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 ...
Saucy Barbecued Chicken Wings
Ladies and gentlemen, I need you to pray for us. I need you to pray that we don’t run out of food or money during the next several years of feeding the bottomless pit that has become my son. I’m not sure when it happened, or who flipped the switch that turned my sweet baby boy into an eating machine but I feel that there is no going back. There haven’t ...
“Life Changing” Harissa Chicken and White Beans
After 8 years of cooking and then writing about it, I have enough confidence in my skills to say that I am an above average home cook. I can, on a fairly consistent basis, put a meal on the table that doesn’t kill anyone. I have also been fortunate enough to produce some pretty amazing creations that have been met with rave reviews, but, until last week, I have never made ...
Make Ahead Pork Potstickers
Make Ahead Pork Potstickers are easy to make. Grab a friend and make a big batch to keep in your freezer for a lightening fast meal or appetizer that you can make right from the freezer! Make sure to read the notes to learn how to freeze potstickers for later! If you had told me 5 years ago that my kids would frequently beg me to make potstickers for dinner I would have ...
Gloriously Retro Pineapple Ham Balls
I have a slight obsession with vintage recipes. Just something about the fads and trends of cooking that thought Jello molds and mayonnaise was a good combination fascinates me. I often find myself wondering, what was the mindset of the women (for it was almost assuredly women) who came up with these unorthodox combinations. I think it must have been a little bit ...
Broccoli Bites and the Terrible Hide and Seekers
The game of hide-and-seek is certainly not anything new. As a child, our regular games of hide- and-seek were closely related to black-ops style missions that demanded that the hiders call upon all of their stealth and ingenuity in order to outsmart the usually older and bigger seekers. We would play endless games, making sure to place “base” in some wide open area ...
Jam Muffins
I have a deep-seated love of muffins. Something about the domed tops and colorful liners that make me as giddy as an 8-year old to pop a couple of muffins in my face for breakfast. Muffins, for me, are a great way to celebrate a weekend, a snow day, or the fact that you are awake at 4 AM on a Sunday morning for no good reason. Versatile and forgiving, muffins can turn ordinary ...
Italian Braised Short Ribs
My husband and I have been working on our own little project. It’s been going on for the last 6 or 7 months and was brought on by the rising cost of cheap cuts of beef. Cuts that, 5 years ago, most folks didn’t know existed. We have seen some of our favorites such as flank steak, skirt steak and beef shank go through the roof! I would have never imagined that it would be ...