It’s been a good month full of cookies, cakes, pies, and candy. Somewhere in all of it I made this soup. I think it was on the day I made chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies, and two batches of shortbread cookies. I am a baking machine. When I get going, it is on. In between cookies baking I thought about a filling soup to balance out the sugar. Yes, it has cream in it, but just a bit. I got some beautiful kale and sweet…

Chole is an Indian dish that I learned about in my Asian Cuisine class in Culinary School. It is also known as Chana Masala. In this particular class we were focusing on the cuisine of India. We made samosas, chutneys, flat breads, and curries. This is a Northern Indian dish full of spices, onions, tomatoes, and chickpeas. Beautiful and flavorful, perfect on a cold day, and this cleanse. It is vegetarian, vegan, gluten free, the works. We were…

It’s no secret here or to anyone I know I crave Mexican food all of the time, everyday. I love the balance of flavors it offers with acidity, sweetness, sour, and sometimes spicy, but always so good. Being on the cleanse I needed to find a way to eat tacos. Yes, it is difficult for me to not eat tacos for 21 days. I love tacos, clearly. I can eat tortillas on this cleanse, so long as they do not contain weird ingredients, they must be…

Did you know pears are a year round fruit? We think of them as winter bearing fruits, but in fact you can fresh of the tree fruit whenever you want. Especially here in the Pacific Northwest, pears are abundant and beautiful. I took this opportunity to add natural sweetness to a butternut squash soup recipe using pears. Also seeing as I just finished my 21 Day Food Lovers Cleanse, I am easing into eating meat again. So it was fun balancing…

I am feeling like the luckiest girl in the world. Hard work pays off, good people karma, and all the trimmings. I took a trip to Virginia the week before last to visit the Sabra hummus factory, and chickpea farm. How super duper cool is that? This trip and the bloggers who get invited to be Sabra Tastemakers. The people at Sabra and Seymour Public Relations make this all possible and work so hard to make it a seamless experience from start to…

This is the easiest no heat using soup that the Summer can offer! Yes it’s soup. But it’s tortilla soup, so it doesn’t count in my book. You know when you want good food, but are running around enjoying Summer, working, and playing but also don’t want to eat out? That is what the crock pot is for, I think. I rarely use my crock pot, but it saves so much time, and avoids using hot stoves and ovens. Plus this tortilla…

Disclosure: This is a compensated post in collaboration with Gourmet Garden Herbs. As usual all opinions are my own. Thank you Gourmet Garden for making NJB awesomeness possible! Herb squash biscuits?!!! Yes. Ok, it’s just a smidge of squash but it’s there, and it is totally necessary. The squash made friends with the Gourmet Garden Oregano that I used in this recipe. They played off one another to give this biscuit a deep savory…