To my mom…

Today she turns fifty-fi…I mean forty-five ;)

My mom is the person I look up to most in the world. She studied for and obtained her third degree while raising three children.

She taught me the importance of education, hard work and dedication.

She’s also the type of person who will entertain a room and is the life of any party. She’s passionate and opinionated, quite fiery despite her 5’2” stature.

Ever since my Papa passed away in January ‘08, she’s been caring for my Nana. I know it’s been a big life change for her, and I hope she knows her efforts are not going unnoticed!

Finally, she is a mother through and through. Growing up, she was full of love for her children. Even through some rocky times, I never once doubted she was there for me, 100%.

During my high-school years it was just me and my mom living together in the house. We did a lot of bonding during those years. Watching her struggles has taught me how do deal with my own. She is the strongest person I know. Every valuable life lesson I learned, I learned from her.

Happy Birthday Mom!!

My mom is also a great cook, who always fed us healthy, homemade meals. However, she’s not much of a morning person. Luckily, I learned how to make myself breakfast at a young age :P

Went a little savoury this morning – egg, cheese, Yves veggie sausage patty, ketchup on a whole grain english muffin. Then a pear sprinkled with cinnamon on the side. I love my sweet bowls of oatmeal in the morning, but sometimes I just want some eggs!

I finally polished off that coleslaw for lunch today. It was getting close to the end, but still very flavourful!

I mixed up some salmon salad to put on a whole wheat hamburger bun. The salad was canned salmon, canned peas, red onion, mayonnaise, mustard, lemon juice, curry powder, pepper.

 
Yum! I always forget about canned salmon. Tuna and sardines are usually my go-to’s. But this was pretty darn good!

I stayed with the curry theme for dinner. It started with some Amy’s organic butternut squash soup.

I’m not a huge fan of “drinking” my meals though. I like to bulk up my soups! So I chopped up the rest of my wonky butternut squash and 1/3 block tofu and tossed it in maple syrup, curry powder and cumin. Then roasted/baked it.

 
It was still missing a little green though, so I dug into my freezer and found some broccoli.

Threw it all in a pot and let simmer to blend the flavours, then served in a giant bowl.

Ohmygosh, this was delicious. One of my best “impromptu” meals in a while! The sweetness of the maple syrup blended amazingly with the sweetness of the soup. Then the curry gave it an exciting kick. I also loved having the chunks of squash with the puréed soup. 

Of course, it may have been my hunger talking as I’d just come back from the gym. I’d been psyching myself up for a bike today since the weather was absolutely perfect. But when the time came, I was so unmotivated. If you followed me during my triathlon training, you know I’m not very good at forcing myself to do to scheduled workouts if I’m just not feeling it when the time comes. For me, exercise is fun. And I never want to do anything to take the fun out of it!

I hardly ever blow a workout off unless I really need the rest day. So I considered my options and what jumped out at me the most was spin class. It felt like such a cop out, trading in a legitimate road bike ride with a spin class. But ya know what? I had a blast in class!!

The room was packed full of enthusiastic people, it was my favourite instructor, the tunes were awesome (how can Paradise City not pump you up?). I was able to put my whole heart into the workout, and loved every minute of it, even when my legs were screaming at me!

So my lesson today is if you’re going to be active, make sure they’re activities you really want to do instead of just going through the motions :)

Okay, time for me to go watch the last half of the Biggest Loser! By the way, you guys reminded me of so many shows I forgot about in my last post. I’m really bad at keeping up with things on a weekly basis, it’s so hard to keep track!

Question of the day: I bragged about my mom, tell me something awesome about yours!