We have some rainy day blues going on here with a pretty empty fridge and pantry as well as a dead car battery. That’s no bueno when you’re feeling snacky! Thankfully, I had a carton of beans and still tons of basil in my summer garden. You can use this recipe as a rough guide. [...]

The start of fall, officially today, commences the start of soup season for me! Savor this fix it and forget it slow cooker meal after a long day. It is plenty hearty on its own but don’t let me stop you from serving it with some crusty bread or over rice, couscous, or quinoa. French lentils, red [...]

This was my smoothie before a friend’s 40th birthday celebration last weekend. The danger for me was that the festivities were at one of my favorite Mexican restaurants and it requires great restraint to control my intake of chips and salsa! One of the added advantages as to why I drink green smoothies is that they [...]

We don’t eat a lot of pasta around here partly because of the starchy carbs and also because I want to be an unconventional vegetarian. In fact, my biggest compliment of the vegetarian food prepared for us on the Disney cruise last year is how impressive it was that in 7 dinners, I never once [...]

(Polenta cakes served with goat cheese, roasted veggies and hot sauce.) Polenta, which originated in Europe, is similar to grits as both are made from stoneground corn. The type of corn for each varies as does the coarser texture of the cornmeal used to make polenta. I consider polenta to be a great vessel for [...]

As you may have read in my Get Well Sooner post last week, we had the go-round with colds last week. When the kids are sick, I try to balance what I want to get into them nutritionally with their diminished appetite as well as special requests. Because everyone deserves to be spoiled when under the [...]

  There was a time when I had a 2 year old that had a picky palate only pacified by store bought ranch dressing. Oh how many foods he ate with the help of this popular American condiment. I tried to find the healthiest version that I could, either organic, lower in sodium, or with [...]

What started out as an interest in eating :) and led to my love of cooking was then followed by my weight loss journey. Through books like The China Study, documentaries like Food, Inc. and Forks Over Knives, attending seminars, and following investigators like The Food Babe as well as physicians like Dr. Mercola and Dr. Weil as well as other [...]

Fall is just around the corner meaning the well priced bags of organic apples at Trader Joe’s are back! You can bet I snagged a few bags. I was standing in my kitchen doing my usual smoothie-for-the-next-day prep when I saw my overflowing basket of apples. Thoughts of apple pie followed. This smoothie is a bit sweeter [...]

On one hand beans have had an excellent reputation since the beginning of time being a cheap, accessible, nutritionally dense food and on the other, many claim that beans are hard to digest causing gastrointestinal distress and diets such as Paleo are against them all together. I have already said a few times on this blog [...]