• From the Kitchen :: Southern Style Banana Pudding

    Now that we’ve lived in Georgia for over three years, I’m finding myself more and more drawn to southern things.  Large front porches with hanging ferns, grits, pimento cheese, monograms, and even hairbows.  I can’t wait to try making a Hummingbird Cake {I recently tasted one for the first time and it was delicious} and I’m going to keep cooking Shrimp and Grits until I have it memorized and perfected. One of the classic desserts of the South is banana pudding. I remember seeing dishes of this at potlucks when I was a kid, but I always made a beeline for chocolate chip cookies and ice cream sundaes.  The value…

  • Sausage and Tortellini Soup

    During the winter months there’s not much better to me for dinner than a warm bowl of soup with a slice of freshly baked bread.   Soups are fairly easy to make, they’re relatively inexpensive, and almost always delicious. We visited my sister in law and her family right after New Year’s, and she made an amazing sausage and tortellini soup.  I knew we needed to add this to our menu, so I tried to copy it the other night.  This soup is hearty, and yet there are lots of veggies in it that also make it pretty healthy.  For an extra kick, you can use hot sausage instead of…

  • Sausage Stuffing Recipe, the Best Stuffing You’ll Ever Eat

    Thanksgiving is less than a week away!  I can’t even believe it!  If you’re looking for some last minute recipes to add to your menu, you’ll definitely want to include this one.  Just be sure to buy an extra pound of butter; you’ll need 3/4 of a pound for this recipe alone! Four years ago we spent Thanksgiving with my husband’s sister and her family in Las Vegas.  We were living in Monterey at the time, so we decided to make the 8 hour drive and it was totally worth it.  Isabella was almost one, and I was about 34 weeks pregnant with Mallory.  We had a great time with…

  • Uses for Leftover Halloween Candy

    We’re now two weeks past Halloween and there’s still a lingering collection of candy in our pantry.  Part of me wants to just throw it away so the temptation to indulge will be gone.  Thankfully, my kids love the fruity sticky stuff and leave the chocolate goodies behind.  Unfortunately, this means I end up eating said chocolate goodies. Yesterday, as I stood there debating about which kind to snack on, I started thinking about how to use up all this candy.  Maybe you’ve wondered that too.  I’ve rounded up some creative ways to put candy into cakes, cookies, or to use it for other crafty projects.  You don’t have to…

  • Day 26 :: Bake Something with Pumpkin

    It’s fall.  The season for mums, pumpkins, sweaters, snuggling with your honey, and soup  {not necessarily in that order}.  And this morning when I got up it actually felt like fall.  Our house is currently 65 degrees, so I had to turn on the heat.  Those little babies upstairs need some warmth! One way to thrive?  Get in your kitchen and bake something.  Since it’s fall, bake something with pumpkin.  Using one can of pumpkin you can make both of the recipes below.  If you don’t like pumpkin, certainly someone you know does, so take a loaf of bread to them, or wrap a few scones and deliver them to…

  • Simple Layer Cake with Vanilla Frosting, from Martha Stewart

    When my Martha Stewart Living magazine arrived in the mail a few weeks ago, the girls loved the picture on the front: source They proceeded to look at the entire copy with me on the bed one day.  It was fun to have my girls interested in home decorating, baking, and gardening.  When they found out that there was a recipe for the cake on the front cover photo, they wanted to give it a try. We donned our aprons and got to work one morning.  The icing recipe is my favorite ever, I think, as there was PLENTY to generously ice the cake, and there was even some leftover.…

  • It’s Strawberry Time & a Strawberry Tart Recipe

    My strawberry picking this year consisted of driving 5 minutes down the road and carefully selecting eight gallons of pre-picked strawberries from a local berry stand.  The price wasn’t that much more, and in my current pregnant condition, the husband forbade me to go to the strawberry patch with the kids this year.  I’m glad he put his foot down!  I spent most of one morning just hulling strawberries and freezing them for a year’s worth of smoothies.  I also made two batches of strawberry freezer jam. Then, I ventured out and tried three new strawberry recipes over the weekend. source These scones were delicious.  They did take a bit…

  • Broccoli Salad

    Broccoli Salad is a favorite in our home.  Broccoli was on sale last week, so I decided to try a new recipe and see how it went.  I was happy with the results.  I used to prefer the broccoli salad with shredded cheese in it, but I now like just the combination of fruity and salty with Craisins and sunflower seed kernels.  Most recipes for broccoli salad call for sugar in the dressing, but I liked that this one uses honey; it makes it seem not so bad for you. The other thing I like about this recipe is that the dressing isn’t over-powered by mayonnaise.  Sometimes the mayo takes…

  • Paula Deen’s Lemon Bars

    When I returned home after being gone for 2 weeks, it was nice to have several magazines to look through.  I received a subscription to Food Network for my birthday, and I am loving it.  Their magazine has such a great balance of easy to make dishes and some that require a little extra time and not-so-on-hand ingredients; I love the combo of both. Paula Deen has a recipe in this month’s edition {which I noticed is still on the magazine racks in the stores if you want to pick up a copy} of her lemon bars.  I’ve been a sucker for pretty much anything citrus during the past few…

  • Caramelized Beet & Onion Pizza

    When my husband goes to the grocery store for me I never really know what he’s going to come home with. Even if I send a specific list, there is at least one item that I hadn’t asked for.  Many times it’s a great treat, like the other night when he came home with some Lorna Doone cookies because he remembered that I said  I wanted a shortbread cookie.  One time he bought xanthum gum.  Does anyone even know what xanthum gum is?  I don’t. Last week he went to pick up some ingredients for strawberry ice cream {I would have posted about that but there isn’t enough left to…