Author: byjoella

Cooking at Home…

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We’ve been enjoying Sun Basket for awhile now.

In fact, the featured picture on this post was one of our Sun Basket meals we recently cooked at home, Sesame-crusted Salmon with Orange and Roasted Carrot Salad. It tasted AMAZING!

We were ready to add another company to supplement our Sun Basket meals. I did some searching and decided to give Home Chef a try. They ship for free if you order over $45, so I ordered the following meals for 2: a meal to cook, a “no cooking required” salad meal and 2 smoothies = free shipping!

Here’s what’s on our 1st Home Chef menu this week:
  1. Mojito Pork Chops
  2. Sesame Chicken Salad
  3. Strawberry Colada Smoothie(s)
The Home Chef menu will be added to our Sun Basket menu for this week:
  1. Shrimp tacos diablo with pickled cabbage & lime.
  2. Sicilian chicken breasts with salmoriglio sauce and broccoli.
  3. Piri-piri shrimp with curried sweet potato-coconut mash.

Home Chef will be our 4th meal kit company we’ve tried. Our first experience was Blue Apron, the second, Sun Basket (our favorite), and third was Green Chef. You can read about our experiences by clicking the preceding links.

Our first Home Chef shipment arrives this week, so be sure to check back to find out how our  meal kit experience with them goes.

Until next time….

We aren’t just a market, we are Rustic Country Market Living.

Inspiring Home Life ♥️,

THE RELENTLESS REDECORATOR

I Love East Coast Antiques & Crafts…

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I absolutely love to visit historical places on the east coast. I love the antiques. I love the crafts. I love old brick, old rock walls, old glass, and old wood. I love getting inspired by different colors and textures. I leave these places with a desire to create things! Here’s a few inspirational photos I took during some of my past visits to the east coast. Maybe they will inspire you too!

The Relentless Redecorator

 

Home Cooked Meals…

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I grew up during a time when girls were taught Home Economics. I was taught how to be a stay at home mom and manage a home and family. Kind of like that movie Pleasantville. It was never my desire to be a working professional, juggling a job and family. How could I??? I wasn’t even taught how to juggle home, family with a full time job.

Change happens…

Today, we live in a double income world. Most families juggle home and work life. Single parent families typically struggle to make ends meet. While a double income household is advantageous; it also has it’s disadvantages, like less quality time at home. Grocery shopping is the last thing I want to do after working all week. As a result, we have a tendency to go out to eat too often.

Are Meal Kits Really Worth It???

The idea of having meal kits delivered to our home seemed intriguing to me, but was it really worth it? After trying a few, I’ve concluded it is! Since we started to use meal kit services, we’ve enjoyed more home cooked meals and increased our quality time at home. We’ve seen less left over food waste at our house. We cook restaurant quality food at home. Time permitting, we can prepare the meals together. We don’t have to spend time shopping for ingredients. We don’t have to buy extra ingredients that end up spoiling. I get to review the proposed meals in advance and make changes based on what we might like to eat. I can skip a delivery week, which works well if we are going to be traveling. I can even change the delivery day if needed. All we need to provide is a few pantry items (IE: salt, pepper, oil) and kitchen tools (IE: pans, utinsels).

Sun Basket…

I recently cooked Sun Basket’s Braised chicken with carrots potatoes and thyme recipe. Cook time was 20-35 minutes. I was waiting for my husband to get home from work, so I extended the cooking time by reducing the heat. I chose to add Vermouth instead of white wine or water. We really enjoyed this meal, had plenty of food to eat and there was a small amount of leftovers.

Click this link If you’d like to read more about our Sun Basket Meal Kit Experience.

Inspiring Home Life,

THE RELENTLESS REDECORATOR

Replace or Update?

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Sometimes you just gotta do what you envision you wanna do.

Before…

I had wanted to change the look of our old, country dining room table, chairs and hutch instead of buying new furniture. I was tired of the dated look. I envisioned that the table, chairs and hutch could use some new color. Our current house has a lot of stainless steel and gray accents which inspired my new color choice.

I bought some charcoal gray chalk paint to update the set for a fraction of the price of buying a new dining set. I decided not to distress the chalk paint because the old white paint already had a natural aged look, and I loved how the charcoal looked next to the old white paint.

I decided the old, wood knobs on the hutch had to go, so I visited one of my favorite stores, Hobby Lobby. I found some antiqued silver/glass knobs to add to the hutch. The new look took our old dining set to a whole new level.

I love it!

Inspiring home life,

The Relentless Redecorator