I’ve been cautiously enjoying the warm weather we’ve been experiencing as of late. Cautious because I know it won’t last. Concerned because it’s a little unnatural to have double digit weather in the middle of February. I think this Sarah Scribbles comic I recently saw on Facebook properly sums up my feelings best.

Despite my conflicted feelings, I took advantage of this nice weather a couple weeks ago and shot these cookie photos outside. I normally don’t do any photography on our little south-facing balcony, but I really wanted to make use of this old table I snagged a couple years ago from the furniture recycle drop-off room in our building. The last few wet winters have not been kind to this table, but this makes for an excellent surface for food photography. I’ll take what I can get, especially since our limited condo space makes hoarding multiple photography surfaces pretty difficult. In fact, at this point, I’m pretty sure my days of dragging this musty table inside for photos are now over.

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I had every intention of posting something right after I attended the 2016 Food Bloggers of Canada Conference at the end of October, but the universe had other plans. Remember earlier last month when I had a minor cold and then said that I couldn’t remember the last time I was sick? Well touche universe, touche. Right after the conference, I was hit with a horrible bout of the dreaded common cold. To give you an example of how crazy it was, I took a couple sick days from work and my FitBit told me that during one day, I slept off and on for 15 hours. During the weekends, I became the queen of two-hour afternoon naps. At one point, I was even convinced that my stomach was sloshing around from all the tea and hot soup I was consuming. I’m now slowly getting my energy back (a little cough here and there), but it’s still a miracle that Trevor hasn’t caught it (knock on wood, hah).

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Although I do the majority of the cooking in our kitchen, there are many days where Trevor and I will make separate meals. I’m not a big meat eater and Trevor can’t have dairy, so once in a while, I’ll make a pizza for myself and Trevor will grill himself a steak with all the fixings. It’s a win-win situation because we each still get to cook and enjoy our own favourite foods even if the other person won’t be eating it.

Trevor isn’t the biggest fan of sweet breakfasts, so I’m usually on my own if I make pancakes or waffles on the weekend. Luckily I don’t mind because the majority of the recipes I use will make enough for 2 or 3 people at the most. That way if Trevor doesn’t want any, there is just enough leftovers to make a nice weekday breakfast. I always feel a little bit more ahead on Monday when I can toss leftover pancakes or waffles in the toaster and slather with almond butter and homemade Grandma jam.

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I’m always completely giddy this time of year. It probably has to do with wearing sweaters and boots all the time, walking through parks that are sprinkled with colourful, falling leaves and eating lots of apples, squash, and pumpkins. This season is so short (at least in my opinion), so I try to make the most of it and soak up everything all at once.

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A couple weeks ago, I received a large bag of gala apples from my cousin’s apple farm near Port Elgin. To say that I was excited was a complete understatement. Work commitments and a lack of vehicle options (I recently sold my car) have made it nearly impossible to leave the city, so I was a little bummed out that there would be no apple farm visit this year. To make up for it, we’ve been purchasing the locally grown apples from the busy St Lawrence Market Saturday farmer’s market, but as delicious as those apples were it never felt the same. Half the experience is definitely picking your own apples fresh from the tree and I can’t say I get the same thrill when choosing an apple basket from a sea of other identical apple baskets at the crowded market.

Another big draw I’m currently missing from apple farm is their in-house bakery. While I love their streusel top apple pies (so.much.apple), my mom is more partial towards the apple cheddar biscuits. In fact she is such a fan that she makes them herself using this apple cheddar scone recipe. Although it’s not the same recipe used by the apple farm (which makes hundreds at a time), it’s good for when the mood strikes, they will make a great last-minute breakfast addition and this recipe can be made in less than 30 minutes.

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Apple season is upon us! I’m so excited to share this recipe because the fall season is probably my favourite food season, especially with all the great produce available in Southern Ontario. We recently gave up our car so we’ve been braving the crowds and making use of the Saturday Farmer’s Market at the St. Lawrence Market every weekend. This was one of the many perks I was looking forward to when we were planning our move downtown and I couldn’t be happy that St. Lawrence and many other farmer’s markets are just a 10 minute streetcar ride away. Being carless may mean that we’re unable to make a trip up to the apple farm again this year, but at least we can still get our fill of locally grown apples.

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For a couple of years, I’ve been fighting the urge to buy a doughnut pan. The main reason I didn’t want one was because doughnut pans really only have a single purpose – making doughnuts. I love doughnuts just as much as the next person who has a baking blog, but I could never picture myself making them very often. To own a baking gadget with only one purpose seemed pretty pointless unless you plan on using it a lot.

Of course, this changed last week when I spotted this cute little mini doughnut pan at Kitchen Stuff Plus. I can’t say that it was love at first sight because it took me several days to make the purchase, but now that I have it and made these doughnuts, I’m definitely smitten.

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It’s been two weeks since we returned from the farm and we’re still making our way through all our apples. Yesterday was a landmark day in that we finally managed to fit them all in the fridge. Our crisper is full to the brim and we have apples spilling over each shelf. We’ve been keeping our grocery shopping to a minimum as to not disrupt the current organization of the fridge. Even at our rate of eating 2-3 apples per day, we realized that we’re still not making much headway.

I realize that this may sound a little complain-y, but I don’t mean to be. In a few months, we’ll miss these apples especially when I have to resort to going back to the grocery store to pick up some tiny, flavourless ones probably shipped in from somewhere in the States.

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October holds a lot of fun memories for me. Besides being my favourite time of year (fall weather, pretty leaf colours, Halloween, cozy sweaters, pumpkin-flavoured everything), it’s also the month that Trevor and I got engaged. If you read back in my old posts, I mentioned spending Thanksgiving at Smith’s Apple and Farm Market in 2011 and then a couple weeks later making a post with a vague mentioning of the engagement along with a quick apple related recipe. At the time, I was averaging about 50 visitors a week, so I was not sure on what level I wanted to share personal things and who, if anyone, was going to read them.

It’s taken me a while, as I’ve been reading through my old entries, but I’m slowly opening up and trying to become more personable.  I discovered that my favourite food bloggers are the ones who not only post great photos and recipes, but also share a little bit of themselves in their writings. It could be a childhood memory, a personal story, or a small insight to their week and I love this because it allows the reader to get a little glimpse of the person behind the blog. You do have to watch what you share online, but at the same time it adds a bit of a personal touch among the hundreds of thousands of other bloggers who are out there who are all sharing variations of the same recipes.

I realize now that this sounds like a lead-up to me telling our engagement story. There is a bit of a story, but now that it’s almost two years old, I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to do it justice. Instead, I will show some photos from last weekend when Trevor and I drove up to the apple farm, now as newlyweds, to visit family, pick some apples and to remember that time almost two years ago when we decided to get married.

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January is the month that I always find that I eat the healthiest. I stock up on portable fresh fruit and vegetables to take to work and I avoid junk food like the plague. I feel really good for about three-ish weeks and then as February starts to inch closer, I slowly fall off the wagon.

But like every year that I can remember doing this, I am thinking not this year. This year is a big wedding year, and with being a bridesmaid in one of my best friend’s wedding in July and our wedding in August, I figure that this alone is enough motivation to keep on eating better.

This is one of the challenges I’ve faced since starting a food blog – trying to eat healthier. Since I bake something new at least once a week, its almost a guarantee that there will always be baked goods in our kitchen. That’s not a lot of willpower for someone who wants to keep fitting into both a bridesmaid dress and her wedding dress in less than 8 months.

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