rest were great. I’ll post a link to a video of the supplies I used below.
This month’s cheese of the month brought delectable surprises.
For $30.00 a month, the Towne and Cheese Shop, of St Marys, offers a monthly surprise bag of cheese. I have been getting it since February and have been delighted with it. Each cheese comes with an information card that comes with pairing and serving suggestions that are very helpful.
This month’s surprise bag brought four different kinds of cheese. Two of them very mild, one intense, and the other sweet.
The Bernese Mountain and Monterey Jack, were the mild ones. I liked them just as they were by themselves. The Red Storm was strong an intense and I will enjoy it the most served on crackers, or in a sandwich. The honey goat’s milk cheese was my favourite. It was sweet, tangy and delicious and went really well with rice crackers. It’s very affordable and the selections are delicious.
I made sauerkraut! I can’t remember if I’ve ever fully finished making it before. Something usually goes wrong for me, like I forget about it for too long, or pieces will float to the surface and go moldy. This time it went perfectly. I got the recipe from here, it was really simple. You just need salt, cabbage, and some jars.
I cut up a head of cabbage and put it into two bowls. There is a lot of cabbage and I didn’t have a big enough bowl to do it in one. I also used pickling salt instead off the salt they used in the recipe, because I didn’t have sea salt. I also ended up using more salt and if I make it again, I would add more. Pickling salt is big chunks. I think it needed more to make up for the difference.
After you add the salt you let it sit for a bit and then you have to squeeze, or mash the cabbage, to get the salt in and for the cabbage to release the liquid. I squeezed it with my hands while my spouse and I watched TV. This method took awhile and I got cabbage EVERYWHERE. It wish I had taken a photo of the couch after. I made a mess. It was fun (not sarcasm, it was fun).
Once you are finished that process you then pack your cabbage into some jars. One head of cabbage filled both of these 1L jars. I didn’t get enough liquid out of the cabbage for everything to get submerged, so I made the brine solution from the Prairie Homestead recipe, and made sure none of the cabbage was floating to the top. In the wide mouth jar some of the cabbage kept coming loose, so I weighed it down with a smaller mason jar. I made sure the lids were only sitting on top, to let the gas escape and then left it for a couple days longer than a week.
It turned out great, it’s healthy, and I plan on keeping some on hand all the time from now on. Speaking of healthy, I also grew some of my own sprouts.
At first I tried using a mason jar with my new sprouting lids. I was so excited to try them out. I soaked the seeds over night and when I went to drain them the next day they wouldn’t drain. The seeds formed this gelatinous goo around them, like chia seeds do and no matter how hard I shook the jar, the water wouldn’t come out.
As I knew it would, everything ended up rotting and going bad. I had to dump everything out and start over. Next I tried again without soaking the seeds. I shook them around with water and drained the jar. That worked fine, but when I went to water them again the next day, they were gelatinous and wouldn’t drain. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. I didn’t hear anyone else complain about alfalfa seeds doing that. Well guess what. They weren’t alfalfa seeds.
I had bought arugula seeds. I bought these seeds years ago by the way, and they still sprouted no problem. I’m impressed! I decided to try again with an old sprouting tray I had.
I sprinkled the seeds over a damp paper towel. I messed up in this photo. They are supposed to be sitting on the white tray (pictured in the photo with the growing sprouts), this green tray is just the base. The white tray is a draining grate that helps the seeds drain so they don’t rot.
The seeds grew really fast and I had sprouts in under a week. They had a little nip to them too. Arugula sprouts are spicy! I will grow more of them, but I really want to try my new sprout jar with the right seeds. I will buy some alfalfa seeds and try again.
As for the snake orgy, I’m not sure if that’s what they were actually doing, but there is a group of snakes that live under this rock and comes out every spring after a couple warm days. When I saw them for the first time this year, they were clumped in this ball. I left them to whatever shenanigans they were getting up to and know I’ll be seeing them throughout the Summer.
It’s a beautiful Sunday so far. The weather called for rain and clouds and it’s been warm and sunny – a beautiful day. I started my day with coffee and puttering around cleaning the kitchen.
My spouse woke up just as I finished cooking breakfast. It was the usual scrambles eggs, home fries in the air fryer, and today a side of sauerkraut. I bought the sauerkraut in this photo from the grocery store, but currently, I’m almost finished fermenting my own (I’ll post about that later this week).
As for the cloak, it’s cute and whimsical, but I felt silly wearing it out. In fact I carried it until I found a quiet spot by the river where my spouse could take some photos. He was weird about it too.
I’m more “free willed” than my spouse, he is my gage for what is socially acceptable. This cloak seems to have crossed the line. I know you’re not supposed to care, but I felt uncomfortable.
Being a warm day, I wasn’t able to judge how good this cloak would be at keeping me warm. It was getting hot wearing it to snap some photos.
It would definitely be more appropriate for cooler weather. I don’t think it would last in long in a Canadian winter against the temperatures. In the above photo I’m holding in closed, but it still stays open around the neck and chest. I used a tie closure made from the cloak fabric. I’m sure a different closure would help with that immensely.
I lined it with taupe coloured satin. I’ve been told satin is really hard to work with, and they are correct. The middle seam of the lining bunched during the sewing process and therefore ended up being short. I should have ripped the seams out and resewed it, but I didn’t, which in turn ended up messing up the drape at the bottom of the cloak.
If I want to fix the problem I would have to either rip out the entire lining and make it again, make the cloak shorter, or add some extra fabric to the lining which would make some strange lines on the inside. You wouldn’t see the inside lining, so that could be done. I’d still have to rip out a lot of the work I did. The cloak is pretty long, it wouldn’t probably be okay to make it a little shorter.
I’m going to leave it the way it is for now. I’m never going to wear the hood up. I like the way it looks down much more. It looked funny on, but the cloak would look incomplete without it. I do like the cloak, but not to wear it casually around. I will wear the crap out of it every Halloween season though.
This was the spoils of my grocery cart and I’m feeling proud of it (if that container of potato salad wasn’t in there, I’d be downright smug about it). I’m trying the “Fake it till you make it” approach to healthy habits. I’m pretending I’m a health nut, someone like Chris Traeger on Parks and Recreation (which I’m currently binging), so this came home with me. I bought more healthy Power Bowls for those times I don’t make lunch, and fruits and veggies.
I made a meal that I’m calling Weirdy Bowl. I cooked cauliflower, eggplants, kale, and mushrooms and them added them to tofu in a coconut milk broth that I seasoned with curry powder, garam masala, turmeric, and salt, and put it over steamed quinoa. I topped it with a dollop of hummus and potato salad (yes the potato salad is very weird, hence why I called it Weirdy Bowl). The hummus though… pretty good. I’m currently fermenting sauerkraut and growing sprouts, the potato salad will be replaced by these things in the future. It was easy to make and didn’t take too long. I’ll be making more things like this in the future. May my inner Chris Traeger cook all my future meals.
Lobster Shorts 