Last Spring my dad, my friend Nicole and I went to this awesome workshop where we learned how to put together our own mushroom logs. It was a fun day full of laughs and learning an interesting new skill and we each came home with three of our own shitake mushroom logs with high hopes of harvesting oodles of mushrooms for years to come. We all got so excited in fact that we ...
Recipes
Sweet Potato Noodles and Moroccan Turkey Winter Bowl
If there was a poster child for the adage “You can’t out run a bad diet” I would be it. For the last 14 months I have religiously gone to the gym. Two or three times a week I let my trainer, Joe, try to whip me into a thinner shape. Some wonderful things have happened in that time. I’m strong enough now to open any jar in the house. I can walk up several flights of stairs ...
Quick and Healthy Greek Chicken Salad
There is a Greek restaurant just down the street from where I work. It sits on a busy street surrounded by gas stations and fast food restaurants. Parking there is atrocious. There are a few tightly packed spots right off of the busy 4 lane avenue and a few more spots tucked into a dingy alleyway just behind the building that is shared with a title loan and a Cricket phone ...
5 Minute Spicy Black Eye Pea Hummus
A quick and spicy bean dip with a twist, this Spicy Black Eye Pea Hummus is a creamy and delicious adornment to chips and veggies alike. If you were a good Southerner, you would know that every New Year must be rung in with a bowl of black eye peas. You would also know that somewhere in that bowl of tiny cream colored ...
One Pan Bacon Cheddar Hashbrown Flip
Bacon and cheddar come together with eggs and hashbrowns to create a memorable breakfast your whole family will flip for. Easy and delicious, this One Pan Bacon Cheddar Hashbrown Flip feeds a crowd. This time of the year is when life slows down for us, professionally. The vineyards are dormant, the tourist season has long ...
Winter White Bean Bake
The temperature has finally fallen to a degree akin to Winter here in the South. It was a long, hot Summer and I am happy to have to bundle up for a change. Winter cooking is really my comfort zone. The extra hours of darkness and cold weather give me so much more opportunity to tinker with recipes and come up with meals that warm the cockles of my heart. My kitchen is ...
The 10 Must Have Staple Recipes to Stock Your Pantry
I am a HUGE fan of any recipes from scratch (if you hadn't figured that out by now). While the cost savings of making your own can be huge it's really the fact that I know EXACTLY what is going into my recipes. Also, when you live waaaayyyy out in the country you have to be creative and resourceful. And who doesn't love feeling self-sufficient? (Probably no one, but if there ...
Easy Cheesy Sausage Skillet
The holidays bring out all of my stressors. I stress about money, getting all of the gifts finished, making sure the kids are at the appropriate party at the right time, squeezing in a trip or two to visit out-of-town family, and trying not to indulge so much that I have to totally swap over to wearing nothing but leggings and yoga pants before the end of the year. I run off of ...
Butternut Squash Bisque
Smooth and warm and comforting for a winter's day light lunch. Butternut Squash Bisque will warm the cockles of your heart. I have come down with the first (and hopefully last) cold of the season. I'm all achy, my ears have a slight ring to them, my throat is raw and my head is all stopped up. The simplest of tasks has me run down and out of energy. The furthest I have gone ...
Almond & Jam Thumbprint Cookies
We are in a whole new territory this Christmas. Our children informed us a couple months ago that the jig was up. That they knew the secret. Our cover had been blown. The era of Santa was over. Is it awful to say that I was happy to hear it? For years I have been losing credit for some pretty awesome gifts. Not to mention that I have been forced into ...
Chocolate Chip Biscotti
It doesn’t matter how old you get, having dessert for breakfast always sounds like a great idea. Especially this time of year when the last slice of pumpkin pie is totally a balanced meal and the family weekend brunch most certainly includes a heaping pile of cinnamon rolls. Cookies are a little harder to justify. I guess you could call it a “breakfast cookie” but they lack the ...
Peanut Butter Marbled Fudge
This time of year is rough on me. I struggle with it emotionally and physically. I'm talking of course about being surrounded by sweets 24/7. I'm struggling to physically get my butt into my pants and I'm struggling emotionally trying to convince myself to not eat all of the delicious sweets that I have surrounded myself with. I'm okay with it for now. January will be here ...
Porchetta Roll with Chimichurri Sauce
I have a love/hate relationship with Christmas. I love all of the gift giving and cookie making. I love the get-togethers and all of the twinkling lights. What I don't love is just how dang expensive it is. Every holiday season we struggle to do all of the gifting we want without digging ourselves into a hole of debt that we then spend the next several ...
Garlic Shrimp Rice Bowl
Living in the country on the edges of society has always had its sacrifices. We knew that when we moved back nearly 6 years ago to my small hometown. But here recently, a little bit of the modern world has finally reached our doorstep. We now have honest-to-goodness internet. Oh sure, we had internet before. It came out of a tiny black box that sat in ...
Easy Breakfast Hash
I’m not sure what it was that possessed me to raise chickens. Maybe it was the fresh country air, maybe it was chicken coop envy, maybe it was how cute and fluffy they are when they are little chicks, but it most certainly had something to do with eggs. There is nothing quite like an egg from a happy chicken. Unlike the sad, bland eggs from the grocery store, the eggs ...