Today was bad, but the salad and dancing was great!

Today was a horrible, terrible, awful, bad day! Seriously. Very! I was late taking Tiernan to his matinee and late picking him up. I have NO CLUE how that happened because I am one of those organized-everything-written-down kind of people. That said, if I am dragging my husband along, I tend to be late. It runs in his family! The curse! And if it's important.. not usually late. This play? Hadn't been rushed once! Until today. I could die of embarrassment. For real. If it was possible, I likely would.

Moving on... most of the day sucked. BUT! Tonight we headed out to Marmora for Classic Cruisers. A group of the girls who dance at Angela Maracle Studios put on a beautiful dance parade. I loved it! Nothing beats a poodle skirt! ;) I have a load of photos to upload to Facebook, but for now here are a couple of my girl.

♥

Showing off her Russian! :)

Dinner was on the go tonight. We had pretty much zero time to sit and have dinner, so I made some chickpea salad sandwiches (with some Guyanese curry instead of the dill, and the beans more pureed with a bit more mayo) on the softest onion buns and a delicious salad that I threw together. We ate it in the van on our hour long ride to Marmora. Fun. At least the scenery was pretty! Tiernan ate the salad and sandwich at the house of some friends of ours - huge thanks to them for letting him hang out and getting him to Oz on time for the first time today! :P

Craisin-Almond-Feta Salad

4-5 cups baby spinach

1/2 cup sliced almonds, toasted for 5-7 minutes in the oven

1/2 cup craisins

1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese

1/2 thinly sliced red onion

3 tbsp red wine vinegar

3 tbsp olive oil

4 tsp honey

1 tsp coarse Dijon mustard

salt and pepper, to taste

Mix the vegetables, craisins, almonds, and cheese in a bowl. In a separate small bowl, mix together the vinegar, oil, honey, mustard and salt & pepper. Combine well. Drizzle the dressing over the salad and toss well to coat.

Dinner and a confession.

Hi. My name is Shannon and I have an addiction... to cookbooks. Yes, cookbooks. I don't really want help for this addiction. I enjoy it thoroughly, and thus far it hasn't interfered (in a bad way) with my life. Anyone who really knows me knows how much I love variety, and how much I hate being around/eating/doing the same thing repeatedly. The cookbooks really help that! Over the years I've picked them up at varying book stores and some non-book stores, received them for birthday and Christmas gifts and thrifted them. I don't have any cookbooks that I don't love. Inside each and every one of them are treasures. Recipes that are tried and true, recipes that have yet to be discovered and recipes that were a really good starting point for inspiration. I was talking with my friend Christina about these recipe books of mine and told her I'd take a picture and blog about it. Today I decided to take a picture... but there was no way to fit them all in one shot. Instead, I got a whole entry full of cookbook pictures. ;) Just think about how many MORE pictures there would be if I still had all my meat-centric cookbooks. Luckily, I sold them all in a garage sale.

So, if you're looking for some new veggie-minded cookbooks, here are some ideas!

These are my vegan cookbooks:

Vegan a Go-Go
Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar
Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World
The Mediterrranean Vegan Kitchen
Appetite for Reduction
La Dolce Vegan!
The Garden of Vegan
How It All Vegan!
Vegan With A Vengeance
Vegan Planet
Veganomicon

My Moosewood collection!

Cooks For A Crowd

New Recipes

Simple Suppers

Cooks At Home

Low-Fat Favourites

Cooking For Health

Celebrates

Sundays At Moosewood

Book Of Desserts

Daily Specials

Other Random Veggie Cookbooks:

Vegetarian 3 in 1

Company's Coming Meatless Cooking

Vegetarian Meat and Potatoes

The Vegetarian Family Cookbook

The Essential Vegetarian

The Great Vegetarian Collection

My well used Slow Cooker collection:

The Gourmet Vegetarian Slow Cooker

125 Best Vegetarian Slow Cooker Recipes

Fresh From The Vegetarian Slow Cooker

Other Random Vegetarian Cookbooks:

Vegetarian Main Dishes From Around The World

Low GI Vegetarian Cookbook

Light Vegetarian Cooking

330 Vegetarian Recipes For Health

Specific Ethnic Foods:

Asian Flavours

Step by Step Indian (couldn't find a link for this one on Chapters)

Complete Book Of Sushi

Grilling: (I miss grilling outdoors.. no BBQ for us yet!)

Complete Book of Vegetarian Grilling

Grill It Vegetarian

Other books:

Pinawa Auxillary Cookbook (no link)

More Health Smart Cooking (Kyle's book from before we got together) (no link)

Canada's Best Bread Machine Cookbook (oh, how we miss our bread machine)

The Healing Herbs Cookbook

The Food Substitutions Bible

Complete Book of Home Preserving

Desserts!:

Hello, Cupcake!

125 Best Chocolate Recipes

These are the kids' cookbooks:

Silly Snacks (no link)

Kids' Healthy Cooking

Wookie Cookies Cookbook

The Darth Malt Cookbook

And you can't forget the drinks! Adult drinks included. :) :

The Top 100 Juices (this is also Tiernan's book since the juicer is his!)

Martini: The Collection

Cocktail Genius

Phew! That was exhausting. Haha! I also realize I don't have pictures of three more cookbooks, but I will link them anyway.

Rebar

Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day

100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes

So there you have it. That is my entire cookbook (addiction) collection.

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Today is our very last Hella Busy Thursday for a very long time. I can't promise that this will be the last time ever, because... that's not very likely at all. From now until September, there will be no swimming (on Thrusdays) or Kung Fu and that makes this day soooo much easier. Dinner at home? Yes, please!

I made some Mediterranean pitas for dinner on the go tonight. It's a pretty easy recipe, and pretty yummy, too.

Mediterranean Pitas

1 cup carrots (I bought them already in matchsticks!)

1 cup cucumbers, sliced into matchsticks

1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese

juice of 1 lemon

2 tbsp olive oil

salt & pepper to taste

Add all the ingredients to a small bowl, stir to combine and add to some mini pitas.

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Let the madness begin....

This blog brought to you by Chickpeas!

Welcome to yet another Hella Busy Thursday. This one is even crazier than normal - but it's the second last one! Thank goodness.

Once again, today finds me making supper in the early afternoon. For tonight's on-the-go menu I have croissant sandwiches with chickpea salad spread. I got the croissants at our local bakery, Belleville Bakery. The chickpea spread is a favourite around here - it's sort of a mock chicken salad spread. Once I became a vegetarian I really missed the occasional chicken salad sandwich, and when we discovered this, I was hooked! With that I'm bringing along a creamy coleslaw (Tiernan's favourite!) and some Pockys for dessert. ;) This morning I also whipped up some hummus for the kids' lunch tomorrow (another of Tiernan's favourites!).

Bring on the swimming, kung fu, ballet, jazz, meeting (?? Is there a meeting tonight or not??!), and soccer practice. I am woman, hear me ROAR!

Hummus

2 cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1/3 cup tahini

juice of 1 lemon

3 cloves garlic

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp olive oil

paprika

Mix all of the ingredients, except for the paprika in a food processor. Add some water a little at a time to thin it out to desired consistency. Place in a dish, sprinkle with paprika (or cayenne is you want more bite!) and refrigerate.

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Chickpea Salad Spread

1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed

2 tbsp mayonnaise

2 celery stalks, sliced thinly

1/2 tsp dill weed

sea salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Place the chickpeas in a bowl and mash gently with a fork or masher. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix until well combined. Refrigerate until ready to use.

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Creamy Coleslaw

1 medium head of cabbage, shredded

1 large carrot, shredded

1 tbsp onion, minced

1 apple, shredded

1 1/4 cup mayonnaise

1/3 cup sugar

1/4 cup vinegar

1/4 tsp celery seed

1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper

sea salt, to taste

Shred cabbage, carrot and apple in a food processor. Add to a bowl with the minced onion. Combine the mayo, vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper, and celery seed well in a small bowl. Mix with the vegetables and chill.

Dinner at lunch hour?

You might be thinking, 'Is she updating her dinner post already?!' and you'd be right! In our world today is Hella Busy Thursday. There are only a couple more HBTs before things slow down for us (by choice!), and I think we're all looking forward to it. Thursdays will still be busy after these Hella Busy Thursdays are over, but not this crazy. Today isn't too bad since the competitive season has started at the dance studio so there's no dance classes (for Rhianna) or meetings (for me) tonight. We have swimming right after school, Kung Fu for Avery & Rhianna right after that, then Kung Fu for Tiernan right after that. Then we get to rush home and change Avery into his soccer gear before rushing out to his hour long soccer practice. Not to mention that Kyle wants to go out for a Magic Draft tonight at Goodsell Collectibles, so I'm doing most of this solo.

*deep breath*

You don't want to hear about next Thursday. :P

Let's not forget all the running around I did this morning - signing kids up for Spring activities, stocking up on cat/rat/dog food/treats/litter, picking up maps and newspapers about Maple in the County, shopping for a new gym bag for Avery, and stopping at a grocery store.

At any rate, we eat on the go on Thursdays. Typically, I make something during the day, and pack it up before heading out to pick the kids up at school. This morning I made a couple of cream cheese spreads (never buy them - homemade is so much better!) that I saw on Rachael Ray. I put them on the most delicious toasted bagels in the world, St Viateur Bagels from Montreal. If you've never tried Montreal bagels - find some now! Mmmmm.

And that's it. Easiest dinner, ever!

Bunny Spread

1 container cream cheese, room temperature

1 carrot, grated

3 green onions, finely sliced

Mix in a bowl, and chill for a few hours so the tastes can mingle!

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Asian Spread

1 container cream cheese, room temperature

1/4 cup cucumber, finely diced

3 green onions, finely sliced

1-2 tbsp Braggs

Mix in a bowl and chill for a few hours so the tastes can mingle!