Welcome to spring time! (For real this time.) After one late in the game snow storm, we are finally enjoying REAL sunshine and REAL temperatures in the 70’s, and I don’t plan to go back. This time when I hang up that big puffy coat, I want it to be for the last time. And you know what people eat when it’s spring time? They eat asparagus. Which brings me to today’s topic, Farro Salad with Asparagus and Tomatoes.
There’s a very important birthday coming up this week! (Ok, technically there are a couple important birthdays coming up this week, but only one of them is relevant to my post today… As for the other, happy birthday to you too!!)
My little buddy is turning two! And to celebrate I experimented with some homemade dog treats.
I’ve been a little lax with the posts for a week or so, but for good reason! I had to spend a little time doing some Mexican food research 🙂
St. Patrick’s Day is almost here!
To be fair, this means less to me than it does to my husband, a confirmed ‘person of slight Irish descent.’ In honor of his heritage (which in actuality is mostly Scandinavian), or perhaps more accurately in honor of his affinity for beer, he routinely goes all out on St. Patrick’s Day. This means several things: 1) watching The Boondock Saints (which is harder to wrap my head around now that I can only see Norman Reedus as Daryl Dixon of The Walking Dead), 2) green bagels, and 3) Jameson Irish Whiskey, Bailey’s Irish Cream and Guinness Irish Stout beer all in one glass.
A couple years ago, to celebrate, we enjoyed some green bagels. Last year, we made Irish coffees to start the day. This year, I’m taking a tamer and more mature approach. I’m channeling Ina Garten and whipping up some Irish Soda Bread.
I know you’d never know it from reading my blog, but I promise that I do try to eat food that’s good for me (and not just muffins).
Enough about health food though. Today, I want to share a Chocolate – Chocolate Chip Pound Cake that I tried on a whim one evening. I hate to end a great dinner without something sweet, and if there’s nothing around, you have no choice but to whip something up. One of the best things about baking is that you can almost always concoct something amazing with ingredients you have on hand + Pinterest.
I know that within my own lifetime, food has gone from being a good thing that people generally like and are happy to have around to being SUPER TRENDY. I don’t know who first coined the term “foodie” or published the first food blog, but at this point, everyone knows that food is cool. The icing on the food cake for me was probably the way that Pinterest suddenly made all these foodie websites so available. The result: there are so many amazing food blogs that I’m subscribing to that I can barely keep up with all of them, and I keep discovering new ones that I want to follow! This post is my attempt to reproduce a recipe published by Whole Living Lauren. Buffalo Cauliflower Bites! 
I’ve been waiting and waiting for March! It’s not because I like March – I’d say it’s easily a leading candidate for my least favorite month of the year. But March is like the Gateway to Spring. We have to get through it for spring to get here, so we might as well get it started.
Today I have a smoothie recipe that’s perfect for March – it’s green which feels appropriate for St. Patrick’s Day while also being a healthier choice than green beer, and it’s full of foods that make me feel like summer’s around the corner (like mangoes and coconuts)!
I wish I loved vegetables. It’s such a bummer than they’re basically the only foods that are indisputably healthy. No matter what other food you’re talking about, someone will come up with some evidence that you shouldn’t eat it. Meat? Dairy? Even complex carbs get a bad rap from some researchers. It leaves us with just … vegetables.
As much as I complain about winter, there are a couple reasons that I look forward to it. The number one reason is that I love to have an excuse to be comfy – blankets, sweaters, hot cups of tea, etc…
Ina Garten’s Chunky Banana Bran Muffins make a comforting treat for a winter morning!
I have a lot of food-related projects swarming around in my subconscious pretty much all of the time. Most of these are hypothetical projects that will never happen … like making a batch of every single chocolate chip cookie recipe I’ve ever seen so that I can once and for all decide which one I like the best and just discard the rest. (Wouldn’t that be convenient? I’ve accidentally pinned about 30 different chocolate chip cookie recipes, and they’re stressing me out.) Another hypothetical project I wish I could tackle is to make every single recipe in every single cookbook that I own (which would take me 18 lifetimes). In lieu of doing that, I can at least keep trying to make more of the recipes I haven’t tried yet, so … that’s my pathetic compromise. And without further ado, that brings me to this recipe for Pasta with Portobello Sauce!
A classic from Rachael Ray’s original 30 Minute Meals cookbook!
The Bahama Llama 