I feel like I haven’t posted a recipe in ages! The hardest thing for me about posting recipes is remembering to take pictures of the food as it’s being cooked and again once it’s done and plated. And even when I do remember, my pictures usually aren’t all that great, so it doesn’t make me particularly excited to share them here. Food photography is an art form unto itself! But I initially said that this blog would be an outlet for me to share recipes and cooking adventures, and I do cook new things fairly often, so I should stick to that more!

I’ve cooked some pretty delicious things lately (thank you Pinterest!), and I want to share a few of them with you so you can join in the fun.

For the 4th of July I made Plain Chicken’s Slowcooker Baby Back Ribs. I had never cooked ribs before, let alone bought them, so I was pretty clueless at the grocery store. I’m also not used to buying meat full price, so I was doubly overwhelmed. But I managed to find a package (a rack? a slab?) of “pork loin back ribs” for a reasonable price at Publix, so I bought them. I wasn’t sure if they were the correct type for the recipe, but I figured how bad could they be? I had no idea how to remove the membrane from the back as the recipe directed, so I didn’t. I also ended up needing to cut the slab in half in order to fit it in my crockpot, and I couldn’t get them to stand up as the recipe called for, but slow-cooked meat with a delicious rub can hardly turn out bad. Once I broiled the ribs briefly with some barbecue sauce, they were absolutely delicious. We enjoyed 3 each that night and 3 for lunch the next day! The meat came off the bone so easily that I actually made mine into a sort of sandwich on Hawaiian rolls. Mmm! If you don’t have a grill, or don’t want to grill, this is a great way to still have that festive barbecued meat.

Plain Chicken is one of my favorite blog resources for simple, unpretentious but delicious recipes, and I can also highly recommend her creamy jambalaya pasta, her slowcooker ham and beans, and just about any casserole she features on her blog!

For a quick, weeknight meal these pizza quesadillas have been a lot of fun. I’ve had, erm, issues trying to make quesadillas before wherein the smoke detector went off, but the guidelines in this recipe have opened up a whole world of quesadilla making to me! You can definitely play with the ingredients here and honestly use just about anything you have on hand. I like recipes like that.

For some reason during summer I find myself craving Southern foods like pimento cheese and chicken salad. I’ve made this skinny pimento cheese twice now. Andy doesn’t normally like mayonnaisey foods, and even though this uses Greek yogurt instead of mayonnaise I was worried it would hit the same textures triggers, but even he loved it! It makes up a nice-sized batch, and it’s great to have a dinner option that doesn’t heat up the kitchen at all.

And finally for today, check out Jessica Alba’s turkey meatballs. (Who knew that she was multi-talented?!) I found these on a whim when I had some ground turkey in the freezer that I decided I wanted to make into meatballs. A quick Google search turned up several recipes, from which I picked this one, and I’d say it was a success! The recipe could have been easier, but since it yielded enough for one meal and more for the freezer, I’ll forgive it. I love that these use turkey instead of beef and even have some sneaky vegetables in them.

I’m usually really bad about making a recipe once, declaring it delicious, and then never making it again. But I’m starting to have some go-tos, a few of which are included here. How do you find recipe inspiration? Do you tend to make the same thing frequently, or do you flit around like I do?

P.S. If you’re interested in keeping closer tabs on what I’m cooking, or gleaning some ideas, you can follow me on Pinterest! I make my meal plan from my pins every week, so it’s highly likely that I’ll actually try the things I pin.

I am notorious (well, with myself anyway) for making a recipe that I really like…and then never making it again. Especially with the advent of Pinterest and the All Recipes app on my phone, it is so easy and fun to make a new recipe every night of the week. Of course I have my basic standbys that aren’t really recipes at all, like boneless pork chops on the George Foreman grill and pan-fried chicken tenders, but otherwise I mix it up so much! But I think I need to figure out a way to keep track of the winners so I can revisit them. I’d love to have an arsenal of true recipes memorized. Plus, if it was good the first time, it would probably be great the second time, too!

Two Thanksgivings ago Andy and I decided to have a solo holiday, and I bought a ham because I a) don’t like turkey that much and b) was scared of cooking a turkey. Somehow a ham just seemed much more manageable. It came out delicious, but we of course had a LOT left over. I got it into my head that I wanted to make a ham and bean soup and a quick Google search turned up this one from All Recipes.

I’m linked up to Tasty Tuesday at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam!