Orecchiette with Peas, Asparagus and Mascarpone 14 June, 2013

Sunny skies and rain boots. A younger version of myself, smaller, with a wild imagination and pig tails, stood within the giant wooden-staked rows of sugar snap peas. There wasn't enough time to break for lunch, I thought, as my mom called my name through the window. Things were getting serious. In the game of war, there were two teams, two forts, and the goal was to find your opponents, capture them, and ambush their fort with dog poop. Jason, Corinna, and Robyne were inching in on me. I could hear them rustling in the brush. My fort stood unoccupied, and the other members of my team were nowhere to be seen. I grabbed as many sugar snap peas as my tiny hands could hold, and I headed back into the forest. Garden sustenance came in handy, back in the days of light hearted savagery. 

We Be Grillin' Poblano Peppers and Corn 06 June, 2013

When you find yourself spending more time in Home Depot than the grocery store, and more time on the patio than in the kitchen, something major and constructive is likely in the works. Our patio currently looks like a construction site, saw dust dispersed amongst soil. It's wildly comforting in a messy kind of way. Brent has taken up woodworking as a hobby, and I am completely jealous. I also share a strong passion for this craft, but with my already lengthy list of hobbies, I'll let him have this one. He has just built a gorgeous planter box for the patio, roughly 5 x 2.5 x 2 feet - big enough for a good urban harvest. Last weekend we filled the box with soil and then I meticulously sowed each seed, in three solid rows. Each day brings more sun, more growth, and more happiness. I am waiting in anticipation like a kid on Christmas morning for the carrots and beets to pop their leaves out of the soil. My tomatoes are thriving, and so are my beans, with their slender stems climbing tall. My chard, which was planted in a separate pot adjacent to the planter, has not been blessed the the same fortune as the others. The leaves are infested with leaf miners, and while I've done my best to prevent their reoccurrence, it is proving to be a challenge. The experience has been trying.

Chocolate Coconut Cherry Tarts 30 May, 2013

I met Mr. H at Oktoberfest. Not in Munich, but a similar festival in Kitchener-Waterloo known as Canada's Greatest Bavarian Festival. There was a lot of beer drinking, chicken dancing, and pretzel eating. To be honest, I was basically drunk for 3 days (which is not the story I will tell my children on how I met their father). It is actually quite surprising that I was able to make such an impression in that state. Mr. H dazzled me with his bright smile, good looks, and intellect - he is much more put together than I am when he drinks. I was serious about this guy in a major way, until he told me that he was moving to Seattle. And then I was like - what the shit? I reluctantly spent the next few weeks getting to know him, and then his family, and then I was basically a mess because I loved him and he was leaving. He left, and I cried, and then got stupidly drunk and repeatedly called him at 1:00 am, luckily because of the time difference it was only 11:00 pm his time. I then cried some more, and drank some more.  I was a wreck, and an emotional drinker. I think I have probably revealed too much. 

Date Newtons 22 May, 2013

Have I ever told you about that time when I was stuck? Not the type of stuck you get when you decide to venture out into a snow storm. I was stuck in life, in a place, in a job, with a boy, all things I didn't like. I was stuck so deep that I was unsure of how to get out. After a lot of self-reflecting and gin drinking, I dug myself out, moved forward, got an education, and left the boy. It was when I finally decided to grab the steering wheel, instead of riding in the back seat, that the car seemed to go in the right direction. Sometimes I look back at that time of my life, not with regret or shame, but as a point of reference. To remind myself of the person that I once was, and the person I am today. And although at the the time it seemed like a really terrifying decision, it turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made.

Huevos Rancheros with Scrambled Eggs 16 May, 2013

Growing up, my dad built the family a chicken coupe, complete with four rows of tiny individual chicken rooms, and a fancy zig-zagging staircase, so that the chickens could get to their rooms and out the front door whenever they wanted. We didn't eat them, we mostly just collected their eggs and tried to avoid stepping on their poop. We had a rooster named Lucy who was super annoying and woke me up every morning at the crack of dawn, a few ducks, and two geese - who were also really annoying and used to chase me around the back yard trying to bite my ankles. Each summer my parents grew a large vegetable garden with tomatoes, peas, beans, etc., and my grandma would come visit at the end of the summer and pickle the beets, cucumbers and make jam. She would also make us hike into the bush looking for fancy pieces of wood to put in her garden, which I never really understood. My family were modern day hippies. We lived in the country, far away from modern conveniences. I didn't have a lot of friends. I did however have chickens, and they were the best friends a girl could ask for. Each morning, I would put on my red rubber boots - as a preventative measure, and I would go out to the coop and feed them Cheerios, because clearly chickens like Cheerios. I would gather eggs, and my dad would scramble them up, or he would make French toast.

Now for all of you runny egg lovers out there, you should probably just skip to the last paragraph because I'm about to go on a rant. I wouldn't call myself a true lover of eggs. If you scramble them up, so that the white and the yellow mix to be a nice uniform consistency, with cheese, or top those scrambled eggs with hot sauce and queso fresco, sure, I can get behind that. I will basically eat scrambled eggs every day. I also have no reservations about using them in baking, and heck, I've even come around to the idea of quiche. I wont however eat eggs that have been poached, hard/soft boiled, or sunny side up. I can't even look at a picture of an egg sunny side up without gagging, which made it really difficult during that period of time, possibly last winter, when it was all the rage, bright green asparagus, pizza, everything that I love, ruined with a big old egg on top. Instead of runny eggs, can we just start putting avocado on everything? 

I usually shy away from huevos when I'm eating out, because they're often served with an egg, cooked in a particular way that I don't care for. If there's an option, I'll ask for scrambled, but most of the time I am assaulted with a dirty look, and then I have to remind myself that indeed there is no huevos rancheros god, and I am totally fine eating this dish the way that I like. Last month I went to a super fancy restaurant in Seattle, and ordered a ridiculously expensive dish, and then they put a tiny quail egg, sunny side up, on top. Just because the egg was tiny and cute, does not make it awesome.