After a busy week, one of my favourite ways to unwind is in the kitchen. It doesn’t matter if it’s making supper for the night, baking cookies for the week or preparing muffins for weekend breakfast. Something about following a recipe’s instruction, measuring and shifting flour and taking that first bite is so soothing, it seems to melt away all my built up stress.
Yes, I’m strange that way.
You know those handy cookie scoop devices that allows you to create perfectly round cookies each and every time you bake? Well, have you ever broken one?
This seems to be my habit as of late. Over Christmas holidays, I was in charge of making the chocolate truffles for our dessert platter. I was over-enthusiastic with my scooping and likely running on a sugar-high from all my secret taste-testing, when I clenched too hard on the mechanical scoop handle and managed to twist the gear inside. The sliding blade became dislodged and stuck out at a sad angle from the device. This was a heavy-duty scoop too and the first time on record that it broke.
A couple weeks ago, Trevor took me to my favourite restaurant, Fresh, for pre-birthday brunch. For the last few months, I had been raving about all the good things I had been hearing about their brunch menu, especially their pancakes. Trevor took this as a hint and instead of going out for birthday supper later that day, we made our way downtown for brunch.
Since moving to Toronto, Fresh restaurant has become a regular staple in our downtown dining experience. Their menu consists of delicious vegan options that shuts down all stereotypes in thinking that meat/milk/egg/cheese and sometime gluten free foods are bland and unsatisfying. Although salads are on their menu, they also offered filling burgers, wraps, assorted baking (chocolate!) and their famous fresh bowls. Trevor’s personal favourite is their flavourful BBQ burger and I will never turn down their broccoli and vegan cheddar soup and an order of crispy quinoa onion rings. As someone who doesn’t eat meat often and with Trevor’s lactose intolerance, it’s great to know that their menu can satisfy both of us without making us feel bad afterwards.
This Valentine’s Day-ish treat has been brought to you by the flavour vanilla.
I know, I know. You’re all sitting there scratching your heads thinking “but where is the chocolate? Won’t somebody think of the chocolate?”
As it goes, every year sometime between the months of December to February, I always find myself growing sick of chocolate. I see it littering the grocery store seasonal aisles and instead of feeling inspired, I just want to run. This year is no different and now I feel that if I see another foil-covered shaped treat, I’ll throw it to the floor and step on it.
Where did January go? I feel like it was just yesterday that I was celebrating the new year. Now every time I go into the grocery store, I’m being bombarded by flowers and chocolates and everything that goes hand-in-hand with Valentine’s Day.
Not that I mind having another reason to buy more chocolate. Mmmmm, chocolate.
Canadian food blogger, baking and eating her way through life. Musical theatre fanatic. Personal finance nerd. Sometimes runner/yogi. Green smoothies are pretty amazing.
