As a stay at home mom, I often have grand plans in my mind of how I’m going to keep the boys entertained without resorting to the tv most of the day. Some days I nail it and they spend most of the day outside but other days they watch tv. A lot of tv. Now I could berate myself or, even worse, compare myself to the other moms who get all their little kids to the beach on their own without seeming to lose their minds. I try hard not to do that (often) because I’m only seeing a […]
Simple and Delicious Oven Fries
There are countless recipes for oven fries on the internet. Some of them are very simple and just involve tossing some olive oil and salt on the potatoes and roasting them in a hot oven on a baking sheet. Others involve cumbersome steps of soaking, or par-boiling, and then drying the potatoes. I’m sure the soaking or par-boiling methods yields oven fries that are something closer to their deep fried cousins but when I’m putting together a quick dinner, that usually includes breaded chicken strips, I don’t want to give my potatoes wedges a bath. I want simplicity so that […]
Pork Schnitzel with Warm Savoury Apples
This is a paid post sponsored by Ontario Apple Growers. All opinions are my own. Growing up, pork chops with apple sauce were a household staple. I was a picky eater so I always had the apple sauce on the side, rather than as a condiment on the pork chop. I was one of those kids who needed each food item to be separate on the plate. The pork chops we had usually had the bone in it still and were more than likely coated in Shake n’ Bake. My mom is a great cook but it was the 1980s and […]
Banana Bread with Prunes & Milled Flaxseed
One of my many food related quirks has to do with how particular I am about bananas. I only eat bananas that are all yellow. If they start to get spotty then the banana flavour is too strong for my tastes. So what happens to the bananas that don’t get eaten when they are perfect for me? Well, they sit on the counter getting more and more skeezy until they are ready for banana bread. Banana bread is a treat. I have tried to make it healthier in the past by using maple syrup, Greek yogurt, rolled oats, etc. in […]
Savoury Flatbreads with Apples and Crumbled Blue Cheese
This is a paid post sponsored by Ontario Apple Growers. All opinions are my own. There is a familiar scene for many who work from home or are a stay-at-home-mom like I am. We maybe grabbed a quick lunch while we were working or scavenged off of the lunch that we were preparing for the little ones. Who among us parents haven’t eaten some macaroni and cheese straight out of the pot with a fork when naptime was barreling down on us? We catch ourselves in the middle of the day getting mighty hangry. It is this time of day […]
Caramel Apple Chelsea Buns
This is a sponsored post for Ontario Apple Growers. As always, all opinions are my own. I remember the first time that I had a chelsea bun. My mom bought me one from a bakery that was in one of the malls in Barrie. I absolutely loved it. I always called it a cinnamon bun but I think that most people consider the ones with that white icing all over it to be cinnamon buns. I don’t eat those ones. My cinnamon buns, or chelsea buns as I learned they are called while watching The Great British Bake Off, always […]
Sour Cream Coffee Cake with Ganache Glaze
I have been in the process of rebuilding myself for a while. Since I last put up a post, I’ve had my third and very last baby. She is beautiful and sweet. She completes our family and she’s adored by everyone. Now I need to rebuild my body, my career, and find myself again so that I can make sure I can raise all these babies of mine as a whole person and not just as the harried shell I usually feel like. Part of my personal rebuild is through exercise. I have found several different workout sources that suit […]
Broccoli Cheddar & Sweet Potato Soup
I’ve always loved cooking and baking so my perspective on making dinner is one that includes deep enjoyment and satisfaction in the process of cooking. Because of my love of cooking, I read a lot about cooking on blogs and I join discussions about it on blogging forums. Frustration in getting people to cook from scratch is a common issue that is raised. Something that does bother me when I see threads on forums on this topic is the amount of judgement directed to people who do not have home cooked food on a regular basis. As someone who loves to […]
Butternut Squash Macaroni and Cheese
Breaking a Pregnancy Taboo (oh and a baby announcement) I don’t know how to talk about this so most of the time I keep very quiet. You see, I’m breaking a very serious rule about pregnancy. The rule is that you are supposed to be so happy to be pregnant. There are permissible modifiers to this rule and they include: you can be unhappy or even miserable (but only in a physical sense) because of terrible pregnancy symptoms and you are allowed to be worried about the well-being of the baby. What you can’t be is thrown into a serious […]
Cheese Cappelletti Updated
I’ve been thinking a lot about expectations lately. I don’t mean societal expectations on a grand scale, what I have been thinking about are the expectations that I have of myself. These expectations fall short of my reality and I am shockingly unkind to myself about it. I don’t aspire to be June Cleaver keeping a perfect home but I am picky about meals. I also only really want to cook when I’m in a good mood which doesn’t happen very often. My son rejoices when I pull out the box of chicken fingers from the freezer or, better yet, […]