Probably more of a surprise to see a post today than not, right? I didn’t mean to surprise take 1 month off from blogging, but apparently that’s what I did. With a shift in focus at work combined with some home renovations that have left me sleeping in the living room, I’ve just had a lot on my mind and, honestly, not much homemade food on my plate unless it took a whopping 5 minutes to pull together and dirtied basically no dishes. I just really wasn’t feeling it. Luckily, this dip fits perfectly into my extra-lazy lifestyle lately but is nice enough to serve to company and fits in perfectly with a tailgating spread. Though I may be pretty out of the loop and not at all into sports,...

Josh and I eat a ridiculous amount of Ranch dressing. Like, a scary amount. Almost as much Ranch as barbeque sauce, but let’s get real, I’d basically have to drink the stuff to consume more Ranch than barbeque sauce. Our brand of choice isn’t exactly the healthiest choice, but it just tastes so good. None of the healthier brands or traditional recipes really quite match what we crave in a Ranch. Apparently there’s just something about the chemically taste of processed food we can’t get away from in this house. Since going right for the standard Ranch-iness wasn’t doing it for us, I’ve started aiming for flavored Ranch. I have to say, this definitely hits the spot when a craving hits. We drizzled the dressing over veggie and bean tostadas...

The first day of autumn isn’t for a few weeks, but if Starbucks is selling their pumpkin spice lattes, than I declare it to be fall.  Also, the enormous pile of apples in my kitchen declares it to be fall. The last few years I’ve been just swimming in apples from my parents’ trees and a girl can only make/eat so much applesauce, regardless of how delicious hot, fresh apple sauce tastes. My favorite (only) local vegan restaurant has baked pancakes, which I always feel silly ordering because they’re basically just pancake batter baked in a muffin tin.  But man are they delicious, like a pancake-muffin hybrid.  After trying it out at home, I realized that pancakes that way is actually even easier than cooking them on a griddle, so...

This month’s Recipe Redux prompt was about getting back to the dinner table. Coming back from vacation, getting back into a routine, and sitting down to eat a healthy dinner together. After a vacation (especially one with many indulgent treats) there is nothing I want more than to eat a huge salad. Well, after a million cuddles with my kitties. The problem with that? The LAST thing I want to do on my drive home from the airport or at the end of a road trip is to swing by the grocery store and restock my fridge. So instead for this recipe I focused on something incredibly easy (duh, what’s easier than a grilled cheese?) with ingredients I would normally have floating around my fridge, pantry, and freezer. Let running...

Pathetic confession: I never got a garden planted this year. I prepped the area, fertilized, made a plan of what I wanted to grow… and then nothing. I had a busy first month-ish of summer and by the time it was A. not pouring on the weekend and B. I actually had the day free, it was almost August. I’ve always heard people say that years go faster as you get older, and I’m really seeing that more and more. Luckily, my boss has a garden that grows way more than his family can eat, so I’ve been swimming in zucchini and bell peppers (my favs!). The first time he brought them in, he also emailed a recipe for zucchini “crab” cakes. They sounded so good that I immediately made...

As I was thinking about making this sauce, actually making this sauce, eating this sauce, and writing about this sauce I had this bizarre fear that the food police would be on me about it. You know the type, right? The people who no matter what you say, do, or make find something wrong with what you did. You can’t call that a XYZ because traditionally it’s made with the blah blah that’s only found in the pfffft region. So I spent a ridiculous amount of time Googling remoulade. And saw a ridiculous amount of mayo, for one. But really, I saw that basically everyone makes it differently, so all that matters is that it’s delicious. And guess what? It’s delicious, so bring it on food police haters :-p Josh...