We’ve been eating copious amounts of pickled red onions lately. On tacos, on breakfast sandwiches, on salads piled high with watermelon and feta. The reason why is simple. I started playing around and realized just how insanely easy they are to make and how they make basically everything more delicious. They might not work on chocolate cake. But then again, maybe they would! I won’t tell you how to live your life or how to eat your pickled red onions, I just have to insist that you make a jar. Five ingredients, no cooking, no fancy processes. The result is a delightfully pink onion that even non-onion lovers will love – they don’t have any spice to them at all, but they have the best crunch!
Recipes
When we’re entertaining, Bob and I start the same way every single time – by brainstorming the menu. We can have epically long discussions about what to serve for Thanksgiving dinner while sitting on a boat in the blazing hot sun in July. But right now, the earth is melting. It’s actually threatening to melt at any minute, at which point the floor will literally turn to lava and we’ll be undone. It is so hot this summer! While I’m loving it, I basically don’t want to cook. Ever. We’re living off sandwiches, salads, watermelon and big jars full of ice water in our house and I have no shame. Even standing over a grill sounds entirely unappealing. Short of ordering pizza delivery, which is an entirely valid option, this sandwich board is your answer for your next party! You don’t have to cook, you barely have to prep anything. It’s the very definition of life saving when you have a party coming up and the earth is melting.
Has anyone figured out where 2018 is flying off to yet? How on earth are we already heading into Memorial Day weekend?! I’d make some sort of vague complaints about how life is just moving too fast, but frankly, I love this time of year best of all and my sister flies home in a few days for the long weekend sooo, I got nothing. (This is where I would enter one of those quizzical little shrug emojis I love so much in text messages if such things were acceptable in long form.) With Memorial Day, comes picnic season and with picnic season comes an uptick in entertaining and the need for crowd-wowing but easy dessert recipes. That’s exactly where this brownie pizza recipe comes into play, friends! It’s relatively easy to make, it’s insanely pretty (without requiring any fancy decorating skills, which I don’t have) and it’s topped with the most delicious strawberry buttercream frosting. That’s what we call all the wins!
A few miles down the road from where my grandfather lived when I was a kid, there was a u-pick farm with a big strawberry patch where he’d take me every summer. The farm has since closed, but not before I was able to take Em there when she was just six or seven months old to pick berries and gleefully smash them all over her face. Strawberry season has always held a special kind of magic for me and I’m sure that farm is partially why. While it’s not quite strawberry season yet for us (this far north it tends to be mid to late June), I know it is in many parts of the country so I thought we should make strawberry pies! Mini pies in a muffin tin, because tiny things are adorable and because, duh. Who doesn’t want their own little pie?!
I may or may not have mentioned before that breakfast is hands down, no contest, my favorite meal of the day! If it came down to it, I would gladly eat breakfast foods every meal every day for the rest of my life. No shame! I think that’s why I love these adorable breakfast to-go jars so much. They’re perfect for prepping at the beginning of the week to bring with you to work, sending along in a kid’s lunchbox or for offering overnight houseguests in the morning before they hit the road. You can spoon yogurt (I prefer plain Greek yogurt, but obviously any flavor will work) into the jars on Sunday and bag up all the granola at the same time. I used simple, inexpensive cello bags from the candy aisle Michaels and sealed them with a piece of washi tape. For the kids or guests, you can write cute little sayings on tags and tie them on with baker’s twine for an extra sweet touch. Add fruit, cute spoons and napkins from Sugar & Cloth, and you have hands down the easiest, yummiest breakfast for on the go or on the road!
Does anyone else have a family of dippers? Between Bob and I and the kids, seemingly none of us has met a veggie or chip we didn’t want to dip! When the folks at Deep River Snacks sent along some of their delicious kettle chips to team up for a post, I instantly knew that I was making a huge spread of over the top party dip recipes. And make all the dips I did! These dips are totally party-worthy, especially when paired with a spread of Deep River kettle chips. Buffalo bean dip, everything bagel dip, spring pea hummus and loaded ranch dip! All of them are crazy delicious, pretty darn simple to make and loaded with flavor. Serve them on a board surrounded by chips and you’ve got a snack spread your family and friends are sure to love!
I’ve never been a huge fan of traditional jalapeño poppers. You know the kind. They’re usually stuffed with cream cheese, sometimes they’re breaded, and in any case they’ve always just been a little meh for my palate. The exception to that is our buddy James’s homemade poppers! Now those are delicious. What’s even more delicious? Mac and cheese stuffed jalapeño poppers! They’re basically exactly what they sound like – jalapeño peppers stuffed with homemade mac and cheese and baked until golden around the edges. I like to sprinkle them with chives or parsley when they’re done, but cilantro would also be great if you’re a cilantro kind of person! (Does anyone else find it fascinating how polarizing cilantro is? Ha!) In my book of “sure bet crowd-pleasing not to be missed” appetizers, this poppers certainly rank right up there at the top of the list! They’re basically the very best kind of comfort food of all.
If you’re reading this chances are good that you’re pretty well versed on my love for entertaining. Bringing people together over a great meal is a true passion for me, and luckily my husband agrees. The result of two people who love to cook and spend time with friends? We entertain a lot. And by “a lot,” I mean as often as a few times a month. I get asked all the time about how we do that, and the answer is that we keep it simple! Sure, there are times that we cook an intricate meal, but most of the time I’m a huge advocate of pulling together a spread that is wow-worthy without taking all day to prepare. One of my favorite entertaining ideas is any kind of “make your own” food station, in this case an awesome pasta bar that I created shopping exclusively at Walmart! The beauty of this pasta bar is how quickly it comes together, how amazingly convenient it is to pick everything up in one shopping trip and how tasty the end results are! Your friends and your kids will go crazy for this one, and the prep time is totally minimal. This is my kind of dinner party!
It’s Monday morning following an ice storm over the weekend, so the start to my week is looking a whole lot like big cups of coffee, sheltering in place for another 24 hours, and if I’m lucky, some extra snuggles with my kid. (And yes, it’s mid-April and we’re encased in ice.) While the little one sits next to me, armed with a stash of crayons and her favorite coloring book, let’s talk about avocado toast! I know, I know. There’s nothing revolutionary about avocado toast, which is becoming such a mainstay these days that it’s basically ubiquitous. But here’s the thing. We can’t stop eating it! When you have a two year old who is obsessed with avocados and her parents echo those sentiments, well, you buy a lot of avocados. Bob prefers his with tomatoes on top and a big pinch of coarse ground salt. If I’m keeping it simple, I like mine with a generous sprinkle of red pepper flake. If I’m keeping it real though, I love my avocado toast piled high with veggies and herbs and a little bit of interest to keep it fun. Today I’m sharing eight awesome ways to make the best avocado toast on earth. This certainly isn’t the first avocado toast round-up you’ve seen and I bet it won’t be the last, but I can guarantee all of these varieties are crazy delicious. What’s your favorite way to eat it? I have a kitchen full of avocados and marble rye bread and I’m ready to go!
I’m a really big fan of simple ingredients that are perfectly paired together. I also really love potatoes. While those two things may seem completely unrelated, I’m here to tell you otherwise with these super tasty smashed potatoes! Don’t they look kind of fancy? Well they’re not! You just need to be able to boil water and operate your oven at a very minimal level and these beauties can be making your palate happy with just the teensiest amount of effort. They’re topped with fresh lemon juice, Greek yogurt, lemon zest and chives for a flavor combination that is light and refreshing and seriously delicious. I love these as a party appetizer! You can line them up on a tray so friends can just grab them and bite right in! Or they’d also make a great side to a weeknight or weekend dinner. I like boiling up a bunch of potatoes and then just smashing and baking off a few at a time during the week for breakfast or dinner. So good! And that, friends, is my ode to smashed potatoes. Try these! You’ll love them.
Well, friends, I am certifiably obsessed with making bark. If that wasn’t already self-evident, here’s another chocolate bark recipe, loaded with Lucky Charms and sprinkles just in time for St. Patrick’s Day! Why do I love bark so much? In short, it’s incredibly easy and really fun to make. It’s such a sweet, simple novelty and people go crazy for it whenever I make a fresh batch. Our kids love to help sprinkle the toppings and after I make a big batch (if it’s not specifically for a party), I just tuck it into an airtight container in the fridge where it keeps for a couple of weeks without a problem. You can divvy it up into little cello bags for gifting to co-workers or neighbors, or send it to school for a special St. Patrick’s Day treat for the little leprechauns in your life! Basically, it’s inexpensive and quick to make, so you don’t have to plan it out days in advance, and you can switch up the flavors and colors however you want. Have I made the case for bark yet? If you haven’t given one of my many bark concoctions a try yet, there’s no time like the present! I promise you’ll be hooked.
Admittedly, making chocolate bark is becoming a bit of a thing around here. It started with Halloween candy bark, then Christmas bark in a bunch of varieties, Easter candy bark and here we are today with conversation heart chocolate bark just in time for Valentine’s Day! If you need a last minute treat for your kids to bring along to school or you want to whip up something sweet for your co-workers, this is the ticket! Here’s the thing though – chocolate bark is so easy to make. Seriously! If you can boil water, you can make bark. The key is to melt the chocolate over a double boiler. I don’t have an “official” double boiler so I use a stock pot with water and then a heat-safe glass mixing bowl sitting on top of the stock pot and it works great. (Check out my “Behind the Blog” Instagram Stories highlights to see what I mean!) I made my bark with dark chocolate with a white chocolate swirl, but you can really use any chocolate you like. Other than that it’s just conversation hearts and pink heart sprinkles, which also aren’t strictly necessary if you can’t find any. Personally I just love bark, because people find it to be such a novelty and it’s easy enough that if you don’t prefer to bake or you have kids you want to have help you with sprinkling the toppings, you’re good to go. Give it a try!