Jan 21

Yesterday was: fup90x, a huge excitement over cooking books, tea party dreams, awesome vegetarian quesadillas and the smell of a winter's cranberry cookie.

Tonight I made this amazing chorizo black bean soup.

Jan 19

Yesterday was: a rich bolognese simmering all day, a cold nose, plenty-a-rain, the quiet around me

The winter blues.

I've got a case of the winter blues. I tried my best to avoid it, I feel I really did. Orange juice and vitamin D, exercise every day and enough sleep but it's come on and it's hard to shake.

(I actually sat here and had tea and strawberry shortcakes in the spring)

It's rained non stop, and been dark from 4pm-8am. I haven't seen the sun in 10 days. And to make it all worse we've been counting down the days (89!) until the biggest trip of our life so far and maybe of the rest of our lives, from inside our dark basement apartment. It makes for really long days.

11 days ago I made cupcakes to celebrate 100 days until Europe...it feels like 3 weeks have passed!

So what's a girl to do when she takes her camera outside and sees nothing buy brown and wet? Bake up summer with raspberry crumb bars and strawberry rhubarb pie. Thats what. (And don't worry, the berries were frozen from last summer, no Californian strawberries here)

We threw a hint of summer party, complete with burgers, beer and pie.

She can make tuna noodle casserole.

And her favourite peanut butter and chocolate concoctions.

And maybe fill up on beet barley salad.

The other thing she can do is throw a winter tea party. And hopefully a summer one to follow!

Jan 14

Since our snow day...well on our snow day, shane made me a snowman. Then the cat knocked him over.

I made beef stoup (from the pantry #5) with a delicious oat soda bread.

I hung out with Tash and Erin overnight, did mom's birthday thing and this was my dinner

and this is a peanut butter hot chocolate with homemade marshmallows!

Jan 12

I love snow days! Shane even tried to go to work, but got stuck.

So we hung out and made macaroni and gouda cheese. Yum! And played Monopoly with T & G.