Quickly Now

This is a pretty horrible photo in terms of quality, but I loved my outfit today. I just felt really cute and happy, so I decided to quickly snap a few shots and take what I could get.

The only things missing are earrings, because I somehow left the house without any today, which is odd for me. Early mornings make my brain all foggy, I guess. Cheers!

Sticky Toffee Pudding

I was making the sticky toffee pudding, with roasted banana ice cream and candied pecans for the restaurant at the college this week. I'm very happy with how the little puddings came out, as well as the plating. Making little 'cookie' bowls for the ice cream is always fun and easy, too.

There was a birthday, hence the special plate. We were out of chocolate so I just nicked some leftover ganache from another person in the bakeshop and used that to write out the letters. They're a little more blobby than I like but it did the job. Cheers!

Sushi

This week we made sushi in our Garde Manger class. Not bad considering I'd never made any before! Cheers!

Soup Sunday

I woke to a world blanketed in snow today, and it felt like a good day to make some soup. I've been meaning to make a batch of this awesome Pumpkin Ale Cheese Soup for months now, and finally I got around to it today.

 

I always like to add a little more pumpkin puree than the recipe asks - 2/3 of a cup just doesn't seem like enough to me - to give it that added little pumpkin kick. With smoked paprika and dry mustard in here, the flavours need to be robust enough to stand up to those spices.

Now I'm going to enjoy some soup! Cheers!

New Menu

We have a new menu for this semester in the restaurant and we all got together in the kitchen last night to cook and bake up all the dishes - and then stuff ourselves silly eating them. The idea was that we'd all know what they looked like and how they're supposed to taste.

I didn't manage to get photos of everything, unfortunately some stuff got eaten before I had a chance, like most of the main course proteins. But ah well!

Why our chef decided the put a bread pudding and a sticky pudding on the menu was beyond us but eh. I've got the beef mufalleta next week and I'll be hard-pressed to top the one made by my classmate with the onion rings. A challenge! Cheers!

Holi-Daze

I spent most of my holidays with my honey, eleven straight days of loving bliss. Now I'm back in school and already feeling swamped. It's nice being able to look back on some of these photos and remembering the wonderful time we shared.

Before heading off to the cottage, I convinced my honey to eat ramen with me at the Momofuku Noodle Bar in Toronto. SO GOOD. Their pork buns were melt-in-your-mouth delicious, but so rich. Plus discovering my man can use chopsticks like a pro was another reason to adore him.


I may look a tad grumpy in that last photo but it was my I'm-cooking-and-concentrating face. I made us tasty fish chowder, and tomato rice soup, and other nummy warm things to eat when it's cold and snowy outside. I even baked up a chocolate Guinness cake with cream cheese icing for my honey's son's birthday, but the lad was a bit of a grumpus (unfortunately) and there aren't any photos of that.

We got a good dumping of snow and the boys did quite a bit of cross country skiing while I stayed inside by the warm fire, reading and relaxing. Eventually our stay at the cottage came to an end and we have to treck back out. They skied, I followed behind on foot because I'm stubborn and feel if I were meant to ski, evolution would've given me ski-feet.

That's my grumpy face in the cold, and the distance across the lake we had so far traverse. Not counting the section in the forest, first... And then the way left to go!

 

While I certainly wasn't having a blast walking back out to the vehicle, our time at the cottage as a whole was wonderful. It was good to get away from civilization and enjoy some peace and quiet. I missed it soon as we were back on the busy highway again. I hope you all had wonderful holidays. Cheers!