What's cooking, good looking?
Overly productive Sunday edition

Sunday's brunch was one of my "all-out" breakfast feasts, this time comprised of two slices of Ace Bakery's Organic Sliced Multigrain bread, toasted (less than one carb serving per slice, you see),
wilted organic spinach, organic avocado, two fried eggs, two breakfast sausages, three strips of nitrate- and nitrite-free bacon, two Dr. Praeger's Potato Pancakes (at just over 1 carb serving
per two patties), and a homemade, dairy-free Hollandaise sauce made with fresh-squeezed organic lemon juice, one egg and Earth Balance's vegan margarine.

I had, however, started the day by making a batch of jam thumbprints to bring in to work, to express my gratitude for picking up my workload while I was away on vacation. I played around a little with the flours this time — as I didn't have much all-purpose flour around — adding pastry flour and bread flour, plus some Ezekiel flour. I also stayed truer to the recipe in terms of which fats I used, substituting vegan margarine in place of the required amount of butter, plus half lard and half coconut oil in place of the shortening. The cookies hold their shape really well, but are a bit dense for my liking. This is, however, a characteristic of this cookie recipe, these cookies get softer in storage. The last batch of jam thumbprints I made used all-purpose flour and coconut oil exclusively and didn't hold their shape well, but did produce a crispy, lightly coconut-flavoued cookie that really complemented the jam. I'm going to have to play around with my fats some more, methinks.

Finally, I finished off my culinary adventures for the day by making a risotto with the carnaroli rice I was fortunate enough to find at Rube's Rice Shop in St. Lawrence Market, earlier this week. The risotto was made with one Harvest Sun organic herbal bouillon cube, another of their onion bouillon cubes, saffron, filtered water, olive oil, an organic yellow onion, king oyster mushrooms, organic peas, three sausages I had in my freezer and the leftover pork souvlaki I had in my fridge from Saturday night's excursion to Astoria Shish Kebob House (their award-winning pork souvlaki, btw, oddly disappointing).

Hopefully, I won't be cooking again any time soon! :)