Since we moved into our first house a few years ago, Jason and I have gotten really into grilling. I especially love it because it’s a rare chance for me to pass off some of the work to Jason! I prep whatever we’re grilling and he takes care of the rest! This salmon recipe that I’m sharing today is our GO-TO. I mean, we’ve made this probably dozens of times. It never fails and it goes with just about any side dish. The flavor of the marinade is SO good, not overpowering but just enough to complement the natural flavor of the salmon. And it’s super easy to make!

In addition to being delicious, salmon is an awesome source of protein and omega-3 fatty acids, so I like to add it into our meal plan once a week. The marinade only takes a few minutes to put together and the result is delicious!

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Epic Grilled Salmon

Salmon marinated in garlic, herbs, and citrus and made deliciously crispy over the grill!

Course Main Course

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes minutes

Total Time 25 minutes minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 lbs. salmon
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 T. dijon mustard
• 1 T. chopped rosemary
• 1 lemon
• 1/2 t. pepper
• 1 1/2 t. salt
• 1/2 T. grapeseed oil

Instructions

• In a small bowl, stir together the garlic, dijon, rosemary, the zest of the lemon, the juice of half the lemon (reserve the other half for later), salt, pepper and oil.
• Pat the salmon dry and place it in a dish skin side down. Spread the marinade over top and let sit in the refrigerator for 15-30 minutes (if you don't have time for this, just skip to the next step).
• Preheat your grill to medium-high heat. Brush the grates with oil.
• Grill the fish flesh-side down first for about 5 minutes (you should see grill marks), then flip and cook for an additional 5-10 minutes until done, depending on the thickness of your fish.
• Squeeze the juice of the remaining lemon half over the fish and enjoy!

My favorite sides to serve with this are roasted potatoes and grilled vegetables like zucchini, summer squash, or mushrooms. Such a delicious 30 minute meal! Happy grilling!

I experimented by combining my favorite pumpkin bread recipe with a couple banana bread recipes that I like and the result is WOAH. The flavors of the banana and pumpkin compliment each other SO well. The fall spices come through but aren’t overpowering, and the bread is perfectly soft and moist. Just writing this is making me want to get another piece STAT!

This is a true quick bread, so it doesn’t involve any complicated steps or fancy equipment! Here’s the simple recipe:

If you make this, prepare for your house to smell like magic as it bakes! And prepare to want to eat the entire loaf by yourself. I’m not judging you if you do because I’ve already eaten like a third of the loaf pictured here…

I really have missed you guys. I’ve missed blogging. There’s a plenty long story to explain why I’ve been gone SO long, but that’s a catch-up session for another day. But these next two pictures sum up my current situation pretty well.

A picture says a thousand words, right? It’s hard to do much of ANYTHING productive when you’re trying to keep a one-year-old alive, trust me!

Thanks for reading!

Isn’t it beautiful?? It’s exactly what I needed and its nice and high off the ground so that me and my preggo belly don’t have to bend over AND our mischievous little dog can’t even attempt to mess with the plants inside. The bed is 4 square feet so using the square foot gardening method I knew I had 4 spots for different plants. (Edit: I’m terrible at math. I meant that the bed is 4’x4′, so it’s a 16 square foot bed. Haha sorry about that!) I decided to use half of the box for cherry tomatoes (I can fit 1 mature plant in each square foot so that means I’ll have 2 plants in the bed), 1 square foot for sugar snap peas, and the last square foot for basil plants. So something like this:

Strawberries:

For my strawberries I decided to make a pot tower instead of using the garden bed. I read great things about growing strawberries this way so I thought it would be worth a shot! I bought a package of bare root strawberries plants (which are basically plants with roots attached that are dormant and dried out) and planted them in plastic cups to make sure they were still alive. Once I saw little leaves start to grow, I moved them to my pot tower outside!

These photos were taken around April 10th (right before we left for our baby moon). Here are the strawberry plants today (about 40 days later):

They are doing SO well! Tons of giant leaves and some lovely flowers and berries!

I’m hoping in another month I will have red, delicious berries to eat! So exciting!!!

Tomatoes and basil:

Alright, time for the not-so-sucessful part of this story. I decided that for the remainder of my plants (tomatoes, basil, and sugar snap peas), I wanted to grow them all from seed. I just felt like that would be the most rewarding experience, and plants that you grow yourself from seed are supposed to be stronger plants in the long run (at least that’s what I read!). It was early March when I got my seeds so it was still too cold out to start all the seeds outside. Peas are fine in cold weather, but tomatoes and basil can’t handle frost well. So I got myself a seed starting tray to start the tomatoes and basil indoors.

I planted all my seeds in Mid March, and by early April all the indoor seeds had sprouted! I was so excited for every little leaf–it was like watching a miracle! Basil seedlings:

Tomato seedlings:

Both types of seedlings did continue to grow, but I’ve recently come to accept that they just failed to thrive. Over time they started turning yellow and sad looking, and the tomato plants especially got very weak and leggy. This is the basil 40 days later:

There’s growth for sure, but not NEARLY as much as there’s supposed to be. Not to mention that when I transplanted them into these plastic cups to give them more room to grow, I discovered that they essentially had no roots at all. Same thing with the tomatoes, barely any roots at all. Just generally very sad and droopy looking:

While I would have loved for them to have thrived, I’m not that sad about it. Watching them sprout up was SO much fun and I feel like I learned a ton from this failed experiment (lesson: plants need more light than a tiny stream through some window blinds…duh). I think next year I will try again with indoor seed starting but I will 1) start much earlier in the season and 2) maybe invest in a grow light. Also it’s super easy to just go out and buy started plants, which is what I intend to do very shortly so that I can still grow my tomatoes and basil.

Sugar snap peas:

Not all of my seeds were a failure! One of my best friends recommended that I try sugar snap peas because her parents had a lot of success growing them here in Georgia. So I planted seeds in mid March, and by early April I had some lovely little pea plants growing!

The variety I bought is supposed to be self supporting, but as the peas grew taller and heavier I noticed they weren’t doing a very good job supporting themselves! They were falling over like crazy and going in all sorts of weird directions. But despite that they seemed to be growing well and in the first week of May I discovered my FIRST pea pod!

And about a week later I collected my first official “harvest”!

They are SO tasty! And its so much fun to eat something that you watched grow from a teeny, tiny seed. To help with the support issue, last week Jason helped me put in some stakes and a support net that I got from Home Depot. We tied each plant up and they’ve already started to grow onto the supports. So much growth so fast!

In the picture above you can see that the base of each plant is all brown and sad looking, and that is the handiwork of some very RUDE pea aphids! I didn’t even know that pea aphids existed until about a month ago, but once I saw my plants all covered in these tiny green bugs, I googled and quickly learned about them. Thankfully a ladybug came along and ate them all (yay nature!) and we haven’t had a problem since. Every couple of days I have beautiful new peas ready to eat!

That wraps up this garden update! I’ll update again in about a month (which is right before baby is due) and hopefully by then I’ll have even more progress to show you!

Thanks for reading!

Throughout my pregnancy I’ve had a lot of fun coming up with various mocktails to drink. Favorite concoctions have included various combinations of cranberry juice, pineapple juice, lemon or lime juice, and sparkling water. A lot of times I do this in an effort to stay hydrated, but sometimes it’s just fun to make a special drink for yourself! Since strawberries are coming into season now, I’ve been dying to make a drink with them and thought agua fresca would be the perfect thing!

If you’ve never had one before, an agua fresca is essentially a fruit flavored water. They’re really popular in Mexico and a lot of places here in the US. If you get a really good one, it will be made with fresh fruit juice or puree. They can be made with just about any fruit imaginable and the flavor combinations are endless! The sweet strawberries and tart lime juice in this one make an insanely refreshing duo.

The great thing about making your own drinks is that you control what goes inside! In my house we use turbinado sugar, but coconut sugar or agave syrup would work just as well here. And feel free to add more if you like a sweeter drink, but with ripe and in-season fruit the amount I use should be plenty!

I confess that while I intended to enjoy this over the course of a few days…I drank it all in a day. Oops! Hey, still less sugar than a big soda so I feel good about it!

This would be perfect to serve to company outside in warm weather, or just as a fun addition to your family dinner! I can’t wait to get more strawberries this weekend so I can make more!

I think I should start at the beginning of this story! Jason and I have been married for about 7 years and have been together for over 10 so some of you who are long-time readers might have wondered if/when we were planning to have children! We’ve always known we wanted kids, but I wasn’t really “ready” until about 5 years ago, and Jason joined me on Team Baby Fever about 2 years ago. We made the “official” decision to start trying during the 2015 holidays, and after New Year’s of 2016 I bought Taking Charge of Your Fertility (a book that I would highly recommend to every woman, whether you’re trying to get pregnant or not) and started to track my cycles to help us get pregnant as soon as possible. It did not happen right away, and that was a bit of a tough time for me! If anyone is interested in our TTC journey, let me know and I will share more about it in another post. Long story short, after 10 unsuccessful cycles, a visit to my doctor, and lots of prayers, we finally got the news we had been dreaming of!

When we got the positive we were actually out of town at Château Élan celebrating our 10 year anniversary as a couple! I cried happy tears and spent a long time just staring at the test in disbelief. Needless to say, it was a pretty awesome way to start the trip and we were in a blissful haze for the whole weekend.

I was right at 4 weeks pregnant when we found out (that’s around the earliest time you can get a positive test) so we knew we’d have to sit on the news for a while until getting it confirmed by my doctor and making sure everything was good. Those first couple months of being pregnant I felt great! I was bloated and definitely sensitive to smells, but I was able to still eat really well and workout and drink my Shakeology every day like usual.

At about 7 weeks pregnant Jason and I nervously went to our first prenatal appointment. If something has gone wrong, that first appointment is oftentimes when you find out because the majority of miscarriages happen in the early weeks. That’s always a real concern for any couple so we were SO grateful to see a heartbeat and get a picture of our tiny inchworm baby to take home!

That appointment did come with some unfortunate news, as my OB diagnosed me with uterine fibroids. If you’re like I was before all this and have no idea what fibroids are, they’re essentially non-cancerous growths that appear in or around the uterus. They’re not very common in women my age, but they are more common in African-American women than in other ethnicities. Apparently I had them before pregnancy but I just never new it! My doctor told me that they could definitely cause complications but more often than not you can have a normal healthy pregnancy even with several fibroids. She did warn me that there might be some pain involved, and boy was that accurate! But I’ll get to that in a minute…

Around that same time my pregnancy symptoms really started to kick in! I started getting nauseous all day and very picky about food. I ate a LOT of bagels and got cravings for random things I ate when I was a kid like broccoli cheddar soup (see above), cream of mushroom soup, Kix, and easy mac. I also had an insatiable desire for orange juice! As soon as I opened my eyes in the morning, I simultaneously felt starving, nauseous, and in the mood for O.J.

As my food aversions and nausea got more intense during weeks 7 and 8, I could tell that I wasn’t getting enough nutrients. I also (MUCH to my chagrin) started craving meat!! I’ve been a proud (and happy!) vegetarian for 5 years so this was shocking to me. But I had kind of reached a breaking point in terms of food and had started to lose weight, so the thought of having some meat began to tempt me more and more.

The Thanksgiving plate you see above was vegetarian. But after dinner…I ate a piece of duck! Yes. Yes I did. It was only one bite but gosh…that bite tasted GOOD. I’m just being honest with you guys, which is hard for me to do about this subject! I had (still have) a lot of reasons why I’m passionate about eating a plant-based diet. I’m not proud that pregnancy created this weak moment for me and that I’ve reintroduced meat into my diet. At the end of the day, I decided that eating and getting calories to my baby needed to be a priority. I’ve come to peace with that choice because eating meat (and snacking throughout the day) helped me get through that rough patch where I could barely keep anything down. This little tiny baby (who had then reached gummy worm size status) wreaked havoc on my dietary habits, and that’s a-okay with me.

By the time Christmas rolled around and I was approaching 12 weeks (the start of the second trimester), the nausea and food aversions had calmed down quite a bit. I was still drinking orange juice like a crazy person and had to pick out some maternity clothes to keep comfy during the day. We decided to share the happy news as our Christmas card! We had been dying to shout it from the rooftops, so it was awesome to finally announce!

We enjoyed a great Christmas up in New Jersey with Jason’s family! At the tail end of that trip I started to experience some back pain and cramping. It was pretty mild at that point so I didn’t think much of it (both back pain and cramping are normal pregnancy symptoms), but by the time we got back to Atlanta things started to intensify.

Come New Year’s Eve, I was in so much pain that I was on the verge of tears and could barely move around. I finally decided that I should call the nurse line, and after talking to the on-call nurse about my symptoms she suggested that I head into the hospital as soon as possibe. An urgent care facility would have been good enough, but because it was so late at night (on New Year’s Eve no less!) the ER was the only thing that was open.

They took some blood and put me on IV fluids before checking with a doppler to make sure there was a heartbeat. That whole night was pretty terrifying because for the first hour or so it really felt like they were bracing us for the news of a miscarriage. Lots of poker faces and “How far along are you? Okay, still early…” It also took the nurses a long time to find a heartbeat, which was scary. But they finally did find it, and told me that it appeared a bladder infection was causing the pains! I thought this was strange because I’ve had one of those before and I wasn’t experiencing any of the same symptoms. But we were happy to have an answer and as soon as I was released we got my antibiotics and went about our merry way.

I started to feel better and a few days later we got another ultrasound that showed baby looking healthy and on track.
During week 14 I essentially felt like I wasn’t pregnant at all! The second trimester energy boost was definitely a real thing for me and I was loving it! I finally felt well enough to start the bump picture project that I had been planning.

But a few days later the back pain and cramps came back! I was so frustrated and confused about what was happening, but started guessing that it might be the fibroids causing this pain and not an infection. And after going back to the hospital that following weekend to give a urine sample, the lab confirmed that I had no infection.

At that point I decided to just deal with the pain (with the help of a hot water bottle–what a glorious invention!), and thankfully it did subside over the course of a few days. When I went in for my next midwife appointment, she said that this was part of what I should expect with the fibroids and that I could use an over-the-counter pain reliever to help if it happened again. Some women with fibroids have to deal with constant pain, so I feel really grateful that it was just those two rough patches and I’ve been relatively pain-free since then. By week 16 I was feeling right as rain, and was starting to crave fruits!

I don’t know what it is about raspberries, but since around week 16 I have NOT been able to get enough. I could honestly eat a couple containers a day, they are soooo good! Along with the return of my appetite came the beginning of my weight gain, which I welcomed gladly! It’s never been easy for me to maintain or gain weight so when I see the scale go up I am one happy mamma. I can probably thank my mom for a lot of that because she’s been so nice about making me lots of treats since I’ve been pregnant. Like this incredible Italian Cream Cake she made for my birthday last month!

Weeks 17-19 were awesome! I still had lots of energy and was very relieved not to be in any pain!

We had a small scare during this time because I got a call that one of the genetic tests we took showed a high risk for a neural tube defect. As you can imagine, that caused us to freak out a bit. They gave us an appointment with a perinatologist, and the whole thing turned out to be a blessing in disguise (a very bad disguise!). The perinatologist checked everything out and said that the baby had no signs of a defect, and that my fibroids had likely effected my hormone levels and caused the positive blood test result. At that appointment we learned SO much more about the fibroids and found out that this doctor would be seeing us in conjunction with my OB’s office just to monitor and make sure things are good. He’s an amazing doctor and it’s really reassuring to have him taking care of us! Plus he does long ultrasounds so we got to spend a long time looking at the baby.

During my 19th week I got to feel the baby kick for the first time!! It’s such a strange feeling and really hard to identify if you’ve never been pregnant before. It wasn’t until I could feel it from the outside that I realized for sure what it was! Jason got to feel his first kick a few days later which was so special! And on the day that I turned 20 weeks, we had our gender reveal party and learned the exciting news that we’re having a girl!

I think it’s safe to say that the first half of my pregnancy was fairly eventful! But my Baby Bear has survived and thrived through it all, and that is the most important thing to me and Jason. As I write this I’m 25 weeks pregnant, and so far the second half of pregnancy is fantastic! Every night I lie in bed, rest my hands on my belly, and thank God for this beautiful blessing.

I have several more pregnancy topics I’ll be discussing in these last few months before I have the baby, but I will also be sharing recipes in between so stay tuned!

When it’s cold out, I’m all about hot oatmeal. It’s a longtime favorite and I basically never grow tired of it. But when it starts to get warm out, I get excited about a whole different kind of oatmeal!

There’s lots of ways people make overnight oats. Some eat it hot, some eat it cold…some like it thin, some like it thick…some use chia seeds and some don’t…there’s a lot of variations. Personally I like my overnight oats to resemble a pudding or custard–YUM! Chia seeds and yogurt are a must for me because together they create the perfect thickness in the final mixture.

Mix the ingredients together the night before then eat right out of the fridge in the morning and it’s pure heaven!

Raspberries have been a major pregnancy craving of mine (pretty much all berries actually!) so when I was thinking about my first overnight oats of the year I didn’t have to think very hard about potential toppings. I smashed most of the berries up to make a little “jam” for layering into the oats and then left some whole to throw on top. If jam isn’t your jam then feel free to leave all the berries whole–the taste will be the same!

Cheers to the arrival of spring and all of the warm weather foods that come with it!

I took tons of pictures of the food but forgot to take any of people (typical!), so big thanks to my dad and my friend Emily’s boyfriend Max for remembering to take pictures of the humans.  Let’s talk food first!

The party was at noon so I wanted to keep the food light, and per Jason’s recommendation I took a lot of the workload off myself by ordering some food and enlisting my mom’s help for some things too. I made a simple meat platter, cheese and cracker platter, and a citrus mint salad. My mom made deviled eggs (half with bacon and half without).

I also made these little veggie cups, which were a cute idea I found on Pinterest!

And then from Alon’s (a local bakery-cafe) we ordered two sandwiches by the stick: (caprese and smoked turkey) and a deli salad platter with quinoa salad, lentil salad, and roasted red pepper pasta salad.

For dessert my mom made some delicious chocolate and vanilla cupcakes with buttercream icing and I made chocolate drizzled rice krispy treats. We had fun making the desserts fit with the gender reveal theme!

We also had a little area set up where people could vote whether they thought our baby was a girl or boy and then put on a corresponding pink or blue lei depending on their vote!

And then of course I had to show what the “old wives’ tales” predicted the gender to be!

After everyone voted and got some food, it was time for the BIG REVEAL! The way we chose to do it was for Jason and I to find out along with everyone else at the party. The only person who knew the baby’s sex was my friend Emma, who I had delivered the envelope to from the doctor’s office. Based on what was inside the envelope, I asked her to choose either pink or blue confetti poppers to pass out at the party. Then we counted 3-2-1 and everyone popped the confetti to reveal the news!

It’s a GIRL!!!

We are so excited!!! My prediction was SO wrong. I had such a strong feeling that it was a boy, so clearly my mother’s intuition needs some work! As soon as we popped the confetti I put on a pink lei. It was really special to share this moment with my family and a small group of close friends. I wouldn’t have had it any other way!

Special thanks to Emma for keeping the huge secret and helping us pull this off!

Kenny is super excited that he gets to remain our only son.

Stay tuned for my next post, I’m going to be talking about my experience with pregnancy during the first trimester!

We bought a house!

After years of renting, Jason and I decided it was finally time to stop throwing our money away and settle in somewhere! We knew that we wanted to find a safe and comfy neighborhood where we would feel completely at ease starting a family. We ended up in a neighborhood in the town where my parents live! Here are some peeks at the inside of the house after we moved in back in September.

We all love it here! Especially our dog, who has a huge backyard to run around in and lots of space in the house to take over!

So far it’s been SO fun to own a home, even though it comes with a lot more responsibilities. We had a housewarming party right after we moved in which really made the whole thing feel real!

I’ll definitely do a house tour post to show you all the rooms and share what we’ve done with the place so far!

And now for our second big update…

We’re having a baby!!!

And can you guess what the pink beads mean?? We had a gender reveal party last weekend, which I’ll be doing a post on to share the fun!

Being pregnant has been an amazing experience so far. Jason and I have been taking photos bi-weekly to document the size of the bump! Can you tell that it’s grown?

I really want to start documenting my pregnancy in more detail and the blog seems like a perfect place to do that! In other words, lots of fun life/lifestyle posts coming soon! I’ve really missed writing here and I’m so excited to get back into it!

This bad boy is a nutritional powerhouse! I added my favorite fall fruit and vegetable (apple and butternut squash) along with quinoa for fiber and protein, dried cranberries for some tartness, and toasted almonds for that warm, nutty flavor (and the added bonus of some healthy fat!). I happen to love blue cheese so I added that too, but you can certainly leave it out for a vegan version of this meal.

Allow me a moment to just recognize this dressing. THIS DRESSING, y’all. Perfect balance of sweet and sharp, and the smokiness just takes it over the edge. As a vegetarian I sometimes miss the smoky flavors that a lot of meats have (like bacon!), but I love using liquid smoke occasionally to provide that same amazing flavor. The recipe above makes a bigger batch than you’ll need for one salad. Because you are going to want more. Trust me.

This salad would make a great packed lunch because none of these ingredients have a lot of moisture that would make the salad soggy. Pack the dressing in a separate container and you’re good to go!

I’ll be seeing you again this weekend with a big life update post! It’s been far too long since I talked about what’s been going on with us!

One of my most popular recipes (it has over 160,000 views on my site!) is my Greek Yogurt Macaroni and Cheese. I love to see new comments and notes coming into my inbox about people trying and enjoying it! Because that recipe is a winner, I decided it would be fun to do a spinoff stovetop version. This recipe is faster to make because it doesn’t require any baking, but it has the same delicious flavor as the original! And if you prefer a more saucy mac and cheese, this is gonna be right up your alley.

I highly recommend using mild cheddar cheese for this. Some reviewers on the OG recipe used sharp cheddar and from what I gather that makes for too “tangy” of a final product. I’ve always used mild cheddar for this because the yogurt provides its own sharpness and you want to keep a nice smooth flavor. You could even use all monterrey jack if you want, that would be delicious too! 

I’m telling you…this is magical stuff! It’s best when it’s fresh off the stove, but it will reheat just fine later on if you have leftovers. Please comment below if you try it! I hope you love it as much as I do!

-Lauren