I am giving away this fabulous Fun Da-middles gift pack on Cooked from the Heart and it is scheduled to end this Friday. So make sure you go on over there and leave me a comment! That’s all you have to do to enter the giveaway. If you’re a blogger and a social media addict, of course there are also extra ways for you to earn additional entries

HAPPY MONDAY, EVERYONE!

With the weekend coming up, I’m scouting for recipes to try this weekend. I have a few in mind already now we’ll just have to see how much energy I have left to actually cook them!  It’s a grey and rainy day here in NC today and I’ve been craving some kind of bean soup. So if nothing else, I just may have me a pot of soup this weekend!

If you’re on a look out for food ideas, here’s a few recipes recently published in our kitchen blog:

Here is a delicious marinade for fajitas. My husband loves his red meat so steak fajitas it is for him but you can also use the same marinade for chicken or whatever meat you choose even shrimps. With shrimps though, just make sure to not marinate it too long as the lime will start breaking down your shrimps. i.e. cook it before you’re ready to put it on the fire.

This would be perfect for that last hurrah on the grill.

How about hamburgers for breakfast? Well why not?

It has all the elements of a good healthy breakfast: starch in the form of bread, your protein in the beef patty and the addition of an egg makes it complete! A great way to start the day.

Try it out!

Here’s another out of time dish if you’re like us and don’t mind eating out of turn once in a while. Grits is usually eaten for breakfast, but this dish is so good, it’s good enough for dinner!

If you’re up for something really delicious, you gotta try out this Mushroom and Shrimps over Cheesy Grits. As Paula Dean would say, this will make you want to smack yo’ momma!

 And if you’re wanting to want to try something exotic and new yet somehow comforting as the weather cools, then you’ll enjoy this chicken stewed in coconut milk. The flavors are not shocking, but they are mildly exotic. Just enough to make you dream you’re sitting somewhere sunny and warm.

Try this out when the weather starts getting too cold and dreary. It’s a perfect thing to keep the SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) away.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

It’s the height of summer and most kids are home, probably sleeping in most days or involved in one kind of summer activity or another. Here’s one treat that most of them will love; I know my girls love having this ‘puffy pancake’ as they call it.

I usually reserve this for our weekend breakfast but it can easily be a weekday treat too especially when everyone is home during the summer.

With the dog days of summer upon us with a vengeance, I try not to fire up the oven in the middle of the day but early in the morning, this is a delicious exception to that rule!

The great thing about this pancake, not only is it gorgeous as it puffs up over your skillet majestically, it is also so easy to put together that you can have an amazing breakfast ready in less than an hour.
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Just plugging a couple of posts on my other blogs…

I have a guest post on Found Not Lost, Jillian Gile who is a guest blogger at My Dog Ate My Blog. She writes for us, 10 Tips for Running a Successful Book Club. She has some really great and sound ideas if you are running a book club or if you’re setting up a new one.

On my cooking blog, I posted a step by step recipe on HOW TO MAKE SAUSAGE GRAVY. It was the highlight of our Weekend Leftover Brunch that I wrote about last night.