How To Keep Falling In Love With Toronto, Part Four

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Hannah

Plans and dreams and endings and beginnings and disappointments and exhilarations and sleeplessness and giddy-bursts-of-joy-beneath-my-breath and possibilities and challenges and happiness and denial and hopes have been skittering within me for a good six weeks now, and somewhere along the way I forgot to tell you why.

Oops.

So here is the result, in a nutshell, of my recent bout of debating/positing/accepting/tinkering/hoping:

On Friday, I’ll be flying into California for another few months of travelling around the U.S., later returning to Toronto to continue building a soul-soaring life in Canada.

It feels fitting, before I bid the city a temporary adieu, to write one last installment of how to fall in love with Toronto. Shall we?

29. Continue exploring Kensington Market throughout winter, delighting in its ability to constantly surprise you. A sidewalk table laden with treats offering samples galore? Why not?

30. Step into Patty King, Kensington Market’s Jamaican bakery, and gaze excitedly at such unusual (to you) sweets as Tamarind Balls and Grater Cake.

31. Buy a snack called Doubles from said Patty King (thank your friend for being the hand model), and decide after a single bite that the turmeric-spiced fried-yet-soft bread filled with channa (chickpea curry) is quite delicious.

32. Laugh delightedly upon finding a reference to your home country in a Sunday morning crossword filled out with Lisa.

33. Laugh again (though on a different day) at how ornate and complicated sushi in North America always seems to be. Remember how simple (and wonderful) sushi was when you travelled around Japan a few years ago.

33. Attend a three hour hands-on chocolate class at ChocoSol, and be so impressed with the Toronto-based company’s ethics and chocolate creations that you buy several different flavours to review (eventually).

34. Giddily order vegan and gluten-free desserts to-go from Fresh after brunch with Sarah, your favourite housemate of all time.

35. Experience a very good day at your internship.

36. Experience a very, very good day at your internship.

37. Experience one of the best days of all time at your internship.

38. Be grateful that taking these steps towards falling in love with Toronto means you’ll truly look forward to returning in the fall.

39. Start packing. No really, Hannah. Start packing. START PACKING.

Salted Peanut Butterscotch Blondies

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Hannah

I’m not quite sure how to introduce these Salted Peanut Butterscotch Blondies to you. The following all seem appropriate:

You’re welcome.

I’m sorry.

Come to mama.

Hooooooooo boy.

Yes. With a bonus side of yes. Yes.

How can it be wrong when it feels so right?

I wish I knew how to quit you.

These blondies were an experiment that went exuberantly wonderfully magnificently right. It all started when my hands, completely of their own volition and in breach of my mind’s demand that they leave well enough alone, reached for a bag of butterscotch chips at my local supermarket.

It continued when the word “blondies!” popped into my head as I pondered what new treat to bake for my beloved colleagues to further (following the success of the Chocolate Chip Coconut Macaroons) illustrate my joy at working with them.

However, I felt in my heart of hearts that straight butterscotch blondies would be too insanely and cloyingly sweet. Plus, none of the recipes I found online felt right to me.

So I created these Salted Peanut Butterscotch Blondies off the top of my head, and spent the entire time they were baking in the oven and cooling on the counter fretting over whether they’d taste any good at all.

Well, these blondies didn’t just taste good. They tasted devastatingly incredible. With a perfectly crackly-crispy top and crust, a dense, moist, almost-chewy and always-butterscotch-sweet middle, and everywhere large nubbins of salted roasted peanuts ensuring that every bite was a minor miracle, these are perhaps my very favourite non-vegan non-raw non-dairy-free non-gluten-free recipe creation of all time.

Don’t just take my word for it, either. One of my colleagues emailed the team with “They are perfection. Seriously. Eat one!”, while another wrote “Oh. My. God. I’m dying. Literally dying. These are so good.”

I maybe had to hide my face a little bit to cope with the happy feelings at that point.

Perhaps I don’t need to quit these blondies after all.

Salted Peanut Butterscotch Blondies

Recipe by me
Makes around 24 (I can’t quite remember)

3/4 cup (185g/1 1/2 sticks) butter
2 cups (400g) brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups (210g) plain (all-purpose) flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups (170g) butterscotch chips
1 1/2 cups (170g) roasted salted peanuts (I didn’t chop mine, but you can if you’d like. Personal choice hurrah!)

Preheat oven to 350F (180C). Grease and line a 9 x 13 inch pan.
Melt the butter in a medium-large saucepan over medium heat. Remove from heat, then stir in the brown sugar, salt and vanilla extract until combined, and let cool slightly (just five minutes or so; nothing crazy. I’m not saying you should go watch an episode of The West Wing or anything).
Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing through after each addition. Stir in the flour until combined.
Gently fold through the butterscotch chips and salted peanuts. Pour batter into the prepared pan, then bake for 25 – 30 minutes (I did 28, and to me they were perfect. I like to err on the side of underbaking rather than overbaking blondies; it makes for an addictive, enticing soft chewiness). Cool completely before slicing.
Hooooooooo boy.

Northern Ontario Wilderness Magic with Heathy: Part Three

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Hannah

If I were to create new titles for my Northern Ontario adventures last year, Part One would be renamed “Magical Friendship and Raw Vegan Dessert Heaven” and Part Two would be called “Flights of Fancy and Carob Cashew Marvellous Mousse”.

Today’s post, Part Three, would be known simply as “The One Where Our Faces Show Up A Lot”.

Do you want to know the signs of true friendship in the North? They include:

Being driven into town every day by your non-coffee-drinking friend so that you can buy a cup of coffee from the lovely local cafe;
Having your friend come up with reasons why she “needs” to go into town every day so that you never have to actually ask for said coffee run; it simply happens;
Walking through the snow while laughing over Elvis sightings and then gasping with glee because MINIATURE HORSE-PONY-CREATURE-THING-JOY-PATTING-PATTING;
Not being made fun of when you have to use the absolute lightest weights during an impromptu workout together over a fun girly movie;

Making raw vegan sushi in the kitchen one night after exhilarating in the joy of a yoga class led by Heathy (who is, no word of a lie, the best yoga instructor I’ve ever had… why are you so far away, Heathy? Why?);
Giggling wildly upon later discovering that, while you were smiling serenely at the camera, Heathy was wielding a knife like a gorgeous fiend behind you;

Finding someone who will not only be silly with you in the kitchen, but will respond to your pleas not to roll the sushi “because I’m not any good at it!” by handing you the nori and stating that “you only learn by doing”, thus further reinforcing her soulsister/spirit-guide status;

(Mmm, delicious sushi and delicious Ontario white wine…)

Feeling like you’ve known each other for longer than you can remember, and wishing you lived close enough to have movie-dessert-wine nights every week;

But, because you currently don’t live close enough for that, being given a plate of your favourite of Heathy’s pumpkin treats (the raw vegan pumpkin pie) as well as the one you hadn’t yet tasted (the traditional baked, but still gluten-free and dairy-free, pumpkin pie) to eat on the four hour Greyhound bus back to Thunder Bay, en route to Toronto; and

Knowing that even if it’s months before you see each other again, the memories are strong enough to keep your friendship shimmering like gossamer.

Northern Ontario Wilderness Magic with Heathy: Part Two

Posted on March 2, 2013 by Hannah

To read the first two installments of my Northern Ontario adventure, click here and here.

My first day with Heather in her winter wonderland home was marked by naught but joy, deliciousness, laughter, secret-sharing, and the forging of soulsister-bonds. I awoke the next morning wondering if our second day could possibly be as magical as the first.

It could.

After making and enjoying a nourishing breakfast together as the fire crackled in the fireplace behind us, Heathy and I headed out to watch her partner, J, take off from a lake on his fancypants waterplane-machine. (It probably has a more technical name than that, but “fancypants waterplane-machine” makes sense in my head.)

Planes that take off from and land on water! Who knew! This world of ours!

Then lo! More exclamation marks! Suddenly Heathy and I weren’t simply watching J take off from the water from inside a warm building on land; we were inside the plane.

Girls on a plane!

I was giddy with excitement.

Up, up, and away!

Heathy was kind enough to let me sit in the front of the plane with J, and thus I was able to witness, first-hand, J’s astounding skills as a pilot.

I mean, look at all those gadgets and gizmos and thingamabobs I’ve got twenty! (Wait, no, that’s The Little Mermaid.)

We flew over lakes and houses, over trees and snow, down and up and around until we finally landed on another lake and slowly made our way through shards of ice to the shore.

Thank you, J, for an incredible experience unlike any I’ve ever had.

Unfortunately, Heathy was feeling a little unwell after the flight, but it was nothing a little soulsister firepit dancing couldn’t heal.

And a little more, for good luck.

As I’m sure you could guess from the dessert extravaganza of my first night, no day with Heathy is complete without enjoying some sort of epic raw dessert of wonderment. Heathy knows I love carob and nuts, and that I was interested in playing with Irish moss, and so we danced in the kitchen to create the most amazing, luscious, I’m-still-craving-it-now-why-can’t-I-have-an-everlasting-supply-of-it raw vegan Carob Cashew Mousse.

We took the carob topping from Heathy’s Double Choco Strawberry Cake in Raw Food Carob Desserts, increased the amount and switched up a few proportions, and dear holy squee. We done good. We done so good I forgot language speak proper.

And then Heathy went and garnished our dessert with lucuma coconut cashews.

I can’t even. So much wanting. This is why I’ve taken so long to write up these posts; I almost can’t cope with the levels of wanting that accompany the remembering.

Only almost, though, because the remembering in fact makes me deliriously happy, and such happiness is something I never want to forget.

Northern Ontario Wilderness Magic with Heathy: Part One

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Hannah

How can I convey to you, in nothing more than unmoving words on a white screen, the week of enchanted and unexpected magic that I spent with Heathy of Sweetly Raw and Food and Yoga for Life in her northern Ontario home last November? How can I adequately describe the way our kindred sistersouls starting weaving together like lace from the moment we met, and how the depth of our connection combined with the dreamlike surroundings made it seem like every vulnerability was uncovered, yet at the same time like we were soaring, because we were together, curled up by the fireplace, shimmering and understanding everything?

How can I explain what it was that led Heathy to invite me into her home and world, and for me to accept without hesitation (and, in so doing, undertake over a day’s worth of travelling each way), when in truth we barely knew each other beforehand? How can I, long a skeptic of all such matters, explain this in any other way than that the universe made it so, that somehow the stars knew that Heathy and I needed to find each other and begin our deep friendship just like this, cocooned from the outside world by snow and distance, sharing secrets, stories, and an endless array of sweet treats?

I can’t explain it. And perhaps I shouldn’t. Perhaps it is enough to be grateful to the universe for bringing Heather (and her delicious Sweetly Raw desserts) into my life.

Perhaps it is enough to simply show you a glimpse of our magic.

After my flight to Thunder Bay, overnight B&B stay, and four hour bus ride the next morning, Heathy picked me up from the Greyhound station and drove us an hour back to her home. From the moment I stepped out of Heathy’s car and saw the lake glittering with the sun’s light beyond tall silver trees in her backyard, I knew my week was going to be special.

Oh hey there, little squirrel fellow! Aren’t you just a sweetest thing!

Hide and seek! I see you! Up there on your squirrel roof! Don’t worry, I’m not about to steal your squirrel feed.

After all, Heathy and I have almost 4 kilos of intensely amazing raw almond butter inside, and we don’t really want to share either.

After I’d finished the above imaginary conversation with a squirrel, Heathy bundled me up in winter gear and took me off exploring with her little poodle pup, who was so affectionate and lovely that I began to miss my own poodle pup terribly, my poodle pup who recently passed away.

But this is not a post of sadness; this is a post of joy. The joy of new friendship, of wearing reversible mittens both ways at the same time (pink! brown!), of skipping stones across the water and laughingtalkinglaughing breathlessly.

After a little more time getting lost in the beauty of northern Ontario, I experienced the incredibilityfulness of Heathy’s raw pizza wizardry for dinner while also meeting her partner J, who is a man of awesomeness.

The recipes for Heathy’s all-raw buckwheat sunflower seed sundried tomato pizza crust, marinara sauce, pesto, marinated veggies, and cashew cheese are available here. You must make them. Forever. Except leave room for dessert, because…

Is this what heaven looks like?

Wait, no.

This is what heaven looks like.

I may have started to hyperventilate a little bit when Heathy said “dessert time!” and then laid out, on the counter, everything you see above. All raw, all vegan, all so incredibly beyond comprehension delicious that I almost cried with overwhelmed exuberance.

Raw vegan dark chocolate moonie pies, jumbo almond butter cups, jumbo peanut butter cups, pear crumble, pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin pie, lucuma pumpin fudge, cashew chocolate clusters, almond chocolate clusters, macaroons…

This is what heaven looks like.

I told you it was magic.

Wayfaring Chocolate

adventures in chocolate, travel, cooking, and living

Tag Archives: happiness

How To Keep Falling In Love With Toronto, Part Four

Salted Peanut Butterscotch Blondies

Salted Peanut Butterscotch Blondies

Northern Ontario Wilderness Magic with Heathy: Part Three

Northern Ontario Wilderness Magic with Heathy: Part Two

Northern Ontario Wilderness Magic with Heathy: Part One