Cake Try Outs

My Mom is turning 65 in a few weeks and I offered to make the cake. The only instruction I was given was: "chocolate". I thought there were a lot of places I could go with that so I started brainstorming ideas. One of my favourite ways to fancy up a cake is to add chocolate bars to it. One of Mom's favourites is Terry's Chocolate Orange, so I decided I would try making a chocolate orange cake. As I recently learned that it's good for me to try out new recipes, I spent much of Sunday fooling around in the kitchen with a chocolate orange cake.

The cake was super fun to bake and decorate, and because I was just making it for practice there was no stress while making it. I made a three layer cake that was iced mainly with whipped chocolate icing and had orange frosting between the layers and on the top.

This is what it looked like:

I was really happy with how the cake looked and it was actually pretty easy to decorate. I texted this picture to Mom and this was the response I got:

She is the sweetest, eh?

The look of the cake was what I wanted and I will definitely use some of the same decorative elements in the final version. The only thing that has to change is the taste. Turns out I went a little overboard with the orange extract that was added to the icing. So much so that my mouth actually tingled when I ate it. Whoops! It's still edible, but the chocolate orange balance just wasn't right. Dare I say, it was too much of a good thing.

But this is why I'm practicing. And I've learned a new baking rule: easy on the extract!

I still have a few weeks to figure out what cake I'll take to her birthday, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to adhere more to her initial instruction and just go with chocolate.

I Got An Awesome Deal with PC Plus Rewards

One of our Canadian grocery chains, Loblaws, recently introduced a loyalty card program. The main idea is you get rewarded with points when you shop at their store. 1000 points = $1.00 in store credit, so add up enough points and you get free stuff.

The closest Loblaws chain to us is The Real Canadian Superstore. It is actually the grocery store I shop at the least. My only reasons to shop there are for the hot deli and various PC products (usually bacon or chips - and sometimes a combo of the two). From time to time they do have sales worth going for, but mainly I do my grocery shopping at the Food Basics.

I was interested in the PC Plus loyalty card though, as the flyer indicated that the bacon we normally buy would earn us 1000 points ($1.00 in store credit). The points never expire, so I really just thought I would buy bacon over the next few years and get my 20,000 points ($20), which is the amount of points you need to earn before you can redeem your rewards.

Then I looked at the flyer more closely. Last week value size Palmolive dish soap (1.1 L) was on sale for $2.47, and also came with 2,500 points. So basically spend $2.47, get $2.50 back. I thought that was a pretty stellar deal. Since you need at least 20,000 points to redeem them, I bought 8 bottles of Palmolive (obviously!). Each bottle earned me 2,500 points, so 8 x 2,500 = 20,000.

So 8 bottles of Palmolive with tax was $22.33, but then 20,000 points ($20) was put on my rewards card. Getting the deal was great, but the experience was made even better because the cashier was really excited for me. He said: "I know someone who is going to get a great deal if they have a points card!" The cashier even tried to use me as an example to the guy in front of me of why he should sign up for the program (it's free to join). The guy in front didn't want a rewards card, but it made me feel good to be a celebrated deal getter.

Here is why I loved this deal so much:
(a) what you spent and what you got back was equal (plus you got a lot of product too)
(b) the product was practical and non-perishable
(c) it was a low cost investment (I only spent $20)

Now it wouldn't be a deal for me if I just wasted my free money on just anything, so I went back to the store and bought what we usually buy: bacon.

We love this bacon and buy it regularly, dividing it into portions and freezing it for weekly meals. 1kg of this stuff (2.2 lbs) is $9.99. Two packs cost $19.98, but in order to redeem my points I had to spend at least $20. So I bought a grocery bag for $0.05! I normally take re-useable bags, but this was a great reason to buy one. The total sale was $20.04, but we don't have the penny in Canada anymore, and to my surprise, The Real Canadian Superstore rounds down their prices to accommodate the lack of the penny. So my total was $20 even, all paid for by the loyalty card.

Plus, the bacon also earned points (the flyer said 1000 points, but they each rang in at 2000 points). So I currently have $4.00 on my loyalty card. How cool is that?

So to summarize (because I am so damn excited about it!):

I spent $22.33, got 8 bottles of dish soap and $20 in store credit. Then spent the free $20 on bacon and a shopping bag, and currently have $4.00 in store credit. The way I look at it, I bought bacon like I normally do, but got over 8 L of free dishsoap and $4 in store credit.

Now having said all this, last week was the first week of the rewards program, which could be why they had such a great points deal. This weeks flyer didn't have any deals that appealed to me, so who knows if something so good will come around again. I know I will be watching for it, though. If it turns out this is my one and only PC Plus deal, I'm happy to say it was a damn good one!

Wish Restuarant Brunch #FoodPicFriday

When my friend Natalia got married, she held part of her reception at Wish Restaurant in Toronto. The atmosphere was perfect for a wedding and the brunch options all sounded amazing. I ended up choosing a menu item called the Florentine: poached eggs over wilted spinach with leak and Parmesan fondue. The eggs were lovely and the meal was served with a tasty amount of breakfast potatoes. Beautiful food to celebrate a beautiful day.

Happier

At the start of 2013, a few friends posted about happiness jars. Happy moments are collected throughout the year in a jar and at the end of the year, it is opened up and you remember all the nice things that happened.

I thought it was a pretty good idea so I put a jar by my desk and started filling it with happy little notes.

I was pretty good about adding to the jar until May, when my friend Jen let me know about an even better idea for collecting happy moments: an App called Happier (now available on the web too). Happier is a similar concept to the happy jar, except it also involves a social network. Not only are you thinking about and collecting your own happy moments, but you get to look through other people's happy moments too. This is one of the best features of Happier, as it often makes me happier to read about the day to day things that make others smile. Things like "I got 8 hours of sleep!" or "The sun was out all day" are just really nice to read about.

The app has expanded a lot since I joined in May, and each new version is better than the last. In the current version when you post three happy moments in a day, you're rewarded with an image that says "You're Awesome". There is also confetti that rains down on the screen after you post a happy moment, which is both fun and encouraging. They even celebrate user milestones, as I recently reached my 200th moment and was rewarded with this appearing on my screen:

On the social side, you can "smile" at moments, comment on moments, share them, follow other people's moments, and search for happy moments by category. For example: "eating awesome food" and "animals" are both categories to browse. Scrolling through these categories, you'll find hundreds of posts of people just loving on their pets or being overjoyed by the food they've just eaten. It's really a lot of fun.

If you want to check out the happy moments I've posted, you can find them by clicking here.

Thinking about the little things and being part of the Happier community has been a very positive addition to my year. If I'm having a bad day, Happier is a great place to go to be reminded of all the little things that make life fun. And refreshingly, for a social network, it is a very positive space to be. Most of the comments I get on my moments are variations of "Me too!" or "I love that!" or "I should do that too!" Obviously not everyone is made happy by the same things, but if you see something that doesn't appeal to you, you can just scroll past it and find twenty other moments that will make you smile.

Hundreds of little things made me happier in 2013, and I'm looking forward to going over my Happier posts and reading through my happiness jar so I can remember all the moments that made me smile.

400th Post!!!!

I'm adding another item to my list of 2013 Blog Milestones. Today is the 400th post on the blog!

It's been a really active year on the blog and I'm very happy to celebrate all the times I've hit 'publish'. Over the entire year I have averaged 15 blog posts per month, but since I upped my game in June, I've been averaging 22 posts per month. So awesome and very proud of myself.

Thanks for being on this ride with me. It really is a lot of fun! :)