One of my favorite nerdy cooking challenges I like to give myself each year is thinking of new ways to use leftovers after the big Turkey-Day feast! Sometimes it feels like those leftovers can last for weeks, and you’re eating turkey sandwiches until you never want to see another turkey again until next Thanksgiving. I made a few of the Thanksgiving classics and experimented with a new idea for leftovers this year: layering them into a Thanksgiving leftover inspired pot-pie! Everything in this recipe can be pulled from your holiday leftovers. Start with some pie dough leftover from your holiday baking, toss in chopped up turkey and keep it juicy with some leftover gravy drizzled on top, and layer it with leftover mashed potatoes, stuffing, and cranberry sauce before baking with another layer of pie crust on top. The result is a slice of Thanksgiving that has just about every key leftover packed into each bite! My husband jokingly suggested that I should call this Pilgrim Pie, a rustic little nod to Thanksgiving’s roots, and I think it fits the dish perfectly! Earmark this one for your turkey-day leftovers next weekend, full recipe below:
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With a blink of an eye it seems as though the holiday season is upon is! Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and once we finish our turkey, December always speeds right by Christmas and New Years are popping up on the calendar. This holiday season is a little bit different for us, since I’m inching through my third-trimester, we’ll be doing a bit less traveling to see friends and family out of state, and instead having some visitors stay with us! I’m sad about missing a few traditions that my family does in NY, but I’m actually really excited for mix things up and have family stay with us for the first time ever. Making everyone feel at home and special — since it’s a new tradition we’re starting this year — is top of mind for me right now. I thought it was the perfect time to share a few of my tips for how to prepare for house guests and make everyone feel welcome!
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Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, and in the past few years, Friendsgiving has been moving up the list too! At Friendsgiving you get all of the perks of a Thanksgiving feast (more stuffing please!) without any crazy family drama, and usually a few more holiday cocktails. We attended a Friendsgiving brunch this weekend and it was a blast, I ate enough that I started to resemble a Thanksgiving turkey! In preparation for lots more holiday events, Friendsgiving included, Target Grocery sent me a big box of Thanksgiving essentials, and challenged me to step up my holiday table game using only products from Target. Inspired by a local and seasonal treat — cranberries — I set out to share a handful of ideas to bring cranberry flavors to your holiday table with all of my favorite Target products. From cocktails to appetizers to desserts, I’ve got a cranberry spin on just about every Thanksgiving angle!
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Thanksgiving is only 10 days away, which is totally boggling my mind! Over the weekend I started to write down a quick list of recipe ideas, items I need to stock up on from the grocery store, and a handful of my favorite entertaining pieces I plan to pack up and take with me when we head to my family’s house! My siblings and parents give me a hard time because I arrive for the holidays as though I needed to bring my entire kitchen with me – but I’m loyal to my favorite cooking tools, and have some go-to entertaining pieces that always make prep and serving easier. I ‘ve done a post before on my cooking essentials, and thought it would be fun this year to share my all-time favorite entertaining pieces to expand my list!
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I have been living on IZZE drinks as the base for fun cocktail concoctions since I found out I was pregnant. Gosh I miss wine and fancy cocktails, but these sparkling drinks have done the trick while I’m riding out my last two months of mocktail-life! I mixed up an autumn inspired drink that can easily made with or without alcohol, and is a perfect pairing for friendsgiving fetes and fall dinner parties. I started with one of my favorite IZZE flavors, sparkling clementine, and mixed in a homemade simple syrup packed with seasonal spices like cardamom, cloves, cinnamon and anise. Top it off with soda water (and pop in some vodka if you’re drinking!) for a crowd-pleasing drink. Recipe below!
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It feels like the holidays are so far away, but Thanksgiving is only two weeks away, and Christmas is creeping up right behind that! I’m feeling a bit of that holiday spirit today as I flipped open the holiday issue of Family Circle and saw an entertaining piece I worked on with them sharing some easy tips for hosting during the holiday season. Check out the new issue to catch all of the tips and start getting ready for your own holiday hosting plans! 
With the weather getting cooler, the holidays inching closer, and my pregnant silhouette getting bigger and bigger by the day, all I really want to do on the weekends now is cancel plans, hibernate by the fireplace, and indulge in some rich, tasty snacks. Those savory appetizers that can almost replace a whole meal have been front of mind for me, and I got an idea for this one after Family Circle Magazine asked me to create a holiday dish that featured California Walnuts. Their nutty flavor paired with crisp diced apples that are cooked down with sugar and spices and drizzled over the warm brie for a sweet and savory appetizer that will impress your guests this holiday season! Check out the write-up in this month’s issue of Family Circle Magazine, and access the recipe below: 
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Last week I shared a little recap of our babymoon getaway weekend. Before we decided to spend a weekend on Nantucket for some R&R pre-baby arrival (and the madness of the holiday season), I was doing some research on babymoon destinations and felt like there weren’t many resources out there for this type of a trip. The babymoon concept has gained more popularity in the last few years, and up until recently most people I knew that took one ended up going somewhere warm and tropical. It wasn’t really an option for us to pick a destination that required plane tickets or tons of time off (and sadly, with the spread of the Zika virus, my doctor cautioned us against traveling anywhere too far south). Those factors kept us in the New England travel radius, and helped me narrow down a few key places to consider going. We ended up picking Nantucket because it was just at the edge of the off-season and neither of us had been there for more than a day trip before.
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It’s been awhile since I’ve shared some house updates! In general a lot of our home improvement projects slowed down after I got pregnant — not being able to paint has put a damper on some of my DIY abilities. One room that has gotten a bit of a makeover since we moved in that I’m excited to share today is the dining room. We painted the dining room, and removed all the doors that close it off from the kitchen and living room only a few months after moving in. After that, we just popped in some hand me down furniture and craigslist pieces from our apartment and walked away. With the holidays coming up, I really wanted to “finish” this space and have it be a place where we could entertain friends and family. Of course no space is ever really finished, but we did tackle a few improvements to give it a fresh look.
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Leftover from my early-pregnancy period of morning sickness is a bit of a distaste for vegetables at the moment. I’m trying my best to eat healthy, but sneaking in veggies has been a challenge. So I’ve been trying hard to find any flavors of vegetable that sounds moderately appealing to me, and go full-force packing those into my diet. Butternut Squash has such a sweetness to it, that I can almost trick myself into thinking it’s less veggie and more like a treat! This weekend I experimented with a homemade hearty butternut squash soup packed with tons of vegetables and autumnal flavors. I hid a few carrots in there, and an apple and shallots for even more flavor. Some salty roasted pepitas and crusty bread make it a perfect chilly fall day meal! Full recipe below:
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