Food and exercise (okay, mostly food) has reigned supreme again in our household this week.
After my husband smoked two chickens last weekend, we had a lot of leftovers, so I made this simple taco soup, subbing in shredded smoked chicken for pulled pork. The recipe uses mostly pantry staples and it comes together quick and without much fuss. Tasty too (especially with alllll the toppings), although I’d like to try adding some chipotle peppers with adobo sauce next time for a bit more depth.
On Friday, my husband made jalapeno cheddar stuffed burgers with sweet potato fries (SO GOOD!), and we ordered donairs from what is quickly becoming our favourite take-out joint on Saturday night. We had a few beer deliveries from local breweries throughout the week, and had some fun trying a few of them on Friday and Saturday night. I’m loving all of the sessionable options out there right now.
I started a recipe club with my mom, and we made these Blueberry Maple Bran Muffins for our first recipe. Mom said hers turned out great. I used oat milk instead of regular milk and may have overbaked mine, but for whatever reason they came out a bit on the dry side. We’ve got no-yeast cinnamon buns are on the docket for this week.
For dinner tonight, I tried this crispy chickpea and halloumi curry, which was meh (except for the bites of halloumi, which are always delicious), along with my staple recipe for homemade naan. We found out that tomorrow is our neighbour’s birthday, so some cookies were in order. I tried these rather finnicky but genius ones from Sally’s Baking Addiction. So. Worth. It. Even if they did take half the day to make. The neighbour probably doesn’t need any…
Some non-food highlights from the week were getting to run outside today because it finally stopped snowing (and got up to 13 celsius!), my midweek pilates class (who knew 45 minutes of basically stretching could make one feel so good), and catching up with two of my closest doctor girlfriends over Zoom on Thursday night (with wine, of course).
As we head into a new week, here are some things I’m thinking about:
- This quote about how not everyone needs to do pandemic-related work during the pandemic, from Conor White-Sullivan, founder of a cool note-taking app called Roam Research (full interview available here):
“Instead, I think it’s a crazy opportunity for people to do deep work, because a lot of the other normal distractions of daily life have been removed. Isaac Newton basically invented calculus when he was in quarantine, Shakespeare wrote King Lear. There are lots of good precedents of people being able to do wild work because they had the time alone with their thoughts. So I don’t think right now is a time for people to just suddenly be like, “I’m going to address this plague.” But I do think it’s a time where people can think about what comes after this. The world is going to look really different.”
- A reminder that learning requires focus…I know this, but it’s so easy to get caught up in multitasking, so I need constant reminders
- I’m pretty sure I have the world’s tightest hips, so one of my goals is to be able to do malasana pose (i.e. a deep squat) by the end of this pandemic. I’m practicing every day and making very slow process
Have a wonderful week!
Emma Olive Billington 