Aurelie D.A.P.L. January Recipient Writes a Blog Post for Deko and Posh

Note: A big thank you (even though these letters are tiny) to Deko and Posh for letting me write a blog post on their fantastic blog! My words are not worthy…

Among the things people most often ask after hearing about my rather grueling schedule is “Do you ever do anything else?”. The answer is yup! I do plenty other than my cookbook and business. To prove it, I have come up with a list of the top 5 things I do besides work on The Healthaliciously Good Cookbook and related cooking.

List of the Top 5 things I Do Besides cookbook/business

1. Read! I love reading. I am so notorious for it that I always get books or gift cards from book stores for Christmas/my birthday. I don’t have a single favorite book (I can’t pick), but I do like and am currently reading the Eragon series by Christopher Paolini (although I find them a bit too blood and gore… usually skim through those parts) and the Aurelie Laflamme by India Desjardins series (This series is written in French because, being a bilingual Canadian, I also speak French. I enjoy reading them because I get a kick out of seeing my own name in print. Too cool!).

2. Playing my clarinet. Another one of the things I do often, even though the “woody” feeling of a clarinet reed in my mouth bugs me. I typically practice around a half hour each day and I am trying to work that amount of time up to 45 minutes everyday (New Year’s resolution!).

3. Choir (practices, concerts, fundraisers, and everything in between). Although I seem like a very musical person because of 2 and 3, let me assure you I’m not (in fact, I don’t have a favorite song, group, or anything. I’ll listen and appreciate just about anything playing on the radio with few exceptions) . I just happen to participate in both of these activities because a) I enjoy playing the clarinet and b) Choir is fun and we get to go on trips and perform at concerts. Anyhow, yes, I am in a choir and we practice often. 2 hours and a half every week + 4 hours every month+ fundraisers/concerts/extra practices = a lot of time spent at choir.

4. Walking with the dog. Our family is honored (or doomed, depending on your point of view) to live with a small, energetic (a.k.a. excessively hyper), always-hungry-no-matter-which-time-of-day beagle dog named Julie (Yes, we named our dog a human name, despite our best intentions.). She requires long walks daily (rain or shine) to be placated otherwise she will chew your socks or find some other havoc-wreaking activity to do.

5. Surfing the net. Probably the activity that is the less interesting of the 5 (because who doesn’t do this?), but yes, I must admit that I love to surf the web. Some of my favorite sites include are http://www.freerice.com which quizzes you on vocabulary words (and also on geography, languages, and other subjects, if you want) and gives money that helps pay for rice given to the needy after you get a question right, http://www.goodsearch.com which gives money to your favorite charity every time you search, and http://www.care2.com which lets you send free ecards and earn money for environmental charity at the same time.

So that’s my top 5! What about you? What do you do in your free time?