I have a family favorite recipe that we make all the time that is a Mexican “lasagna” that uses tortillas instead of lasagna noodles, and Hood Cottage Cheese instead of ricotta cheese. I used that dish as my inspiration and made a cold Mexican layered dip, flavoring the Hood Country Style Cottage Cheese with Mexican spices and layering it with guacamole, pico de gallo, beans, lettuce and cheddar cheese. I love this recipe for easy summer entertaining because, to start, there’s no cooking involved! We live in an old New England house with no A/C so I’m always brainstorming recipes that help me avoid turning on the oven in my kitchen during the warm summer months. 
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If you guys have been following around here for a while, you know that I love my grazing boards. I started a whole #DomestikateGrazingBoards hashtag with all of my snack-feast creations on instagram, and keep a big grazing board inspiration collection on my Pinterest page too! My last summery snack board was one of my favorites, and I’ve been itching to make another warm-weather twist on these fun food displays. This time around, I took my board and I made it into a box — a picnic box to be exact! A perfect little traveling container for an al fresco feast.
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Please note: This post was created in collaboration with Chase Freedom Unlimited. All opinions, images and content are my own.
I’m checking in today on my “be a better baker challenge” in collaboration with my friends at Chase Freedom Unlimited, and this week I tackled summer desserts: mini angel food cakes with berries and whipped cream. I find one of the issues I’m facing with this baking challenge is finding the motivation to take on complicated recipes. In cooking, I’m always looking for smart shortcuts to save time, cut down on dishes, and get delicious healthy food on the table fast. Shortcuts in baking are a big no-no, so I struggle to take on those harder recipes – the joy of baking is a daunting one!
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A few weeks ago, we checked an item off of our summer bucket list with a perfect warm-weather date night at Fenway Park, thanks to our friends at Nellie’s Free Range Eggs! We are big fans of Nellie’s and enjoy their free-range eggs nearly every morning for breakfast and are even bigger fans after our fun night at The Red Sox game, where we celebrated Free Range Egg Day in support of nutritious, Certified Humane eggs that come from happy, healthy hens. 
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Even though it’s been a whirlwind few days catching up on work after our vacation, I’m still really feeling the summer vibes this week. We took Jane to a fun outdoor concert and had a picnic dinner (and tested out these cute new bento lunch boxes!). I shared a fun mermaid-themed movie night on the blog. And I brought home this sweet beach painting by Ashley Provencher from Elburne Home Decor on the Cape and styled it next to some pretty hydrangeas. It’s all that good summer stuff and it makes me so happy. The summer fun continues this weekend with some birthday celebrations for my dad and my husband – picnics, boat rides, and margaritas! See more of what’s been happening around here below: 
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Please note: This post is created in partnership with Christmas Tree Shops andThat!. All opinions, images and content are my own.
I have been checking items off my summer bucket list – lots of beach days, working on my garden, eating al fresco and perfecting my margarita recipe! One big item on my bucket list was to have an outdoor movie night with Jane, and maybe make some tasty s’mores to go along with our viewing party. 
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I have been on such a corn-kick lately; I can’t get enough of the sweet summer kernels! This recipe is for a simple summer pasta dish full of the sweet corn that I sautéed with butter and garlic and shallots. The corn releases juices and creates a creamy sauce when combined with the butter, wine, and reserved water from the pasta. I folded in fresh pesto (recipe in my cookbook!) and herbs to give it even brighter, seasonal flavor, and some sweet Italian sausage gets added in to give it the heartiness of a main-course. I have made it a few times in the past few weeks, once when we had family over for an al fresco dinner. I served it with a fresh garden salad, and savory slice of Southern Living’s buttermilk tomato pie. The whole meal just tasted of summer in every single bite! Get the full recipe below:
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A few weeks ago I was confiding in my mom about my secret guilt that I never made a baby book for Jane. I’m so type-A and generally obsessed with paper products so it’s strange I never started one. My mom reminded me though that I have a much more detailed account of Jane’s life than most people have of their kids — right here on the blog and on my instagram page. She was so very right! I do cherish looking back at old posts and seeing our travel adventures, and try to share funny anecdotes in my captions too. Last week we spent a nice stretch of time down on Cape Cod with our close friends and had the very best time — splashing in the ocean, eating all the fried seafood, and making memories. So this post is my summer vacation addition to the “baby book” full of all of the pictures I would have tucked inside!
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A crudité platter is almost always on my menu-plan for gatherings, big or small, because it’s a wonderful way to add tons of color and flavor to a table. It’s also a delicious and easy way to incorporate the bounty of New England’s seasonal vegetables available locally in the spring and summer! I like to give those beautiful seasonal ingredients an accompaniment that lives up to their fresh, crisp flavor; a homemade dip is the perfect balance for the crudité. This cottage cheese dip, using Hood’s new flavor Cottage Cheese with Cracked Pepper, is simple to assemble and tastes best after the flavors combine for a bit in the refrigerator.
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I am eating up every last bit of summer this month. We had a perfect 4th of July weekend with some beach time, meals by the water, and a friend’s pool party to top it all off (Jane put those toddler swim lessons to the test and was paddling around like a fish!). This week we’ve been eating from our veggie garden every night and I’m loving it; it turns out the way to get me to eat my veggies was by growing them (and occasionally by mixing them with pasta). And there’s more summer fun in the mix coming up: I’m tackling the outdoor movie night from summer bucket list, gearing up for more beach time, and packing a picnic for a summer concert series at our local library! Summer is sweet, and I’ve got a few more warm-weather updates for you below: 
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