Summer Squash Couscous

I have been searching the internet for squash recipes this month to try to find ways to use up all the squash I've gotten from my CSA box. Even after giving some away I find myself with an abundance and a need for new recipes. This light summer dish is really wonderful.

Yellow Squash Crustless Quiche

We have lots of yellow squash showing up in our CSA box and while we do love Dilled Yellow Squash as a side dish, we just weren't eating enough of it to use up our supply. This recipe came along with one of our deliveries and we made it with some minor modifications. The result was very good, a crustless quiche with a rich, buttery flavor.

Ground Beef and Cabbage

Have you ever had one of those days where you decide what you're going to make for dinner 5 minutes before you start cooking? Well, I have them all the time! And this recipe is one of the success stories. Now it doesn't sound like much, but I hope you'll give it a try because it is surprisingly delicious and so easy to make.

Blackberry Cobbler

About four years ago, when I married my husband, we planted a single blackberry plant in our backyard hoping for blackberries each year. The first few years, we were thrilled to pick anywhere from 5 to 20 blackberries in late June and July. However, this year, we were so excited to have lots and lots of blackberries. Besides eating them right off the plant we made blackberry pancakes, blackberry waffles, used them in smoothies, and this cobbler.

Natural Treatments for Black Spot (on Roses)

“It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Betsy-Tacy and Tib

One of the first things I did when I moved into this home was purchase several rose bushes to plant in the garden. Now, at the time, I was extremely inexperienced with gardening and had no experience with roses, but just decided to dive right in. The house already had several climbing rose bushes and a few other plants and I figured, what the heck, how hard can it be??

Ha ha ha ha... well, several years later I am still inexperienced but I know enough to know that growing roses can be a bit challenging. In my experience, they prefer morning sun, thrive with plenty of water (soak the ground, not the plant), and do their best in well-drained soil. I formerly selected my roses based on how pretty the blooms looked. But, that transitioned to include fragrance and then finally disease resistance.

Very fragrant, small purple roses after pruning away diseased leaves

Hamburger Skillet (Easy & Flexible)

I have a confession... my husband and son love hamburger helper. LOVE IT. Before I married my husband, it was one of his regular meals. Now, when I am away for work sometimes I will come back and see the boxes in my cabinets. I have a fit. They thinks it's scrumptious.

I have never eaten the stuff. I think it sounds terrible - I mean you can't hardly get much more processed than hamburger helper.

So anyway, all that being said, and with love for my family and a desire for this journey to be easy for them (and a reason to throw away that last box of hamburger helper peeking out from behind jars of pickles) I thought I would try to make something reminiscent of hamburger helper without all the nastiness in the box version.

Creole Shrimp

It's that time of month again when I peruse the pages of my recent Cooking Light magazine and re-vamp one of their recipes for my dinner table. I really enjoy this magazine for the new ideas it inspires, but don't necessarily agree with several of their ideas of "healthy" foods  (often their elimination of butter or healthy fats of any kind as well as subsitutions with low fat or no fat milk and their use of "fake" foods like margarine). However, these types of ingredients are easy to replace with more nourishing options.

In their latest issue, the June 2013 magazine, I found a wonderful shrimp recipe that my family thoroughly enjoyed. In fact, it was so good, it will likely be on the regular rotation and I hope you will enjoy it as much as we did. Here is the link to the original recipe. I've changed it up a bit below.