Mom's White Bean Hummus

I don't know if I mentioned it here on the blog, but my mom is one of my biggest culinary inspirations.

She has always been the absolute best cook I know.

She's always trying something new and she's not afraid to get the kitchen dirty while doing it.

Whenever my dad and mom first got married they lived with my grandmother (my dad's mom) for a little while before they got a house of their own. Since Penny (my grandmother) wasn't a cook, she and my mom worked out a deal. My mom would cook dinner and Penny would clean up. 

The story goes that many nights Penny would say that she didn't know whether to clean the kitchen or just burn it.

I definitely feel that way sometimes. But no matter what the kitchen looks like, my mom's cooking is absolutely worth any amount of cleaning.

Grown Up, Goat Cheese Dessert

I absolutely love looking at other food blogs.

It's so fun to see the different way that food bloggers cook and photograph various ingredients. And I love using recipes from other blogs.

Birthday Cake With Tang

We had a birthday at our house recently.

My husband, Jason, turned 24 on Tuesday and I made sure that we had a few parties to celebrate his wonderfulness!

On Tuesday, I made him a birthday dinner of filet mignon (ok, so he cooked that part), bacon-wrapped asparagus, goat cheese mashed potatoes and an incredible dessert of goat cheese custards with red wine berry sauce (these will be up on the blog soon).

Easy Hummus

One food that I discovered during my time in England was hummus.

There were always two flavors of hummus (regular and Moroccan) at my little grocery store in Oxford and I always had a package in my fridge while living there.

Hummus is a perfect, healthy, creamy dip. I love it on pita or pita bread, tortilla chips, raw carrots and as a condiment on sandwiches.

Almond Shortbreads

So, as I mentioned in my last post, I had a wonderful culinary gift delivered to my door a few weeks ago.

My own retro blue Kitchen Aid stand mixer!

I have been wanting one of these mixing magic machines for quite a few years. And finally I was able to combine some wedding gift cards with some cash to get one.