What I learned living as a bachelorette for 10 days. (1) The house stays a lot cleaner when only one person is living in it, and the trash and dishes are much more manageable. Surprise, surprise. (2) More importantly, if left to my own devices, I would probably live solely off desserts and breakfast food. I ate way too much ice cream, granola...

When making smoothies at home, we were in a bit of a rut. We always mixed yogurt with bananas and some variation of berries or maybe mango if we were feeling a little adventurous and wanted to go tropical. I was a little tired of smoothies, truth be told. Until I ordered the Blue Banana smoothie at the Pro Club's cafe after a particularly tough...

Although we haven't been doing quite as well as we have hoped in our quest to eat healthier dinners, we haven't been complete failures either. One of the delicious, but healthy meals to come out of our kitchen recently was these shrimp cakes, made in a manner similar to the salmon burgers of yesterday. Don't be alarmed by their green color—...

Salmon burgers were a regular part of our repertoire back at Rice, but we just bought pre-made ones from Whole Foods. Now that we pretty much live in the salmon capital of the world, I can't believe we haven't yet tried to make our own. Since we are moving in less than a month and we are getting some great looking salmon for very reasonable...

How hard it it to find spaghetti squash? Apparently really difficult around us. Whole Foods hasn't ever had them when I've looked, and Amazon Fresh can't seem to keep them in stock when they are delivering to me. But I finally got my hands one, and decided to make low-carb spaghetti and turkey meatballs with marinara. We've joined a fancy...

While sadly, we have not found any Tex-Mex out here worth our time or the calories, we have stumbled across a few "Southwestern" style restaurants in the area. The salsas are different and so is the cheese, and really just about everything else, but words like enchilada and taco are familiar, so we can appreciate the cuisine. One of the local...

Right before I left for Houston, we went on a pizza making spree. Here is the first one we made— a chicken alfredo pizza. Instead of tomato sauce, we used alfredo sauce as a base (a low-fat version to keep it healthier), and then we topped with a little bit of mozzarella, shredded chicken, chopped spinach and Kalamata olives. We made our own...

Today I am heading to Texas! I am really excited for this trip. The last time I was in Texas I got married, so of course, that trip was awesome, but things were a little crazy. This time around, I get to see my extended family, old friends from high school, and I get to see college friends as well celebrate Rice's Centennial. I also get to...

I believe I have done the impossible. I got Dustin to eat cauliflower and like it! Actually I tricked him into trying by hiding the cauliflower amidst mashed potatoes. He took one bite, said they were really good, referencing Joël Robuchon, and then I told him there was cauliflower in it. You should have seen the look on his face! I've seen...

Best use for leftover homemade everything hamburger buns? Sloppy Joe's. Healthy Sloppy Joe's made with ground turkey breast, but all the flavor thanks to ketchup, worcestershire sauce, tomato sauce and paste, red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, and a myriad of spices. There are some red chili flakes in there, which give it a little bit of kick....