• Friday Five #8

    . I’m late with the post today: My excuse is that today is my birthday and it felt like a weekend day, but also, I just plain forgot. So here we go. ONE In a little blog cleanup: I’ve moved the Monday Meal Plan posts off of the main blog feed page. I felt like…

  • Tuna & Rice Bowl

    Right before the Covid lockdowns started a couple of years ago, we were starting to see “poke” shops popping up everywhere around here. If you’re not familiar with it, poke (pronounced poh-KAY) is a Hawaiian dish of raw fish served with soy or sesame oil and maybe green onions or seaweed. It’s a very simple,…

  • Friday Five #7

    . ONE If you haven’t heard by now, you can go online and order free Covid tests to be delivered to your home. Right now every household is eligible for a 4-pack of tests. You can order them here: https://special.usps.com/testkits . TWO Zach and I are trying to incorporate more vegetarian eating into our planning…

  • Friday Five #6

    We’ve made it through two full weeks of 2022 and so far, so good! Here are my five things for this week. ONE I bought a juicer! I realized after finishing my week of juicing last Friday that I do feel much better if I make veggie juices part of my routine. After doing some…

  • Basic Red Tomato Sauce

    This tomato sauce is at the heart of a good number of the dishes I make on a regular basis as well as being a go-to for a quick and easy dinner when the meal plan falls through. I always want to keep some in the freezer, so it’s something that I make every time…

  • Friday Five #5

    Let’s just jump right into the first Friday Five of 2022. These are the things that have been on my mind this week. ONE Today is the last day of my 3rd annual post-holiday juice fast. This year I did the “expert” level program – the one with more green juices and fewer protein or…

  • Black Eyed Peas

    Skip directly to the recipe It’s tradition in the South to eat black-eyed peas in some shape or form for luck in the new year. Some places make Hoppin’ John, a mixture of peas, rice, and pork or ham. In Texas, you couldn’t watch a New Year’s Day bowl game without Texas Caviar, a bean…

  • Welcome 2022

    I’ve always enjoyed and looked forward to the symbolic “restart” of the New Year. The winding down of Christmas and the indulgent holidays, the packing away of the decorations, the traditional New Year’s Day meal of black-eyed peas and greens and cornbread instead of the rich, heavy holiday fare all allow me to mentally and…

  • Closing out 2021

    I’m honestly not sure what to say about 2021 other than for us it epitomized Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”. The Worst: We’re still firmly locked in a Covid loop, despite being vaccinated and boosted around here. The new variant of Covid…

  • Friday Five #4

    It’s been a whole lot of Fridays since the last Friday Five and I’m sorry for that. I’m just going to cut right to the chase: On July 4th weekend, while we were painting the garden shed, Zach had a heart attack; a STEMI – the one the doctors call “the widowmaker”. We were incredibly…