Cultured Butter

My new work schedule has made me very productive in the evenings. I started culturing the cream for my butter project on Sunday afternoon, and actually had enough time to make it on a Monday evening--even after hitting the grocery store, going for a run, making dinner, and prepping Tuesday night's dinner. I'm amazed at how much I'm able to get done these days.

Camping Food, Part III

This part three of a three-part series about the greatest summer food of all: the stuff you cook by the campfire...or in this case, over the campfire. It is also my post for the America Test Kitchen's Dish It Your Way challenge. Every other week they give a dish or ingredient and two weeks for bloggers to make the dish and write about in their blogs. At the end, the social media team reviews them, posts links to the competing blogs, and picks a winner for an online subscription to Cook's Country. Wish me luck!


We spent this past weekend in Bend to celebrate Shawn's birthday (don't worry honey, I won't tell everyone how old you are). Since time and menus were running out for me to make the next dish for the second to last food blogger Dish It Your Way challenge, I had to combine efforts and make mac and cheese in the great outdoors. Shawn was really disappointed by the way. Oh wait, not at all.

Tuna Pasta (not tuna casserole)

I do my best to plan all of our meals the weekend before so we aren't tempted to go out and spend money. Once in awhile I over plan what we need, such was the case a couple of weeks ago when we had more leftovers from the BBQ than I expected. We were supposed to just have simple tuna melts, so holding off on using the tuna was easy. It came to make the shopping list last week and I figured in our cans of tuna to our meal plans, of course, to save some money.

Baconfest

Until September, I will writing some posts for America Test Kitchen's Dish It Your Way challenge. Every other week they give a dish or ingredient and two weeks for bloggers to make the dish and write about in their blogs. At the end, the social media team reviews them, posts links to the competing blogs, and picks a winner for an online subscription to Cook's Country. Wish me luck!


Next up in the Dish It Your Way challenge: burgers. When I showed Shawn the list of themes weeks back when the challenge began, he made sure to ask me if I was participating in this one. The man loves a good burger...and boy is he picky as to what "good" entails.

Camping Food, Part II

This part two of a three-part series about the greatest summer food of all: the stuff you cook by the campfire...or in this case, over the campfire.


This weekend we spent two peaceful and quiet days at the ocean. What was supposed to be a short retreat to one of my all-time favorite locations, ended up being another entry in the Shawn and Carmel Adventure book. We arrived at our beach campsite only to discover that every.last.person. there owned at least one ATV. And when they weren't disturbing the peace of the ocean with their engines, they were tinkering away on them, and in the case of our neighbors, talking loudly and playing club music. Needless to say, we didn't spend too much time at our site. We retreated to another beach and the pub.