i'd rather be baking

I’ve been behind this week. Behind on work, on working out, on baking, on blogging, on household chores. Sometimes you just get behind, right? And it’s easy to focus on the tasks mounting on your to-do list, the overflowing inbox, the dirty dishes in the sink. We’re all guilty of this; it’s human nature, pure and simple.

These things grew dim for me this week, as I suspect they did for many others. This week I, along with hundreds of others in the food blog community, was captivated by the death of fellow blogger Jennifer Perillo’s husband, Mikey. Mikey died of a sudden heart attack, leaving behind Jennifer and their two small girls. I don’t know Jennifer, and honestly had never read her blog before this week, but my heart has broken for her all week. And last night, I learned that a dear childhood friend of mine just lost a cousin to a suicide bomber in Afghanistan. Life is so utterly fragile and short.

Jennifer wrote a beautiful, heartbreaking post asking that those who wished to help her in some way do so by making peanut butter pie (Mikey’s favorite) today, and sharing it with their own loved ones. I thought this was a wonderful idea — realistically there’s nothing most of us can physically do for her, and nothing we can offer will diminish her pain. But we can make pie, and we can show love to those close to us. I don’t know of anything more important than that.

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Every weeknight come 6:00 I stand in my kitchen, sweaty and exhausted from my workout and scrambling to pull together dinner. Over the past few weeks I’ve found myself assembling different salads for dinner more often than not, as cold, flavorful veggies are often the only things that sound good (other than ice cream). Hummus is a great addition to an otherwise boring green salad – throw in some feta, red onion, and tomatoes and you’re golden!

If you’ve never made your own hummus, you’re missing out! Even the most basic of food processors can handle this task – I had a super-classy $12 model for several years and it had no problem grinding up chickpeas. The lovely thing about homemade hummus is that you can completely control the flavors to your liking. I usually go with garlic and roasted red peppers, but this basil version is a great change of pace for summer. And if you have a basil plant, this is so cheap it’s kind of ridiculous.

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Apparently it’s that time of year again, in which I can’t get enough fruit. We paid a visit to our favorite fruit farm (again) this weekend and picked bunches of berries — raspberries and blueberries this time. Honestly, I don’t even like blueberries that much, but these little guys are amazing. Ryan loves blueberry scones and I love lemon anything, so here we are.

To be fair, these are more lemon than blueberry, which is completely fine with me. They made the house feel all buttery and cozy this morning, and made me want to put on my favorite Lululemon tank and some sweatpants and go back to sleep. I resisted, but the impulse is still there. Just saying.

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