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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The Dirty Dozen and Clean 15
Hey there Food Hippies. When asked about the best place to start your Real Food journey, I almost always say with the Dirty Dozen list. This post is a duplicate of the Dirty Dozen Clean Fifteen page featured on my nav bar, but my theme won’t let you Pin images on a page, only in a post. So I’m going to sneak this into the mix so that if you happen upon it, you can pin the image below that I worked hard pretty on. In my opinion, this is quite possibly one of the most important lists that you could memorize when it comes to eliminating harmful toxins from your diet. An…
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30-Minute Monday Skillet Shepherd’s Pie
I honestly can’t believe it’s Monday already! Man, where does the time go? This week we’re going comfort food, and what says comfort more than a saucy, meaty filling with veggies and mashed potatoes piled high on top? Pretty much nuthin’ if you ask me. When mashed potatoes hug a saucy, meaty, veggie-filled filling, it’s magic my friends. Comfort food magic! If you have anti-veggites (people who don’t like veggies that much) in your house, like I do, you can sneak in some extra veggies and they probably won’t notice. If I work veggies into something with meat and gravy, The Stud Muffin will happily eat the veggies. If they sit on his…
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Cranberry-Coconut Oatmeal Cookies
Cookies!! There aren’t too many people that don’t love a good cookie. I love home baked goods over store bought any day. Even thought I don’t make them all the time- mainly because since switching over to eating more whole, fresh, clean, real foods, I simply don’t crave these nearly as often as I once did, these really are scrumptious. Since ‘healthifying’ the way we eat, I’ve adopted the “Good, Better, Best” mindset. An example would be, good is an organic, non-gmo packaged cookie with minimal ingredients, and ones that you can pronounce. In other words, no chemicals or nasties. Better would be making the cookies from scratch, using as many organic ingredients…
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Chicken Pasta Primavera
We love pasta in our home. I’m sure being married to an Italian has absolutely nothing to do with it at all. Because of our love for fresh pasta, I someday hope to own some special die casts for making my own shapes, like penne, and rigatoni. Until then, I buy imported organic dry pasta for dishes that call for something other than a long skinny noodle. Those I’ve got down pat. I really want to share my homemade pasta recipe with you guys, but I don’t have anywhere to attach my pasta maker in my kitchen. Which I affectionately call Lord Voldemort’s 8th Horcrux. As soon as I can figure out how…
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30-Minute Monday– Italian Sausage, Pepper & Onion Hoagies
Happy Monday everyone! It’s time for another 30-Minute Monday dish. Are you excited? I know I am. This weeks dish was a tasty one. I loved the pepper and onion mixture SO much; that I served it over some linguine the next night for dinner and it was UH MAY ZING! Whoa! Yeah, if you would rather just skip the hoagie roll, boil up some pasta and top with a couple slices of the sausage, and a few spoonfuls of the peppers and onions. Yee-Haw it was tasty. Actually, now that I think about it, you should probably try this as a hoagie first simply because this was a very flavorful and filling…
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Real Food Girl Takes a Field Trip to We Know Stuff
Hi Everyone! Today I’ll be doing a guest post over at We Know Stuff. There are two fabulous sisters behind this fun blog and a couple months ago Denine, Daniele and I started chatting about how overwhelming all the information available online was regarding Real Food. All this information with resources to show them the way and instead of empowering them to make the changes they desired to make, that information made them feel inferior, ashamed, and anxious. Understandably, that made me sad. It made me sad because I personally know many Real Food food bloggers and if we’re making people feel ashamed because they aren’t at the same point on their path…
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Balsamic-Strawberry Black Pepper Jam
I made jam!! This is the first time that I’ve ever made jam and I’m quite thrilled with how it turned out. Last year I went to one of those craft fair thingy’s where people sell jams, and homemade crafts, candles, jewelry, scarves, things for your pets, and your home. Anyway, I bought a small jar of Strawberry Balsamic jam with Black Pepper. For $12.00. That’s right, I paid $12.00 for an 8-ounce jar of this stuff. Man, was it good. I savored every $1.50-ounce of that jam. I did not however want to keep spending $12.00 for a small jar of homemade jam, no matter how good. I knew I was going…
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30-Minute Monday–Red Lentil Coconut Soup with Garam Masala
Spicy, exotic, hearty, filling, luscious, vibrant, unique- these are words that I would use to describe this soup. It’s a celebration in your mouth. You may even violate the spoon because you’ll wanna get every.last.drop off it when you take your first bite. Yeah, it’s *that* good. You may be surprised to learn that I don’t care for Indian food. Back when I used to do home mortgages and worked in a bank, we would have a big potluck once a month. We had the sweetest banker who was from India, but every single time I ate the dishes he brought, I’d get super sick. For some strange reason I tend to avoid…
