Let’s be honest. Thanksgiving is delicious and all, but the best part is all of the leftovers. If done correctly, the fridge will be full of meals that I don’t have to work too hard for for the majority of the week. The first couple of meals are generally a similar version of the original meal; swap the virtuous Brussel sprouts ...
Recipes
Spinach and Mushroom Stuffed Shells
Spinach and Mushroom Stuffed Shells is handy freezer meal to have at the ready. Cheesy and delicious and covered in sauce, this dish will make your busiest evenings a cinch. Spinach and Mushroom Stuffed Shells makes for a fantastic family meal that is so easy to make! This is one of those recipes that you can prep ahead of time and freeze, then bake on a busy night, or ...
Crock Pot Double Chicken Stock
Chicken stock is one of those things that everyone knows that they should make themselves. That if they did, in fact, make their own that it would be practically free. Making chicken stock seems like a daunting task because good chicken stock takes forever on the stovetop. It just sits there, barely bubbling the day away until every ounce of deliciousness has been sucked out ...
Pumpkin Cake Roll
The “cake roll” has been around for a long time. The Swiss roll and the Yule log come to mind as the most classic of rolled desserts. The mesmerizing spiral of cake and sweet, creamy filling are hard to resist. I don’t roll cake for just any occasion. Its nerve racking and delicate work, but the end result is so impressive that I will set aside my fear and give it a go. ...
From Scratch Green Bean Casserole
At the height of the atomic age, canned foods and anything encased in gelatin were all the rage. Commercial food companies everywhere were vying for the attention of housewives in the new suburbs of America. They came up with all sorts of crazy (and many times, unappetizing) recipes that could be whipped up in a hurry with their products. Campbell’s Soup was no ...
Sweet Potato Rolls
Even though the weather is more like Summer than mid-Autumn, there is no denying that Thanksgiving is just a few short weeks away. Cooks everywhere are compiling grocery lists, digging out family recipes, and trying to locate the gravy boat in order to prepare for the biggest meal of the year. Thanksgiving is all about tradition. There must be turkey and ham, ...
Banana and Blackberry Baked Oatmeal
I think every plan that I have made in the last week has been thwarted. Plans to go into work early to get things done were interrupted by a broken water main. Efforts to actually make it to work on time were waylaid by 6 escaped chickens and a dog that thinks they are delicious. And all of the good intentions for spending my day off prepping meals for the week were ...
Crispy Roasted Okra
Good okra recipes aren't always easy to find. Okra can be such a finicky vegetable and the number of appetizing ways to prepare it are slim. Fried okra is delicious, and pickled okra is perfectly fine, but our new favorite way to eat okra is Roasted Okra. Easy to make and even more delicious to eat, Crispy Roasted Okra turns this slimy veggie into the potato chip of the ...
Back to School Baked Turkey Meatball Subs
Back to school can be such a busy time of year with those crazy pick up and drop off lines at school, conflicting dismissal times, and of course, the start of fall sports. While there is always a lot going on, that doesn’t mean dinner can wait. This recipe for turkey meatball subs makes for an awesome option to fill up the family without spending too much time in the ...
Homemade Ketchup
I was standing at our local farmer’s market last week talking to David from Riversong Farms and lamenting about my glut of tomatoes and my lack of storage space for the dozens of quarts I had already put up when he made the most wonderful suggestion. “Make ketchup,” he said. ”It’s really good and pretty easy to make.” It was the most wonderful idea I had ever heard. Why ...
Green Bean and New Potato Salad
Life has an amazing way of teaching lessons. We have had so many lessons in the last week. My husband has learned that you should never run with wet shoes on and that broken bones sometimes take a plate and 8 screws to fix. I have learned that it takes 6 minutes to get from our house to the nearest doctor and that we have an astounding amount of friends and family who ...
Easy Chocolate Zucchini Cake
It became abundantly clear on our recent vacation with my in-laws just how perilously close our children are to the teenage years. Even though our annual pilgrimage to the lake was full of the usual childish giddiness of vacation, each activity was punctuated by a solid dose of 9-year old sass. Our daughter ( now often heard referred to as “your daughter”) was the worst ...
Fresh Strawberry and Peach Oatmeal Crisp
The first week of Summer Break has been an eventful one for the kids. Their nights have been full of sleepovers, rodeos and drive-in movies, while their days have been filled with building projects of their own design (more or less). The most ambitious of the building projects so far has been the construction of one backyard fort. The original plan, which was completely ...
Slow Cooker Short Rib Pasta in Homemade Marinara Sauce
A few months back, I received a request from a friend of mine. She was requesting a recipe of course, one that would solve all of her problems, one that would make her days easier and her meals more delicious, and of course it had to go in the Crock Pot. And it couldn’t be soup. “And don’t make it too fancy,” she said. “If I have to go to the grocery store to get some spice, I ...
Sirloin Tip Roast with Parsley and Tomato Chimichurri
The garden has taken over our lives. Every day begins and ends with me bent over a garden row picking out weeds, thinning out lettuce, or tying up tomato plants. I usually sneak out with my first cup of coffee before the kids get up to go putter around the nearly 1000 square feet of dirt that is full of high hopes and tomato plants. I think that I am probably a ...