Female Mechanical Engineers

Hello everyone, I just saw this shirt on facebook and had to share it! I studied mechanical engineering in school and I just wanted to share the love! Go celebrate those female mechanical engineers in your life by buying them this shirt!!

http://teespring.com/mefin

Home Made Mitt Clips

I kindof stumbled onto my latest project:

Recently it was my Mother-out-laws birthday and I was stumped. I've bought the out-laws many gifts in the past that go unused so I find it difficult to pin down exactly what to get them.

I decided to cheat a little this year and look back at my mother-out-laws Christmas wish list and tried to see what she was still missing. She had: a sweater, work shirts, sun hat, mittens (cheap ones because she says she loses them all the time), logic puzzles and restaurant gift cards. She had gotten most of the things on her list at Christmas except the logic puzzles, so yay that's one thing down.

Budget, I strive to spend the same amount on everyone that's relatively close to me except my boyfriend, he's special ;) The logic puzzle book I found was roughly a quarter of my budget so I thought to myself what else can I do?

I thought of a solution to her losing mitts dilemma, MITT CLIPS!!! I feverishly searched the internet and found several mitt clips all ranging around the ten dollar mark plus shipping but they looked like they were designed for a 5 yo. She would not like that.

I thought I could just get the clips at Fabricland and elastic and fabric and make my own. Two clips came to 4.20$ each, I'd need 4 clips for one set, plus the elastic was going to be another 4$. 12$ for one set... I thought to myself "these clips are identical to the clips on my sheet retainers"

and went straight to Walmart. I picked up a set of sheet retainers which gave me enough clips to make two sets for 10$ and it includes the elastic. I figured I had material already and trekked home with my newfound supplies :)

My clips

The clips were a little long so I trimmed the length and cut off one of the clips:

Cutting off the one clips

Then cut in half

From there I cut two rectangles of like colour that would be big enough to wrap around the elastic plus the seam allowance (about quarter inch) and the length of the original elastic plus the same seam allowance. Using the original length gives me some fabric to make it look gathered and so my fabric doesn't limit the stretch of the elastic. 

Measuring the rectangle

From here I cut the rectangle and sewed under the short ends:

Then with wrong sides together I sewed the long ends together:

Then flipped it right side out:

I then slipped the tube onto the elastic and sewed the other clip back on. I also tacked down the ends to the elastic so they didn't slip around:

Repeat the above to make a pair. I made a pair with some plaid I had leftover from my sweater project :) 

VOILA! A complete set of two mitt clips :D 

Sweater Repair

I have this super adorable little three quarter length sleeve peach sweater that I've had for ages!

This photo doesn't really do it justice :( 

But sadly a few months ago I noticed a small tear at the back near the top!!

I've been thinking for some time about this, always about to toss it but never wanting to let it go :( Then the other day my boyfriend outgrew an item of clothing and I knew it immediately! It was the one! It was my repair tool!!!

Isn't it the perfect colour? 

So here was my plan, cut out three hearts, zig zag stitch the edges and cover the hole with one then sew the other two onto the elbows. Now this would make the sweater a little less formal but at least I can keep and wear it without having a hole in the back!!

I tried to draw a heart. Then I tried again.... then I decided I couldn't draw symmetrically and picked the half of the heart I liked most and decided to fold it in half and cut the pattern:

From there I cut three hearts out of the fabric and pinned them onto my sweater. I found thread to match the burgundy colour in the plaid and zig zagged my way around each heart. Now the one near the collar turned out significantly better than the others because gosh it's hard to sew on a sleeve! Here's the finished product:

I'm still debating on whether or not I'll take the ones on the sleeves off, open the sleeves, re-sew, then sew the sleeves up again. The worse looking heart is somewhat hidden on the left sleeve right now....

How I cook Roast Beef in the Slow Cooker

I don't generally follow a recipe I just toss stuff in the pot and cook till it's done... when I lived closer to work I'd leave it on low for the am, go home at lunch and crank it up to high then eat straight after work, mmmmmm!

Slow Cooker Roast Beef

2 lb Roast

Garlic

Salt

Pepper

a few medium sized potatoes peeled and chopped to bite size

Beef broth

Whatever veg you have on hand

Throw it all in the slow cooker in the am, set the timer (outlet timer or if you have one on your slow cooker) to about 5 hours before you plan on eating/getting home.

Gravy?

Remove meat & veg & potatoes

Pour juices into the largest diameter pot you have and bring to boil

While waiting for it to boil mix 1 teaspoon cornstarch in a jar and fill with cold water.

Close jar and shake the shit out of it

Once the juices have boiled slowly pour the cornstarch water in while mixing

Mix for a bit while it's heating until it thickens

If after 5 mins it's not thick repeat the cornstarch. Actually make that 3 minutes.

Meal Planning 2

I've prepared a second week of meals for my menu plan! My next challenge might be seeing if I can program a gadget on here that let's you build your own weekly meal plan and have it produce a menu? That might be beyond my technological capabilities but we shall see, perhaps I'll investigate next week!

So without furthur ado, week 2:

Monday: Honey Mustard Chicken

Tuesday: Lettuce Wrapped Hamburgers (This one is pretty self explanatory but I'll post my recipe shortly)

Wednesday: Trout & Pan Fried Veg

Thursday: Crustless Quiche

Friday: Chickpea, Tuna, Tomato, Feta salad, yeah I add Tuna


Groceries

Monday:

Plain Mustard

Dijon

Honey

Olive Oil

Onion

Garlic

Chicken

Salt & pepper

Rosemary (fresh)

Tuesday:

Ground Beef

Egg

Spices

Vegetables (onion, peppers, mushrooms)

Wednesday:

Trout

Salt & pepper

maple syrup

Soya sauce

butter

lime juice & zest

chives

Thursday:

Eggs

Real Bacon

Broccoli

Cheese (mmmm)

Spinach

Carrot

Friday:

Chickpea

Feta

Cherry Tomatoes

Tuna

Lemon Juice

Olive Oil

Oregano

Salt & pepper

Meal Planning 1

At my work there are a lot of young male engineers who's diet mainly consists of whatever can be removed from the freezer and cooked in a toaster oven or microwave. Heck, in university a healthy meal for me was sitting down to some tostitos, salsa and sour cream (veggies, protein and starch!)!! But after school I started learning how to cook. Initially I dabbled with bottles of butter chicken sauce and just added chicken and veggies and rice but progressively I tried new recipes.

One day a colleague and I were talking and he said he'd love it if someone sat down and told him what to cook every night and what to buy at the grocery store. This got me to thinking about my own erratic meal planning whatever I was doing. So I started making meal plans for my week to guarantee healthy eating and push some prep to the weekend when I had more time. I did this for about a month when the same colleague told me he was still eating at McDonald's. He's pretty fit, he does cross fit thrice per week but wasn't getting all that much fitter! As well, we all know you can't outrun your fork.

I started to electronify my meal plans and put them on google docs so he could use the same meal plans I did and hopefully stop eating at McDonalds *puke*. Not that I'm full on against McDs, they have great coffee and it's hard to make an egg mcmuffin all that bad for you. But not every meal of every day....

So here are the five meals and below that is your materials required, or what some might call a grocery list:

Monday: Salmon & Asparagus foil wrap BBQ/Oven

Tuesday: Cauliflower sauce & brown rice pasta

Wednesday: Meatloaf

Thursday: Paleo Spaghetti, can replace tomato sauce w/ pesto when on sale

Friday: Slow cooker roast beef (I'll post the recipe for this shortly)

Groceries

Monday:

Salmon

Dijon

Honey

Horseradish

Asparagus

Olive Oil

Tuesday:

Cauliflower

Brown Rice Pasta

Garlic Cloves

Vegetable Broth

Butter

Milk

Wednesday:

Ground Beef

Potato

Carrot

Cheese

Ketchup

Egg

Spices

Thursday:

Spaghetti Squash

Salt & Pepper

Olive Oil

Spaghetti Sauce or Pesto

Ground Beef

Vegetables for sauce like mushrooms, bell peppers, onions

Friday:

Roasting Beef

Potato

Veggies

Beef Broth

Cornstarch

Garlic Cloves

Salt & Pepper

Ice Cream (kidding.)

18 Weeks of Crop Share - Week 3

Hey everybody!

So rather than just sharing what we got in our food box each week I've decided instead to share what we did with some of the items in our food box :)

The first and least complicated was lunch on Tuesday:

We had a somewhat traditional European meal of smoked havarti, spicy cherico and spelt bread (and some butter for the bread). The bread was from our food box but it was all delicious!!

Next I whipped up a Strawberry Mint Salad:

Check out the hyperlink above for ingredients and directions!

The next one was made by Alexandre, he put together a Kale soup of sorts. I'll do my best to describe each picture but to be honest my largest participation in this was chopping ingredients as they came and consuming the end product :D 

Fry the garlic and either oil or butter!

Add the onions to fry!

Cut the stem out of the kale and chop it up, toss it in the pot with the garlic, onion and butter.

Chop the tomatoes, garlic scales and green onion, while the kale cooks

Add the broth to the pot!

Add the tomatoes, garlic scapes and onion to the pot :) 

Not sure what was put in the blender... more to follow on this one! I'm certain there were white navy beans in there and some other kind of white beans... and their juices from the cans, maybe that's it? 

Pour the contents of the blender into the pot, mmmm needed a bigger pot since he doubled the recipe!

Last step: ENJOY! I think this is the recipe he used :) 

How do you try new things and incorporate them into your meals? What's your favourite recent new find? 

KitKat I Am Unimpressed.

A few days ago my Samsung Galaxy SIII Android phone informed it was going to update to 4.4.2, YAY! normally. But this time not so much... I'm not going to go through every change I noticed because I didn't honestly see many, just a few glaring ones:

1. The GPS icon in my pull down menu has been replaced with a "location" marker. This seems to be tied to my GPS which means that I can have both on or both off... my weather app seems to lag but eventually catch up and figure out where I am.

2. The battery gets murdered after turning on my camera. I did some digging and it looks like there's a bug generated when the camera is turned on. I did an experiment where I turned on the camera then shut down the program by holding the home button and swiping it away, the battery still died fast. So next I'm going to try rebooting after I use the camera.

Have you recently updated to 4.4.2? How are you liking it? 

Romance in The Food Box

It was a Monday night. Alexandre arrived and instantly you could feel the romance in the air. He approached the Fat Chance Farmstead stand and locked eyes with Josh and Josh said "we have some flowers for your food box this week" and Alexandre melted! Ok, not really but there was some romance in our food box this week :D

This week we got some repeats from last week (which is darn awesome because that stuff is golden - strawberries? mmmmmmm) and some new stuff! Alexandre had to go pick it up himself this week so I didn't get a chance to visit but he picked us up some oven roasted pizza which they'll be doing every other week now which is awesome for Monday night dinners ;) I'd show you a picture but when there was two bites of the pizza left we said "oh man, we should have taken a picture!" At which point Alexandre took a picture but it doesn't look much so I'll spare you.... 

Now for what we got this week, it seems like more than last week so we better start mowing down instantly!

We got flowers, a loaf of spelt bread, a kohlrabi, spinach, kale, garlic stems, shallots, did I mention the pretty flowers?, strawberries and aragula. 

Now last week they recommended a salad dressing for us so we basically had green onion and aragula salad (creative I know!) with the following dressing. It was DELICIOUS!

1/4 c Balsamic Vinaigrette

3 T Olive Oil

1 T Maple Syrup

Yummy :D 

Are you getting hungry yet? What do you do with a kohlrabi? 

Getting Our 2014 Garden Started

Last year my boyfriend and I dug out a 4' x 4' patch in the yard near the deck and he framed it with some boards. We grew seedlings in our kitchen and got all ready for it and planted the seedlings but were underwhelmed with the results. So this year we were a little apprehensive about getting our garden started after the lack of product last year.

I decided last night to get it going for two reasons: I like having a garden, weeding is good for my stress levels, and the neighbours and the fat chance farmstead gave us some seedlings and I needed to get them planted before I somehow killed them.

This is what I started with:

Yup there's a garden in there....

So I pulled up all the weeds and tossed them in the yard for the lawn tractor to eat:

From there I got out my hand cultivator I picked up at Rona yesterday and got to cultivating. That's thirsty work I tell ya! Then I made little mounds for my seedlings around the time it started to pour rain, I wanted to get them in for this rainfall too so they got a good start. And this is my garden as it stands now, cross your fingers we get lots of produce! 

Garden map:

Cherry Tomatoes    Peach Tomatoes   Neighbour Tomatoes   Neighbour Tomatoes

Tomatoes and possibly carrots?   Ground Cherries   Fooled You Peppers   Fooled You Peppers

What's in your garden this year? Did you get an earlier start than me? 

My Boyfriends Crepe Birthday Cake for 29 years!!

It's coming up on my boyfriends 29th birthday so annually he organizes a birthday camping trip with his friends and I organize our families to come over for some cake! I got all my duds in order early on this one, I made the facebook event a month ago so no one would have an excuse to miss it :) Something I noticed a couple days ago was that I made it for 5 pm. Although not inherently bad for a Friday evening I get off work at 4:30 and home is a half hours drive which means no prep time. I'll have to start earlier so I can leave earlier, oh well!

But this year we looked at cakes and he decided (slash was told, whatever) that he wanted me to make a crepe cake! So I looked at some recipes online and settled on a layered cake. This is the plan: three layer consisting of crepes, healthy nutella (experiment of almond butter, cocoa and honey) and coconut whipped cream.

I started with the crepes. I found a recipe online and started substituting a few things and before I knew it I wasn't really following the recipe anymore... oops! So here's the ingredients before I decided to try a healthy nutella:

For the crepes I started by adding the following to a bowl and whisking it with my immersion blenders whisk attachment:

1 c unbleached flour

2 T honey

2 eggs

1/2 c milk

1/2 t vanilla

Double yoke :o

Whisked till it was bubbly!

Then I slowly added another 1 c milk (I used 2%) while I whisked and then 1 t melted butter.

From here I prepared my cooking accoutrements:

Crepe pan (thanks mom!), spatula (later switched to a smaller one because this one didn't fit into the pan under the edge of the crepe) and a plate to receive cooked crepes!

I used about a third of a cup of batter each time, no oil since it's no stick ( oil just makes it difficult to spread the batter!!) and set the temp slightly lower than what you use for pancakes. Normal is 5/10 on the dial for me so 4 is perfect for spreading the batter before it starts to cook too thick.

Once your crepe starts looking brown on the edges like this one it's time to flip. Less than 2 minutes later I took the crepe off heat. I ended with a lovely stack of crepes:

From there I started on the "nutella". 

I used the following ingredients all mixed together:

2 c almond butter 

3 T cocoa

2.5 T honey

It turned out pretty good, just a little dry tasting and it looked sort of like chocolate icing:

So then I started on the whipped cream. It took some trial and error on the coconut milk but essentially I needed to find coconut milk with only two ingredients and no preservatives or emulsifiers and then leave it in the fridge 24 hours. One can seemed to separate more than the other but oh well!

I got my blender out and blended and blended and blended and when I tasted it it didn't taste so awesome so I added some vanilla powder. In case your not familiar with vanilla powder this stuff is awesome, it's made from ground vanilla beans according to the google but I think this stuff also had some sweetener in it:

This made the initial taste sweet and vanilla-y but the after taste was still that strong over powering coconut that just leaves your taste buds in shock. So we decided it would ruin the cake and the only other alternative I had on hand was knock off cool whip (this is the night before the party and I have to work all day the next day). 

Needless to say the "nutella" was too thick and the crepes kept tearing and the dessert whip melted so my cake turned into a souped sandwich in an aweful hurry and at that point I had to admit my boyfriend had good reason to suggest I pick up a box of cake mix for a back up. I forgot to take a picture of the whole cake with the sparkler # 29 on top but here's a picture of what was left. It was a hit:

Saturday morning though I woke up and used that "nutella" warmed up a bit with some defrosted frozen fruit and some cool whip and made myself a bangin' breakfast! Add a cuppa with some Bailey's and I was cruisin :) Not a complete loss!

Have you ever gotten really excited and into a recipe only for it not to work the way you intended? 

Our First Food Box!!

June 16th marked the first pick up day for our food box from Fat Chance Farmstead!! If you missed my previous post or I didn't explain it there we paid 600$ up front and then for 18 weeks starting on June 16th we pick up a box of fresh produce and a loaf of spelt bread. The fist one is special though for many reasons. The first is we got maple syrup, yay!! I love maple syrup. The second is we got some plants to put in our own garden. Now that might be a project I tackle tonight and I'll show you pictures, but it's essentially a 4' x 4' weed patch right now...

So here's our first crop share box:

So in this box we got the following:

Shallots

Arugula

Some more green shit....

Strawberries

Lemon Balm

Oregano 

Seedlings: Cherry Tomatoes and Tomatoes described as fuzzy like peaches, and Ground Cherries

Maple Syrup

Spelt Bread

Looks yummy eh? 

Have you received your first bunch of a crop share yet for this year? Is it enough considering it will increase as the year 

Annual Commuter Challenge 2014!

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen! That time of year has come round again for the annual commuter challenge :) This is a one week dash to reduce your carbon footprint, you don't need to be perfect you just need to work on improving your impact on the planet this week.

Typically I carpool with my boyfriend to work but this week I'm going to try riding my bike a few times. I did my first ride this morning and I'd like to share with you that this felt like death. Ok, not really but it didn't feel good and to top off my hour long ride (16.5 km) with sunburned shoulders (from my 4k run yesterday) I arrived at work to what I was looking forward to as a delightfully warm shower... no hot water. D:

This is how I felt:

But fear not, my boyfriend brought me Tim Hortons coffee and a "Hungry Man" microwave dinner for lunch and I am certain that by 4:30 today I'll be ready to ride home and look something like this:

That's right, a million bucks :D 

So how will you participate in the commuter challenge this week?