Zucchini Feta Fritters with Poached Eggs

Zucchini Feta Fritters use the freshest summertime flavours - filled with shaved zucchini, chopped mint, and basil, you might already have the ingredients growing in your garden!

As I said on Instagram, sorry for the very long and unintentional break!

We ended up spontaneously moving - which wasn’t all that spontaneous, really, considering we had been talking about moving since getting married last August. We’d been hoping to buy a house/townhouse - but guess what, the real estate market in Vancouver sucks. Really sucks. As in, can’t-buy-a-detached-home-for-less-than-1-million-dollars sucks.

It’s funny because it feels like the traditional and “expected” progression of #adulting is 1) get married, 2) buy house, 3) have baby, 4) live happily ever after. Which is ridiculous with a capital R, because life certainly doesn’t work out that way. But somehow I felt like we were failing if we couldn’t buy a home now that we were married.

After much discussion, we realized that just because buying a home was natural/affordable/expected for our parents’ generation or for friends in other cities - it didn’t mean it was right or realistic for us.

And after all my chaos at work this Spring, and the potential of being laid off looming over our heads, we wondered, What’s the harm in renting?

When you let go of society’s expectation of what you should be doing, it’s amazing what other options present themselves. So, why not rent? Why not find our dream rental home?

Our list of desires was not small, but after 5 months of searching, we found it: the unicorn of rental homes. So we moved out of our small rental apartment and into a bigger rental house.

And it is so, so good!

Blueberry Basil Smoothie

I grew up on an island in the pacific northwest, on the coast of British Columbia, Canada. Taking a ferry to the mainland (where I live now - in the city of Vancouver), through an archipelago of mountainous, treed islands was a regular occurrence - sometimes you could even spot whales!

The ferry passes through a grouping of islands called the Gulf Islands, and one of those islands is Salt Spring. Salt Spring Island is very small in comparison to the island I grew up on, with a tiny town, rolling hills of farmland, artisans, hippies, rocky beaches, and a very, very laid back lifestyle. (It’s a lovely place to vacation! You should go!)

Salt Spring Island has an incredible, incredible farmer’s market during the spring and summer - one of my favourite vendors is Salt Spring Kitchen, who sell artisanal preserves.

Last summer I picked up their Blueberry Basil Jam which has become a favourite to pair with a sharp cheddar cheese and cracker. The sweetness of the berries plays off a hint of refreshing basil - it’s a lovely sweet-savoury combination.

This pairing inspired me to re-create the same flavours in a Blueberry Basil Smoothie! I’ve added fresh basil leaves to a classic blueberry smoothie, creating a refreshing twist in this healthy breakfast smoothie.

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Breakfast Galette

A cheesy Breakfast Galette wrapped in sour cream pastry with an egg baked onto it - a special weekend brunch!

I have a soft spot in my heart for galettes - the pastry is supposed to look kind of messy, they’re usually filled with fresh seasonal fruit, and they are just so rustic and lovely to look at and taste. In fact, we’re serving fruit galettes as our wedding dessert! So yes I do love them that much.

Here we have another take on the galette - a Breakfast Galette. Similar idea - the recipe uses the same sour cream pastry dough as I make for fruit galettes, but instead of filling the galette with fruit, it is filled with creamy ricotta and mozzarella cheese, and then topped with proscuitto, basil, and a big fat egg.

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