Guest Blogger: Comfort Potatoes From The Mom Chef

I first started writing this blog mainly because I needed a good excuse to feed the husband new dishes. I was tired of serving the same old, and I wanted him to hop on the healthy wagon with me. Never in my wildest dreams would I start reading so many blogs, bookmarking so very many recipes and truly looking forward to other bloggers' posts.  

Today I'm happy to share the words of one of those bloggers with you. Christiane, aka The Mom Chef, tests out magazine recipes on her hubby and beautiful little girl, always offering up her honest opinion and often with a bit of humor. I can still remember the first post I read of hers about making a blue igloo cake. She cracked me up - and made a pretty impressive dessert that I'd never imagine tackling. I was hooked.

I have a feeling you will be, too.

Country-Style Potatoes - Comfort From Things That Go Bump in the Night

di·chot·o·my: division into two mutually exclusive, opposed, or contradictory groups.

I am a dichotomy. I love sunlight. I love Mary Poppins and Brigadoon. Many things make me cry; videos of returning soldiers surprising their children, Lassie being kicked, Folgers commercials. I could never go hunting because I couldn't kill anything. Even spiders are sent out of the house, unsquashed, though I loathe the critters. And I never, I mean never, watch horror movies because they scare the bejeebers out of me.

And yet, that contradictory flipside of me relishes reading the king of horror. Sitting directly behind my desk sit two bookcases. One entire case contains over fifty Stephen King books.  I'm entralled with his writing style and I adore his humor. The fact that he can make me laugh in the midst of scaring my pants off is amazing. In print. 

You-Gotta-Stop-Cooking-With-Basil Potatoes

Mustardy-Lemon Chicken, Basily-Lemon Potatoes and Boring Ol' Green Beans

You'd think, thanks to my clever titling skills, that this post is about the husband whining that I made bad potatoes for dinner - bad potatoes cooked with basil, to be exact. But our potatoes weren't bad at all. They were a little interesting, perhaps, and had a little flavor we aren't really used to with potatoes, but they were good. 

So what's the husband's issue with me using basil all the time? 

Oven-Baked "Fries"

Pulled Pork Sandwich and Oven-Baked "Fries"

There are plenty of things that, excuse my language, really suck about living so far away from our family and friends. We didn't make it "home" for Christmas last year nor will I be able to attend any of my little (big) brother's baseball games this season - his senior year of high school. We've missed everything from large family dinners to impromptu lunch dates with our grandparents. I'm not gonna lie: Sometimes living 796 miles away from our hometown stinks.

The decision to spread our wings and fly south was our decision, though, and, to be honest, has blessed with a number of amazing opportunities. We found great jobs, a sweet home and Stella. The move has also allowed us to open our home to a number of weekend guests and create memories that'll last a lifetime. (Alright, the truth is we've got a journal our visitors write in so we can piece together the visits we can't quite remember.) No one ever called us up and asked if they could visit for the weekend when we lived in our first apartment (in sin, yes). All of our friends lived nearby. That would have just been awkward. But now that we've moved, we get visitors quite often. This weekend, enter our cowboy-hat-wearing groomsman, one of my many cousins, E.