And Possibly Dinosaurs

The best parts of being a homebody

Food

Work in Progress: My Incredibly Unruly Herb Garden

It’s time for a new series on the blog! I’m calling it Work in Progress, where I share things I’m learning in the messy middle, before I’ve figured out what the hell I’m actually doing.

So much of blogging has become shiny before-and-afters, and it’s so important to show all the in-betweens, when we try things and they don’t work. Or even if they do work, but we’re not sure if we’re doing it right at all.

That’s the idea behind Work in Progress—showing the human side to the before and after. And first up is my incredibly unruly herb garden.

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Classic Cocktails I Want to Learn

My most recent 101 in 1001 list started on Friday, and one somewhat ironic theme of the list is entertaining. Don’t get me wrong—Sean and I are 100% not entertaining people right now, since, yunno, global pandemic. But I’m at least a little bit hopeful that there will be a vaccine within the next 1,001 days, so Sean and I will be able to start entertaining again.

I really want to be “the house that everyone goes to” once the world opens up again, so I want to improve my entertaining / hosting skills. One of the most fun skills I want to develop is bartending.

Right now I’ve only got two cocktail recipes at the ready: sour amaretto and Moscow mules. I could stumble my way through a margarita if I needed to, too. But I’d really like to have a bunch of recipes memorized so I could easily make a cocktail for anyone who comes to visit.

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Moscow Mules

Let’s be transparent: my bartending skills are… lacking. But there’s one recipe I can make over and over without messing up: Moscow Mules!

It’s one of my favorite cocktails to make, and it’s perfect for a hot summer day. Plus, they’re incredibly easy.

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Drinkmate Water Carbonator

This post contains affiliate links that I could make commission off of. All opinions are my own. Learn more.

Over the past year or so, Sean and I have started drinking a lot of La Croix. I’ll blame it on our trip to South Carolina last summer—we drank a lot of La Croix then, and kept up the habit when we got back.

I liked the idea of getting our own water carbonator to replace our La Croix habit, but I always assumed the only option was SodaStream, which I was 100% uninterested in purchasing.

Then a few months ago, after a comment from my sister about the environmental impact of purchasing all those La Croix cans, I did some digging and found different water carbonator to try: Drinkmate.

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Recipes I Want to Try

This is now my third Recipes I Want to Try blog post, and it’s honestly one of the posts I look forward to the most! I wasn’t sure it if would stick, but it totally has—I’ve been using these recipes as inspiration, which has been especially helpful during the pandemic.

Last time I shared 8 recipes and made 6 of them. Let’s see how many I end up making this time around!

What recipes are you excited to try?

Our First Experience Brewing Beer!

Living in West Michigan, it’s hard to not be a beer person. My hometown, Grand Rapids, has been named Beer City USA, and my current town, Kalamazoo, is home to Bell’s Brewery, which makes the Best Beer in America.

So it was only a matter of time until Sean and I started brewing our own, right?

I put it on my 101 in 1001 list back in 2018, but it took a pandemic for us to finally prioritize it.

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Recipes Getting Me Through Quarantine

Back in November or December, I chose my Word of the Year for 2020. I thought long and hard about it, and was so happy with the word I chose: Home.

Super ironic now, right? I had no idea back then what Home would mean for all of us by the end of March.

But there was so much more wrapped up in it than just the idea of staying home. I wanted to read more. I wanted to decorate the house and complete small projects that would make it feel more like a home. And I wanted to cook more.

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Recipes I Want to Try

I shared my first list of recipes I want to try back in February, and while I didn’t make all 11 of them, I made a few! I really liked listing out recipes I’m interested in, because writing lists and sharing them on the blog are big motivators for me. I’ve decided to make this a quarterly thing!

All of the recipes I’ve called out are comfort foods for me, and they’re things I’ve never made before, so I’m hoping to learn some new kitchen skills while getting to eat my anxiety.

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Recipes I Want to Try

In an effort to really flex my homebody skills, I’ve been thinking more and more about cooking. I’m not exactly a confident cook… I can follow a recipe, but I get panicked if things don’t go according to plan or too many things happen at once.

I know that I will only improve with practice, so I’ve been eyeing more recipes that I want to try. Hopefully once I catalog them here (and in the back of my Passion Planner!), I’ll remember to try my hand at some of these!

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Last-Minute Valentine’s Dinner

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day.

You forgot, didn’t you?

Yeah, it’s too late to make reservations, plus you’d just be paying extra for the holiday and it’s not going to be that great because the restaurant will be jam-packed and overbooked.

What are you going to do?

Hey, stop freaking out. This is where I come in. I’ve got an easy dinner and dessert recipe for you that you can make TODAY and not freak out tomorrow when you’re running around trying to find a decent bouquet of flowers that doesn’t look like it’s been trampled.

Both of these recipes are fantastic and should only take a couple hours overall. The Chicken Ragù with Bacon is fantastic and even better the next day. The Muddy Buddy pie is so easy and you don’t even have to turn on the oven. You can do this, I promise.

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