Hellooo! So glad to know that you are still here. It was never my intention to go this long without a recipe or even just a post, but I seriously underestimated how little time I would have, especially after I returned to work after my maternity leave.

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Seeing as how sukiyaki is considered a wintertime meal, it seems fitting that I would share my Grandma’s recipe on the last day before spring. Sukiyaki is a Japanese hot pot dish that consists of meat and vegetables that are slowly simmered in a mirin, soy sauce, and sugar mixture. Along with the meat and vegetables, my Grandma would also add sliced water chestnuts, potatoes, mushrooms and a package of Ichiban noodles. The whole pan would be brought to the center of the dining room table and we would eat everything over a bed of hot rice. My Grandpa enjoyed his in a more traditional sense by cracking a raw egg into a bowl before adding his hot ingredients.

I had emailed myself the measurements and instructions to this sukiyaki recipe a couple Christmases ago when I was made it alongside my Grandma, and I recently discovered the email while doing a massive inbox cleanup. After cooking and posting the end results on Instagram, I received a few comments and requests for the recipe. I get it, nothing is more comforting than a hot pot meal.

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The last few days have been filled with cold medicine, kleenex, and binge-watching Netflix. I don’t know how they do it, but our favourite shows seem to always know when we’re feeling run down and they all come back at once to make us feel better. Lately, Trevor and I have been enjoying the last season of Girls (sob), the mid-season return of Last Man on Earth and the newest season of Love. Cooking has been pretty minimal due to lack of energy, so I’ve been making a point to clean out the freezer and eat all the leftovers. It’s times like these that I’m grateful for batch cooking.

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Whenever I think of my greatest food weakness, I always narrow it down to freshly baked bread. The delirious, glorious smell of fresh bread has always sent me into a complete tailspin. During my early twenties, I spent a summer during university working the storefront of a family-run bakery in Regina and it was pretty much a dream come true for me and my deep love of carbs. A good portion of my summer paycheck went back to that bakery and I would stock up on their homemade bread, dinner rolls, poppy seed loaf, and their daily cinnamon buns.

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I’m hoping that by posting this recipe today, I’m putting it out there in the universe that we could really use some snow. I checked the weather this morning and I can’t believe it’s early December and it’s raining. To be quite honest, I’m not sure how I feel about that. A couple of weeks ago it was a little chilly and I bought a new winter jacket, but jokes on me because I’ve only been able to wear it once. Maybe I’ll re-watch the “Winter” episode of the Gilmore Girls Revival on Netflix and hopefully, that will set off something (PS: those #finalfourwords, am I right?).

While it doesn’t look like December outside, it’s starting to feel like the holiday season in our little condo. We haven’t yet made the trip down to our storage locker to get our Christmas decorations, but I’m already starting to prep some holiday treats and make lists for the upcoming cooking and baking I need to do. My office is holding it’s annual cookie exchange in a couple weeks and I’ve already signed an armload of cookbooks out of the library to conjure up some inspiration. During our weekend cleaning, I also found a couple of old holiday magazines from 2013/2014 that may come in handy. Hoarding magazines for the win!

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I realize that this may not be considered “the best time” to post a stuffing recipe, what with Canadian Thanksgiving come and gone and American Thanksgiving over a month away. But as the temperature continues to drop and the evenings get cooler, I know this stuffing will still make a nice hot side dish to go alongside a Sunday roasted chicken or weekend glazed ham. Just because Thanksgiving is over for us Canadians (and is still on the horizon for those south of the border) doesn’t dismiss the fact that snow and winter are on their way. Now may actually be the best time to stock up on comfort food ideas for the long cold months ahead.

In all honestly, though, I did originally plan to remake and take photos of this recipe at some time at the end of the year. But it worked out that I was the first person to finish my supper (lupper?) on Thanksgiving and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to use my camera in the natural daylight. You may notice that the staging in these photos are a little rough and all of the food is awkwardly piled on one side of the dish. But that day I was fueled by turkey, gravy, and determination, so nothing was going to stop me. Plus I like to think that the holidays are not so much about getting things perfect as they are about eating good food and spending time with the people you love.

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I know we’re at the very end of rhubarb season, but I couldn’t let the season go without sharing my Grandma’s recipe for rhubarb meringue cake. It’s also a bittersweet day because today would have been her 83rd birthday. My Mom sent me a photo of her handwritten recipe last month, but I was so caught up in all my jam making that I didn’t have any rhubarb to spare. Once I slowed down on the jam production, I set aside some extra stalks.

When I first made this cake, I had no visual guide and only a very briefly written recipe, so I was constantly texting my Mom questions: What size of cookie sheet do I use? How thick is the cake suppose to be? Is it supposed to be meringue? How thick??? My fingers turned red and went numb chopping up stalk after stalk of rhubarb and after I spread the thick, fluffy meringue onto the unbaked cake base, I started panicking and was convinced that I had done something wrong. We were just about to eat supper (poor Trevor was hovering around the counter waiting for me to move so he could get his food), so I put the cake in the oven, set the timer and hoped for the best.

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My experience in the kitchen started at a young age. I remember trailing after my Grandma when she was in the kitchen and “helping” lick whipping cream off the detachable beaters. On nights when I wasn’t doing homework, I would watch my Mom prepare supper and reluctantly set the table (my least favourite chore). I made chocolate chip cookies so often that I had the recipe from The Purity Cookbook memorized before I reached a double-digit age. But my real training in the kitchen didn’t occur until I was 11 years old and my Mom was pregnant with my sister.

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For the past month I’ve been making a point of going through and cleaning up old files on my computer (call it spring cleaning if you will) and a couple days ago I came across the cookbook I made for my Grandma. I filled it with family photos, fun little snippets and of course, a round-up of her most loved, family favourite recipes. Last December I hounded my Mom to send me photos from her recipe notebook and then spent countless evenings transcribing her handwritten notes. The structure of each handwritten recipe was the same: title, ingredient list, oven temperature and then total minutes (i.e. 350*F – 11 minutes). That’s it. Luckily I spent a lot of my childhood and teen years observing her in the kitchen, so I was able to understand the lack of instruction for the most part, along with the help of a little kitchen intuition and of course, advice from my Mom.

Over the years I’ve featured a couple of my Grandma’s recipes here on the blog, but it wasn’t until I started the cookbook project that I was able to get her recipe for monster cookies. And after having a blast stacking cookies, taking photos and getting crumbs everywhere, I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to finally share the recipe. Always a crowd pleaser, monster cookies are fun, chewy cookies that are notably made with peanut butter, rolled oats and filled with lots of chocolate chips and M& M’s. As former peanut butter loathing child, I always wondered why my Grandma had jars of the stuff in her pantry and now I think I have my answer.

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The last few months have been difficult since my Grandma passed away. Late last year we were informed that her cancer had returned and then she left peacefully in the second week of January. I barely had a chance to register the former and then we were thrown head first into Christmas. Suddenly we were wrapping presents, baking and making the most of the holidays. On January 2nd, a couple hours before our plane was to leave, I hugged her and silently wished her goodbye in my head because I knew I would never be able to say the words out loud.

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