A quiet return with Creamed Spinach

Posted on February 24, 2014 by Not Crocker

Well, as you might have inferred from my lack of posting over the last (oh my) two months, I have been crazy busy. I think I have also been crazy tired, meaning that coming home meant schlumping around rather than whipping up tasty treats and posting them here! I have been feverishly working on finishing my Masters, as well as scrambling at work getting a couple big projects underway. All to say, sorry for the unbelievably long absence. I wanted to come back with something INSANE and PUNCHY, but this is a subdued, yet delicious recipe. I have some punchier things in the wings, so no fear. But let’s ease back into this.

I’ve missed NotCrocker, and I felt so terrible about my terribleness that I haven’t even been to the blog myself much in the last month or so. Avoidance is a bizarre strategy for coping, so here I am, posting and coming back, and making whatever promises I can that I will not run away again! Work is going to keep going like mad through the next two months, and my paper is top-priority in my off time, but NotCrocker will not fall by the wayside again. I love posting great dishes, and will continue to do so. Who needs to sleep?! Not this lady!

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Roasted Tomato and Beef Spaghetti Sauce and Spaghetti Squash

Posted on January 2, 2014 by Not Crocker

Well, this is it, a commitment from me to me to cook more paleo and keto foods. I love the creativity needed to come up with new versions of our favourite carb-ladened foods. It is a challenge, and as my last couple months of blogging can attest, I’ve been pretty worn out. But I see the interest (check out my most popular low carb post, Chicken Pizza Crust), and I know that I feel great when I am eating a lot more veggie and protein combos than sugar, so here we go! This is pretty much my first public proclamation of a paleo commitment, but my interest in it has been evident through my many paleo and keto posts over the last year.

So here I am, making a commitment. I will try to post more delicious paleo and keto options that make use of veggies and proteins in ways that I love. Most of my cooking in this style is kind of thrown together, which is why I don’t often post it, but I will make an effort to really document what works, why I did this, that, and that other thing, and will keep on making food that tastes great and makes you feel great!

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Pumpkin Sausage Soup with Crispy Kale

Posted on October 20, 2013 by Not Crocker

Well hello fall and goodbye sky. We’ve had an incredible amount of fog in the last week. I like it frankly, it is cool so I have been cozying down in my pjs and blanket. Watching the other buildings slowly disappear is weirdly calming. I don’t like the lack of sunshine, but I will take a few days of darkness here and there.

In other, exciting news, another NFB Digital Studio project has launched, this one is one of mine! Check out Similkameen Crossroads in your web browser. It is a gorgeous photographic and audio essay by Tyler Hagan. It launched at ImagiNative on Friday. Click through the photos while listening to the stories from the Similkameen Valley.

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Balsamic Roasted Yams

Posted on September 29, 2013 by Not Crocker

For the first time in a long time, I felt lucky yesterday. I was walking home with some takeout Vietnamese food, enjoying the crisp fall air and I just thought how lucky I was to be walking home through a city I love, to an apartment I love. I have a great job, a loving family, and really incredible friends. Of course, all this came to me just two days after the year anniversary of my dad’s death, a day that didn’t make me feel lucky at all. But as I walked home, I knew that dad would love a day like this, a day when you could feel the weather changing; when everyone looked just as happy as me to walk around in a city that he also loved.

I thought to myself, feeling as lucky as I did in that short stroll home, I lost my father and thirty more years of his wisdom and humour and love. BUT, I was so lucky to have had 25 years of it. Some people don’t even get that. Some friends of mine didn’t even get that. And I got 25 years filled with immense love, wonderful though occasionally questionable wisdom, and truly I am my father’s daughter, so he gave me so much of what makes me who I am, that I will see little pieces of my dad for the rest of my life.

So, as I sit here looking out from my beautiful little apartment on the rainy, windy, cold morning in Vancouver, I am okay. I know that a loss is only as great as the love felt. And so I know that both the love for my dad and the pain of losing him will reverberate through the rest of my life. A sweet melody of sorts.

And I am okay.

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Shrimp & Artichoke Dip

Posted on August 27, 2013 by Not Crocker

Wow. Well, sorry for my incredibly long absence. I know I was JUST apologizing for being away from Not Crocker for a long time and here I am again after an epic stall. This time of year is bringing up a lot of sadness and I’ve been somewhat sapped of motivation. The funny thing is, it isn’t that I haven’t been baking and cooking, I just have been having a tough time getting to the computer to write up the recipes and prepare the photos. Sigh. I am going to try my best to get back on track, I promise.

I had a beautiful visit at home with my mom. I was only home for a whirlwind weekend and would have loved to have spent the summer lounging on the deck, taking in the sun, but it was not possible this year. We had a wonderful dinner party with all our friends, and things felt close to normal. Dad’s absence was/is startlingly noticeable and the times that I sit there and feel him not being here (if that makes any sense) are overwhelming. It’s almost been a year since his passing. The shocking thing is that it feels like there is no way this is real, even today, a year later I often feel like I can just call him up for a chat or advice or sass, but I am also achingly aware of how long it has been since I’ve heard his voice. I love my dad and am so thankful to have had him.

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