What a great little dunking cookie! The heat will come up from behind and surprise you, but more like a whisper from an old friend than a boogie man screaming. How’s that for a food-related description? 😉

Just this week I was talking to a friend about how all food blogs go one of two ways. Either they follow the food trends like the wind (looking right at all you people doing vegan desserts right now) or have one hit dish that they tweak and tweak and tweak again since it’s a guaranteed hit.

Breaking news – summertime is a great time for salads. I know, I know – it’s a little surprising to hear the gal who would live on chocolate chip cookies alone waxing poetic about summer salad recipes. But life is all about balance, no?

As I mentioned last week, there are a million and one reasons why the Instant Pot is the hardest working soldier in my kitchen, but this week I want to introduce you to THE best recipe for the machine – risotto.

It took us a solid three weeks of school before my girls were in school all five days of the week, so we had a LOT of time to fill up. In that spirit, I started thinking about what we could do in the kitchen that wasn’t cookies. (Don’t worry, we made those, too.) I stumbled into a recipe for a lemon sugar body scrub and guys, it was such a hit!

When it's too hot to bake, but you want something chocolatey, try this recipe for homemade magic shell chocolate ice cream topping.⁠ 

The first time I made this dish, the meat soaked up most of the juice, so the sauce was thick. The second time, it was more stew-like. Both were great.

There are a lot of foods one would assume to be clean and simple, even if they were jarred. Salsa, particularly the kind you find in the deli section of the grocery store, is one of those foods.