Why did the Goat Cross the Road?

Do you ever feel like you’ve lost yourself? Or perhaps found yourself?

I’ve been a little like a kids mitten or scarf lately, or maybe I’ve always been like this and only just realized it. I lose myself regularly and then promptly find myself again. Once a month I think “Oh! That feels like me… I haven’t felt that in a few days/weeks. It’s nice to be me again.”

Is that unusual?

Anyway, I’ve been playing with some goat milk in my cooking, baking and cereal. It’s a weird ingredient for me, as I am not super into the raw taste. Today, I discovered a nice way to use goat milk and found a little bit of myself hiding in the kitchen cupboards, right next to the flour pail that hasn’t come out since I last moved houses.

Here’s what we came up with:

Cranberry Goat Scones

Ingredients: 

2 cups flour
5 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup butter, chopped up
2/3 cup goat milk
1 cup frozen cranberries
Zest of 1 large orange

*set aside a little extra milk, sugar and flour for sprinkling

 

 

Method:

1. Begin by preheating the oven to 425 degrees celsius.

2. Measure the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt into a bowl and stir them together.

3. Add the chopped up butter and blend into the flour mixture with two knives or a pastry blender until it resembles coarse corn meal.

4. Gently stir in the milk, just to moisten. Now add the cranberries and orange zest.

5. Now get messy. Stick your hands in there and mush it all into a ball. Sprinkle some flour on the counter and dump the mixture on there. Knead it gently until it forms a nice ball (5-10 times, max.). Squash the ball until it’s about 1 inch thick and round (or whatever shape you want, really). Cut it into pieces. Scones are traditionally triangles, but I like to make rectangles and squares too. Whatever the shapes, make them all about the same size so they’ll bake evenly.

6. Brush the tops with milk, sprinkle with sugar, and place in oven for 12-15 minutes or until slightly browned on edges. I like to eat them warm, but you could also cool them on a wire rack.

Happily Ever After… with Muffins!

I just returned home from my final postnatal meeting with my second ever doula client. They are an amazing family, and I am feeling so grateful to the universe in this moment for being welcomed into their birth experience. I wanted to give them a gift for sharing this intimate time with me, especially since I am still training.

I was having a hard time figuring out what would be an appropriate gift. Nothing seemed good enough, valuable enough, meaningful enough. Another doula and I were bouncing around gift ideas and when she said ‘baking,’ I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it.

Food is my other passion. Duh.

Of course they go together.

There is nothing more Robyn that I could share with anyone. So today, I baked. It was a sweltering hot day to be spent indoors baking Love into the form of Muffins and Loaves! (love loaves; loaf loves…. say it, it’s fun).

They were very happy. Food seems to be the best gift for busy families. It probably didn’t hurt that the baking was still warm when I arrived at their home. It felt great to give them a little piece of me after they’ve shared so much with me.

Fresh Raspberry Muffins

 

Ingredients:

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
3/4 cup coconut milk
1/2 cup olive oil
Zest of one orange
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups fresh raspberries
1 oz chopped unsweetened chocolate

 

Method:

1. Mix the dry. Flour, baking powder and salt.

2. Mix the wet, in another bowl. Sugar, eggs, milk, oil, zest and vanilla. Beat slightly.

3. Add the dry to the wet and stir until just moistened. Stir in chocolate and raspberries, careful not to overmix. (Over-mixing muffin batter causes tunnels when baking).

4. Spoon batter into greased mini muffin tins, filling 3/4 full.

5. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

*adapted from here.

Banana Loaf

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar
6 large ripe bananas, mashed
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 eggs, slightly beaten
3 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 oz chopped unsweetened chocolate

Method:

1. Cream butter and sugars. Beat in bananas, vanilla and eggs.

2. Mix flour, salt and baking soda in separate bowl. Add to wet ingredients.

3. Stir in chocolate and any other additions (nuts, seeds, berries, don’t be scared to go crazy).

4. Spread into two greased 9×5 loaf pans. Bake at 360 degrees for 45-60 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.

*adapted from here.

Discover Passion

As many of us do, I’ve been hunting for the answer to what I want to be when I grow up for some time now. With every new experience – every battle and every success – I feel I’ve come one step closer. All those steps finally seem to be adding up and a picture of where I’m meant to be is beginning to form. With that knowledge comes many changes.

The focus of this blog must be shifted. It has been shifting for a while, as I’ve found a desire to share more than recipes. I still want to share recipes, but I also want to share my other passions here. Food will always be a passion of mine – the kitchen is my safe space where magic happens – but it is no longer my primary focus.

Families. Family support. Babies. Children. Teen moms. Doula.

This is the stuff that’s in my heart these days. Working as a nanny, working with developmentally delayed kids, working in foster homes – these are the things that have led me to see that families lack support… support that I can provide. That support needs to be there from the moment a family begins. To me, that means supporting parents from conception on, regardless of where pregnancy takes them.

There are so many things in the works right now. I am booking my first clients as a Labour Doula. I will be certified by the end of the year, at the latest. I am making connections with other doulas and families. I have suddenly found myself surrounded in amazing, passionate women who are driven to succeed. I am a part of this beautiful community that is quietly changing the birth scene, empowering women, parents and children to become the best versions of themselves.

So, I don’t know exactly what I want to be when I grow up, but I’m getting close to figuring it out. Stay tuned to see how the adventures of being a labour doula impact my journey, and to see what other crazy twists turn up along the way.

The Wonder of the Sandwich Cookie

So yesterday I remembered late in the day that I’d made a commitment to donate dessert to this fundraiser. I had set the bar high when baking for this group in the past, so my tired headachy state was no excuse to make something shitty. Since these folks have supported my past adventures with many generous donations, I wanted to make them something awesome.

My roomie and I cracked some Bacardi Breezers *puke* and pumped up some System of a Down. We were ready for some serious baking.

This recipe was originally found on Daily Crave and it almost certainly rocked my world.

Cinnamon Shortbread Cookies

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temp
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. In a separate bowl whisk the flour with the salt and cinnamon. Set aside.

2. Beat the butter until smooth and creamy. Add the sugar and beat until smooth. Beat in the vanilla extract. Gently stir in the flour mixture just until incorporated **original recipe suggests chilling at this point, but I found this made my life more challenging than it ought to be – use your judgement.

3. Preheat oven to 350F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

4. On a lightly floured surface roll out the dough into a 1/8 inch thick circle. Cut into the shape of your choice (heart sandwich for Valentines?). Place on the prepared baking sheets and refrigerate for about 15 minutes. **chilling here is worth it as it helps keep the cookies in the shape you worked so hard to create.

5. Bake for about 8 minutes, or until cookies are very lightly browned. Cool on a wire rack

Pumpkin White Chocolate and Cream Cheese Filling

1 cup chopped white chocolate
1/4 cup cream cheese, room temp
1/4 cup pumpkin puree
1/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice

1. Melt white chocolate slowly in a double boiler over low heat (or in a saucepan if you don’t have a double boiler – just be careful not to burn it).

2. Add the other ingredients and mix. **whats pumpkin pie spice? I used allspice and nutmeg and it was awesome.

3. Cool until it reaches ideal spreading consistency.

Now is the best part. Spread the filling between two cookies and mush them together. Not only is this fun to do, the resulting cookie sandwich is rather delicious. If you make a double batch you will have enough to satisfy your own cookie craving for several days as well as give some to all your friends. I spent the whole afternoon (after the fundraiser) giving people cookies.

Come Alive

I’m beginning a new stage in my life. It’s been slowly emerging for a while, and can no longer be pushed to the back burner. I’m done my sociology degree, and have run out of excuses. It’s time to realize my passion and live it…. or at least make an educated guess at what my passion is, and finally do something with it.

Here’s what’s holding me back: Bits of my soul are on the brink of cynicism.

Some days I know, way in the depths of my self that it’s all good. The pit of my stomach can tell me that it’s okay; I’m okay, the world’s okay, the universe: also okay (understand my calm a little more here). Then I flip-flop to this other place where it’s just so not okay, it’s devastating. My heart aches and I cry these hopeless tears filled with sadness for the state of our world. These are the moments that leave me terrified to even try to realize my passions.

What if I try to create positive change and I fail? Won’t it mean that the world is a horrible, hopeless, miserable place? What if I’m all wrong about the importance of passion – the importance of people doing what they love (this, I believe, is what makes a society whole). These are the feelings that keep me from accomplishing anything. If I don’t really try and I don’t invest myself… I can’t fail.

Yet, if I’m unwilling to welcome passion into my life, I may as well just write off my whole life as a failure now.

I was creeping Facebook the other day and someone described a reading as ‘hard on the soul,’and I knew that was exactly what I’ve been feeling. So many things in this life are hard on my soul. How do you comfort your soul? Take the good with the bad. Accept that the pain and the challenges are what make the beautiful moments possible. Cry your face off when you need to. Paint. Run. Cook. Eat cake. Do yoga. Do whatever it is that happens to feed your soul. Don’t let the bad stuff erase the good stuff – let them compliment each other.

So, maybe the world is a horrible and miserable place – but it’s also a place filled with beauty, Love and magic.

It’s a place where people learn and grow everyday.

If you’d like to leave me a comment on how you learn, grow and comfort your soul – this will be a place I can come for reminders of the beautiful things when they’re hard to see.

Baking - and eating said baking - are some of the things that feed my soul

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. – Howard Thurman

Happy New Year!

I stayed in on new years eve (briefly hitting up a hot tub party after the ‘partying’ was done), and poured out my soul to a word document. This is just a snippet of what I wrote. It may seem a tad dramatic since you don’t have the context of living inside my head, yet it feels like it ought to be shared. If you don’t know Hey Rosetta!, you may like to try them on for size while you read.

I think I’m having an existential crisis.

I’m listening to hey rosetta, the simplest thing, and having an existential crisis.

I’m not even sure what that means. But what else could it mean when I’ve been able to feel it welling up inside me and I finally, finally cried my face off. I happened to be on my knees, if you’d seen me you might have thought I was praying… I was down on my knees beside the bed with my head bowed and my stomach churning as I poured out my soul through my tears into my hands and wished I knew how to pray – wished I knew what I’d ask God to produce or change.

Oh. I was praying. Isn’t that praying? I expressed in the presence of God, the Universe, who/whatever, that I feel so helpless and hopeless – but all the while I still felt that calm under and in-between the horrible churning of my insides.

The calm that knows everything is okay.

No, you’re a turkey.

Tomorrow I will spend the whole day cooking, baking and doing crafts with people I love. There is a turkey in the last stages of a multi-day defrost process waiting in my fridge. There are tarts ready to be filled and cookies ready to be eaten. I’ve even got ribbons, garland and a real miniature christmas tree which will soon be decorating my house. Christmas scented candles are waiting to be lit so my home can smell right for the holidays.

You’d never guess I don’t even like christmas. I’m not religious, my family isn’t travelling to come see me, and I don’t have children to enchant with stories of fat men and gifts coming down my non-existant chimney. Christmas is an irresistible excuse to forget any responsibilities in favour of drinking wine too early and eating until you can’t move – even with your pants undone.

Don’t forget that christmas is also the perfect time of year to force people to spend the entire day doing all the weird things that I love with the promise *bribe* of a turkey dinner at the end of it. Even stringing popcorn can be fun when the turkey I’ve been raving about for the last month is finally in the oven.

What I’m trying to say here is… I’m incredibly excited to spend all day tomorrow with people I love. Cooking and sharing food with people I love? What more could I ask for? I am so blessed to have a turkey in my fridge, a box of decorations waiting to be hung, and people who want to share these things with me.

I work hard to be this lucky, and so do all you wonderful people – so I’m going to spend a whole day stuffing you full of mashed potatoes and butter tarts while I tell you over and over again how happy I am to have such awesome people in my life. It’s just icing on the cake that I’ll get to eat turkey sandwiches for weeks after this feast! How could I not be grateful?