goop

I like Gwyneth Paltrow and rather enjoy her Goop newsletter (some of the recipes have been great). I was not, however, impressed with her most recent post extolling the virtue of the Clean Program.



The 21-day program consists of one solid meal and two liquid drinks or liquid meals - all for 350 bucks!

What a crock. What's wrong with just eating healthier foods? I'm sure you could buy quite a few more weeks' supply of real, whole foods for $350.

I wish Ms. Paltrow wouldn't validate the use of this kind of crap.

Weekend randomness

Hopefully this will be us again in six months' time as we've just booked our flights back to Canada for Christmas!!!



I haven't been home for Christmas since 2006, so I'm very excited to go back and do some serious eating, drinking, and visiting. Merry, merry! :)

Now for some more summery comments...

How good was the Wimbledon final? I can't imagine remaining that focused for over 4 hours!

Because I'm a loser, I thoroughly enjoyed when they pointed out all of the celebs in the stands: Gavin Rossdale, Russel Crowe, Woody Allan, Sir Alex Ferguson.

And finally, I made this fab salad the other day. It's been far too hot to turn our oven on this week and this kind of salad is the schizz.

Cute tees

Two of my good friends will be having babies in the next few months so I'm looking for some gifts that I can send back home to Canada. I'm loving the baby stuff at Twisted Twees.

I love this Dad and baby set:



I will certainly be buying this one for my friend Kat who loves that line in Dirty Dancing.



The political pants make me laugh. Now who wouldn't want a shot of Maggie Thatcher on their kid's butt?



Or maybe some racing pants?

Mom and Dad's visit II

On Wednesday all four of us headed to Coniston for a 8-mile walk up the Old Man of Coniston and Swirl How. This was the first time any of us had been hill walking in the Lakes so we all were rather nervous and excited.

The warm weather and clear skies made for some sweaty walking but some spectacular views.





The final ascent did require a bit of scrambling but we all made it up in one piece.





The views were pretty spectacular.





I love this picture of Lee. Maybe it's just the wedding band.



We sorely underestimated the amount of water we would need (we're such rookies) so this Coke I had at the pub at the end of the route was the tastiest Coke I've ever had!



We could see England's highest peak in the distance, so Lee and I will definitely be climbing Scafell Pike soon!

Mom and Dad's visit

My Mom and Dad left today after a fantastic week-long visit. I loved the fact that I was able to celebrate Father's Day and my Mom's birthday with them for the first time in years.

I had to work on Monday but early Tuesday morning we all packed into our car for a trip up to the Lake District. We stayed in Ambleside, which is a cute little village on Lake Windermere. Lee was in his element as there were more camping/outdoors shops than I have ever seen in one place.









We lucked out with the weather and enjoyed a few drinks beside the lake. We then hopped on this bad boy for the mile-long trip into town.



That night, Mom and I convinced the boys to try out a vegetarian restaurant in the village. It was really a cool setup. You get a two-course dinner and a cinema ticket to the old-school style cinema above the restaurant.

We saw a cute little British film called Waiting for Eric. It introduced my parents to Eric Cantona, a Frenchman who is famous for playing for Manchester United, strange proverbs and the kung fu kick on a fan. We were in bed early in preparation for a day-long hike.

Goodbye to Royal Worcester

I bought this Bialetti Moka pot yesterday. First designed in Italy in 1933, it sure does work like a charm! Lee and I both like enjoying our espressos in our cute little Royal Worcester cups.



On the way home from a walk along the river, we thought we would stop into Royal Worcester to see if we could get a few more of the cups. I had realized that they were closing down and selling off all of the stock, but I didn't realize that the very last day was today!





The shelves were pretty bare but Lee managed to buy quite a few sets of bowls, mugs and plates for Christmas gifts for his brother and sister.



I bought myself a sweet plate from the Spode Christmas Tree line for only £2.10.



I left feeling rather sad that the entire site is closing. We can see the whole complex from our flat and I've always enjoyed telling my Nana that we could see where some of her china was made. There has been porcelain production in Worcester since 1751. I'm not sure what will happen to the site itself - I really do hope that the city council won't allow some developer to completely demolish the old buildings.

This sign was displayed throughout the buildings.

258 years. Canada isn't even that old.

Back to normal

After two weekends of sun and high temperatures, things are unfortunately back to normal around here.

As seen by the view from our kitchen:



I think these kinds of rainy Saturdays call for housework and baking. I completed the former begrudgingly, but rather enjoyed the latter. I made these granola bars using a recipe found on this lovely blog.



My bars were very tasty, although still rather brittle. Some of the bars collapsed when I cut them so instead of shoving them in my mouth in the name of 'taste-testing' I decided they would make some lovely granola for breakfast.

I stored the granola in one of my favorite containers for keeping things fresh.



I have a guilty secret where these containers come from: instant coffee. I know, I know. The horror. Please don't judge. Instant has nothing on the coffee we make in our cafetiere but sometimes the convenience just wins out. And of course, I love the jars.

The jars themselves are very practical for storing all sorts of things. I use them in the bathroom for q-tips and cotton balls and in the office to store all sorts of bits and bobs.



P.S Carrie - remember making the car in the back of the picture in Grade 7 shop? I was so mad when Jeremy one the speed competition as he cheated! Ha ha.

A camping weekend

I cannot believe the weather we've been having over the past few days! Is this really England? It's been 25 degrees and sunny, which made for an absolutely glorious weekend. Lee and I travelled down to North Devon with two other couples (and one couple's 8-month-old) for a camping weekend. We were finally able to put a few of our wedding gifts (a tent, some camping gear, and sleeping bags) to good use!

The view from the campsite:



After setting up our tents we headed down to the little village,



and stopped in here,



for quite a few of these bad boys.



As it was still school holidays, the campsite was pretty full.



The next morning, Becky whipped us up a hearty meal of bacon and eggs.



I was on tea-making duty (very important!). It was rather windy so I had to sit in our tent to shield the campstove (and read some trashy mags while watching the kettle boil).



After breakfast we headed out for a gorgeous 3-mile walk along the coast.





The boys took turns carrying the not-so-little (but wonderfully behaved) little boy.







We hope to do a lot more camping this summer as the meterologists predict a warm summer (although hopefully not too warm as England still is a third-world country when it comes to air-conditioning in offices and on public transit, ha ha).

I love long weekends

We've had a such lovely, relaxing long weekend - I love bank holidays! Yesterday Lee and I went for a run along the river and followed it up with a big breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast. We were padding our stomachs for the festive drinks that we would be having later on that day at our friends' wedding.

The wedding was such a great time. It took place at a gorgeous historic home and the weather could not have been more perfect. Following the civil ceremony we had champagne and canapes in the grounds while the bride and groom were off getting their pictures taken (how civilized!).





The grounds were spectacular.





I worked up the nerve to wear a fascinator throughout the day, as I don't think I'd ever wear one at a Canadian wedding.





Lee with the gorgeous bride.



There was a lot of champagne on offer, which led to some somewhat dodgy pictures ;)







I loved how the table names were named after places that the bride and groom had visited. We were seated at Oakville - where they went for our wedding!



We've spent today just relaxing and getting ready for the work week. I wanted to have some oatmeal cookies to have with our lunches but we were out of butter and eggs. Luckily I found a vegan recipe that required neither of those ingredients and it actually was rather tasty (although not the prettiest - but that could have been due to the baker, not the recipe!). I only used a third of the sugar recommended as I thought the recipe looked far too sweet.

Back that sh*t up

This small box - a birthday gift from my Dad - saved my sanity last week.



For some unknown reason, my seven-month-old laptop completely died. The laptop had to be reformatted and all of my data and software was wiped cleaned so that it would start up again.

Thankfully I've been pretty good at backing up every Sunday night so I did not lose much of my data (only the work I did on Monday). I've spent the past week restoring the data from the external hard drive, re-uploading all of my software and being ever so grateful that my entire PhD was not lost...

Moral of the story: Back your shit up.