Okay this is gonna be so great. I just got back from The Ubyssey’s annual Pender Island retreat. Which was very fun. There was disc golf. There was some very intense non alcoholic ginger beer. There was a truly epic hunt for a phone in the woods beneath a cliff (we found her!).

But maybe my favourite part was that the place we stayed had a BEAUTIFUL kitchen. I forgot to take photos of her (oops) but she had so much counter space. And so many drawers and cupboards. And a beautiful range. And some very nice cast iron pans. Before the trip, I had planned to make food for maybe 8 people? But I think I ended up bringing enough food to (at least partially) feed everyone there for three meals.

This really made me so incredibly happy. I’m so glad people were willing to try my food. And it was nice when people helped out. It was just really cool to be chopping a freakish number of carrots with people :D. And people said such nice things about the food which was very sweet and really nice to hear. I’ve historically felt very bad about my cooking skills and a little incompetent and definitely worse than my partner, so it was good to have a lot of people say nice things to me :D.

And I’m so excited for my next chance to make food for lots of people. It’s gonna be incredible. I will make better transport decisions though. I gave my editor a bag of jars to bring in his car, then I brought a bag of everything else on the walk/bus/train/bus/ferry. And — big blunder — my bag was way heavier. This also meant there was a bunch of things I’d wanted to bring/make that I couldn’t just because of food transfer logistics (RIP lunch poutine).

For the amount of food I made, the groceries cost was honestly not bad at all. Like $90 for 35-45 person-meals. SUPER worth it. Truly I have discovered a new vacation type for myself which is rent somewhere with a nice kitchen and trad wife for a bunch of friends. And one of the other editors said that next year they’d do starters and I could do the main course which sounds INCREDIBLE. I’m so excited :)

Anyways, I shall replicate the three recipes I made here: two dinners and one breakfast. As well as a little bonus of iced chai. You should tell me if you try any of these! They’re all at least vegetarian (if eggs count as vegetarian) because I don’t like cooking meat :D. I’m also giving recipes for the amount I made on the trip — so you might reduce them significantly if you are not cooking for 10+ people.

Iced Chai (8-12 servings, I think)

I feel bad because I don’t think my editor (iced chai enjoyer) actually got to try any of this? Mostly because we ran out of milk. (See also, transit above.) Next time I shall bring significantly more milk.

But this is a super quick one. She takes like maybe 5 minutes? And makes truly like 8-12 glasses of iced chai. It’s not quite the same as the type of iced chai you might get at a coffee shop, but I still love her. And also she is maybe 8% the price? Or lower? idk I haven’t mathed it out.

I should also add that my partner developed this recipe :D

Ingredients

• A pitcher (this isn’t strictly an ingredient, but you should have a pitcher to make/store this in!)

• Hot water (enough for the pitcher)

• 4-6 tea bags of Chai (I’d start higher, since you can always dilute with milk!)

• ½ Cup of brown sugar

Instructions

1. Put tea bags into pitcher

2. Pour hot water into pitcher

3. Put brown sugar into pitcher

4. Dissolve the brown sugar by stirring

5. Let steep outside the fridge for a couple hours

6. Put in fridge

To serve, just pour over ice and add milk :). You can also change the amount of sugar/tea bags to your liking.

Veggie Lasagna (18-24 little lasagna squares)

Of The Vilest Rag fame! The EIC of The Ubyssey talked about this on her episode of the podcast. I got the recipe and made it for the polycule + others (hi others, sorry Aisha that you weren’t others) and it was really good! So I brought her back for Pender.

(I think the recipe is the first one when you google vegetarian lasagna. I’ve modified her a little because I think the food processor is dumb)

Truly this may be my favourite recipe now????? She’s just so delicious. And though she takes a little while to make, she makes a lot of lasagna. A great meal for lots of people.

Ingredients

• ½ cup olive oil

• 6-8 carrots

• 2 bell peppers

• 3 zucchini

• 2 onions

• 2 800ml cans of diced tomatoes

• 4 cloves of garlic

• A big container of spinach (truly go with god. She’ll wilt down)

• Fresh basil (I just buy whatever the little plastic container of organic spinach is at Safeway)

• One of 750g containers of low fat (1%) cottage cheese

• 1 packet of no boil lasagna noodles (~18)

• Low moisture mozzarella cheese (I get a block that’s 400g)

• Red pepper flakes

• Salt

Instructions

First, we’re gonna do the sauce! You can actually make this a couple days before the rest of the lasagna. For Pender, I made it during my lunch break on Wednesday!

1. Strain the diced tomatoes in a colander. Don’t rinse them, but do a little shake to get the wet out.

2. Dice the diced tomatoes. Just make them really small. I do this a handful at a time. I’d kinda fun! Move them into a bowl that’ll be big enough to do some more sauce action!

3. Chop the basil and add her! I also normally add a little extra of just the dried basil from our spice rack.

4. Next, get that garlic real fine and add her in as well!

5. Season with about a teaspoon of salt and a heaping half teaspoon of red pepper flakes. The spice is honestly really nice, trust! I have honestly been sneaking a bit extra red pepper flakes too.

6. Add ¼ cup of the olive oil then mix her all around.

7. You can either jar her for later or set her to the side while you make the rest of the lasagna parts.

Next up is all the veggies. This is a chopping heavy step — perfect for putting some keen reporters to work on some carrots and zucchini.

1. Chop all of the carrots, zucchini, bell peppers, and onions! I try to get these as fine as I can with a knife while also not taking years to chop. I don’t mind the texture of individual pieces of veggies though :p.

2. Start cooking her on the stove top with ¼ cup of olive oil. (You don’t need to measure this. Just go with God. You’re putting oil in a pan just go until it looks mostly covered.) I’ve needed to use two different pans to deal with the number of veggies, so just a heads up on that.

3. Let her cook for like… 15 minutes? You don’t want her to char, but you definitely want some browning. Make sure to stir!

4. Throw the spinach in! She will wilt away into nothing.

5. Put the cottage cheese into a bowl and add the veggies to her! Add salt (start with ½ teaspoon but I go up to a full teaspoon) and however much black pepper you are called to. Stir her around. I actually have a photo of this one

And now we assemble! I have previously done this in two 8 inch by 8 inch pans which were stacked pretty high! But at Pender I did one and a half longer dishes that were like … 8 inch by 14 inch maybe?

1. Base layer: 1/3 cup tomato sauce

2. Lasagna noodles covering the area. If you’re doing an 8×8, this is probably 3. Just snap them down to fit and use the scraps to take the place of a noodle later on. It’s lasagna so you can commit a lot of assembly sins and no one will notice!

3. Put a goodly amount of the veggies and cottage cheese — about half of what you’ll use on the lasagna. Then throw around 2/3 cup of tomato sauce and a handful of the cheese on top

4. Lasagna noodles

5. More cottage cheese! This is the last time you’ll cottage cheese + veggie. Then more shredded cheese. About the same as before.

6. Lasagna noodles

7. Put whatever sauce and cottage cheese you have left. Then all the cheese you have left. I have another photo for this step!

Let them cook

1. Preheat oven to 425

2. Cover the lasagna with foil (make her like a little hat so there’s air between the foil and the cheese). Or if you don’t have foil but you do have two more dishes that are the same size, you can use those instead! (See above)

3. Place her in the oven on one of the higher racks. You want to get some heat towards the top of the lasagna for some cheese browning action!

4. Let her cook for 20 minutes

5. Remove the covers then let her cook for 15 more. Maybe rotate her if you’re worried about how even your oven cooks things.

6. If the cheese isn’t browned on top, maybe throw the broiler on? I didn’t do this either of the times but I wish I had tried it!

7. Take her out and let her cool for 20 minutes or so

This lasagna is so good. You can feed many many people. It’s great. Definitely try this. It’s genuinely not like… a compromise to make it vegetarian. It tastes so good, it doesn’t even matter that there’s no meat :).

Pancakes (makes a lot. Like… 25-30?)

My truth is I searched pancake recipes and did the first one. But she was pretty incredible. I brought some whipped cream and a jar of maple syrup as toppings. (My editor was EXTREMELY confused as to how I got the maple syrup into the jar because it wasn’t the syrup’s normal receptacle.) I’d bring more maple syrup and whipped cream next time. And maybe some jam?

I had the honour (this is genuine) of waking up early to make these before someone had to leave to catch a ferry and it was a great time. I slept almost-outside on a little bed with a view of the sky and water. It was nice and cold. I got to walk up to the main house. It was great. And I got to make pancakes for a friend :). Well, lots of friends :).

I also learned I can DO THE CLASSIC PANCAKE FLIP. I’m so cool y’all. You don’t even understand. I’m the coolest.

Ingredients

• 6 cups of flour

• 4 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons of baking powder

• 4 tablespoons white sugar

• 5 cups milk

• 12 tablespoons of melted butter (two hits of 30 seconds in the microwave did the trick for melting, with a bit of stirring action)

• 4 eggs

Instructions

1. Sift all the flour, baking powder, and sugar into as big a bowl as you can find.

2. Add the milk and butter. I’m a coward who is afraid of egg shells, so I cracked the eggs into a separate container before pouring them into the big bowl.

3. Mix her good. Make sure everything is combined. It’s okay to be a little lumpy!

4. Put her on the stove! I did a bit of butter for the first pancake, then none the rest of the time. The butter honestly just made the first pancakes worse, so maybe that’s not necessary. Having a big thermal mass in the cast iron was nice and meant the pancakes cooked super evenly. Just keep an eye on them and test if they’re ready by lifting up an edge of the pancake before flipping. Also if you take breaks between making pancakes, make sure your pan is thoroughly heated before you throw down the batter!

Trust me: Tofu Tacos (about 30 little guys)

ITS ACTUALLY REALLY GOOD I PROMISE. Throw away all your dumb little assumptions about tofu because it’s actually really versatile. I promise she is very tasty and you will like her! Like I promise she’s so good. At least one person who said they didn’t like tofu told me they did in fact enjoy them! Maybe this was a lie, but if it was then the kids are right: journalists are all Biased, Boring Liars.

She is also great for multiple meals! You can reheat her pretty easy. You can make quesadilla type things. Highly recommend. She’s one of my go to things to make. I use this size of recipe for me and my partner, so we get at least two more meals of left overs.

(My partner got her off Instagram and we made some tweaks. Mainly adding the beans :p)

Ingredients

• 2 blocks of tofu. At least firm. We go for a 350g extra firm block

• A can of beans

• 2 onions

• 6 cloves of garlic

• Salsa

• Can of pineapple chunks

• Soy sauce

• Oil of choice (we typically use grapeseed but I subbed this for melted butter at Pender and it was fine)

• Dry Tofu Spices: 4 teaspoons of cumin, 2 teaspoons of paprika

• Tofu Sauce Spices: 2 teaspoons cumin, 2 teaspoons paprika, 1 teaspoon chili powder. Sometimes I throw in some garlic/onion powder.

Instructions

1. Shred the tofu! Just with a cheese grater. Put her in a big bowl

2. Add 4 tablespoons of soy sauce, 2 tablespoons of oil of choice, and your dry tofu spices! Mix her around.

3. Preheat your oven to 400. Spread your tofu as thin as possible on 1-2 baking sheets. Put her in for half an hour or so. Stir her around whenever you feel like it. Probably at least once. (We will sometimes split the tofu between the oven and the air fryer. The air fryer gets her a lot crispier, so it’s a nice variation in texture.)

4. Take a 20 minute break. You deserve it!

5. Come back and chop your onions and garlic. With some oil of choice, throw her onto the stove in a pan big enough for all the tofu.

6. Add your tofu sauce spices as well as 4 tablespoons of the salsa! Let her cook for a couple minutes, or until you get bored

7. Partially open the can of pineapples and get as much of the juice into the pan as you can. Add 1 tablespoon of soy sauce too.

8. Rinse beans in a colander then add her to the pan

9. Once she’s bubbling, drop the heat and add the tofu. Stir her in and give her a taste. Add more seasoning as you desire!

Serve in a vessel of your choice. We go for like 6 inch tortillas. I’d heat these wrapped in foil in the oven, normally. But tragically the Pender kitchen — though she is my wife and I am going to marry her — did not have any foil. So I painstakingly heated every tortilla for each person as they queued.

My go to toppings for this is cheese (obvs), bell peppers (I would go for 2, for the size of our group), the pineapple from the can, the salsa, and some limes. I also sometimes go for lettuce, but my truth is I was shopping and I saw the lettuce would be $5 and I didn’t want it that much LMAO. Sorry any Ubyssey lettuce enjoyers.

Also a pro tip is if you want to stretch the taco filling a little longer, you can make 1-1.5 cups of rice. Either make people do some rice with their tofu or mix it into the pan. If you go with the latter, maybe add some more cumin, paprika, and soy sauce. Go with your taste buds.

Other News

The future of creative freedom…

Okay so this is very niche but the graphic design/layout software I’ve been using for years just had a whole big thing. ‘Twas the Affinity Suite and it’s better than Adobe because you pay like $150 for it once and then have it forever. It is worse than Adobe in many other niche ways (god I’d kill for being able to use GREPs again when I’m going layout). But she’s perfectly functional for everything I do and also not a million dollars a month and automatically using everything I make to train a stupid ai plagiarism launderer.

sigh

Anyways, Affinity took down all their apps and essentially nuked their website at the start of October and replaced it with an ominous “the future of creative freedom is nearly here.” Which is. TERRIFYING. That’s the phrasing of a super villain who is about to reach the culmination of their evil plan. And this whole vibe wasn’t exactly helped by Serif (the company who made Affinity) being bought out by Canva last year. Because Canva is angling for an IPO soon so like. Yeah. I don’t trust them to do right by their customers for the rest of time.

But it turns out the future of creative freedom was a new version of the app which is completely free (with AI features 🤮 available with a Canva subscription). This is — dare I say — still terrifying. Because software isn’t free to make. So it’s like… where’s the money coming from? They say that it’s coming from… professional designers at companies using Affinity (which is free) but then the companies are like “because our designers are using Affinity, we need to add more seats to our Canva subscription for… the non-designers”?!?!?!??!?!?!?!??!?! Also they might be yoinking what I make for ai training purposes which is gross????

Maybe I’m a hater but I do a little bit think there’s gonna be a shenanigans within the next half-decade. It’s just scary because I was an Affinity enjoyer. And I’d legitimately rather pay for it because I’m getting genuine value out of it and I feel like it’s worth the money. But now there’s the Free Software Enshittification of Damocles hanging over my head. Which is less snazzy.

Anyways, niche rant. But what isn’t here.

A new sigh

I ironically picked up a little sigh + head shake my editor does when he’s annoyed by rock climbers, birds, etc. Because I am of course Spencer Izen, Perspective Editor at The Ubyssey. (This joke doesn’t need explanation, obviously.)

But then drunk people (singular, not you if you’re reading this, genuinely) were being drunk. And it was very annoying to me personally as a maximally sober person. I dunno it just got on my nerves a lot because it was like… go lie down or drink some water or eat some food instead of making it my problem. Also because I’d totally be more together if I only had two drinks (footnote?).

But I was very annoyed, and I constantly did the Spencer Sigh and it was genuinely very good for my emanation of frustration.

From the Archive

No photos or link because this was CENSORED FROM THE INTERNET.

But there is a special sexy calendar issue of The Ubyssey with nudes from Ubyssey + AMS execs. WHICH IS CRAZY. A former coordinating editor told me of this issue’s existence, then I found her with the help of the current eic.

Terrible but also epic. In brief looks I got as we flipped through the pages horrified, they looked somewhat tasteful? Like it wasn’t just dick pics.

Also don’t be a freak and say this should happen again. Don’t do my friends like this plz.

That’s All!

I reeeeaaaalllllllyyyyyyyyyy want to cook for a bunch of people again. Alas, our kitchen is not quite equipped for bulk cooking. But I could do 6-8 people. (tbh we’re mostly limited by the chairs situation at the moment.) And I’m totally gonna. Personal goal is to make food for a group twice a month. I may make my partner’s chickpea curry the next time we have people over? That sounds good. She’s very yummy :)

I need to find some more recipes for next time :D. I’m so excited to cook for my wife again (the Pender kitchen is my wife). I might also try to figure out how to make home made French fries and vegetarian gravy so we could do a poutine thing next time.

If y’all have recipe suggestions please send them my way! I’d really appreciate it! I don’t cook meat or seafood (which is also meat), so maybe don’t send in like an epic T-bone steak recipe? But if the crux of the dish isn’t necessarily the meat, I could figure out how to sub it out :).

Who knew that I’d discover that I realllllyyyyyy want to be a stay-at-home tradwife.

ALSO NOT TO FREAK OUT BUT THE MIGHTY NEIN ANIMATED SERIES COMES OUT NEXT WEDNESDAY. I’m gonna try to convince my partner that we should do watch events Thursday evenings after my opinion meeting (starting probably 8:15 pm). Or maybe Friday evening would be better. Idk I’ll figure it out this week.

See y’all in a fortnight (November 23) at 10:03 pm. Until then, buzz on, my busy bees!

POV: You’re a bird and there’s foot stuff at Pender since 2025