I arrived on Long Island the other day and made my way out to my parents’ house for a week with my sisters and their kids.  I just love Long Island in the summer.  The West Coast is great, but there’s nothing like East Coast summer.  I am a little jet lagged still despite assuming the time zone once I arrived.  Hopefully I can beat it tonight!  I have created a great summer menu for the week ahead, although I will be cooking for a crowd so I will follow a different plan.  You can follow along on Instagram for the details.  But I will be including all the summer goods like corn, zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, peaches, green beans, basil, peppers and berries!

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Goodbye, Portugal.  We’ll be back!  My older daughter was able to join us for our last full day in Portugal and now we’re making our way over to Spain to pick up my son (aka Mr. Picky) who has been there for almost 5 weeks.  We are so excited to see him! I have eaten a little too much fish (2-3 times a day!) and not enough vegetables and I am not sure that’s going to change in Spain.  My husband introduced fish into his diet a few months ago and is doing well with that.

After Spain, I head to Long Island on Thursday for 8 days with my family.  I love summer!  I will be uploading a post very soon about the Wellness Retreat I am teaching at September 26-29 at the magical Greenhorn Ranch in the Sierras.  If you want information ASAP, you can call 530.283.0930.

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Hello from Portugal!  Hubs and I are taking a little vacay to celebrate this year’s big birthday (his was in May, mine is in October.)  We are already having the best time!  My older daughter will join us next week and then a few days after she meets us, we will go pick up Mr. Picky who has been studying in Spain for the last month.  🙂

In the meantime, I have a wonderful retreat to give you a little preview about.  I’ll send an email with more information to everyone on my subscriber list in a few days.  I will be one of the hosts of a wellness retreat September 26-29th, 2019 at Greenhorn Ranch in the Sierra Mountains.  It’s an all-inclusive weekend offering the space and serenity to reconnect, visit health goals, learn more about mindfulness, and cultivate a better sense of balance.  Go to www.greenhornranch.com or call 530.283.0930 with any questions.  Mention my name when you register and let me know if I’ll be seeing you there!

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I hope you are in the midst of a fabulous holiday weekend.  I am taking my relaxing very seriously if you must know ;).  My older daughter came home from Dallas and accompanied my husband and me to our friends’ house in Montecito for a few days and other than writing this blog post, I have checked out!

For my cooking class students, I am not teaching in person July or August, only online.  I can teach a class by request, but I am out almost the entire month of July.  Please email Erika for August availability:  Continue reading

I was working on a another post for this week until I received an email from my editor with my manuscript attached.  She passed the baton to me, so to speak, and now it’s my turn to edit.  I need to work on edits pretty hard core in the short term because I am going away for July 4th weekend and then I am going on a big trip mid-July that I am super excited about.  Hubs and I are both celebrating big birthdays this year, so we are going to Portugal and Spain by ourselves for a little vacay and then two of our kids will join us at different points.  How great is that??  We haven’t been on a fun trip like this in a while.  Can’t wait.

In the meantime, I will be taping the July online class on Monday, so all my cooking class participants will be getting that one right after July 4th.  I have been recipe-testing like crazy and shooting food in preparation of being away for a few weeks.  I also shot a few more recipes to add to the Thanksgiving e-book I did last year.  I am going to update that one with some more recipes and tips.  Last year, I had some requests to have the ebook out in time for Canadian Thanksgiving which is in earlier October.  I will do my best!

Here’s your dinner planner for the week.  Happy 4th!!

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Happy Summer, officially! Today is the day I make lots of lists of things I want to accomplish over the next two months since my cooking class schedule is super light.  Two months from now, I will look back on said list and wonder where the time went and how is it possible that I got none of it done LOL?  Alas, what it really means is that I needed the summer to have a little down time.  I do have a round of edits coming up for my next book and I will continue filming cooking classes for my online platform.  If you normally take my classes in person, I doubt I will teach any this summer, so check out the online versions.  It’s the same class, same nutrition information, same tips and tricks, recipes, etc.

If you missed my segment on Home & Family this week, you can watch it here.  And if you don’t live in LA and couldn’t catch my segment on food waste with KABC’s Lori Corbin, here it is:

Here are some great ideas for dinners this week, but I’m not opposed to a few olives, tomatoes and hummus every now and again when I need a night off!

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Happy Weekend and Happy (almost) Summer!  I just landed in Pittsburgh to visit my younger daughter who has an internship here for the summer.  I’ve only been to Pittsburgh twice before, and very briefly, so I’m excited to spend a few days alone with her in the city.  Because I am here for Father’s Day, I totally blew it with last week’s dinner planner and forgot all about it.  See last year’s dinner planner for a few suggestions.

On Tuesday, I am heading over to the set of Home & Family where I will tape a cooking segment.  I love doing that show.  The hosts and crew have great energy and I always get a generous amount of time to talk and cook.  The episode will air on Wednesday on the Hallmark channel, so check your local listings for time.  I’ll be making the one-pot farro from last month’s cooking class.  It’s a winner!

I’ve been slowly seeing more summer produce trickle into our markets.  I still cook dinner most nights when school is out, but the meals tend to be simpler and lighter.  We can be happy with a giant salad with or without animal protein.  Sometimes just a little avocado and or some hemp seeds or almonds on top do the trick.  Desserts lean towards seasonal fruits, especially berries and stone fruit.  I love grilling, roasting or broiling stone fruit – so delicious!

Here’s your dinner planner for the week.  As always, almost any recipe can be adapted to suit your taste or eating style.  Let me know if I can offer suggestions in that regard.

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