Interview with The Girl Who Ate Everything

Today, rather than featuring a recipe, I would love to feature one of my favourite food bloggers, Christy, from The Girl Who Ate Everything!

Christy has a fabulous blog at http://www.the-girl-who-ate-everything.com/ where she regularly features her tried, tested, and true recipes. She also has an amazing recipe index where you can search for recipes by type including Appetizers, Main Dishes, and Desserts!

So far I have tried her Chicken Gyros, Baked Creamy Chicken Taquitos, and Baked Ziti all of which have been to die for! This week I’ll be trying out her Lasagna Cupcakes!

Christy impresses me with her ability to manage being a mom to 3 boys and a baby girl, cook delicious meals, and blogging so I got together with her to ask a few questions and find out how she does it!

What inspires you most to try/create/find new recipes? Most of my recipes are a result of my immediate craving. I just listen to my gut...hehe. Or if someone requests a certain type of food I try to find a really good recipe out there.

What made you decide to start a blog about your cooking? I was missing my family and realized that when I cooked our favorite family meals it felt like my sisters were in the kitchen with me. So I started a blog to organize my recipes!

How do you find the time to raise a family and cook quality meals, never mind blog about it? Great question. I think we all find time for the things we love. My priority is my family so if I ever feel like this blog is taking away from them, I take a step back. I believe in being in the moment so when I'm with my kids, I'm with my kids playing and having fun. I don't get on the computer until they are in bed asleep.

Are there ever times when you don't feel like cooking? What do you have for meals then? Absolutely. I cook everyday but Friday and Saturday. One day we take the kids to Chick Fil A or something like that and the other day is usually date night for us. Sometimes I pull an audible during the week and we order pizza but that's very rare. Dinner is when we connect and talk about the day. Although sometimes it's when we threaten our kids to eat their food and try to hear each other over the crying baby. Just keeping it real here. :)

What is your favourite style of food? I love casual party food. We have our fair share of get togethers so I love food that isn't fussy and that are crowd pleasers.

Do you have an ultimate favourite recipe or a particular go-to recipe? You can't make me pick one. Ahhh! You cannot lose with these Ham and Cheese Sliders. Adults and kids always go for 'em.

Also, it seems like these Oreo Truffles and Stuffed Mushrooms are requested at all of our get togethers.

Oooh those all look sooo good! I’ve really been wanting to try the Ham & Cheese Sliders and might just have to fit them in on the weekend! I also love how Christy keeps it real with dinners at their table!

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions Christy! And I’m sure all of you will be able to find something to overwhelm your taste buds on her blog!

Yard Demolition!!

On top of our house renovations we have tons of exterior work that needs to be done. While a decent chunk will wait until next year there were a few things we wanted to tackle including some massive pruning, pulling out dead stumps, and replacing our decrepit ugly fence.

We decided the best way to tackle the majority of these tasks in the least amount of time would be by getting some buddies over to help us in exchange for beer and cookies and boy did we accomplish a lot in that one day!

Cue in Jordan and Brian. Jordan likes to complain sometimes but being that he has biceps the size of baby heads he gets the job done. Brian is a very zealous go-getter who apparently happens to get a little chainsaw happy….

First they yanked out the fence. Since it was so old and rotten most of it was able to just be ripped off in huge pieces and then sawed down. We left the metal posts in place to act as a future guide for the new fence although they too will be getting pulled out.

We ended up with a nice huge pile of fencing which we’re slowly breaking down because we want to keep the slats that are in good shape for random odd projects.

Next up was pruning. We have a really large nut tree of some kind in our yard which the birds love but a lot of limbs were dead that needed to go. Brian manned the chain saw while Jordan hauled off the limbs into the alleyway hulk style. We later sawed the branches into more manageable pieces to be burned later.

A Little Green Monster

I have a confession to make; being pregnant and watching a toddler is not easy. I try really hard to keep the house decently clean, have healthy meals on the table, and keep my toddler happy but this is no small feat.

Some days those particular tasks are easy and the day just flies by. Other days I’m a lot more tired than usual, my body hurts, the dishes are piling up, Anna is whining and bored, and I just want to lie on the couch and die. Does anyone else have these days? A few days ago I had one of those days.

Anna has learned that when she wants to go outside she’ll put on her shoes, get her jacket, and then bring me my shoes. Normally I’ll stop whatever I’m doing and take her out for a small walk around the block or out into the backyard to play but this day was not one of those days. This day I just wanted to lie on the couch and close my eyes to the world. Sadly this is never possible when you have a toddler running around. I tried to explain to Anna that mama was exhausted and that I couldn’t take her outside, somehow she understood. She put down her shoes and then walked over to where we have her art supplies stored and pulled out her finger paints. I immediately thought about the mess; the kitchen was already a disaster and you throw a finger painting 19 month old in the mix and it turns out messy, real messy. When we finger paint we don’t always use paper but just let her smear the paints around her tray. However seeing as I knew my dream of lying on the couch could never be a reality I dragged myself up and set her up with her paints on her tray.

I have to confess, we had a blast. Laughter and giggles abounded and I started to feel better and less tired. It seems happiness and crazy green monster faces are contagious.

Anyone else dieing of cuteness yet? After we finger painted I put my monster into a big bath of bubbles to dissolve away the monstery goo and reveal my cute little baby once more. And you know what? Afterwards I threw her together some dinner and she went straight to bed allowing me enough time to clean up and make dinner for Charles when he got home from work.

This all made me realize that children don’t care that their is a ton of dishes in the sink and laundry to be folded; all they care about is spending time with you and sharing some silly faces and laughter. And at the end of the day that’s what counts and turns a horrible couch potato day into an awesome day.

Citrus Zucchini Muffins

Today I want to share with you guys my current favourite muffin recipe that I’ve been making! These muffins are absolutely delicious; they’re moist, have a nicely balanced flavour, and best of all they are healthy but certainly don’t taste like it!

The recipe I follow is from here. I typically double this recipe and then freeze half the batch for later. I find I can usually get away with just using 1 medium sized zucchini, 1 orange, and 1 lemon. I also use whole wheat flour and cane sugar instead to make the muffins a bit more nutritious. And lastly I typically only need to cook these for about 10 minutes vs the 20 listed.

And you know what my favourite aspect of these muffins are? That Anna loves them and that she is secretly getting zucchini!

What’s your favourite muffin recipes? Or do you have any secret ways for getting your kids to eat veggies?

A 3-Tier Composting System

Charles is obsessed with composting. I mean, obsessed. If he dares find something biodegradable in the garbage he gets upset and usually at me because I’m the slacker haha. Luckily as a result of his OCD we barely ever have any actual garbage but we do compile a lot of recycling and a ton of compost.

We needed something big and something cheap to tackle our compost solution so we decided to turn to pallets! We also came up with a 3-tier system for our compost pile  meaning 3 separate corrals to collect all our waste. One corral will be for the current composting pile, then once it’s full we fill up the second one so the first one can actually break down. The 3rd corral is for all our mulch – leaves, grass etc.

We came up with our system by doing a bit of research; we particularly turned to here and here for a lesson on composting. We also found this handy list for what one can and cannot compost, you’d be surprised by all you can compost, even dryer lint! Then we turned to Young House Love’s tutorial here for how to create a basic pallet compost.

After we did our research we went on a hunt for our pallets which a local furniture store allowed us to take off their hands for free. We frankly couldn’t believe it; these pallets are actual hardwood plus their blue! We were pretty psyched! We collected 7 of these. If you’re only building a singular corral however you’ll only need 3.

Then while Anna played in the yard Charles got to work measuring and clearing up where we wanted our pallets; we wanted to make sure we had enough space in the back to plant some bushes later as well as room to be able to easily rebuild our fence. Charles marked off where each pallet would go with rocks.

Electrical Problems

As stated in this previous post we had our electrician friend, Skylar, come over to our house to fix a few things for us on top of addressing the wiring for our demolition. For the past 5 months the fan and electrical socket in the washroom have not been working!

We had tried turning the breaker off and on, resetting the plug, nothing worked. At first Skylar was even baffled by it but eventually he wondered if maybe the plug was wired to a plug outside since the wiring in our house is old and kind of wonky. Upon taking a glance outside sure enough there was an outdoor socket along the bathroom wall and when he reset that socket our fan and power was restored!

Can you believe it was that simple and we were living without power in there for 5 months! Bah! Since then has changed the wiring around so that if we blow the outlet we can simply reset it inside instead, thank goodness.

Our other electrical issue was that the breaker for our washer and dryer kept switching off whenever we ran our dryer; it was making laundry very difficult and often we had to resort to doing laundry at Charles parents. We initially wondered if it was the whole breaker box, or perhaps even the dryer itself.

Once again this was luckily a quick fix as Skylar decided to first try replacing that single breaker switch. Upon doing so he realized that that switch was a cheap Chinese knock off and wasn’t even government approved. In fact the screws were even too small for the wire attached to it hence why it kept turning off! Upon replacing the breaker our dryer now officially works and we can resume our laundry again, what a luxury that has been! Luckily all the other breaker switches didn’t have this same problem and were all government approved.

Have any of you ever had some annoying but surprisingly simple electrical problems around your house? I’d love to hear all about it!

Chocolate Covered Strawberries

I love strawberries and I love chocolate (who doesn’t?) so it’s only natural that I would have a supreme love for chocolate covered strawberries! Once upon a time I thought these were super difficult to make….until I tried and discovered that they were one of the simplest treats out there!

First you need to prep your strawberries. Cut off all the tops, wash them, and pat dry with a cloth. If your strawberries are wet they will not get properly coated with chocolate. Also, line a baking tray with wax paper.

Now you need to make your chocolate! I never fully measure my ingredients but I start with approximately 1 cup of chocolate chips and an 1/8 cup of butter for a dozen or so strawberries. I melt the chips and the butter in the microwave for about 45 seconds, stirring halfway through, and then add milk until I achieve my desired consistency.

You want your chocolate to be nice and melty (is that even a word?) but not super runny; basically so it will slowly drip off the spoon but not run.

Once you have both your strawberries and chocolate ready just drop the strawberries one at a time into the chocolate, roll it around to full coat, then place on your wax paper lined tray. Repeat for all your strawberries.

Place your strawberries in the fridge for about an hour or two to harden then serve with a nice dollop of whip cream! Enjoy!

Ogres Are Like Onions…

And so is the demolition of a wall; there are so many layers to deal with and it takes quite some time! Luckily time was on our side Easter weekend as Charles had 4 days off so we set to tearing down some walls to make way for our stairs!

As stated in this post we are removing the jut in the wall in the living room, along with the separating wall of the mudroom and living room to make room for the stairs to the attic.

This was the corner we were dealing with.

We started off by calling in our electrician buddy, Skylar, to remove a baseboard heater for us and make sure the power to that corner of the house was turned off. We quite possibly could have done all this ourselves (or just turned off the power to the whole house during demolition) but we needed him to look at a few other things for us anyway. With electricity, or lack of thereof, covered we set about to covering everything else with drop cloths.

Then we (well, Charles) set to tearing down some walls! (We only first covered the tv; once Charles got to actually tearing down walls then he laid down a drop cloth on the floor.) Charles used a Super Wonder Bar from Canadian Tire along with the occasional pound of a hammer to get in there and rip down the mouldings and walls; It’s basically a suped up crowbar.

Easter Fun!

Wow did we ever have a busy Easter weekend! I am going to have some awesome posts for you guys over the next 2 weeks involving some crazy projects both indoors and out! Here’s a little sneak peek, can you guess what we’ve been up too inside??

Easter itself we had a blast! We went over to Charles’ parents house and even had my parents over for a fun-filled family day! We put on an egg hunt for Anna and savoured a large turkey dinner afterwards. It was amazing watching how into the hunt Anna was; she did such a great job finding almost all the eggs by herself and sometimes with just a point in the right direction!

Easy Homemade Sushi!

Sushi is definitely one of my favourite foods but sadly in my town there is only one restaurant that serves it and it’s super expensive. As a result I never got to eat sushi very much which sucked horribly.

One day I stumbled across Potholes & Pantyhose post about how easy it to make sushi at home here. I must say she certainly did make it sound easy so I set about to doing some research to learn a little bit more then went out to get my ingredients. I even discovered that sushi really does not have to cost that much!

My shopping list consisted of rice vinegar ($5), seaweed ($2), a bamboo rolling mat ($2), wasabi ($3), imitation crab ($3), and sushi rice ($5). That’s only a total of $20 and apart from the imitation crab and seaweed everything is left over to make several more delicious meals of sushi! I will note I also used cucumber, carrot, and avocado but I don’t count those since I almost always have them on hand.

Now onto the procedure! First I rinsed my rice and then cooked it according to package instructions. (1 1/2 cups of water per 1 cup of rice brought to a boil then covered and simmered for 12 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to stand covered for 10 minutes.)

As the rice was cooking I cut up my carrots and cucumber into long strips, chopped up my avocado, and laid out the rest of the ingredients.

Sun Rice is the brand of rice I used; it was specifically called Sushi Rice so figured it was my safest bet haha. You want to make sure to use a short grain Japanese rice. Normal rice like white, jasmine, basmati etc. will not become sticky enough in a non-mushy way. You also want to have a container of water by your side, water is your best friend, it prevents the rice from sticking to your fingers.

Here is my cooked, cooled rice and sushi vinegar. To make the vinegar I mixed together 4 tbsp rice vinegar, 2 tbsp sugar, and 1/2 tsp salt as per my rice packages directions. However once I mixed it all together I only spooned 3 tbsp of it onto my rice. I found I had to heat the vinegar in the microwave for 30 seconds to get it to combine. Another important note is to to make sure the rice and the vinegar are in plastic, glass, or wood bowls. Metallic bowls do something to the composition of the vinegar apparently.

Once you have all your ingredients you want to add your sushi vinegar to the rice and gently mix it until combined. Then lay out a slice of seaweed onto your bamboo mat, wet your hands, and go to town. You want your rice only to be a grain or 2 thick on top of the seaweed, keep the edges about 1/4 inch around free of rice, and layer your ingredients about 1/3 of the way from the end. Here is an amazing video showing how to prepare and roll your sushi.

My first roll turned out quite messy and I rolled it quite loose but it got better as I went along.

This was my 3rd roll I made! Much neater!

My 1 cup of sushi rice made enough for all 4 of these rolls. Each roll cuts up into 8 pieces so we had a total of 32 pieces of sushi which fully fed both Charles and I. These turn out to be a lot more filling then one thinks!

And here is what the finished product looks like all chopped up! I served this with soya sauce mixed with some wasabi. Enjoy!

Have any of you ever tried your hand at making sushi from home? What about any other exotic foods? Feel free to share your favourite recipes!

Front Door Decisions

I don’t know about you guys but the first thing I notice about a house is the front door. You could say I’m obsessed with them; the door makes or breaks a house. As a result I am dying to spruce up our front door being that it’s just a plain jane simple white door without a window or even a peephole!

Problem is there are sooo many front doors our there to choose from! And did you know that the type of door you have or the colour it is can affect the feng shui (or energy to put it basically) of your household? While I’m not crazy about getting the right door for the right feng shui it is an interesting point to consider. This page has some interesting simple details about different types of doors to choose for the right feng shui.

Right now I’m really loving a nice dark wood door with a window for our house such as these. I think it could add a lot of character and really appeal to the older style of our home.

Problem with a wooden door however is they are usually super expensive so we are still considering cheaper alternatives such as these!

Some Carpets and One Crazy Bush

Our yard is a mess. That’s putting it lightly. It’s a disaster. I really don’t know how to describe it….it’s super bumpy with the majority of “grass” being super scratchy weeds, there’s carpet and other oddities buried in it, a bush full of sticks and deadwood, and a crazy run down fence. Did I have you baffled at carpet? Not a word of a lie, like I said, disaster.

Now that the weather is finally warming up we manned up and went out to tackle this yard….or well Charles did and I just tagged along to keep him company and interject my opinion while snapping pictures hahaha.

First he started by pulling up the random sections of carpet buried in our yard….

Oh ya! Mr Strong Arms at work! ;)

Check out this beautiful pile of carpets we pulled up along with some odd green edging. Anyone looking for some carpet for their house? Bahahah! But really, who does this???

Next up for tackling was the massive bush. We went into this completely innocent not realizing what was truly in store for us…we thought that a rose bush, a blackberry vine, and a black currant bush had simply fused together and so it started out at as a little clipping here and there…

10 Spice Ribs

For the first time ever I decided to try my hand at making pork back ribs! I put in some research and decided that baking then broiling was my best bet for tender ribs being that we don’t have a bbq.



I followed this sites recommendations for how to prepare then bake and broil the ribs. Luckily our ribs from Costco didn’t have the membrane on the back that needed to be removed but make sure to check yours for this.

I started off by rubbing my ribs all over with a dry rub; I followed this recipes basic concoction but then added a few of my own touches and measurements. Here’s what I used:

3 tsp brown sugar
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp roasted red pepper and garlic
1/4 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp lemon pepper

Once my ribs were nicely coated I placed them on a baking tray with some lemon slices and a bit of water. I covered the tray with aluminum foil and then baked them at 325 F for 1.5 hours.

I tasted the ribs at this point and they were already soooo full of flavour from the spices but I still removed the foil, drained the liquid from the pan, and coated my ribs in Bulls-Eye Guinness BBQ sauce. I then broiled them for about 5-10 minutes on each side.



I served the ribs up with baked potatoes, carrots, and beans. Delicious! These were honestly easier to make and turned out better than I ever could have expected! Do any of you have any additional secrets to great ribs? I’d love to hear them!