The Hunger Struck - Confessions of a Food Fanatic.

I have been the laziest cook lately. For the last few weeks as this blog will attest I have had minimal time in the kitchen. Actually it hasn’t been intentional at all, I’ve just been so busy lately. We are desperately trying to find a house right now as we’ve out grown our one room apartment, so all of my free time has been spent doing this. Any of you Vancouverites who have been through this process recently will know how frustrating it is. I wont get started on the housing prices in Vancouver, they make me want to pull my hair out.

But hopefully we will find something soon because I’m sick of this and need more time to do the things I love again. AND my kitchen misses me. AND i just got a new set of amazing pots and pans. AND figs are in season!

I don’t know about you guys but I’m absolutely obsessed with figs. I wait not so patiently all year until its fig season. Once they start showing up we go absolutely fig crazy. Seriously we eat them on a daily basis. I thought I would share this extremely no brainer recipe quickly, its the first thing we do with figs each year and it may change the way you look at bruschetta forever.

There really is nothing that pleases my hubby more than some open face sandwich action. It’s among his top 5 favorite things to eat and I would bet that it might actually be in his top 2. It doesn’t really matter what you put on the bread, as long as it’s piled high, it could be almost anything that you fish out of the fridge and it would still be “the best thing he’s ever tasted.” Men are funny.

Because of this we tend to eat bruschetta a lot or some other variety of sandwich fare. More often than not these also end up to be quite simple, as they are usually the result of random items left at the end of the week. After being away for a few weeks on vacation with my girlfriends, I was feeling generous and decided to plan his favorite and perhaps more lunch appropriate meal into our dinners for the week.

Gougères come from the Burgundy region of France and are commonly served accompanying champagne. They are light savory pâte à choux cheese puffs and they are currently my favorite bite to serve dinner guests before a big meal.

I’m not a big Champagne drinker, though I’ll drink like I am one when it’s around. Why hold back when you can just go for it? I will say that several years ago, while still living in San Francisco I might have had a mini champagne (not the real stuff! ) drinking problem and would often find myself with a glass in hand on my balcony with certain enablers before noon most weekends. I was 25 and for us Canadians living in the US a $2 bottle of Champagne-like-stuff was as good as free. Do you have any idea how much booze is taxed in Canada? That same bottle would cost like $17 here. We had to get it while we could. Plus we needed all of the money we could to shop at this place aka heaven on earth.

I make pizza quite frequently. I’m not sure if this is one of those things I do unconsciously to torture myself or if I do it out of a genuine desire to master some kind of technique. Currently, unconscious torture seems more likely as I’m acutely aware of how futile pizza making is when dealing with your average domestic oven. They just don’t get hot enough. Yes you can buy a pizza stone and preheat your oven at its highest setting for 10 hours, but guess what? Your Pizza will always be mediocre.

Several weeks ago I bought a huge butternut squash and because I’m somewhat indecisive, it has been sitting on my counter untouched ever since. I found myself staring at it everyday, uninspired by the thought of making soup or roasting it as is, just bored of my usual recipes. Bored, bored,  bored.

What to do?

After a few weeks I decided that it was time to search around a bit and hopefully get inspired by what others have made and maybe find something that is a bit out of the ordinary from me. Something sweet like muffins but better, it definitely had to be better than muffins.

Well I didn’t have to search long before I found the answer tucked away in the 2006 archives of La Tartine Gourmand. The second I read Squash Harvest Loaf I was captivated and knew what had to be done.  Sometimes all it takes is a quick glance through the ingredients of a recipe to feel completely confident about how it will turn out. Pureed roasted butternut squash + buttermilk + Roasted Pumpkin Seeds, Pecans, Walnuts… what could go wrong?