Kristine Cocchiarella
Classically trained Cordon Bleu chef turned anti-GMO, pro-organic, food hippie blogger with a passion for REAL food.
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Cheesy Orzo with Broccoli
Earlier on in my blogging career I stumbled upon this side dish while wasting time trying to solve the toughest world problems by doing research online. Before the idea to start my blog was ever hatched in my special little mind, I used to follow quite a bit of non Real Food bloggers. No shame in that. A good recipe is a good recipe. Sometimes you just have to Real Foodify it, as I like to say. This recipe came from Iowa Girl Eats. She’s got a great little blog filled with some tasty recipes that are easy for me to adapt to our real food lifestyle. Many of her more current recipes…
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The Best Hot Weather Chilled Soup Recipe
Surprise! I don’t normally post on Tuesdays, but this week I have The Best Hot Weather Chilled Soup Recipe and I’m sharing it over on my friend Kristin’s blog. Kristin blogs over at Live Simply. I love her blog. When my blog grows up it wants to be just like her blog! So pretty!! I’ve mentioned before that this year I’m expanding my warm weather recipe collection so that TSM and I can still enjoy nourishing foods on the days when it’s too hot to want to cook at all or we’re just not hungry for something heavy. This soup is light, fresh, rich, colorful and best of all, it’s SO good.…
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30-Minute Mondays– Fettuccine Alfredo with Chicken and Broccoli
Wow! It’s already the first full week of May. This year is more than a third of the way over. Can you believe it? We had a small cold front move in last week which meant I was in the mood for comfort food. One of my all-time favorite dishes is Fettuccine Alfredo. I love a tasty white sauce. And if it has cheese in it, even better. This is a simple recipe that is full of flavor, tender chicken and beautiful green broccoli. This is one of only two or three ways that The Stud Muffin (TSM) will even eat broccoli. It’s the Will Wheaton to his Sheldon Cooper. This dish…
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Lentil Salad with Bacon
It’s that time of year. You know, when the days start to get warmer and out of nowhere an 80+ degree day pops in and dinner time rolls around and you’re like, “Um, no. It’s not happening. I’m not cooking, uh-uh, no way, no how, it’s too hot. Bleh!” Tell me I’m not the only one who feels that way on really warm days? I love salads and I have a ton of great recipes written down, but I’ve yet to feature any of them on the blog because my salads feature so many components I’m pretty sure y’all be like “She’s crazy, there is NO way I’m doing all that just for…
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Lemon Gem Cookies
It’s spring!! It’s been spring for a while here in South Carolina, but I try not to talk about it since they still have snow up in MN where I’m from. For weeks I’ve wondered why none of my neighbors has opened their windows to air out their homes, let in the lovely fresh air and enjoy the breezes and the singing birds. Then one day when I had the windows wide open and fans blowing, too I discovered that an eighth of an inch of pollen covered every surface of my house inside and out and I’ve been blowing my nose non-stop. On principle alone, I refuse to shut the windows and…
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30-Minute Mondays– Pan Fried Pork Milanese
Pan. Fried. Pork. I could leave it at that, post few photos and you’d be salivating while you run to the freezer to see if you have any pork chops you can thaw out. Is there anything better than breaded, pan-fried pork that’s been pounded thin and seasoned just perfectly? Probably, but at the moment I can’t think of anything better. 30-Minute Monday almost didn’t happen this week. Some poor planning on my part left us without the ingredients to make the next dish I had on my list. The recipe, from start to finish took me a wee bit over 30 minutes because I had 8 pork chops to fry (they were…
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Simply Perfect Rice Pilaf
Are you intimidated by rice pilaf so you rely on that “San Fransisco Treat”? I used to be. Then I went to culinary school and learned a really easy way to make perfect rice pilaf. Each grain comes out nice and fluffy, not sticky or clumped together. I love rice. I could eat rice every day. The Stud Muffin isn’t a huge fan, but he’s coming around. He does like this pilaf, so whenever I make fish, chances are this rice will be on my plate. Rice can be flavorless and boring, but this rice is made with homemade chicken stock so it’s definitely not lacking in flavor department. I have found…
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30-Minute Mondays– Maple Soy Salmon
One of the things that I love about cooking, and photography for that matter, is that it keeps me humble. According to The Stud Muffin, I need to keep my ego in check, so he’s pleased that I’ve found things that challenge me and keep me humble. The reasons that cooking (and photography) keeps you humble is the moment you think you’ve mastered a technique, ingredient, or a certain dish or recipe, something happens, call it misaligned stars, faulty human, bad ingredients, Murphy’s Law, humidity…whatever, but something happens and for whatever reason epic failure doesn’t even begin to cover how badly the end results were. As a food blogger and someone who develops recipes I…
