Our Trip to Italy

At the beginning of October, Trevor and I took a trip to Italy! We had booked this trip back in the summer to try and take advantage of the cooler weather and the quieter tourist season. As luck would have it though, when we arrived in Rome it was 28*C for the first couple days and all we had packed was sweaters, jackets, and long pants. Luckily our AirBnb had air conditioning, so we didn’t melt when we were sleeping, but the first couple of days of walking around in the heat were a little uncomfortable. However, it was still a vacation for us and I made the best of the hot weather by eating gelato every single day. When in Rome, right? (more…)

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If you follow me on Instagram or Snapchat, you may have noticed that I started making my own jam. Yes, my tiny little condo kitchen has been turned into a jam making factory. In the last month, I’ve churned out two batches of strawberry jam, two batches of strawberry/rhubarb jam and one batch of lemon/strawberry jelly. The canning addiction has hit me full force and we’ve barely scratched the surface of raspberry, blueberry, apple or peach season. I keep joking with Trevor that by the end of summer, he’ll be able to build himself a fort with all the jars.

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It’s been pretty quiet here. My Feedly newsfeed has been pretty empty too, so I’m glad I’m not the only one taking some time away from the computer screen. There has been some baking going on, but nothing worth sharing for the last few weeks. And when I wasn’t in the kitchen last month, it was busy, busy busy.

So busy in fact that here is a list of 5 fun things I did last month instead of blogging. I tend to feel guilty now that I’m not maintaining a regular posting schedule, but I thought this would be a nice reminder that it’s always good to step away from the keyboard and enjoy life when things get busy.

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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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It’s been a little quiet here and I feel guilty popping in without a recipe to share. But it’s been a rough start to 2016, so you’ll have to bear with me a bit.

For the past little while, I’ve found it difficult to keep up with blogging after my Grandma passed away in early January. To say that she was a huge influence on my love of food and baking is an understatement. Many of her tried and true recipes are scattered here, from her Classic Pecan and Raisin Buttertarts to her famous Prospector Buns and even one of my favourite posts Grandma’s Christmas Shortbread Cookies. I even did a recap post back in 2012 when she took my mom and I to Japan.

Right now, I keep waiting for the right time to get back into baking and food photography, but it still hasn’t hit me quite yet. I have no intention to stop blogging, but I think I need to continue taking a little time away for myself and wrap my head around everything that’s happened these past couple weeks. When the time is right, I’ll be back.

I’m still active on social media, so please feel free to check me out on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

xo

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Growing up, I remember my mom owned a sweater with the phrase “30 never looked so good.” It was a white pull-over sweater with crazy fonts and coloured shapes – think Saved By the Bell styled clipart. When I was a teenager, it become one of my mom’s favourite sweaters to wear while doing chores around the house and at the time I remember thinking how “old” 30 seemed. To a kid like me, being 30 was practically a lifetime away. I still had high school and university to get through. Not to mention that late 20’s post-university phase of figuring out a career, buying a house, balancing a bank account and walking successfully in high-heels. Pretty much everything that I thought responsible, serious adults did once they turned 30 and have everything figured out.

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It’s taken me over a week to post photos from our whirlwind England/France trip because I’ve been in denial about no longer being in vacation-mode. Getting up early when you’re on vacation is fantastic because it’s all about the “what are we going to see next?” or in our case, “what are we going to eat next?” Although we had moved prior to our trip and had a new place to come home to, it was a confusing few days fighting jet lag and getting back into the routine of work and daily life.

The main reason we took this trip was to attend Crystal and Craig’s wedding. Crystal and I go as far back as junior high when we both lived in Saskatchewan and she was even a bridesmaid at my own wedding last year. A couple years ago she went to teach in Saudi Arabia and met Craig who is from the UK. I wasn’t surprised when they announced their engagement, but I was thrilled when she asked me to be one of her bridesmaids. Since the wedding was going to take place overseas, we decided to make the most of the traveling and spend a few days in Paris, with a quick side-stop in London for good measure.

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Here is a photo of a Saskatoon berry pie, fresh out of the oven. Well, as “fresh” as pie can be when instead of a cake, you have a pies for your wedding. And your main pie is not just any pie, but a Saskatoon berry pie, a flavour requested by groom who was born and bred in Saskatchewan. And then after the wedding, you tenderly wrap most of that pie in plastic and tin foil and then you freeze it with the tradition that you will both enjoy a slice on your one year anniversary on August 16th 2014.

Today is our one year anniversary and technically, we had to cheat this tradition by a few days because we’re currently on route to another wedding. This upcoming wedding holds a dear place in my heart because the bride-to-be was one of my close friends in high school and also one of my bridesmaids. So a couple days ago, I unfroze, unwrapped and baked our wedding pie so we could each enjoy a slice.

On our wedding day, the pie was delicious. We each had a bite for photos and later in the night, Trevor cut himself a full slice to enjoy. But as pretty as the pictures look, I guess you can’t deny that the pie was frozen for a year and recently survived a move from our old apartment to our new-to-us condo. In fact, Trevor’s exact words when we each took a bite was “it tastes like it spent a year in the freezer.” Oh well, you can’t win them all!

Happy one year anniversary to my best friend and the love of my life. Although we get to spend today chilling out in the airport, I’m thrilled to be able to spent it knowing that we’re about to cross off a couple places off our travel bucket list!

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One sign of a good moving company is that everything is lovingly wrapped up, even Ikea furniture!

Creeping on our movers from our condo balcony. And yes, that’s the real company name.

Our new place, before the paint job (don’t mind Trevor’s Frankenstein cup and prosthetic spider).

After we painted and re-installed the kitchen shelves. The white/blue is much brighter and more inviting than the green, don’t you think?

Also a side-by-side comparison of our old apartment oven and the oven in our condo. I’m not sure what I love more about this newer oven – the built in timer, the glass window or the fact that the temperature doesn’t shoot up to 450*F at random intervals.

All right, back to laundry and more packing.

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Let me just start by saying that baking ruts are the worst. THE. WORST.

I originally started this post as a top 5 list of things I was doing to avoid the fact that I am dealing with a baking rut (title was lengthy and obviously tentative). However, I couldn’t get passed the 3^rd point without running out of ideas and thinking that I was sounding like a whiny 5-year old. Not my intention, but understandable once you realize how frustrating being stuck in a rut like this can be.

SO FRUSTRATING!

The few things I have had time to make have not been very exciting. Flat raspberry muffins that were so moist we had to store them in the fridge and eat them within 3 days because I was scared they would go bad. Breakfast cookies that don’t taste like anything and I’m still trying to finish off (Trevor has already given up). It can be a little bit discouraging, especially when my inspiration to bake has completely disappeared with all these set-backs.

But I am still around and I know that this rut I’m stuck in will pass. I know that it doesn’t help either that a) it’s summer, so our apartment is currently a million degrees and b) we are in the process of planning a move for August. I was going to do a reveal post about moving sometime in the next month, but I figured that I would just throw it out there now and maybe do another write-up later. Like about how I’m thrilled to finally say good riddance to the ancient, malfunctioning stove my landlord refused to replace and saluting the not-quite-brand-new-but-still-an-awesome-upgrade oven in our recently purchased condo. Or the fact that we will have air-conditioning at the new place so turning on the oven will no longer be an ordeal when the weather is slightly warmer than 20 degrees. Oh, and the fact that we will have, wait for it, our own washer and dryer. Stuff like that.

So here’s to a summer where hopefully I can shake myself out of this rut and dig out my camera under all these moving boxes. Oh, and my inspiration. It’s probably packed somewhere around here too.

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