I’m back! Changing things up this fall to Tuesdays for the newsletter. I hope you have had a wonderful summer full of sunshine and delicious meals.
Cooking
Nut and Chocolate Energy Bites: I find I’m always looking for a quick snack to grab on the go to appointments or meetings, so I’ve been playing around with energy bites. This recipe was adapted from Minimalist Baker’s 5 Ingredient Peanut Chocolate Chip Energy Bites.
1 cup Medjool dates, soaked for 10 mins in hot water and drained
½ cup natural peanut butter (or other nut butter!)
½ tbsp cocoa powder
2 tbsp chia seeds
⅔ cup rolled oats
⅓ cup shredded coconut (unsweetened)
¼ cup dark chocolate chips (optional)
½ tsp flaky sea salt
Pulse together the soaked dates, peanut butter, and cocoa powder in a food processor or blender. Transfer to a bowl and hand mix in the chia seeds, oats, coconut, chocolate chips and sea salt. Form into tbsp-sized balls (makes about 20) and set in the fridge. Store in the fridge for up to 7 days (or freeze!).
Other things I cooked:
Julia Turshen’s Swedish Meatballs: these are a weeknight staple for me. I froze half of them in individual portions for future me (even the noodles and cabbage - the noodles lost a little texture but it wasn’t bad!). In my IG post I note my method for braised cabbage.
Alison Roman Chickpea Stew: this is a fall and winter classic for me, so hearty and warming. I do 1 can of chickpeas and 1 can of coconut milk to make it more manageable for one person.
Julia Turshen’s More-Vegetable-Than-Fried-Rice: I couldn’t find a link to her recipe online but this article summarizes her method! Recipe is page 58 in Simply Julia (next time I’d halve the recipe for one person - I was eating rice for days!).
@buttina’s Crispy Tofu: this is my absolute favourite method for fried tofu. The key is freezing the tofu and then letting it fully thaw. I used regular ketchup in my glaze since I didn’t have banana ketchup.
Tuna Melt: last week’s melt had finely diced celery, red pepper and green onion, grainy mustard, mayo and greek yogurt!
Liz Moody’s Sweetgreen Crispy Rice Salad: this is always one of my fav hearty salads for lunches. I prep everything as she lists, I just omit the rotisserie chicken (I can never eat a full rotisserie chicken myself and I find the salad is filling enough as is). So yummy!
Andy’s East Coast Chicken Maple Curry Penne: I loosely followed Andy’s recipe - I added some fresh minced ginger with the onions and garlic, and I didn’t have yellow curry paste so I used some Good Food For Good Coconut Curry Sauce. I also reduced the maple syrup (probably did 1-2 tbsp) and stirred in some greek yogurt to make it a bit creamier. Added frozen green peas and roasted squash at the end to bulk up the veggies!
Drinking
City Seltzer: I came across this at my local coffee shop and it’s so yummy! I tried the Orange Cream, Berry Whip and Cool Melon flavours and loved them all. A few have a slight vanilla flavour to them which I love, and all the flavours don’t taste artificial. My new fav sparkling water/seltzer!
Reading
Naturally Wine Newsletter. I love this newsletter for staying up to date on wine news, learning about trends in wine, and finding local (Toronto) spots to try!
Following
@cookcasual: I’ve shared her profile before but I especially love her account in the fall with all the seasonal produce. Great inspo for veggie-forward meals!
Listening
Using
My freezer! Now that we are back to cozy season, I’m trying to treat my freezer again as not somewhere where food goes to die but to add more variety to my weeks. I froze 3 servings of the stew linked above for easy future meals for me, I chopped half a butternut squash and froze it raw to roast this weekend, and I had some steamed broccoli leftover that I knew I wouldn’t get to so I froze it to throw into a soup or stirfry in the future.
Thinking
About how horrible cleaning those butter and cream cheese boards would be! I’ve been seeing them all over Instagram and they are beautiful and sound delicious, but all that fat getting into the grains of your wooden board stresses me out. I vote to make “butter plates” happen!
Laughing
Have a great week,
Kaleigh