Growing up, I remember my mom owned a sweater with the phrase “30 never looked so good.” It was a white pull-over sweater with crazy fonts and coloured shapes – think Saved By the Bell styled clipart. When I was a teenager, it become one of my mom’s favourite sweaters to wear while doing chores around the house and at the time I remember thinking how “old” 30 seemed. To a kid like me, being 30 was practically a lifetime away. I still had high school and university to get through. Not to mention that late 20’s post-university phase of figuring out a career, buying a house, balancing a bank account and walking successfully in high-heels. Pretty much everything that I thought responsible, serious adults did once they turned 30 and have everything figured out.
Comfort food #ALLtheTIME is still happening and right now we’re up to our ears in homemade soup, hearty stews and all the fresh bread imaginable for dipping. As much as I’m not a fan of this time of year, what with the cold weather, snow and having to constantly scrape salt off my boots, I can’t deny that all this warm, cozy food sort of makes up for it.
Whenever there is a fresh blanket of snow outside, I always find myself reaching for comfort food. Lately it’s been casseroles, homemade soup, fresh baked rolls, warm mugs of apple spiced tea and all the baked goodies imaginable. The freezer as of late has become pretty bare because we’ve somehow managed to eat through all the carrot ginger soup and leftover turkey stew I made and promptly froze at the end of December. Luckily with all this soup and stew we’ve been eating, my new bread maker has been getting plenty of use. I’ve become a master of the “dough” setting and turning out fresh rolls like nobody’s business. Hopefully later on in the year I’ll be able to face my fear of making fresh bread on a regular basis and we can stop buying up all the spongy commercial bread at the grocery store across the street (possible goal for 2015?).
I’m a big fan of looking through my old recipe archives. It may sound weird, but one of my favourite things to do is look back and see when the last time was that I made something from a certain category. I recently started a notebook full of recipes and flavour combinations that I’ve been meaning to try and flipping through my archives is a good way to keep some variety in my baking (such as posting 6 cookie recipes in a row and not realizing it until after the fact). Plus going through my archives can be a nice reminder to see if I’ve already posted a similar recipe. As of this month, I’ve been blogging on SBH for four years and those early years of posting are especially fuzzy.
One interesting thing of note in my recipe categories was that there were a total of 15 muffin recipes posted in 2012 and 2013. That’s a lot of muffins, especially when you consider that in 2014 I only posted 2 muffin recipes.
So to make up for my seeming lack of muffin recipes last year, I thought it would be fun to get a jump start and post the first one of 2015 in January.
The urge to hibernate has been hitting me really hard as the winter days are getting colder and the nights continue to be dark. Some days I feel like I have energy to burn (do ALL the things!) and other days I just want to wrap myself in a warm blanket and plant myself on the couch. Preferably in front of the TV or with a good book and a large mug of tea.
Along with this urge to lounge around comes the desire to eat all things sugary and starchy. We’re really big on comfort food kick right now, with pasta and casseroles being our favourite go-to for supper. Most nights I try to pair it with a kale salad to keep up our vegetable intake, but it’s not always the case. Winter is a weird time and I seem to have misplaced my desire to eat my vegetables even when I know I should be. I’ve even been turning my nose up at the idea of making green smoothies. Who am I and where did the real Jessica go?
Canadian food blogger, baking and eating her way through life. Musical theatre fanatic. Personal finance nerd. Sometimes runner/yogi. Green smoothies are pretty amazing.
