A little over a week ago, we started a new chapter in our lives. We moved to into our first house!! Our house seems to have been built with our family in mind, and our neighbors are fantastic! 

The dogs are LOVING the park across the street and our fenced in backyard where they get to run around off-leash. It makes me SO happy to see our rescue dog BooBoo (real name Martleby Jones Williams Jr. Anderson – Zoom, III) enjoying his freedom to frolic!

What a process it has been. One of my friends said the month before and after she bought her first place, she generally did not feel well and started to get worried that something was really wrong with her. She was telling her mom about it when her mom said, oh honey, you just bought a house. When she told me this, I felt empathy but I also thought, what could be so stressful about moving? Especially when you have time to leave your old place.

I take it back!!!!!!!!!!

I am SO behind in every area of my life right now. In addition to some water leaks and dry wall replacement, we are also still waiting to get internet, so that's been a fun process. 10 hours on the phone with Comcast led to switching to ATT which added up to about the same amount of time in the store and on the phone when they were unable to verify our address. It is EASIER to buy a house than to get internet apparently. 

All of those things are tiny in comparison to how much we love our new house and the neighborhood!!

My favorite part of the house is the kitchen, where we have a gas range! Our new kitchen was a major selling point!

My mom has a gas range, and I know things heat up a little bit faster as opposed to an electric stovetop. I also learned the basics of cooking on a gas range from the family I spent three years with as a nanny! I can't remember having any sort of problems with burning things at their house! 

I’m still learning how ours works.

After 12 hours of soaking, I spent an hour trying to remove an inch of burnt wheat berries from one of my pots yesterday.  They were simmering on the lowest setting, and they still burned!! (This picture is mid-hourlong scrub, post 12 hour soak.) I mean, wheat berries? I make wheat berries, farro, etc., several times every single week. Never have I EVER even come close to burning it! 

This weekend, I made sweet potato gnocchi for six people. I have been testing this recipe for about a month now, I made it for New Years Eve and it was perfect! I thought that this occasion would be the grand finale… It’s a good thing I had this avocado toast recipe in mind so they could eat it while I scorched the gnocchi.

Everyone still enjoyed the meal, but I was slightly mortified…. I'm still pretty embarrassed. 

I'll be eating avocado toast until I learn how to make anything other than eggs and soup on our stove. 

I thought this recipe would be the most appropriate contribution during this time. I'm still trying to find the other half of my brain in our boxes as we finish unpacking. 

This is a recipe that is perfect for the following situations:

• those times when you don't want to spend lots of time in the kitchen
• when you need something healthy but delicious
• when you want to make a lovely vegetarian/vegan-friendly appetizer (something different than hummus and veggies or carrots.)

Make this delicious piece of art and let me know what you think!! Leave me a comment below! Take a pic of your beautiful creation, post it on Instagram, tag @corrielanderson and use #itsallofit so I can see it!!

Have a great week!!

AVOCADO TOAST WITH SPICY DRIZZLE

Recipe Author: Corrie Anderson             Recipe Type: Snack or Appetizer

INGREDIENTS

• 1 baguette, sliced diagonally if you’re making this for a group OR 2 pieces of hearty bread for 1 to 2 people 
• 2-3 avocados, sliced thinly
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 lime, cut lime in half and squeeze the juice 
• 1 - 2 teaspoons Sriracha or hot sauce of your choice
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• ½ teaspoon harissa seasoning*
• ½ teaspoon honey
• tiny pinch of ground cinnamon
• freshly ground black pepper
• kosher salt
• ¼ - ½ cup sunflower seeds 
• ¼ - ½ cup sesame seeds

INSTRUCTIONS

1.  To make the spicy drizzle, mix olive oil, lime juice, hot sauce, ground cumin, harissa seasoning, honey, and cinnamon in a small bowl. You can definitely modify the amount of hot sauce depending on your tolerance for spicy things! 
2. Toast baguette slices under the broiler; keep your eye on them so they don’t burn! (If you're making toast for yourself, a toaster might be easiest.) 
3. Place avocado slices on top of baguette slices, drizzle with spicy sauce, add sunflower seeds and/or sesame seeds, and sprinkle kosher salt and black pepper on top. Enjoy! 

*Harissa seasoning is a mixture of red pepper flakes, cumin, coriander, paprika, garlic, salt, and caraway. If you don't have this on hand, you can mix a tiny pinch of red pepper flakes, 1/4 tsp cumin, 1/4 tsp coriander, 1/4 tsp paprika, 1/2 teaspoon paprika, and a pinch of salt.