Grocery Shopping with Katie

Yesterday wasn’t a good day eating or personally. I was feeling a little sorry for myself (due to the lack of job) and ended up with carb overload. After reading a post by Caitlin discussing the power of positive thinking I decided to give it a try while heading for bed. Just before falling asleep I thought over and over again: tomorrow is going to be a good day, tomorrow is going to be a good day. I woke up this morning and guess what? It worked! Today was awesome.

Breakfast was an egg white omelette topped with mozza and a cinnamon bun that I purchased at a local bakery in my carb induced state yesterday.

Even Charlie got in on the action.

Awesomely delicious!

After breakfast spend some time catching up on some of my favourite blogs then I headed out to the grocery store to pick up some things for the week.

I’ve decided to do a break down of my purchases so you can see how I spend some of my grocery money. See below for a more detailed list.

While grocery shopping I pick up Starbucks.

Grande, non-fat, no whip pumpkin spice latte.

I’ve heard complains that people find this just a little two sweet. I think its the whip. If you get it without whip it makes it much better.

After I got home from grocery shopping I was hungry and ready for lunch. I decided to take some Hearty Vegetable Soup out of the freezer. I threw it in the microwave for a minute or so just to soften it up enough to get in a pot then reheated in on the stove.

Just as good as I remembered it.

If not better.

So thick and chunky.

I paired it with a couple of slices of local home made bread from the same bakery.

After lunch I decided to apply for a job. Not just any job, not even a teaching job but I job that I would love that is in the non-profit sector. I’m not really sure if I even qualified but I spend a good couple of hours re-working my resume and writing a cover letter (its been a while since I’ve written an non-teacher resume and cover letter) and then I hit send - ‘Your message has been sent’ – ACK. I did it! There’s actually a couple of other non-teaching jobs that I’ve been looking into that I might apply for tomorrow. Not going to say anymore then that right now but I’ll definitely let you all know if I hear something.

Grocery Shopping with Katie

I decided to do something different with today’s post. I took a picture of everything I bought at the store today and I thought I’d share just a little of what grocery shopping with me would look like.

Produce

I’m actually not doing to bad in this department at home. We had my step-brother, his wife and my niece and nephew over for dinner on Sunday night so I picked up tons of produce to make a huge salad so we still have a some left over.

Today I picked up: bananas (time for green smoothies again), two large red peppers to stuff tomorrow night for dinner, brussel sprouts, a zucchini and some parsnips for some roasted veggies.

Breads, Seeds, Etc…

Quinoa (never tried it but going to use it to stuff the peppers tomorrow night), Scottish Oats (everyone in the blog world loves this so it’s about time I give it a try), pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and sliced almonds – I’m planning on making my own granola, plus they are great on salads.

Fridge Items

Orange juice (the hubby cannot eat breakfast without it), frozen spinach, and shrimp for dinner tonight.

Speciality Items

Vanilla Extract (I’ve been meaning to get some since we moved here), white kidney beans (for dinner tomorrow evening), pumpkin and pumpkin spice (pumpkin oats and pumpkin spice scones – here I come).

All in all, I purchased all these items for about 50 dollars. No too bad.

Time for dinner (I’ll share with everyone tomorrow) and I hope you enjoyed a journey into my grocery bag.

Question of the Day: What’s in your grocery bad?

~ Katie :)

Oh Happy Day

This post is going to be short and sweet. One of my best friends in the entire world is coming to visit me today. She has been traveling around Europe for the past 2 years (usually comes home at Christmas so we get to see each other then) and she just spend the last month and a half in BC with her boyfriend. She is headed back to NS to start the job hunt and on her way she has decided to make a quick stop in Calgary to visit me! She’s only her for a little less then 24 hours but I’m still very happy that she’s coming. I’ll be picking her up from the airport in about 3 hours.

Before I head to do a little cleaning and tidying I just wanted to share the amazing soup recipe that I made last night for dinner. It was adapted from Simple Bits.

Hearty Vegetable Minestrone Soup

• 3 tbsp of EVOO**
• 1/2 a medium onion, chopped**
• 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 2 young carrots, chopped
• 1 cup of celery, chopped
• 2 small zucchini, chopped
• 2 sprigs of fresh rosemary, chopped**
• 2 ears of corn, cut from the cob
• 1 cup of fresh green beans
• 1 box of organic vegetable stock
• 2 cups of water
• 2 large tomatoes (approx. 2 cups), chopped**
• 1/4 of a pack of whole wheat spaghetti
• 3/4 of a can of white kidney beans**
• 1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped – plus more for garnish
• Fresh parmesan cheese for garnish (optional)

**Changes I made to the recipe – you can see the original here.

The recipe was simple but it took about 2 hours in total. It almost took an hour just to cut up the veggies but it was worth it in the end. Definitely don’t try this if your in a rush, it requires quite a bit of prep time.

I also decided to add some kidney beans to make it a little more hearty and filling for a full meal.

First, I chopped up all the veggies. Then in a large pot I heated up 3 tbsp of EVOO in the bottom. Once heated I added the onion, garlic, carrots, celery, zucchini and rosemary. Let that cook for about 5 mins stirring until the vegetables are a little soft.

Then add the fresh beans and corn and let those heat up (approx. 2 mins) then add the vegetable stock, water

And chopped tomatoes.

Bring the water and stock to a boil then let cook for about 10 more mins, stirring occasionally.

While everything else is cooking, heat up water and cook pasta according to directions on the package (before added the pasta break it up so it is in smaller pieces). Also, drain and rinse the kidney beans from the can.

Once all that is done, add the pasta, beans and 1/4 cup of basil.

Cook for another 5-7 mins then season with salt and pepper.

The recipe made about 7-8 servings.

What an awesome end of summer, beginning of fall soup recipe.

Serve in a bowl with a little extra basil and some parmesan cheese.

 

Along with a piece of fresh bread.

A great vegetarian recipe (or vegan without the cheese). Even the hubby who is against anything vegetarian loved it.

I definitely recommend using fresh veggies for this recipe. It made it the soup!

I’m off now to get ready for my houseguest. I’ll be back tomorrow with another yummy recipe to share!

~ Katie :)