Do all the big girls go WordPress?

I've whined about how badly I want to makeover my blog forEVA and I never seem to get it done! I am seriously going to just have to sit down and get to work coming up with header concepts etc. I think part of the reason I'm procrastinating it is because there has been talk about doing the "switch" to WordPress because apparently all the "big girl" bloggers agree that it is the way to go because you have more "control" over your site. I gather this is the layout and customization. This however, will take time because I've got 2 and a half YEARS worth of regular posts! Come to think of it, how devasted would you be if you lost your blog? Do you back up your blog? Imagine if one day, BOOM, gone! And then that annoying person asks you for your backup to fix it and you're all, "huh, back up?" Something to think about!

One of the things I was warned about in the transition to Wordpress is that while it is a relatively smooth (albiet time consuming) transition transferring over the old posts, there has been issues with comment casualties. i.e. not all of your comments will carry over. I hate the thought of that! I live for all of your comments, suggestions, insight and support and I would hate to leave any of that behind!

The bottom line though is that I really really want to update the look of this blog and I remember what a stress it was when hubby converted me to a Mac and I was NOT happy with the Mac blogging tools AT ALL so I ended up using the Windows Parallels program to continue to use Windows Live Writer. I'm pretty attached to my WLW! I'm pretty sure that you can use it with Wordpress, yes?

What are your thoughts on the whole Blogger v. Wordpress preference? Has blogger been able to compete with the customization control "pro" that apparently Wordpress has?

Not Enough Can Be Said About Caramelized Onions

Lucy Update:  Thanks you guys for asking about her ;-)  It’s been a week since I took her into the vet with her cough and gagging and where the vet said that she sounded as though she had kennel cough.  He diagnosed her on the sound of her cough because it sounded “characteristically” like kennel cough which is like a honking goose kind of a sound.  He said that it is highly contagious to other dogs and that she could have easily picked it up from another dog on the walking trail while she was at my Dad’s when we were on vacation. (I took her to the vet 3 days before that to update her on her vaccines.)  He said it’s usually viral and while he would prescribe her antibiotics in prevent any other infections, it would have to clear up on its on in about 2 weeks.  She seemed to be getting better, at least better than she was that day, but now her cough sounds more like wheezing and she usually does it when she first wakes up, a little bit in her sleep early in the morning and when she’s excited (like when we get home from work).

Here’s the thing:  If it is kennel cough I’m more convinced that she picked it up AT the vet when I took her in for her vaccinations.  It is more likely because she was around more dogs there directly than she was at my Dad’s.  My Dad has a 14 year old dog who is not vaccinated and who is also not sick!  It seems to me that if she had it when she went there (given how highly contagious it apparently is), she would have spread it to him and especially given his age he would get it for sure.  If she didn’t bring it there and picked it up there, it seems to me that he would still have gotten it!

She’s all finished with her antibiotics now and I’m waiting out this week. The animal hospital called to check on her and they said they would tell relay the update to the vet and see what he says.

If she’s not better by Monday, I’ll have to check with them again because that part doesn’t add up to me!  What if it IS something caught in her throat (the reason I brought her in to begin with) and it’s been there this whole time?!)  I am just being a worried mom, I know.  I will wait it out.  She’s completely acting like herself and everything is fine that way, but she’s still wheezing and coughing :-( (although not “as” bad).

Okay so on to today’s eats :-)

I put the Berry Green SuperFood to use this morning and mixed myself up one mother of a smoothie!  In the blender went:

• 1 1/2c almond milk (had to add the 1/2c b/c it was too thick)
• 1/2 frozen banana
• 1 – 1 1/2c chunked melon, watermelon, pineapple
• 1/4c frozen raspberries & blueberries
• 1 tbsp almond butter
• 2 cubes of frozen steamed spinach (these worked out  famously!)
• ended up adding water because it was too thick

 

 

I ended up with enough for TWO people!  It’s so hard to judge!  I tried to pawn one off on the husband (mixing his up with some more real milk), but he didn’t care for the taste. I don’t get it!  I LOVED LOVED it!  It didn’t taste fake at ALL!  In fact, it had a really nice strong sweet flavour from the Berry mix!  It didn’t last me as long on the drive to work as it usually does :-)

I put the other one in the freezer and I will have it another time I guess! (P.S. Don’t take hubby’s reaction too seriously, he does not like vegetables or even much fruit, but he’s working on it!)

Later on in the morning, I supremely enjoyed a Honeycrisp apple (Yum!):

Last night I was almost late for my massage therapy appointment when my computer reminded me 10 minutes before the appointment so I was out the door like a flash.  By the time I got back I had little time to prepare a lunch for today, so I thought I would use today as my Local Jo Cafe & Market lunch of the week.  I frequent this place and love it’s quaint rustic cafe feel and the food has always been good :-)  (Plus they also sell local produce and local meats!).

Today’s special was “Jo Fritatta with Vinaigrette & Carmelized Onion.”  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but was willing to give it a go!

You could taste the caramelized onion in the best way and it made me think that caramelized onion makes everything better :-) 

Someone made a caramelized onion dip at my neighbours pot luck party a few weekend’s ago and it was YUM-O.

The have fantastic coffeeeee:

Another stop on my “Yogurt Tour of America” this afternoon for a snack!  I still have a few select yogurts left from my Whole Foods loot in Maine and today I decided to give the So Delicious Plain Coconut Yogurt a try.

 

Did I like it? Well ‘yeah’ but even if I could buy it here, I’m not sure if I would.  It did have a nice coconuty flavour for a “plain” yogurt, but the consistency was kinda strange.  I did like it, but definitely love the ice cream version better!

Fish for Supper!  I tried the other frozen organic salmon that I bought at the Superstore and one thing surprised the heck ouuta me:  I think I may have been more excited about having those fantastically fresh Brussels Sprouts that I bought in Mahone Bay than I was for the salmon!  And I LOVE salmon!  I can’t believe I never discovered brussels sprouts until recently.  I’ve been missing out!

Balsamic glazed just the way I like ‘em

The salmon was awesome too.  I drizzled on some maple syrup, sprinkled the top with the Omega Crunch salad flax and sprinkled these maple flakes on top of that:

It rocked:

Random change of topic:  I haven’t exercised in FOREVER and I don’t like it!

Amazing Grass Giveaway!!!

It’s Giveaway Time Bloggies! I’ll get to that in a second, but bare with me for a second first while I share with you today’s eats because I was all good and photographed them and everything :-)

One of the best ways for me to kick off a Monday on the right foot is with a great breakfast! This morning I had my had and true fav Liberte Svelte Vanilla yogurt with thawed Webster’s Farm raspberries and Blue Menu granola. There was something about the amazing vanilla flavour of the vanilla in this yogurt that made it absolutely amazing flavour!

And a Steeped Tea to go!

Morning Snack rocked too. I absolutely LOVE Honeycrisp apples and what’s even better is having one with a portion of Beemster cheese and honey almond butter. YUM-O

I put the rye sourdough bread I bought in Mahone Bay yesterday to good use for Lunch today. I made a sandwich with greens, tomato, babaganouj and goat cheese! Grapes and local cherry tomatoes balanced it out perfectly:

Then there may have been a rather LARGE Laura Secord indulgence all at the hand of the “extra scoop for 99 cents” scam that they got me with! For some reason I thought that one scoop of ice cream for $3.00 wasn’t as good of a deal as 2 scoops for $4.00! Gah! I did not need this much ice cream! It was damn delicious though!

After work (aka the snackiest weak point of my day), I couldn’t help myself from having another slice of the rye sourdough bread with some mango ginger stilton and Fox Hill old cheddar:

It was super delicious but completely unnecessary especially in light of my huge amount of ice cream at lunch time, but I had it anyway so that’s that! Hrpmh!

Supper was Fajita salad! Saturday night I made shrimp and chicken fajitas (thanks to a suggestion from Tasha) for my Aunt and Cousin while they were up and I didn’t get the chance to blog about it. There was just a weee bit left over shrimp, chicken and sautéed peppers & onions so I decided to toss it all into a bed of greens, some black beans, corn chips, shredded cheddar, the juice of a lime, dolop of fat free sour cream and mild salsa:

It was Amazing!!

Speaking of Amazing (:-D) I have been thoroughly enjoying the Amazing Grass samples that I’ve been trying! So far so good! I still have the berry flavours to try and the wheat grass. Well, the fun folks at Amazing Grass have offered TWO FREE TUBS OF ANY KIND OF AMAZING GRASS THAT YOU CHOOSE and they will ship them to you free of charge :-) WOOT!

You get to pick TWO of these:

• Wheat Grass
• Green SuperFood
• Chocolate Green SuperFood
• Berry Green SuperFood
• Kidz Green SuperFood
• Amazing Meal Original
• Amazing Meal Pomegranate Mango Infusion
• Amazing Meal Chocolate Infusion

Here’s what you have to do to enter:

• Leave a comment on this post telling me what would be your picks if you won this Amazing Grass Giveaway (you don’t have to have a blog to leave a comment, just please ensure that you leave your email address)

WAYS YOU CAN WIN ADDITIONAL ENTRIES:

• Link this contest on your blog and then come back and leave a second comment with your link to the contest
• Send out a tweet on Twitter and make sure to tweet it @angiealltheway so that I can record the entry (max 5 entries for RT's to be fair)

I am leaving this contest open until Friday @ 7:00 EST

Oh yeah! I will remind you of this later on when I announce the winner, but Amazing Grass has also offered to give you guys a 15% discount if you decide to order some for yourself online.

All you have to do is enter “angie” in the checkout box to receive your discount :-)

Good Luck Everyone!

Impromptu Mahone Bay Day!

I had such a great visit with my Aunt and Cousin last evening just chatting away and watching some TV that I didn’t get my day blogged! And today was such a fun-filled say I decided I would post-pone yesterday’s eats and hopefully get them posted later. This morning was an early morning for my relatives because my cousin was participating in a paint ball tournament in Hubbards. They were up early and out the door in time to have him there by 7:00. My Aunt came back to our house where we chatted for a bit and then decided we would spend the day between going and watching the boys do paintball and puttering around Mahone Bay. BUT before we hit the road I convinced my aunt to have an Amazing Smoothie with me before we went! She hardly hesitated because she is a reader of my blog and already knew what I was getting her into!

I decided we’d give the Chocolate SuperFood a shot and mixed us up a double batch:

The Mix:

• 2 servings Chocolate GreenSuperFood
• 1 scoop Chocolate Ultimate Protein
• 2c organic almond milk
• 1 frozen banana
  
• 1 1/2 – 2 tbsp almond butter
• 1/3c steamed spinach
• 4ish ice cubes

And she liked it! She said that she sort of felt like there were “bran buds” in it, which I couldn’t taste that at all. I don’t know if I’m just used to these kinds of smoothies, but I loved it. Of course, there was lots of other things in it besides the Chocolate Green SuperFood, but either way, that’s how I make them and they so far have not let me down!

I decided at the time that I would steam up the rest of the spinach and then freeze it in ice cube trays for easy smoothie access. I haven’t tried it frozen before, so we shall see how that works!

Then we hit the road and watched the boys in action:

I brought a long a little snack snacky snack of a HONEYCRISP APPLE! Dang I LOVE these and it’s my favourite Fall produce (and pomegranates of course).

I got a little too close and got a little splatter!

Then we hit up Mahone Bay and browsed a few antique shops. This place was CRAMMED with stuff:

We kept making our way down the street and I got hungry again, so I grabbed my emergency Peanut Butter & Jelly Larabar I had in my purse:

We made our way down to a flea market and browsed the tables and enjoyed the beautiful surroundings:

And by that time we were both hungry again so we stopped into the Cafehaus where we thought we were going to grab a panini, but it turned out that the selection was indeed quite small on that. We ended up scoring some sourdough rye bread and something incredible caught my aunt’s eye which was organic maple flakes! I HAD to buy that because it would be incredible in yogurt, oatmeal, sprinkled over salmon etc. SO EXCITED ABOUT THAT!

We stopped at the next place and had the perfect mid-afternoon “Lupper”:

We both enjoyed the “Lox Bagel” (I think that’s what it was called?) and it was basically a toasted bagel with cream cheese, smoked salmon, onion & tomato:

I decided that they were generous enough with the smoked salmon that I was going to make “two” out of it and I spread the cream cheese on the other half and divided everything on each half:

It rocked :-)

We sat there and chatted, gabbed over coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice and split a slice of apple-caramel pie!

Soooo good! We didn’t miss a beat and before we knew it they were closing up the shop and it was time for us to move on.

We stopped at one more place before leaving to pick up my cousin from paintball and we saved the best for last:

I loved this place! I bought some fresh honeycrisp apples (less expensive than in the grocery store!) and there were plenty of other fresh produce:

I had never even SEEN what brussels sprouts look like before they are picked and had no idea that they grow on a stalk almost like broccoli! I had to buy one because I LOVE them:

It definitely put the Autumn spirit skip in my step and especially with all of the pumpkins and beautiful orange and Fall colours everywhere:

OH and my Aunt spied something ELSE amazing when we went inside in the cheese case! It’s Mango Ginger Stilton! They don’t usually let you taste them, but she let us and it was the first cheese to ever just crumble and melt in my mouth so I HAD to buy some!!

I could hardly wait to get home and have some of that fresh sourdough rye bread with some of that amazing cheese!

My fruit bowl is good and stocked for the week!

What a fantastic day!! ANDDDDDDDD…….I can’t wait to go back down there with the fabulous and beautiful Cat, Jen and Amy who are COMING TO the East Coast for thanksgiving with their husbands so Jaime, Lynn, Lesley, Tasha, Lex and I can show them how we rock it East Coast style! WOOOT! I CAN’T WAIT to see these girls, they are SUCH AMAZING women and we totally had the greatest weekend together when we went to Toronto in June, ‘member??

Speaking of!! We have tons of things planned for their visit and one of which includes a Keith’s Brewery Tour and a Thursday night downtown in Halifax, so if any of you lovely readers who are in the area and are interested in joining us for a drink next Thursday night, PLEASE don’t hesitate to email me: angieallthway@gmail.com We would be delighted to meet you and have some good times in Hali!