When you think of a charcuterie board, you might think of a cocktail party, a light dinner or even an afternoon snack. But I also think of breakfast!

As I’ll explain below, charcuterie for breakfast is quite common in Europe, and I think we should celebrate here in the United States, too!

Read on to learn how to build an epic Breakfast Charcuterie board perfect for a weekend brunch or holiday gathering like Mother’s Day.

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Is there anything more comforting than a bowl of mashed potatoes and homemade gravy (or even bacon gravy)? In my house, they’re not just for holidays (although we surely have them then, too, and a potato cake or my leftover mashed potatoes recipe the next day).

Mashed potatoes are the first thing I want when I feel under the weather, or when it’s cold and gloomy outside.

And if I’m serving a juicy flat iron steak on grill, the meal isn’t complete without homemade mashed potatoes with heavy cream (and maybe some Dr. Pepper baked beans, too).

I just really enjoy the process of making mashed potatoes, and experimenting with them by adding unique ingredients and flavorings. These Blue Cheese Mashed Potatoes are the ones I’m currently digging the most.

They’re the perfect accompaniment to prime rib, ham, or lamb lollipops, or turkey (and no gravy is really needed). You could even put them on top of mini shepherd’s pies!

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After Thanksgiving, is it possible that “the big game” (don’t you hate how everybody has to call it that due to copyright issues?) is the second biggest food “holiday” of the year? I know we take menu planning for it pretty seriously around here!

And somehow it’s turned into a whole day event, too. While “dinner” might be crock pot ribs or Sonoran hot dogs, you have to have snacks for the afternoon lead-up to the event, too!

If I’m attending a gathering, I might show up with individual charcuterie cups or Korean meatballs for nibbling before the game. If I’m hanging around home, I might make a little football charcuterie board for my fam, or maybe some shrimp deviled eggs and ham and turkey sliders for snacking.

But my all-time FAVORITE game day dish is this Healthy Buffalo Chicken Dip recipe. Let me tell you why it’s so good, and maybe you’ll want it to be a part of your game day celebration, too!

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If there’s one thing I despise when the weather warms up, it’s using the oven and turning the house into a sauna. My country style pork ribs recipe is really best for cooler fall days.

Heck, even using the stove heats up the house sometimes! Dr. Pepper baked beans are great on cooler days, but not on the hot ones!

At least the slow cooker doesn’t heat up the house, so I can still make crock pot ribs.

Other than that, it’s really best to do most of the cooking outdoors (or just eat cold salads like seafood pasta salad for dinner), and probably even eat at the table outside, as well. Who’s with me?

We do hearty salads like turkey burger salads for dinner quite often around here. Adding a protein like mini burger patties or steak always makes a salad more satisfying.

While I could easily chop the lettuce up and serve this recipe as a fork-able salad, I decided to save myself a step and just serve it as steak lettuce wraps.

One less thing to do, which is always nice on a hot summer evening.

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Do you have “clean out the fridge” meals once in awhile, or even weekly?

Pizza is frequently on our menu for that type of meal, because pizza (and even a crostini pizza bar) is great as a vehicle to use up extra odds and ends hanging out in the fridge (like rotisserie chicken for chicken pizza or cheeseburger pizza made with leftover ground beef).

Often, these leftover ingredients are from two or three recipes I’ve made for work, resulting in one big Frankenpizza (which is honestly how the crab rangoon pizza came about).

Celery, grape tomatoes and odds and ends of cheese often need to be used up. And we always have shrimp of some kind in the freezer, because it’s one of my daughter’s favorite foods.

While shrimp is great for an appetizer or a seafood pasta salad, you might not generally think of it for pizza. I’m hoping I can change your mind with this buffalo shrimp pizza recipe.

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This Halloween Cheese Board is perfect for your Halloween Party

Halloween is definitely one of the most beloved holidays in our household. My husband goes all out with yard decorations, I plan our family Halloween costume months in advance, and our daughter is in it for the candy, of course.

I’ve already done an extensive post on Halloween food ideas (and Halloween deviled eggs, too!). But when you combine my love for Halloween with my love for fun charcuterie board ideas, I couldn’t resist a Halloween board dedicated to charcuterie and cheese.

And if breakfast charcuterie and charcuterie chalets are things, then a Halloween charcuterie board is also most definitely a thing.

I love a unique charcuterie board idea! Equal parts cute and creepy, let me walk you through how I built this spooky appetizer tray. And don’t forget a batch of Halloween bark or Halloween cake pops for dessert!

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I am not the type of person that goes to the grocery store without a plan (especially now). I have a buttoned up, triple-checked-for-accuracy grocery list divided into separate “work” and “personal” columns, in order of where each item is located in the store.

Specific brands of products and sizes/varieties of fruits and vegetables are noted. On the back of the list is a meal plan for the week, outlining which entree and side dishes we will eat each night.

There is one exception to this meticulousness. Sometimes while meal planning, I find myself thinking, “I can’t eat any more butternut squash noodles or maple brussels sprouts – I need to find a new vegetable to make. But wait a minute, what types of vegetables are there, even?” 

My mind literally draws a blank as to what types of vegetables are even available for consumption, so I’ll just write on the meal plan (and corresponding grocery list) “TBD Vegetable.”

This is the one thing I don’t have mulled over and planned for before arriving at the store. I know. Living right on the edge.

So yeah, there are actually tons of vegetables that I routinely overlook. Instead of grabbing green beans and tomatoes or carrots for honey roasted carrots and getting in and out of the store as quickly as possible, lately I’ve been taking a few moments to study all the types of produce available.

This time around, I saw a head of radicchio that looked particularly inviting, so I dropped it in my cart, destined for a roasted radicchio recipe.

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I know in Monday’s post, I sort of lamented about how small my Thanksgiving gathering is, thus, not allowing me to make a HUGE Thanksgiving recipes list with a million different dishes. I shouldn’t complain at all, because the way things are means it’s simple and relatively easy to prepare the meal.

I’ve heard from several of you in the past few days, and it turns out, small family groups similar to my own are very common for Thanksgiving. Not everybody is cooking for 30!

And while I DO have a recipe for a whole roasted turkey being published next Monday (and a corresponding leftover turkey chili recipe), I wanted to share a turkey recipe fit for a smaller gathering today.

This Blue Cheese & Apple Turkey Breast Roulade provides about five pounds of turkey, making it just the right size for my family of six. If you had a slightly larger (but still pretty small) guest list, you could serve this roulade plus a few roasted turkey drumsticks.

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Any tomato haters out there? I’d be surprised if there were any reading here, since so many of my recipes include tomatoes. But in real life, I know a surprising amount of people who don’t like tomatoes.

Look, I get it: those sad lifeless slices of pink tomato that come on fast food sandwiches are horrible. But there is NOTHING like a fresh, local, juicy, farmer’s market tomato.

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One of my favorite summer meals is homemade grilled pizza. It’s my favorite because 1.) it’s delicious and adaptable to whatever I happen to have in the fridge, and 2.) it’s my husband’s specialty, so I can sit back and relax while he makes dinner.

While ideally, I would eat homemade pizza two or three nights a week, it’s not always possible. As grilled pizza season coincides with golf season, Jeff golfs after work a lot in the summer, meaning he’s not home to make me pizza!

While I would love to have his pizza dough stretching and shaping and grilling skills, sadly, I do not. My grilled chicken pizzas are more mess than masterpiece.

My secret for those nights when I still want grilled pizza but don’t want to mess with the dough? Either a small crostini pizza bar for one, or pre-made naan bread from the store. It’s a really great substitute for traditional pizza crust, and even the most novice griller couldn’t mess it up.

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