Hello and welcome to the weekend! It’s a long one here with the civic holiday Monday. We have the usual assortment of family gatherings and yard work/chores to catch up on. Wow, this summer has been flying by so fast. This is usually the time I start mapping out Fall and Holiday content, which is just wild to even contemplate. Overall, I’m welcoming a bit of late summer ease and savouring it while I can. I hope that you are as well!

Oh, and I’m thinking of adding a “5 Seasonal Recipes” highlight to this weekly catchup post. Let me know if that’s something you might be interested in! Okay, keeping this week’s edition a little short, easy, and breezy. Be well and take care out there ♥️

5 Things I’m Reading:

1. I was a bestselling recipe writer – then burnout killed my appetite for food, and life. This is how I found my way back
2. What A Week Without Taking Photos Revealed To Me About My Life
3. The Cure for Disposable Plastic Crap Is Here—and It’s Loony
4. Our phones don’t have to make us feel miserable
5. What’s More Italian Than Making Pasta With Grandma?

5 Things I’m Enjoying:

1. Food influencers and climate change
2. 10 nice ways to say no
3. How the #1 baguette in Paris is made
4. Author Julia Hotz on The Good Life Project: A Radically-Simple Approach to Getting Well
5. It’s vegan zucchini bread season!

5 Questions:

1. What are the wooden stick utensils in your photos and videos?
   They are the flat sauté spatulas by Earlywood Designs! I love a classic wooden spoon, but something about these sticks just feels nicer. They’re great for breaking things up in the pan, flipping food over, and scraping all the bits out of a skillet.
2. Where did you find dried butter beans?
   In my latest recipe, I mentioned that I cooked my butter beans from dried. I do find them to be superior to canned butter beans! But buying them can be confusing. At the store, you’re looking for Lima beans in the aisle with dried beans and lentils. I know it’s weird, but: Lima beans = butter beans! They’ve become sort of trendy in the last year or so, which is great because beans are amazing. I got mine at my local Food Basics store.
3. Do you preserve any summer crops?
   Canning intimidates me so much, so the short answer is no. I will freeze lots of corn, zucchini, peaches, blueberries, and raspberries and dry some of my garden herbs. I do want to try making jam or canning tomatoes some time though. If anyone knows any reliable, foolproof, and simple canning resources, please share them in the comments!
4. Favourite non-dairy milk that actually has flavour and not a lot of added ingredients?
   Why it’s my homemade nut milk of course! I do not always have time to make this though. My favourite store bought milks that are light on ingredients are Edensoy soy milk or any of Elmhurst’s unsweetened nut milks.
5. Do you ever cook anything inedible or nearly so? Did you learn anything from it?
   A savoury cooking adventure that goes wrong can almost always be salvaged in my experience. My biggest failures have always been in the baking department. In the early days of the blog, I would get so focused on health-ifying vegan desserts and treats, and some of the test bakes would turn out just dreadful texture-wise. And the flavour was honestly worse! It’s taught me that I appreciate treats being treats. Sometimes you have to just honour the craving! A dash of all purpose flour or brown sugar is worth it for me personally. Using exclusively whole grain flour, dates for sweetener, less oil etc has its merits for some folks, I completely understand. I also do enjoy using those things as ingredients in my recipes sometimes! Leaning towards an occasional batch of gooey and traditional brownies vs a weekly tray of lacklustre black bean brownies has been a net positive for me overall though.