This simple veggie salad is light and so easy to make! I came up with this recipe after visiting my friend Amy Brown’s Laughing Goat Flower Farm. Amy has a beautiful flower farm and grows vegetables that she sells to local restaurants. When I saw how many beautiful varieties of cherry tomatoes she had in her massive garden, I knew I had to make something with them. I also grew some of my own vegetables and wanted to use what I had in my garden as well! Using what is fresh and in season is something I really enjoy. There is nothing better than picking something you have grown, as you know exactly where it came from. I have always enjoyed growing and cultivating my own food. When my husband and I first met, he took me to Idaho to meet his grandparents. They lived on a farm in Kuna, Idaho. The farm had been in his family since the early 1900's. My husband’s grandpa had the most amazing garden. I remember walking through row after row of every vegetable you can imagine and
Fresh Peach Dessert Recipe
Fresh Peach Dessert Recipe Whether I am in Utah or Washington, at the end of the summer it is peach season! Both states have a lot of peach trees! I love peaches and the yummy desserts you can make with them. Peaches remind me of summertime and this fresh peach dessert recipe makes me wish it was summertime all year long! A few weeks back I was at a family gathering at my brothers home in Cache Valley in Northern Utah. They had invited some friends and family over to celebrate my nephews return from a two year mission for our church. After the church service, we went back to their home and my brother and his wife hosted a luncheon. We were all so hungry after a long morning driving up there and attending church so when I saw this amazing peach dessert, I knew I was going to have to try it! Everyone there was salivating over it. I shouldn’t admit it, but I dished that up first and ate that before I had anything else! Who needs to eat a sandwich first when there’s a
Homemade Lasagna
One of my favorite recipes to make is my delicious homemade lasagna recipe. I make it with homemade meat sauce or what they call bolognese. This recipe is also what I use when I’m making a marinara or bolognese sauce for spaghetti! You can make it vegetarian by leaving out the meat and it then becomes a simple marinara. This recipe has evolved over the years as I’ve learned more about authentic Italian cooking. When I went to Italy years ago, I had the most amazing pasta! I asked the little Italian grandmas who hosted us how they made their sauce. I came back from my trip and tried to replicate what they told me to do. It’s taken a few years, but this is the recipe I’ve come up with that I think is pretty close. The most important thing is the quality of the ingredients. If you can get fresh San Marzano tomatoes, that is your best option. If you can’t find them (they are hard to find sadly) you can use Roma tomatoes. They also have canned San Marzano tomatoes
Outdoor Farm to Table Entertaining
A few months back I had the opportunity to attend a floral arranging workshop at a beautiful rose farm in Washington. It was a wonderful day and I met some very lovely and talented ladies. After the workshop, we stayed in touch and soon we were talking about doing a collaboration. We brainstormed our ideas and thought it would be so much fun to utilize all our different skills to create a farm to table meal and outdoor tablescape. We wanted to create the perfect outdoor entertaining environment where friends could gather and enjoy the last bit of summer and transition into fall. Part of what was so amazing about this collaboration was that one of the ladies owns a farm where she grows fresh flowers and produce. This was a dream come true! Creating a beautiful tablescape with locally grown flowers and cooking farm-fresh food from a local farm was something I've always dreamed about doing. A gorgeous farm to fable entertainment. I plant a garden each year as well, but my garden has
Lazy Daisy Cake
Lazy Daisy Cake
The year before my Grandma Benson passed away, I gave her a recipe box filled with blank recipe cards as a Christmas gift. The following Christmas, she gave the box back to me and had handwritten her favorite recipes on the recipe cards. A month after this, she passed away. The recipes she wrote for me have become one of my most treasured possessions. Whenever I make this simple yummy cake recipe, I think of her and the fond memories I have of her.
One of my favorite recipes that she left for me was “Aunt Mickey’s Lazy Daisy Cake” It’s a sponge cake with a cooked, then broiled frosting. This is a family favorite and another one of the recipes I grew up enjoying. We loved it when Grandma Benson (that's her in the picture frame when she was a little girl) would come to visit because we knew she’d make us a Lazy Daisy Cake and her Chicken Cracker Casserole. I will need to share that recipe