Brent grew up in Santa Maria, California. Santa Maria is known for its unique and delicious style of BBQ and Brent’s barbecuing skills are no less impressive than the BBQ from town where he grew up. He was destined to be a GRILL Hero from birth. Just look at that confidence at the grill! Traditional Santa Maria BBQ […]

Whole chickens are one of the most economical sources of protein. I buy them in bulk every few months from Azure Standard. To get the most out of a single chicken, I’ll first, cook and serve it as the main course.  Then that night I’ll make chicken broth from the bones.  The next day, I’ll […]

Our CSA box this week. Seriously, 24 artichokes, albeit, they are small but still…24! We also got English peas, apricots, lettuce, bell peppers, Tokyo turnips, cauliflower, potatoes, parsley, and  summer squash. It’s the Motherload. Today, I made the English Peas recipe that I had on my meal planner for yesterday.  I’m all about flexibility. First, […]

A few weeks ago, I was on a list to take a meal to a friend who had a baby.   As I was skimming the list to make sure I wasn’t bringing a duplicate meal, I saw “sloppy lentils”.  Since, I already had a bunch of lentils from my last Azure Standard order, I […]

If you can see past the smog, keep your sanity in traffic, avoid gangs, and don’t mind earthquakes then southern California is a pretty great place to live.  Not only do we have amazing weather but in our smallish town, we have almost two Trader Joe’s (I say almost because one is being built), multiple […]

So I’m a little late to the game. Pumpkins are so like last October.  Duh. But this evening while trying to organize my photos I came across these pictures and remembered how much I had enjoyed this dish.  Then I looked in my recipe notebook and saw I had actually scribbled something that resembled written […]

One of my favorite foods is stuffed grape leaves or dolmas.  Problem is I don’t get grape leaves in my CSA box but I do get collards.  A lot of collards.  Which leads to my second problem,  I’m not crazy about collards.  Which leaves me with two options throw them out or get creative.  I scored […]

I don’t often post “this is what I did today” type of posts but this year Christmas felt so special that I can’t help but want to share it and capture it to keep in my memory.  Even if it was two days ago. There was nothing extraordinary about this particular Christmas.  Maybe it felt […]

Did you know there are two types of persimmons?  I didn’t until a few weeks ago when my husband saw that one of our friends on Facebook had gotten more persimmons than she could use from her CSA.  Brent quickly commented telling her how much I looooove persimmons and a few hours later we had […]

I’ve not kept it secret that I enjoy the taste of junk food, especially pizza. I’ve also shared my food ideals and reality.  Most days, I pass on junk food including traditional pizza.  However, deprivation isn’t any fun (and can lead to a binge) so to satisfy my junk food cravings I make healthier substitutes.  Not long […]