Our family is continuing our efforts to eat more vegetarian meals each week and this Taco Lentil Soup recipe has been a perfect weeknight dish to help us with that goal. A few things I love about this recipe: 1) it’s easy to make and is a one-pot meal for quick clean up, 2) it’s full of pantry staples like dry lentils, canned beans, salsa and taco spices so I can make it when there’s not much in the fridge, and 3) the recipe is great for making ahead of time and reheats well for leftovers.
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We are in a stage of toddler-hood where everything and anything must be tied to a seasonal theme. We need decorations on all of our windows that feature the nearest holiday, our Sunday morning pancakes must be in the shape of a holiday icon (bunnies! shamrocks! hearts!), and even our after dinner treats require some seasonal touches. Jane requested St. Patrick’s Day cookies and we made this green M&M cookie recipe together on a recent snowy day.
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I am always on a mission to reduce food waste, and one of my favorite ways to use up the scraps leftover in our fridge is to make a big pot of chicken stock. It’s a ritual in our house, every few weeks I’ll roast a chicken for dinner and use the leftovers for lunches and the bones for replenishing my stash of chicken stock (it freezes well for later use!). The stock is a kitchen staple –I use it in so meals from soups and sauces, and it even tastes great on it’s own. My secret to make fast work of stocking up on stock is to use my Instant Pot. 
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I’m sitting at my desk and staring out the window — looking at the blanket of snow covering our yard — and the idea of springtime seems quite distant. My friends at Christmas Tree Shops andThat! invited me into their stores last week to preview all of the festive new items for spring and Easter, and it got me so excited for that snow to melt, for the flowers to bloom and to celebrate in the season ahead!
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Last week my friend Sarah Waldman — a fellow food writer and my go-to-gal for clean beauty advice — and I hosted a little chat on IG Live. We talked all about how we both got on our clean beauty journey and then dug into some of our favorite products. We specifically chatted a lot about winter skin — and both of us have very different skin types so I thought it was interesting to see the products we both love and a few of the unique items she recommended that weren’t on my radar — Sarah loves the face oils, I’m a serum gal! You can go back and watch the entire interview on my instagram page, and I thought I’d share a few of the highlights from it in a blog post. Scroll down for some of our favorite clean beauty products for winter (and PS: new customers can get 20% off their orders right now — just visit beautycounter.com/katebowler to shop!)
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I’m kicking off another year of my annual reading list — it’s a running list of every book I’ve read with a brief recap and mini-book review. Last year I didn’t meet the goal I set, I fell short because I had a hard time focusing at night and was juggling a lot during the end of the year (weren’t we all?!). I’m just starting to get back into the reading groove and it’s such a good way for me to escape and power down at the end of the day (and fingers crossed that later in 2021 I’ll get to do some vacation reading if we ever get to travel again!). One of my goals this year is to focus on diversity over quantity. Instead of setting a goal for the number of books I want to read, I’m challenging myself instead to read from diverse authors, perspectives, and genres. See everything I read in year’s past on 2018’s list, 2019’s list and 2020’s list for more book inspiration and scroll down for my current reading queue:
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I’ve got an easy little hack to make a double-duty Valentine’s Day treat for all of your sweethearts! Since we’ll likely all be spending Valentine’s Day hunkered down together, I took my favorite boxed brownie mix (Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate Brownies, omg) and made a kid friendly batch to celebrate with Jane, and a grown-up version to serve for a special “date-night” with my husband.
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The snow is coming down outside, and I’d venture to guess lots of other parents like me are trying to figure out how to entertain their kids this morning. I love a seasonal DIY project, Jane loves a seasonal DIY project, and we both had a really fun time making this one for Valentine’s Day: recycled heart crayons! We have a big plastic container in our playroom that holds all the random crayons — broken crayons, crayons from restaurants, crayons from craft kits, crayons that somehow ended up in the bottom of my purse. With a little bit of prep work, a silicon mold, and some color sorting, we recycled the abandoned crayons and melted them down into festive heart shapes to share with our friends. 
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When I was brainstorming recipes and content for the new year, I was admittedly in a bit of a rut — struggling with fresh ideas. I’ve been blogging for over a decade and sometimes I have to go back to my own site to ask “did I already do that?” One thing I realized: a lot of my everyday meals, the staple dishes I make every week, are so second nature to me that I never take the time to write them down. I’m trying to be better at capturing the “classics” from my weekly meal plan, and this skillet roasted chicken is an all-time fave that I make often. We typically eat the legs and thighs for dinner and save the leftover chicken breast meat for chicken salad, soups, taco filling, etc. The bones get added to my instant pot with all the leftover veggies in my fridge drawer and I make stock to tuck away in the freezer. Don’t be afraid of the spatchcocking process, you just need some sharp kitchen shears and a brave face (this tutorial is helpful). Get the rest of the recipe below!
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I’ve been craving a big, restaurant-style Caesar salad and mixed up one from scratch this week. The keys to an amazing Caesar salad: crunchy crisp greens, lots of fresh cracked black pepper and salty parmesan cheese, and a fresh, homemade dressing! It’s simple to make, and the vigorous whisking can count as your arm workout for the day. A few tips: You can use whole anchovies, but I opt for the paste since you only need a tiny bit and it lasts longer in the fridge! And if the raw egg makes you nervous you can substitute 1 Tbsp of mayonnaise for the egg yolk. See the recipe below:
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