Happy New Year!

After 3 weeks of travel through India and Thailand, my feet are back on Canadian soil. My brain, however, is irritatingly convinced that my feet are still in Asia. Jet-lag has had me up at 4:30 am for the past 3 days. I am tired. The nauseous, head-falling-in-cereal-bowl, slow-motion-blinking, saying-”excuse me”-to-the-wall-I-just-walked-into kind of tired. The fact that I am able to coordinate thought-fingers-keyboard right now is a small miracle.

To give you a brief rundown, in the past 21 days I have seen the inside of Vancouver, Beijing, Delhi, Cochin, Hyderabad, Bangkok, Phuket and Taipei airports. There were numerous red-eye flights. There was a beautiful Indian wedding and hundreds of future in-laws to meet. There were throat infections, delhi belly, mystery rashes, car sickness, sunburn, hives and antibiotics. There were beautiful beaches and chaotic cities and bustling family homes. There were temples, houseboats, markets, grand palaces, and rickshaws. It was a wonderful, and certainly memorable trip… however, it has left me completely bushed.

Under the scorching Asian sun, I was only vaguely aware of Christmas, but I assume that it happened in my absence. While I was eating idli and dosa, I’m sure you were enjoying the holiday food trifecta of butter, chocolate and cheese. Considering this, and the fact that if I were to stumble around my kitchen in my current state I would almost certainly bake my oven mitts and burn down my apartment building, I thought I’d dig around the archives for some light-hearted oldies to kick off a new year of cooking.

May your 2012 be filled with happiness, success, laughter, good friends and amazing food. And may I get some sleep before I start throwing cats at people. Continue Reading »

This is a very quick hello from far away!! I’m busy eating incredible coconut curries and soaking up the humid South Indian sun, so I must keep this short.

While I’m finding it hard to imagine snow and christmas lights right now, I still wanted to share my collection of festive goodies.

What’s that I hear? I think there is a tender coconut with a straw in it calling my name. I must be off!

Have an eggnog for me, okay? Continue Reading »

I am leaving in the morning on a big trip to India. I’m pretty seriously excited. My fiancé’s sister is getting married. I get to go to a big Indian wedding, and eat Indian food three times a day (more if my pants are stretchy enough), and hang out with some wonderful people. In the sun!

Okay, backing up a bit, yes, I said fiancé. Can’t say it yet without blushing and smiling foolishly ear-to-ear. And squealing a bit. And hopping a few times. EEE! But that now I’ve said it once, I’m reverting back to boyfriend.

So moving on. These lovely sugar cookies are rolled in cinnamon sugar and then baked. The outcome is sparkly, crinkly, lightly spiced cookies that are perfectly chewy and quite magical.
Simple, but wonderful. Continue Reading »

Pears and ginger go swimmingly together.

Ginger and chocolate is divine.

Pear and ginger AND chocolate all packed into a buttery, flaky scone? I’d tell you how good it is but my mouf is full. Continue Reading »

I can get you excited about Christmas now, right? Because it’s been in full swing for me for weeks.

I’m talking egg nog in my coffee and rum in my egg nog.

A marathon of holiday movies and a playlist of five-hundred Christmas songs being played on a loop. Non stop. From the moment I wake up till the moment I go to bed. I’m surprised my Hindu (i.e. completely befuddled by this out-of-control Christmas thing) boyfriend has yet to “accidentally” drop my ipod in the toilet.

All that to say, it is finally almost appropriate to start being publicly excited about Christmas. I think you should celebrate the first day of December by baking fudgy cookies with candy canes on top.

Continue Reading »