a peek inside the fishbowl

This fresh, delicious, melt-in-your-mouth slice of Key Lime goodness can be yours!* Karen from Sugarplum Fairy is the home-baking master. I had the good fortune of taking a second round of baking photos for Karen but this time the focus was on pies and squares. (Remember last time?)

Here’s her list of offerings. I spent most of yesterday shooting (and, um, SORT OF SAMPLING**) most of the items below. (And I am still processing photos!)

She’s updating the Sugarplum site this weekend. There’ll be more info there soon if you’re interested.

My question for you: is it wrong to have pie for breakfast? :)

* Sorry out-of-towners, this is for Ottawa residents only!

** By “sampling” I mean eating crumbs and licking the forks. I did not eat six squares and six slices of pie yesterday. I sweartogod.

I’m not sure how many of you are aware, but there’s a feature I installed awhile back called “A year ago today.” It’s located about halfway down the middle sidebar. Last year’s post on this day was about the spinach brownies. (Here is the followup post, complete with audio clip.) It’s funny that it came up today, because I was just talking about those brownies.

Last night I attended a very special kind of dinner. A couple mompreneurs in the neighborhood are thinking of launching a new business and I was invited to a part taste-test, part focus group, part brainstorming session.

And now I have an important question to ask all of you! I’m curious. What are your feelings about a service that offers home baked dinner items delivered to your door? (This is not intended to be a sales pitch. I’m just interested in your thoughts.)

Imagine this:

• Frozen batches of traditional comfort food like chili, mac & cheese, chicken pot pie etc portioned for a family of four, delivered to your door. All you need to do is heat and serve (no muss no fuss).
• Free delivery 
• Meals would be packaged in glass containers which can go between freezer and microwave
• Ingredients would be locally sourced where possible
• Meals would be priced between $12.00 and $15.00 each 

What do you think?

This was my lunch yesterday:

Not that exciting, I know, but I’ve been inspired to focus on myself and my eating habits.

Call it a midlife crisis, but this is going to be the summer I buy myself a two-piece bathing suit!

I’ve realized that if I don’t want to pig out at dinner I need to eat regular healthy snacks during the day. I used to pooh-pooh this idea but I’ve tried it and it really works for me.

I eat breakfast. I’ll have something mid-morning (like a boiled egg), lunch around noon, and then something in the afternoon around 2:00 (like a sliced apple with almond butter). In lieu of a second coffee (I’ve been drawing the line at one cup of Really Good Coffee in the morning) I’ve been brewing some green tea in the afternoon. (I finally found a suitable mug! I know this might sound bizarre, but I can’t drink it out of a traditional coffee mug and my Japanese tea cups were cute but too small.)

Around 4:00 p.m. I like to have a bowl of soup. This has worked miracles for me. It totally takes the edge off and makes me a happier person. I’ve tried a couple of different recipes, broccoli soup, carrot, one with chickpeas etc. if anyone has some fave soup recipes please share! (Marla posted a great one in the comments of this post.)

Come dinner I have one helping of the “main,” a small amount of carb, and will only have seconds if it’s the vegetable. (Related: I discovered this amazing sesame roasted cauliflower recipe the other day.)

I’m putting my foot down and not eating after dinner. This is a tough one because Mark is exceptionally good at making popcorn and it’s very hard to resist.

As for today, well, I am going to throw all this to the wind because there’s going to be an influx of baked goods coming into the house. But more on that later. ;)