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A Month of Thanks, Day Twenty-Three

Today I'm thankful for the enjoyment I get out of cooking and that I've become pretty good at it, if I do say so myself (and Matty and Maddie will say so too!). Matty is also a really good cook and enjoys it just as much, so we have some pretty awesome meals at our house and generally always make dinner unless we are beyond pooped or in the mood for going out and enjoying a meal made by someone else. Since Madeleine has been a baby we have always eaten dinner together at the table as a family, which is a habit that I plan to continue until we have an empty nest. Even though she is young we try to talk about our day, upcoming fun things, and just connect and unwind after our days.
But, back to the food!

I love trying new recipes and get a lot of them from blogs and daily emails from some of my favorite recipe web sites. I get a lot of my weeknight and slow cooker recipes from Real Simple, the Food Network site and Food 52; and look to Food and Wine and Bon Appetit for recipes when I have a little more time.

We also have a really good collection of cookbooks and these are a few of my favorites:

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This is a great book that I use to make a lot of Chinese and Indian recipes, and I still haven't used it to its full potential; there's a ginger, curry chicken stir fry that is so easy and so good I always go to.















I actually inherited this book before I moved to Boston, which is probably a sign I made it to the right city. The marinara sauce recipe is incredibly easy and the reason that we will never use sauce from a jar again. I make it at least once a week and always have some in the freezer.

We also subscribe to Food and Wine and steal my AIL's Bon Appetit and Martha Stewart subscription on a regular basis.


This is the awesome soup that I made last night from Food 52; I used all barley and substituted spinach for kale and canned diced tomatoes (always Tuttorosso) for fresh. It made so much delicious soup that I was able to stock my freezer and have seconds for dinner! We paired it with sourdough bread from When Pig's Fly (which is my favorite second only to when Matty makes bread for us) and one crazy toddler - voila, dinner success!


Once my month of thanks posts are over I plan to start dedicating a weekly post to things that we cook up around the O'Shea house, including some of the amazing things that Matty brings to the table (ha!, punny!).

What is your favorite website or cookbook? All this talk of food has made me seriously hungry!

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