Author: Tanie

I got sick of the word “party” and the alliterative titles, deal with it.

Raspberry & White Chocolate Popsicles

Originally I wanted to do a raspberry mint popsicle, which a friend suggested to me, but I didn’t have any mint left. Then I thought I’d do a super raspberry smoothie popsicle with raspberry juice and frozen raspberries, but I didn’t have enough actually raspberries for that and my smoothie came out more like a slightly lumpier juice (ew…). I figured that would make some delicious yet uninspired popsicles, so I decided to try my hand at my very first layered popsicles! The first layer is the raspberry juice and the second is white cocolate raspberry gelato! Don’t go getting all excited though- I didn’t make it, I bought it, so I can’t help you if you want to try your hand at artisanal gelato. Also I don’t think it’s available outside Canada so SORRRYYYYYYYY!

Making two-layered popsicles is easy: fill your popsocle mold partway with one type of juice (or yogurt, or melted gelato, or whatever), freeze, fill the rest of the way with a second type of juice, add the sticks and freeze again. Obviously for more layers you would put in less liquid each time and do more freezing steps. Easy-peasy.

“Can you look sadder about having a popsicle please?”

Also be sure to check out my friend Jess Mary’s soy chocolate chai rocket pops over on Robots & Lace, and even though it’s nothing to do with popsicles (because I haven’t come up with a way to make a palatable cheese popsicle, although I don’t think it would be impossible) you should visit my sponsor Full Frontal Fromage to see my guest post about cheese!

I’m really really really REALLY tired of the OH SO HILARIOUS pregnancy cliché about pickles and ice cream. Does anyone even know anyone who has eaten pickles and ice cream while pregnant? Ugh that just sounds repulsive to me, especially since pickles are like, MY WORST NIGHTMARE. So please do not make that joke to me unless you want me to throw up on you.

During my first trimester and the worst of my morning sickness what I was really into was straight up lemons. When I was at my most nauseous I remembered the part in the Pioneer Woman’s book (which if you’ll recall, I HATED, probably why being nauseous reminded me of it HA) about her first pregnancy and how she was so sick she couldn’t do anything but loll around her house sniffing lemon wedges. I’ll try anything to prevent puking so I gave it a whirl and to my amazement, it worked. So then I was just like the Pioneer Woman, lolling around my house sniffing lemon wedges. Oh, except I have a job where I work fifty hours a week and a kid to raise and responsibilities like housework and pet ownership that I can’t just not do. WHATEVER IT’S FINE I’M NOT MAD. Anyway after the first day just sniffing lemons wasn’t enough, and I moved on to licking and then sucking on them. GROSS! I felt like my teeth were going to dissolve right out of my head but it was the only thing that helped and I figured citric acid couldn’t be any worse than stomach acid. It got to the point where I’d just eat whole entire lemons (and also one lime). Ugh so weird.

Happily that’s all over now and I can focus on my one true love, lemonade. It is the absolute number one thing I have been craving throughout this pregnancy, although to be honest I crave it all the time because it is the perfect drink (seriously, search this blog for “lemonade” and you will get more than a reasonable amount of results). Since I’ve been pregnant, though, my obsession has really stepped up its game.

The absolute best kind of lemonade in the world is OF COURSE homemade by me. Perfectly lemony and perfectly sweet, the hard-won fruit of laboriously hand-squeezing millions of lemons with my crummy little citrus reamer and getting the juice all up in my hang nails, it tastes all the better because you have to WORK for it.

BUT HOLY GOD WHO WANTS TO DO ALL THAT????? I think I got my fill of hand-squeezing lemons last summer and if anyone wants me to make any they can buy me some kind of lemon-squeezing machine.

Since I’m not into making it myself, I’ve been searching for the best store-bought lemonade and I’ve found two worthy contenders: Simply Lemonade and Happy Planet organic lemonade.

Simply Lemonade is made by the Simply Orange Juice Company, which is owned by Coca-Cola, so I’m going to go out on a limb and say you can probably buy this anywhere. They also make a raspberry lemonade which I like, and a mango lemonade and a limeade which I haven’t tried (the former because I don’t like mangoes and the latter because I haven’t seen it in stores).

It’s pretty good, isn’t my favourite store-bought lemonade. That title goes to my holy grail of lemonades, Happy Planet.

THIS LEMONADE IS SO GOOD YOU GUYS, both the classic and the raspberry lemonade version. It’s like the organic lemons were squeezed by locally sourced angels. idk if it is available everywhere and if it isn’t I AM SO SO SORRY. They only sell it in the summer, and I spent all last fall and winter whining about it and all spring tweeting at Happy Planet asking when it would be back. I actually think if I tweet at them about it again they might block me. I’m considering buying a chest freezer just so I can fill it with this stuff (and my favourite homous from the farmer’s market). I can’t even imagine how hard I would cry if I was pregnant in the non-Happy Planet lemonade season, it’s literally unthinkable.

This wasn’t exactly the vision I had in mind for pictures but it is P O U R I N G with rain outside and this is literally the only spot in our apartment where it’s possible to take a picture with any sort of semi-decent lighting (the curse of basement dwelling). Hopefully next week we’ll be able to get outside/away from the compact fluorescent bulbs!

I feel kind of silly that I put on makeup for these, I NEVER wear makeup during the day at work (or on most evenings and weekends tbh), especially since it’s raining and my stupid mascara is like, the OPPOSITE of waterproof. Buuuuut I felt all puffy and sleepy faced and wanted to look pretty, and I have to have a counterpoint to those pics of my face with all the burst blood vessels, right? Anyway I still kept it real slovenly by not bothering to redo my roots this week out of laziness, as you can see in the pics Taylor took. SO MANY GREY.

Aww I’m so pretty. I took these before Sym went to school and she’s obsessed with Photo Booth so OF COURSE she wanted in.

WITH EFFECTS.

Sorry I’m not sorry but this never gets old.

The higher the hair, the closer to God, y’all. I need to get a teasing brush so I can do this irl.

I don’t think it’s any sort of secret that I’ve been trying to be a better blogger recently. I’ve been through some slumps and some lulls and my self-imposed pregnancy gag order, but now I’M BACK AND BLOGGIER THAN EVER! Well maybe just medium bloggy. Back in the day when I posted in my livejournal I averaged a thousand posts a year. A THOUSAND. That’s three-four posts every single day. And I’m just one woman! With no life! It’s fine, I’m okay with it.

One of the hardest things for me is looking at a whole month and thinking to myself “OH MY GLOB WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO BLOG ABOUT ALL MONTH LONG????

This gif is for you, Lillian.

My iCal paralyzes me like a deer in the headlights and I end up putting posts off and saving a lot of half-written drafts that go nowhere. It’s inefficient and lame and I finally found a way to snap myself out of it. BEHOLD THE WONDER OF MY BLOG POST PLANNING MOLESKINE!

This is also a sneak peek at (most of) the rest of June for all you lucky ducks.

I just use my regular lined moleskine for this, I know you can get proper planner ones but 1) it’s already June sooooo…., and 2) if I don’t keep this up it’ll be a waste of a book. I also use this same notebook for shopping lists, glitter banner lists, blog sponsor lists, housework lists, basically just lists in general. Anyway, if I include the very bottom row below the last ruled line there are 31 spaces on each page, so it’s perfect for monthly planning anyway.

The first thing I do is go through the whole month and put in all my regular weekly posts. I currently have four: Manicure Mondays, SYMstagram on Fridays, Popsicle Party on Saturdays, and officially starting this week although technically as of last week, I’ll be posting about my pregnancy on Thursdays. When I decide what colour of nail polish or what kind of popsicles or what aspect of my pregnancy I want to post about I add that in as well, and it gives me time to figure out what I need to photograph and start drafting posts in advance (for example, I’m typing this on Monday. HELLO FUTURE EARTHLINGS!).

Once I have the regular posts planned I can go through and add in any other posts I want to do on any empty days, like my post about Sym’s upcoming run, my upcoming post about July sponsors and THIS VERY POST YOU ARE READING NOW. I actually had the idea for this post after I took the picture so while it’s not listed there please rest assured it’s in my book irl. I also added a small list on the righthand page about posts I KNOW I’m going to do but I’m not sure of the date yet, just so I don’t forget about them. When I know when those posts are going up I’ll add them to the main list, and once I post is posted or scheduled I check it off.

All in all I have 28 posts done/saved/planned for June, and that’s not even including random posts of nothing but pictures of my dog being cute. TWENTY-EIGHT. And I’m just one woman! Now I just need to type them all up. And remember to take pics! For some reason that is still the hardest thing for me! Like on Saturday Sym and I went shopping for nail polish and then baby clothes (LIKE A TINY DENIM JACKET ^____^) and I bought her a cute charm bracelet and then we went for froyo as a belated celebration for her awesome report card, and do you think I took a single pic? NO. NO I DID NOT. I even had my camera with me! So if anyone has any tips or advice to help me overcome that particular block they are very very welcome!

This past Saturday was the opening weekend for the West End Farmers’ Market, which is conveniently located in front of my house (pls don’t stalk me, I am all burnt out from creeps already this week). It’s so nice to roll out of bed on Saturday mornings, scope out the vendors while I walk the dogs and plan all my purchases in advance.

Unfortunately my favourite homous vendor wasn’t there and since I live in Canada there isn’t a ton of stuff in season yet- it seemed to be mostly lettuces and tomato plants, but I did get some good things.

Like MILLIONS AND MILLIONS OF LITTLE TOMATOES. This was over a pound and I think Sym has eaten most of them already. I’d be annoyed but really, what am I gonna say? “Oh no, child, please don’t eat all the healthy nutritious vitamin-packed organic produce?” lol as if.

I also bought some very expensive but very sweet and tiny strawberries, organic free-run eggs, a whole strawberry-apple pie that I can’t even photograph because Taylor ate it all already(!!!), local honey sticks for Sym, and some cheese marbled with blackberry wine from my favourite SPCA-certified cheesery (I really want Kate from Full Frontal Fromage to come up from SF to see me so we can go there and visit their happy cows!).

American Apparel Neon Red

Neon again! I thought this was the American Apparel Neon Coral I couldn’t stop thinking about, but it turns out the coral is basically a straight orange. In my mind coral is an orange-y pink, so this Neon Red is much closer. It is also LITERALLY the brightest colour on the face of the planet, and I feel like I can only wear neutral-coloured clothing with it. Luckily I already do!

All ready to run!

Next Saturday (June 9th) my sweet girl is participating in the Starbucks Run for Women (the 1k for girls under 12) which supports Plan Canada’s “Because I am a Girl” initiative (click that link for tons of information that makes my pregnant self* get all weepy). The money raised goes towards providing clean water and food, healthcare and education, and things like birth certificate registration (to help protect against trafficking) and microfinance loans to support small businesses run by women.

Basically it’s a good thing, and if you want to sponsor Sym’s run you can donate here. Your donation is fully tax-deductible and I know Sym would appreciate your support.

* lbr, I would get weepy about it even if I WASN’T pregnant

Mint Lime Popsicles

I had the idea for these popsicles the other week but I forgot about making them until the very last minute. I’d originally planned to make new mint-infused simple syrup but I didn’t have the time to start from scratch so I just tossed a half cup of plain simple syrup (made from organic cane sugar, ooh la la) that I already had into a small saucepan with a handful of mint leaves, brought it to a quick boil and then let it cool completely before straining the leaves out. For the lime portion I just used some Minute Maid frozen concentrate limeade, since I knew from previous experience that hand-juicing limes is an exercise in futility. ANYWAY. I mixed the half cup of mint syrup with one cup of limeade and poured it into my popsicle mold, then for funsies I added a single large mint leave to each one before freezing.

To be perfectly honest I was a little apprehensive about how these would turn out, by which I mean I thought they would be gross. When I was mintifying the syrup there was a weird burnt smell in my kitchen and I didn’t know whether I’d scorched the sugar or if there was something on the burner (a frequent occurrence around here). I was also unsure of my proportions. Would they have too much sugar? Not enough mint? Would they be too lime-y? The only thing I could do was hope and force Sym to try one first.

This is the best picture I’ve ever taken of Sym.

The verdict? THESE ARE SOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!! I couldn’t believe it, like I REALLY thought they’d be nasty but they were the perfect mix of cool minty sweetness with a hint of tart citrus flavour, while being the perfect shade of green. If I made them again I’d maybe use a scootch less sugar and maybe a tiny bit of fresh lime juice, but all in all I have no complaints!