fig goat cheese & strawberry toast

This is really more of a summer toast but I couldn’t wait three more months. This is super delicious and comes together in just a few minutes.

makes 2 servings

4 slices thick cut Italian bread
olive oil
2.5oz fig goat cheese*
5 medium strawberries
1tbsp balsamic vinegar
3 mint leaves

Set your oven to broil. Lay your four slices of bread on a foil lined baking sheet and brush lightly with olive oil. Wash, hull and thinly slice the strawberries, chiffonade** the mint leaves and if necessary, mix the fig goat cheese. In a very small saucepan over medium heat simmer the balsamic vinegar for 1 to 2 minutes to slightly reduce. Set all the toppings aside.

Toast the bread under the broiler for 30 to 60 seconds, keeping an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t burn. Remove from the oven, flip each slice and brush the other side with olive oil. Spread each toast with a thick layer of fig goat cheese and arrange the sliced strawberries on top. Return to the oven for 1 to 2 minutes, again keeping a close eye on it. Once the cheese and strawberries have softened, remove from the oven. Drizzle with the balsamic reduction and garnish with mint leaves. Enjoy!

*None of the stores around here have had fig goat cheese for months, so I made my own by mixing 2 oz of plain goat cheese with one tablespoon of fig jam and half a teaspoon of honey.

**To chiffonade the mint leaves simply stock the leaves roll them up together and slice.

The mustache man.

this season

The last three weeks…

After Halloween it was the girls’ birthdays, which are just three days apart in early November. For Sym we had her dad’s family over for cake (she requested triple chocolate) and presents the weekend before, and then on her actual birthday I took her out for ramen and a movie, which has become our go-to mother-daughter activity. On Gwen’s actual birthday we had a feast of Chinese food followed by strawberry pie (her request and something I’d never made/she’d never had?) and on the following weekend had a bunch of her little friends over for a unicorn-themed party. We bought a bunch of decorations and supplies in like… February, added a crêpe paper streamer rainbow wall, a mini ball pit (an inflatable pool filled with crush-proof balls from Amazon, our small kiddie pool needed 400 balls so if you do this plan accordingly) and a HUGE mylar unicorn balloon. I made funfetti cupcakes and pretty much just let the kids run wild.

For all the birthday cakes this year I’ve used recipes from The Stay at Home Chef and they’ve all been fantastic

Once the birthday season ended I had a week’s reprieve of doing nothing and now… it’s Christmas. I like to put the tree up bare for a few weeks to let the kids get used to it before adding decoration, with the idea that they won’t go crazy and trash all the ornaments. This has always worked, by the way, until Gwen and now Nicky. Last year Nicky broke so many ornaments (shatterproof DOES NOT equal toddlerproof!) I ended up stocking up on clearance ones after Boxing Day but I can’t remember exactly what he wrecked and what I bought so it’ll be a fun surprise in a couple weeks when we decorate. So anyway I put the tree up last weekend, as well as some lights around a couple of windows and a few bits & pieces on the sideboard.

Due to all the endless emergency vet bills we had this year Taylor and I are in a pretty tight financial situation, so we’ve elected not to exchange gifts (which is killing me bc my love language is buying you stuff and having stuff bought for me) and focus on the kids instead. I’m really hoping for some fun family outings and as redemption for last year’s multiple cookie disasters, successful cookie baking! Sym and I got a head start last weekend with these ginger molasses cookies which I HEARTILY recommend.

Some other things I’m looking to make happen during this last season of the year:
1. I need to make myself some new slippers as mine are a wreck. I’m slowly formulating an idea for some bootie-style slippers with a sheepskin insole, wish me luck on this!
2. I am DESPERATE to finish painting. The hallway, playroom, and kitchen are all still half-done, and the foyer (which was the first room Taylor and I painted in this apartment in like… 2007) really needs a refresh. Owing to my tragic finances this will def not be done this year except for maybe the hallway since I think I have white paint left for that, and mayyyyybe some medium grey part of the foyer (because who doesn’t want endless half-painted rooms?).
3. SPEAKING OF MY FINANCES I’m changing the structure of my client fees in a way that I hope will help sort things out; wish me luck on this too.
4. FINAL FINANCIAL BIT but hey why not check out my etsy shop if you are looking to treat yourself or someone to a little sparkle this holiday season! There are currently rolling strikes with Canada Post but I can provide price quotes for alternate carriers or just like… order early! And often!

This is one of the prettiest things I’ve ever made IN MY LIFE and I’m honestly shocked it’s still available?

spooky pretzel sticks

I had this idea for a fun activity to do with Gwen the other day when I was in the snack aisle at the grocery store and saw some pretzel sticks. I already had white candy melts and a TON of Halloween sprinkles in my extensive sprinkle collection so it was a breeze for us, but you should be able to find both at Michaels (Homesense is also a good source for seasonal sprinkles).

We found that the type of sprinkles that worked best were the smaller ones, like coloured sugar and nonpareils. The jimmies and flat confetti-style sprinkles were harder to get good coverage with, and the larger shaped sprinkles (we had skulls, spiders and candy eyes) had to be placed individually. I think larger pretzel rods would work better with these other kinds of sprinkles but I haven’t tried it yet.

All in all this is a fun and easy activity for kids, and can easily be adapted for any occasion that they make sprinkles for (ie ALL OF THEM). I’m already planning Christmas and birthday versions (and yes I already have allllll the sprinkles I need for them).

Ingredients:
– pretzel sticks
– white candy melts
– assorted sprinkles

Line a baking sheet and cover your work surface in parchment paper. Pour 1-2 tablespoons of each type of sprinkle in a shallow bowl or small plate.

Melt the candy melts according to the package directions. Dip your pretzel stick ~2/3 of the way in the melted candy and twirl to coat thoroughly. Roll your coated pretzel stick in the sprinkles of your choice and place on the prepared baking sheet.

To add larger shaped sprinkles, use a broken pretzel stick to add to a dab of melted candy to the back of the shape and press each one to the pretzel stick.

When you have coated all your pretzels place the sheet of finished pretzels in the fridge to harden for 15-20 minutes. Keep in an airtight container for up to a week.

should you put candy eyes on chocolate brownies?

On Monday afternoon I asked Sym if she wanted to help me make brownies. She agreed but asked “can we make them spoopy?” I was like… no, I can’t think of a way to do that so instead we just sprinkled the top with come choclate jimmies (her fave type of sprinkle). When I was putting the jimmies away though, I found a pack of candy eyes and inspiration struck. THIS was how to make brownies spoopy!

I was a little worried they would melt in the oven though, and sadly this was the case. HOWEVER after I took them out I just put new eyes over the badly melted eyes and in the end our brownies looked spoopy as heck (I recommend doing this because the new eyes will stick to the melted eyes, whereas if you just try to put eyes on cooked brownies with a nice crisp top they won’t stick at all, also DON’T talk to me about putting icing on brownies BROWNIES ARE NOT A CAKE).

Brownie recipe from The Stay at Home Chef.

thankschicken

It’s no secret I’m not a particular fan of turkey, or of cooking a whole bird. I’ve only tried it once (with a chicken) and it was an unmitigated disaster. Maybe it’ll be something I tackle later this fall but not yet. Because of this I skip the “traditional” meals on Christmas and Thanksgiving: for Christmas we do roast beef with Yorkshire puddings, but for Thanksgiving I wanted to do something different. A while back I had this idea of doing fried chicken and waffles, and I’ve made it a few times now with varying levels of success. This is the first year I’ve come close to really knocking it out of the park.

For the chicken I used this recipe from Southern Kitchen. I’m not yet at the point in my cooking where I have it in me to take a whole chicken and cut it into 8-10 pieces, and chicken with bones is a bit of a hassle for the little kids to eat so instead I used boneless thighs. I also skimped a little on the hot sauce because 2/3 of my kids don’t like spicy things (guess which one loves the heat IT’S THE ONE WHOSE DIAPER I HAVE TO CHANGE). But other than that I tried to follow the recipe & instructions as closely as possible. I even bought a splatter screen (god bless it, honestly) and a frying thermometer (which I had to go to FOUR stores to find). I used our workhorsiest cast iron skillet and peanut oil (which was great btw, afterwards there was no old fry oil smell in the house AT ALL) and did the chicken in three batches while Taylor manned the waffle iron.

We’ve used a few different waffle recipes over the years but I’ve never been 100% sold on any of them. I did a bunch of research to find a new one which is how I stumbled on the Waffles of Insane Greatness. And like. These waffles. ARE SO GREAT! Crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, easy to make batter (no whipping up a bunch of egg whites separately) and best of all they don’t stick to the gd waffle iron! This is def going to be our go-to waffle recipe from now on.

We kept the chicken & waffles on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper & wire racks in the oven on a low temp so it’d all stay warm until everything was ready to serve; the wire racks kept them from getting soggy. I was too anxious about my skillet full of hot oil to really get into doing a bunch of sides so we just had one: honey glazed carrots. Maybe next year I’ll do more, but all in all, this meal was a hot.

reflections on a cake pan

When you are trying not to think about something the only option is to think very, very hard about something else. Like you can’t NOT think of a thing, you have to replace it with another thing. I’m trying to not think about something so every other thing I think about takes on a bizarre, almost reverent significance. For example: I got a new bundt pan this week.

I don’t really make that many bundt cakes (SO MUCH WORK) and I already had a bundt pan but I just… didn’t like it. It wasn’t cute. I bought it at a grocery store a few years back because I had a desperate need one day to bake a bundt cake, something I’d never done before, and since I was working that day I didn’t have time to go all over town looking for the perfect pan. So it’s plain and boring and flat on the base so the cakes that come out of it are flat on the top and LOOK that’s just not what I want in a bundt! Around Christmastime last year I was at my favourite store HomeSense with Symphony and she found a fancy gingerbread village bundt pan and was like “WE SHOULD GET THIS” but it was FIFTY DOLLARS and I’m sorry but I’m not paying $50 for a cake pan at HomeSense.

Since then though, I’ve found my thoughts being consumed by a desire for a new, fancy, cute bundt pan. As we headed into the colder months my mind drifted to them more and more often, and I would browse online trying to find the best price for the fanciest pan. When I ordered new rain boots the other week I almost tossed a sale-priced Christmas-themed pan into my cart as well but at the last minute I changed my mind, the sale price just wasn’t good enough. I still couldn’t stop browsing them though.

On Wednesday I had a pretty rough day of work, and so after the kids were in bed that night I asked Taylor to go for a walk with me, where else but my favourite store HomeSense (fyi I do always call it that, especially when speaking aloud). I just wanted to browse all the things and unwind from my day with no one screaming at me. I wasn’t actually planning on buying anything but as we rounded the corner into the bakeware aisle I thought to myself “I should check if they have any cute bundt pans!” and before I even finished the thought I spotted it: a Nordic Ware Fall Harvest Bundt Pan. What a frilly, fancy lil bitch it was too. A wreath in heavy cast aluminum, decorated all over with leaves and acorns, this was a pan to be proud of! I’d looked at the same and others like it on various websites in the past weeks and it was priced at less than half what I’d seen it at. SOLD.

The next day I was ready to bake. You have to wash a new cake pan before you can use it, and since washing dishes in an inherently mindless activity, as I filled the sink I could feel my thoughts veering towards the thing I don’t want to think about. I needed to focus in on something, and so I focussed in on washing the pan. I used the hottest water and some Mrs Meyers basil-scented dish detergent on a soft sponge, and after washing and rinsing the pan I held it cradled in my arms, still warm, as I gently dried it with a clean white cloth, carefully getting into all the nooks and crannies of the leaves and acorns.

I took the same care buttery and flouring the pan when it came time to add the batter; a variation on a brown sugar bourbon cake recipe I’d picked that morning. I’d wanted something worthy of the pan. Something autumnal but not pumpkin-y, something simple that would let the shape of the cake itself be the star, something fairly easy so I’d have enough time to get the batter mixed and the cake baked during the kids’ nap time. I’d picked up the butter & eggs I’d needed already, but I didn’t have enough brown sugar so I used 2 cups brown and 1 cup white, and instead of plain ol’ regular bourbon I used Kentucky Swamp Water, which is what I call a bottle in which I have mixed together all my least-favourite bourbons, including some maple-flavoured Knob Creek, so MY cake was MAPLE brown sugar bourbon. I also left off the glaze, as the directions cautioned that boiling bourbon might burst into flames, and I wasn’t keen to start a kitchen fire with a house full of toddlers.

The recipe called for a baking time of 70-75 minutes, but it was for a 12-cup pan and mine is 10-cups. I didn’t want to waste the excess batter so I quickly buttered & floured my 4-inch springform pan to make a mini cake as well, and since I was making one slightly-smaller and one much much smaller cake, I set a timer for twenty minutes and started checking from there. The last three things I’ve baked have all been over- or under-baked so I was also looking for a bit of kitchen redemption, and was bound and determined not to fuck up this time. In the end both cakes were ready after 38 minutes, which was weird because I thought the smaller one would bake faster? I’m actually baffled by it. While the cakes were baking the sweet smell of sugar, spices, and maple filled the house. All the kids were sleeping and the house was (mostly) clean so I had a minute to just sit, and as I sat there, smelling the delicious fragrance in peace and quiet I thought to myself: this.

five layer pink ombre cake

Gwen’s Thursday Lego Club is over, but she now has soccer after school on Mondays so Treat Day has moved up in the week. Monday is typically a nice, easy day for me as Taylor takes Gwen to school and Sym picks her up from soccer, meaning I don’t have to walk down the hill with the daycare kids AT ALL. Except this week Taylor was sick int he morning and Sym was sick in the afternoon, so I had to do it all anyway. Thankfully I started baking early enough in the day that I was (mostly) finished this cake before I had to run out.

I mostly made this as a treat for Gwen; I recently baked a white cake with pink icing and she keeps requesting I make it again, but instead I switched it up and made a pink cake with white icing!

The get the different shades of pink for the ombre I divided the batter evenly between five bowls (using a kitchen scale, each bowl had about 200g of batter) and used white, pink and a little purple food colouring in the following quantities:
– 5 drops white
– 3 drops pink + 1 drop white
– 6 drops pink + 1 drop white
– 9 drops pink + 1 drop purple + 1 drop white
– 15 drops pink + 3 drops purple + 1 drop white

I also added a few drops of white colouring to the frosting because the butter + vanilla gave it a slight yellow tint and I wanted it REALLY white.

I baked the layers in my 5-layer cake pan set for 15 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through the baking time. Once baked, cooled and removed from the pans, I cut a sliver off the top of each layer to level it (I should have levelled them more tbh) I assembled the cake. I put just a small amount of frosting between each layer since I knew there would be plenty on the outside, plus with 5 layers this cake was already tall enough! I crumb-coated the outside, chilled it in the fridge to set it and then frosted the final coat. It might not look like anything special but the best crumb coat I’ve ever done is under there!

These are my go-to recipes for white cake and buttercream icing. My small cake stand (the perfect size for a 6-inch cake) is from HomeSense.

family dinner

Taylor and I still haven’t gotten fully back into the swing of meal planning, but after A LOT of takeout & delivery + one meltdown (from me) about not having the time I needed to cook a poorly-planned meal that resulted in carrots being thrown down the hallway (also by me) we were like… we need to do this!! I also need to REALLY embrace the slow cooker more as sunnier days mean I’d rather spend the afternoons outside with the kids playing and gardening rather than slaving over the oven while they was too much Paw Patrol. Our current cooker is great but only holds 2 quarts so I think it’s time to get a bigger one. I’m leaning towards this model (good reviews and v v cheap, the larger model of our current one is OVER TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS wth) but if you have any recs I’d love to hear them!

Friday: okay this was last last Friday but I made chicken & pepper tacos for the family & my sister and they were GREAT. The only problem was not having enough so next time I’m going to ramp up the quantity! I used this recipe for the chicken and this recipe for the peppers, and topped them just with some fresh cilantro and cheese.

Sunday: rosemary garlic roast beef with Hasselback potatoes and grilled asparagus with lemon & parmesan. I bought a Hasselback potato frame? mold? thing to put the potatoes in while you cut them so these may happen more.

Monday: chicken with bacon & white wine sauce, served with fresh bread and spicy honey glazed carrots. This chicken takes FIVEEVER to make but it’s so good it’s worth it! The kids all liked the bread best though, which is like… quite the compliment because they DO NOT like any “weird breads.”

Wednesday: sweet & sour pork with rice. I left the carrots out of this dish because Nicky has… digestional issues if he eats to many, and was already suffering after Monday’s carrots. Overall it was good, the pork was DELICIOUS but the sauce was a little too sour and not quite enough sweet. I think if I made this again I’d decrease the amount of vinegar in the sauce and increase the sugar.

Friday: Pizza is back! I made two pizzas (pepperoni and goat cheese & basil) and they both turned out well in spite of a few snafus: I divided the dough too evenly (one of my cast iron pans makes a large and the other makes a medium but I cut the dough right in half without thinking), and I forgot to put sauce on one until AFTER I put on the cheese and the toppings! This is particularly embarrassing because I have clear rules about making pizza and the order in which to top them: sauce-cheese-toppings-cheese. However in spite of this they both turned out delicious.

this week

This week. THIS WEEK MAN.

You know the saying that like… comedy is tragedy plus time? So many things have gone awry this week that it’s ALREADY funny, and the week isn’t even over. No need to wait for the tragedy to become comedy when your life’s disasters are on a 24-hour news cycle! Fair warning: a lot of the things that went awry involve a great variety of bodily fluids. The amount of time I spent this week cleaning up pee and poo and puke…!

But we’ll start with me. Last week I bought myself some new baking sheets. I wanted to make cookies for the Thursday Treat (it’s A Thing now) this week, but all my old, crudded up baking sheets were different sizes and thicknesses, so it was almost impossible to figure out cooking times. I just wanted baking sheets that were the same size and the same thickness that would conduct heat in the same way. I’ve finally figured out my oven’s quirks (after only 11 years in this apartment): it runs a little hot, especially on the right side. So I have to rotate whatever I’m cooking laterally halfway through in order to achieve a consistent bake, or roast, or whatever. ANYWAY. I got these new baking sheets so I threw the old ones away. However when I was carrying them to the door, I dropped one. On my foot. No big deal, right? Except the way I was carrying it, it hit my foot on one corner. If it had landed flat, or one the edge I’m sure it wouldn’t have been so painful or dramatic, but all the weight of the thing concentrated on that one corner was just beyond! I’m sure there are mathematical calculations you could do with the weight of the sheet and the height from which it fell to figure out the psi or whatever, but all I need to know was that it HURT. I hobble-ran around the house yelling the kind of nonsense non-swears you yell when you are around little kids: “FRIBBIN FRABBIN JACKALOPIN FLUFFERNUTTER!!!!” The top of my foot swelled up like a gross ballon and started to bruise almost right away. It’s been a few days and the swelling still hasn’t gone down completely and the bruise is spectacular and encompasses the entire dorsal area (yes I googled that so I wouldn’t have to say “top of my foot” again). It goes from arch to arch, toe to ankle, purple and green and yellow. It’s quite a treat.

It’s worth mentioning that this is the same foot that developed plantar faciitis last summer, but I don’t have pain from that anymore because acupuncture cured it? I’m a believer now.

Ok. So. The other thing? I swear to god it’s been one kid or another, one animal or another with the bodily fluids ALL WEEK. It’s mostly blurred together into a haze of scrubbing and wiping and rinsing and sanitizing and washing. Nicky’s hair still smells pukey (after MULTIPLE washes!) and I have never been so goddamn happy to have in-suite laundry in my entire life. It’s also really brought to the forefront my & Taylor’s different parenting styles: when a toddler is barfing and screaming and barfing my go-to plan is to just hold them in place where they are (be that in a high chair, in front of the fridge or next to the front door) until they finish barfing so you only have to do crime scene cleanup in one spot, while Taylor’s natural instinct is to grab them and run? where? the bathroom? I’m not really sure, and I don’t know that he does either.

It’s also worth mentioning that I have an old baby wipes box of latex gloves to wear when I’m changing the daycare kids’ diapers (as per health authority regulations) and WOW have they come in handy this week.

Thankfully out of our family only Nicky has gotten sick (so far…). I think it’s actually been a few years since we’ve had a vomitty disease that’s stricken multiple members of the family, which is kind of incredible considering. Just in case anyone else gets hit we’ve all cancelled all of our weekend plans to have sleepovers, go snowboarding, and do Korean foot-peeling masks with our sisters. Ballet class is still on for now; we’ll see how it goes. In the meantime, if no one gets sick I guess I can spend this weekend working on my endless closet-rearranging scheme. So far I’ve emptied my craft closet, sorted out a bunch of old paint cans from the kitchen closet, and put some crackers where the paint cans used to be. Soooo it needs a bit more work.

The acorn is actually a candle jar; the netting over the bottle was from a package of garlic? I think? Or maybe shallots. Either way it’s repurposed. Also I just realized now that the diamond pattern of the net matches the diamond pattern of the acorn top matches the diamond pattern on the wooden coaster, and yet I had them grouped together? The subconscious mind is WILD.

When we went snow tubing I sunburned my lips and for WEEKS nothing helped to heal the dry, peelly, chapped and PAINFUL mess. Last weekend in desperation I went to Sephora and spent TWENTY-TWO DOLLARS on this Drunk Elephant Lippe Balm. I said that if it didn’t completely heal my fried lips in ONE DAY I was returning it, and guess what? IT TOTALLY WORKED. I started using it on Saturday afternoon and woke up Sunday morning completely restored, goddammit. So if your lips are dried, fried or generally a wreck I recommend this. You’ll love it, and I’m sorry.

This week’s Thursday Treat: brown butter & toffee chocolate chip cookies. I wanted to try a new recipe so I googled “best chocolate chip cookie bon appetit” (I’ve had really good luck with recipes from them) and this was the result. Ironically (?) this recipe ACTUALLY comes from a baking blogger from Nanaimo, BC, which is 12 minutes from my hometown of Nanoose Bay. WHAT R THE ODDS. My grocery store didn’t have any Skor bars but it did have bags of Skor toffee bits so I used 80 grams of those, and 50% cacao chocolate chips instead of dark chocolate wafers (i… dk what those are). These came out delicious, and I got to use my new baking sheets! I also used an ice cream scoop to measure the batter for the first time and why? have I not always been doing this? You should do it too; my scoop is from Crate & Barrel and it works great.

Nicky is no longer drinking formula at all, so this week I washed and cleaned our beloved baby bottle machine so we can sell it, and with the counter space freed up by its absence I spent a glorious afternoon rearranging the kitchen. The toaster and bread box are with the coffee maker in a breakfast-slash-sandwich zone. The coffee maker is next to the sink so you can refilled its water reservoir easily. The stand mixer is closer to the stove which makes sense because most things you mix, you also need to cook. The space makes so much more sense now and is so much more ~visually open~ (sorry). I need to get a second or bigger utensil holder and I want a different breadbox; there’s nothing wrong with our current one but the steel doesn’t go with my current ~aesthetic (again, sorry) and it has a big dent on the top where someone (me…) dropped a jar of salsa on it the first week we had it. I would love one that was wood or white, but I also want a drop-front and a flat top so I can store stuff on top of it. The same one we have now comes in white, which would be perfect EXCEPT it’s not really available here? You can get it on UK sites for £31, but here in Canada I can only find it from sketchy resellers for $160, or $100 + $60 shipping. So the search continues.

OH! As part of the kitchen & pantry project I made labels for all my salts this week! Except this isn’t all of them, I need to get more of these jars (from the dollar store) for the rest of them. I have the labels all ready when I do though

You would never guess this guy has barfed over one hundred thousand times this week.

family dinner

Sunday: farfalle primavera Another of Gwen’s picks, I swear that kid would eat noodles for every meal if she could. She actually requested NO SAUCE but I was like… nope. I threw together a quick primavera with all the assorted leftover tomato sauces in my fridge & freezer, adding garlic, yellow & orange peppers, snow peas, broccoli and some Italian seasoning.

Monday: chicken with scalloped potato casserole I got this recipe from a cookbook I bought for my sister, here it is with my ~adaptations

2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp vegetable oil
4 chicken breasts
1 cup chopped bacon
2 lbs potatoes, cut into 1/4″ slices
2 large onions, sliced
1/2 tsp dried thyme
2 1/2 cups chicken stock, hot
kosher salt & freshly ground black pepper
green onions for garnish

1. Heat oven to 300°F. Heat half the butter and the oil in a large skillet and fry the chicken and bacon for 5 minutes, or until lightly brown.
2 Layer half the potato slices, the half the onion slices in the bottom of a large Dutch oven. Season with salt, pepper and half the thyme, and dot with 1/3 tbsp of butter.
3. Add the chicken and bacon, season with salt and pepper to taste, and dot with 1/3 tbsp of butter. Cover with the remaining onions and finally a layer of potatoes, season with salt, pepper and the remaining thyme and dot with the remaining butter. Pour the hot chicken stock on top.
4. Cover and cook in the oven for about 2 1/2 hours until the chicken is tender and the potatoes are cooked, adding more hot stock if necessary.
5. Just before serving, sprinkle with freshly snipped green onions.

Tuesday: leftover chicken and scalloped potatoes Tonight’s meal was SUPPOSED to be chili with cornbread, but when I started cooking the meat it seemed… off. I’m very paranoid after maybe food poisoning us the other week so I scrapped it in favour of leftovers. There was actually a TON of Monday’s dinner left; the recipe made a huge amount of food and as it turned out, Taylor wasn’t home that night so it was just me & the little kids.

Wednesday: chili After getting new meat, I finally made the chili. We typically use this recipe, and it’s DELICIOUS. I was too lazy to make the cornbread though.

Thursday: scrambled eggs & toast This was just for the little kids as Taylor and I took Symphony to see Black Panther that night. Our dinner was movie theatre popcorn.

Friday: pizza I did NOT make this, Taylor ordered it while I went out for a Fun Mom Dinner with my friend Jill and some of the moms I see at the school everyday. So really I only cooked three meals last week? This week I am going to try to make all the dinners using just what I already have in the house (except for one main dish), so wish me luck!