Sweet Potato & Peanut Soup

Lately I have been on an Asian kick and tonight I made a delicious soup (Recipe found through Pinterest, HERE.), its called Sweet Potato & Peanut Soup! It's amazing, one because it tastes pretty darn good and two because after a long exhausting day it was easy and quick to put together.

This recipe yields about 6 cups and goes well with jasmine rice. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

Shopping List:

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 small onions diced, about 1.5 cups
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 stalks celery, diced
• 3 cups vegetable broth
  
• 1 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 to 2-inch chunks
• 1 13-ounce can “lite” coconut milk
• 1/3 cup unsalted roasted peanuts
• 1.5 tablespoons lime juice
• Chopped cilantro, and chopped peanuts for garnish

Directions:

Heat oil in a large soup pot. Add the onion and garlic and cook (stirring often) until onions begin to get soft. Now add the celery, sweet potato, and broth. Cover and increase the heat to high to bring it to a boil.  Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook about 15 minutes until potatoes are soft. 

Next Puree half of the soup in a food processor or blender and add back to the pot. Puree the coconut milk and peanuts until smooth and add to the soup along with the lime juice. Give everything a good stir over low heat to warm thoroughly. Do not boil. Serve alongside rice and garnish with cilantro and chopped peanuts.

7-11 = Wedding Anniversary

On Wednesday we celebrated our second anniversary! 

A month ago we went to Ucluelet and Tofino as a Father's Day/Anniversary present(which you can read all about HERE), so it wasn't necessary that we go all out to celebrate however it was crucial to at least acknowledge the importance of the vows we made to each other two years ago. 

We began the day by sleeping in, well at least staying in bed, its kind of hard sleeping when a little monkey is crawling all over you. Mid-morning we went for an infrared sauna at the gym... I love the infrared, I can't get over how much sweat can come out of my body in such a short amount of time. It feels so cleansing, especially when your consuming mad amounts of H2O to replenish the loss of liquids in your body.

After the sauna Sevio stayed to work out while Rylee and I did a few errands around town. The early part of the afternoon consisted mainly of me putting together my gift for Sevio, which I'll go into more detail later. We then went home to just relax and hang-out. At 6:30 we dropped Rylee off at our close friends house who offered to watch Rylee while went out for a dinner date at the local golf course.

Between our appy and main course we exchanged our gifts, and surprisingly we gave each other quite similar gifts. I opened mine first and as you can see by the image above my husband has a real knack for exquisite gift wrapping! After reading a very nice note that was full of lovely compliments I opened the "hot cocoa" to find a hand-crafted gift called "Date Night In A Jar" that I wanted to create after finding it on Pinterest (check the blog out HERE). I was so surprised that he got me anything let alone spent some time making it, he's so good to me! Anyways the idea of the gift is that you fill a jar with painted popsicle sticks, and each color represents a different style of date (and each color is explained on the tag).

• Red sticks have more expensive dates on them that require planning on our part.
• Pink sticks are things we can do away from home but are less expensive than the red and don't require as much planning.
• and Yellow are inexpensive/free "at home" dates.

So it's perfect for those days when we want to do something but don't know what or can't decide what to do, we'll leave it up to the fate of the popsicle stick! I love the spontaneity and think its such a cute creative way to keep the love alive.
Now, on to me, or Sevio rather, the gift I gave him was funny enough a Pinterest find as well! It's called the "Passport to Love" (check the blog out HERE), it cost whopping $1.01 and took about 3 hours to put together for 12 months worth of inexpensive but meaningful dates. As it says in the blog its "the perfect gift if you are low on money but high on love OR if you’ve been trying to get in the habit of having regular date night." All I had to do create is the kit which consists of:

• A card (So he knows what its all about)
• A Travel Itinerary (So he knows which nights to reserve for me)
• A passport (So he can travel the world with me)
• Passport stamps (So he can record and remember each one of our travels)
• Airline tickets (Just for fun, there's an online generator that you can completely customize all the details of location, time, person, and you can even pick the appropriate airline)

And the basic idea behind it all is to "travel the world" together, visiting a different destination each month. I'll give you an example of ideas that creator gives out which with a little creativity you can make it your own using attractions in your own town or city or turn your bedroom or living room into another country and pretend like your going off to a far off exotic destination.

Our first stop was this evening and we found ourselves in Moscow, Russia and due to my late preparations I didn't have time to get it all together but I did make a delicious borscht, we did shots of ginger ale, and watched The Hunt for Red October. And these were the original ideas were given for Russia:

• Make some Russian food.  Try Borscht or Beef Stroganoff
• Forget the vodka, take shots of rootbeer
• Play Russian roulette with a cap gun.  Or dress as mobsters.
• Listen to some Russian music online and try to dance the Preesyadka (the Russian knee-bending, kick dance)
• Watch Anastasia or The Hunt for Red October
• Watch the Russian Ballet or Opera on YouTube 

So there you have it, the world awaits us and who knew its all so close to home :P Next month we're en route to Paris, France...  oh là là!