Tag: book

Recipes

100 Days of Real Food Cookbook review

Jessica Smith

Between bathroom renovations and power outages, I almost forgot to share a different kind of post for A Smith of All Trades — a book review!

I have been following 100 Days of Real Food for a few years now and the woman behind the blog, Lisa Leake, just published her first cookbook. Lisa’s blog is about cooking with real ingredients and cutting out processed foods. She has a ton of great recipes to share, as well as tips for cutting back on pre-packaged, over-processed foods. While I’m not 100% processed food free — I might not even be 50% — following her blog has been eye-opening for me as to the simple changes I can make to get rid of some, well, crap. Instead of buying frozen pizzas, we make our own from scratch. Box-mix cookies? A thing of the past. Bisquick for pancakes and biscuits — I can easily make my own. I even make our whipped cream instead of buying the canned stuff!

And you guys know I love to can some food from my garden veggies. And it is always yummier than if I buy it from a store. Real food = delicious food.

Some of our favorite meals have come from Lisa’s blog (The Best Whole Chicken in a Crock Pot — it really is the best and we are actually having it for dinner tonight!), so when I had to opportunity to review her cookbook I couldn’t refuse. Turns out, this recipe is also in her book.

100 Days of Real Food cookbook

100 Days of Real Food is a beautiful cookbook. That might seem a strange thing to mention first instead of, say, the recipes. But it truly is beautiful. Every page has a photo, which is essential (in my opinion) to a good cookbook.

It also has all sorts of recipes (it is a cookbook after all), from simple to more complex. She also explains in great detail about transitioning to real food. I’ve read some of her tips on her blog, but just from flipping through it seems like there is a lot I haven’t seen yet. She has a whole section on tips to convince skeptics (ahem, my hubby) that real food is the way to go. I’ll definitely be reading that section.

I think I might be most excited for her recipes for kitchen staples like salad dressings, bbq sauce, tomato sauce (hello, new recipe to can!) — these are the things that I am so used to just buying from the store but that have sooo many added ingredients. I think having these recipes on hand will make replacing the over-processed versions much easier.

OK, enough of my rambling. Obviously I like it. Check it out!

Here’s a few of the pages from the book so you can see just how pretty it is and how yummy the recipes look.

Shortcut Eggplant Parm RecipeShortcut Eggplant Parm Photo

Veggie Corn Chowder recipe

Veggie Corn Chowder2

Frozen Yogurt Pops recipe

Frozen Yogurt Pops photo

My whole family has been getting into the real food lifestyle, so I know they are gonna want to borrow this one.

 

Next time you hear from me, I’ll be showing off our new bathroom 🙂 Hope you all have a great weekend!

I received a free copy of 100 Days of Real Food — all opinions are my own.

Uncategorized

The Adventures of Remmy the Dog: Moon Walk

Jessica Smith

Ha! I bet you thought Remmy’s adventures were done-zo, but noooooo! Rem recently returned from a moon walk! Or at least I imagined he did 🙂

Check this one out, with constellations at all. I should say, before my astronomy-loving husband see this picture, that obviously this isn’t too accurate. Just deal with it because it’s adorable!

{A Smith of All Trades} The Adventures of Remmy the Dog_Space_Blog

Love my space-walking dog 🙂

Here’s a list of all of Remmy’s adventures:

Craft Projects

Mod Podged Candle Holders

Jessica Smith

Today I’m sharing another project I made for the upcoming Trash to Treasure Fair in November. Using pages from an old book and the remainder of my burlap fabric scraps, I turned two shot glasses that my mother-in-law’s work was going to throw away (not sure why they have shot glasses…) into adorable candle holders.

Here’s what you’ll need:

  • Pages of a book (or any paper) cut into little pieces
  • Mod Podge
  • Fabric
  • Hot Glue
  • Needle and Thread
  • Buttons
  • Ribbon
  • Glass

To start this project, I cut up three or four pages from an old dictionary into little pieces of paper. I had no rhyme or reason for the shape of the paper, just random shapes.

Once my paper was small enough, I started to Mod Podge it to the glass. I put a thick layer of the podge down, then placed strips of paper on top. I smoothed out the paper as I went along to remove any bubbles between the paper and the glass. Once each glass was covered, I placed a layer of podge on top.

I let the candle holders dry for a bit before adding embellishments. They weren’t dry completely, but I didn’t mind since I wanted the stuff I was adding to stick right on top.

At this point, I flipped each glass upside down and added a slim, pink ribbon around the bottom with small dabs of hot glue.

With the pink ribbon added to each glass, I set both candle holders aside to create two oversized flowers. I cut out five petals for each flower, using scraps from an earlier project.

To connect the petals, I folded each petal at the flat edge in an accordion-style fold: down, up, down, up, down.

Then, I sewed through each of the folds. Once I had stitched my way through one petal, I went on to the next, adding petals until I was out.

When all five petals were connected, I looped the needle and thread back through the first petal to finish off the flower.

With the flower complete, I selected a flashy button to add to the middle. I added it to the flower with hot glue, then hot glued each flower to a candle holder.

OHMYGOSHSOCUTE. If these don’t get snatched up at the fair, I might not be so upset.

I like how large the flowers are on the glass, the pink ribbon “leaves,” and the randomness of the dictionary scraps. These might be my favorite candle yet. Now I just need to remake them with aqua ribbon instead of pink ;p