Baking with Blondie

Happy Monday, everyone! We're all at the beginning of a brand new week. These last few weeks of May for us are jam-packed with everything I don't want to have to deal with next month when the baby comes. I've crammed it all into May, and left June completely wide open in case this little guy comes early, or I need to slow things down again...

I have been making cupcakes and frosting since as long as I can remember, but my love for baking these little cupcake beauties didn't really start until my husband was in law school and I had more time to play around with the flavors. I fell hard for the cupcake, and love making them to this day almost every weekend for cake/cupcake orders.  I rarely, though, share my recipes. Why? I like to keep the mystery alive in my baking! I like to have the magical recipe that works every time, that makes people's mouths water, and keeps them coming back for more. However... 

I remember the first time I had spaghetti squash. It was after my Grandma June's funeral viewing, and it had been quite the long day. We stumbled over to my grandma's empty house afterwards, and were pretty exhausted. I remember thinking just how hungry we were, and how I wished we would have packed more things to munch on afterwards. When we walked through the door to my grandma's house, a lovely smell filled our senses. My sister, the paleo-tastic queen, had made a spaghetti squash turkey lasagna bake for everyone to enjoy for dinner. It smelled amazing, and although I had sworn off spaghetti squash altogether, I filled my plate and took my first bite. Although she didn't include the cheesy layer like I did in this recipe below, hers tasted just awesome. I was sold on spaghetti squash forever, and knew right then I would need to recreate this heavenly dish at home for my boys someday. 

Posts will probably sneak down to only two a week here on Baking with Blondie for a while - we are only about 8 weeks away from baby time! My pregnancies (well, the first and only prior to this one) have been super mild in the first trimester, but SUPER insane the last trimester. So things will definitely slow down, but I promise I'm still here, still trying new recipes for this little food blog of mine!  Easy dinner recipes have been my middle name throughout this entire pregnancy. I love being able to enjoy something quick and easy, without having to be in the kitchen standing for too long. Meals like this one have been my complete go-to sanity, and my family eats them up quickly, so I'd say we've found something we're going to stick to for now. 

Guys. I did it.  I made fish.  I HATE HATE HATE HATE fish. With a passion.  But decided to make it for a good reason; the best reason, in fact: my husband's favorite food on the planet is fish. Whenever we go out to eat, he'll order something with fish in it. He LOVES fish. And I never ever cook it because, well, it's fish. It smells like fish. It looks like fish. It tastes like fish. And this preggo Momma can't handle it.  But I decided to brave the unknown. Ryan helped me make the sauce, and I braved the fish. Something awesome happened...

I'm not usually a fan at all of lemon in pasta. Countless of recipes have been tried where lemon is the star of the pasta dish or the chicken dish, and after trying the recipe, there was always what I felt was too much lemon. It was completely overpowering, and I would have to spend the next 10 minutes or so trying to figure out how to bring everything back in balance. I bomb recipes all the time, and figuring out how to save it is just part of the game at dinnertime!  This recipe, however, has completely changed my mind. I wanted to give lemon pasta one more go, and was happily proven wrong! THIS IS AMAZING STUFF, folks. Let's jump right in, shall we?

We are a firm believer in brinner. Usually once a week, one of our dinners is planned out to be omelets, pancakes, a breakfast casserole, or french toast. French toast is definitely one that we come back to very often - mostly because we almost always have all the ingredients for it (bread, eggs, milk, etc). It's also super cheap to make! Talk about a super-inexpensive and easy way to get dinner on the table, and fast. However, I always, against my husband's raised eyebrow, try to serve a green smoothie along with it to my boys; because, veggies always, always, always need to happen (especially at dinnertime). A little bit of bacon, shredded fresh hash browns, or a veggie scramble, would go lovely next to these lovely buttery bites of heaven, too.  So why croissants? Well...  I usually buy two large loaves of bread at Costco every two weeks. Sometimes every three, depending on how quickly the boys go through them. But a couple weeks ago, I found myself on a Thursd...

With my first pregnancy (our now 4 year-old son), I craved one thing, and one thing only: Chinese food. Not the classy, upscale, good stuff (not sure where that exists, but I'm sure it does somewhere). I wanted the trashy am-I-eating-cat-or-what-the-heck-is-this Chinese food from the random food court in a shady strip mall. Orange chicken. Fried Rice. All of it. I wanted it. I craved it all the time.  

There are weeks when we try new recipes for dinner almost every single night, and then there are weeks like a couple weeks ago when we just chug along with the usual tacos, spaghetti, etc. And hey! There's nothing wrong with that, friends.  Unless you're a food blogger...

Ever since spring has begin to peek it's way lovingly through our windows, I've been craving the sweet bursting flavors of fresh berries. Thankfully, now that they are beginning to be in season (strawberries especially), I've been able to toss them into our salads without spending a pretty penny at the grocery store.  I've received a lot of fun and positive feedback from you fine people about my Berry Spinach Salad with Strawberry Lime Vinaigrette  - thank you!!! I've even gone to a friend's house and it's what she had just barely served her family along with dinner. It was so fun to see, and I LOVE hearing about how the recipes I've shared have been working beautifully in your homes. That's such a fun part of food blogging, and kind of my favorite part, actually.  Anyway, I thought we should try another salad recipe involving those gorgeous berries, and this time, I wanted to focus on one of my favorite berries in particular: blackberri...