breakfast – Shoots and Roots

Breakfast Tacos

Are you feeling those first stirrings of Fall yet? I know I have been for a couple of weeks now. The nights are much cooler. My bedroom windows are still open at night, but only a crack. The evenings are still very warm but I have pulled out the warmer blankets for the middle of…

30 Days of Renewal – Day 10 – How to Make Pecan Butter

By: Melissa April 29, 2013June 10, 2018

Breakfast, Food, Homemade Pantry, Nuts, Snacksallergy, breakfast, Food, lunch, nuts, Pecan, recipe1 Comment

If you have never tried a nut or seed butter other then peanut butter then you are in for a treat. Peanuts are not actually nuts, they’re a bean! Which is why those allergic to peanuts may not be allergic to tree nuts. If your kid is a PB&J lover and has a no-peanut policy…

Eggs and Zucchini – A Summer Breakfast

It’s quiet around here. No jingling of Chaser’s dog collar, none of his galloping up and down the stairs at a maniac pace either. Tom isn’t playing loud country music in the driveway while feeding his birds and I’m not waking up to Tom’s mess from his rushed morning, on the way to work. …

Photo Friday – Plum Jam with Recipe

I love making jam in the summer. We don’t bother canning it since we tend to finish it off pretty quickly. That’s why I love this recipe, because you can make any amount you need. This week we used red plums, last week it was tropical plums, next week we will see what is on…

Getting Cultured – Making Yogurt

Cultured – an adjective meaning: enlightened; refined nurtured or grown cultivated; tilled I stare at the directions wondering if this is a huge waste of time. Maybe I should just go to bed. Everyone else is already asleep. I look down at the milk that’s beginning to steam in my favorite saucepan. There is no…

Favorite Food Photos From April and Early May

By: Melissa May 10, 2011

Photographybay area, breakfast, dessert, dinner, food photography, garden, san jose, snack4 Comments

I schedule time to practice food photography several times a week. On many days I drop my daughter off at school and head straight home to take advantage of the early morning light flooding my kitchen and living room. I end up taking so many food related photos that don’t ever make it onto my…

Spring Frittata for One

The rush of the morning is over. My daughter has been delivered safety to school. My husband, long gone to work at an early hour. I sit at the kitchen table and take in the quiet of the morning. My house is silent except for the sound of our neighborhood sparrows and wrens softly chirping…

Back on Track Granola

I stepped onto the scale for a bi-weekly weigh in. Oh crap. Do my eyes deceive me? Is it true? I groan and step off. “Tom, somehow I gained ten pounds in the last few weeks!” Tom smiles and crosses the room to hug me from behind. We both look into the bathroom mirror. “You…

Pull Apart Cinnamon Bread

By: Melissa March 25, 2011May 26, 2018

Breakfast, Dessert, Foodbaking, bread, breakfast, cinnamon, dessert, Food, food photography, pull apart bread, sugar, sweet bread5 Comments

This bread was incredible and gone in under 15 minutes. Recipe I used: Joy the Baker Other recipes like this one… Annie’s Eats La Mia Vita Shop Cook Make The Eclectic Girl Or new twists. Lemon Blueberry Pull Apart Bread from Le Petit Brioche Marbled Pull Apart with Orange Sugar from CaffeIna Lemon Scented Pull…

Meyer Lemon Curd

By: Melissa March 19, 2011June 10, 2018

Breakfast, Dessert, Food, Fruit, Gluten Freebreakfast, cooking, curd, custard, Food, food photography, fruit, lemon, recipe, snack5 Comments

I can’t post today without first mentioning Japan & the earthquake. I have lived 2 miles from the San Andreas Fault in California my entire life living with the fear of the “Big One”. Japan’s devastation is so terrifying to me not only because it is too horrible to describe, but because it will one…