Won't You Be My Neighbour? I Have Two Types of Pie: Shepard's and Faux.

I've been MIA, but I did give you fair warning that it might happen.

My husband was home: the rest of the world ceases to exist.

We are two peas in a pod, best friends, each other's persons, and every other cliché. It's been him and I for thirteen years. When he's gone, it's like my left foot is missing: I can still hobble around and get things done, but my balance is way off.

But for as close as he and I are, my husband and daughter are in a league of their own. There's a "daddy's girl" and there's how my daughter feels about her daddy. They are inseparable. They always have been. She even has a smile, a very particular smile, that she makes only when looking at him. I finally caught it in a good picture this weekend (that I contrived so very hard to take) and it's magical.

Sometimes it's like they share a mind, for better or worse.

I may say that in jest, but there are moments when all I can do is leave the room and let them carry on their craziness uninterrupted because they aren't conscious of anything or anyone outside of themselves and their games.

Our sweet pea always likes to say that her favourite things to do with me are cook, craft, and sing and her favourite thing to do with her daddy is "be crazy." That's their relationship in a nutshell.

As the saying sort of goes "I never thought I could love you more, until I saw how much you love our child."

Or something like that.

While parenting hasn't always been easy (I can't sugar-coat it, there have been some downright shitty parts), I couldn't have picked a better partner.

However, just so our life together is not Hallmark perfect, he works away from home. Which sucks. Solo parenting blows. And it's so hard some days just to make it out alive. Some days it's called "surviving" not parenting.

But.

I am not a single parent. Let's make that clear. Those parents who are truly doing it on their own are damn super heroes. My hat is always off to them.

I have my husband as my support, even when he's not here. I can call him and cry and complain and call our kid an asshole and he won't judge me because he has my back. He's my lifeline when I need to use the "phone a friend" option in a high-stakes round. And when he does come home, which is the inevitable light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel every month, he takes over and I drink tea on the couch while I listen to them bash around like water buffalo upstairs as he tries to get her into bed.

We try to make our daughter's life as normal as possible in his absence. We are able to Skype with him daily, we eat meals with him when we can, and he gets a picture or video of every momentous event in her life, if he can't be here for it.

And when he's home? We cram every moment full of fun things. It's like a mini-holiday from life every three to four weeks. We go to the movies, we stay up late, we adventure to new places, we take special trips, we camp in the middle of the living room, we do whatever she wants, basically. We make memories. We hope these happy times while her daddy is home will act as a salve on her hurting heart when he's gone.

Because does she ever miss him.

You've never heard agony until you've heard a tiny person cry out in the middle of the night for the one parent that isn't there right now. The one person that she would give anything to hug. I admit, at times I feel hurt that I'm not who she wants, but I remember that my heart hurts just as much because I, too, miss that man more than words could describe. Mommy kisses can only help so much when daddy hugs are what is needed.

This time when John was home, it was only for five days. That's it. After a month away. He had gone to Dawson Creek before coming home to hunt for a myriad of animals as well as see his family, who still live up there. I can't begrudge him that happiness.

Five days.

We jammed as much family fun time into them as we could.

Of course, there was the annual pilgrimage to MacMillan's farm for pumpkins and hay rides. No matter how often we go, it still thrills our daughter to be pulled on a questionable old trailer pulled by a puttering tractor.She's been asking to go to the pumpkin patch since July. She lives for it.

Since John won't be home again until November, we needed to get all of our Halloween prep done this week with him. All the crafts and decorations were made and the pumpkins gutted and carved.

Thank goodness for these two willing to dig in there as I absolutely hate sticking my hands into pumpkins. It's not even my hands, I guess, it's the guts touching my arms that I dislike. Don't ask me why, I'm just built that way. I also dry heave if I have to touch a dirty dish cloth for longer than it takes to throw it into the wash. Don't believe me? Ask John. He'll vouch. I just can't handle touching certain things.

Tiny person's, mine, John's

.I decided to take a different route with pumpkins this year and tried melting crayons on them like I've seen floating around online. I am not a Pinterest person (I've discussed this before), but I figured I would give this a shot and they actually turned out!I love them!Now, if someone could come by and decorate the rest of my entry way, I'd be much obliged. In addition to my wreath I made last week, this is about all the fall décor I have. I feel as though I'm missing a gene or something that others possess that innately guides them to make things look pretty.

FYI, I'm also missing the know-how on how to decorate myself-- I am lacking any direction when it comes to makeup and styling that comes naturally to every other female-- so it's really not surprising that my house is unadorned. I like to call myself "low-maintenance" but really, I just don't have a clue on where to start.

But I digress. (I can never say this phrase without thinking of a prof of mine who said this enough times every day in class that my friends started to keep a notch-mark tally. The number of times he said it was really quite impressive.)

When our little family is all together, we really do just focus on one another. We try to smash a whole month's worth of love into a few days. We've always joked that no matter how big our home is, if someone were, for whatever reason, to shine a body heat camera at our house, they'd only see one giant blob as we're always within arm's distance of each other.

We had received "The Love Languages" book as a wedding gift and we read it together while on our honeymoon. It rained for two days straight, so we stayed hunkered down in bed (ooooh, darn) and figured out that both of us love by touch, if it wasn't already obvious. And guess what trait we passed onto to our daughter? We don't call her a koala for nothing.

However, for all our self-involvement, we did have a pressing social obligation this time when John was home: to have dinner with our neighbours. We have lived in our home for four years now and we've had a standing agreement with them to have dinner together for at least two years at this point. So in the spirit of doing things that are nagging at me, we had our neighbours over for dinner. Let me clarify that: having them over was not a burden, they are not a burden (they are pretty much the best neighbours anyone could have), it was the giving up of one evening out of the five we had together. I ignore my closest friends when John's home if time is lacking. It's never personal. They do the same to me when their partners are home and we all get understand. It may not seem like a healthy way to maintain relationships with people, that I just drop off the face of the earth for a week at a time, but that's how it is.

But I am getting things done. No more thickening cobwebs of unfinished promises in my brain. We had them over and we stayed up super late talking and having the best time. I do regret not doing it years earlier as well as doing it on a Sunday. I'm a sleeping-by-nine type person. That being said, I took the photos of the food at 11:30 at night, so they are not my best work. But they are delicious dishes. Just trust me on that.

For dinner we had vegetarian Shepard's pie, deer sausage ragu, a salad that they graciously brought, and faux pie. I'll explain that last one eventually.

As I mentioned, John had gone hunting before coming home and he had shot a deer. He then brought it home for me to help him break down. Such a thoughtful man. I didn't touch it, I was solely on package sealing duty. I was fairly lightheaded from the whole experience. Not my cup of tea in the least. The next day, he made sausage with all the bits. At the same time, I was making a vegan dish on the other side of the kitchen.

Here's a glimpse into the dichotomy of our kitchen and lives:

And our daughter did Halloween crafts. Everyone was in their element.

When I introduce people to plant-based cooking, I like to make dishes that they are likely familiar with, comfort dishes and old classics, just revamped and redone without losing their essence. Truthfully, that's just pretty much how I eat daily. My neighbours had mentioned last week that they were wanting to try vegetarian or vegan dishes, but they weren't certain how to compose a plate. I was happy to make a dish to show them that plant-based can be every bit as delicious as the meat-based dishes that they're used to. And they loved it! Oh, my dancing heart.

Shepard’s Pie

1/2 cup dried mushrooms
1 1/2 cups hot water
4-5 cups of chopped veggies (I used carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, parsnips, onions, and mushrooms)
Olive oil
2 cups cooked green lentils*
1 tbsp. butter or coconut oil
2 tbsps. flour
1 tbsp. Worcestershire (vegan, if desired)
1 tsp soy sauce
Salt and pepper
2 cups potatoes, diced
Unsweetened almond milk, butter, or milk

1. Pour the hot water over the dried mushrooms. Let them soak until the broth is needed.
2. Chop all the veg into bit sized pieces and place on cookie sheets (lined with parchment for easy clean-up). Drizzle with olive oil and roast at 375 until starting to brown, about 20 minutes.
3. Once the veggies are done, dump them into a large bowl with the cooked lentils.
4. In a small pot, heat the butter or coconut oil. Once melted, add in the flour and cook for a minute to cook out the "rawness" of the flour, stirring continually. Add in the mushroom broth and softly boil until thickened to your taste. Add in the Worcestershire and soy sauce.
5. Pour the gravy into the large bowl and mix. Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper as desired.
6. Steam or boil the potatoes (I put them in my Instant Pot for 4 minutes) then mash them as you like. I have made mashed potatoes using just almond milk, but nothing beats real butter in my opinion.
7. Pour the veggie mix into a greased glass pan and top with mashed potatoes.
8. Bake at 400 for 30 minutes until everything is heated through and bubbly. You may want to place a cookie sheet under your dish, depending on how full it is. Just a tip from experience. Washing ovens sucks.

*While the lentils can be cooked in just water, or even extra mushroom stock, for a super tasty and unexpected twist, you can make an Asian-inspired broth for them to cook in. I know, sounds weird. I had made stuffed pastries the night before making the Shepard's pie and had a ton of leftover lentils that I had cooked this way or else I would have never thought to do it myself. Making the lentils in the broth needs an extra hour of fairly unattended cook time, but I think it's worth it. This broth? Amazing. Eat it with everything.

2 cups veggie stock
1.5 tbsps. dark soy sauce
1 inch nub of ginger, roughly chopped
2 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
10 peppercorns
10 coriander seeds
1 star anise
1 green onion, chopped

Bring everything to a boil in a small pot, then simmer on low, covered, for an hour. Strain everything then add enough water to equal two cups of liquid before cooking one cup of lentils in it.

See? Not the prettiest dish, but so so so good.

As for the faux pie, well, I'm just uncertain what else to call it. Our neighbour is a huge pie lover. His wife told us that when she came home from work on "Pi Day," every surface in the kitchen was covered by pies that he had bought at Save-On Foods that day because they were on sale. This guy is serious about his pies. So when making dessert for that evening in a short amount of time, I had thought of a galette but then my time ran even shorter than I expected and I made a tummy-warming standby: roasted butternut squash casserole. Stay with me.

We originally found this recipe years ago on a tiny discontinued forum in the corners of the internet as a side dish. It contained spiralized butternut squash, shredded apples, red onion, parsley, dates, and pecans. As well as curry powder. When we made it, it was okay, but it tasted like a dessert to us. With onions. So I removed those and made it into a true dessert, or breakfast, if we're being honest. But I didn't know what to call it. Our pie-loving neighbour was in his glory eating it, saying it tasted just like pie but without the guilt. Fake pie. Faux Pie.

Faux Pie Recipe

1 butternut squash, spiralized or thinly sliced using a food processor
3 apples, prepared the same as the squash
8 Medjool dates, finely diced
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp cinnamon

1. Mix everything a large bowl.
2. Bake in a large greased glass dish at 350F for an hour and a half. It works perfectly to bake it while you're enjoying dinner so it's warm and delicious right from the oven when you're ready for it.

PS: In case this isn't as "desserty" as you'd like, vanilla ice cream would be amazing with it!So that's where I've been this week. Now let's get into the mayhem that is Halloween. Let the costume making commence.
Well, soon.

Today, I'm more inclined to be like my golden man and mope in the warm sunshine.

I'm allowed, my left foot just left. It's hard to stand up without it until I gain my balance again.

I'll take on the world tomorrow. Talk again soon! ❤