On cold, wintry days nothing quite hits the spot like a nice, hot latte to warm you up from the inside out! But y’all, a Homemade Peppermint Latte – ahhh-mazing! Nothing tops that.

To make my homemade peppermint lattes, I prefer to use my blender, but you can also totally use a hand held milk frother for this, too. I found mine on Amazon pretty cheap. I think this would make a great stocking stuffer or birthday gift for the foodie (do people still call them that?) or coffee lover in your life. [Read more…]

Y’all probably know by now that Wednesday and Saturday are my preferred Kitchen Days, which means on those days, you can usually find me in my apron doing some cooking, baking, and prepping up a storm! To see just what I make each week, on by checking out my Kitchen Day escapades on Instagram and Facebook. And today I’m sharing some of my thoughts and tips on food storage.

We eat most of our meals at home and my kids are hungry a lot, so I always make a ton of food. I get asked often what in the world I do when I cook all this bulk food! Where and how do I store it all? I realize that not everyone will be able to cook as much as I do or have room to store it all! But because bulk cooking and buying health foods in bulk are some of our family’s priorities, I’ve always found a way to store it all.

Jumping right in – here are a few quick food storage tips: [Read more…]

For those of you who don’t follow along with my videos on Facebook, this post was actually a part of a recent Facebook Live series about my top 10 lists. My Top 10 Favorite Online Stores was a big hit – as was my Top 10 Kitchen Gadgets – so I wanted to share this with y’all too! One thing you should know about me…

Hi. My name is Stacy, and I am a kitchen gadget and appliance hoarder.

Even when I Konmari-ed my house and got rid of ALL the things, I kept most of my kitchen gadgets because you know what…I love kitchen appliances. I’m not ashamed; I’m not embarrassed. And you know what? I plan to keep on adding.

But I do not keep my kitchen gadget and appliance collection on my counter.

That drives me crazy! Counter clutter makes me nervous. I keep them all down in the basement on a special shelf that Barry built me. Before I get going on the key top ten kitchen gadgets list, I am going to shock you by mentioning what DIDN’T make the list this time…my crock pot! You know I use my slow cooker ALL.THE.TIME. However, this list is a little less obvious than that. 😉

In no particular order, here’s my top ten kitchen gadgets and appliances:

[Read more…]

Let me start by saying I love fried food. You can go anywhere and find fried food. Fried oreos, onion rings, french fries, etc. I’m sure if someone could figure out a way to fry Coke they would! But healthy fried food? I’m sure the wheels are already turning in your heads…

Is there such a thing as healthy fried food?

[Read more…]

If you’ve followed me for long at all you know that I don’t like making broth at all. Bone broth – nope, not for me! In fact, because of a pregnancy issue that I had with Andy, I didn’t make for a LONG time – like over 6 years! I had awful morning sickness (the all-day kind) and the smell of cooking broth made me so sick that it took me YEARS to overcome it.

But something happened that changed my mind… I got mad.

I can get pretty hot over a lot of things, but broth is probably a new one. Why did I get mad about broth? Well, I wanted to  incorporate more bone broth into our diet, but when I looked around the shelves, there was sugar in every single bone broth my store carried! Bone broth doesn’t need sugar! What in the world? I had been making broth for years and NEVER added sugar – or even thought about adding sugar. I should add that I’m not anti-sugar… I eat chocolate and dessert on Sundays. So it’s not like I’m totally against sugar.

I just try to stay clear of products that have sugar added for no good reason.

We get enough sugar from our Sunday desserts thank you very much… we don’t need it in our beef broth too. Why couldn’t I find a brand of bone broth that did not have added sugar? This whole “sugar in the broth” experience spurred me to make homemade broth again. And I have to admit, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. [Read more…]

The past few months I have been trying to work on drinking more water. Here’s the deal y’all… I don’t like water. Bleh, I just don’t like it. I’ve always been a big drinker. Wink, wink – HA. I mean, I love coffee! And, if you’ve followed me for any amount of time you know this!

But I have been working hard on drinking more water.

Over the years, I’ve had friends who carry around their bottles of water. They are like superstars or something. I wish it came naturally to me to drink water… but it just doesn’t. Don’t tell anyone… but I’m a pop (or soda, or whatever you might call it in your part of the world) girl! It’s only been in the last year or two that I’ve stopped drinking pop and started drinking water. I’m simply not a fan of water. But when I need to be drinking more water and don’t, I end up with really bad headaches. If I start to get a headache, I know that I haven’t had enough water (or magnesium). [Read more…]

I tend to get a lot of questions about how I am cooking from scratch for my family, especially over on Instagram, where I post weekly meal plans, meal prep, favorite cookbooks, etc., as well as pictures of lots of food! Today, I’m answering a handful of those questions and my hope is that this is a help to y’all as you brave the cooking from scratch terrain in your own kitchens. [Read more…]

I’m so excited and I know y’all are going to be so happy too. Why?! Because today, I’m sharing the recipe for the best homemade ranch dressing of all time. I should know, because I love ranch dressing. This isn’t my recipe, but it’s one that has earned a very coveted spot in my favorite recipes binder. You know it’s serious when I preserve a recipe in a sheet protector for all eternity, y’all.

For over 8 years, I searched for a homemade ranch dressing recipe because as you may know, most store-bought ranch is bad news. If you have never checked out the ingredients on the back of a bottle of Hidden Valley Ranch or one of those Good Seasons paper packets… you probably should. They may not taste bad, but both are full of crummy artificial ingredients, MSG, and more! [Read more…]