Recipes, Kitchen Gadgets, Cookbook Reviews, Gluten Free Recipes...
In fact, I plan to see to it that she does.
Made of resin, I plan to use her more for looks than anything else.
Originally carved out of a knotty wood, this adorable pig bowl measures 4″ wide, 8″ long, and 3″ wide.
Like the beautiful pig platter above, the pig bowl is also made of resin.
Click through the links or the pictures to take a closer look.
My family celebrates any and all seasons, days and occasions as we can. What can I say? We love to eat, love to laugh, love to make a lot of noise and look for a reason to do all of the above at once.
Football season was made for families like this one!
Whether it’s college football or the NFL, weekends just become a lot more fun this time of year, don’t they?
Product Description from Amazon
I’m picturing so many delicious things on this gorgeous platter…. pigs in blankets, cookies, brownies, sandwiches, chips, cheese and crackers… and, just like that, I’ve made myself hungry.
See Pfaltzgraff Football Platter for more information and a closer look. This is a beauty.
T-Fal “Thermo-Spot” technology is something that was new to me, but now I’m completely hooked on it. The Thermo-Spot shows when your pan is ready to use… kind of like the red light that lets you know when your oven is good to go.
It’s amazing to me that someone hadn’t thought of this long ago. Leave it to T-Fal.
I also love that T-Fal Initiatives take the non-stick game to the next level. Seriously, everything slides right off of these pans. I love to make “cheese clumps” for salads and soups – which is simply putting little mounds of shredded cheese onto a skillet and letting them brown and crisp up a little. You’d think these guys would spell DISASTER for clean up, but T-Fal pans, they literally slide right off the skillet and into the dish.
As you’d expect from someone who has a food blog, I cook every single day of the week. In fact, when our cats need to find me (to play, feed them, scratch their heads or cater to them in any manner), the first place they look is always the kitchen. Come to think of it, the same’s true for every member of my family… except for the scratching heads part, the human members of my family seldom as for such a thing.
As an avid cook, I have had up close and personal experience with all manners of pots, pans, and cookware in general. If a new cook were to ask me to recommend ONE pan she/he should buy to begin their kitchen collection, I would recommend T-Fal. I love many different pans (including my beloved iron skillet collection), but this is the brand I’d most often recommend.
Why? In a word – perfection. T-Fal cookware is perfect in every single way.
Read more about T-Fal non-stick pans and their ingenious Thermo-Spots on Amazon.
Infinity Jars Glass Dish with Lid
I recently had the great pleasure of selecting a couple of Infinity Jars to review on my food blog and tea blog (Crazy Tea Chick). As soon as I saw their gorgeous collection of premium glass jars and containers, I knew the decision process was going to be a pain-staking one.
I honestly wanted everything I saw! It reminded me of walking into a a Japanese restaurant… what do I NOT want!?!
Infinity Jars features the largest collection of ultraviolet glass products you’ll find anywhere. Their unique jars, containers, and bottles are created and backed by scientists and health advocates around the world. Extensive research has gone into each product.
Not only does each container maintain the optimum freshness of nearly any food, dried good, lotion, or essential oil…. they look gorgeous going about their business.
The heavy duty jars are of the highest quality – and this truth rings home as soon as you hold one. These aren’t the food or herb containers you find in your local department stores – this are the type of containers celebrity chefs would have in their own kitchens.
The first jar I decided upon was the gorgeous Infinity Jar Glass Dish with Lid, pictured at the top. Not only is it uncommonly beautiful, I wanted to use it for “pinchable” black pepper and spice blends. There’s just something about “pinching” the spices you want to use when cooking.
In the picture above, I had a blend I use daily (seasoned salt, paprika, parsley, and garlic powder). It makes cooking faster and even funner to keep these “pinchables” handy.
I’ve also used it to store dry tea leaves. I buy a lot of tea leaves and love to combine them, creating a mixture (for example) of Blood Orange and Vanilla leaves. In the picture below, it was a blend of Raspberry and Peach tea leaves (it was out of this world, by the way).
I could also see using the Infinity Jar Glass Dish with Lid for beautiful carved soaps in the bathroom or by the kitchen sink, to hold potpourri, to store cinnamon sticks or dried herbs, or even as a gorgeous dish for softened butter on your holiday table.
It is simply gorgeous and its uses are many and varied.
I also chose the equally gorgeous Long Neck Glass Bottle. This beauty would be IDEAL for olive oil – or any other kind of oil or vinegar you frequently use, but I have bottles in use already for these kitchen staples. When I selected this bottle, I had one thing in mind, my vinegar-based salad dressing I always have made up… and I mean always.
What can I say, we eat a lot of salads in this house.
The jars come with a very cool cleaning cloth (pictured above) that keeps them shiny and beautiful. They also come with cool little labels which, quite honestly, I don’t use. The jars are just too darn pretty to mess with, in my opinion.
Head over to Infinity Jars to see all of their MANY beautiful products – but pour yourself a tall glass of iced tea first. You’ll be there a while deciding which you want first.
While I have a gazillion and seven things lined up to do today, I HAD to take a few minutes to tell you about a few special savings events going on and coming up on Target’s website.
While I’m wild at the thought of saving 25% (that ends up saving a lot of money), I think I’m even more excited by the thought of a 15$ gift card. More dishes!
Click through the link above or any of the images to see all the wonderful things in Target’s online Kitchen Department.
Also… while this isn’t remotely “kitchen” or “foodie” related (unless, of course, we’re talking about taking great food pics), Target also has another crazy deal going on from the 18th -24th: Earn yourself a Free $200 gift card when you buy an iPhone 7! Do you have ANY idea how many dishes you could buy with a $200 gift card??
If you order soon, you can still have this Stoneware Honey Pot delivered by Christmas. Le Creuset has an unreal number of gorgeous stoneware lovelies for the kitchen – many of which are also available in this Dijon color. Or, if you’re like me and pretty much go with every color of the rainbow, that’s more than possible too!
Inevitably, after months of shopping and planning, my best-received gifts are the cookies and candies I’ve made for my loved ones. That’s why, in the days leading up to Christmas, you can only find me if you look in my kitchen. I’m the one covered in powdered sugar, chocolate, and corn syrup – dancing around to Christmas music.
Man, I love this time of year!
If you love giving gifts you’ve made in your own kitchen, too, here’s a cookbook you’ll want to add to your library right away. Gifts from the Kitchen: 100 Irresistible Homemade Presents for Every Occasion, by Annie Rigg, is an uncommonly beautiful book. As a cookbook collector, one of the first things I notice about a cookbook is how good it feels about itself – the cover, artwork, and photographs let you know, right off the bat, if the cookbook feels really good about itself or if its heart is only half in it.
Gifts from the Kitchen feels amazingly good about itself – we’re talking “supermodel” confidence, here.
Naturally, for a book to be a great book – there has to be more than just great looks going for it. Thankfully, Gifts from the Kitchen comes through in the personality department, too – it’s not just a pretty face.
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Special Occasion Recipes Include
Recipes for Gifts That Fit Any Occasion Include
In addition to the clear and simple recipes, Gifts from the Kitchen provides beautiful examples of ways to present many of these food gifts to your lucky foodie.
This is not a “gluten free” cookbook, but many of the candies and other recipes are, in and of themselves, gluten free. I have not tested any of the other recipes with gluten free flours, so I can’t say how well they’d take to substitutions. It is, however, in my opinion, more than worth having in your collection. The candies, spreads, jellies, etc. outnumber the cakes and cupcakes… and even they provide inspiration and ideas for the gluten free cook.
I’m especially excited about a recipe for “Wholegrain Honey Mustard.” Wholegrain mustard is an obsession of mine – I add it to more recipes than you can imagine (potato salad, BBQ sauce, deviled eggs, egg salad sandwiches, salad dressings…). I can only imagine how amazing this homemade Wholegrain Honey Mustard will be!
See Gifts from the Kitchen for more information.
While you’re on Amazon, check out the other beautiful cookbooks by Annie Rigg.
Cast Iron Paleo by Pamela Ellgen
A recent cookbook I was sent (in exchange for telling you about it) has become an instant classic in my kitchen. How could it not? It fits perfectly in my wheelhouse:
It’s almost as though this cookbook were created for me personally.
Anyone who follows a gluten-free diet knows it can be a bit of a challenge to find recipes that address our personal needs. Can you imagine how much tougher it is, then, to find recipes for a Paleo diet?! That’s like taking our needs and doubling them.
Thankfully, there are great cookbooks (just like this one) that take the stress out of the equation and simplify cooking. Come on, life’s stressful enough – we don’t need extra hassles in the kitchen, right?
Here’s the think, fellow foodies, you don’t even have to follow a Paleo diet religiously or even “part-time” to enjoy… make that love.... Cast Iron Paleo. Think about it, we ALL should be cooking more healthy meals and less unhealthy ones, right?
Cookbooks like this are golden on two fronts:
{Review Continued Below….}
Just a Few of the Flavorful and Creative Recipes
The first recipe I made from Cast Iron Paleo was the Meatloaf on page 133. I normally make my meatloaf with gluten-free breadcrumbs but this particular recipe didn’t even call for them! It uses ground beef, pork, eggs, a few seasonings, and vegetables…. mixed and placed in an iron skillet, then topped with 6 slices of bacon.
I went with a basket-weave pattern with my bacon because it was Monday and I was feeling artsy. Yes, that qualifies as artsy for me.
I honestly didn’t know what to expect. The entire time the meatloaf was cooking, I kept thinking, “But no breadcrumbs?…. But no breadcrumbs?… but.. but…” My meatloaf anxiety was through the roof. But frequent peeks into the oven showed me (again and again) that all was well and the meatloaf was coming together beautifully.
I will say this, if you buy this cookbook (and you really, really should), this particular recipe does not mention an oven temperature. I simply went with the one I use for my regular meatloaf recipe, 350 degrees for the specified time (1 to 1-1/2 hours) and it did beautifully. All the other recipes gave specified temperatures. Perhaps the cookbook printer was sidetracked like me – “But no breadcrumbs?…. But no breadcrumbs?… but.. but…”
{Review Continued Below….}
Gluten-Free and Paleo Meatloaf – Look, Ma, No Breadcrumbs!
Chapter One gives a beautiful primer on cast iron skillets: benefits, history, seasoning, care, etc. Basically, anything you need to know about owning cast iron skillets is right there in one brief chapter.
Chapter Two lays out for the reader the dos and dont’s of the Paleo lifestyle. What to eat (and why) and what not to eat (and why).
After the first two chapters, you get to the meat of the matter (sorry, couldn’t help myself), the wonderful recipes. It’s been my experience that Paleo cookbooks (for whatever reasons) are always just filled with creatively flavorful recipes. Perhaps, since the Paleo cook’s resources are a little different that other’s, they look at food a bit differently. I can’t put my finger on it, but Paleo cookbooks are flat out packed with flavor and I’m loving every second of it.
Recipes Include:
{Review Concludes Below….}
Why I Have This Cookbook Listed in the Christmas Gift Guide:
First of all, Cast Iron Paleo, alone, would be a great gift any foodie would appreciate – especially a foodie who eats gluten-free or Paleo. However, if you wanted to “step up your game,” you could gift this cookbook along with a great cast iron skillet. My own personal preference is Lodge Cast Iron Skillets. Come to think of it, every cast iron skillet (I have an obsession, guys, I’m not lying) and grill pan I have is Lodge.
Read more about Cast Iron Paleo on Amazon today.
Everywhere you look in my kitchen and dining room, you see Rachael Ray and The Pioneer Woman. Ironically, they’re two of the celebrity cooks I turn to the most for recipes and television entertainment as well. I love that their kitchen merch compliments one another so beautifully.
Everything is so bright, colorful, and happy – like the ladies, themselves.
My family knows that when it comes to buying gifts for me, they can’t possibly go wrong with these two collections.
The Pioneer Woman Cast Iron Cookbook Holder
The Cast Iron Cookbook holder above is definitely something I need. It’s already available on Amazon, so no waiting is involved. Whoot!
Click through any of the links above or below for more gift ideas for cooks in your family – especially the one you see in the mirror. You know that one’s on the “nice list” after all!
The colorful ceramic cookie jar is 8″ W x 8″ D x 11″ H. Click through the link for a closer look.
Hamilton Beach 10-Cup Food Processor, with Bowl Scraper (Review)
Confetti Mixing Bowls (4 Piece Set) – Many Colors Available and They’re All Gorgeous
Hamilton Beach 10-Cup Food Processor, with Bowl Scraper (Review)
The T-Fal Cookware Set (Amazon link), above, is available in several gorgeous colors.
