Summer Recap

Somehow another month has passed without a blog post or recipe to share with you, but I'm going to try to make it up with some new recipes starting next week! I made a big batch of soup this week that I'll be sharing here soon, and I hope to start making some pumpkin treats this weekend too!

In the meantime, I thought I would do a post about what I've been eating over the summer - even though I didn't spend as much time cooking or developing my own recipes, I still enjoyed lots of good food!

A lot of my meals were super simple dinners that I could throw together quickly as I was so busy working on my dissertation. I ate a lot of toast with various toppings like avocado or sliced radishes with butter or hummus, and I loved eating fresh tomato and basil sandwiches. I also added a cob of corn to my meals whenever I found local corn at the grocery store!

Near the beginning of the summer, I made a big batch of veggie burgers at my parents' house so that I could pull one out of the freezer any time I was there for dinner and needed a vegetarian option. I loved the flavour and texture of these BBQ chickpea burgers from Oh She Glows, and they made the perfect summer meal with a side of potato or pasta salad!

I always love eating panzanella in the summertime. I usually stick to traditional combinations of ingredients like tomatoes, cucumber, basil and sometimes cheese, but I really liked this fruity variation with strawberries and cantaloupe that I threw together!

On the right is a pasta salad that I made twice this summer - it's a variation of this recipe from the blog archives, but with some changes to the veggies (like corn instead of peas and extra zucchini and cucumber) and I left out the tofu and walnuts. My favourite part of this salad is the creamy lemony basil dressing!

For other quick and easy meals, I made pasta with avocado sauce (pictured on the right), following this recipe from Oh She Glows, and zucchini noodles with a sauce I whipped together using hummus (on the left). I didn't use my spiralizer as much this summer compared to last year, but I still love "zoodles"!

For Canada Day in July, I brought these red and white cream cheese-stuffed strawberries to a party and while they got pretty messy on the trip there, they were still a hit! I can't remember the exact recipe I followed, but this one from The Comfort of Cooking is a good example!

I managed to break out my ice cream maker once over the summer to make this chocolate stout ice cream. I followed a recipe from The Beeroness, but with a few minor changes (I reduced the sugar, left out the toasted coconut, and added a bit of arrowroot powder to thicken it). I thought it had just the right balance of chocolate and beer flavours, and I loved how it stayed creamy rather than turning icy in the freezer like other vegan ice creams tend to do.

Other than my homemade ice cream, I ate a lot of delicious ice cream treats over the summer, from countless bowls of self-serve frozen yogurt, to an amazing lemon meringue pie cone, to a couple of treats that I haven't had in ages - a cookies and cream milkshake and an ice cream float!

I also visited food trucks a few times over the summer, as my city has developed a pretty good food truck culture over the past couple of years. It's usually hard to find vegetarian options, but I loved this kale salad and flatbread with brie and peach chutney!

Finally, I also enjoyed many meals out at restaurants over the summer. Our patio weather seemed a bit limited this year, but I still tried to enjoy eating out on patios as much as I could!  Pictured above clockwise is some halloumi and fried zucchini crostini, caramelized onion grilled cheese, a tofu sofritas burrito bowl from my very first visit to Chipotle, and more Mexican food with tacos, chips, and guacamole.


Hope you all had nice relaxing summers and are ready for all the exciting things that come with fall, like pumpkin, soups, and Thanksgiving food!  Personally, I wouldn't mind a few more weeks of sunshine and warm weather though ;)