Be Happier

I found this pin on Pinterest a few days ago and it made a lot of sense to me. There are little things we can do everyday to make life easier on ourselves or to improve our moods. I know that simple things like making my bed as soon as I wake up or tidying up each room before I leave it make me feel better.

10 Ways to be happier...

Mushroom Wine Sauce

I recently came across a recipe in an old Cosmo magazine I was browsing through called "A Meal Your Man Will Love" and the brownie recipe included for dessert caught my eye (surprise surprise!). Then I got real ( I can't eat brownies!!) and focused on the steak and red wine sauce recipe. It looked so simple and who doesn't like wine? So I made my own version of it, because when I cook I use recipes as a guide and then adapt to what I have/feel like. 

It was good!

Red Wine Sauce:

1 small onion, chopped

Sliced mushrooms

Butter

Olive oil

Beef stock

Flour

Red wine (one you would drink because the flavour concentrates) 

Salt and pepper to taste

Rosemary, fresh is best

1. Heat a pan over medium heat and add olive oil and a small pat of butter. Add the onions to the pan and cook until try start to soften. 

2. Add the mushrooms to the pan and cook until they soften as well. 

3. Sprinkle in a few tbsp. of flour and cook for 2 minutes. Then add a cup or so of beef broth to the pan and stir. 

4. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in one cup of red wine. Bring the mixture to a simmer, stirring occasionally. You want the liquid to reduce by half. 

5. I BBQd the steaks and poured in the juices from the cooked steaks after they had rested under tinfoil for several minutes. I also added another small pat of butter at this time. 

6.Toss in the rosemary. Add salt and pepper to taste. 

7. Serve the sauce over the steaks.
 

Easy Summer Salad

Here is an easy salad recipe you can whip up quickly with only a few ingredients.

Greek Salad:
1 pkg. cherry tomatoes, halved
1 large cucumber, cut into chunks
1/2 red onion, cut into bite size pieces
1 container feta cheese, cut into cubes
1 small bottle Greek Feta and Oregano salad dressing

Combine all of the ingredients together in a bowl and chill.

We had this salad at a family BBQ yesterday and I forgot to take a picture before putting it out. This was all that was left when I finally remembered.

Family breakfast and scones

We have family visiting from out of town so I decided to bake some scones to take to my parent's house for breakfast yesterday morning. 

I have never baked scones before, but have had one from Starbucks! Baking is one of my favourite things to do so I was pretty sure I could make a scone. There were 8 of us so I decided to make two different batches; Oatmeal Cranberry Scones and Lemon Scones. 

I also made an orange glaze for the Oatmeal Cranberry scones and a lemon glaze for half of the Lemon Scones to make them "fancier", but really the glaze just made them yummier! 

Both scones were really good, but the favourite was the Oatmeal Cranberry Scone. It had a really good texture from

the oatmeal with great flavour from orange zest and the dried cranberries.

Oatmeal Cranberry Scones

Yields 8:
1 1/4 cups white whole wheat flour (I used gluten free)
3/4 cup old fashioned oats
2 Tbsp. sugar + 1 tsp. for dusting
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
2 Tbps. butter
2 Tbsp. plain yogurt (I used Greek yogurt)
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup Craisins
zest from one large orange

Glaze
1/2 cup icing sugar
juice from one orange
1 Tbsp. butter, melted

Preheat oven to 450F.
Combine flour, oats, 2 Tbsp. sugar, salt, baking soda, and baking powder. Cut up butter into small pieces and work into the dry mixture. Hands work well here. Mix craisins in. Add the yogurt to your buttermilk (minus the 1 Tbsp.) and then add that to the dry mixture. Again, hands work best. A spoon just doesn’t cut it because the batter is so thick.
Form mixture into an 8 inch circle. No precise measurements needed, just eyeball it. Flatten and make it an even height. Roughly 3/4-1 inch. Cut circle into 8 pie pieces and spread out on greased baking sheet.Brush tops with extra 1 Tbsp. of buttermilk and sprinkle tops with extra 1 tsp. sugar. Bake at 450F for 12-15 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean.
To make the glaze, mix all of the ingredients together until you get the desired consistency (thinner to drizzle, thicker to spread). If you need to make it thinner, add more orange juice or milk. To make it thicker, add more icing sugar.



 

Glutino Crackers

I haven't eaten crackers in a year and a half, which killed me because my go to snack was crackers...always! Obviously I was also overweight and crackers aren't a good snack to eat anyway, but I was still excited to find these glutino crackers at The Bulk Barn (I have also seen this brand at The Big Dipper). They are definitely a savoury cracker with no sweetness at all. 

This brand makes a few different varieties but I have only tried the Original kind and enjoy them. 

Homemade Gluten free flour blend

Normally I buy a gluten free flour blend from The Big Dipper (our local bulk/specialty food store), but after not being able to buy it for several weeks I got impatient and searched for a recipe to make my own. 

This recipe can be used cup for cup for regular flour and is less expensive than buying it already mixed from a store.

Gluten free flour

Yields 4 3/4 cups

2 1/2 cups brown rice flour (can also use white rice flour) 

1 cup tapioca starch (sometimes called tapioca flour which also works)

1 cup potato starch (different than potato flour)

1/4 arrowroot flour

Mix all together and store in an airtight container in your cupboard. I doubled the above recipe!

Happy birthday to me!

My birthday was in July but I haven't got around to blogging in months and months. Partly this is due to not having Internet at my house and only using my iPhone to do everything online, but I prefer not to blog on it. I also prefer to take pictures on my Canon Rebel and uploading them over using my phone, but I have been missing blogging so I will sacrifice quality of pictures just to have some blog content. 

First up is my 29th birthday! 

I was a little sad that family was going to be out of town for my birthday this year so I decided to plan a party for myself. I invited some friends and we BBQ'd and played Ladder Golf and Frizz Sticks, and sat around outside visiting. Then we ate cake and ice cream....actually I ate a lot of cake and ice cream! 

I recently discovered Birthday Party ice cream (sometimes called Birthday Cake ice cream) and OMG! I never ever eat ice cream but I can't stop eating this kind. It is wonderful. And it goes nicely with birthday cake. 

This year I didn't make my cake from scratch because I wanted to try the Betty Crocker Gluten Free cake mix, and it didn't disappoint! No one could tell it was gluten free and it had a nice texture. Sometimes gluten free cakes are quite dense but this one wasn't. I've bought more of the cake mixes to have on hand if I need to whip up a cake or cupcakes, which can be found at all of the local grocery stores.

There are only two negatives to this cake mix: 1) The price- because it is gluten free of course the price is insanely high (between $6 and $7/box), and 2) You need to buy two boxes to equal the amount you would get in one regular cake mix. I wanted two layers for my cake so I had to buy two boxes, where normally I would only need one box of every other boxed cake mix so the price of my birthday cake was quite high! 

I then made a vanilla buttercream frosting to ice my cake and used LOTS of sprinkles.