I shared a picture on my instagram page recently of my end-of-summer veggie garden bounty, and the thing that I’ve been most proud of are the eggplants I grew this year! Also in my garden basket was a handful of leaves cut from freshly planted kale and a few last juicy summer tomatoes. The combination of ingredients plucked fresh from the dirt was my inspiration for this dish. I crisped up the eggplant with a light breading and then layered it with a flavorful, seasoned parmesan and ricotta combo. Then I topped it with the burst tomatoes and kale that had been sautéed with garlic. It was so simple, so good, and I love how the dish brought out the flavors of each of the veggies (the crispy eggplant — that I’m so proud of — was the star of the show). Scroll down for the full recipe!
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One of my favorite publications, EatingWell magazine, is celebrating it’s 30th anniversary issue this month. I love the magazine and have had the pleasure of collaborating with them before so I’m super excited to be joining in the anniversary celebrations and sharing some of my favorite features and recipes in the issue. 
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This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Shaw’s Supermarket. All opinions, images, and content are my own.
I love to serve a giant, overflowing, themed grazing board when I entertain friends and family. But these days, “entertaining” obviously looks quite different. If we have gathered at all in the past few months, it’s been in very small groups with lots of considerations for safety and social distancing. I’m always up for the challenge of getting creative with gatherings though, no matter how small or different they may be from what we’re accustomed to. My friends at Shaw’s Supermarkets shared some of their exclusive Open Nature® line with me, and it felt like the perfect opportunity to rethink my large-scale grazing boards for our new normal.
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If you’ve been following along with me this year you’ve heard me share my love of Little Leaf Farms! I’ve been lucky to partner with the brand on tons of recipe content this year using their fresh, crunchy lettuce that is grown right here in Massachusetts. I rave about the tasty produce, but another reason I’ve long admired the brand is that they put sustainability at the forefront of each container of lettuce they grow and sell. I had the opportunity to visit Little Leaf Farm’s greenhouses last week to tour their facility and chat with CEO Paul Sellew all about sustainability and how their lettuce gets from seed to store. 
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With summer coming to a close (ugh!) I’m making use of every last second of the season by grilling and eating al fresco as often as possible. I have been honing my grilling skills this summer thanks to my new Weber Connect Smart Grilling Hub – see my green goddess grilled chicken recipe and my mango-peach grilled pork tenderloin – and have been trying to expand my menu with new grilled dinner ideas. The tomatoes and basil in my veggie garden are still going strong and served as inspiration for this bright, fresh dish: grilled cedar plank salmon with pesto.
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Around this time of year, I start collecting inspiration for all of my fall projects. I realized after the last few months of staying closer to home just how much I missed heading into a store to gather ideas for the seasonal themes and hues I use in my photos and content. So when my friends at Christmas Tree Shops andThat! invited me to see all that’s new for fall I was excited to take some time to browse and hunt for fresh ideas that would inspire my seasonal palette.
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If you have been around here for a while, you have heard me tout my love for al fresco chicken sausage. It’s a staple in our fridge for quick weeknight dinners when I don’t want to spend too much time in the kitchen (a little secret about being a food blogger: when you cook all day for work sometimes the last thing you want to think about is what to make for dinner!). When my friends at al fresco chicken shared their first taste of their new line of chicken burgers I was eager to give them a try. We’ve been making an effort to cut most red meat out of our diet this year to lessen our impact on the environment, so a chicken burger swap for summer grilling was a welcome menu addition! 
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After I started using the Weber Connect Smart Grilling Hub in some of my go-to recipes (see my green goddess grilled chicken recipe!), I started to explore some of the other cook programs on the app. It got my wheels turning and gave me the confidence to try grilling some proteins that I haven’t tried before. Pork tenderloin is a dinner favorite at our house in the cooler months, but I never cook it during the summer because I hate turning the oven on for 30+ minutes to let it cook. I decided to use the pork cooking programs on the Weber Connect to experiment with cooking it on the grill.
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Over the last few years I made a commitment to myself to get back into a groove of reading more regularly. I was stuck in a bad cycle of ending my days with mindless TV and endless instagram scrolling, so I set a goal to start reading every night instead. It was a huge shift and now has become a part of my routine that I look forward to daily — a great motivator to turn off my phone, get lost in a good book, and power down my brain. I ended each year with a massive review of all of the books I read (see 2018’s list and 2019’s list) and this year I thought I’d do something a little bit different. I’m sharing a running list of my mini book reviews as I go, because 2020 just calls for escaping into a story more than years past, you know? Scroll down for my list and reviews, and let’s see if 2020 is the year I finally beat my reading list goal! 
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Lately it has been hot-hot-hot and my desire to cook dinner has been low-low-low. We’ve been relying on some simple meals like grilled chicken, salads full of fresh, crunchy Little Leaf Farms greens and mixing in whatever is ripe in my garden (so many tomatoes!). A very simple way to make a quick garden salad feel a little more special is with a homemade vinaigrette dressing. 
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