June 13, 2013
Mexican Chicken Casserole
Have you ever had one of those terrible days that just won’t end? Yesterday started with the wonderful surprise that my beloved coffee machine wasn’t working. After much futzing around and ultimately going through the 5 stages of grief for my dead coffee machine, I plopped down in my office chair to try to get some work done. This was followed by a giant cracking noise. At first, I tried to ignore the sound, hoping it wasn’t a big deal. Then, almost comically, I leaned back in the chair and the ENTIRE back fell off along with half of an arm. Thankfully, I was able to borrow my boyfriend’s chair for the rest of the day but things didn’t really improve after that. I was waiting for the maintenance guy and the UPS guy and neither showed up. Add to that some annoying tech issues with my business and not feeling particularly inspired (or even awake) enough to finish a project and you have the recipe for very bad, no good, pretty terrible day.
On days like this I dread making dinner. In fact, …
June 4, 2013
Blueberry Cheesecake Yogurt Muffins with Cinnamon Streusel
Hey there, I didn’t really mean to take a whole month off from blogging but after two weeks I just decided to go with it. Sometimes you just need to take break to recharge! I wish I had the time or energy to be one of those bloggers that posts multiple times a week, but I need to accept that I am not one of those people and do what’s best for me instead of feeling bad about it. Sometimes I forget that this is supposed to be fun and not something to stress about. I’m really grateful to everyone that has stuck around. I’ll do my best to keep on my normal weekly schedule from now on! Anyway, just because I haven’t been blogging doesn’t mean I haven’t been cooking. I have several recipes in the pipeline and a bunch of new ideas for things I can’t wait to test out.
But for today, I wanted to post a recipe which I’ve made at least 4 times in the last month. I seriously can’t get enough of these muffins! They’re based …
Recent Posts
May 1, 2013
Strawberry Cheesecake Smoothie with Nutella Fudge Sauce
I’m pretty sure I’ve stated before that I’m not a fan of the warmer months. Spring is pretty, but here in Tennessee it’s mostly just a few weeks of nice weather before it turns into a 90 or 100 degree hell-scape for four months. But there is one thing I like when it gets warm: I can finally drink smoothies again! I know some people drink them all year round, but for some reason I can’t bring myself to make a smoothie when it’s 30 or even 60 degrees outside. It’s the same reason I rarely make soup during the summer. It just doesn’t sound appetizing. But now that it’s warmer, I’m happily back to my smoothie-a-day habit which makes lunch time so much easier.
I am very particular about smoothies. I’ve been making this …
April 17, 2013
Snickerdoodle Chess Bars (Blondies)
Do you ever get obsessed with a certain food and eat it every single day for weeks or even months? This is not a rhetorical question. I’m genuinely wondering if I’m crazy or not. I do this same thing with new music or TV shows on Netflix, so it may just be my personality to become obsessed with things. In this case, I’ve recently rediscovered my childhood love of cinnamon toast that my mom used to make for me. My new favorite afternoon snack is cinnamon toast with a cup of my favorite Earl Gray tea. I cannot get enough, even though I know that eating bread with butter and sugar on it everyday is not the healthiest thing in the world. Eventually, I’ll get tired of it and move on but I can tell I’m not anywhere near that point yet.
In the …
April 9, 2013
Crispy Cheese Crackers – 3 ways
I was recently given my grandmother’s box of recipes, most of them handwritten, probably many, many years ago and it’s been really fun going through it and seeing what her favorite recipes were. My mother also had a similar recipe box filled with cards and magazine clippings that I look through periodically. Cookbooks are great, but I love taking one of those meticulously written recipe cards out the box and trying to decipher the tiny, perfect cursive handwriting; trying to follow the sometimes very opaque directions; chuckling at old-fashioned ingredients like “oleo.”
Sometimes I think there is too much importance placed on “original” recipes. I love finding a recipe and knowing that it was made the same way for years and years by my grandmother or my mother or hundreds of people’s grandmothers and mothers. I love having a whole boxes of recipes …
March 20, 2013
Meyer Lemon or Orange Swirled Vanilla Bean Cheesecakes
After my trip down to the Gulf Coast in February, I came home with a ton of Meyer Lemons from my aunt’s own tree. I’ve been steadily trying to use them up in muffins or any other lemon recipe I could find, but in the end I wound up making lemon curd. I hope everyone reading this has made lemon curd before and if not, get yourself some lemons so you can make it soon! The process is quick and simple and you’ll want to spoon some of that sweet-tart lemony goodness on everything from your morning toast, to your ice cream for dessert.
Since I had so many lemons to use up, my batch turned out to be almost 3 cups of curd, which unfortunately wasn’t going to keep forever. I’m …
March 7, 2013
Orange Poppy Seed Muffins
I didn’t mean to take so much time away, but after a pretty crazy month I should finally be able to start posting regularly again. It all started with me getting what I thought was food poisoning but turned out to be the stomach flu. It was bad enough that I went to emergency room for the first time in my life. That was an interesting experience! I’m a lifelong cookie dough and brownie batter eater, but I may be done after having to admit to about 10 different people at the hospital that I gave myself food poisoning from eating brownie batter. And then it turned out to be the stomach flu! So embarrassing. (In hindsight, I’m laughing at myself, but at the time I really was mortified.)
A week or so after that, I found out that my grandmother had …
