Category Archives: Life

Nourishment Lately 6.9.16

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{One of our peonies, just before bloom. 6.2.16}

Hi! It has been awhile since I’ve checked in with a Nourishment Lately, but how excited I have been to do so. I have discovered some seriously amazing recipes lately, and I truly can’t wait to share!

This tomato sauce. Oh, this tomato sauce. This sauce is my new favorite thing. What I’ve been doing: I make this sauce, add some just undercooked spaghetti noodles and a tiny sprinkle of pecorino romano, sometimes some chopped fresh basil. Best dinner. I kind of not-so-secretly wish I could have this for dinner every single night. I have been making it once a week!

These mushroom walnut burgers. We have made these twice now, and both love them oh-so-much. We’ve intended to grill them, but got rained out each time, so on the stove it was. Changes I made – I used onions instead of shallots, used feta instead of blue cheese and doubled the recipe both times. How I recommend serving: very simply, on a lightly toasted bun, spread with a little bit of butter and some extra cheese, if you please. The simple serving lets the amazing taste of the burgers shine.

This roasted potato salad. This is the only potato salad I ever want. It is the best. Greg and I are both obsessed, and happened to make it as a side dish to the previously mentioned mushroom burgers both times we made them. Changes I made – I one time used dill instead of basil and the other time used basil, and liked it both ways. Also, I left out the walnut oil because I didn’t have any and just substituted a bit more olive oil. The best potato salad ever.

This perfect stovetop popcorn. I am seriously wondering why it took me 26 years to do stovetop popcorn? Now that I have, I am never going back. I never really gave stovetop popping a thought – in the past, it has always been a bag popped in the microwave. But, I recently had a popcorn craving, so one Friday night a couple of weeks ago, a night that we decided was a “movie night” (we watched “The Revenant” — highly, highly recommend!!), I decided to give stovetop popcorn a try. It was so easy! And delicious! I cannot wait to do it again, actually. For that batch, I drizzled the popcorn with melted butter and sprinkled with salt, smoked paprika and nutritional yeast.

These next three links are not food related, but are nourishing in a different way! I thought I’d start sharing “life” things like this as they seem relevant.

This. Lots of different thoughts on this, but I do believe it. Goes along with next link.

This post from Elizabeth Gilbert. I have been an Elizabeth Gilbert fan for a long time now, probably since time one of reading Eat Pray Love. And following her on Facebook is great. There are so many times when I consider deleting my FB account, but then I think of the EG posts I’d be missing, and I reconsider. 😉 She puts some seriously read-worthy stuff out there and her words really, really speak to me. I loved this post from her, it’s a great read, goes very well with the above quote from Pinterest and is such a great thing to discover.

Yoga with Adriene. I have been doing yoga on and off (but mostly on) for about 10 years in some form or another. For some time, I went to an amazing yoga studio in a town near where I grew up. But for most of those 10 years, I have done a home practice. And really, that’s what I prefer. I like to practice in the comfort of my own home, in my own time and space. I have followed several different yoga channels on YouTube over the years, but have now found the last one I will ever need. I started YWA last winter, just after Greg and I moved from Philly, and have fallen more and more in love with her practice every day. She encourages her viewers to “find what feels good” (in yoga, but in all of life, too) and to do yoga to feel supported and strong. I feel compelled to share the goodness of YWA with anyone and everyone! I could go on and on with praise, but if you are looking for something like this, trust me, and look no further.

Happy almost summer! 🙂 

Nourishment Lately 3.31.16

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1-2{All the way back to 3.8.16. One of the very first warm evenings, from our back porch. The best ever happy hour.}

Hi everyone! I’m excited to be sharing a new Nourishment Lately with you today. I have been doing a lot of cooking, but I haven’t been trying a ton of new recipes, like I was regularly in winter. I wanted to pop in today though to talk about food and share a little of what has been nourishing us over the last few weeks.

This shrimp chowder with veggies + vodka sauce. Soup season is not yet over, and I am determined to make soup as much as possible until it officially warms up. This recipe is an old favorite and both Greg and I were craving it several weeks ago. So on a chilly Saturday, after running some errands, we went to a local brewery, got a growler fill, then came home and made a double batch of this soup. Perfect evening. The large batch of soup was delicious and gave us lots and lots of leftovers. We changed it up a bit from the published recipe – for a double batch, we used two yellow onions, a ton of carrots and celery (didn’t count, but we wanted to it be really hearty), one green pepper, two garlic cloves, 3/4 pound shrimp, 1.5 pounds cod, two jars of vodka sauce, a ton of veggie broth (probably 6-7 cups), salt, pepper, dried oregano and smoked paprika. It was the best. The smoked paprika was a good addition. It made it a bit more spicy, but we loved it!

This kale salad. Something else I have been craving lately – salad like crazy. Kale salad has made an appearance on our dinner plates several times over the last few weeks. The kale salad I make is based off of the recipe linked, but I use the lemon Dijon vinaigrette recipe from this post. 

These broccoli Parmesan fritters. This recipe is an oldie for us, one that we have been making for years. And one that we have been loving for years. Let me tell you, I have tried many times playing around with the recipe, but I’ve determined that it is just too good as written to mess around with. I don’t recommend making any changes. Few, simple ingredients are the best!

This pizza margherita. I was so hungry for pizza last week so I thought it would be nice to do homemade pizza Friday night. When Greg and I make homemade pizza, we usually go wild with toppings. We put on more toppings than the pizza can hold and we try to be super creative with topping combinations. I told him that I hoped he didn’t mind, but for last Friday, I was craving something extremely simple. This pizza is seriously the best. Just sauce (made out of canned tomatoes, salt and olive oil), fresh mozzarella cheese, a little bit of fresh basil and a little drizzle of olive oil. Greg said that was the best homemade pizza we’ve ever made and I definitely agree. I already can’t wait to make this recipe again. It really is the dishes with the fewest, simplest ingredients that are the best.

This quick pizza dough. This is the crust that I used for our pizza last Friday night. I was so happy with how it turned out. I didn’t have a lot of time, and this recipe is perfect for that. I did change it up just a little from the recipe. I mixed the dough in my food processor (so easy!), then placed the dough in a greased bowl and let it rise for an hour while we did some stuff around the house. After the hour, I punched down the dough (it hadn’t risen that significantly), divided in two and let it rest for another 20 minutes, while we prepped the rest of the ingredients. I started the dough at 5:30 p.m. and we were eating homemade pizza by 8 p.m. To me, that is awesome and I will most certainly be making this recipe again!

The First Blossoms of 2016, Part I

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“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold:
when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.”
-Charles Dickens

It is officially that time of the year around here, and I love it. It means that good and warm things are on their way. And, it’s blossom time.

AKA, the time of the year where I will, for better or worse, fill my blog with photos of fruit trees in bloom (see last year’s post here). I can’t help it though, this is all just too beautiful to not share.

Today I’m sharing some photos of the very first little blossoms to show up. These photos were captured on a Thursday evening, an evening that perfectly reflected the Dickens quote at the top, driving around the orchards with Greg. A perfect evening. We drove around, I captured photos, we enjoyed the sun and then watched it begin to set. On an evening like that, I’m as happy as can be.

Here’s to many more evenings like that one, enjoying and capturing what is beautiful.

P.S. Stay tuned for many more blossom photos. I am sharing half of my photos from that evening today, and I’ll post the other half tomorrow. But there will be more, this is just the beginning of blossom time. Also, these are apricot trees!

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