Coconut Bread

Sometimes when I'm visiting the home of a friend or family member, I'll take a sneaky peek at their cookbook collection and - if I'm feeling really sneaky - I'll snap photos of some of the recipes with my phone so I can make them later. What's the point of me buying a new cookbook if I can just creepily take pictures of yours when you're not looking?

So we went to visit my boyfriend's mom in Calgary recently... and long story short, I have a lot of pictures of cookbook pages on my phone now. My favourite book to look at when I'm at her house is Donna Hay's Seasons because like all of Donna Hay's other books, it's filled with pretty pictures of simple and interesting food. This recipe for coconut bread caught my eye right away.

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Love Bars

 

I know that our sense of smell is supposed to be the sense most strongly linked to memory, but I think you'll all agree that certain foods can act as little time machines, zooming us back to a time and place buried in the past. Love Bars, which are sold at Pret A Manger (a sandwich chain in the UK that sells really tasty to-go meals), have this time machine effect on me; one bite and I'm back on the slow train to Chelmsford, eating my lunch after a long morning in the library. The ironic thing is that I would've been in the library researching nostalgia - the subject of my thesis - and now I'm waxing nostalgic about the delicious treats I enjoyed after studying (...and before studying, and during studying).

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Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

There are few things better in this world than a really, really good chocolate chip cookie. Everything about them, from the dough (not ashamed to admit I eat it!), to the smell of them baking in the oven, is classic and comforting and delicious. And biting into a chocolate chip cookie warm from the oven... that's pretty hard to top in terms of heart-melting goodness.

My mom has used the same chocolate chip cookie recipe for years (scrawled on a piece of loose leaf by a co-worker) and I've adopted it as my gold standard cookie recipe. But recently I was listening to the chocolate chip cookie episode of my favourite food podcast, Spilled Milk, and they brought something to light that I didn't know before: chilling the dough for at least 24 hours will result in much, much better cookies. Chilling the dough, they explained, allows the sugars to get completely absorbed by the liquids, and the cookies turn out soft and chewy with a richer flavour - kind of toffee-like. Apparently, even the original Tollhouse chocolate chip cookie recipe called for chilling the dough overnight - a step that for some reason has been left out of the famous package instructions. 

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Crack Mix

I love it when you go to a friend's house or have people over, fully intending to watch a movie together, and then you end up just talking or goofing around for 5 hours instead. That has happened to me twice in the past few weeks, and it doesn't bother me one bit that we didn't watch those movies. At both of those get togethers, there was no shortage of nibbles (I happened to make this mix on both occasions) - plenty of fuel for long conversations or epic game nights.

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Chewy Flax & Oatmeal Spice Cookies

This past weekend I made a trip back to Red Deer to visit my parents and some friends. Despite the iffy weather, my friend Jenna and I decided to be brave and go to the farmer's market on Saturday morning. I felt a little sorry for the vendors - violent gusts of wind threatened to blow tents away and topple displays. But we had hot coffees and lots to talk about, plus we ran into several people we knew, so it wasn't all bad.

Going to the Red Deer farmer's market always reminds me of these flax oatmeal cookies that my mom and I discovered there years ago. They were made by some women selling flax seeds and other flax products (back when flax was the "new" superfood everyone was going crazy for). Anyway, the cookies were delicious, so we bought some seeds and got their cookie recipe, which also includes oatmeal and raisins. High fibre = healthy = I can eat as many as I want, right? Yes. I like that logic.


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Gourmet Granola Bars

Like so many others, I get tired of making lunches to take to work every day. I know it's cheaper and healthier and less wasteful to bring your own food, but sometimes the laziness takes over and I just go out and buy something. Not only is it not good for my bank account, but when you're keeping track of calories, protein, fibre - whatever - it's hard to control your intake when you didn't make the food yourself. It's a bad habit.

So, after several days of buying lunches and having cereal for dinner, I decided I would make a huge batch of granola bars so at least I would have something substantial and homemade to take to work every day. I found this basic recipe and thought up a few different varieties that I wanted to try. I went to my friendly neighbourhood Bulk Barn again (they're starting to recognize me) and loaded up on fruit, nuts, and other bits and pieces to put in my bars. They have everything from protein powders to fibre supplements, so you can really make a powerhouse batch of granola bars if you're so inclined.

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