Hoppy Eating!

On the Easter dinner menu:

Pork-tenderloin on a cornmeal biscuit with

homemade apricot-jalapeno jam.

Roasted Asparagus Bundles

Honey-Glazed Sweet Potatoes

Dinner is served.

Pineapple wedge salad with spicey fruit salsa

Disclaimer: Blogger is not responsible for keyboards ruined by drool. :)

B's in the kitchen

I love cooking for family and friends. Everything I know has been self-taught through many hours of Food Network TV, cookbooks and trial-and-error, as I have no formal training in the cooking/baking industry. I am on a quest to learn all that I can about the cooking world and share it with anyone and everyone interested.

I grew up watching my grandmother cook and remember wondering why in the world she started supper at noon. I mean, we rarely ate before 5:30 or 6:00. As I’ve gotten older and embarked on my own culinary journey, I’ve come to understand why she cooked all afternoon. Simply stated, she enjoyed cooking and I do too.

I watched Julia Child and Justin Wilson religiously as a kid. My Little Tykes kitchen was always in use and I mastered the art of the Easy Bake Oven while watching Julia master the art of French cuisine. I still remember my very first cookbook filled with simple recipes any child could make. Today, I read cookbooks like some people read novels and feel most calm when sitting at the kitchen table writing a recipe for the first time.

I want to share my passion for food and I've yet to figure out exactly how to do that. So, for now, I will share it here with anyone that cares to read. I’ve traded in my Little Tykes Kitchen and Easy Bake Oven for my professional cookware and other grown-up kitchen gadgets. I hope you will enjoy and try some of the recipes I share here. Feel free to ask questions or share your own recipes with me!

Cooper River Bridge Run

For the past 7 years, Brent and I have been participating in the Cooper River Bridge Run which is held in Charleston, SC. It's a 10K run over the famous Cooper River Bridge aka the Arthur J. Ravanell Bridge. We just love sharing in this event with 40,000 of our closest friends.

The day starts by arriving in downtown Charleston no later than 6:00 a.m., so that you can be bussed over to Mount Pleasant where the race begins. The wait for the bus is generally about an hour. Once the race begins, it's an endless obstacle course of strollers, walkers and speed runners. Trying to navigate the course while remaining on your feet is the true test. My favorite thing about this event, the costumes! You just never know what you are going to see. I've shared some of my favorites from this year's run below. I hope you enjoy!



This man juggled the entire race.



Almost to the top.

Just a few people...

Men in the Red Hat Society

The Easter Bunny got in on the festivities.

On the bus headed to the race.

On My Honor, I Will Try...

...To NOT eat another Girl Scout cookie!

On Sunday, I had a run in with the Girl Scouts and their damn cookies. You see, because they called to me from the grocery store entrance I bought 4 boxes (lemon-whateveritscalled, thin mints, dulce de leche and do-si-dos) of them. Unfortunately, I am definitely not the chick who can eat just one cookie or one serving for that matter. So in two days I’ve eaten a box of the lemon cookies. Oops! The other three boxes now reside in my freezer where they will probably die a slow death because I will forget they exist. My scale thanks me in advance.

Ash Wednesday

From dust you came and from dust you will be resurrected.

Last night I attended Ash Wednesday service. For those of you that don’t know, Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the Lenten season. Lent is the 40 day period leading up the super bowl Sunday for Christians a/k/a Easter. The goal of Lent is not to make a plan for change and follow it to the letter. Rather, the goal is to make a change that sinks deeply into life, drawing us closer to self, others, and God. Lent is about intentionally opening ourselves, preparing to receive God’s goodness.

My prayer for this Ash Wednesday is:

Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence O Lord,
Take not thy Holy Spirit from me,
Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation,
and renew a right spirit within me.

The Shack

I recently finished reading WM. Paul Young’s controversial book The Shack and (at the risk of sounding too cliche) if you read one book this year, let this be the book! The Shack is God as I have never seen him before. With every page, the complicated do’s and don’ts that distort a relationship into a religion were washed away as I gained a new understanding of God the Father (Papa), God the Son (Jesus) and God the Holy Spirit (Sarayu) for the first time in my life.

The story centers around the abduction and murder of Missy Phillips, Mack’s youngest daughter, during a family vacation. Four years after the Great Sadness began, Mack is summoned back to The Shack where the horrid incident occurred to meet with God. As Mack walks back into his worst nightmare wondering where was this God during the worst moment of his life, his world is forever changed.

I hope you will read this book and share it with someone else.

Lessons Learned in Bootcamp

Three mornings per week at the ass-crack of dawn, I get up at 4:45 to attend a boot camp fitness class. A class I pay money to attend and be yelled at like some criminal in the prison system all in the name of fitness. I thought I would share these highly valuable lessons I have learned in such a short amount of time.

1. Boot Camp is a four-letter word.

2. Never tell the Sargent your name. Doing so will result in being called out periodically (frequently if you are like me and you need to stop and pick your heart up off the floor).

3. 100 pushups is considered a "warm-up."

4. Drill Sergeants are never nice. They are merely setting you up to have your ass kicked again.

5. The miracle mile involves running 55 flights of stairs should be called "It’s-a-miracle-if-you-don’t-die-trying-to-finish-it-mile."

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with me?