Homemade Biscoff Cookies

It’s Valentines Day!

Do you celebrate?

The kids always have a school party, so we always do the class valentines and the valentine box. 

In the past, I’ve done the bulk of the work, but this year, I decided to let it go!  My boys are very creative and capable and I decided to let them go for it!  We had our 4^th snow day in 2 weeks, so I gave them cardboard boxes, tin foil, tape and told them to have at it and let me know if they needed help!

5 rolls of tape, 4 boxes, and 1 roll of tin foil later, they were done (with very little adult assistance needed) and they did an amazing job!

For my part, I usually get the boys some chocolates and make heart pancakes for lunch (or in this case the night before since tomorrow is a school day).  Then I make steak for dinner, because steak is Hubs’ favorite and it’s a real treat in the winter since steak is usually a summer grilling treat (I know some people grill year round, but our grill is literally buried in a snowbank and it’s been weeks since we’ve seen temps above zero, so, ummm, no). 

Leaky Cauldron Mini Cottage Pie

A few weeks ago, we took a family vacation to Disney World…with a 2-day detour to Universal Studios and Wizarding World of Harry Potter!

There is so much to do and see!  Though both Universal parks are huge, we spent almost all of our time in Wizarding World, living every minute!  The entire family got wands, I almost bough robes (but they were too pricey), and we got a little taste of London when we stopped by The Leaky Cauldron for lunch!

Ginger Pork Pot Stickers & Homemade Wonton Wrappers

Last week, I posted about the fortuitous plane ride to Disney World with the Food n’ Flix movie (which I couldn’t get locally) playing on-board!

After watching that movie, there was still ample time on the flight, so I started paging through the rest of the movies and saw Crazy Rich Asians.  I wasn’t 100% sure, but I thought that Crazy Rich Asians might have been a future Food n’ Flix movie.  Since my phone was in airplane mode, I couldn’t verify it, but I decided to take a chance.

Imagine my surprise later on when I realized that, not only was Crazy Rich Asians the Food n’ Flix movie for February (here's the invite), but also the Cook the Books Club pick for this month!

What luck!

After watching the movie on the plane and having an amazing, magical week in Disney World, I got a copy of the book, Crazy Rich Asians and got reading!

While I enjoyed the movie, in a train-wrecky kind of way, as this librarian typically says – the book was better!

Hawaiian Rolls

So, funny story.  I was totally on the ball with this months Cook the Books Club.  I finished the book over Christmas vacation and made my recipe right away.

Then I got sick (just a sinus infection, but I was completely wiped out) plus I was getting my family all packed and ready for Disney so the recipe just sat there!

Now I’m back from that amazing trip, it’s the end of the month, and here I am!

Cheesy Spinach & Chicken Soup

It’s Food ‘n Flix time and I’m flying in at the end.  Which is pretty typical, all things considered.

I nearly didn’t do this month at all because I was having a hard time coming by the movie.  I always check Netflix and Amazon first (no dice) and then the library (checked out – for weeks!  It’s probably lost) because I don’t like to buy movies, especially if I’m not sure if I’ll like them or not.

Then we got on an airplane to go here:

And on that plane, lo and behold, was the movie for this month, Book Club, hosted by Evelyne from CulturEatz.

One magical week later, and it was time to be back in the frigid cold and start cooking!

Ethiopian Hummus (Buticha)

It’s the 10^th of the month which means it’s time to take a culinary journey around the world with the Eat The World RecipeChallenge!

This month takes us to Ethiopia!  Surprisingly, this is not the first time I’ve researched Ethiopian food – I also took a peek when I read Marcus Samuelsson’s memoir for Cook the Books Club a number of years ago (though I ultimately decided on a French recipe that time, since he is also a classically trained French chef).

So I was excited to revisit Ethiopian food and actually make it this time.  The challenge: from what I saw, Ethiopian food is very spicy (read: not kid friendly) and commonly uses the Ethiopian spice blend, Berbere (which is not available in my area).  I found a couple recipes for a homemade approximation of berbere, but I was still worried about the spice level (plus authenticity is thrown out the window).

So I kept searching and eventually came across bitucha, which is basically an Ethiopian version of hummus!  What makes this version of hummus different than others I’ve seen is the addition of mustard!

Many of the recipes I looked at simply listed “mustard” – which made the wonder – seed? Ground? Yellow? Dijon? What?!?!?

One recipe of the many called for Dijon mustard.   I took my knowledge of berbere (spicy!) and applied that to my buticha, opting for spicy brown mustard here.

Vegan Superfood Breakfast Cookies

Today’s recipe challenge ended up being rather fortuitous.  You see, one of my co-workers asked me to recreate her favorite bakery breakfast cookies.  Just as I was working on developing that recipe, I saw challenge to create a vegan recipe for January! 

The recipe that caught my eye as I was researching was already vegan (and gluten-free!) so that’s what I made!