I made this cake a few weeks a go, so I wanted to get a short post out about it. The cookbook that this comes from is Simple Cake: All You Need to Keep Your Friends and Family in Cake. The concept is great; it includes ten basic cake recipes, and then variations on those basic cakes. I really want to try out all the recipes! This may be one of those cookbooks I actually purchase, which is high praise. I wanted to try the basic Cinnamon Spice Cake...

Thanks to Amazon Prime day, I finally got an Instant Pot. So far I mainly use it for cooking rice and making hard boiled eggs. I have to say it may be worth it just for the eggs! Oh, and I made some really delicious pork chops. The only thing I don’t like about the Instant Pot is the directions. It took some You Tube videos for me to really understand how it works. Now that I’m getting the hang of it, I am looking forward to trying so...

Many of my friends and family have heard me complain about how hard it is to feed two teenage boys without going broke. Recently I found a couple of good sources for inexpensive recipes. I have been regularly using budget meal plans from the Budget Meal Planner. You can sign up for a free weekly email plan that includes breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack ideas for $5 per person per day. I especially love this because it plans out the meals for th...

I don’t know when we started to eat food (that’s not soup) out of bowls. Did this all start with Chipotle? No matter how it started, I am a big fan. Currently, I have been making my lunches by combining rice and a couple of store bought items (right now I’m liking Panera Black Bean Soup and ready-made guacamole). It’s not super difficult to come up with bowl ideas, but if you want some inspiration you should check out The ...

Ok, stay with me on this one, because this cookbook is a lot of fun! If you are a huge Martha Stewart fan, like me, then you know all about Snoop Dogg’s domestic skills. Snoop Dogg, a rapper and television personality, was a guest on The Martha Stewart Show (oh, how I miss that show!) a couple of times. I guess they really hit it off in real life, and later they did a show together for VH1, called Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner. ...

I am super excited about Damn Delicious Meal Prep! I am always trying to eat healthier and trying to plan ahead. This cookbook helps with both goals. I already reviewed Chungah Ree’s first cookbook, Damn Delicious: 100 Super Easy, Super Fast Recipes. In case you missed that one, Damn Delicious is a blog written by Chungah Rhee. Her recipes are simple but flavorful and include a nice mix of traditional American with Asian and Mexican inspire...

I picked up So Good: 100 Recipes from My Kitchen to Yours at the library and knew that the guy on the cover looked familiar. Then I read the first page and found out the book is written by Richard Blais, a contestant on Top Chef. I haven’t watched it in years, but I used to love Top Chef; and I had a vague memory of this really arrogant Richard guy. Anyway, I started to look through this cookbook, and I would say that my first impression ...

I love everything that Ruth Reichl writes, and her cookbook My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life is no exception. I was introduced to Reichel by reading her wonderful memoirs about growing up with a mother who had no interest in food. Reichel went on to become the New York Times restaurant critic and then the editor of Gourmet magazine. This cookbook was written right after Gourmet was shut down, and she found herself suddenly out of a...

OK, this is an interesting cookbook! I am always looking for good “healthy” cookbooks. I have problems with this category, because my idea of healthy is pretty broad. I just eat a lot of different things, including fruits and veggies, and I make most of what I eat, so not a ton of processed or restaurant food. But I do eat all the “bad” things, like meat, carbs, dairy, sugar, etc. Thug Kitchen, like the Whole Foods cookboo...

Things have been crazy around here! The weather is terrible every other day, which means lot of missed school and work. My oldest son just turned 16 and got his license, which is very exciting, but also very stressful. And I just haven’t had the time to try out new recipes. But if you are a chocolate lover, you might like Martha Stewart’s Salted-Caramel Chocolate Cake. My son asks for it for his birthday every year. It’s a pret...