design a life you love
The temperature has yet to dip below 65 degrees in Los Angeles, but I’m still trying to get into the autumn spirit any and every way I can. The best way to infuse a bit of fall into my life? By creating a recipe for gluten free pumpkin spiced cookies, of course!
Have I ever mentioned that summer camp was a huge part of my life throughout my middle school and high school years? I both attended and later worked at camps in Washington State as a camper and then as a counselor. In fact, my first real job was at Camp Don Bosco in Carnation, Washington as a dishwasher! To this day it was one of the hardest yet most rewarding jobs I have had.
To me camp was an escape from reality; an escape from being bullied in school, an escape from feeling out of place and awkward every day. At camp I was given the acceptance and support to really discover who I was and who I wanted to be. It was working at camp where I met one of the best friends I will ever have and it was camp I turned to when I lost him unexpectedly seven years later. Camp was life, camp was love, camp was the smell of crackling embers, the sound of water lapping against the shore, the sight of hundreds of stars against the pitch black night sky. Camp was…s’mores.
I always adored s’mores and the fact that I got to make them with my campers on our weekly campouts in the woods was something I always looked forward to, as did my campers. The whole lot of us equated s’mores to a complete camping adventure and, even when our camp outs were occasionally rained out, I always made sure to still give the kids that part of their summer camp experience.
It has been years since I slept beneath the stars and even longer since I successfully built and started a campfire on my own. I’m not sure I could flip a canoe these days to save my life and the words to some of the camp songs I once loved are long since gone from my head. What remains are fleeting memories of being blissfully happy and free, memories of the sound of my best friend’s voice and laughter, sounds I will never hear again, and memories of roasting marshmallows around a campfire. Camp may be gone from my daily life but every time I bite into a s’more I’m taken back to a less complicated time and place where I fell asleep to the stars and woke to the sunrise, where I’d surprise myself by discovering tan lines on my cheeks from smiling so much, where I fell in love for the first time, where I grew up.
Today, in honor of the warming weather, in honor of the days getting longer, in honor of it almost being time for summer camp once again, and in honor of my best friend, I’m sharing a piece of myself I don’t normally share along with a recipe for s’more cookies.
As the big 3-0 approached, I found myself craving the taste of the rich chocolate birthday cakes I enjoyed in my youth. The only problem was that all of the chocolate cake recipes I had in my arsenal contained gluten. Not one to be deterred by my gluten-free lifestyle, I set out on a quest to find an easy and delicious alternative to the chocolate cake recipes I remember from my childhood.
Eleven years ago I visited France for the first time and experienced THE BEST MEAL OF MY LIFE in Albi. The five course delight was capped off by a thick, rich chocolate dessert that I was unable to identify or duplicate for years. The dish was not quite a mousse, not quite a solid fudge…it wasn’t quite anything discernible. I searched high and low for a decade for anything that came even close to my mystery dessert and finally stumbled upon it by mistake one glorious day when my mint chocolate mousse hardened.
When looking for recipes I search out those that are healthy, don’t use too many ingredients and are simple to make. I’d love to have the time and budget to prepare extravagant meals every night, but since that isn’t possible at the moment I try to make sure what we eat is great tasting and good for us. This veggie quinoa bowl checks all the boxes. It is comprised of just four healthy base ingredients and I can prepare it quickly after a long day at work.
I found the basis of this recipe at Reclaiming Provincial and made a few modifications. The original recipe was geared towards more of a meal you would eat for breakfast and we generally eat my version for dinner. To make it more dinner friendly and heartier, I added in extra eggs as well as additional broccoli and mushrooms so it is more filling.
It may not be the prettiest to look at, but it always hits the spot and, as you will see, is one of Puggle Chef’s favorite meals to help prepare because she loves to snack on broccoli! She has become quite the little sous chef and hangs out in the kitchen with every night me while I cook dinner. She’s quite helpful, in fact if water is about to boil over and I’m looking away she alerts me to it. She’s too cute!
Veggie quinoa bowl ingredients
Plus some cheese which deserves its own photo.
Puggle Chef stir-frying the broccoli.
Stir-fried veggies
Veggie quinoa bowl ready to eat.
