I drink a smoothie for breakfast almost every morning so I’m always looking to switch things up a bit. This smoothie is SO. FREAKISHLY. GOOD. Seriously. SO. GOOD. It’s the perfect smoothie recipe for the season as we head out of fresh berries and toward good smoothies that utilize frozen fruit. This smoothie features a mixture of frozen raspberries, blackberries and blueberries that I found at my local Costco. If you are like Famous Julie or Martha Stewart you’ve probably gro

Salads aren’t just for summer anymore. This salad SCREAMS fall and the maple dressing? I die. It’s like four ingredients (plus salt… is that really an ingredient, though? Let’s be real) of magic on the road to Fall-time bliss. The feta adds the perfect salty compliment to the sweetness offered by the dried cranberries, apples and sugared pecans. The crisp bite of the apples and red onions sends this salad over the edge. It’s one of my new favorites! Be warned, though. This sa

I worked at Bajio the summer after I graduated from high school and I very quickly fell in love with their shrimp tacos. That particular restaurant has since closed, and the closest one is about 30 minutes away, so whenever I need my Bajio fix it’s WAYYY more convenient to make it at home nowadays. I’ve already pretty much mastered their Chicken Green Chile Quesadilla, and we’ve got these shrimp tacos pretty dang close, all I need to do now is discover the secret to their swe

Slab pies are one of the greatest inventions of the 21st century. This is a spin-off of one of my favorite pies: strawberry rhubarb pie. I looked all over the place for rhubarb when I got the hankering for one. I couldn’t find it anywhere. So… sub the Granny Smith apples. I figured they were both sour, right? Oh boy. It worked. It worked like it was it’s job, and it’s getting paid a six figure annual salary. Wha???! … My brain hurts. There aren’t really that many times that y

I’m desperately clinging to summer with every fiber of my being. Because summer has this angel food cake in it. I’m actually really ready for Fall as you can remember from this post. Yikes. But I am desperately clinging to the fresh fruits and veggies that summer has to offer. And these light and fruity desserts that I have been posting. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m all about pumpkin just like the other 400 million food bloggers out there, but I’ll never get over this cak

This dessert is the epitome of summer. You could put any fruit that is currently in season on top and I’m sure it would still be magical. Right now, I’m so obsessed with peaches. If I made it tomorrow the whole thing would just be covered in peaches. You wouldn’t even be able to tell that there was anything underneath my massive mound of peaches piled in a 9×13 pan. Actually, that sounds amazing. The amount of peaches that I have personally consumed since peach season came on

Raspberry freezer jam is probably the least scary thing in the world to make. I was all scared about making it until Famous Julie showed me how, and then I was embarrassed that I was ever freaked out by it. And now you can be embarrassed, too. You’re welcome. Famous Julie called me last week to tell me that raspberries were on sale at our local grocery store. So I promptly made my way down there and bought one hundred dollars worth. Do you guys have any idea how many raspberr

I hate that peach season only lasts like 4 seconds, and then it’s over. Maybe peaches just don’t want to be taken for granted so they make sure that their life span is really short. Peaches, you don’t gotta be like that. I promise that I would still love you so much if you stayed just a little bit longer. Because, I mean really, there is nothing like a fresh peach. Canned peaches just don’t do it for me the way a fresh peach does. If that was the case, I would just can one bi

Have you ever heard of the smoothie joint named, “Orange Peel?” They make the best smoothies I’ve ever had from any smoothie establishment. My new goal in life is to make smoothies as good as theirs.And… not to toot my own horn, but I’m getting pretty dang good. Good part about it is that I never really tire of smoothie testing. I could drink one everyday for the remainder of my life and be perfectly happy. If that was a profession I would be totally set. Smoothie drinker/

OOOHHH MMMYYYY GOOOOOOOSSSSHHHHH. This recipe. I can’t handle it. I love so many things about this summer. I love that I’m not pregnant and I don’t feel like I’m surrounded by fire and brimstone at every waking hour of the day. I love that we have our own house. I love that Baby Girl is old enough to love swimming and being outside. I love that the weather is beautiful pretty much all of the time. I love that we have our own grill and that we use it almost on the daily. Al

This is yet another one from the trusty ol’ Thurston recipe book. So have you ever been working on your laptop, and then you take said laptop to a public area and it’s only when you open up the laptop in this public area that you finally notice how disgustingly dirty it is? Like, it seems like every dust mite and smear in the known universe somehow made it’s way to your keyboard during your journey? Then you start thinking to yourself if only those Black Friday deals at Promo

Remember how I told you that I’ve been obsessed with raspberries lately and I’ve been putting them into everything? I was seriously not joking around. I am indulging in the full bounty of summer this year. I just want to bury my face in a big pile of raspberries at all waking moments of the day. So… If I’m being 100% honest with myself here, this is kind of a cheater recipe. This is a twist on one of the most popular recipes on my blog but it was so good that it was worthy of

I’ve been going a little bit crazy over raspberries lately. I’ve found myself wanting to put them in absolutely everything. And I basically have… recipes to come. I can’t wait until I get a raspberry plant of my own put in my yard. Let’s be honest though, those raspberries will probably never make it into a recipe because they are just so good. Heck, they probably won’t even make it to the inside of my house after being picked. First I need to learn how to keep a plant alive,

Quick? Check. Easy? Check. Healthy? Check. And pretty to boot. It’s the whole package. Plus, you can eat it with chopsticks and improve your dexterity. Do I really have to keep going? This recipe is for those days that you start the morning off with a piece of chocolate cake. Or pastries. Or pie. Or cookies. Which these days are known as their psuedonyms: muffins, donuts, poptarts and …. well, cookies. Cookies is kind of a hard one to justify as a breakfast food. But we’ve al

This. This is summer in a bowl. Summer is the bee’s knees. Especially here in Utah. It’s pretty hard to beat a summer evening in Utah. Then you have splash pads, and swimming, and carnivals, and and and … Actually, I took baby girl to the carnival the other day. Can I just tell you? The day before we go I imagine her first experience at the carnival. She’s running around with her ice cream in hand laughing and skipping in slow motion. (Don’t ask me why she’s skipping, she’s n

I think I may have my priorities a bit messed up. While we were eating this pizza the other day, things must have gotten a little out of hand because halfway through the meal my husband turned to me and said, “I wish you talked to me like you talk to pizza.” WOAH. I knew I loved pizza but I didn’t realize I was THAT nice to pizza. But, it’s like…. pizza. You know? So, basically I want to issue everyone a challenge. I want to challenge you to be as nice to someone this week, a

I’m so ready for summer and fresh berries. I’m watching the Bachelorette as I write this, and I can’t get over the awkwardness. The classic pensive stares across the corn fields or the cityscapes. The bumbling one-liners and nervous giggles. There was even one shot of a dude who was playing fetch with his like, 300 pound labrador retriever. You could tell that lab had never retrieved anything in his life. OH, and how about the yoga dude who is totally into love and the univer

Spring has officially sprung here in Utah. Or at least it pretended to spring and faked us all out. Don’t jerk me around like that, Spring. I thought we had an understanding. Stop toying with my emotions. I can pretend to be upset, but we all know how temperamental Utah weather can be. It’s the tired, hungry two year old of the seasons. You never know when the next melt-down is going to happen, but you just KNOW that crap is about to hit the fan. So, if we can’t have spring o

Is it kabob? Or kebab? The world may never really know, I guess. Promise me that you will still like me a little bit after I tell you a little secret. You are all going to gasp in disbelief and utter disgust when I tell you this, but Costco’s already prepared and pre-packaged food is the bomb. Alright, that probably wasn’t a secret, but… GUYS! I’m a food blogger who buys already prepared food. It’s almost shameful. You have to remember that I, like most people these days, w

This is what I have for breakfast almost every morning and I STILL crave it every day. Some may call it a habit, but those people would be wrong. I crave it every morning because it is DANG delicious. I crave it every morning because it is healthy. I crave it every morning because it is SO easy to whip together. It’s something I look forward to having and it keeps me full for hours. Sometimes I add spinach to it and get my greens in for the day, but mostly I just love my plai