It’s a toddler food post. Because! Beck loves zoodles. She likes them raw, not at any particular meal time (this makes them a vegetable), and with nothing on them. 
Riddle me that. …
Sausage Wild Rice Soup
It’s FREEZING here. 
No, but really. Multiple nights under 30 degrees F this week = the natives are LOSING it. We live in South Carolina, after all. The south. Warm. Stuffy. No fall. Lots of summer. Sweat. Humidity. You get it.
So when it’s this cold (and, yes, I know some of you have way colder lives than this, I understand how different climates work), and dark at 4pm, and we’re decorating for Christmas between snuggling with our newborn and battling our toddler, we totally completely absolutely for sure need a perfect soup to get us through the winter.
This is definitely that. It’s similar in flavor to the sausage rice casserole from Jay’s youth, but with a broth base and just a little bit of cream and cornstarch to thicken things up. We use real wild rice for that chewy whole grain texture, and the added bonus of simmering the soup for long enough to cook the rice (about an hour) is that the house smells GREAT while this is cooking. I use local sausage, but you can use any kind you like or even ground chicken to keep this super light.
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Happy Birthday Jay!
Today is Jay’s birthday, and to celebrate he slept through the night in our bed all by himself, lucky duck, and then left for a work trip this morning. He also forgot it was his birthday until I said something to him. 
Pros and cons to that one, tbh. Two nights in a hotel room alone sounds AMAZING. Two days of PowerPoints and projections…yawn. Hopefully the food will be good.
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2018 Gift Guide: Baby & Kids
….because that’s what my whole life is about. 
Don’t get me wrong, Jay and I never hate getting nice things for ourselves, but I never can gather enough ~caring~ to do adult gift guides besides house/kitchen stuff. Our interests kind of drive our gift desires, anyway, so if I were to make an adult gift guide it would pretty much be the entire list from the Kitchen Gift Guide plus a few golf things for Jay and free babysitting.
Someone come babysit twice a week for free, please. …
2018 Gift Guide: Kitchen
GUYS GUYS GUYS. 
This is my way of shopping this weekend without actually shopping. You know? I want so much to take advantage of every.sale (because you can’t save money if you don’t spend money, that old chestnut), but I don’t need a thing and our house needs to be organized and emptied and NOT filled with more things. But you should definitely be shopping for the cooks in your life! Or maybe…people who need to start cooking a little bit more? People who like hanging out in the kitchen and letting other people cook for them? You know your audience.
I love kitchen gifts because they can be food cooks or non-cooks depending on what you get (there’s frozen pizza on here!), and everyone 1. eats and 2. has a kitchen. So! Here are some of my favorite things + things I’d be thrilled to get. They aren’t sponsored at all, just things I’ve bought for myself or have my eye on and would love to get.
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