This past week has been cold here in Ottawa. Real cold. That biting kind of cold that gets through your coat and multiple layers of clothing right into your bones. When it is that cold outside, all you want to eat is comfort food. Now for me, comfort food usually consists of lots of carbs; pasta and bread immediately come to mind, but in trying to eat healthier, I have decided to forgo the big bowl of spaghetti and make a stew instead.
As part of my new year’s quest to re-discover healthier eating patterns, I decided that I need to make more of an effort to have breakfast everyday. I have fallen into a rut of just having a cup of tea or coffee for breakfast, but not eating any food. It causes me to get really hungry in the morning and then I find myself snacking or grazing all the way to lunch time. I know that having a real breakfast is going to be key to getting back on track.
I confirmed what I had always believed about myself this past month. I am a stress eater. I threw caution into the wind and settled into a December filled with chips, doughnuts and other fried foods. Let’s not forget the countless desserts and copious amounts of bread that I ate either.
But with 2012 behind me and 2013 and an unacceptable scale reading facing me in the mornings, I am getting back on track with more reasonable food choices. So, I thought that the first thing I would share with you is my new potato chip substitute, Kale Chips.
On December 11th I received a call from my sister that our father had been airlifted to Toronto General Hospital. The next morning, Jamie and I jumped in the car and drove to the city to be with Dad. Cherie, Dwayne, Jamie, Mom and I rushed to be by his side. Unfortunately he was on life support, so he couldn’t talk to us, but we spent the next two days talking to him, and bringing up happy childhood memories.
Well, this weekend was our move in weekend to our new downtown apartment. It was kind of amazing to walk into work this morning, and have our ‘commute’ be a total of five minutes 😉
The last few weeks have been filled with packing up our life and putting it into a series of cardboard boxes. I find it amazing just how much stuff we were able to accumulate. We have been living in a two bedroom apartment with no storage for over four years, yet when we were packing, the boxes just continued to multiply!
The weekend of our move is finally here! I have been talking about it for so long that you may have thought that it had already happened.
When I was starting to pack up our pantry, I noticed that the carton of molasses was almost empty. To me it seemed like it wasn’t worth packing away in a box, but it was the perfect opportunity to look for a recipe to use the molasses I had left.
Well, here is another post dedicated to the art of baking. I am very aware that my last bunch of posts have been about baking, but with Christmas around the corner (only 22 more sleeps!) baking seems to be what is in my heart and mind to do.
When the desire to bake strikes you, there is no sense in fighting it, you might as well give in and start pulling out flour and sugar from your pantry.
To counter the amount of baked goods I have been posting, I thought it would be a good time to share with you a breakfast recipe using coconut flour.
This comes courtesy of the Make it Paleo cookbook (one of the two that I have not packed away). Do not be deceived by the amount of coconut flour in this recipe. Even though it only calls for a quarter cup of flour, these pancakes are dense. Super dense. It made six pancakes (three each), and I was pretty full after the second one. Don’t worry; I managed to eat the third 😉
This blog post could easily be only four words: “These cookies are amazing!” 🙂
Having only access to two cookbooks is really giving me a chance to scour through them to find new and interesting recipes. This experience has really opened up my eyes to the fact that I likely don’t give my current cookbook collection a chance, I look through and if I am not immediately impressed by a photo or a concept, I flip the page. But with only two books available to me (since the rest have been packed), I have to actually read the recipes to determine if the flavour combinations are something that I want to try. I can’t remember the last time that a month’s worth of my baking has all come from the same cookbook.
Drum Roll Please! Finally here it is my tried and true pumpkin soup recipe. Don’t let the list of ingredients or the number of steps intimidate you, this is worth every second of prep.
This recipe was published in October 2001, in one of the first Martha Stewart Living magazines that I had purchased. This particular issue had an entire section on pumpkin foods. The more I read about the different things you could do with pumpkin, the more I wanted to try this versatile food.
Ruby Reduction 