Today's Great Deal: London Drugs

London Drugs is a Canadian drugstore (and more) that is found only in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. London Drugs is the only store in Canada that allows coupon stacking, as far as I know and has it in their written policy. Although, the coupon stacking rules use to be a lot more relaxed last year, you can still get some great deals if you have the right coupons.

Most of these coupons came from different issues of Smart Source coupons that are found in the Saturday paper once a month or so, while others came from Websaver and promotional offers. 

Everything you see in the first picture cost me $2.93 including tax and gave me a coupon savings of $24.97, I'm smiling ear to ear. 

Recipe: Cookie Caramel Apple Cheesecake Bars

This recipe is incredible and when I say incredible I mean I've already made it three times in the past two weeks, it's really just that good. I even made these once without eggs and they are still delicious, it you decide to skip the eggs as well make sure to replace them with a tablespoon of corn starch and a couple teaspoons of flour, just to thicken it up.

Ingredients: 

Cookie Part: 
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup softened butter

Cream Cheese Filling:
12 oz (1.5 bars) of cream cheese softened
1/2 cup pf white sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs

Apple Filling:
2 large apples
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tbs white sugar

Crumb Top:
1/2 cup quick oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup softened butter
1 cup all purpose flour

Top it Off:
Caramel drizzle (as much or as little as you want)

Directions:


Preheat the oven to 350 °F.

In a bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar snd butter until the mixture is somewhat crumbly.
Press the dough evenly into a 13 × 9-inch baking pan or a cookie sheet with edges. Bake 15 minutes or until lightly browned.

In a larger bowl, beat the cream cheese with 1/2 cup sugar until smooth. Add the eggs, 1 at a time (beat after each addition). Next add the vanilla and mix until combined. Pour the cream cheese batter over the warm crust.

Peel the apples and chop them into 3/4-inch chunks. Mix the apple chunks with the cinnamon and white sugar. Spoon the apple chunks evenly over the cream cheese mixture.

In a smaller bowl, combine the flour, oats, butter and brown sugar for crumb topping. Sprinkle over the cream cheese mixture.

Bake 30 minutes, or until the filling is set. Reduce the temperature to 300°F for the last 5 minutes.

Last but not least drizzle with the caramel topping.

Enjoy!!!

Store Bought Recipe: Vanilla Oreos Wrapped in Chocolate Chip Cookies

I first saw this on pinspire (a complete copy of pinterest) and thought how incredibly easy and yummy these cookies looked. I didn't have a lot of time to make the cookie dough from scratch, so I used the store bought kind that was sitting in my fridge.

This recipe is so easy all you do is take your store bought cookie dough out of the package, place it in a bowl and add about a 1/4 cup of flour to it. The reason why you need to add the flour is so that the dough becomes a little stiffer and doesn't run off the oreo cookie. Next you take the dough and lovingly wrap it around the entire oreo cookie and place it in an ungreased pan. Once your pan is full place it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10-12 minutes.

These taste the best when the chocolate chip cookie part is still slightly "raw". Once you try this recipe you will want to make them over and over again, if you are on a diet or thinking of going on a diet you might want to skip this recipe.

Enjoy!!!

Today's Great Deal: Thrift Store Finds

I love thrift store shopping, it's fun searching for treasures and finding things you haven't seen since childhood. The only thing I don't like about thrift stores is how incredibly expensive some places like Goodwill and Value Village have become, looks like both these stores have become a giant corporate affair. 

Early today my family and I went out to have our children participate in a university study. I love going to these things, the university is about a 30-40 minute drive away but the kids get a free book and we all get to spend part of the day in an area where we don't usually head out to too often. We made it a plan to check out all the thrift stores, or at least as much of them as we could while we were out. Somehow... and I know this is my fault, (I may have not written down the exact address) we couldn't find the address to the first thrift store, but it was no big deal and instead of really searching it out we got out of the car and went for breakfast. After breakfast we spent sometime walking around looking at some shops, there were some really great boutique stores, but no thrift stores to be found. We had given up on our plan and after enjoying the morning we headed off to another thrift store, only this time I actually knew the location of it. We must have only been driving for three minutes when you wouldn't believe it, a whole row of thrift and consignment stores. Ack! Well they had to wait, we had passed them at high speed and we had other things to do with our day, yes we had to make our way over to that other thrift store.

Heading over to the thrift store I had in mind was the best decision, it's a good thing we didn't stop off at those other stores we drove by (although maybe if I had gone in I wouldn't be saying this now...). This thrift store was having a renovation sale and everything was 30-75% off. It was the last day of the sale so everything was really picked over and the store was quite busy. Still, I managed to pick up ten children's books, a pair of jeans and a funky shirt for myself, the shirt reminds me of something a farm girl might wear and I think it will look cute with those jeans I picked up. I wasn't really keeping count of the price of these things, I was thinking everything would be about $10, but no it was less. I paid $3.50 for everything, I think this is the best deal I've ever gotten on second hand items and as we left the store I told my husband I felt like I just robbed the place. Ha, these kind of prices for second hand items should be the norm, not the exception. 

Recipe: Caramel Chocolate Cupcakes

I found this recipe in an issue of  "Today's Parent", I made these cupcakes for my daughter's second birthday a while back and she loved it, it was literally all over her face. 

Ingredients:

Cupcakes

1/2 Cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2/3 Cup boiling water

1 1/2 Cup all purpose flour 

1 Cup white sugar

2 tsp Baking powder

1/2 tsp Salt

1/2 Cup vegetable oil

2 Eggs

1 tsp Vanilla

1/2 Large bag of "Rolo" chocolate or something similar

Icing

3 tbsp Butter at room temperature

1 3/4 Cup icing sugar

1/4 Unsweetened cocoa powder

3 tbsp milk

1 tbsp Vanilla

Directions:

Preheat Oven to 350 F.

In a large bowl, whisk cocoa with boiling water until no lumps remain.

In a medium bowl, whisk flour with sugar, baking powder with salt.

Whisk oil into slightly cooled cocoa mixture, then whisk in eggs and vanilla. 

Stir in flour mixture until combined. The mixture will be very thick.

Spoon batter into paper lined muffin cups. 

Bake until batter is barely set, approx 8-10 minutes.

Remove partially baked cupcakes and push pieces of  chocolate into the center. 

Bake for another 8-10 minutes, then set on cooling rack. 

For the icing beat butter in a large bowl.

Whisk icing sugar with cocoa to remove lumps. 

Beat into butter, alternating with milk. 

Beat in vanilla until icing is smooth. 

Enjoy!!!

Health/Diet Food Review #1 ~ Gardein Santa Fe Good Stuff

This was my first time trying any Gardein product, and as soon as I pulled the food out of the package my expectations went from being hopeful to thinking it was going to be terrible. Nevertheless, I pushed on and gave it a try. There are three ways you can prepare this food, you can bake it, boil it or microwave it. The packaging suggests microwaving it as the best method, and that's exactly what I did. I popped a few holes into both the meat alternative and into the sauce and threw it in. The packaging suggests 2-2.5 minutes in the microwave, but I only needed 1.5 minutes in the microwave, and then waited another 2 minutes to let the food cool.

The cooked veggie "meat" looks nothing like the picture on the box, but that's to be expected since no heat and eat food I've ever tried has ever come out resembling anything like the picture on the box. The Santa Fe Good Stuff meat alternative is filled with, but not stuffed with black beans, corn, onions and hints of jalapeno pepper. The meat alternative is a little spicy on it's own, but also comes with a packet of spicy tomato sauce that adds an extra kick for those who are a fan of spicy food. 

Looks aside this product tasted pretty good and the company did a good job of trying to make it taste like chicken. The texture was nice, not rubbery and again in this aspect as well you can tell the company was trying to get it as chicken like as possible. The spice factor was a bit too much for me though, I am normally not a fan of spicy food and only used about a 1/4 of the tomato sauce. 

This product works as both a diet food and a health food. Overall I think vegetarians would love this and it might cause meat eaters to develop an interest in vegetarian food.  

Ingredients:

water, soy protein isolate, vital wheat gluten, expeller pressed/canola oil, organic ancient grain flour (kamut®, amaranth, millet, quinoa), onions, natural flavors (from plant sources), yeast extract, sea salt, potato starch, organic cane sugar, pea protein, carrot fiber, organic beetroot fiber, garlic powder, onion powder, extractives of paprika and tumeric. rub: red bell pepper flakes.stuffing: black bean, corn kernels, jalapeno peppers, expeller pressed canola oil, onion powder, garlic powder, white pepper, parsley flakes, sea salt.sauce:  water, tomato paste, onions, garlic, crushed tomatoes, organic evaporated cane juice, expeller pressed canola oil, corn starch, sea salt, vinegar, spices, xanthan gum, chili flakes, ground chipotle pepper.

Recipe: Kale Chips

Kale chips are a great snack food especially for those of you who are thinking about eating a little bit healthier.When it comes to having healthy snacks it's sometimes hard to jump into snacking on carrot sticks right away, so I think this is a great alternative, besides that it tastes great and is easy to make!

Photo Credit

Ingredients:

1 bunch of kale

1 tblsp olive oil 

1 tsp salt

Directions:

-Preheat oven to 350 f

- Remove leaves from stems, wash and dry kale, either with a salad spinner or by shaking the water off really well 

-Place into baking dish, mix in olive oil and sprinkle on salt

-Bake for 10-15 minutes or until edges turn brown, if you have a small pan and a lot of kale leaves turn them half way through baking.

Enjoy