Chicken wraps from Shumaila Chauhan on Vimeo.

I am a sucker for subscription boxes. I love them. Curated artisanal ingredients packaged in boxes and sent to your doorstep- sign me up!

In the past, I have subscribed to many subscription boxes and am always on the lookout for new ones. Recently, Talya, who is part of the This Table team, got in touch with me and asked if I was interested in checking out their new gourmet subscription boxes. Of course I was.

Operating from Canada, This Table curates artisan food from local herbalists to olive farmers to creators of hand-picked berry jams. The packaging of the bottles and its contents does remind me of the Eat.Feed.Love boxes, probably because both of them are Canadian companies and curate from the same local artisans.

This Table Gourmet Subscription Box

Similarities aside, I do like how This Table gives recipe cards, along with a little information about the artisans’ story. The ingredients included are something that I would definitely use in my cooking, along with certain ingredients that will push me to be creative, like their lemongrass mint balsamic vinegar. Each monthly box carries a theme and the one that I received was centered around a gourmet picnic- so the recipes in the box were all recipes that can be easily transported and good to eat cold. The box also carried a letter with ideas for meals that you could prepare for a lunch in the park for 2 or 4, using recipes that were given in the box.

Besides the ingredients shown in the picture above, the box also contained 13 recipe cards.  Each recipe given uses the ingredients in the box sent. For the review, I decided to try their Cali Chicken wraps which uses the olive oil sent in the box; the herby potato salad, the dressing for which is made from the basil pesto bottle in the box; and the dark chocolate espresso cookies that uses the 2nd Crack Coffee beans. While I made a few changes to each recipe, all of them turned out great, and something I would definitely make again.

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Tart cherry, butterscotch and dark chocolate chip cookies.

Seas salt caramel, tart cherry and dark chocolate chip cookies

“Be brave.
You are never going to see the whole picture. You won’t always know how the pieces will fall together or break apart. Life doesn’t work like that. You take chances. You try your best. You follow your heart and your instincts. You give yourself a chance. You risk. You win sometimes and you lose sometimes – but either way you live. You learn. You grow. Be brave. Love, I pray that you will be brave. Bravely try. Bravely believe. Bravely fall and bravely rise again and again and again. You have to choose to believe that there is nothing and no one that can destroy you. You have to choose to believe there is no failure you cannot recover from. You have to choose confidence over cowardice. Choose faith over fear. Choose to try rather than stand still. Choose your story. Choose your dream. Choose your life. Be brave…”-   @soulbraille.

 

My mom used to make nestle tollhouse’s chocolate chip cookies for us as kids. That was the only chocolate chip cookie I ever ate as a child. Growing up chocolate chip cookies weren’t a thing in India. You didn’t get chocolate chips in India. A friend of my dad’s in the US would send us a packet of Nestle’s chocolate chips and my mom would use the recipe on the back of the packet to bake cookies for us. My brother and I loved them. The chips would be rationed carefully so these cookies were not made that often and were always a special treat when made.

Those were the good ‘ol days.

Phone wasn’t a thing, no social media to see what other people are up to and secretly envying their “perfect” lifestyle. Internet hadn’t arrived- at least not in our parts of the world. TV was limited to a single channel, satellite TV came a little later, but that too had only a handful of shows. We went outside to play. We spoke to people to make connections. We appreciated in person when we liked something instead of hitting a like button on a photo. We cared more about ourselves and not what other people were up to. We had time to make real and not virtual relationships and work towards growing them. While I love that technology has brought us all closer, it has some how also managed to keep us apart. It’s a different world we live in than the one I grew up in. There are times I want to disconnect from it all. But somehow my job requires me to remain connected. Or so I tell myself.

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Batter fried crispy white fish with indian spices. Gluten free.

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When I was in India and working on The Pink CakeBox, the cook at my parents’ house would make amazing crispy Amritsari fish. Growing up I was never into seafood but somewhere along the line, that has changed. I am still not too experimental but I am better at trying out stuff.

Even when I was not into seafood, Amritsari Fish is one thing I would still eat without creating a fuss, probably because it is fried. Summer vacations at my grandparents always meant Amritsari fish and tandoori chicken for snacks. Dal makhani, butter chicken and butter naan for dinner, and ice cream for dessert. No wonder I was a fat kid.

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