This is me and my friend Helen Downie! I really love this picture; it was taken on her birthday @
La Distillerie. It's located in The Plateau on Mont-Royal. It's a really great place! It's always packed there and I love the atmosphere. The tables are actually big barrels, and the cocktails are served in mason jars, as you can tell by the picture! That one mojito is enough booze for me! There's 4 ounces alone in a big jar! But you can also get drinks in smaller masons if you wish. I am really looking forward to going back there this summer!
I haven't seen Helen in a while so yesterday we put our energy together and had such a great time! It was a much needed visit, and I always feel so great when I'm around her!
For dinner we ended up making macaroni with a chili twist. Want the recipe? It was delicious! This is what you'll need:
-Egg noodles
-Tomato sauce & kidney beans (
organic)
- (
All organic) Portobello mushrooms, yellow pepper, cherry tomatoes, onions, garlic, carrots
- vegetarian 'ground beef' or the real variety, but I promise,
you can't taste the difference! ;)
First, we browned the onions and the garlic, then added the carrots with a bit of water so they could boil and soften up.
Then we added the sauce and the strained and rinsed kidney beans. Meanwhile our egg noodles are boiling.
Stir the sauce until warm and then add in the tomatoes, mushrooms and peppers.
If you cut your vegetables in bigger pieces, they are more likely to retain more flavor. Stir and heat sauce slowly, barely at a simmer. In another pan, heat up the veggie beef. What's great about it is it's not meat so it doesn't need to be cooked, it only needs to be heated up in a pan with some olive oil. Once hot, add to sauce. Let sauce
"mijote" for a few more minutes until all is hot and
smelling really good and then serve over drained and rinsed egg noodles! Add salt and pepper to taste!
Mmmmmmm!
We also enjoyed a small, green salad on the side with carrots, tomatoes, sesame seeds and some italian dressing, served with a tall glass of water and chocolate soy milk! It was such a beautiful dinner and we were stuffed silly!
Afterwards we washed dishes which gave us time to digest before we continued with the next scheduled activities for the evening. Ever heard of
Turbo Jam? It's hilarious! Maybe you've watched the infomercial one night when nothing was playing on TV? It's another corny video work-out that ressembles Tae Bo. A friend of mine owns the dvd's and made copies for me. We attempted the "Fat Blaster" which is a jam-packed 30 minute work-out. We were sweating and laughing and
struggling to bust our tushes! I could feel the
burn!After Turbo Jam, we stuck
Hip Hop Abs into the dvd player, which is the work-out Helen brought. We did "Hips, Buns and Thighs". Holy Moly, did we ever laugh! It's like your dancing and it really does have a hip hop vibe so it was really fun. This one made me stretch my muscles more, while Turbo Jam's "Fat Blaster" was hardcore cardio. This guy, Shaun T is sure to make you crack up!
We were exhausted at the end of the night, but we felt great!
I miss Helen Downie already! :(
Yet again, we had a memorable evening. I drove her home and we wished each other well, but who knows? Maybe next week we'll find time to, as Shaun T would say, "Work it!" again?
