that's what she baked.

French toast on a snow day.

For those of you not in New England, or somehow have missed the pictures of cars buried in snow, and un-shoveled paths all over social media.. we got a TON of snow this past weekend. It’s still there, actually. All of it. I was supposed to go to work on Saturday, but for this already nervous driver, plus the non-stop snow and high winds and no good streets, this chica could not drive anywhere. I actually haven’t driven my car since Friday afternoon. While, I felt bad I was not able to help out at work,  I was overjoyed to get an unexpected 3 day weekend (my days off now, are Sunday and Monday) and even more happy to spend extra time with Tyler.  

I’ve missed our weekend brunches (since, until last week, I had work every Sunday morning for the past 2 months) and just HAD to take advantage of having a slow breakfast together for not one, but two days. While I’m trying to cook more, I have accepted that breakfast is just more of my thing, anyway, so why not keep trying at it.. It is my favorite meal, after all. Saturday I made Challah French Toast (pictured above). I followed an Ina Garten recipe that includes orange zest in the eggy-milk mixture, and I loved it. I made far too much, so I forced Brittany to come in from shoveling, and she shared breakfast with us. 

Over the whole weekend, I had my fair share of productivity, and of course there was a lot of shoveling, but also an unexpected visit with friends, a good number of bundled-up walks and an abundance of time in my slippers and pjs. A car was on fire next door and I was grateful for the firemen (and health professionals, and people who work in residential environments, and safety) who can’t have a snow day, because they’re just too important. I hope they get a chance to relax, and do things that give them joy, and have some french toast, too.

Please excuse how yellow the pictures are. The temperature dropping makes it the perfect time of year to bake as much as possible and fill the apartment with nice smells and heat, but the lighting is bleh.. (really, it’s because I bake at night often, and that has nothing to do with the seasons, but let’s just blame it on winter, anyway).

Up until recently, I did not like biscotti or scones. I felt like both of the baked goods were always too dry, too hard, and not sweet enough for my liking. I just wanted them to be something else. Like a cookie, or a sweet bread, just not themselves. My apologizes, guys… you’re great when you’re great. And you’re especially great with coffee. When Tyler and I first moved in together earlier this year, he had a large jar that he proclaimed he wanted to always be full of biscotti. It took me a while to get on that (just starting last month), but I’m going to try and keep up with it. Maybe I’ll make a new biscotti every month. Maybe I won’t remember I said I’d do that.  

Pictured, is my first try with my signed Joy the Baker cookbook. It’s the Dark Chocolate and Anise Biscotti. I didn’t have dark chocolate so I subbed mini semi-sweet chocolate chips instead. And I over-baked them by about 5 minutes.. but nothing dunking in coffee couldn’t solve. Also, anise, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I loved you, too. I can’t wait to try everything in this book! You’ll probably be seeing a lot of baking from it soon.

In the kitchen with Lindsay (Christmas color edition)

You may remember Lindsay from the hotdog posts (part 1, 2 and 3) mid-July, and she was around for a more recent waffle post. Lindsay moved from Virginia to Providence, RI last Spring and I’m so so lucky I get to see her as often as I do. She’s my soul mate. Someday we’re going to start a blog or pod-cast or something. But that’s a whole different post for another day. I want to take a brief moment to talk about these waffles. Since I started scratch baking, I’ve poo-poo’d box mixes, because I’m above that now, obviously, except for this one… Come fall, every year at Trader Joe’s, they carry Pumpkin Pancake and Waffle Mix. And it’s sooo good. Pumpkin is definitely more of a November than a December flavor, but I didn’t get a chance to make any last month, so as December crawled in, I decided it was time. Also, I love using the waffle maker. Our kitchen looks very full right now because we have a tiny indoor garden next to the window, and really, the kitchen is generally a busy place. I didn’t take a picture of the finished waffles, because we were taking turns eating them right as they came out of the waffle maker. I’m not sure if the mix is still around TJ’s right now, I only go about once every month or so, but be sure to look out for it next year. 

PEARS!

Friends of mine, who live close by, have pear trees in their yard and said I should come and get some. I wanted to get enough to do some canning with, but I could only fill half a reusable grocery bag. A lot of the pears were too high and I not so cleverly decided to stop by when I was wearing clogs, which of course had to come off… I climbed up on a fence in my socks to get some out of reach, but I couldn’t really climb the trees because they were kinda small, and when you shake branches the pears would sometimes fall and then smash on the concrete of the driveway.

I’m still happy with what I walked away with and hope to turn them into something real soon, before they all get yucky and have to go to the compost. I was thoughtful enough last weekend, when my favoritist Lindsay and I made waffles for breakfast and I thought to peel and chop a couple, and put them in a saucepan with butter, cinnamon and sugar. For those of you who know I’m not much of a cook, this was a very proud moment for me.

More pictures from overnight waffles last weekend.

My least favorite thing about my “new life” (schedule, jobs, time spent, amount of money in the bank, etc.) is how much less Tyler and I see each other in waking hours. It just stinks. However, we have made a point, recently, to do one date night a week and breakfast and lazy-morning-time on Sundays. Last weekend we made overnight waffles… actually I made overnight waffles. Oftentimes when we have meals, it’s mostly Tyler with me hanging out in the kitchen and occasionally helping, mostly watching and talking, but I was so excited to make these waffles that I wanted to make them. After all, it was totally up my alley of measuring, mixing, etc. I even put them in the waffle maker. 

If you’ve never had overnight waffles before, man are you missing out. They’re so light and airy and there’s something special about the time it took to create the batter and let it grow (even though it does it all by itself) that makes them so much more enjoyable. Maybe I shall share the recipe soon.

I am one lucky gal. I get to eat wonderful meals all the time. Tyler’s very good at feeding me lots of great foods. Pictured are some snapshots of breakfast this past Saturday. Tyler made scrambled eggs and piles of potato shreds (I don’t know the actual name). We also had grapefruit and oranges, orange juice and sun tea. Sometimes I contribute, lately I’ve been making salads. I even made my own dressing this time with olive oil, apple cider vinegar, grapefruit juice and salt.

Cinnamon Oatmeal Pancakes (also a sneak peak at my new kitchen thus far)

Yesterday, Tyler and I were supposed to wake up early to do a 5K but it was pouring cats and dogs so we decided to forefit. Since I was already so awake so early on a Saturday morn, I decided to make pancakes. I approximately followed a recipe found on Martha Stewart, but played a lot with the ingredients and I don’t have a food processor (yet) so the texture was different. I’ve never had an oat-based pancake before (at least not that I can recall), and am glad I found another use for oatmeal. They weren’t super sweet, but tasted great with confectionary sugar and syrup or jelly (even though I halved the recipe, there was still enough to try lots of different toppings). 

If you can’t figure it out, the first picture has my computer resting on a music stand. We picked it up for free on the side of the street a while back, and thought it would be great to use as a recipe stand in our new kitchen. It worked out super for me! The move is going well. We’re officially both out of our old places and all of our belongings are in the new place. We just have a lot of sorting and decorating left to do.