The last time I shared our family meals, we were just five weeks into quarantine and I was FEELING it. We are now going on pandemic month six and while we ventured out a few times this summer to socially distant staycations and a few outside get togethers with friends, we've largely continued staying home. And while we definitely bumped up ordering out this summer, I've also been largely cooking three meals a day at home. So I've got lots of dinners to share!   With back to school in full swing this week, I've been on the hunt for new dinners that are delicious but not time consuming. A ..read more

To say that a lot has changed since I posted last would be an understatement. We're going on our fifth week self-isolating at our house and I've been cooking like a maniac (both because everyone is now home for every meal and because it's a great outlet for me). And I've apparently taken up baking. It started out with Cam wanting to bake more cakes and then I hopped aboard the sourdough train when I was able to scoop some starter from Chef Johanna Hellrigl who has generously given out an insane amount of starter to folks quarantined in DC. I'm still working on making an actual loaf of sourd ..read more

This is the first year in a long time that we haven't done an official January Whole30. I really liked the macro coutning and intermittent fasting program I was doing throughout last summer, but had just really fallen off through the fall and holidays. So I decided to go back to that. We briefly attempted a dry January at least, but quickly adjusted that to dry weekdays and I've been holding to that. Nevertheless, many of the recipes I cook are still fairly clean (free of dairy products, legumes, and grains), but I add some of those in as sides now. You'll see lots of dinners out and lo ..read more

Well those three months flew by. I was doing so well getting our summer vacation posts out and then, well, life. I've even had all of the photos edited, but just couldn't get around to writing it up. But seeing as I'm now working on our plans for next summer, I figured it was time to get this trip wrapped up before I forget! I'd left our last Friday in Amsterdam purposefully open. We'd toyed with the idea of heading to Haarlem or the beach in Zandvoort for a day, but I didn't want to commit to that ahead of time. Kane was sort of chomping at the bit for some WWII history, so I looked up ..read more

We spent the end of this wonderful summer vacation in Amsterdam and while we were sad to leave Antwerp, we were all excited to get to the last stop! We packed a lot into four days here, so I split this visit into two posts. We'd booked ahead (and then changed to a little later) our Thalys train tickets to Amsterdam. The train couldn't have been easier and it was nice to have some forced downtime. I thought we'd seen a lot of bikes in Belgium, but it seemed like every square inch of Amsterdam was covered in them -- turns out most people who live there have several and keep them in different ..read more

Although Bruges may be the holder of my favorite vacation day, Antwerp was definitely my favorite city in Belgium. I think this blog post I'd scoped ahead of our trip totally nailed it: "I see this as a city which sits culturally somewhere between Paris & Scandinavia and it has a hipster scene which feels less about display and all the more alluring for it." I absolutely loved it and wish we'd had more time there than anywhere else on our trip. We made some adjustments to this city visit on the fly based on our first few days in Belgium. Our transfer ride to Bruges was so easy that I d ..read more

As is quite evident by the title of this post, it's been months and months since I posted a meal plan. Nevertheless, we've been cooking and eating our fair share! (Not like you were worried, I know). Since I last posted our meals, I've generally been following a plan of intermittent fasting and tracking macros. I've expanded my food options a bit, but still been keeping it healthy. I also kept trying a few different meal services, but was never completely happy with them. So, it's back to recipe surfing again for me. Our family LOVES salmon, but I often find that different recipes come ..read more

We had plans to take Belgium commuter trains from Brussels to Bruges and Bruges to Antwerp. But after a mere two days of schlepping everyone around Brussels, we decided to take one of our taxi drivers up on his offer to drive us to Bruges instead (I checked around to make sure it was a comparable price to hiring another private transport). There was definitely traffic, but it was probably still less time than doing the whole train thing -- especially since we prove incapable of packing lightly. The local trains do appear to be quite easy. You don't have to book them ahead of time and they l ..read more

I am still fighting jet lag (or maybe it's just back-to-school malaise), but it's been a few years since we took a big family vacation of just the four of us, so I am intent on getting through our Beligum & the Netherlands photos! We spent our last bit of summer visiting three Belgium cities and Amsterdam over about ten days. It. Was. Awesome. Don't get me wrong, there was plenty of bickering, whining, and emotional/physical insults and injuries. But, despite all of that, we had a total blast. We kicked off our trip by flying into Brussels, Belgium. We took a red eye in and went straig ..read more

It's been quite a long while since I took real photos of any family activities. Partly because I've been photographing a bunch for work stuff so photos for fun just also seemed like work, partly because I just haven't had much interest or time to blog (obviously), and partly just because I upgraded to a new camera a few years ago and wasn't super happy with the switch (right before our California trip, which photos I never finished editing for that very reason). But we just took a big family trip to one of my favorite childhood vacation spots and I decided to give it another try. I didn ..read more