Tag: Lifestyle

Fall Couscous with Butternut Squash

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Here’s another fall recipe for you guys! I don’t work with squash very often, but we have a big bag of frozen squash chunks in our freezer and it’s fall so I figured it’s time to bring it out😂 Another ingredient that I haven’t used in a looooong while is couscous. I’ve been on the quinoa train, but couscous is actually really good! It’s basically just really small beads of pasta made from durum wheat, and it cooks super fast so it’s very convenient. Combining these two underrated ingredients with some other awesome stuff is going to give you the perfect fall side dish🙌🙌

We’re roasting up the butternut squash along with chickpeas and red onion, and everything is going to get SUPER caramelized and delicious. The couscous takes like 5 minutes, so it can be whipped up just as you’re taking the veg out of the oven. For some crunch (and extra autumn-y-ness) we’ve got pumpkin seeds! Then everything is tossed together with a tahini and apple cider vinegar dressing😍

I love how the couscous almost absorbs the dressing, so it’s just full of great flavour. And of course, roasted veg is my fave! Honestly, how else would you eat squash? Boiled? Just not as good. I hope you enjoy this awesome fall dish!

Fall Couscous with Butternut Squash

Serves: 4-6

Total Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

For the Couscous:

  • 3 cups frozen butternut squash chunks
  • 1 can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
  • 1 small red onion, chopped
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 cup couscous
  • 1 1/4 cup water
  • 2/3 cup roasted pumpkin seeds
  • Salt and pepper to taste

For the Dressing:

  • 1/4 cup tahini
  • 3 tbsp apple cider vunegar
  • 3 tbsp water
  • 1/4 tsp garlic powder
  • 1/4 tsp allspice
  • Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

  1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
  2. Toss the butternut squash, onion, and chickpeas in a large bowl with the olive oil and some salt and pepper. Dump the veg onto a parchment lined baking sheet, and roast for 30-35 minutes, until the squash is soft and caramelized and the chickpeas are crispy.
  3. Bring the water for the couscous to boil in a small pot. Add in the couscous, remove from the heat, and let it stand for 5 minutes until cooked.
  4. In a small bowl, mix together all of the dressing ingredients. Set aside.
  5. Toss together the couscous and roasted veggies in a large bowl. Add in the pumpkin seeds and dressing, and mix until everything is combined.
  6. Enjoy!!

Have a great Thanksgiving weekend everyone!!

Your Truly,

Olivia:))

Creamy Tahini and Sweet Potato Soup

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I’ve been on a roll with the fall recipes lately! I’ve been loving all of the warm spices and fall flavours. Today I made a delicious Creamy Tahini and Sweet Potato Soup that is PERFECT for fall and super easy to make.

I’ve started experimenting with Tahini a bit more, and I love its nutty sesameness😂 I added it into my Carrot and Date Breakfast Cookies, and they were great!! In this soup, tahini adds such a depth of flavour and a nice richness. It pairs really nicely with the sweetness of the sweet potato.

To make this liquid gold, start by caramelized some onions😍😍 The smell of frying onions is the best! Then add your potatoes, some black beans, garlic, tahini, apple cider vinegar, paprika, cinnamon, and chicken broth. If you want to go vegan you can definitely use veggie broth. After all of your ingredients are in the pot (I think there’s only like 7 or 8) then season well with salt and pepper and let the soup simmer till the sweet potatoes are nice and soft❤️ Everything gets tossed in the blender and you’ve got a nice, luscious, creamy soup!

I love blender soups because they’re so simple and not particular at all. Chop your onions too big? Who cares it’s going in a blender. Basically, you cannot go wrong with this awesome fall soup. The flavour from the tahini and the cinnamon and paprika is insannnneeee. I know you may not like the sound of cinnamon in soup, but trust me it works. Make sure you try out this recipe because it’s definitely a winner!!

Creamy Tahini and Sweet Potato Soup

Serves: 4-6

Total Time: 60 minutes

Ingredients:

  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 medium sized sweet potato, chopped into 1 centimetre cubes
  • 1 large white onion, diced
  • 1 clove of garlic, minced
  • 1 cup cooked black beans
  • 4 cups chicken or veggie broth
  • 1/4 cup tahini
  • 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
  • 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1 tsp paprika
  • Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

  1. Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add in the onions and cook until caramelized, about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally and adding water if necessary so that they don’t burn.
  2. Add the sweet potatoes, black beans, tahini, garlic and apple cider vinegar to the pot and cook for another 2 minutes.
  3. Dump the broth, cinnamon, and paprika into the pot and season liberally with salt and pepper. Stir to combine.
  4. Bring the soup to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer, cover, and let cook until the sweet potatoes are soft, about 30-40 minutes.
  5. Use a ladle to scoop all of the soup into a large blender, and blend until smooth. If you need to you can blend the soup in a few batches.
  6. Return the soup to the pot and season to taste with salt and pepper. Enjoy!

Hope you love this soup recipe!! Have a great weekend:)

Your Truly,

MyDayIsBooked:)

Fall Reading List

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‘Sup guys? I pretty much finished all of the books on my past reading list; I’m just finishing up The Great Gatsby and am waiting for The Guinevere Deception to come out in paperback form😂 But I have an AWESOME reading list going on right know, so I thought I’d share.

I’m making pretty decent headway into my 2020 Reading Challenge, and I read a couple books that didn’t really apply to it lately, like The Rule of Four, which was pretty good. I just need to keep going hard because I have a few prompts that I have NO idea how I’m going to meet but… that’s why it’s a challenge I guess😂 Anyways, out of the three new books on my reading list, two pertain to my challenge and one is a “side book” that I thought it’d be great to read during spooky season.

I found out that one of my favourite authors, Sarah J Maas, who wrote the Throne of Glass and A Court of Thorns and Roses series, wrote a new book this year and I didn’t even know about it. I reallllly want to read this book, but I checked it out on my bookstores website and it’s only available as a German e-book right now😂 I could order it on Amazon, but I have a bunch of book store gift cards, so I don’t want to spend like thirty bucks when I could wait. So that’s a bit disappointing, but keep an eye out for it on future booklists because I WILL be reading it.

Ideally I’d like to finish all four of these books by the end of October so that I’m doing good going into the home stretch of my challenge. 👌These all seem like pretty awesome books so that shouldn’t be a problem. When I’m really into a book I just zoom through it, ya know? I’m feeling good about these picks and can’t wait to dig in to some great novels! Fall is a time for snuggling up with a nice hot beverage (or something with peanut butter in it because peanut butter works in every season✌️) in your cozy clothes with a good book:) Check out some of these reads if you’re not sure what to read this autumn!❤️

PS. The Guinevere Deception is coming out in paperback on October 13th, so when that day comes I will be picking it up and reading it ASAP👍

All The Light We Cannot See

This book has won multiple prizes, and looks like an incredible story. It intertwines the lives of two young people; a blind French girl from Paris and a boy in a small German mining town, both living during the Second World War. When the Germans occupy Paris, the girl flees with her father and one of the most valued jewels in the city to her great uncle’s house by the sea, while the boy is enlisted to help destroy resistance to the Nazi regime. The author tries to highlight the goodness of humanity, even during these troubling times. This book has over 500 pages, so it fits into my challenge which is great👌 I’m excited to read it!!

And Then There Were None

This is an Agatha Christie novel, and I’ve never read one of her mysteries before so I’m looking forward to it! I thought it’d be great with Halloween coming up. This one is about ten people, all with mysterious pasts, who are invited to an island for the weekend by a millionaire. But when they arrive, their host is no where to be found, and there’s a strange nursery rhyme framed in every room. When murders begin occurring that match up with the rhyme, the guests begin to panic. Which one of them is the murderer? Usually I’m a bit of a scaredy cat when it comes to mystery novels, but I’m going to put my brave pants on and read this one. It looks really good🙌

Sophie’s World

I like philosophy a lot; I think it’s really interesting to think about the major questions in life. I have a few books on philosophy that mostly just explain the ideas of big philosophers, but this book is different. It’s a novel, and it’s about a girl named Sophie who begins receiving mysterious letters in her mailbox with questions on them like “who are you?” And “where does the world come from?”. She begins corresponding with an unknown philosopher who teaches her the ideas of many of the world’s philosophers, while receiving the mail of a girl named Hilde. To find out who this girl is, she must use her new philosophical knowledge. I thought that this sounds really interesting, because instead of just explaining the philosophies, this novel actually puts them into a story-like format. I need to read a book about philosophy for my challenge, and this is it!

I hope you read some of these novels too! They look promising and I can’t wait to start them🥰 See you tomorrow!

Yours Truly,

MyDayIsBooked:))

October 2020 Bullet Journal Set-Up

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Hey guys! I’m a little late in posting this, but I promise that it’ll be worth the wait. I don’t know why I keep doing themes that take so long😂 I thought this one would be more simple but nope! For October this year I’m doing a phases of the moon theme, and this is different for me because I’m ONLY using black and white, which I’ve never done before. If you want to know which phases are happening on which days of the month, check out this website that I found- it’s really helpful! This theme is inspired by AmandaRachLee, whose journal I love! Here’s the link to her video if you want to check it out: AmandaRachLee

She did this theme last year, but I’ve definitely tweaked it and made it my own.

I love these spreads but it just took me a while to colour in all of the black parts😂 I was impressed with how much ink is in my Tombow Fudenoske brush pens, because I coloured in SO much area with them! They’re almost running out though so I have to order some more. I also made good use of my white gel pen by doing cursive over the black, and a bunch of star doodles🥰 So yeah, these pages look simple but they kind of take a lot of work😂 If you’re looking for something a bit less time consuming, you could use black paper instead of colouring in with black, I just like how the black ink looks.

There are so many fun things that you can do with a moon theme though, which you’ll see in my journal down below👇 I can’t wait to start using these spreads! They’re so simple but pretty and timeless. Hope you find some inspiration in this post! Happy journaling:)

Here’s my title page:) As you can see there’s lots of black😂 I did a big black circle with stars in it and wrote October in there, surrounded by a bunch of moons in different phases. Then we have that black border with the moons in the four corners. I love the quote I used for this month; it fits my theme perfectly and reminds me that sometimes I don’t get the full picture!

I’m still using the little mini calendar, and this month there actually isn’t any room to write anything in there. I just drew which phase the moon will be in on each day, so it’s more for me to get a sense of what the month looks like. Then on the other page I have a space where I can write down events, tasks, school stuff, and goals for the month. I don’t know, I might switch back to a full calendar spread next month and just see if it works better with school, but for now this is pretty good for me. These spreads are pretty simple👌

This tracker layout has captured my heart, so it’s here to stay❤️ This month it’s pretty simple with those moons on the side, and a black header with white writing. I’m tracking all my habits, my mood, my productivity, and my workouts. This month I’m tracking if I worked out in the morning or not instead of if I just worked out anytime, because my workout tracker at the bottom will let me know if I worked out that day or not. I think this turned out really cute!

Here I have my gratitude and blog planner together on the same pages, so I’ll write what I’m grateful for on one side of the black divider, and plan blog stuff on the other. I did all of the moon phases again, and the black header, which both look great:)

I included a moon journal on half of this spread, which I thought was pretty cool! The basic premise is that during different phases of the moon, you focus on and journal about different things. Like for example, the Full Moon is gratitude, and the New Moon is your hopes and dreams. There’s actually a lot you can do with moon journaling, so feel free to do some more research. Here’s the link that I used for some info: Moon Journaling Info

Then on the other page I have my first weekly spread, which looks simple but was a lot of colouring😂 My hand was dead after I finished filling in all of the stars. But it looks really good!

I really like this theme and how different it is! Which themes are you guys doing for October? Have a great rest of your weekend and I’ll see you tomorrow:)

Yours Truly,

Olivia:)))

No Powder Protein Smoothie

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Hey guys:) I got a cool new blender over the weekend that makes single serving smoothies, so I thought I’d whip up a smoothie for breakfast this morning, and I could drink it on the drive to school. This morning was Upper Body day💪💪 so I wanted sone protein in there. Protein powder is my first choice, and for a while I was using some that we just had in our pantry. But now we’re out, and it’s so dang expensive! I’m not about to spend sixty five bucks on a thing of protein powder. This is where we get creative, people.

I tried adding black beans into one of my smoothie bowls a few weeks ago, and it may sound gross, but you can’t even taste them. Plus, they help thicken things up. Boom, 6 grams of protein. Then you’ve got a tablespoon of peanut butter, which adds great flavour. Another 4 grams of protein. Then some spinach and kale for the vitamins. 1 more gram. And finally, a cup of almond milk. 1 gram. So then you’ve got yourself a smoothie with 12 GRAMS of protein without using any powder whatsoever!!

This smoothie is not only full of vitamins and protein, but it tastes great👌 The peanut butter gives it some nuttiness, and the strawberry, banana, and peaches make it sweet🥰 This is a recipe that I will definitely be remaking, because it’s a quick, portable, protein filled breakfast that satisfies my sweet tooth! Definitely give this one a try😊

No Powder Protein Smoothie

Serves: 1

Total Time: 7 minutes

Ingredients:

  • 1 banana, frozen and chopped
  • About 5 fresh strawberries
  • 1/2 cup cooked black beans
  • 1 tbsp natural peanut butter
  • 1/2 cup packed spinach
  • 1/2 cup packed kale
  • 1/2 cup chopped frozen peaches
  • 1 cup unsweetened almond milk

Directions:

  1. Add all of the ingredients into a good quality blender and blend until smooth.
  2. Enjoy!

Such a quick and easy breakfast recipe!! Hope you enjoy:)💪💪

Yours Truly,

Olivia:))