Sweet Potato & Garlic Galettes

These galettes have become my thing. They're what I make if I'm required to make something. I love them for several reasons, not least of which being that they're the brainchild of one of my favourite people, Yotam Ottolenghi (whose cookbook I've already posted about). While some assembly is needed, they're actually really easy to make, and they tend to be crowd-pleasers: garlicy, crispy/crunchy, salty, spicy... all the important boxes are ticked. Like most people, I like making things with a high reward to effort ratio.

The amounts in this recipe are approximate and don't really matter - you can use as much or as little of each as you see fit.

...The moral of the story is, you can basically put anything on puff pastry and it will magically look/taste incredibly schmancy.


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Blackberry Curd Tarts

I think I ate my own body weight in blackberries last summer. Behind our flat in Chelmsford were miles and miles of blackberry bramble, and it seemed like we were the only ones picking them. All-you-can-eat blackberries! I was in heaven. Thinking about it now, Chelmsford seems like some kind of mythical promised land - not the land of Milk and Honey, but of berries and rosemary:


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World's Best Sangria

This weekend, my sistah-from-anotha-mistah Jenna came to visit. We shopped at the Old Strathcona farmer's market, walked down Whyte, did lunch at two of my favourite restaurants (Mayfield Joey's and the Cactus Club), went to the mall and shopped till we dropped, AND made an epic meal from recipes we found on Pinterest. Basically the girliest weekend ever.

And here's one more superlative: this is the best sangria I've ever had, like ever. In my whole life. We made two big pitchers of it and guzzled it like juice. It was a gorgeous weekend for it - I don't want to jinx anything, but I feel like summer is officially here to stay. And now that we have a signature drink, I hope there are many more girly weekends in the coming months.


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Ginger Creams

In most cookbooks, the table of contents reads something like: Appetizers, Mains, Sides, Desserts (et cetera, et cetera). If I ever made one, the only categories I would need are: Breakfast, Desserts, Breakfasty-Desserts, and Stress-Eating (...and maybe a brief addendum for all the tofu and vegetables).


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Carrot, Apple and Pecan Muffins

A couple days after I moved back to Canada, my mom and I drove to my uncle's farm near Sedgewick for Thanksgiving dinner. It was an Albertan crash course - nothing reacquaints you with your homeland quite like a day driving through its countryside. We saw geese and deer and moose, and the coyotes were just starting to howl at each other as we left the farm.


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New York Sesame Seed Bagels

In October 2009 I took a bus to New York, where I met up with my sister for a mid-term holiday. It's in the top 5 best things I've ever done. New York is every bit as amazing/surreal/scary/magical as you imagined when you were a kid, and then some. There's character and mythology crammed into every square inch of that place, and it was overwhelming - but at the risk of sounding corny, it made me feel alive. (Yeah... that was extremely corny).

Anyway, our hostel was in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and that place is seriously TEEMING with hipsters. And say what you like about them (*cough* pretentiousridiculoustryhards *cough*), where there are hipsters, there's usually good food. After being disappointed with the free breakfast at the hostel, my sister and I started going to Swallow Coffee on Bogart Street every morning before heading out to explore. They did coffee and takeaway breakfasts, as well as VHS video rentals. Of course.


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Millenium Cafe Pumpkin Cookies

If you live in Red Deer and haven't had a pumpkin cookie from Café Millenium, you need to. They're amazing. Cushiony-soft little things topped with a magical crack-sauce icing. They're so good that a couple of summers ago, when I was working in an office in the very far north of the city, my co-workers commissioned me to go on a pumpkin cookie run (it took my whole lunch hour to get in and out of downtown, but it was worth it).


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