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.

Jan

We've been trying to stay warm in this weather, I haven't even really taken my camera out. There is so much ice I'm afraid I will fall with my camera and hurt it.

We have been cooking A LOT though, so here:

smoked herring kippers on homemade bread, roasted cauliflower with tahini sauce (from the pantry #2 and 3)

homemade butternut squash goatcheese ravioli with sundried tomato pesto (from the pantry #4)

chocolate souffle with nougat whip

spicy kettle corn

awesome sticky buns

pulled pork, bacon and egg sandwich

orahnjaca

From the Pantry #1

Israeli couscous. Cooked with it once, couldn't figure out how, left it forever. I have a whole bag of it. So I tired it again and it's great! Loved it, very filling though. Don't kid yourself into thinking it's healthy. I mean...well, it is as healthy as pasta is. Cook it in a pot of boiling water, 15 or so minutes. I cooked up some swiss chard, red peppers, shallots, garlic, topped it with goat cheese and chives. Drizzled with some great olive oil. Next time I need to add more balance, like my aged balsamic vinegar. Yum!

Really!

Jan 7th

We’ve been keeping things really low key here recently. Pajamas after work kinda low key. Mind you, I cook in my pajamas. We watched Aladdin one night, and ate bacon, onion, rosemary pizza with a little truffle oil. We had it with some raspberry lemonade from the pantry. And blueberry pavlovas, from the freezer.

We’ve reached 100 days until we leave for Europe. Holy! With that constantly in mind I came to the realization that we have a LOT of food that I don’t want to go stale/bad/freezer burned. So I will attempt, in the next 100 days, to use up all these items and new and delicious ways. They come from the cupboards, the pantry and the freezer. I’ll be posting on my other blog any worthy recipes, and the rest will get quick mention here. I’ll call it, From the Pantry.

An example of something from the pantry was this salmon fillet. I spiced it up and ate it with some (AWESOME) herbed rice and my pickled beans (so many in the pantry!)

Eating Well...

No doubt about that.

No excuse for my absence.

But today we made homemade pasta!

Goodbye 2010

If you’re not saying it, you are thinking about it. We are all reflecting on a passing year. Our days were busy, fun and sadly gone. I’ve experienced a lot of change this year, our family growing up and moving on. I got married, and went on numerous trips in this half of the world. I’ve learned more about my husband and our growing relationship, like a tree, from the ground up. We’re becoming more solid everyday. It’s hard to believe I’m another year older, when it feels like we just started 2010.

To recap this year: a marriage (ours), a honeymoon, two sisters graduating and moving out, an amazing and bonding trip to California with said sisters, a sickness involving weeks in the hospital, a death of an elder, and a decade beginning birthday.

I had a lot of fun this year, it’s good to be young, one day I won’t have this freedom. It was nice to learn a little more about who I am and who I want to be. It was nice to feel happiness right down to my toes and warm fuzzy feelings eating me up. I enjoyed my time with family and friends and I especially enjoyed my summer. I enjoyed gaining a year of experiences and a year of experience with all the things I love baking, photography and being outdoors.

I’m anticipating yet another year full of change, life changing decisions to be made, futures to be started. 2011 is my year of realized dreams.

In the coming year I hope I can strike a better balance in my life, here is what I’ll try:

I want to pay more attention to you, whoever you are. If all you do is read this, I want to write to you more. If you are my close family I want to be around you, to give you more of myself. If you are not so close family I definitely want to know you better, wish you a happy birthday ON your birthday, surprise you with treats and show you that I care about you. If you are my dog I want to pay more attention to you, shower you with love and play your slimy game of fetch.

I want to travel more, see more, understand more. I want to make connections to new places and discover that which I overlook, the things around me all the time. I want to experience the rivers and mountains, here, and get outside even more than I do. Picnics in my favourite park, tea parties in my garden, cold water and granola bars at the top of our hikes. Foraging for mushrooms and fiddleheads, my food and outdoors belong together.

I want to stick to a baking budget. An allotment both of money and time. 2010 could be summed up as the year of my kitchen, all be it extremely tiny, but this is where I spent the majority of my time. I need to balance my baking with my needs. I need to be in the kitchen to keep sane, this is where I enjoy myself, but baking more than we could ever dream of eating is consuming the majority of my food budget, we need balance. So this means baking once every other day not a few items everyday. And slowing down once I get there, there is NO rush, no one told me I had to make anything!

And that brings me to my next point, I need to cook myself more dinners, real dinners. Learn the techniques I want for my children, my kids won’t want a bowl full of vegetables every night,or leftovers 6 nights a week! I challenge myself to break out of my safe food and get into the unknown, and hopefully share it with you.

So please, remind me of these things. You are important to me, more important than my hobbies, my pjs and a book, my over planned planning! Good luck to all of us in 2011, I hope it is your year of dreams too.

This was our Christmas...

for dinner please refer to here.