Chocolate Almond Cookie Pumpkin Ice Cream Sandwiches {Gluten-Free, Grain-Free}

Don’t ask me how many of these I ate for breakfast on Sunday morning. I don’t want to talk about it.

Two. The answer is two.

I mean, put yourself in my position. You’re a food blogger. You are waking up early to make ice-cream sandwiches because you have to photograph them while there is still enough light outside. We lose light fast this time of year. You cut these beauties up. You stack them. You photograph them. They start getting all melty. You shove one in your mouth to save it from its melty self. You take a bite and get pumpkin ice cream all over your chin and in the ends of your hair. You could just put them back in the freezer, but you’ve already come this far. Just finish the dang ice cream sandwich. It’s really good.  […]

DIY Sugar Cookie Foot Scrub | A Valentine To Yourself

I was blessed with a lot of things. I have a great family and a wonderful husband. I live in a beautiful part of the world. My friends are the coolest and usually laugh at my jokes. I feel fortunate. However, one thing I wasn’t blessed with was pretty feet.
I was made aware of this fact when my Hawaiian grandfather looked down and my flat, calloused, chubby-toed footsies, and then looked at his equally flat, calloused and chubby-toed footsies. He smiled at me and said “Look at those Hawaiian feet! You got cute feet. They look just like mine!”  It was true. They did. Uh oh. Maybe I just needed a fresh coat of polish.
Later in life, someone (my mother) would tell me that every time they heard Jack Johnson’s song “Bubbly Toes” on the radio they thought of me. Cute. Is this because my big toes actually have fat rolls? Perhaps, yes.
Even later in life I would try to snuggle in bed with my husband and he would gingerly tell me “Honey, do you want to go get a pedicure? I will go with you.”  This is his polite way of telling me that I had hooves, and it totally hurts to snuggle with someone who has hooves. […]

Lentil Soup With Lemon Yogurt Cream

As long as I can remember I have been a fan of lentil soup.

When I was younger I would heat up a can of Progresso, cook pasta shells in it, and then proceed to dump at least a quarter-bottle of grated Parmesan into the mix. This is not an exaggeration. You know how the bottle has two settings? One of them is the sensible trio of holes that will simply dust your food with a socially acceptable amount of cheese, the other is one gaping hole that is intended for quick and sudden evacuation for large amounts of cheese. I used the gaping hole side. This dish is what my Italian father dubbed “Pasta Fazool.” It was simple and tasty and I am sure that our Great Italian Grandmother is rolling over in her grave somewhere at the thought of us using canned soup and buckets of pre-grated Parm.

For a long time this satisfied me. Opening up cans, dumping the contents, saturating the finished product with buckets of gritty cheese. This got me through most of college… along with a suspicious amount of turkey sandwiches and vodka. Then, one year I got bit by the soup bug. I am sure this was during the first year that I started teaching. I was constantly sick. I started making soup from scratch and it was a revelation. I experimented with everything from chicken noodle, beef stew, chicken and rice, spicy sausage soup with spinach and of course lentil. […]

A Homemade Christmas: Rosemary Bath Salts

Christmas is swiftly approaching our doorstep.  I am reminded of this every time I leave the house. There are no longer good times to go shopping. The malls are crowded with families clambering for time with Mall-Santa and fellow last-minute shoppers. Even the grocery store is a battleground. I had to drive to three different stores in my small town yesterday to find shredded coconut. Holiday baking is in FULL swing. Tensions are high. Coconut is scarce.

As much as I love buying people anything and everything, it’s hard on the wallet. Plus, there is a certain sentiment about receiving a homemade gift. It feels extra special.

This is one of the ideas that I came up with recently. […]