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A Life From Scratch.

A Life You Adore Around A Table You Love.

Big Sky bound.

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bigsky

Tata friends! This week my crew and I are off to Big Sky Montana for awhile – yee haw!

Don’t worry, as always, ALFS will keep moving along. You’ll get to hear from the fantastic Tina from Shredded Sprout. Also my super hip sister in law, Molly, will be writing as well. I also hope to check in from time to time in between the hiking and fishing and ranching and… sigh. 

If you want to follow along our vacation, Facebook and Instagram are great places to start. This is my favorite place in the whole wide world, and I’d love to share it with you.

Happy June!
C

Father’s Day line up.

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father's day2014A whole lot of love and a whole lot of food going out to the wonderful fathers and grandfathers in my family this Sunday. They deserve it, right? My dad and my father-in-law had to put up with (still) raising 3 girls each (yikes) and raising M (double yikes). And M could not be more on top of being a rockstar dad to both L and B. So, cheers to them! Here’s what will be simmering away on the stove, sizzling away on the grill, and chopping away on the cutting board in their honor:

The ultimate bbq chicken. Is there a more manly dish?

Chopped tortellini salad. A win with the men and the ladies.

Homemade corn muffins. Ina makes the best.

Bowls of fresh fruit.

For dessert? My mom will be whipping up a batch of super manly Texas brownies. Yee haw!

Also, after weeks of not knowing what to get him, I’m pretty sure I found the best Father’s day gift ever for M. Check it out and shhhhh don’t tell!

Happy Father’s Day!
C

The birds and the bees.

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zucchini flowers

Ah, the birds and the bees. You think you’ve got it all figured out, right? Until you were asked to pick only ‘male’ zucchini flowers. Let’s back it up here…

Did you know? I’m sharing a plot with my fantastic neighbor, Tina, who writes over at Shredded Sprout. As much as we love to cook and style and entertain, we don’t exactly (read: really) know what we are doing. Enter Sil, our other partner.

It was clear what his purpose was vs. my purpose, i.e. – he knew what to do. Somehow our garden went from being a large plot of dirt to a thriving green machine. The first gift presented to us from the dirt were beautiful zucchini flowers. Being oh so chic and totally current with hip foods (ok, that’s totally in my head), I knew we had to cook something up with these beauties. But wait….!

You can only pick the males.

Huh?

Yes. Only the males. If you pick the females, the zucchini squash literally won’t grow. The female flowers are  – get this – pregnant with the squash. Seriously? Even in the gardening world it’s the woman? #notfair

I’m not exactly sure Tina and/or Sil had total confidence in me in selecting the few rarer males (I don’t blame them), but I promise you all I did it right. The males are on a much longer and slimmer stem – totally showing off. The females are stuck a bit down low and literally have a rotund piece attached to them. Huh, sounds familiar.

Anyway, a quick trip to the garden with the boys, and off to Tina’s to make this killer squash blossoms recipe. Is it something to make on a whim? Is it quick? Easy? No. Not at all, really. But, it just happened to be the exactly perfect thing to make on that particular Sunday in June.

C

P.S. Sil, I heard one made it your way and I hope this, and much more to come, will be worth all the effort you put in.

C’s picks.

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c'spicks51

Can these fun summer weekends never end? Pretty please?

We kicked off ours with dinner at Grandad’s and Grandma Ginger’s. Seared scallops, badminton in the yard, and rose on the patio. It was all picture perfect! Saturday was full party mode around here as we celebrated my dear friend, Catherine’s (milestone) birthday. I think it’s safe to say we all had just a bit too much fun. More baseball, lunch by the beach, and gardening on Sunday? A hit all around. 

And now for our menu plan line up for the week – here we go:

An impromptu dinner at Catherine’s on Sunday night sounded perfect. It’s always good to relive the event the next day, right? Hands down best quote of the party, by Catherine of course: “I can’t be outside in the rain because I just got my hair dry cleaned.” Alright then! Antipasto platter along with grilled burgers. Done.

Grilled caprese chicken sounds like the perfect thing for a Monday night. Roasted green beans too.

With M flying off to Seattle on Tuesday, it’s the perfect time to bust out this salmon. We’ll go with broccoli on the side.

Another night on my own, let’s go super healthy again with this cous cous salad chock full of veggies, feta, and smoked paprika. Yum.

Thursday M returns, and off to the city we go. 10 year anniversary baby! 

We’re back Friday and with a 6PM baseball scrimmage, I don’t see dinner being much aside from a hot dog on the way there or after. These hot dog melts are killer.

That’s our line up for the week – let’s hear about yours!
C

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