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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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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Over the years, the most popular post has been my recipe for Easy Yogurt Overnight Oats (thanks, Buzzfeed) and as the temperature continues to go up, it’s easy to see why. They are super easy to make because all the prep is done the night before and you get to wake up to a cold, creamy breakfast that can be dressed up with all the fruit and toppings your heart desires. A definite plus for me because I tend to be very zombie-like first thing in the morning and the window between waking up and leaving for work tends to feel very short.

Lately, I’ve been posting a quick photo of my weekday breakfasts on Snapchat and it’s helped me become a little more creative with what I eat. When I was a teenager, I was perfectly happy with a large bowl of Cheerios or another kind of cereal, but over the last years I’ve discovered that boxed cereal doesn’t fill me up the same way. Right now, I’m really into simple foods with lots of veggies or fruit (hello berry season!) and anything that doesn’t take a lot of time to put together.

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With all the pumpkin I’ve been eating this month, it’s a miracle my head hasn’t turned into one. I’m yet to make a pumpkin pie, but I’ve been making lots of pumpkin pie oatmeal for chilly morning breakfast (recipe here) and we finished off the pumpkin cake a couple weeks ago. As I type this, I have another little guy sitting on my desk that will likely be roasted and baked into something delicious. It may seem like I’m eating a lot of pumpkins now, but I know I’m really going to miss squash season once we’re knee deep in gingerbread and peppermint season.

These cookies are not made with pumpkin per say, but they have all the lovely spices that remind me of pumpkin pie and I couldn’t resist the chance to break into my food colouring and use my little pumpkin-shaped cookie cutter. My sister was visiting over the weekend and she kept commenting on how great the condo smelled every time we opened the oven door. I cheated and used a container of pumpkin pie spice, but you can use a mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and allspice if you don’t have any on hand.

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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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Bananas never last in our kitchen. In fact, until recently I’d have to remind myself to put bananas on the list before heading out to the grocery store. Thanks to my almost daily green smoothie habit, we will easily go through a bunch in under a week. Trevor also likes to have a piece of fruit with his breakfast and lately, it became a battle of who got the last banana. Since my weekday green smoothie usually happens after work, I always lost. Until now.

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Happy Easter Weekend!

No holiday-themed recipe this week. Normally I would get really bummed out about not being able to “time” my recipes properly in accordance to the upcoming holidays, but this time I actually have an excuse. Right now, Trevor and I are making our way to the airport for our big Easter weekend trip. Vague much? I guess you’ll have to keep an eye on my Instagram for more clues.

This little mini vacation has been a long time coming for us. Since we didn’t travel anywhere for Christmas, we’ve both been feeling a little stir-crazy. Does that happen to anyone else? We booked this trip back in January during what I thought was one of the coldest weeks of winter (little did I know that February was still coming for us). Now that the weather is a tad warmer, I’m excited to tie up my running shoes and go explore and eat my way through another city.

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Whenever there is a fresh blanket of snow outside, I always find myself reaching for comfort food. Lately it’s been casseroles, homemade soup, fresh baked rolls, warm mugs of apple spiced tea and all the baked goodies imaginable. The freezer as of late has become pretty bare because we’ve somehow managed to eat through all the carrot ginger soup and leftover turkey stew I made and promptly froze at the end of December. Luckily with all this soup and stew we’ve been eating, my new bread maker has been getting plenty of use. I’ve become a master of the “dough” setting and turning out fresh rolls like nobody’s business. Hopefully later on in the year I’ll be able to face my fear of making fresh bread on a regular basis and we can stop buying up all the spongy commercial bread at the grocery store across the street (possible goal for 2015?).

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In early November, I started taking hot yoga classes at a studio near our condo. Nothing too crazy, just something to help me stretch and unwind a couple nights a week. It’s been especially good because my job is very sedentary and much of my morning and afternoon is spent sitting at a computer desk. The last time I did any hot yoga was a little over two years ago, so the first few classes were a little rough to say the least. However, it’s now been a little over a month and I’m amazed at how quickly I was able to gain back some flexibility. The human body is a pretty cool thing.

Besides flexibility, I’ve also had to deal with an increased need to eat ALL the food around me. Luckily it’s a pretty great time of year for food. Between holiday parties, cookie swaps, and baking up a storm on the weekends, my hungry yoga belly has never been happier.

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Even though Canadian Thanksgiving is over, pumpkin is still very much a big deal here. We’ve been eating leftover pumpkin pie tarts (made with coconut milk for Trevor), pumpkin gingerbread loaf and now I’m back to eating pumpkin for breakfast. It may seem like overkill right now, but soon we’ll be in the middle of the holiday season with gingerbread, peppermint and eggnog. The fall season is very, very short and I was nicely reminded of this the other day when I noticed some retail stores have already started to put out their upcoming holiday merchandise. I was so not ready to see that much red and green so soon after my long weekend.

I recently took on the challenge of roasting pumpkins to make my own puree, and wow, what a difference it was compared to the canned stuff. I’m all for using canned food when I’m in a pinch, but sometimes I forget the obvious of how much tastier (and cheaper!) it can be to go that extra mile. Of course, I forgot to document the process because taking apart a pumpkin, gutting it, cleaning, and trying to keep the seeds can be a messy job. Two small 3lb “pumpkin pie” pumpkins took me a little over an hour and that was before they were even placed in the oven. Luckily, I ended up with a sizable bowl full of pumpkin seeds to roast and over 4 cups of delicious pumpkin puree.

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