Well 2016 is almost over and it’s been a good year for gardening and growing vegetables. This year we started a new adventure that included building a garden in Upstate New York and then growing our hearts out. Every year we keep a weight chart to track how many pounds of vegetables we grow. Every harvest weekend we visit the garden, lug pounds of vegetables home in the car and into the apartment and then weigh each vegetable....

Meatloaf is one of our favorite dinners in our house. What’s not to love? It’s filling, easy to make and oh so delicious. This Cheesy Meatloaf is super fluffy and moist inside due to the shredded cheddar cheese we’re adding in. Here’s a quick video I made to show you how simple it is to make. The cheese is not overpowering and doesn’t make it taste too “cheesy”. In fact, if you don’t tell anyone, they might not even know there’s cheese in it, instead they’re going to say “How did you make this meatloaf so fluffy?...

This chicken and cherry tomato toss is a gardeners dream serving up a fresh and delicious stir-fry dish! When tomato season hits I like to be prepared for recipes because once one it starts…. then it will start to rain tomatoes! When tomato insanity hits we often have days where we are picking 10 pounds of tomatoes. I make plenty of sauces to last us through winter, but I love to enjoy our cherry tomatoes super fresh for dinner!...

So let’s dive in and see how the garden is looking in the beginning months of growing season. All these pictures were taken on Sunday where we did a full day of hard garden work (while lathering on SPF 1 million). This post is picture heavy as I’m going to take you on a full tour and introduce you to every single vegetable we’re growing. Besides my usual harvest posts I’m going to continue to do full garden updates about every 2 weeks so make sure you keep checking back to watch their progress!...

I think it’s pretty cool when parents introduce kids to gardening at a young age. To do this, you can start reading garden books for kids, and then head straight to the garden to plant and get dirty! Did you garden as a kid? My dad was big on rose bushes and tomato plants. Those tomato plants in our garden were huge and were his highlight in the summer time....

These chocolate brownies covered in rainbow sprinkles bring back memories! I have fond memories of picking out the weekly grocery store snack when I was a kid, most often reaching for a box of Little Debbie Cosmic Brownies! What wasn’t to love about these brownies? They were chocolate! They were soft! They had rainbow sprinkles! They had “Cosmic” in the title! They were so cool! Whenever I’m in the grocery store now and I walk by the display of Little Debbie pastries, my eyes always dart to quickly find the Cosmic Brownies....

Juicy Turkey You guys are just the best. All your comments you left on Essy’s post are so beautiful and caring. Reading through and seeing all the love, reliving stories of your own past losts and just being the sweetest really made me feel better. I owe you all a donut. When you’re in Brooklyn, you holla at me, we have a date. Thanks again, it really means alot to our family....

This is such a simple meal that my family loves. It looks like a Sunday dinner meal, but it can easily be made on a weeknight because it only takes about 1 hour from start to finish to bake this chicken! I serve this with mashed potatoes, or I make roasted sugar snap peas to put on the side along with the cabbage. If you’re looking for a oven roasted chicken recipe that’s juicy on the inside and crispy on the outside, give this chicken a taste!...

As the garden season takes off, I will be doing a series of posts on how to preserve everything you grow so you can enjoy them now and many months later. We won’t let any of our hard work that went into planting and caring for these plants go to waste here! I often say “I garden because I cook”. My love for being in the kitchen goes hand in hand with getting my nails dirty pushing down seeds....

Waffles have been a go to breakfast for us lately, because they are both delicious and quick. With frozen waffles, you throw them in the toaster oven for 6 minutes and they’re done. Then it’s up to you how you want to eat them – do you use syrup? How about jelly? How about butter? How about.. pumpkin butter? Pumpkin Butter Recipe If you want to make your own fresh pumpkin puree for this recipe you totally can....

I can only imagine what it would be like to bake with the Pillsbury Doughboy. You would pour 2 glasses of ginger ale and as the cookies are baking in the oven, he would tell you all his secrets. He would give you his baking knowledge full of soft cookies and sweet treats. You would forever owe your life to him. Then you would reach into your pocket and shyly pull out 2 best friend necklaces....

Ways to wow them? You can try: Singing and dancing to them, or even better with them. Most likely they won’t be wow’d at all and will ask you to put them down. Buying them a new toy. They might get wow’d, but most likely they are going to like the box it came in better. Buying them a new bowl. They don’t care, it only matters what goes in it....

These are all ways I like to greet this macaroni and cheese. Its real special. This macaroni and cheese mixes a bunch of cut up cauliflower with pepper jack jalapeno cheese to add some spice. Then it’s all melted over pasta shells. Oh and there’s bread crumbs on top to add a bit of crunch. Do you love pepper jack jalapeno cheese as much as I do? I love the kick of it....

The Best Ricotta Cookies Recipe Ricotta cookies, sometimes known as Italian ricotta cookies, are fluffy cookies with a simple vanilla glaze. This is an easy ricotta cookie recipe because it only requires several basic ingredients and makes the most delicious cake-like cookies, perfect for the holiday season. There’s also no need to chill the dough so there’s no time spent waiting around. Use red and green sprinkles (or other festive sprinkles) on top of the sweet glaze to get in the holiday mood....

Our hearts are broken and I didn’t know crying this much was possible. Essy was more than a pet, she was part of our family, the family we created together. Essy was with us from the beginning and went through every experience, adventure and obstacle Matthew and I have shared together. Essy was one of my best friends and she is the sole reason for my love affair with cats....

When it was my first time buying brisket many years ago, I didn’t know where to look for it at – with the meats on the shelf? Behind a refrigerated door?Is it at the meat counter? And what does it look like? I had no idea. So after a google image search and phone in hand, there I found it in the meat department on the top shelf all the way to the left....

In August we start to see the Summer harvest really start to shine. Tomatoes and peppers are picked by the basket, corn is starting to be made, watermelons grow a few on each vine and the cucumber plants are snaking through the beds. When we grew cucumbers on the roof in containers they would spread similar to pumpkin and watermelon plants, and now that we’re growing Upstate they continue to spread and become friends with the kale, cabbage and other nearby greens....

This spooky Halloween meatloaf looks like a zombie’s face! Your kids will love this for dinner, and it will probably terrify you. This meatloaf recipe is more than just scary, it’s scary good! Seriously, my kids say this is Mom’s best meatloaf and they love eating it! Enceladus always requests a zombie eyeball for her piece! Hah! If you can get past the look of it enough to dig in, you’ll realize that your zombie face actually tastes quite delicious!...

How To Make a Modern Dollhouse One of the most exciting things about being a Dad is getting creative and building things for my daughter Enceladus. She recently started to discover her imagination when playing with her toys so I thought it was the perfect time to build her a dollhouse for her little people and animals. Let’s be honest. Most dollhouses are hideous plastic monstrosities that break easily and clash with everything in your home....

This year our potatoes were really special to me. ⁣⁣Enceladus is in the garden a lot with us, but the potatoes are extra special because we grew them together. On a Saturday morning in early June, we kneeled side by side in the dirt. I dug holes and Enceladus placed each potato in the hole. Then she helped me push dirt on top of each and give them a pat....