Roasted Garlic Chicken and Broccoli Pasta is a quick and easy family favorite a delicious weeknight dinner. Tender chicken and broccoli is mixed with corkscrew pasta in a cheesy sauce with Parmesan and roasted garlic to make a weeknight winner. When we moved in to our new house nearly 2 years ago, we knew we had found something special in the overgrown mini-farm that ...
Meat & Poultry
Muffaletta Style Italian Party Panini Sandwich
A million years ago, a fresh faced 20-something and a curly headed 30-something walked into an Italian grocery in the heart of New Orleans and ordered a muffaletta. Hand in hand, those two love birds shared a wheel of Italian delight stuffed with salty, rich cured meats and cheeses and oozing with a briny olive salad. Even though the fresh faced 20-something was doing her best ...
Spicy Sausage & Shrimp over Parmesan Grits
Creamy grits, spicy sausage , sweet shrimp all in a tangy balsamic sauce comes together for an amazing quick and easy dinner. Give Spicy Sausage & Shrimp over Parmesan Grits a try tonight! In cooking, as in life, trusting yourself is a big hurdle to get across. Actually, its a hurdle you have to jump over time and time again until it becomes second nature; until ...
Sweet Potato Noodles and Moroccan Turkey Winter Bowl
If there was a poster child for the adage “You can’t out run a bad diet” I would be it. For the last 14 months I have religiously gone to the gym. Two or three times a week I let my trainer, Joe, try to whip me into a thinner shape. Some wonderful things have happened in that time. I’m strong enough now to open any jar in the house. I can walk up several flights of stairs ...
Quick and Healthy Greek Chicken Salad
There is a Greek restaurant just down the street from where I work. It sits on a busy street surrounded by gas stations and fast food restaurants. Parking there is atrocious. There are a few tightly packed spots right off of the busy 4 lane avenue and a few more spots tucked into a dingy alleyway just behind the building that is shared with a title loan and a Cricket phone ...
Porchetta Roll with Chimichurri Sauce
I have a love/hate relationship with Christmas. I love all of the gift giving and cookie making. I love the get-togethers and all of the twinkling lights. What I don't love is just how dang expensive it is. Every holiday season we struggle to do all of the gifting we want without digging ourselves into a hole of debt that we then spend the next several ...
Turkey Cranberry Sliders
Let’s be honest. Thanksgiving is delicious and all, but the best part is all of the leftovers. If done correctly, the fridge will be full of meals that I don’t have to work too hard for for the majority of the week. The first couple of meals are generally a similar version of the original meal; swap the virtuous Brussel sprouts ...
Slow Cooker Short Rib Pasta in Homemade Marinara Sauce
A few months back, I received a request from a friend of mine. She was requesting a recipe of course, one that would solve all of her problems, one that would make her days easier and her meals more delicious, and of course it had to go in the Crock Pot. And it couldn’t be soup. “And don’t make it too fancy,” she said. “If I have to go to the grocery store to get some spice, I ...
Sirloin Tip Roast with Parsley and Tomato Chimichurri
The garden has taken over our lives. Every day begins and ends with me bent over a garden row picking out weeds, thinning out lettuce, or tying up tomato plants. I usually sneak out with my first cup of coffee before the kids get up to go putter around the nearly 1000 square feet of dirt that is full of high hopes and tomato plants. I think that I am probably a ...
Saucy Barbecued Chicken Wings
Ladies and gentlemen, I need you to pray for us. I need you to pray that we don’t run out of food or money during the next several years of feeding the bottomless pit that has become my son. I’m not sure when it happened, or who flipped the switch that turned my sweet baby boy into an eating machine but I feel that there is no going back. There haven’t ...
“Life Changing” Harissa Chicken and White Beans
After 8 years of cooking and then writing about it, I have enough confidence in my skills to say that I am an above average home cook. I can, on a fairly consistent basis, put a meal on the table that doesn’t kill anyone. I have also been fortunate enough to produce some pretty amazing creations that have been met with rave reviews, but, until last week, I have never made ...
Gloriously Retro Pineapple Ham Balls
I have a slight obsession with vintage recipes. Just something about the fads and trends of cooking that thought Jello molds and mayonnaise was a good combination fascinates me. I often find myself wondering, what was the mindset of the women (for it was almost assuredly women) who came up with these unorthodox combinations. I think it must have been a little bit ...
Italian Braised Short Ribs
My husband and I have been working on our own little project. It’s been going on for the last 6 or 7 months and was brought on by the rising cost of cheap cuts of beef. Cuts that, 5 years ago, most folks didn’t know existed. We have seen some of our favorites such as flank steak, skirt steak and beef shank go through the roof! I would have never imagined that it would be ...
Sage Roasted Turkey Breast
Over time the enormous family reunion style Thanksgiving of my past has given way to a much smaller and more intimate holiday table. And although I miss the big, loud Thanksgivings of days gone by, I cannot say that I miss the marathon -like cooking and dirty dishes that goes along with it. I have had enough marathon cooking in my life, I would prefer that my holidays be just ...
Top 5 soups for Fall
The beginning of Fall begs for soup. Those first cool days and even cooler nights are practically made for curling yourself around a comforting, steaming bowl of goodness. Soups are economical and generally pretty easy to put together. Ever since the kids changed their mind about the goodness of soup a couple of years ago, soup is on the regular Fall/Winter dinner rotation. So ...