Two fingers pressed together where one fingernail appear a bit higher than the other
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Yours is a Fingernail Bit Better

My nine year old son gets frustrated when he tries to communicate something to me and I find it unclear. He gets very annoyed when I try to ask followup questions or rephrase what I think he’s trying to tell me. He growls/groans? at me and tells me I’m not letting him talk, or I’m interrupting him, or I’m being too over the top. During winter break he suggested out of nowhere that I make “apple crisp”. That is a phrase that has never been …

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I’ll Have my Cake and Eat it Too

A long time ago in a castle far away a twenty-something version of myself stumbled upon the website Allrecipes.com. Over the years I bookmarked and saved and screenshotted and emailed recipes I was interested in trying. I’ll set the scene a bit more for you…I’m not a cook, I’m not a baker, I’m AM a picky eater, and the kind of recipes I am interested in must require very few ingredients with basic techniques. In the last decade or so, there have been two go-to …

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First Generation Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes

My children are being raised in a household with two working parents, I was raised by two working parents, as was my mother and to my knowledge her mother before her.  Regardless of the obstacle of time – we are all culinarily inclined. We can make a mean roast, soup, stew, chop, steak and a slew of vegetables to ride alongside (pardon me as I pat myself on the back). Despite our culinary prowess, at some point in our family tree making mashed potatoes fell …

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Quick and Healthy Lentil and Rice Salad

I’m not good at making up recipes from scratch, but I’m decent at taking existing recipes and making them faster and easier to prepare! So when I recently came across a recipe for a lentil and rice salad, I knew that with a little help from Trader Joe’s I could make it in under 10 minutes, and even add some extra texture to the original recipe. The real time savers here are the pre-cooked lentils and rice from Trader Joe’s. It came out quite tasty, …

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Homemade Yogurt – the Gift that Keeps on Giving

Remember Amish friendship bread? You give sections of the dough to others to make their bread, and you keep some for yourself to bake? I was reminded of this when a friend of mine recently taught me how to make yogurt. I have an Instapot which I absolutely love. But I’ve been intimated to try the yogurt setting. Active cultures, bacteria – it sounded complicated, and hard to get right. Well I couldn’t be more wrong! It takes awhile (10+ hours when all said and …

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Banana Baking Round Up

It’s been a long time since I’ve baked.  Cooked? Sure, almost on the daily. But baking, probably not since Christmas (scones and brownies don’t count).  There’s not a ton of time in my hustle to bake especially now that it’s summer and it feels like we’ve had something every Saturday or Sunday for the last month. Today all of that changes!  We get bananas delivered to the office every week and this week with it being short because of the holiday we had a surplus …

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Kitchen Confessions, Part I

This is likely the first of many parts.  It’s not easy, but I will confess – I didn’t used to wash my fruits and vegetables before eating them.  Saying it sounds dirty. Because it was. We’re beyond it now, but with that comes lessons learned. Before J was born our idea of a nice Saturday morning was waking up, whenever the mood struck us (can anyone remember how glorious that was?!) making coffee and breakfast together and then shuffling to our family room to watch …

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Brunching like a Mother

When C and I bought our first house five years ago one of the things we were most looking forward to was hosting holidays.  We love to entertain and the idea of filling our home with delicious food and the people we loved seemed exactly what home ownership should be.  Over the years we’ve added a few holidays, but the first big event we’d hosted in our new home was Mother’s Day Brunch.   I am a sucker for brunch.  Sweet, savory, gooey, crunchy, fruit, …

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The Dinner Hustle

I LOVE to cook, and ideally I would cook all day Sunday sipping red wine listening to mellow music while prepping meals for the coming week.  Sounds dreamy but there is absolutely no time for that especially during baseball season. That leads me to using my resources so I’m ready to prepare quick healthy meals during the school / work week.  It’s all about being prepared to hustle so I thought I’d share my strategy for healthy family dinners.   I have not always loved or …

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Crockpot Corned Beef Sliders

I make dinner every night! Said no working mom ever.  At least none of the ones I know.  I will say, cooking is how I unwind after work and one of my passions so I try to cook as much as I can.  Creating something while dancing around in the kitchen listening to music just seems right. I often tell my parents that they were Jedis in raising us (or at least me).  I can’t remember my mom asking me to help in the kitchen, …