A Pinch Of Making It Worth the Wait

I’ve (almost) moved on from (what was to be) the “Great Philly Sports Week of 2025”. I’d almost like to Men In Black flash forget what we just watched of the Phillies and Eagles this past week. On top of all that, I was battling a post-travel cold after my trip to Austin. But as life goes, now we are on the UP.

After many hours horizontal to round out last week, I took as many steps Sunday as the previous three days. Talk about a turnaround (take notes @ The Birds). I was able to keep up with marathon training after a few days off, stacking up 15 miles as planned.

What really was fueling me was the fact that I had some brioche dough waiting for me to make some donuts after. For whatever reason, donuts have been the biggest craving for me after my long runs. I typically leave it up to the professionals to fry up these soft, pillow-y treats. But after a whole lot of doing nothing with lots of scrolling, the idea of donuts stuck out to me.

Prepping the dough Saturday night made the morning easy. One smaller proof after separating out to eight balls before I headed to the store to grab ingredients to make chili – a little inspo from the weather and a call from some smart friends, shoutout to Carissa and Jeff. But one meal at a time.

I followed Cloudy Kitchen’s Nutella Donuts recipe for the dough and the process. Super simple and a great process. One thing I wish I thought of to read more about is to press the portioned dough down a bit more so that the shape is a bit more oval-like, rather than a round ball.

I switched it up since I had two flavors on the brain that there was no changing – vanilla chai whipped cream and pistachio. I combined this smaller batch whipped cream recipe (doubled this) and this chai seasoning recipe (halved, but only used about 2 tablespoons and saved the rest). The pistachio was easy because I used some pistachio cream I brought back from Italy, which seem to be getting more readily available and there are plenty of recipes if you so please.

Frying these were pretty easy peezy, even doing the final four all together. Then I rolled them in granulated sugar before letting them cool. Somehow I managed to let them cool mostly before digging in. Again, making it all worth the wait.

I stayed busy by swapping the oil in the dutch oven with the chili ingredients to get that slow-simmering process started. After the little bit of chopping and opening of cans while the ground beef browned, the donuts cooled. I added all the chili ingredients to the dutch oven, threw the lid on top and let that thing simmer for a few hours.

Immediately back to the sweets. Thankfully I now have plenty of piping bags from the cake decorating before, so filling the donuts was easy. Had to get it right, and these flavors were exactly what I was craving for a fall treat and post-run.

Quite a process for eight donuts, but I love a nice homemade good. Verdict: flavors were great and the donut turned out well, but I’m leaving this to the pros to save some time. Maybe some homemade munchkins soon though.

After cleaning plenty of dishes and Lucy telling me that she wanted to get her steps in after the few rainy and slower days, the chili was just about ready. So I got started mixing up and baking the cornbread muffins. Now, I love a great cornbread as much as the next person, and I like the idea of the challenge of making cornbread. But for this family recipe of the chili, we gotta keep it nostalgic with the box for Jiffy corn muffins. Also, being spoiled with the Amish Market’s cornbread in West Chester, which is basically just cake, it’s a tall order to make anything that tastes close to as good at home.

I made about half of this family recipe — for once I realized I can portion things down — with what I realized were some chef changes and notes from my mom, like only using a quarter of the beans recommended since my brother and I used to pick them out.

The chili turned out just as I had hoped and took me back to the warming meals from when I was younger. The trick to perfecting the bowl: crumble up and mix in at least one muffin into the bowl of chili, then butter the muffin top to eat on the side.

As if that wasn’t all enough, I took the challenge of making some homemade chicken noodle soup tonight. And I really mean homemade considering I opted to make my own broth – I guess this is what I got myself into by choosing Molly Baz’s recipe titled “Maximalist Chicken Noodle Soup”. So here’s what we started with:

And eventually that cooked down, we chopped up some fresh veg to top the noodles and the flavor-packed broth, ending up with the finished bowl:

So this weekend, really just these past to days, were back on the cooking grind and lots of waiting, as prescribed by the doctor (myself last week). Those donuts were a process, but damn were they a treat to kick things off. The chili on a cold, gloomy fall Sunday: the answer. And that soup was WELL worth the cooking down process.

Talk about some meals to carry me through the rest of the week. And hey, the sun will be back to shining with cool mornings and warmer days ahead for the perfect transition with the leaves changing as well.

Trust the process 🤘