Sometimes March can be such a struggle to get through, even with the promise of Spring so close by! Apparently I got through it by baking FOUR cakes, and planning a fun adventure you’ll hear more about soon:

  • I kicked off the month by going to my friend Jen’s birthday party, which started at Famous Last Words, a super cute book-themed bar in the Junction, where it’s decorated like the coziest/coolest library, and all the all the cocktails are named after novels. We then went to dinner at Atai Bistro, a French-Moroccan restaurant nearby. Krishna and I shared a Vegetarian Mezze platter, Kusa salad and a Smoked Eggplant flatbread. Everything was delicious and I would definitely go back, except it’s now temporarily closed! Hope they re-open soon.
  • Sometimes when I’m feeling extra depressed in March, it helps to make a batch of Skillet Strawberry Jam, because it makes my whole condo smell like summer and it’s so nice to eat on toast or dolloped on oatmeal.
  • Another guaranteed serotonin boost: a cross-border shopping run to Target & Trader Joe’s with my friend Heather, which we did at the beginning of the month. Note to self: stop buying freeze-dried fruit! I think I was too excited by these cupcakes and brought home more flavours to keep experimenting with, but forgot I already had a big stash in my baking cupboard.
  • The Oscars went down this month, and it felt so nice to cook up a huge feast and have Kristine over to watch with me! I decided we would have a Smitten Kitchen Keepers Oscars Feast and we had: Honey Thyme Baked Feta (except I used goat cheese), Perfect Meatballs & Spaghetti, The Big Green Little Gem Salad, Garlic Bread Focaccia (the crust from the Angry Grandma Pizza brushed with this topping), and Chocolate Dulce Puddle Cakes for dessert. It was EPIC and everything was amazing!
  • Cake #1 this month was for my office bud Max’s birthday/national holiday (pictured above). It was a Guinness chocolate cake with Bailey’s frosting and Lucky Charms marshmallows for decoration. He loved it so much! yay!
  • Cake #2 was for my dear friend Kelly’s son Tyson’s birthday. This cutie turned 5, and Kelly ordered a little chocolate chip cake, with chocolate icing on the inside and vanilla icing on the outside. He loved it too!
  • Cake #3 was for my brother Joel’s birthday, and I made him the Whole Lemon Poppyseed Cake from Smitten Kitchen Keepers. Another hit!
  • Cake #4 was sadly a goodbye cake for one of my faves from the office. Vicky loves Coke, so naturally I made her this cake with this frosting. I told her I was stuck in the denial phase of grief about her leaving, so this is what her cake said:

Other non-foodie things I was obsessed with this month:

  • Kristine and I went to see Creed III before our Oscars night and it was SO GOOD, but it’s hard to endorse this now after he-who-shall-not-be-named was cancelled.
  • I spent a lot of the month reading The New Jim Crow (overflow from Black History Month), but also read my first absolute banger of the year: I Have Some Questions For You. This book was SO GOOD and hard to put down. I’m obsessed with anything set at a boarding school (watched too much Dead Poet’s Society as a kid), and even though this was kind of like a true crime story, it wasn’t too scary for me.
  • I started a re-watch of one of my all-time faves: Friday Night Lights! So good!

Flashback!