Hello and happy Saturday to you! My partner took the week off and I joined him for the most part. We kept it local and tended to some stuff around the house. Very low key! Popped into downtown St. Catharines one day for a marinara slice at Di’s, a flat white at Wandering Spirits, and a browse at Mindbomb Records. We checked out the new-ish Blue Goose Farm Store another day, which was lovely. I grabbed Badger Flame beets, shallots, fennel, sprouting cauliflower, and deliciously spicy arugula. A recipe with the fennel is coming your way next week! We also had a little doggie walk around Dufferin Islands and the botanical garden one day, which was very relaxing.

Overall, time well spent. I’m also still going hard with heavy weights at the gym and trying to run twice a week. I feel good, but am still getting used to the lifting in general, muscle soreness, and the fuelling side of it all. And don’t get mad, but the dip in temperatures this week had me testing Fall recipes a bit. I haven’t busted out the pumpkin yet, but I can feel it coming.

This weekend is another busy one, so I’ll leave you with the usual assortment below. Be well and take care! Big love.

5 Things I’m Reading:

1. What Is Food?
2. Everybody Gets a Star
3. The Middle Way of Stress
4. Goodbye, ‘soy boys.’ Hello, swole vegans
5. Just Breathe

5 Things I’m Enjoying:

1. On my watch list: Omnivore
2. Max Joseph’s Happiness series on YouTube
3. Love seeing the process of a Trader Joe’s sign artist
4. Ella Mills, the founder of Deliciously Ella, on the Happy Place podcast
5. I invested in a Flairosol Olivia refillable oil sprayer recently so that I could stop buying the single use olive/avocado ones at the grocery store and Costco. The spray on this is so even, controlled, and fine. I love it! It’s also handy for evenly distributing olive oil on a composed, single layer salad.

5 Questions:

1. I was wondering what your content creation process is like. How far in advance do you work? How do you plan/schedule out recipes?
   I looove this question! Speaking strictly from a blogging standpoint: I have a document with a bunch of recipe concepts organized by season/holiday. These are just recipe titles with about a paragraph of notes describing the proposed method, ingredients used, and some rough SEO research notes if appropriate. If I lost this document, I would be screwed because my food blogging brain and all plans for the future essentially live there lol. I post one recipe a week and start working on it in a rough way a couple months out. As I get closer to the planned posting date, I am getting more granular and refined with it. The recipes I’m going to post are scheduled out for every Wednesday about 3 months in advance on my Google Calendar. Some of this planning is based on seasonality and holidays and some of it is based on recipe search trends. For example: the search volume for “vegan stuffing” peaks the week before American Thanksgiving, so last year I put my version up a few weeks out from that peak time period. The planning out stage truly gets me so excited (especially from September-February), and I wish I had the bandwidth to post more than one recipe a week sometimes!
2. You joke about your “pro setup” for photography… I was wondering what tools you use/tips for creating this kind of setup?
   I joke about my pro setups for shooting content on Instagram all the time, but the whole thing really does work for me! I find a good spot by a window (in the kitchen, living room, wherever), use a soft, padded bench from my dining room and lay a Photo Surfaces background on there. I might bring out a wooden board or vinyl backdrop to change it up. I sometimes use a diffuser if I need to. Photos are done with a Canon 6D and for Reels, I set up my phone on this Tripod stand that’s equipped with a bluetooth remote. In the Fall this year, I want to play around with a darker/moodier setup for Reels because my kitchen is so dark and I just want to embrace it in the cozy season. One of my main tips is to get really familiar with either studio lighting OR how the light falls in your home throughout the day. 
3. What is the best way to cook homemade pizza? Do you have a pizza oven?
   We have our BBQ pizza method absolutely dialled in and it’s my favourite by far! I place a baking stone on the grill grates (when it’s cold!!), and then rip all the burners to high and let it preheat for about 10-15 minutes. The BBQ will get up to 650 degrees Fahrenheit typically. Then, I stretch and top my pizza on a peel and get it on the hot stone as quickly as possible, and close the lid. Once the pizza is puffed up, nicely browned on the bottom and starting to bubble/brown on the top, I take it off. You have to resist the urge to lift the lid open and check on it because you want to keep the heat contained! Typically it takes about 7-8 minutes to cook. Sometimes I find that the pizza needs a quick broil in the oven to get the top nice and caramelized, but not always. 
4. A good honey mustard dressing?
   My vegan sweet mustard dressing is the best in the biz. It has the perfect amount of sweetness, tang, and complexity. You can find it in this recipe for chopped kale cabbage salad. I use maple syrup because I have a bee product allergy and they’re also not considered vegan.
5. Love seeing your sweet face in the new lunch series. What’s your skincare routine?
   The Instagram lunch series is coming back this week, yay! And thank you. I stick to a mild cleanser, serum, moisturizer, face oil/balm at night, and sunscreen during the day. The products I’m using lately: Osea Ocean Cleansing Milk, Sahajan Radiance Face Serum, Sahajan Nourish Crème Riche, Pai Rosehip BioRegenreate Oil OR May Lindstrom’s The Blue Cocoon, and Salt & Stone’s sunscreen (this sunscreen has a white cast FYI). I also apply lactic acid at night twice a week.