Food

  • Food

    Flour Sifter Hack

    Warning: This post contains bad lyrics, cheesy rhyming and unnecessary descriptive details. You may want to avert your eyes. I totally understand. When my husband and I got married, we received many wonderful wedding gifts from our friends and family. Since we were really young when we got married, those gifts were definitely helpful in setting up our house. One of the items we received was a flour sifter. I’m pretty sure it came bundled with some other baking supplies, but I cannot remember who gave me that gift. I feel bad about that. I also feel bad that I only used the flour sifter a dozen times. Okay, it was more…

  • Food

    Pane Bianco with Basil, Sausage & Sun-Dried Tomatoes

    An alternate title for this post could be everything sounds better in Italian. Pane Bianco. If you want to hear it pronounced, click here. What is pane bianco? Well, in English it means white bread. See? I told you it sounds better in Italian! In this case, it is fancy-schmancy looking white bread filled with deliciousness. I stumbled upon the website Never Enough Thyme…When Lana’s Cooking the other day and could not get her recipe for Pane Bianco out of my head. I mean, look at it! It’s gorgeous! Here is my dough all rolled out and sprinkled with fresh basil, sun-dried tomatoes, sausage, garlic and an Italian cheese blend.…

  • Food

    An Unsponsored Blue Apron Review

    I read a fair number of home and lifestyle blogs and lately you don’t have to try hard to stumble across a Blue Apron sponsored post. What’s Blue Apron? Blue Apron is a meal ingredient delivery service. They deliver pre-measured ingredients, along with the instructions on how to cook an entire meal consisting of a main dish and side. From what I can tell, they have a 2-person program and meals for a “family,” which is about 4 people. I have a friend who uses Blue Apron and she received a free meal trial to “gift” to a friend. Peer-to-peer marketing at its best! She gifted it to me. So, Blue Apron…

  • Food

    4-Banana Banana Bread

    Here’s the deal. I think I’ve said this before. Pardon the repeat. My family doesn’t tell me when they suddenly no longer like a certain food. All anyone will eat for breakfast for weeks is Rice Krispies. Then when I go and stockpile a bunch of Rice Krispies to prevent someone from snap, crackle and popping when we run out, of course, they decide they don’t like Rice Krispies any longer and only like Raisin Bran Crunch. This story could be told over and over in our household, just change the name of the characters for different foods. Apparently, I’m the only one who hasn’t caught on to the rules…

  • strawberries on the happy list
    Food

    Strawberry Time

    As a girl who was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, I am still flabbergasted that I can pick beautiful, sweet, ripe strawberries in mid-April in Georgia. God bless the sunshine! I’d been on “strawberry watch” for a couple of weeks waiting for my favorite Georgia farm, Washington Farms, to have ripe berries. Last Thursday I was just home from preschool drop-off and happened to check Facebook in a last ditch attempt at procrastinating on sanding the kitchen cabinets. The farm was having a pick 2, pick 1 gallon free deal that day. So, I jumped in the car and hustled over there (it’s an hour drive) to pick some…

  • Food

    I’m Food Trendy and I Didn’t Know It

    Is anyone else a huge fan of The Pioneer Woman? *raises hand higher* Every recipe I’ve tried of hers has been fantastic. Plus, her writing is pretty entertaining. Since I grew up in the country on a ranch, I can relate to some of the antics of country life. I, however, cannot relate to the antics of famous blogger/Food Network star/author life. Eh, you win some, you lose some. On Monday I was eating my breakfast while checking out her blog when I about fell off my chair from what I read.  Do you know what her food post on Monday was about? Eating TOAST in Los Angeles. Yes, toast. I about choked…

  • Food

    Banana Blackberry Muffins with Vanilla Orange Glaze

    They say necessity is the mother of invention. I say two black bananas sitting on your counter mocking you is the mother of invention. Tomato, ta-mah-toh. And, really, I just adapted a recipe from good ol’ Betty Crocker, so it’s not like I’ve gone out on an extreme culinary limb here. It was a delicious limb though. So, here’s the deal with me and muffins. If I’m going to add fruit to them, then I prefer for them to be mainly fruit with some muffin dough to hold the fruit together. Anyone else with me? *crickets* I used frozen blackberries that we picked last summer, but frozen blueberries or raspberries…

  • Food

    Dave’s Killer Bread – Updated CopyCat Recipe

    I’ve been making a copycat version of Dave’s Killer Bread at least once a week for about a year now. Holy smokes. My 20-something self would never believe I’ve become so handy in the kitchen. My 30-something self hardly believes it either! I am in no way an expert on all things related to bread making. I’m learning as I go and sharing the journey. Case in point: this bread incident. A few months ago, I had the opportunity to get my fix of the real Dave’s Killer Bread while visiting the Pacific Northwest. Since then, I’ve been tweaking the recipe ever so slightly to try and get it even closer…

  • Food

    Clean Out the Fridge Pasta Salad

    My son plays t-ball on Monday evenings from 5:30 – 6:30, which is smack-dab in the middle of all things dinner-related for that evening. It really throws a wrench in the evening routine, but it’s only for 8 weeks. Plus, there are enormous amounts of cuteness and hilarity when you try to teach 4 and 5-year-olds how to play baseball. So we will deal because it is totally worth a belly laugh or two every Monday…and the boy enjoys it! To work around this scheduling hiccup, I’ve been feeding the kids a very early dinner, at 4:30 or 4:45 p.m. Last week I was trying to figure out what I could bring…

  • Food

    Homemade Girl Scout Cookie Thin Mint Ice Cream

    If only those Girl Scout cookies weren’t SO good. It would make it much easier to say “no” to the little girls coming around our neighborhood selling those hard-to-resist creations. In case you’re a Girl Scout with cookies and treats to sell, I haven’t said no yet! By the way, I’ve been extremely impressed thus far with how articulate and composed these young girls have been. Even at 6 and 7 years old they are demonstrating impressive poise and responsibility. I was not a Girl Scout. Hmm…could explain a few things. 😉 I mentioned in this post that we recently became the proud new owners of an ice cream making machine. This…