Ah, summer. Sweet, sweet summer. Warm weather, sunshine, flowers and beautiful produce – especially fruit. There are many delicious flavor combinations that come together just a bit more perfectly in the summer months with blueberries and lemons being one of my favorite.

Blueberries and lemons are great in drinks (both non-alcoholic and alcoholic), in breakfast foods (waffles, crepes, yogurt) and in desserts. Cakes, pies, puddings, cupcakes, tarts…lemons and blueberries are a winning pair. These Blueberry Lemonade cupcakes are no exception and are easy to whip up for a summer barbecue. And did I mention they taste like summer in dessert-form? Yeah, there’s that, too. 😉

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We love meat and vegetables and find that they make a perfect dinner for us. This type of meal is nutritious, filling and yummy – and it lets us cut out the carbs in the later part of the day.

While the combinations are seemingly endless, sometimes we seem to get stuck in a rut with similar flavors. I’d been craving Indian food but didn’t want to make a curry sauce that would make me yearn for rice. So I got to thinking about what I could make instead….
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This is my second recipe to include sweet potatoes in a savory way. The first attempt was good – a lovely and simple gratin – and this one proved to be just as if not more delicious.

I adapted the hash from Closet Cooking and I’ll note the changes along the way. We had this meal for dinner and it was satisfying. It would also make a hearty breakfast. Continue reading →

Bone broth. If you’re like me, you’ve been hearing a lot about this recently. It seems to have gained more attention through the popular Paleo Diet. I don’t follow this diet, but I’ve been making my own chicken stock for awhile and wanted to know what the difference was. 

Once I started reading up on it, I learned that cooking the bones for 12-24 hours and adding a bit of cider vinegar helps extract more minerals and nutrients from the bones. It also makes the broth tastier. Over several attempts, I’ve managed to create a very basic but very delicious recipe for this magical bone broth. Continue reading →

I’ve never been a big fan of sweet potatoes – they were always presented to me as substitutes for white potatoes. I never found this to be an even substitution because they were sweet, while the white potatoes were savory. How would that ever satisfy a craving? 

It turns out that most sweet potato recipes call for things that make them sweet – brown sugar, cinnamon, syrup for dipping sweet potato fries, etc. I became determined to find ways to make these more savory so that I could vary my vegetables even more with this nutritious food. This gratin is my first attempt and it turned out very well – better than I ever expected. Continue reading →