Kickin' It Days 25 & 26

Poor Jamie & Shannon have been snow & iced in where they live in Toronto for 6 days now, with no electricity for severalof those days and still no Internet service! But with help from their sweet sis Suzie. the Kickin' It Old Skool Blog-A-Thon is jammin' right along! I am a day behind due to THE BIG DAY yesterday (which was actually pretty much like any other day for hubby and I other than we ate far more sweets than we normally would!) but today I am catching up, starting with the prompt for Day 25-HOLIDAY TRADITIONS!
Honestly, I am pretty "over" talking about the holidays. It is a pretty low key event around here as it is just the two of us...all of our family is either far away or not a part of our lives, so the few traditions hubby and I have we have just established over the past five years of being together during this time of year, and I feel like I have already shared most of them either here or elsewhere online...so I will share something that made me smile yesterday and is tradition related...

photo from Pinterest

When my kids were little, and all through their years of living at home, we had the "tradition" of having those cheap, in the tube, topped with squirt-out-of-a-little-plastic-bag-super-sweet-white-icing cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning breakfast and I always arranged and baked  the spiral hunks of cinnamon infused dough into the shape of a Christmas tree (basically in a triangle!). I have not made them since the last Christmas my kids and I shared living under the same roof, which was in 2007. They are 25 and 28 years old now; my son shares a condo with two female friends and my daughter has her own little family with her husband and 4 year old son. I talked to them all several times yesterday, and during one conversation, my daughter mentioned that she had made cinnamon rolls that morning for their family breakfast...in the shape of a Christmas tree. Hearing that one small, simple thing warmed my heart, made me tear up, brought back sweet memories and helped me feel closer to her on this special day, even though we are over 2,000 miles apart. It just made me very happy that this one small seemingly insignificant thing is a treasured enough memory to her to continue the tradition with and for her own family!

And here are my "babies" in a photo from their Christmas together yesterday. I get to see them again in just two weeks, when I go 'home" to St. Louis for a 15 day visit!

Hope you enjoyed many lovely traditions this holiday season!

And for Day 26, we are sharing TEN THINGS IN YOUR FRIDGE!
Our fridge, like many this time of year, is pretty stuffed, mostly with crap delicious indulgent treats we would not normally eat...or at least not have so much of at the same time, lol!  Actually, we are very blessed in that our fridge ALWAYS has an abundance of good foods for us to partake of. Since we both work from home 95% of the time, we eat most all of meals at home, and try to always keep a variety of our favorite foods on hand. I am going to share my top 10 fave things in there right now! All but the first one are "staples" around here! (all photos are from Google images)

1. (what's left of!) A Ziploc baggie full of chocolate covered peanut butter Ritz Bitz-my new holiday sweet treat obsession for this year! Pain in the you-know-what to dip in chocolate, and mine turned out looking like a classic example of "Pinterest FAIL",  but still oh-so-yummy!

2. Several bottles of Honest Tea Green Tea with Honey. I usually drink water with everything, but really love the not too sweet sugary flavor and not too strong tea flavor taste of these, so I splurge every few days and enjoy half a bottle with lunch or a snack. On the label, it says "Sure, we add a kiss of honey, but not enough to gross you out!" It is a the world's first organic Fair Trade certified ready-to-drink bottled tea. These 16.9 oz. bottles can cost up to $2.99 EACH, so whenever we see them on sale anywhere, hubby spoils me by stocking up on a case or two! I think the cheapest we have found them was 69 cents! The bottles also sport an interesting or inspirational quote on the inside of the label, revealed as the tea is drank, which I always love to read! The last bottle I had said: "The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do"~John W. Holt, Jr.

3. Mr. Mobley's Original Tahini Sauce. A delicious locally made item, which I first found at a nearby farmers market last summer, and have since discovered is also available at several Safeway grocery stores here in my area! We love it on rice,quinoa, falafel, noodles, tofu, beans and spanakopita!

4. Red Cactus brand Sweet Mild Salsa. I fell for this salsa on one of my trips back home to St. Louis a few years ago, and as it is made in neighboring Illinois, I (sadly!) could never find it in my area of Washington state. So on my every trip home (about 3-4 times per year) I would load up on as many jars of it as I felt I could safely pack in my suitcase to bring home and hopefully last me until my next visit! Then just last week, we walked into the nearby Oroweat Bakery Outlet store and I could not believe what I saw right before me on the top shelf of very first front door facing display rack...MY SALSA!!!!!! I immediately squealed with excitement and grabbed as many jars as my hands could hold! The lady working there, seeing my obviously thrilled state, said they had just gotten it in that morning, so of course, I had to relate my whole (silly!) story about the salsa and express my joy at now having it available to me so close to home! She did warn me that it seemed an rather odd item for them to carry and she wasn't sure if it would be a permanent inventory product, since they kind of get random things here and there as they are available! I bought 6 jars, and plan to stock up on more every time we pass the store...IF I am lucky enough that they still carry it! Otherwise, it is back to weighing down my luggage with jars of salsa every few months, lol!

5. Sabra brand Spinach Artichoke Hummus. I! LOVE! HUMMUS! I could (and often do!) eat it every single day. I have tried many brands and flavors, and this one, along with Trader Joe's Edamame Hummus are at the top of my list! I especially love it with Stacey's brand baked Parmesan and Garlic Pita Chips!

6. Beechers Flagship cheese. The reason I can never be Vegan. Another local obsession! I go to Pike Place Market as often as possible just to indulge in their famous Mac 'n Cheese, (made with this cheese), which even Oprah has on her list of fave foods! Most of the grocery stores around me carry several types of their cheeses, but their Flagship is my very fave, and our fridge is rarely lacking at least one hunk of this amazing cheese!

7. Trader Joe's Reduced Guilt Chunky Guacamole. Another food obsession. I blame my daughter for first introducing me to this green goodness that, along with TJ's flax seed tortilla chips, I can easily make a meal of!

8.  Classico Traditional Basil Pesto. Some day I will get around to trying to make my own pesto from one of the many recipes I have collected...but so far, it has been easier to just buy this yummy brand, which we always have at least a few jars of on hand!

9. Trader Joe's Sunflower Seed Butter. SO yummy on whole wheat toast or waffles with a little whipped honey, banana slices and cinnamon!

10. Fresh broccoli! Always! Lots and lots! My fave veggie, which I love raw or cooked, and put into many different dishes I concoct! It's always a game to guess how much it will cost at eat grocery trip...around here it is anywhere between 69 cents a pound to $2.99 a pound, sometimes within a few days time, with no apparent rhyme or reason!

Thanks for reading, hope you are having a good "day after"!
Happy Me, Laurie.