Omiyage Eats


Wait a minute - what's that photo of muffins doing there?

To be honest, if I weren't craft blogging, I'd probably be food blogging. There's really nothing like homemade cookies or a fresh loaf of bread or muffins warm from the oven. You'll notice a theme there - that theme is wheat - which I love, but which doesn't love me! We'll talk about that more in a bit. 

Don't worry - food isn't taking over, but I'm always interested in tried-and-true recipes and what other people eat, so I thought it would be fun to share what we're eating in this space. To get started, here are a few snaps of things we've been eating and loving lately.

Back to those muffins. There are almost always over-ripe bananas in our kitchen - some get frozen for smoothies (nothing improves a smoothie like a frozen banana!) but the rest end up baked into banana bread or banana muffins. While a basic banana muffin is great, we often dress them up - recently I've been stirring walnuts and dark chocolate chunks into banana bread and adding berries to muffins. Those ones are strawberry banana but blueberry banana (or even strawberry-blueberry-banana) are pretty fab too! How about you? What's in your favourite banana bread/muffin recipe?

We're also big fans of pancakes. I don't think I've ever met a pancake I didn't like! (That's a lie - in Brazil pancakes are a savoury dish served filled with ground beef - kind of like a manicotti but with pancake instead of pasta. While I can appreciate a savoury pancake - Korean pancakes are pretty perfect - I'm not sure a meaty filling is my speed!)

For Pancake Tuesday, we had Chocolate Chunk pancakes with coconut yoghurt, homemade strawberry sauce, homemade maple syrup and sliced banana. Oh, and bacon. Of course.  Joy The Baker has some pretty great pancake recipes - these chocolate chunk ones are a favourite as are her Carrot Cake Pancakes should you want to squeeze a bunch of veggies into your morning meal without going the kale smoothie route!

I'd love to hear about your favourite pancake recipe - well, as long as it isn't wrapped around a pile of ground beef!


Despite what these pictures might tell you, I'm trying to get back to a wheat-free diet - not gluten-free per se, just cutting out most wheat. I was off wheat for more than a year but, since we've established that wheat is pretty much the most delicious thing going, I gave in and started eating ALL the wheaty things again. But now I'm trying to get back to not eating all the wheaty things. Again. Are you still following that line of logic?

Anyway, I try to avoid gluten-free things that require alchemy (and things like xanthan gum) and stick to recipes that are simply flourless. I was excited to try making flourless cookies and even more excited that they actually look and taste like cookies! If you are on the hunt for naturally gluten/wheat-free recipes, these peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies are pretty great.

I didn't follow the recipe exactly (because I'm kind of incapable of following a recipe exactly) but even with reduced sugar, reduced vanilla, reduced chocolate and a reduced mixing time, they were a success! I'm happy to elaborate on my changes should you be interested.

Do you have any tried and true flourless recipes? 

Have a wonderful weekend! Hope it's filled with delicious things.