Eat Alberta 2014

 

This weekend I set my alarm, woke up nice and early, packed my knife and apron, and headed to NAIT for the fourth annual Eat Alberta conference. It's a full day of workshops, cooking classes, and lectures about food, with a focus on local ingredients and conscious eating. A whole day of talking about food. I was in heaven. 

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Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies

I’m back! Sorry for the long hiatus – I’m blaming it on spotty internet service, a long and much-needed vacation, starting a new job, and generally enjoying summer too much. The last month or so has been a whirlwind of catching up with friends and family, going camping in Kananaskis, and spending a whole lazy week in the sun at Lake Windermere. It’s been a busy but lovely summer so far.

We went for a hike in anticipation of the calories to come.

 

Anyway! I come bearing cookies! Big, soft peanut butter sandwiches – a creamy filling squished between two chewy PB cookies. These are for hardcore peanut butter lovers only.

I made a big batch of these to bring on our camping trip in Kananaskis. There were almost thirty people there – a whole side of my boyfriend’s extended family – so I wanted to bring a crowd pleaser. And who doesn’t like peanut butter, amiright? I got the recipe from Sweet Pea’s Kitchen (where the cookies and photos are markedly prettier, haha) and have made it a few times; the cookies always receive great feedback – mostly “Mmm”s and “Omgahhh”s and “Mrrumnumnum”s.

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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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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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Ode to a Hometown

For my very first post, I thought it would be fitting to make something in tribute to my first home: Red Deer, Alberta. Not really the type of place that inspires confectionary creativity; our official cookie was chosen in a mid-nineties attempt to contrive some kind of "Red Deerian" culture. New Yorkers have their black-and-white cookies, Paris has its macarons... and we have the Caramel Surprise. I know. It needs a new name.

I'm not really sure how they represent Red Deer, but they're delicious (which is all that really matters, right?): a soft, chewy chocolate cookie filled with caramel and topped with chopped pecans. Yum.


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