Tag: featured
DIY Natural Skincare: Winners and Losers
If I could hold my head up high and proudly look you square in the eyes, you’d see that my skin is looking great. I’m slightly ashamed to tell you it’s not because of the plethora of DIY natural skincare concoctions I’ve been trying on my face. For more than a year starting with my […]
Tomato cucumber salad with quinoa and grilled sourdough
This is that magical time of year for food when all things come together to produce an embarrassment of riches, a “stupid first world problem.” In the Tomato Envy garden, there is so much fresh food it’s hard to know what to do with all of it. That’s when I turn to my trusty collection of […]
Summer Gazpacho
Someone reminded me the other day that although it’s September and photos of other peoples’ kids heading off to school with their new backpacks flood my Facebook feed, it’s still NOT fall. That doesn’t come until September 22nd this year, the autumnal equinox. So while I might be so over the heat and hard work […]
DIY Calendula Oil for Great Skin
How amazingly pretty are these little orange flowers? The sunny good looks of these edible calendula flowers belie their very serious benefits for dry, damaged skin. When you combine these benefits with those of a super nourishing oil, you tell your troubled skin, “I mean business.” Benefits of calendula for the skin Calendula, an annual flower sometimes […]
10 Fall Crops to Grow Now
I have mixed feelings about late summer. I wait all winter for spring because I love getting my hands in the soil and harvesting the first fresh food of the year. All summer, I work constantly to keep up with harvesting food, cooking or preserving it and making sure it doesn’t go to waste. Now as […]
Zucchini Oat Bread
Do you know people who consider zucchini bread to be almost as good as eating the vegetable itself? I do. I know people that use this sweet bread as a way to disguise zucchini so their kids will eat it. That’s all ridiculous. Let’s just call zucchini bread what it is: cake. Zucchini bread of course […]
Miso Sweet Corn Soup
Maybe it’s because my garden’s tomato harvest hasn’t yet begun to overwhelm me or maybe it’s my tendency to hoard food for winter, but when I saw the recipe in Bon Appetit for this soup, my first thought was, “I need to make big batches for the freezer!” My urgency to make this miso sweet […]
Cherry Browned Butter Bars
Spring and summer bring a barrage of fleeting treats after long winters of eating mostly root vegetables and whatever I was able to squirrel away in my freezer or pantry from the previous summer. First, I eagerly wait for asparagus, then that magic time when asparagus and morels overlap for about two weeks, then it’s […]
Your Ideal Life and the Big Picture
This is a post I’ve been wanting to write for months. I’ve had the ideas swirling around inside and I’ve been putting words to those ideas while I work, walk the dog, do the dishes, work in the garden, cut flowers, and wash my hair. I’m sure none of it will come out as eloquently as I’ve […]
Rustic Kale Mushroom Galette
In case you clicked through to this post only to discover what the heck a galette is, all you need to know is that it’s like a lazy man’s pie. And, almost everyone likes pie. A galette is special because it has the best elements of a good pie like an impossibly flaky crust and […]
Hi! I’m Brande. I’m a proud homebody, reluctant career girl, and happy wife to a nearly flawless husband. I’m not afraid of spiders, getting dirty, ill-advised kitchen experiments, or lofty ideas. Welcome! I can’t wait to get to know you. 
Freezer Friendly
Gluten Free
Good For Singles
Sure To Impress
Vegetarian