Roasted Eggplant & Basil Spread

Every now and then I find myself in a stalemate with a veggie (this week it was an eggplant). We pause, we lock eyes… we just kind of stare at each other. I grumble and look quizzically at it as if it’s going to speak to me. It’s as if I am Michelangelo and this vegetable is my marble. Maybe it will tell me what it wants to be. Nope. It’s not talking. We’ve got ourselves a strong and silent type.  At this point I get all ponderous and morose over why I decided to purchase an eggplant in the first place. I consider letting it live out its final days on the counter top right next to my sad little banana graveyard, but just don’t feel right about it. Plus, let’s be honest…. I’m hungry. Life is hard. […]

How To Make Grape Jelly From Grape Juice

When a neighbor calls and asks you to help harvest her vineyard in exchange for grapes… you go.  At least, I totally go. I’m usually not one to turn down fresh produce. You know this. I’ve discussed my produce sluttery. I will work for food. Period.
It’s only later when you’re staring at a very large container full of harvested grapes that you think, “huh…what now?!” Like anything fresh, grapes have a shelf life, and you need to get on it kind of quickly before they ripen themselves to death, fermenting and exploding all over each other. Time to roll up yer sleeves…
Fast forward. It’s a Saturday night. I have an eye twitch. I’ve been washing and de-stemming grapes for over an hour. My fingers are purple. I have chosen to watch the movie Stepmom while taking on this project. Uh oh, here come the waterworks. Tears mix with my grape stained hands as I wipe away sobs. Susan Sarandon didn’t have to make that extremely sentimental magicians cape for her son, did she? Whoa. Ugh. So. MUCH. Crying. My husband calls me from a bar on his business trip. I have to explain to him that I am fine, but have just made the incredibly  misguided decision to make grape jelly while watching a highly sentimental film. Nothing to worry about here (totally worry). […]

Pump Up The Beet Juice | A Juicing Recipe

Pump up those beets, pump them UP… while your feet are stompin’, and the beets are pumpin’. Look at here the crowd is jumpin’!!

It’s normal to change Technotronic lyrics to match your green juice recipes, right? Cool. I thought so. Can we remake this video too? Maybe the flashy background could be a bunch of psychedelic beets and we could wear hammer pants that are covered in veggies?  Let’s keep all of their dance moves though. That choreography is solid. Bless the 90’s. They were good.

Did I lose some of you? Probably. Just watch the video. It will get your Wednesday movin’.  Dare I say it might even pump it up? I said it. Can’t take it back now.

So, this morning I realized out of all of the juicing we have done here, we have never juiced beets together. What?! How is this possible? I love beet juice. We’ve made juice that tasted like a mojito. We’ve definitely juiced carrots. We’ve even juiced a watermelon. We’ve taken beets and blended them into one of the best smoothies of my life. Seriously, that smoothie is something special. I’ve even taken beets and made chocolate cake out of them. Whoa.  Yet, I haven’t shared with you my go to beet juice recipe. This just seems wrong. Let’s fist pump and right this wrong together. I’ve got that Technotronic song in my brain so hard that my top half is typing these words to you, but my bottom half is dancing. Pump it up!! Can’t control myself.

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Easy Refrigerator Dill Pickles

Eleven years ago you could find me at a college theater party sharing a peach-flavored Arbor Mist with one of my best friends. Yes, directly out of the bottle. You might ask, what is the difference between a normal college party and a “college theater party”? Good question. I would have to say that since the people in attendance are theater students, can most likely cry on command, and have a flare for the dramatic, things can get intense. Also, there are usually two to five dudes that have ponytails (or if you’re lucky, a rat-tail)  un-ironically. Someone is drunkenly doing a monologue on the patio. Almost always someone is either wearing suspenders or a raccoon tail that is pinned onto the back of their pants. It’s a scene. I was there. It was confusing.

Ten years ago you could find me sobbing uncontrollably on the couch of my single-lady apartment. I was watching the last episode of Sex in the City and unashamedly splitting a whole rotisserie chicken with my cat. I wish I could say this is the only time that happened, but I would be lying to you. When you’re nineteen years old and live alone and have a lot of feelings, sometimes you just need someone to help you binge eat a whole chicken. You don’t discriminate if that someone has a lot of grey fur and two sets of paws. […]