Orange Loaf

Merry Christmas! I hope you’re all having a wonderful holiday with tons of snow!

I love the snow. I’ve always loved the snow. There’s something about the way the magical snowflakes softly and silently blanket everything that makes me feel like a little kid about to open presents on Christmas Day. This past Tuesday, I woke up to an unexpected, but welcomed surprise of snow. At school, I wasn’t able to focus at all because I just wanted to play outside in the snow. For one of the first times in my life, I felt as if school was just like confinement. I wanted to get out so badly. I got my chance to frolic about at lunch when I jumped around in the fresh snow. It’s a great feeling being the first person to make a set of tracks on a field. The snow seems to hush all noise and cover up any worries—unless you have to drive in the snow. I even saw a bunch of adults having a snowball fight in the park.

Another 5-10 cm of snow was forecasted for Wednesday before it was supposed to change to rain. Rain. The word I hate hearing in combination with snow. Living near Vancouver, I’m supposed to be used to the snow making a brief visit before getting washed away by the rain in less than a day, but I never am. As a huge snow lover, it always brings me sadness watching the beautiful, light snow quickly turning to nasty, wet slush.

Wednesday brought a few more centimetres of snow before turning to rain at around 1:30pm. Being busy at lunch, I wasn’t able to enjoy the huge snowflakes that fell. I enviously watched from inside a classroom as other students had fun making snowmen, twirling about, letting snow caress their face, and rolling around—well, that’s just basically a description of what I like to do in the snow, but I imagine other people like doing that too.

Now all that remains are dirty clumps of snow on the sides of the street. An eyesore.

It’s another wet and green Christmas for me, and the spirit of the holiday almost seems to get drowned out a little by the rain. Maybe it’s because I know Christmas is essentially a commercial holiday now. Maybe it’s because my family doesn’t put up a tree anymore. Maybe it’s because there’s no snow. Maybe it’s because the feelings of love and kindness take a backseat to the hustle and bustle of this holiday. OR MAYBE BECAUSE IT’S SO DARK THAT I JUST WANT TO SLEEP. Grr.

Whatever the reason, I just don’t feel the magic this year. It’s simply another day of the year.

Cinnamon Bun Pancakes

Hi, I’m sick. I don’t like being sick, but who does? Exactly. No one. I became ill after coming home from annual retreat that my high school program does. When you’re spending so much time with a bunch of sick people, you’re only bound to get sick! Well, I technically got sick when people with sniffles and sore throats came to school the next day and infected me. Otherwise I would have been fine! It’s probably just a cold and I’ll be over it in a few days.

Every year my program goes to the Sunshine Coast for a retreat (3 days, 2 nights) to develop group work, leadership, friendships, and all that good stuff. It was so much fun! I think I enjoyed it much more this year than the other four times because it was my last retreat. Oh, we sleep in cabins and not tents.

I got up early both days to take some pictures at the beach (and shower, because there’s always a huge line to shower and that’s not fun). The view is super amazing, and I love watching the sunrise.

You see those geese? I don’t like them. They always managed to escape from me. I missed so many photos because they flew away from me before I could get a nice one. When I had my camera off, a group of geese flew over in a perfect V formation. By the time I turned my camera on, they were just little specks in the background. Not fair.

Sorry, this should be a post about pancakes, not my fun retreat… hehe.

Zucchini Bread

It rained for what seemed like the first time in months. I know I said it the last time it rained (which was a little over a two weeks ago), but I live near Vancouver so it rains much more often than this—although I’m not complaining about the lack of rain (yet)! It was just one of those bleh kind of days where I didn’t feel like doing anything, and my mood seemed to emulate the cloudy weather. Alas, life goes on. I decided to bake this zucchini bread to lift up my mood.

For some reason, I stopped writing here a few days ago and now this has been sitting in my drafts since last Sunday. I assume it’s because I was working on my homework.

After since my extremely yellow lemon zucchini loaf, I’ve been wanting to try zucchini bread… like actual zucchini bread that’s not extremely yellow. Yes, I’m still not over the fact that it was so yellow.

I looked through my favourite food blogs and found this zucchini bread recipe. The original recipe makes 2 loaves and uses 3 large eggs, which bugs me so much because what am I supposed to do if I only want 1 loaf? It’s not like you can only take half of an egg. Well, I suppose you can, but that’s silly. I just happened to have super super small eggs, so I used those.

Baked Vanilla Donuts with Lemon Glaze

One week until school starts again. I can just feel my summer vacation floating away to nothingness. Well, I already know it is. I’ve gotten my package from school. Sigh. It’s been getting cooler the past few days. Another sign that summer break is coming to an end. I almost decided to put on a hoodie today, but I was too lazy to walk upstairs to my bedroom. It rained as well, which was quite nice. It hasn’t rained in a while. The last time it did was during a super long thunderstorm.

I still want to bake so many things. Bah. I decided to knock one of the things off of my list. Baked donuts! Not fried. Baked. I do like the occasional fried donuts with glaze, but I’d rather not do it myself because then I would know exactly how much sugar I use, and that would scare/disgust me. I also don’t like the thought of dealing with hot oil.

So baked donuts. My friend Shakti introduced me to baked donuts with her post. Since then I’ve been obsessively searching for recipes. I have a collection of donut recipes now, but I don’t have a donut pan. Yesterday, I was in HomeSense and I was dying looking at all of the pans and just baking things in general. Luckily (or sadly), I resisted buying anything. I made it my project for today to create donut moulds (and then bake using them). Shakti made her own donut moulds, so I was like hey ~~I just met you, and this is crazy, but here’s my number, so call me maybe~~, I’ll just create my own donut “pan”.

Lemon Zucchini Loaf

How is it already almost the start of my grad year (aaaaah already)? That’s not allowed to happen. I’ve done nothing this summer and it’s nearly over. Ugh. I created myself a list of things to do before school starts again ~~because YOLO~~. Sorry, I had to. Katie Couric abused that terrible acronym two nights ago on Jay Leno. I nearly cried. Damn you, Drake. Anwyay…

Find a volunteer opportunity for the upcoming school year.
Clean my table and the surrounding area (because it’s a disaster).
Gain back 7 lbs (3/7 so far).
Make something with yeast (kaljsdflkajds yeast is so scary).

While I decide on the first thing I want to make with yeast, I chose to bake this lemon zucchini loaf. When I told my mom that I would be making a lemon zucchini bread, she just gave me a strange look. I don’t know what I was thinking. It seems like a strange combination. And I guess it is.

I’ve never actually had zucchini bread. Just zucchini bread. Maybe I’ll add it to my to bake list once I find a recipe that begs for me. I really like grating zucchinis. It’s so easy and I love the big shreds. I could shred zucchinis all day. Well, not really, but it’s fun. On the other hand, I hate zesting lemons. I try to get all the zest off and I get quite frustrated when I miss a spot over and over again… like that lemon above. Ugh.

Apple Cinnamon Crumb Muffins

I can eat normally again! This is a cause for serious celebration. I didn’t know how much I would miss “regular” food just after a week. I lost a total of 7 pounds (yikes!) after I got my wisdom teeth removed. My friend said I was a twig before the wisdom teeth removal, so now I guess I must be the leaf on the twig? Because I can eat, now I can taste what I bake. My baking is in full swing again!

I decided to bake these apple cinnamon crumb muffins I saw on Two Peas and Their Pod (after I became hooked while looking at pictures of their cute baby). The muffins looked too good for me to pass up. Nice pictures are a good way of convincing me to bake something.

Vanilla Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

You know those days when you wake up with a horrendous headache even after sleeping 7 hours? Yeah. Those days suck. I woke up with that on the day of my friend, Mary’s birthday party. My entire jaw was sore from my terrible sleeping position. A killer headache and killer jaw pain. A great combination! I still wanted to make these cupcakes for her birthday party, though.

Baking is actually quite comforting for me and cupcakes are probably my favourite things to make. I really like the thin batters. When I was making these cupcakes, my headache actually sort of went away. Well, it did when I was baking but it came back when I stopped. Baking should be used as a method of therapy! I would attend that.

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