This post brought to you by New York Life. All opinions are 100% mine. We are a family of many traditions, and we are fortunate that longevity seems to be a family trait. My great uncle was the first to come to America, and over a period of 20 years helped the rest of our […]
I love to cook at home for my family, and I definitely want our family meals to be delicious, but I also like simple. Cooking entire meal in one pot, like my new Le Creuset 6 3/4 Qt French Oven, keeps things neat and simple, and there is less to clean up after a good […]
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This pot is on my wish list! This sounds delicious. I’ll admit I’m not a fan of tofu, but it has been a long time since I tried it. I think I’d love this with chicken though.
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I used to cook with tofu a lot in college, but haven’t in a while. I’ll have to try this soon. Thanks!
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I don’t know that I’ve ever tried tofu. If mushrooms are going to be in my food, they better be microscopic! 🙂 I don’t like them.
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That looks amazing – both the food and the dutch oven. It looks big enough to fit a dish for our family of 6!
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I have a cast iron stock pot I try to use for dishes and it never turns out quite like I’d like. This looks like a great pot and delicious recipe!
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I wouldn’t have thought to do a honey baked tofu. It sounds delicious!
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I often do a pot roast in a one-pot style on the stove. Your risotto looks delicious!
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Yep, it’s big enough to cook a whole chicken or turkey (small to medium sized)!
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Lol 🙂 I adore both tofu and mushrooms, I could eat them every day!
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It has been a long time since we had tofu. I like stew and baked beans for a one pot meal. That’s all that’s coming to mind right now.
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I plan to get some more Creuset after the kitchen is finished. The switch to an induction cook top will have me replacing a ton of pans.
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I don’t care for tofu or mushrooms, but that does look so good. I really would love that French Oven, though!
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I’m so jealous that you have a Le Creuset dutch oven! They are beautiful, useful and for me – drool worthy. I’m not a huge fan of tofu but I would give this recipe a try. . . at least once.
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Yum it looks great and my husband would love all the mushrooms.
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I just have to say your pot is SO pretty! I have never had risotto, I know that could sound weird. It sounds amazing I just have never ventured out and tried it! I think it is about time!!
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Le Creuset items are hands down the best! They last for a lifetime. I am always up for enjoying a yummy risotto as well.
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I had no idea making risotto was so easy and I love that you have mushrooms in this!
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I love those kinds of pots. I should use mine more often. I may start with this recipe.
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I’m not a big fan of mushrooms but it does look pretty tasty!
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Great recipe! I love tofu and mushrooms. 🙂
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I think this pot would be a great addition to my kitchen for sure. I can think of many meals that would be perfect for cooking in it. I have never tried tofu at all. I am not a huge fan of mushrooms (except in cream of mushroom soup in for my swiss steak.)
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That looks delicious!
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This looks amazing! And, I have the exact same pot lol.
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I have never made tofu before. Ever. This is interesting and tasty sounding enough that I might give it a go!
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I am printing this recipe off, looks so good. I make a french onion soup a lot in my french oven.
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That sounds delicious! I want a French Oven SO badly.
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I actually really like tofu when it has lots of flavor cooked in. I have never used a dutch oven before, but this looks like a good reason to give it a shot.
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Looks great, Penelope. I love my Le Creuset pieces, although I don’t have as many as I want 🙂
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Can you ever have enough? I want the grill pans, the little pots, the utensils…I want it all 🙂
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That french oven is beautiful! I love their products!!
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We don’t eat much tofu. But this recipe looks delicious. We’ll have to try it.
This post brought to you by Miracle-Gro. All opinions are 100% mine. When I was single, I never thought I’d be the type of woman who’d work from home to be close to her children. I never thought I’d be the type to lovingly cook meals at home to make sure everything her family ate […]
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I love eating veggies out of my own garden (and my f-i-l’s garden). They taste so much better and I know they’re organic. I always use Miracle-Gro in my vegetable and flower garden.
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We want to grow our own food. Our children seem to try more veggies that they grow themselves. Plus, we are growing as a part of our farm business.
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I love the idea of gardening! Maybe it’s something new we could try.
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We use to use Miracle Gro for years. I am not in a house anymore, but will pick some up when I start my seeds.
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I’ve been saying this for years but one day I’d love to have a garden.
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I’m going to attempt a bigger garden this year with more variety. Last year all I had was tomatoes in my garden.
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Sounds like you have a great mindset and your family is lucky to have you as “mom”. I always thought growing vegetables would be neat but I have never actually tried to make a garden.
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Lovely picture! Gardening is something that I have loved doing since as a teenager. I have never grown vegetables before, though, but I’d love to attempt to do this someday.
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There are definitely sacrifices in having kids but they are great 🙂 What a fun campaign to really connect with others.
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I love to grow a garden full of vegetables and flowers, because it makes me feel closer to nature, and because there is nothing else that tastes as good as vegetables fresh from the garden. I love to set the table with a vase full of flowers cut from my own yard, too, to make it a more pleasant atmosphere while we are eating.
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I also enjoy showing my family love through homecooked organic meals.
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I love the idea of gardening! I just wish I had a yard to do it.
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I would love to have a nice garden in the back yard. We’ve talked about it for a few years but need to actually do it. 🙂
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I adore that photo, Penelope. 🙂
Yes, we grow veggies — hoping to add more beds this year.
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We use Miracle-Gro in our garden too. My mother-in-law swears by it and is very loyal to this brand. I love the spin you put on this post. Like you, I never dreamed I’d be the stay-at-home/work-at-home mother in a million years. Now I wouldn’t change it for anything.
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We have always used Miracle Gro, great product, love the picture!!
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I agree that a garden is love… in so many ways.
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I tried to start a flower garden with the boys last year, but then we went on our summer trip and by the time we got home they were all dead. We are going to try to do a fall garden this year though.
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Like your dad I love growing vegetables in our garden. I’m so looking forward to getting our seedlings into the ground and picking that first ripe tomato or batch of lettuce and mesclun.
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It is amazing how motherhood changes us! As I grow as a mother and a wife, I too want nothing but to protect my family and do everything I can to “grow them” into the most wonderful unit.
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My husband wants to garden this year and we’ve been pricing things to see how much it’ll cost. I’ve heard of Miracle Grow but never used it but I’ll definitely check it out, for sure.
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This is such a sweet post! I can’t really grow anything due to lack of space and extreme heat, but I really wish I could. In the meantime, I make sure I buy good food from the store.
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You’re growing love and healthy boys – definitely the best career change!
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I seriously have a black thumb and with the drought here in Texas, I’m not even sure what I could grow. I saw some hanging strawberry baskets at the nursery the other day though that I think I could manage. I think we did a good job growing a young lady though, we think she turned out pretty awesome 😉
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That is so wonderful that your father did that for you. Now you are doing that for your family. It’s a wonderful thing to pass on.
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What a great momma you are!! Looks like you really do have so much love and compassion and it is nice to see you are there for all the important milestones of your kids life!! I love having a garden!! I can’t wait for us to start one this year!!
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Miracle-Gro has some wonderful and amazing quality’s you wouldn’t believe how beautiful the flowers turned out that I planted last year
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I love that you changed careers to be home with your boys. That picture is adorable, by the way.
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I would love to be able to grow my own vegetables like you do. So hard to do in the desert.
In the early months of being a new mom, we can sometimes be super frazzled. We call it “mommy brain”, a state in which the lack of sleep combined with out of control hormones and spending all our time caretaking a teeny (and demanding) human being causes us to forget the most basic things- like […]
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GAH — I sooooo could have used this when I was in the bottle phase of Mommyhood.
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This is so awesome, the perfect gift for a new mom. Wish I had had one.
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Is it so bad that I want one of those drying racks though I don’t have any babies in the house?! It would be great for glasses, silverware, and caps/lids. We used to have these disposable bibs and plastic reusable sippy cups that make eating out soooo much easier!
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How neat is this? My friend could use one for her baby!
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I am definitely in the thick of the “Mommy brain” period right now! I could definitely use that dryer rack, I love the look of it!
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So nice knowing that everything is right there where you need when you need it! They’re really thinking about moms!
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That is what I told my husband! I said “this can be used to dry anything, it’s versatile for long term use”
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Thanks for posting about this, I’m going to keep it in mind for a gift for any new moms I know. It was a long time ago that I had a baby, but I remember the bottles and lids and sippy cups overtaking my counter top! This would have been so handy.
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This is a great tool. I wish this was around 6 years ago.
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Now this is AWESOME!! I love how it folds up and it is so compact!!! Great organizer for sure!!
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This looks like a neat product! My daughter could use it for her milk jar lids!
I loved our bouncy seat because all our children loved it and I could move them from room to room with me as I cleaned, folded laundry etc.
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This is so cool looking and such a neat concept. I can come up with many other issues besides just baby bottles. Thank you for telling us about this neat gadget.
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I most definitely have mommy brain almost 7 weeks pp! I forget things all day long and can’t form coherent sentences
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This would have come in so handy when my daughter was little.
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Just the thought of organized storage makes me smile! I was a bottle feeding mama, so something like this could have really come in handy.
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This is amazing. I wish I had one when I was younger and needed it! It’s a perfect gift for a new mom.
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I wish I had one of these when my kids were little.
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I need a lid organizer for my fitness bottles LOL! And I’m not so sure I don’t still have a little “mommy brain” even though my youngest is 8!
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It have a Munchkins drying rack, but it isn’t good as this one. 🙂
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Wow, how I am getting this for my daughter! She is do in September, love it!
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This is so handy! It’s usually a struggle to get things completely dry and not smelling stale.
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This looks like a very handy organizer. This would have come in handy with the babies but ours was very basic.
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These are some great products. They would be really nice baby shower gifts.
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I used a sanitizer thingy that you put into the microwave. I could use it at night and have clean bottles the next morning. While I’m not a huge microwave fan, it was convenient and I wasn’t heating up the kitchen by boiling water on the stove.
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This would have been so nice to have when my children were much smaller!
This post brought to you by Upromise by Sallie Mae. All opinions are 100% mine. Parents want to help their children, and ideally we’d love to be able to help them with college costs as well, as much as we can. Upromise by Sallie Mae is a rewards program where shoppers can earn cash back […]
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I am SO glad our daughter earned herself a full tuition & fees scholarship and got a semester stipend to go with it. It took so much pressure off of us to figure out how we were going to help foot the bill for a 4 year degree. That being said, now the pressure is all on her to get good grades up so she keeps the scholarship 🙂
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I went through that too, I had a scholarship and had to study hard to keep up my GPA…that kept me in line all those college years 🙂
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I was fortunate to have a full-ride to my private university … not sure how I would have afforded it otherwise…. there wasn’t such a thing as UPromise then!
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I completely forgot about my Upromise account! Thanks for the reminder. OF course I can’t remember my login information because it’s been so long!
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I wish I would have gotten the same when I was younger. Student loans are horrific!
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WE have a Upromise account with both children. We only have a couple hundred in it for like ten years, but every little bit helps!
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Put three children through college, still managing two of their accounts. Would love to let it go!
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This is one area I would like a do over on. My son will be a senior in high school next year.
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It’s great that there are things like this to help families. College is insanely expensive. :/
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The only thing I love more than shopping online is earning cash back! How wonderful to be able to consider your child’s education.
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I’d never heard of this program before. What a great way to save up for such an important thing little by little.
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I really wish I’d taken more advantage of that when my kids were younger. I started way too late, and it really adds up if you start early.
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This is a wonderful program. I wish they would have had this when my son was born.
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such a great program and with college rates climbing every little bit helps
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This could really add up! I need to set up an account.
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The cost of college is outrageous and this sounds like just the thing to help defray the cost.
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Sounds like an awesome way to save up for college.
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Upromise hasn’t really given me a whole lot of money through the years, but I can see where the concept is good. The cost of college is crazy!!
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What a wonderful program!
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My son is only 5 but it’s time I started looking towards his future..
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With the rising cost of college, I don’t think we’ll be able to afford it without help like this program.
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I just checked our Upromise account the other day and was impressed with what we had in there.
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I so hope our son can get full scholarships when he goes to college. I know I don’t want him to have to get student loans and pay for 10 years after he graduates, like I did.
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I think it’s wonderful for parents to be able to earn money to use for tuition. Schools are so expensive!
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I don’t really know what my daughter’s future holds. No matter where her progress is at, having a fund to help her get started would be great.
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Great post, lots to think of when college rolls around. We put three children all through college. My two boys are now paying their own college bills which we love. Still paying for my daughters 🙂
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How many children do you have?
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We have three. 28, 26 and 22
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Wow, you look tooooo young!;-)
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Thank you Penelope!
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We have a Upromise account that I had forgotten about. I wish we had the opportunities to add to it here like we did in FL. I just don’t see many places that accept upromise around here.
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Florida has a prepaid college program. I have both children signed up under this.
My husband and I are first generation Christians and we have just wanted to pass that heritage on to our own children, but it will be ultimately their decision to keep it going or not.
Sounds like you have such kind and generous family members! I don’t feel like many traditions were passed down to me, so it’s up to us to create some.
Your grandfather sounds like an amazing man. I don’t think too many traditions were past down to me, but my husband and I are making new ones. 🙂
My little girl inspires me every day. Despite her disability, she is generally a cheerful child. If she can handle that much frustration with some modicum of grace, I sure in the heck can.
What a touching story and an inspiring family you have! All of my ancestors came through Ellis Island as well, mostly from Russia and Germany.
Aah, what a nice story to read. Your family sounds wonderful.
Your daughter is a beautiful little angel 🙂 Just seeing pictures of her in your posts makes my day, she is so sweet and happy.
Such an amazing story and what an inspiring family you have!
Stories of family members coming to America are always so inspiring. I definitely feel it is important to share the good- I had nothing as a child and so the memory of that fuels me to give back.
My husband is a retired Firefighter/Paramedic. I’m hoping that one of sons will follow in that to make that a tradition.
I grew up poor, yet my single mother always managed to provide for me. This taught me to how to be thankful and appreciate things without taking them for granted.
What a wonderful story of family. I’m thankful for my family’s longevity too.
What an inspiring and interesting story.
What a beautiful and touching story!
There are several inspiring experiences that I’ve heard and seen which have directly affected my life. What an amazing person your grandfather must have been!
I’m a first generation North American as my mom’s family emigrated from Germany in the 50’s. My dad immigrated when he was an adult. Both have incredible stories to tell from World War II from my Dad being separated from his parents when he was just 7 years old and having to look after his two younger sisters, to my Mom’s family escaping over the Berlin Wall. The courage, bravado and faith that both sets of my grandparents had to keep their families safe and not compromise their faith are such an inspiration to my family.
There was a time many many years ago when my life felt like a prison. I was married to an abusive man who controlled every single aspect of my life, and I had nothing. When I left I was penniless with three kids in tow. For an entire month I lived off of angle food cake because that is the only thing we had left over after I gave the boys the nutritious food from the food bank handouts. After being at a point like that, it was all the inspiration I needed to get up, change my life around and inspire me to keep the good going for the rest of my life.
Oh my gosh! You really are inspirational!
That is so cool that he helped people one by one like that. What an awesome guy. You’re going back into pharmacy one day? That’s great!
My family inspires me. They make me strive to be a better person. Sounds like you have a wonderful family, Penelope.
Jewel inspired me as teenager/young adult. To go from being homeless, to what she has now, is amazing.
My mothers childhood, reminds me to keep doing good!