Snickers Without Guilt

New week, new tricks! Many of us spend Mondays thinking it's time to start all over, fresh, with a clean table. Perhaps the past week you allowed yourself to have a little too many treats, a few too many glasses of wine, didn't quite eat by the book, didn't do as much sports as you should have, didn't get enough sleep etc. But now it's Monday again, new week, new chance to turn it all around.

I've always had a sweet (and salty) tooth, ever since I was a kid. It's hard to resist goodies if they're lurking around in your kitchen cupboards. After moving to France, there has been temptations around each corner and it has taken a lot of strength to keep making healthy choices. To choose the sad version of ryebread (in Finland it's just so much better) instead of the fresh baked baguette in the bakery by your quartier.

I don't believe in complete denial of cravings. In my opinion if you eat clean the majority of the week, you can have some guilty pleasures here and there (this doesn't mean eating a full packet of crisps and three chocolate bars in one go though).

If you're like me and have a craving for something sweet most days but want to still look out for your weight, I might have a solution for you! Instead of buying candy from the store which is packed in artificial colours, flavors and sugar, try this homemade snickers cake! It's a more natural choice and still so sweet that a small piece will definitely satisfy any sugar cravings! I made this a few weeks ago and even my hubby loved it. The recipe is originally from a Finnish lifestyle blog that I follow regularly. The original recipe can be found here in Finnish.

Snickers Cake

Base

180g salted peanuts

80g oat flakes

8 juicy dates

4 table spoons of water

Topping

2dl cream of choice

2 table spoons of honey

2 table spoons butter 

(replace half with coconut oil if you prefer)

30g sugar free dark chocolate 

Start with preparing the base. Crush all ingredients in a mixer but leave some nuts for decoration. Add the water at the end and mix until you have a base that's easy to handle. Take a plate (pie plate/casserole for example) and spread the base on it evenly. Place into freezer.

Prepare the topping by adding all ingredients expept the chocolate, to a teflon kettle. Let boil on medium temperature, stirring the whole time until you have a thicker mass with caramel colour. Now mix in the chocolate. Take the base from the freezer and spread the topping on. Add a couple crumbled peanuts on top and put back to freezer. 

After a couple hours, take the treat out, cut a slice and enjoy! The cake keeps well in the freezer!

PS. One of my favorite training songs at the moment!

Have an active and delicious Monday!

Two Months Later

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It's been about two months now since we came back to France after a five years break and moved to Bordeaux. The beginning was a little rocky I must admit, the apartment we originally were supposed to live in turned out to be a horrible mess, we ended up staying in a hotel for one week before found the place that we now live in, I learned that my employment would be a lot trickier than I first thought, I seemed to have forgotten most of my French and even the simpliest conversations caused me headaches, my rheumathism was kicking my butt 10-0, we still hadn't found someone to rent our flat in Poland, there was a lot of paper work to sort out from getting married (some in Finland, some in France) and well, the list is endless!

One leisurely Sunday in town.

These perfectly formed little passages got my heart going...

Omelette & bananabread brunch.

One of those quilty moments... But hey, when in France, eh?

Banana bread.

Slowly getting some exercising done after an unfairly long break!

Now, we're at the beginning of October and we've settled in. I speak French rather well, some could even say almost fluently, I've sorted my CV in French and have my fingers and toes crossed it'll bring me results sooner than later on my job hunt (so far, staying optimistic, we'll see how I'm doing in my next catch up post). So far I've been sending an English version of my CV to companies (where the job advert has been in English) as well as a French language version of the original and was wondering why it resulted in zero hits or interviews so far. Back home I had been told my CV was good and although I knew it must have been slightly out of date when it comes to its' format, I was surprised when I heard the feedback from a French connection lately.

After the games there's normally a social mixer at the VIP area of the ice rink, this is where the players go greet the sponsors and other people involved with the club. It's normal for wives and girlfriends (and even babies!) to tag along in this post game gathering and socialize. So that's what I was doing the other week when I came accross someone that works closely with the team as a sponsor. I got offered help with my CV as well as help sending it over to some potentially interested companies and so on. Later on the week I met up with this contact to go over my CV and I was then really surprised when I saw how the French CVs were expected to look like. For instance, if you had no picture on your CV, you would automatically have something shady about you and nobody would give a second look at your resume despite what experience you had listed there. After a one hour session I went back home and completely re-did my resume. No wonder I didn't hear back from anyone before! Now, thanks to this great network the team has, I might stand a chance on the job market ;)
 
Besides the massive work on my CV, I've fixed my passport and other documents that needed sorting out after getting married, I've gotten some sports back to my weekly routine which has helped with my rheumatism as well, I feel at home in our apartment and the town, I've made friends with pretty amazing people, ice hockey season has kicked off nicely, I've done some things outside my comfort zone (I went to a spinning class in a pool, in a one piece swimming suit for starters, let me just say, yey me!) and a lot more. In addition, I've been spending some time in the kitchen, baked my first banana bread, created a new recipe for healthy breakfast pancakes and well, perhaps one of the coolest things, discovered how to make a healthier version of Snickers at home (this deserves a hooray I think)! I'll put the recipies up here if anyone is interested in healthier goodies :) In the meanwhile, a few pics from here and there!

Paris <3 Had to take one quick snapshot while on my way to the Finnish embassy to fix my passport.

Does this really need a caption?

Salad with chevre.

A little reading corner at our home.

Have a lovely mid-week!

Easy Peasy Stuffed Zucchini

Living in the same household with a hockey player means you need to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Back in the days in Poland I mainly cooked for myself and most of the cooking took place over the weekends. Moving to France and living in the same place again has meant cooking more frequently and after cooking the same chicken pasta or chicken with rice day after day you start being desperate of discovering some new ways of using similar ingredients. With a sports player there's certain limitations to what you can (=should) eat because of the games etc.

I rarely use any recipies when I cook and normally just think of some flavor combinations that work well together. I cooked stuffed zucchini this week for dinner and made enough so that we had something for lunch the next day as well. This dish is easy to make and there's a billion variations you can do to the recipe! Below's what I used to make mine with this week.

Stuffed Zucchini

ca. 40min

5 round zucchinis

300g chicken breast

1 bag (ca60g or 2portions) basmati rice

1 yeallow bell pepper

1 echalote

125g garlic&herbs cream cheese

parmesan 

gruyere (grated emmental works ok)

salt

pepper

garlic (dried, from a mill)

honey (optional)

Heat oven to 200c. Bring water to boil in a kettle and cook the rice. While the rice is cooking, chop the chicken breast, onion and bell pepper into small cubes. 

Cut the "hats" off the zucchinis and then carve the soft insides out. Chop the insides to small pieces. 

Add butter/vegetable oil to a frying pan and add the chicken in, once it has some color to it, add the onions, bell pepper and insides of zucchini. 

Place the zucchinis and their hats next to them on an oven plate (use cooking paper under so they don't stick to the pan) and place to the oven for ca 10 minutes so they pre-cook before stuffing them.

Spice your chicken and veggies with salt, pepper and garlic powder (you can also add in dried or fresh herbs here!). When the water starts to rise from the zucchinis, add the cream cheese in. Mix well. Add the cooked rice in, mix and check the flavour. At this point you can add a little parmesan to the mixture as well as a little drizzle of honey depending of your preferance. Once the mixture is somewhat thick and there's no more excess water on the pan, you're good to start stuffing the zucchinis.

Take the zucchinis out of the oven and start stuffing. This is the easiest if you use two table spoons to do the work. Press the stuffing in so you can fit the maximum in. Add some gruyere on top of the zucchinis and leave the hats still on the side. Put the zucchinis in the oven until the cheese has taken a golden colour. 

When serving, add the hats on top for decoration. Enjoy!

PS. There may be some excess stuffing, this is good to be eaten as it is as lunch for example, but in case you have some extra bell peppers you can stuff them with the same filling if for example there is someone in your household who isn't too big of a fan of zucchini.

Happy Cooking and Happy Friday!

8 (false) Reasons For Not Doing Yoga

By all means, I am not a yoga expert so if you're expecting pictures of dancer asanas etc. you shall be disappointed. As I started to have problems with my back (=rheumatism) again at the beginning of the year and while the inflammations decided to have a rather permanent stay at the premises of my body, I became desperate.

I could not do my regular gym resume, no running (this was so disappointing it really killed my mood!), at some point I couldn't even go for long walks etc. I was literally trapped inside an old woman's body before reaching my 30s. I started to refer to myself with the nickname grandma, in a sad way it felt accurate. What wasn't comfortable was that due to high stress levels and no movement I wasn't losing any weight but morelike gaining back what I had lost with hard work the year before. I needed the endorfins that I normally would get from running, but how?

I think I've said this before, but here it comes again "things have a way of working out". I had been sitting alone in my corner of the office for a year, when one day a new colleague joined the company and came to sit in my area of the office. We started chatting and the conversation turned to health and exercising, it turned out my new office neighbour was a yoga teacher! She insisted that I come and try a lesson at the school she teached in one day. Slightly suspicious at first, I decided what the hell, I'll give it a go as I can't do much else at the moment anyway! And after my first visit, I understood, that all the reasons I had before for not trying yoga, were wrong.

Here's my (false) list of reasons for not trying yoga and how I overruled them after trying yoga:

1. You're not flexible. You don't have to be, the flexibility is a bonus that comes with time and practise. 

2. You're not the skinny yogi type. There is no weight limitation for yoga, everyone can do it. Yoga can help with your weight control.

3. You're not strong enough. Yoga helps develop strength, you start with the strength you have and time after time you get stronger.

4. What will the others think. This is such a cliché. Everyone else is busy doing what their doing, nobody cares! And on the other hand, what everyone else thinks about you is none of your business.

5. It's outside my comfort zone. The best things happen outside your comfort zone.

6. It's too hard. Good things never come easy.

7. Yoga is not a sport. Everyone who's tried it knows better.

8. I have no time for it. Every minute counts. With good time management you can easily fit a 30 minutes session to your morning. Every session doesn't have to be 90 minutes long!

Have a lovely evening!

A Hello From France!

One and half months of silence does the trick, you start feeling like perhaps it's time to come and give an update on how things are rolling! I've not been silent on purpose, it's just that after the "holidays" all my time went to work, preparing for the wedding and preparing for the move. And now, suddenly it's already middle of August and the summer's about to be over.

Walk by the water in Bordeaux.

A glass of rosé and chevre salad.

It's been a very lovely, but an extremely stressful summer where there hasn't been any breaks to take a pause and just relax. After all the wedding preparations and a wedding of my dreams, we were immediately dropped out of our wedding bubble to planning the move. In the meanwhile I was still working normal days and took only a break when we actually took the road to drive to France.

From our Sunday stroll by the sea.

We've now been in France for little over two weeks and it's taken some time to get used to the new surroundings and being back here. I had somewhat high expectations of feeling relaxed after our arrival but it seems to take some time to get to that place.

The city is great though, it really does indeed look like a relaxed Paris in here, like they say. I've met some friendly people so far, which is always a bonus. I'm really looking forward to September already, when the French come back from their holidays and the neighbourhood as well as the city wakes up. August gives the town a little zombie like vibes, not so much in the city centre which is full of tourists but in the surroundings as all the small shops and bakeries are closed for the holiday period.

The other reason for looking forward to September is that by then I'll likely be more integrated here and can find my way around more easily. As an impatient person, I'd like to fix the house, my hobbies and my work to a place that feels comfortable to me, rather sooner than later.

A couple details in our home.

My current work comes to its' end by end of October which means I'm looking for new opportunities at the moment. It being August means it's quiet in the job market too and I'll have to wait with my signing up to language school for a little while as well. I understand French well but still need some refreshing on my vocabulary and writing.

Our home from the outside. A very boheme garden in front ;) But with a little work we'll have a lovely terrace to enjoy morning coffees at!

 I'll put up a whole post about the wedding, once we get our wedding pictures from the photographer. All I can say is, the day and the weekend was simply amazing and I wish I could go back in time and re-live it all over again. We had all our photo booth pictures from the wedding framed and everytime I pass that collage I can't help but smile :) They don't call it "the best day of your life" without a reason ;)

Time to start cooking now as hubby's coming back from practise! I'll start posting some recipies again soon (that was one of the main points of this blog anyway...) as I'll be cooking more in our new place.

Wishing you a great week!

Marianne

A Day With Me (part2)

It's been a while since my last "a day with me" post so I thought I'd do another one :) I like reading this type of posts myself in the blogs that I follow, hope you do too! So get a comfy position in your armchair and take a look at how my day went!

5.50

The alarm rings. The first thought is "I can't". 

6.00

Snooze alarm. Damn, I still can't.

6.30

S*it. I get up as I need to wash my hair before heading to the physiotherapy at 8am. Getting up this early and to do this type of activity on holiday should be forbidden by law. I look at my fiancé and Patu who happily snore away when I drag myself to shower.

7.20

I need to hurry up if I want to make it on time. My hair takes forever to dry and the humid bathroom makes me feel like I need to hit the shower again soon. I decide to skip breakfast until after the physio, there's no time for such activities now.

7.45

I park my car by the old soviet style building which works as the homebase for several different companies providing healthcare services. I walk in together with quite a few elderly people who I assume are there to fix potentially similar issues to mine. The only difference is, they're about 45 years older than I am. 

7.50

I run into an old colleague and friend at the waiting hallway of the place. We have a short catch up and agree that we're slowly falling apart piece by piece. Not good.

8.00

My always positive physiotherapist starts to work her magic on my feet. Ouch and ouch, but a good ouch. A little ultrasound and cold air therapy to finish off the treatment.

Yey! One more physio done!

8.40

Time to hit the traffic jam and go home. I feel happy, the physiotherapy is working and I can walk almost normally. Pretty cool stuff.

9.00

Ahhh, breakfast finally! I fix a bowl of oatmeal. I eat it straight from the plastic cup I made it in the microwave, no time to make things pretty. It looks like a bowl of waste but hey, the taste is good! I change clothes so we can head to town to the new Lutherian wedding church.

10.45

Everything sorted at the church, we've booked a rehearshal for Friday before the wedding and agreed on all other details.

Wedding flower "shopping"

11.15

Meeting with the florist. Looking at different flower bouquets and floral table decorations. The florist is really nice and professional and gives us a lot of great ideas. We manage to set up everything and select the flowers we want for our special day.

Mmm. Carbs.

12.00

Lunch and coffee in the market square, things start to taste like holidays :) 

13.00 

The carb loaded lunch hits me hard and we decide that we have deserved a good nap. I set up an alarm for one hour later, feels luxurious!

Me and Patu agree, it is tough waking up after a nap.

15.00

Ok, I snoozed again! I get up and make myself a vanilla Nespresso. It's legday today and I can't head to gym feeling foggy and zombie-like.

It's all about the attitude when working out!

15.45

Sweating like a pig. I did 20 minutes bike, 4 x 10 on leg press (45kg, 55kg, 65kg, 75kg), 3 x 12 deadlift (30kg), 3 x 10 sumo squat, 3 x 10 narrow stance squat (both with 15kg), 3 x 24 lunges (12 on side, 14kg). I drink my protein shake in the dressing room and pack my things and head home.

On my way to the wedding dress fitting!

17.00

Speedy shower at home after gym and change of clothes. I call a taxi and head to my wedding dress fitting at Anna Kara.

18.20

Woop woop! My dress is ready and it's perfect! :) For the first time I can visualize myself as a bride walking down the aisle. Even the weather cleared out as if to celebrate the moment. I decide to walk home instead of taking a taxi. I call my mom on the way home and we go through the dress details and all the things we've managed to sort out for our big day so far.

18.45

At home, starving! I eat nectarins and some rice cakes with ham. Fiancé has finished his workout and is fixing our seating plan for the wedding.

19.30

Cooking a simple omelette for dinner. Eggs & turkey ham served with cucumber tomato salad. Super simple but enough on a day like this. We fix some more details for the wedding. Good stuff coming up I think :)

21.50

I finish writing this post and need to take my butt downstairs. Monsieur PatPat needs his evening pee walk. Around the building it is, against the rules of the residence, like two little rebels we sneak around the backyard. 

Yeah, about the same amount of sweat I had at the gym today. Less muscle though.

22.30

Michael Jordan is tired (my fiancé calls me that sarcastically as I apparently am very lousy at throwing things). Setting my wake up call at 6.45 with 15min snooze allowance. Why? The physiotherapist's torture chambers are calling at 8.30 :)

Good night and good morning! <3

An Emotional Rolleroaster

That's something that describes the past two weeks quite well. Crazy busy days at work, stress, physiotherapy, pain, yoga, relief, wedding planning, stress/panic and traveling to Finland for my brother's wedding, joy. That pretty much summarizes things for you. In addition to this we also have the move coming up in a little over a month's time which means a road trip from Krakow to Bordeaux. Before that we should decide what to do with our apartment in Krakow :) No need to worry right! Even with a lot going on, I still try to see the light at the end of the tunnel and keep my grandma's old saying "everything has a way of working out in the end" at the top of my mind.

We're on holidays now, finally, and staying at my parents' place for a few days. My brother got married last weekend and we had a lovely celebration nearby my hometown, by a lake with lots of friends and family gathered around, everyone on a good happy mood. It was a lovely day and the weather, which is pretty arctic +10 degrees now, was warm and sunny just for that one day (just like we ordered! ;)).

Right after my brother's wedding it was time to put our thoughts towards our own. Everything was supposed to be under control and we had everything sorted out, but then "nie ma" happened, like always in Poland. I was at work on Thursday finalizing things for my ongoing projects so that they'd be in an ok place when I went on holidays while my fiance went to our wedding church to double check things were under control.

We had booked our church and priest already a year ago and we had been asking several times during the past year whether everything had been taken care of, if we had to do anything special, take courses or anything extra due to me being Lutheran and they had convinced us all was ok no need for anything. Well, they had told him our papers were not ok and that we had to do some paper work three months ago and now with only a little over a month to our wedding the church wedding could not take place due to this not being done. As a cherry on top of the cake, after hearing this my fiance went to see the priest that was booked for our wedding and he had said that nobody had told him about our wedding that he is on holidays all of July. No church, no priest.

There's a lot more detail and mess to this story than this but lets just say, our holidays that were supposed to be a relaxing time back home just enjoying finally being together with no stress and hurry, has turned into a big fight against bureaucracy, booking a civil ceremony in Finland (we're coming back here in two weeks for that, ouch!) and organizing a Lutheran church for our wedding day so we can get a blessing in front of God's eyes. And did I mention we're "shipping" our own priest from Finland to Krakow to give us a blessing. "Ohh dear..." has been a well used phrase during these few days :)

I think after all of this trouble, moving to Bordeux will taste like sweet nectar. I am not lying when I say I can already imagine myself walking somewhere on the western coast, on sunset, with my boys, on our way to have fresh seafood and a glass of cold rosé... Now that's a view worth working for! :)

Have a great week! <3