Getting a little GOOPed!

I'm not big on surfing the net. In fact, I often ask people how they are able to spend hours upon hours "surfing". Where do they go? What is so interesting that would keep you in front of a life sucking computer screen for hours on end? In my quest to discover, I just recently stumbled upon a website called "GOOP". (www.goop.com). It was created by Gwyneth Paltrow and is basically a weeklyish newsletter of tidbits of advice from her own life experiences. She's divided the site into 6 different sections. There's info on food, travel, clothing, etc all centred around the Oprah-esque "living your best life" or "nourish the inner aspect" as GP says.

I was definitely intrigued. I have to admit, her writing style is quite personable and if you think about it, like Oprah, she's had the benefit of living a priviledged life. Why not pass on all the useful and interesting tidbits of her life experiences to everyone? After checking out only the first few sections of the site, this is my favourite "tidbit" so far. Much of her "advice" is common-sense. But sometimes, in our hectic, material driven lifestyle, we sometimes forget the "common" stuff. So here's a little "goop" from GP on raising children, which I think is actually something people should employ all the time, whether you have children or not.

"...it has been my personal experience (both as a child and a mother) that children are like little radios picking up our frequency. They know the real truth about what we are feeling versus what we are presenting and it is incredibly isolating to find a major discrepancy between the two. When in my grown-up sphere I am confronted with disappointment or my own intolerance and a bad mood to boot, I often name what is going on (in other words, I say, "Mommy is having a hard day, and I am feeling upset") so that the very mundane human “bad” feelings do not turn into some grim phantom in the room with me. Sometimes I don’t have the maturity in the moment, and when it fails me, I apologize at bedtime when my children and I are having a talk. I have felt my daughter’s whole body sigh in relief when I have simply and very specifically voiced regretting my own behavior. Here’s to doing the best we can. "

Kale!

Meet my new favourite vegetable: Kale. As many of you know, I often discover a new ingredient to try, and once I decide I like it, I'll cook with it as much as possible often to the point of overdose. There was my beet phase, my polenta phase, my reintroduction to mushrooms (specifically cremini,) and now its Kale. I always walked by it in the vegetable aisle and thought it looked just too healthy to try. It was enough for me just to eat spinach. Then I watched an episode of Rachel Ray on the food network and saw a recipe for "kale au gratin" that looked tasty. The recipe didn't turn out as good as I had hoped but when I took my first bite of Kale, it was nothing like I had expected. I thought it would be bitter (similar to rapini) or else have that "green vegetable" taste (i.e. spinach, green beans) but it was neither. It was just tasty! Thus began my "kale kick". I've basically used it wherever I would use spinach. In lasagna, in stirfry and today in a soup. The only thing is that it is quite hearty so you have to cook it a bit longer to get the stems soft, but once its cooked (with lots of garlic of course,) its deeleecious! I won't even bother going into all its health benefits (there are many,) but if its good enough for me to blog about it, then you know its worth trying! Gooooooo Kale!

Happy Birthday Carol!

Last Friday I met my cousins Mad, Carol and Meredith for dinner at The Citizen to celebrate Carol's birthday. The restaurant was participating in Winterlicious so we all had full 3 course meals and then went back to Mad and Mer's place for more birthday cake. I was definitely more than 110% full that night. It was nice to catch up and get together outside of our usual family functions. I remember when I was little, I thought my cousins (and my sister,) were SO much older I could never imagine us all hanging out together. Now, I'm happy that we are all like girlfriends rather than just family. We just have the added benefit of having known each other all of our lives. I especially enjoyed reliving Mad's highschool infatuation with Joan Jett and feathered hair.

Saturday I met Sally to check out The Cupcake Shoppe and try on more wedding dresses. For two people who are trying to lose some weight, going to the a cupcake store was not a good idea. Especially when you walk out with a dozen cupcakes. I meant to take them to Scarborough today but unfortunately I forgot, so now I must sit here and watch them all stare at me with their sweet buttercream frosting... "serenity now"!

Warning: not suitable for all viewers!

This is a pic of my head "post" lipoma with about a dozen stitches. It hurt a lot more than I thought it would but I'm glad its out. It was weird to be able to hear all the cutting, cauterizing and sewing though. I could even hear the surgeon scraping the fat off of my bones. I was face down for the whole procedure but awake so I was aware of everything and felt my head being pulled from side to side. There were a couple of interns in the room with us and I could hear them asking him questions. One of them even said "woah, I didn't think it was going to be so big" when my doctor was taking it out. It was rather large, about the size of two eggs and perfectly round.

Now half of my head is totally swollen and trying to heal. It must be weird to have an empty space back there. I bet the neighbouring tissue is thinking, "what's with all this extra space?" Its interesting how the body just knows what to do. The first night's sleep was a bit difficult as I couldn't lay on my back but I will finally get to wash my hair tonight and I'm hoping it will feel better after that. (I'm crossing my fingers my head doesn't just spontaneously explode.)

Quiet Time...

Gotta love the quiet, lazy mornings. For some reason, having a lazy morning during a weekday is always more enjoyable to me than on a weekend. Maybe its the idea that typically I would be working but instead I'm sitting in my pjs with my morning coffee. Sooooo nice!

Saturday night I spent Valentine's with Susie and Josh and Gerwyn. Over a year ago, Sooz and Josh invited us over to their place for dinner and ever since she would never let me forget that it was our turn to return the favour. So what better day to have dinner together than Valentine's! Gerwyn made rosemary encrusted rack of lamb with roasted whole tomatoes and asparagus. It was deeeleecious! (I forgot to take a photo!) Susie brought dessert which was four different chocolate concoctions from Dufflets. They were deeleecious too! Since Susie is one of the only people who loves games as much as me, we also played Taboo. It was a very close game but we ended up winning by 2 points. I think our competitive edge was due to Gerwyn always using embarrassing personal stories to make me try to guess what the word was. Whatever it takes to win, right?

Sunday I went to Scarborough to visit with Grams and then spend some family time with my niece and cousins. Hanna's family ended up coming by and we all played with Charlotte. My uncle really likes babies and it was especially cute to see Charlotte dance every time my uncle's cell phone rang. Then my brother and Nancy drove me home and Charlotte and I spent some time colouring and exploring my entire condo.

Today I've had my coffee and toast and am relaxing a little before I head to the gym to start burning off some of my weekend calories. I'm also trying to spend some quality time with the lipoma on my head. Today is our last day together. It was nice knowing you lipoma, see you never! (hopefully...)

Valentine's Day 2009!

Cupcake ALERT!

Ladies, you are all officially on alert.

I was at my friend Stephan's on Thursday night for dinner with his husband Mario and our friend Janet. They had recently adopted a beautiful baby girl and I've been meaning to meet her for over a year. She was honestly the most friendly little baby I've ever met. As soon as I walked in the door I was greeted by their 3 crazy dogs and in amongst the furry animals was a little girl with a big smile. Her name is Mari-sol and she is 16 months old. Unfortunately I totally forgot to take pictures but she spent the hour or so while she was awake on my lap or playing with Janet. So cute!

Anyway, onto the deeleecious exciting news. Janet had brought cupcakes from a bakery in Mississauga which I thought were quite tasty. Especially the red velvet cupcake with vanilla icing. As I was raving about it, Stephan told me that the absolute best red velvet cupcake is at a bakery on Queen and Leslie called Sweet Bliss. Apparently they only bake them on Friday, Saturday and Sundays. They also bake all kinds of other cakes (including wedding cakes, hint hint). Stephan had used them to bake a "marie antoinette" cake for his daughter's first birthday. (Look for it in next month's issue of Canadian Family magazine.)

I can't wait to give 'em a taste. Even if they are not as good as I hope, I'm looking forward to trying a new cupcake!

Weekend Update!

I had made myself little resolution to not post without pictures this year (hence the few posts I guess,) but since I didn't take any photos this weekend, I'll have to make do.

Friday night I met up with Sally my Pally to finally indulge in a little Winterlicious. It was a very spur of the moment thing, we decided to try Coco Lezzone on College. It wasn't bad but my beet salad tasted like they used canned beets. (I'm such a food snob!) Dessert was the best part, I had a lemon tart and Sally had the chocolate mousse cake (picture a "so good"). We had a glass of wine with dinner and I think I must have been ovulating or something cause that wine hit me like a ton of bricks. I felt like I could barely stand when I got out of there (and it was really only ONE glass!). I tried to get Sally to talk "wedding" but as usual, she changed the subject every time. She is the most "un-bridal" of any bride I know. Way to be original Sal! Anyway, it was a nice evening out and nice to catch up with my Pally who I rarely get to see anymore now that she no longer works downtown. She's turning into a regular suburbanite!

Saturday I met Mahi for what is starting to become our traditional brunch. This week was Toba again however we were lucky enough to be joined by Saadia who brought along her tasty freshly baked bagels from Baking Class. Mmmmm mmmm good. Saadia, they were even tasty for my breakfast this morning. I am sad that I only have one left. I am going to covet it tomorrow at breakfast. After stuffing ourselves, I did some chores around the house and then went over to Saads again for some play time. We played a new game on her Wii called World of Goo. I loved it, something about the illustration and background music just totally relaxed me. We also played Rayman's Raving Rabbits in which I totally schooled her until the end of the game when she was awarded some totally unfair, out of the blue, non-sensical 5 bonus points which gave her the win. I made up for it by beating her in Tetris though. Wait til Sally and Mel get a hold of that one, it was especially fun because you can "launch" weapons on the other player at any time. Some of the weapons were pretty funny. One of them was a miniature guy who gets dropped onto your tetris pieces and runs around your game. He's pretty funny to watch (and even funnier to squish!)

Sunday I headed to Scarbs to visit with my mom and grams who was very hungry. She had just eaten breakfast when she started to sing a song about being hungry. I said, "grandma, you just ate breakfast half an hour ago!" and she said "I did? I didn't even know." Now you know where my appetite comes from.

Sunday afternoon I came home and went to the gym (finally!) and then made dinner for Gerwyn and I. He had a meeting the next day at Toronto Western so he decided to come over and try to avoid the morning rush hour the following day. Unfortunately he was delayed this morning by his car being towed from the lot across the street. A rather painful lesson to learn but what else can you expect from parking in a private lot I guess. Luckily Stuart was kind enough to take G to the impound lot in East York. Stuball, we owe you!

Tonight, I met Mel for an exercise class at her gym. She's always raving about what a great workout it was so I decided to give it a try. As expected, I was dripping by the end of the class. (However so was she so I didn't feel THAT out of shape!) After the class, Norm made us energy smoothies and a healthy carb-free dinner. Then we headed to Norm's mom's house for some of her famous coffee cake which she made for Norm's birthday which is tomorrow. Happy early birthday Normula and thanks for your great hospitality (as usual)!!

Charlotte's first hair cut!

This is my beautiful little niece a day after her first hair cut. My sister in law decided to take her to Melonhead's in Markville for the momentous occasion. Apparently Charlotte enjoyed the experience with the exception of the blow dryer. I think she looks like quite the little lady. We spent the afternoon on Sunday going from room to room looking at everything and laughing at photos of ourselves. (She likes to look at herself what can I say?) I'm used to her travelling in her baby car seat but now she just waltzes into a room (and into the house) all by herself. I can't believe how fast she's growing but I love that she looks at me and smiles because she knows who I am (or maybe I just look friendly). She comes over and puts her arms up to give me a big hug. An aunt couldn't ask for anything more!