The Naptime Chef

Friends! It’s once again been a long time since I’ve written and there are many reasons why. My kids are getting older and we’ve been running around like crazy getting them settled in school, spending time in Cooperstown and Maine, and more. Also, truthfully, for the past year or so I’ve been struggling with where to take this blog next. My kids don’t nap anymore, but I still love to cook, I’ve launched a new newsletter (you can sign up on the bar to the right), and have been working with outside consulting clients too. It’s been up and down, there have been easy days and some very hard ones.

I love blogging, but the hamster wheel of creating new content regularly gets difficult, especially when my family likes a certain regular rotation of recipes almost all of which I’ve already shared here. Developing new recipes is not easy…and is not always welcome!

During this time, as I’ve been looking at my homepage wondering where to go next, I’ve been doing a lot of reading, journaling, and examining my own life. It’s been wonderful, hard, meditative, and agonizing….and at the end of the day it’s brought me to a much better, much happier place.

I feel more relaxed and excited about my life than I have in a long time, plus, I’ve learned how to set boundaries around what I want to do, and what I don’t. There are many ways to look at this shift in my mindset, I like to call it my own “life edit,” no doubt perfectly timed with my milestone birthday last year.

Either way, changing my relationship with myself to one that is much more positive than it had been has brought my to a better place in my work and, hopefully, my relationship with you. This fall I’ll be reintroducing recipes and photographs to the blog. I’ll also be merging in my newsletter content you so can read it more easily. The newsletter and this blog go hand-in-hand so it makes sense for them to be together sometimes.

To that end, in addition to my blogging, newslettering, and the like, I’m going to start offering Life Coaching. In fact, I’ve studied so hard (and continue to learn so much!) that next winter I plan to truly dive into life coaching and roll out my first course to pair with my personal coaching efforts. However, for the time being I’m working one-on-one with clients.

I’ve worked hard to re-write my story, and now I want to help you re-write yours!

I’ll be discussing my life coaching and writing at @naptimechef on Instagram. Right now it feels right to keep it all together. I feel truly aligned with this and hope you’ll like the shift in tone and tempo of the blog and instagram. I’ll be post my first set of course offerings this week. Please stay tuned and thank you, as always, for your support!

Late last spring I was thrilled to enter into a partnership with the fantastic meal planning app, Menud (pronounced Men-you’d). If you haven’t had a chance to check it out yet I highly recommend downloading it. It’s completely free! It is designed to be a one stop meal planning app where influencers like myself provide our recipes at no cost, and you can add them to your meal calendar for the the month AND create a shopping list at the same time.

Honestly, it’s a real boon for anyone who is running to and fro (isn’t that all of us?) and needs help planning meals that fit into their daily routine. Even better, if you really don’t have to plan you can just grab one of my PlateLists, pop it int your calendar and you’ve got an instant meal plan for the whole week lickety split!

From here on out I’ll be promoting my work with Menud regularly… If there is anything you’d like to see on the app please let us know and we’ll get to work on it!

(Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Hood Cream. The photographs and opinions are wholly my own. Thank you for supporting the sponsors that make The Naptime Chef possible.)

Summer is finally here. The kids are out of school and we are preparing for our upcoming trip to Cooperstown for the Fourth of July. I’ve been hard at work on The Little Snack Newsletter and other fun projects, all of which have been amazing. I’ve also been fitting in some late afternoons at the pool since it’s summer after all!

The true sign of summer is, of course, that I’ve basically turned off my oven and cook almost exclusively on the grill. One of our favorite everyday dinners is this grilled chicken salad. The chicken is simply marinated in a favorite balsamic marinade and grilled to perfection. Then I toss together a salad full of spinach, vegetables, and some cheese. It’s perfectly simple, but what really makes it special is the creamy dressing.

Dear Friends,

I’ve had the best time writing for you since January 2009. I could never have predicted the amazing journey The Naptime Chef has been. Between two cookbooks, one new baby, and three separate kitchens life has been a fun, frantic, mysterious whirlwind and now it has brought me here. The Naptime Chef will be continuing, so don’t panic, but I’ve been working on a couple pet projects for a long time and now I am excited to share them with the world.

The first is The Little Snack Newsletter. I have a wonderful mailing list of readers and sending them only my own blog content doesn’t feel like enough anymore. So, I am starting this lifestyle newsletter for women 35+ that centers around food & wine, design, and travel. If you already subscribe to my newsletter you will get it. If you don’t, please sign up on the sidebar. There is a Cookbook Club and everything!

Update: I’ll be sharing links to the newsletters on this blog as they roll out so be sure to check here for newsletter content, too!

(Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Hood Cream. The opinions and photographs expressed are my own. Thank you for supporting the sponsors that make The Naptime Chef possible.)

Mother’s Day was a blast and now Father’s Day is right around the corner. I know these are both Hallmark holidays, but I do love them. In our house these small holidays are all about family time. It’s about gathering together for a special meal and taking time to enjoy each other’s company. That is something that is much harder to do these days with ours kids sports schedules! This year I partnered with Hood^® Cream to create a yummy egg casserole for my husband to enjoy on Father’s Day. It was a lot of fun thinking of all of his favorite flavors and coming up with a dish for him to enjoy!

Okay, truth time….

I talk a lot about food, and I certainly do my fair share of exercise, but I often shy away from sharing the not so sunny times that I encounter now and then. One of them is the occasional episode of… wait for it…heartburn. When I was writing this article I took an informal poll of my friends and they agreed, we all suffer from it from time to time. Between coffee, stress, wine, and more, it’s bound to crop up, especially when we least expect it.

I’ve never had heartburn like I did when I was pregnant, but I still get it on occasion. And today I am going to share my new favorite way of treating it: Omeprazole Orally Disingtegrating Tablets. I know, I know, swallowing a pill isn’t the worst. But, honestly, I vastly prefer these strawberry tablets because they dissolve right on my tongue and I don’t need to swallow a whole bottle of water to get it down. Let’s be honest: for a mom on-the-go that kind of convenience is magic.

The most adorable cabana sac for summer at the beach!

This delightful book to inspire her next trip to Paris. (illustration by TheFrancoFly)

A gorgeous tote for taking to the farmers’ market and bringing home freshly picked flowers.

A beautiful book of portraits for livening up her coffee table.

Without question, the most relaxing body scrub.

Fabulous shoes for wearing all summer long.

Amazing handcrafted cards she can put on her desk.

Cushy socks for padding around house or wearing to exercise.

Luxurious face oil to make her extra glowy.

Lavender cookware, because it’s her favorite color.