A very easy breakfast to prepare for your family and kids can be ready in only a few minutes. After you wake up, you pop it in the oven!

My children love french toast so when I feel like saving time for breakfast, I will make Overnight French Toast the night before. I generally always have the ingredients in the house and it takes maybe 10 minutes maximum to get it all put together.

I made this recipe last night and here is the recipe:

Overnight Oven-Baked French Toast

This recipe is from the website http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/overnight-oven-baked-french-toast-10000001120185/

Overnight Oven-Baked French Toast

Women, do you like wine and chocolate? What better place to get wine and chocolate than this fabulous event!

Fit your Style and Jennifer Ettinger present the 4th Annual Women, Wine and Chocolate Event!  This event will benefit the Women’s Centre of York Region! 

Please visit the event page http://www.womenwineandchocolate.ca/ for more details!

I participated in a twitter party in December and won a year supply of Campbells Canada Stockfirst.

This is a new product and until after I won the prize, I hadn’t seen it before.  I have looked through the Campbells Canada websites and have made a list of recipes I had planned to try after I received.

Well, today was my lucky day!

I received a 5 case shipment of Stockfirst.  There are a total of 24- 480 ml packages of cream stock, 24- 480 ml packages of beef stock and 12- 480 ml packages of chicken stock.

I wll be going through the Campbells Canada websites and try to decide which recipe I will cook first.

I want to thank Campbells for this wonderful prize and with being added a member recently to the Food Bloggers of Canada, I will have many recipes to share.

So very excited!

I have officially been accepted as a member of Food Bloggers Canada and will be adding more meal and food content to my blog.

I am very excited about adding this to my blog.  I always told my husband that if I could become a food blogger, I would be there in an instant! 🙂   And who doesn’t love food?

Stay tuned for more recipes, food reviews, and much more.

I will continue to write about many different things while adding the food content to the mix so will be an all-around lifestyle and food blog.

Very excited!

Stay tuned….

As a mother of four, I am always cooking and trying out new recipes.    Hope you enjoy and try them out too!

Darlene’s Chili

One of my favourite meals to cook is Chili, mmm!  Over the years of experimenting, I have came up with my own version and make this many times from over the fall to the spring season.

Ingredients:

2 cans red kidney beans

2 cans sliced mushrooms

2 cans kernel corn

Old Elpaso Chili seasoning mix

1 small can tomato paste

1 can of spaghetti sauce

1 can of stewed tomatoes

1 can of brown beans

1 green pepper, red pepper and yellow pepper diced

1 lb ground beef, cooked

Cooking Instructions

Mix all together in crockpot. (slow cooker)  Cook on low for 8 hours or high for 4 hours.

* This will make a full 6qt crockpot full.

I hope you enjoy this chil as much as my family and I do!

Chicken Parmesean, mmmm!

I make this every couple of weeks in my house.  It is so easy, tastes great and even a good menu item for when you have a few extra guests.

Ingredients:

1 egg (cracked w salt and pepper and stirred and sitting in bowl)

bread crumbs ( I use italian bread crumbs for everything but any bread crumb will do)

spaghetti sauce (just enough to spread on top of chicken)

grated fresh parmasean cheese

skinless boneless chicken breasts

Directions:

1. Dip chicken in egg mixture.

2. Dip chicken in bread crumbs and make sure the chicken is coated.

3. Place the chicken on the pan.

4. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.

5. Take chicken out of oven.

6. Put spaghetti sauce on top of the chicken.  This is up to you as to how much you use but I use a few spoonfuls.

7. Sprinkle cheese over the spaghetti sauce. Again, use as much or as little as you prefer.

8. Bake in oven until cheese melts.

Voila! You are done. Very tasty chicken parmesean and very easy!

Chicken Stirfry

I absolutely love a great stirfry. I sometimes order them when I go out for a meal but I make them quite often as well.  And, they are so easy to make! And healthy too!

All you require is fresh veggies, meat of choice, a little bit of cooking oil, and stirfry sauce if you would like to add that also.

For this particular stirfry, I used alfalfa sprouts, green pepper and red pepper. I also add green beans, snow peas, and nushrooms. The more veggies, I think the better!

Simply, put a little oil in your wok or cooking pan. Heat up, add chicken or meat of choice and cook until the chicken is fully white. Add your vegetables and continue to sautee and cook until vegetables are ready to your liking. Towards the end, drain the cooking oil from the pan and add your stir fry sauce. Even soy sauce tastes very good also.

My family loves stirfry over rice so I use that as well but you could also use egg noodles, or eat simply just as is.

Very yummy and tasty.

Welcome to the the year 2013!

I want to wish everyone a very happy and prspoerous new year, filled with love, joy, wealth, success, and happiness.  I look so forward to hearing about your triumphs and all of the great things you will do this year!

Have a great one! 🙂

The School Council from Clearmeadow Public School will be hosting our very first winter carnival, in Newmarket, Ontario, on February 9, 2013.

The main part of the carnival will be from 10 am to 3 pm.

There will be a pancake breakfast to start off the day, for those early birds. The hours will be from 7:30 am to 9 am. Your breakfast is at no charge , however, we ask you to please bring  a can of food per person that will help out the Newmarket Food Pantry.  We have asked the Centrol York firefighters to help serve and cook the pancakes. Mmmm pancakes!

There will be a vendor showcase, basket raffle and possibly silent auction, an animal show from Zoo To You, talent show, food area, chili cook-off contest, outdoor games.  The Newmarket Hurricane hockey club will be out for some of the day and a few community groups as well.  We are hoping to have horse drawn carriage rides as well as visits from the Fire Department, York Regional Police, and the EMT service.

We would like to thank the following businesses/people for their donations to this event, thus far:

Druxys– 100 soup portions

Function Studios in Newmarket– 10 free week passes as well as 10 10-week passes (valued at $120 each)

Kim Price – Board Games

Persechini Fitness Centre– 3 month VIP Membership gift certificate

Lori Mofford, Royal Lepage Realty, Aurora- $100

Rogers Television

Funnery Playpark, Newmarket

Of Rock n Chalk, Newmarket

Town of Newmarket

If you are interested in volunteering, donating a prize and or participating in our event, please send me a reply to this post.

On behalf of Clearmeadow Public School, I thank you all for donations and help.

Admission for this event is FREE so please mark your calendars and come out for a great day of fun!  More updates to follow!

Have you thought about your goals for the new year 2013? Do you have any resolutions that you have made?

Over the past few years, I have stopped using the term ” New Year’s Resolutions”.  I find that if I say those words in context with the things I would like to change or improve, I NEVER do them.

I will now refer to them as goals.

For the 2013 year, these are a few of the things I would like to do/change/improve:

1. Eat better

2. Exercise…. any form is acceptable but will work on some running goals.

3. Finish my Fundraising Management Certificate

4. Work more on my blogging and my website

5. Learn some new things- social media techniques, design and photoshop software

6. Play with my kids A LOT, they are growing so fast

7. Organize and declutter my entire house

8.  Look for professional opportunity. ( My kids will be in school full time in September)

9. Continue to be more charitable and give back to my community

Above all, I will improve on learning new things and will NOT give up on what I want.

Please share your goals for the new year with me, I would love to hear about them!

Happy New Year to all!

I recently joined a twitter party online last week.  If you know the hashtag being used and the people who are moderating the party to follow, you are able to see all of the responses. What I have seen so far, the moderators ask questions and you reply with your answers as everyone else does too. The party is usually sponsored by a Brand or a Company who is giving the opportunity to people to win the prizes.  I do not know how the prizes are distributed, however, there are some pretty COOL prizes.

The party I joined was called “Roast beef and Gravy” party. This party was held by Great Canadian Beef ( @grtcdnbeef) and Campbells Canada (@campbellscanada).  The discussion was about gravy, sauces and great tips on how to make your meals great.  I was lucky enough to win a one year supply of Campbells new product called ” Stock First”.  I am not one hundred percent sure if this entails beef, chicken and cream stock.  I received an email yesterday confirming that my prize will be delivered within the week of January 7, 2013.

I am very excited to try out this new product and better yet, it gives me an excuse to try new (and more) recipes this year.  I will discuss this product further after it has arrived and I will begin testing.

Do you have any great recipes for gravies and sauces you care to share? Please comment! Thanks!

All in all, I think my year was a fairly great one!

I turned 40 this year, began a fundraising management college certificate program, started writing and blogging after many years. I ran a half marathon in May and did a half marathon walk in March.

My twin girls turned 5 this year, daugther 8 yrs and my son 11 years old.  My, they are becoming young girls and an almost teenager and great young man. They keep me busy and add a little chaos into my daily life but in a great way.

I met many new and wonderful people this year and am very grateful for the year I had.

I am very grateful for my family, friends, husband, children and to everyone new I met this old, new and from the past, I thank you for making a difference in my life; for who I am and who I am still becoming.

Best Wishes for a very Happy Holiday Season and have a fabulous 2013!