Maple Leaf Mommy

Welcome to our weekly All Canadian Link Up!  This weekend and every weekend, Canucks Rock! with our All Canadian Link Up and Candid Canuck feature interview.  Brought to you by your hosts: Did you know Canada?, Tales of a Ranting Ginger and Maple Leaf Mommy!

This week's Candid Canuck is Sara from The Travel Presse. Check out our interview with her..

Sara with her two brothers in New Zealand.

T is for table laid out with tasty treats.


We did a little taste testing with some of the goodies hubby and I brought back from our trip to the Food Bloggers of Canada Conference last month.  (Thank you Tree of Life!) And I thought this would be a good time for trying out some of the new photography tips I picked up at the event.

So tell me, are my new photo taking tricks working? Am I tempting you at all?

I recently received a preview copy of Listen to the Birds: An Introduction to Classical Music!, the newest release from award-winning Canadian children's publisher The Secret Mountain. I've reviewed a few book & CD sets from The Secret Mountain in the past, and I've always been impressed with the quality of the books (hardcover, lovely paper, great print quality; I'm a sucker for that).

The subject matter for this one though stole my heart, it's designed as an introduction to classical music. I'm always eager to expose my girls to the fine arts, so as a parent how could I not love this concept?

Now, I will admit, at ages 3 and 5, my daughters are too young for this book. It's wordy, and not quite interesting enough to keep them engaged. They enjoy it in small snippets, but there's no way I can get them to sit still long enough to get through the entire thing. However, this doesn't really surprise me because they are well below the suggested age range. The book says it's made for ages 7 and up, and I'm guessing that is spot on.

Welcome to the The Great Canadian Giveaway Link-Up hosted by Mom vs the Boys and Maple Leaf Mommy.  This is a weekly link-up, with a new linky published every Thursday (often up by Wednesday night).

Canadian sauce maker Maison Le Grand sent me a lovely assortment of gourmet cold-pressed Pesto and Rosée Sauces to play around with in the kitchen. They asked me to share a recipe with my readers that I made with one of the Rosée Sauces. And I've been struggling with what to post, because truly the sauces are so easy to use, it's embarrassing to call anything I've come up with a recipe.


For example, here's what we had for dinner last night: I browned some chicken. Removed it from the pan. Sauteed some garlic and thin cut carrots and zucchini. Added the chicken back in, added the Maison Le Grand Rustic Rosée Sauce and let it simmer for a bit. And while all of this was going on I boiled some rigatoni pasta on the other burner. Not counting chopping the veggies, which I had done earlier in the day, the entire meal was ready to eat in under half an hour.

See what I mean? Do you get why I don't really feel like I can take much credit for the recipe? The sauce is really doing all of the heavy lifting.  Take chicken, your vegetables of choice, add sauce, add pasta... Voila dinner is served!