Kailey A Clark

 Here is another easy one pot recipe! Let’s face it, if I can’t dirty the least number of dishes on a weeknight I’m happy. I love to have more time to play with the boys which means easy cooking and clean up meals are the best. This meal is so good I couldn't even get a picture of it done as it was dished up before I could even get my phone! When it comes to this recipe you really can play around with the flavours to give it a different taste. Before kids my husband and I loved to use to diced tomatoes with chilies and hot Italian sausage. Now that we have kids who haven’t grown a liking to spicy foods yet, we usually have the diced tomatoes with Italian seasoning and a mild Italian sausage or even a honey garlic sausage to add a little different flavour.  This recipe is also great as a pasta. The only difference is that you add the entire bag of egg noodles to make it a pasta dish.  Ingredients:   - sausage (1 pkg your choice of flavour but we really like the Italian)  - 1 yellow

 We LOVE pizza in this house and any way to add extra flavour to make it better I am all over that. We had an abundance of tomatoes come off our tomato plants this year and were needing to come up with more ways as to how to use them. I was able to make soup and pasta sauce and then thought that this pizza sauce would be another great option as we eat pizza pretty regularly. I also froze a lot of tomatoes as it was hard to keep up with them all turning red at the same time. Frozen tomatoes work well with this sauce as well as they are getting cooked down anyway.  This sauce is a runnier sauce as I'm not a fan of a super thick pizza sauce and love how it adds just a touch of flavour to the pizza. If you are wanting it to thicken more, add some tomato paste to help it thicken.  Ingredients: 16 cups chopped tomatoes (Garden fresh add a lot more flavour) 1 onion 1-2 full heads of Garlic (I LOVE garlic so I tend to add more) 2 TBSP Olive Oil  2 TBSP Italian seasoning 1 TBSP Basil  2 TBS

This has been the longest post break in a long time but I have been feeling extremely overwhelmed with work and home balance. As some of you know I am a teacher and teaching looks much different this year. I usually teach hockey academy and am active all day and feel happy to sit down and write a blog post. This year Hockey Academy has been put on hold and I have been asked to teach in our boards virtual school. This has been an amazing learning opportunity and I feel like my virtual classroom has really come a long way. However, with being online all day my eyes have been sore and tired by the end of the day and thus completely unmotivated to write any blog posts. I finally feel like I have a plan and an understanding of some of the different programs out there to help with my teaching and thus why there is finally a new POST!! This dish is amazing and so quick to make! What else could a mom or busy person ask for, right!?! My husband and I use to fight over who got the leftovers for

  This has been a busy week with back to work and being a virtual teacher. I haven’t been a classroom teacher for the past 3 years and am really trying to get back into the swing of things. I was really enjoying my hockey academy role and am hoping that once COVID is under control we can bring the program back.  This recipe is inspired by my Aunt. She made something like this or perhaps this exact recipe (I didn’t ask for it) at a family function this summer and my husband has been asking for it ever since. They’re delicious bites of zucchini that are fried and crispy!  They taste like you're eating some good old comfort food while also knowing in the back of your head that you're also getting some vegetables while you do so. I will definitely be making this recipe again. We used Ranch salad dressing to dip it into but they also taste delicious on their own. Another dip I am wanting to try these with is tzatziki sauce as I think the dill in it would really add some extra flavou

                                                      This has become one of our favourite dinners this past winter and honestly I am excited to bring it back into the mix again soon. It is such a simple dish and the best part as it is all cooked in one pan/roaster. If you're anything like me you will want to have leftovers for lunches. This is why a cookie sheet does not work for me when making this meal. I pull out my big turkey roaster and fill it so that my husband and I can have lunches for a couple of days of the week. With getting back to work (I am a teacher remember) I will have to start thinking about lunches again and honestly that is one of my most dreaded tasks. This definitely helps as it lasts a couple of lunches and is nice and healthy! I love that with this recipe you can chop almost everything a head of time and have dinner prepped the night before. I find that the chopping takes time and after school we tend to get busy before dinner. I can take the pre chopped v

These muffins are so good and have tons of flavour! I got this recipe from my mother in law and they are worth making. I was hesitant to make them as I didn't know if the boys would like them and I thought they would be difficult to make. I was WRONG!! My youngest son cannot get enough of these muffins. I'm pretty sure he ate all 12 muffins when we were visiting them this past week.  When we were leaving my Mother in Law had some extra crushed pineapple to send home with us so I could make some when we got home. I love these muffins but had it in my head that they would be difficult to make but once again I was WRONG. I think from start to finish they took a total of 35 minutes to whip up and bake. Talk about my kind of recipe!                    Ingredients: 1 1/2 cups flour 1 cup white sugar 1 tsp baking powder 1 tsp baking soda 1 tsp salt 1 tsp cinnamon 2/3 cup cooking oil 2 eggs 1 tsp vanilla 1 cup raw grated carrots 1/2 cup crushed pineapple (with juice) Directions: 1. Pre

 Here is another Garden Fresh recipe because well we have a lot of garden veggies to use up! I love tomato soup and am usually the only one in the house who wants to eat it. However, this soup recipe has so much flavour to it that the whole family enjoyed it. It was pretty priceless to see the look on my oldest sons face when he took his last bite of soup talking about how good it was because it didn't have onion... To tell him that there was onion in it! He was SHOCKED! Hopefully that brings us one step closer to the end of onion picking out of his food as his favouite place to put the pieces of onion is on the table. Photo evidence of onion in the soup below!!!                      Now that we are getting to the end of summer and closer to the "start" of the school year (whatever that might look like). I am feeling more motivated to cook in large quantities to start to fill some space in the freezer. Then usually by late fall my husband makes us eat a lot of the fill as

  With all our garden goodies we’ve had to come up with new ideas for what to do with them. We’ve had a really good growing season and it’s been so great to walk outside to harvest with the boys. This recipe turned out way better than I thought and we will definitely be having it again. We had a power outage today for most of the day but managed to make a chocolate zucchini cake for dessert and this dish to accompany our deer steaks and potatoes.  My boys won't admit it but they also enjoyed this meal. But can't beat the fresh flavours that the garden fresh veggies add to this dish!                Ingredients:  2 cups chopped zucchini  1 cup diced tomatoes  3 cloves sliced garlic  1/2 onion  2 TBSP fresh dill 1 TBSP dried oregano Salt and pepper to taste  3 TBSP olive oil  Directions:  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees   2. Chop zucchini, dice tomatoes and slice onion and put into baking dish. Toss with olive oil.  3. Slice garlic chop dill and add to dish. Add oregano, and salt a

I LOVE to make cakes and have played around with this buttercream recipe quite a bit. It’s a nice recipe that is easy to decorate a cake with as well and really easy to change the flavouring and colouring if you like.  I’ve recently make the icing coconut and chocolate flavour and it easily changed into whatever flavour your wanting to add. The chocolate buttercream is slightly different as you’re adding cocoa powder and I will post that recipe below  Buttercream Ingredients:  1/2 cup butter (room temperature) 1/2 cup crisco vegetable shortening  5 TBSP whipping cream (or milk but whipping cream works the best)  1 tsp vanilla (or flavouring of choice)  3 3/4 cup icing sugar  Directions: 1. cream butter and shortening together until smooth  2. Add cream and flavouring and mix until just combined   3. Add icing sugar (and cocoa powder if making chocolate icing) and mix together. Start slow and then increase the speed once mixed and mix on medium speed for approximately 2 minutes or until

Well with our garden producing so much we have definitely had to try some new recipes as well as making some of our old favourites. This chocolate zucchini cake is a favourite of everyone in the house. This is such a versatile recipe that you can make the basic chocolate zucchini cake recipe and then add in any fixings if you wish.                                                    We usually add chocolate chips either inside or sprinkled on top of our cake. However this time (pictured) we decided to try adding score chips and chocolate chips to the cake because why not!  I would say that if you’re going to add any fruit (raspberries, blueberries, etc) to the inside of the cake, give it a little extra baking time as it will add extra moisture to your cake. But definitely check it after 50 minutes and then assess how much more time you think you’ll need.                                                       This cake is always a huge hit and with the added chips it was an even bigger su

So far our beets are doing really well in the garden! This meant that we got to pull some to help make more growing room for the others while also getting to enjoy the love we have put into growing them so far. I also did the same with our carrots today and we also enjoyed snacking on them this afternoon as well as grilling them for a treat with dinner.  Balsamic BBQ'd Beets is a super simple recipe that tastes delicious! Just don't ask my boys if its good as they were not interested in trying them. However, my husband and I really enjoyed them and will definitely make this recipe again this summer.  Ingredients: 4- 5 Beets 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar 1/2 tsp Garlic Salt 1/2 tsp marjoram 1/2 tsp thyme 1 tsp rosemary  Directions: 1. Wash and slice beets 2. mix all ingredients (except beets) in a bowl. Place sliced beets in a shallow container and pour marinade over top. 3. Put in fridge and let rest for approximately 30 minutes. 4. BBQ for 8 - 10 minutes a side and then enjoy! 

On a hot summer day is there anything more refreshing than fresh fruit and veggies right out of the garden? Well maybe a beer but that's hard to beat! This is a really simple bruschetta recipe that has lots of flavours and tastes even better when using fresh ingredients straight out of the garden.  This year our gardens are doing really well! We have had a lot of heat  and humidity this year and it has really helped out gardens grow and thrive. Our Roma tomatoes aren't ready for picking yet but our cherry tomato plant has been ripening quite well and is a nice addition to the bruschetta mix. We also have our basil plants that are also doing really well and have added additional flavours to our cooking. Another key to making the bruschetta have extra flavour is using fresh minced garlic as you really can't beat that taste. Also adding some heat with some chopped jalapeno peppers (also fresh out of the garden) would be a nice addition to add some spice!                      

I'm not usually one to make creamy salad dressings as it's not something I've generally done. But this creamy Caesar salad dressing is really good and super easy to make. I prefer to make this salad on nice crispy kale as it is a bit of a thicker leaf. However it is still good on other lettuces like romaine or leafy green lettuce.  We're in the middle of our third heat wave this summer and it's only the beginning of July! This has meant that we have been doing lots of cold salads and BBQ cooking as we are not turning our oven on as we do not have Air Conditioning. Although we are seriously considering it as our boys are struggling to fall asleep at night as their rooms are still hot and the temperature outside hasn't had a chance to cool off yet.  With the speed that our lettuce and Kale have been growing in our garden and the fact that we are wanting to eat cold foods we have enjoyed this salad a little more often than we might normally have. This dressing also

                                                          Well it's hard to believe but SUMMER is here! The end of this school year was really weird... It still feels a little incomplete as you weren't able to have your typical celebrations that you normally would with your class and you weren't able to give your kids a proper good bye. But that will not stop us from having a good summer. COVID - 19 may have added some restrictions on what we can and cannot do, so I have come up with 10 ideas of things that we are able to do while also adhering to social distancing guidelines. 1. Walk, bike, hike, etc. We have a walking path that is about 8 km down the path and back to our house. My oldest son loves to ride his bike now that he is able to and is always wanting to join me on my morning adventures. My youngest also loves to come along for the ride, as he is in the stroller and gets to snack along the way. Whether you have a walking path or not, getting out and enjoying the be