Naptime Everyday: Recipes for Everyday Cooking and Baking

I am a huge fan of birthday celebrations. It is not that I am interested in shouting my age from the roof top, I just like festivities centered around celebrating a special person in your life. Essentially any kind of birthday party should be a fun celebration no matter if you are a kid or adult!
So, this week I am challenging you to plan a birthday celebration for a family member or friend. It can be something small – like bringing cookies to them, or sending them a sweet special note – or something large, like baking a huge cake and planning a blowout party. If you don’t have any birthdays to celebrate this week plan something for a friend in the future and share what you are going to do. Whatever it is, we want to hear how you do it!

Eureka, we are back in our school routine! My daughter is back to attending afternoon pre-school on a regular schedule and I am back to cooking while she is at school. Most days she comes home and has some quiet time (and often falls asleep) after school, so naptime is still hanging around a bit, though the length of her school day is more than enough time for me to happily cook and work as I want. In fact, I’ve been working a lot on my “official” website launch and the commencement of a huge birthday-themed project will begin tomorrow! In light of setting this up, I decided to turn to a faster dinner recipe today which is where this delicious, simple baked cod came in.

I don’t mean to imply I am not going to miss my daughter when she is at school, but I am glad school is starting this week. It is time. Time for her to get back in a daily routine, me to get settled back into everyday life and my husband to have us home again instead of running off on week long excursions while he stayed home to work. One of the things our fall routine requires is a continuous parade of school snacks. Like most schools, my daughter is not allowed to bring peanut butter, but she can bring pretty much anything else that is healthy and easy to eat in her allotted snack time.

A new webisode! I am not going to write much about this pizza since I talk about it so much in the video. I learned this method for making homemade pizza while at King Arthur Flour. The bakers their suggested I preheat my oven for an hour with the pizza stone in it (!) and then use their pizza flour blend to make an easy pizza crust. Their ideas seemed to smart and manageable that I immediately tried it when I got home and am so glad I did. It worked beautifully! So, without further ado. Our homemade pizza night on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

As I indicated last week, I am a compulsive tomato buyer at the farmer’s market. There is something about their ruby red skin that just lures me in and says “buy me!” It is a little like the way I feel when I am wandering through the Saks shoe department, too, but the tomatoes are a lot cheaper. Right before the hurricane last month we had a spell of gorgeous summer weather and I served tomatoes nearly every night for dinner.

Last Monday began as a normal day for me. I took some food photos at breakfast, walked to the coffee shop with my daughter and made a quick run to the toy store. When it came to jump into my twitter feed around noon I got excited to exchange canning tips with friends. I couldn’t wait to share a new great canning tip and recipe I had just discovered.

What’s Going on Today: Heat wave city – beaching it all day! Naptime Goals: Prepare burgers and leave in the fridge for the afternoon, prep Caprese Pasta Salad Tonight’s Menu: Blue Cheese & Bacon Burgers, pasta salad. The only blessing about the heat wave two weeks ago was that my daughter tired out much more […]

What’s Going on Today: Preparing for afternoon with friends the next town over. We are bringing the dessert! Naptime Goals: Bake cake and give it enough time to cool! Tonight’s Menu: Jim’s Grilled Tuna, Snow Peas, Rice with Scallions, Chocolate Peanut Butter Bundt Cake When our friends invited us over for the tuna cookout I […]

What’s Going on Today: Loving the summer weather, produce. Not loving the early morning wake-ups (although it makes for a nice afternoon naptime!) Naptime Goals: Whip up Spicy Mango BBQ Sauce, marinate chicken, make quick couscous salad. Book editing! Tonight’s Menu: Spicy Mango Grilled Chicken, Couscous salad, strawberry-mint ice cream! The only problem with grilling […]

What’s Going on Today: Early 5:30am wake-up call! Farmer’s market, laundry, camp! Tonight’s Menu: Grilled Lemon Rosemary Chicken, Couscous Salad, Strawberry-Lemon Verbena Ice Cream Naptime Goals: Make ice-cream base to all the herbs to steep! This kid is killing me with the 5:30am wake-ups. I swear, I am this close to lining her windows with […]

  What’s Going on Today: Summer camp heaven, walks to the beach, lazy summer days. Tonight’s Menu: Beer Marinated Pork Tenderloin, Composed Salad with Lambrucha-Chervil Vinaigrette, Blueberry Pavlova One of the best parts about Belgian beer is that is can be sipped, stirred and baked. In the virtual picnic Wendy and I dreamt up while […]

Phoebe and Cara’s website, Big Girls, Small Kitchen, was one of the first blogs I ever read. We started blogging around the same time and I remember being immediately taken in by their cool concept of quarter-life cooking. To be honest, I felt a little bit like I was reading a flashback to my own […]