Portobello, bacon, red onion quiche with homemade shell. 

Beach hippies. 

Morning commute.

Love where we live. 

We’ve discovered a new summer love. I’m sure there are so many amazing spots around Vancouver to explore but Sasamat and Whyte Lake are a pretty good place to start. Nothing beats floating around on a lake in the sunshine surrounded by trees and mountains. 

The blackberry bushes around my neighborhood are kind of out of control this year and it’s amazing! I’ve been picking bowls of them - with a few odd stares and one random who asked me to eat one in front of him to prove they are not poisonous - people are strange. They make an amazing fruit compote which goes on everything (by everything I mean oatmeal, porridge, yogurt, ice cream, waffles, pancakes and granola). My latest experiment, banana blackberry muffins… oh yes. Free local fruit, ummm I should be giving you weird looks for NOT picking it… on second thought never mind more for me.

Lunch. Caprese Salad, nom nom nom. 

Newish sandwich shop in lovely Gastown, Vancouver. The food is fantastically fresh/homemade and I’m in love with clean/vintage/manly decor. 

Bread made with squash - can you believe it!? I really didn’t think this was going to work but I needed something to make with the cute mini “sweet squash” I bought at the winter’s farmers market. I baked the squash and tried to eat it plain but I’m not much of a plain food kinna girl. Searching for something to make I found this recipe and decided to give it a go, reading through the comments I opted to make a few changes. I sprinkled some Italian herbs (basil, rosemary and thyme) with the flour so that when I rolled the dough out it picked up all the yummy herbs. I sprinkled a hefty amount or coarse sea salt onto the top of the braided loaf before putting it in the oven and brushed the loaf with olive oil instead of the suggested egg wash. This made an AMAZING sweet bread with the texture of a croissant and since I was too lazy to mash the squash it had beautiful little yellow squash fibres throughout. Hurrah! 

Winter Farmers Market apples & pears