A few weeks ago we went to Baltimore and had dinner with some friends. I ordered a pumpkin risotto that was absolutely incredible, topped with a splash of balsamic vinegar and some big flakes of Parmesan. When I got home, I just had to try and replicate it. I didn’t get it exactly right, but…

The colder nights have me craving a big bowl of pasta or soup. The days have been in the high 60’s here, which makes both hard for me to wrap my head around! I decided to start off easy with a veggie loaded bolognese pasta, but be on the lookout for soups coming soon. This…

School is back in full swing with conferences, traveling, and after school events! With Thanksgiving coming up, things are finally starting to slow down and I can do some catch-up here. The meal I’m featuring this week is a great weeknight meal, because of how quickly it comes together! I take care of prepping the…

The school I teach at has a large Hispanic populations, and it has really pushed me to work on broadening my cooking horizons into Mexican food! All last week with the pierogis I said I was making empanadas, because I remembered my recipe wrong. This week I decided to go all in. This is NOT…

I love dumplings in any size and shape; pierogis, pot stickers, empanadas, They’re all good. There’s just something comforting about a great filling covered in thin dough. This month, I’ve been experimenting with pierogis and empanadas, since I’ve already covered pot stickers. These pierogis are vegetarian, and filled with potatoes (another favorite) and cheese. The…

One of my good friends is a vegetarian and she came to visit last week! We love having company, and we hadn’t seen her in what felt like forever. Cooking vegetarian isn’t something we do very often, but it is something we do. This one is *almost* vegan except for the couple tablespoons of butter,…

We have a jalapeno plant and a serrano that have managed to cross pollinate and make the craziest little peppers. The ones on the original jalapeno plant are not as spicy as the ones on the serrano plant, but they all look exactly the same. The plants are producing like crazy, so I decided to…

We are forever on the lookout for easy dinners we can do on weeknights. I have a student teacher right now, so I’m leaving work later. There is also a ton of fresh produce out and about right now to incorporate into salads. I definitely get bored quickly of salads, and am always looking for…

I don’t normally think of a salad and think “what if we put some beef on this?” but this time was different. After pursuing through my cookbooks, which is one of my favorite things to do, I came across this salad and it hit all the notes I was looking for. Protein? Check. Little bit…

There are few things more special to me than spending time with my family. I don’t get back south very often, but when I do we make the most of it! Last time I went to my mom’s house, my sister came to join us for the weekend. Mom was wanting to make her normal…