Cooking
Bagel Bar: This bagel bar tradition started a few years ago with my girlfriends, where we would thinly slice up veggies, get “good” cream cheese (Western Creamery brand or from a local bagel shop), and do a make-your-own-bagel adventure. This weekend we added to the bar with crispy bacon, sliced old cheddar, smoked salmon, fresh dill, capers, fruit salad and pastries! A super fun brunch:
Other things I cooked:
Alison Roman’s Chocolate Tahini Tart: This is one of my go-to desserts to bring to a dinner party. It’s non-fussy (read: hard to mess up) but always is a crowd-favourite.
Soup bar: I posted this meal idea to my IG stories last year (saved under highlights as “WFH Soup”) - this week I made a single serving of dumpling soup using chicken stock, frozen dumplings, frozen corn, green onion, diced mushrooms, and adding in fish sauce, hoisin sauce and chili oil for quick flavour! Easy, fast, small-batch soup!
Julia Turshen’s Best Black Beans: this was my first time making black beans from dried and I don’t think I will ever go back to canned. They have such an amazing texture when cooked from dried, and are relatively hands-off while they are cooking (no soaking required, and you just need to check on them every 30 mins or so to ensure there’s enough water). These Puerto-Rican-style black beans were soooo flavourful (lots of garlic!).
Roasted delicata squash: My favourite squash right now is delicata - it’s so easy to cook since you can eat the peel. I just cut it in half length-wise and scoop out the seeds, then thinly slice (~0.5-1cm half-moon slices), toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper, then roast at 400F until fork tender and browned at the edges. It’s so sweet, nutty, and flavourful all on its own!
The First Mess “Cookies for Breakfast”: I have a busy work week ahead of me so I wanted something that would be easy to grab for breakfast without much thought. I made a batch of these on Sunday for the week to have with some fruit. I used quick-cooking, non-gluten-free oats because that’s all I had on hand and they turned out great! I used sunflower butter as well because I was too lazy to stir my new jar of almond butter hehe.
Drinking
Avling Brewery’s Ontario Pale Ale “Calm Sea”.
Following
@cookcasual obsessed with this page for seasonal veggie inspiration. Lots of squash ideas were posted recently.
Listening
Tiger Lilies by Sun on Shade, Lloyd Buchanan.
Using
My bread knife. I bought this one last year from Amazon after the reco from @cashinbakes, and it’s so sharp and slices bread/pastries like a dream. Used this for slicing bagels this weekend, as well as cutting croissants into quarters (so we could all try the different flavours) and it didn’t crush the pastries at all!
Thinking
About how amazing fall produce is. Squash, beets, potatoes, apples, the list goes on. I’m ready for cozy food!
Laughing
Have a great week!
Kaleigh