For a couple of years, I’ve been fighting the urge to buy a doughnut pan. The main reason I didn’t want one was because doughnut pans really only have a single purpose – making doughnuts. I love doughnuts just as much as the next person who has a baking blog, but I could never picture myself making them very often. To own a baking gadget with only one purpose seemed pretty pointless unless you plan on using it a lot.
Of course, this changed last week when I spotted this cute little mini doughnut pan at Kitchen Stuff Plus. I can’t say that it was love at first sight because it took me several days to make the purchase, but now that I have it and made these doughnuts, I’m definitely smitten.
It’s been two weeks since we returned from the farm and we’re still making our way through all our apples. Yesterday was a landmark day in that we finally managed to fit them all in the fridge. Our crisper is full to the brim and we have apples spilling over each shelf. We’ve been keeping our grocery shopping to a minimum as to not disrupt the current organization of the fridge. Even at our rate of eating 2-3 apples per day, we realized that we’re still not making much headway.
I realize that this may sound a little complain-y, but I don’t mean to be. In a few months, we’ll miss these apples especially when I have to resort to going back to the grocery store to pick up some tiny, flavourless ones probably shipped in from somewhere in the States.
October holds a lot of fun memories for me. Besides being my favourite time of year (fall weather, pretty leaf colours, Halloween, cozy sweaters, pumpkin-flavoured everything), it’s also the month that Trevor and I got engaged. If you read back in my old posts, I mentioned spending Thanksgiving at Smith’s Apple and Farm Market in 2011 and then a couple weeks later making a post with a vague mentioning of the engagement along with a quick apple related recipe. At the time, I was averaging about 50 visitors a week, so I was not sure on what level I wanted to share personal things and who, if anyone, was going to read them.
It’s taken me a while, as I’ve been reading through my old entries, but I’m slowly opening up and trying to become more personable. I discovered that my favourite food bloggers are the ones who not only post great photos and recipes, but also share a little bit of themselves in their writings. It could be a childhood memory, a personal story, or a small insight to their week and I love this because it allows the reader to get a little glimpse of the person behind the blog. You do have to watch what you share online, but at the same time it adds a bit of a personal touch among the hundreds of thousands of other bloggers who are out there who are all sharing variations of the same recipes.
I realize now that this sounds like a lead-up to me telling our engagement story. There is a bit of a story, but now that it’s almost two years old, I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to do it justice. Instead, I will show some photos from last weekend when Trevor and I drove up to the apple farm, now as newlyweds, to visit family, pick some apples and to remember that time almost two years ago when we decided to get married.
The fall season tends to give me two types of feelings. One is the need to organize all the things. This feeling is usually fulfilled with cleaning every inch of our apartment, sorting and donating a bunch of the stuff we no longer use (mostly clothing) and creating new organized ways to live our lives (i.e. cupboard organizers). Previously in our university days, this type of feeling used to be achieved by watching an Oprah special or a particularly depressing episode of Hoarders. Now, I find that the organization bug hits me twice a year: once in the spring and once in the fall. Our apartment has never looked better.
The other feeling that hits me is a weird type of nostalgia. I could blame it on the fact that its September and this time of year is usually reminiscent to those returning to school. However, it’s been 5 years since I said goodbye to my post-secondary career and graduated my way out of tuition fees and overpriced “mandatory” textbooks purchases. Now that I think about it though, this feeling started last week when Trevor and I spent a rare, quiet evening at home enjoying some scotch (him), red wine (me) and flipping through old bands and songs generated from a recent BuzzFeed list. Sometimes I feel so muddled down with trying to keep track and remember things on a daily basis that I am shocked to find out that I can recall lyrics from songs I haven’t listened to in probably a decade. It leaves me with a feeling of wondering “what part of my brain did I drag that information from?”
A couple weeks ago, Trevor and I decided to use a few of the gift cards we received from our wedding and went a little crazy. Along with the usual new set of dishes, kitchen gadgets and cupboard organizers (aka my new obsession) we also purchased a little waffle maker. I had been looking to buy one for a while now, so to say that I was excited for this purchase was an understatement. Let’s just say photos were taken before this thing was even out of the box. It was even the last model in the store. I think it was a sign.
I’ve used this waffle maker twice so far, so it’s already become a nice part of my kitchen appliance family along with my blender and my KitchenAid mixer. Besides making perfect little waffles and being super easy to clean, it also folds up nice and small and can be neatly tucked away in my cupboard. As anyone knows, bulky appliances can be such a pain especially when you have to drag them out to use them. But not this little guy.
One of the reasons I’ve wanted a waffle maker for quite some time is because it’s a nice change in our breakfast routine. We take our breakfast very seriously, especially on the weekends when the morning atmosphere is more relaxed. No getting up at an ungodly hour when it’s still dark out. No carefully sipping hot coffee as to avoid spilling on our work clothes. No rushing to catch the public transit to get downtown before the insanity of rush hour. Just sleeping in and enjoying some breakfast on the living room couch while we watch Netflix in our pajamas. This doesn’t happen all the time, but we try to set aside one day on the weekend to have a relaxing morning.
Canadian food blogger, baking and eating her way through life. Musical theatre fanatic. Personal finance nerd. Sometimes runner/yogi. Green smoothies are pretty amazing.
