My brain has been drained a little bit lately as I get ready for another round of exams coming up and with the weather being particularly freezing lately I have wanted to go into full-fledge hibernation mode. Homework has been piling up because I am the worst at doing any sort of homework during Christmas break. As much I curse my procrastination, I did need the downtime to relax and not overthink everything to death. But now we are the second week of 2015 and I had to get right back into the full-schedule, juggling school and work full time. Blasted adulthood!

Mark has also returned to school and started his internship at a Toronto fine dining restaurant to complete his culinary degree. Nights at our house have become pretty lonely when I am not working and I usually have dinner by myself (with the exception of Barb snuggling on my lap). I haven’t really wanted to cook for myself too much since it always seemed like a waste but I asked myself why I thought like that. Perhaps I read too many women’s magazines in my youth (thinking that adults actually did these things) and thought that the phrase “Cooking for One!” was pathetic. Just because they put an exclamation point at the end and in a cheery bright font does not make the phrase any better. However the act of cooking a proper healthful dinner for myself should be a priority and I must devote some time in my evening to do so. A daily devotion to myself and my well-being. A dollop of hummus, peeled carrots and some pita sometimes doesn’t cut it as a proper dinner since I usually use the hummus container lid as a plate for the veg and pita. Oh how my mother would cringe.

Roasting vegetables with some chickpeas is pretty easy, comes together quickly and is versatile when you get tired of the same vegetables you have been eating all week. You can make this dish go even further when served on a bed of cooked grains like brown rice, quinoa or millet (all gluten free grains!). I cook my grains on a Saturday morning before work so I can eat them for my long shifts on the weekends and have some left over for school. I soak my grains on Friday night after work to get them all sprouted to cook the next day. Living it up. “Sorry guys can’t go out, I have to sprout my grains…” Don’t worry I have never said that.

Mark is appreciative of the leftovers he gets when he comes home late from his internship and I get an actual dinner. Double win.

P.S. I am digging this new addition to my pantry: za’atar, a savoury Middle Eastern spice blend that I have been sprinkling on everything. I also made this hummus with it.

The post Roasted Chickpea + Vegetable Bowl w/ Za’atar Tahini Sauce appeared first on Sprouts & Chocolate.

Halfway there! It is kind of crazy how time flies by when you are having fun or when you are stressed out about deadlines for posts but for this first time MoFo’er it has been such a great experience. I am not sick of my kitchen just yet so it is full steam ahead in the second part of this month.

This recipe is inspired by my mother and her love for old black-and-white movies. When my sister and I were growing up, we did not have cable, just the old rabbit ears with tinfoil balls on their ends so we did not watch a lot of TV. My mother only enjoyed a select few cartoons like Animaniacs or Bugs Bunny (which I know them now to be incredibly violent!) so needless to say we did not watch a lot of kid-shows either. During my teen years when all my friends were obsessed with Dawson’s Creek, Friends and Passions (yes the soap opera) however my mother had no patience for 90’s teen TV characters complaining about how everything was just so tragic. “I will show you real tragedy,” she would say as you popped in a VHS tape. So I spent most Friday nights watching Gregory Peck in the Maycomb courtroom defending a wrongly accused man while Jem and Scout watched from the balcony, Audrey Hepburn in her trench coat, soaked and looking for Cat in the rain and of course Humphrey Bogart saying goodbye to his true love all for the greater good but meeting a friend along the way.

How I love Ilsa Lund’s (Ingrid Bergman) jewelry sparkling softly in the low lighting, the way she sipped champagne so elegantly, her large brimmed hats and her amazing capability to keep a white suit stain-free and glowing.

Rick’s Café Américain is what I thought every nightclub was like: large bandstand with talented musicians in white dinner jackets, a piano player playing beautiful love songs, fancy hats and gambling underground until I actually went to one and upon arrival some pimple-faced kid barfed near me, spattering it across my shoes. That place was no Rick’s.

Casablanca is still my favourite old movie as well my mothers. I imagine Morocco’s air to be full of warm spices, gin joints to get a stiff drink and having a grand but tragic romance with my true love. But in the meantime, I will just enjoy these Moroccan Spiced recipes with a drink in hand.

 10 recipes down, 10 more to go! Woot!

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