Brooklyn Farm Girl - Food Blog, Gardening and Motherhood from NYC

Butternut Squash Baby Food Recipe

Dec 08 2018

I have a picky toddler and she loves this puree, so trust me – your baby is going to love this Butternut Squash Baby Food Recipe made with fruits and vegetables! And even better, it’s easy to make! This is a nutritious Stage 2 and Stage 3 puree for baby, or to serve to toddlers in pouches.

Homemade Baby Food Recipe

I love making homemade baby food for my daughter. In the beginning our favorite was Apple, Pear and Banana baby food. Then she loved these Sweet Potato Baby Cookies. Now it’s her new favorite snack – Butternut Squash puree mixed with lots of fruits and vegetables!

Butternut Squash Baby Food

So there I was in the kitchen, eyeing up a beautiful butternut squash that a friend gave me. Sure, I could make butternut squash casserole, or a creamy soup, but instead I decided I was going to chop it up and make baby food with it. How’s that for a Mama loving their baby first?

Dec 07 2018

GLUTEN-FREE White Chocolate Dipped Pistachio Cookies are the BEST for CHRISTMAS baking! This easy gluten-free recipe makes 48 spiced pistachio cookies that are dipped in melted white chocolate! They are made with almond flour and teff flour, making a perfectly formed cookie! They are one of my favorite Christmas cookies, perfect for family eating and holiday gifts!

Gluten Free Christmas Cookies

These Gluten-Free White Chocolate Dipped Pistachio Cookies need to become a must-have on your holiday baking list! I made them last weekend and they were gone by Monday morning! They have the taste of a spiced cookie but they’re dipped in white chocolate adding a touch of sweetness to every bite! Add some festive sprinkles on each one and you have some of the prettiest cookies you’ll bake all season long!

Pistachio cookies are one of my favorites, but they’re even more irresistible when you add in cardamom, cinnamon, and allspice to give more of a holiday taste (and smell!) to them. These cookies are not overly nutty tasting, but just perfect so everyone loves them.

Dec 05 2018

Easy Ground Beef Chili Recipe served inside bread bowls! This quick dinner is ready in 20 minutes and your family will love it! This post is sponsored by Red Gold® and SheKnows Media.

Easy Chili Recipe

If you live in the Northeast, you’re likely feeling the fall season. The temperature changed quickly, suddenly calling for heavy jackets and hats. To warm you up, I wanted to share this Easy Ground Beef Chili Recipe with you; it’s a simple meal that the entire family will enjoy!

If you’re a parent, you probably have an endless list of activities to do every day. Between your career, your children’s school, and their extracurricular activities, it’s probably difficult to carve out an hour to make dinner once everyone is home.

I’m excited to share a homemade chili recipe that doesn’t require a slow cooker or an hour in the kitchen – this dish only takes 20 minutes and it’s sure to warm everyone’s hearts (and tummies!) on the busiest nights.

Dec 03 2018

Organic gardening tips on how to switch your garden to full organic. Compost, seeds, watering and testing the soil are all great steps to take. This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Stonyfield® FIELDS Initiative.

Tips On Making Your Garden Organic

Snacks and parks go together pretty nicely if you ask me. Think of all your favorite times at a park, it probably also involved some friends, a blanket and endless sandwiches and chips. Think of all your favorite times with your child at a park, it also probably involved snacks because goodness – kids love snacks! Within a year of becoming a parent, I’ve learned to always be stocked with snacks!

That’s why I’ve been so happy to team up with Stonyfield since they’re the perfect mission first brand to tie together snacks and parks. How so? Well first read this post, then this post… and now let me tell you a little more about the StonyFIELDS Initiative.

Nov 30 2018

Easy to make Cinnamon Sugar Pistachios recipe! These are perfect for healthy snacking! I love gifting these in mason jars for the holidays too!

Cinnamon Sugar Pistachios

Pistachios are something of a necessity for the holidays in our house. As a kid Santa would always leave me a bag of red pistachios in my stocking that I would eat right up with my pistachio red stained fingers. As a adult I still get pistachios at Christmas time, but now I like adding some cinnamon sugar spice to them.

There is something about the smell of cinnamon that really gets me in the holiday spirit and has me humming Christmas songs!

Nov 27 2018

Easy to make Beef Chorizo Stuffing recipe, one of my family’s favorite holiday side dishes to serve alongside chicken or turkey. This classic simple stuffing is made with white bread cubes and chorizo. Your entire family is going to be asking you for this recipe! Thank you Cacique® for sponsoring this post. Visit your local grocery store to pick up your fave Cacique® product for a delicious dinner tonight!

Beef Chorizo Stuffing

Maybe you don’t think Mexican spices when you think holiday recipes, but I’m here to change that. A little bit of Mexican taste is going to transform your usual stuffing recipe into something bursting with flavor. Say hi to Beef Chorizo Stuffing …. this side dish is delicious!

This stuffing recipe is a family favorite, not just because of how tasty it is, but because of how easy it is to make! The holidays are about spending time with your family, so with this stuffing you don’t need to be stressed out!

I often serve this stuffing alongside chicken or turkey, but I also love it next to pork chops too!

Nov 24 2018

Please everyone admire our Christmas tree because with a 1 year old and 4 cats, the bottom third of the tree probably won’t stay decorated for long!

To be honest, we had our tree up and decorated BEFORE Thanksgiving, but I didn’t want you guys to think I was crazy so I waited 2 days after Thanksgiving to post it. Hah.
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Slow Cooker Beef Stew With Cooking Wine

Nov 20 2018

SLOW COOKER Beef Stew with Marsala Cooking Wine made in the crockpot in 6 hours! This easy recipe is packed with vegetables creating a full classic meal perfect for holiday entertaining or a family meal. My husband declares this one of the best dinners!

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Holland House. All opinions are my own.

This is one of my family’s favorite Slow Cooker Meals. We always break out our crockpot when cold weather hits because I love being able to make a delicious meal for my family that I know is going to warm up their bellies!

Nov 15 2018

Easy Cinnamon Rolls recipe ready in 12 minutes! Use refrigerated biscuits to make homemade Cinnamon Rolls with a powdered sugar icing that your kids will fall in love with! These Cinnamon Rolls are quick and delicious – perfect for Saturday morning breakfast.

Easy Cinnamon Rolls

On a scale of 1-10 on the yummy scale, these cinnamon roll muffins are a 11. Watch out, I might fight you for them!

One afternoon I was craving cinnamon rolls. It seemed like everywhere I looked I saw a cinnamon roll on twitter, on the street, in a window, and every time I closed my eyes. All I wanted was a cinnamon roll, ok maybe I wanted two, but I wanted them quick.

Nov 14 2018

EASY Step by Step Instructions on how to make Fresh Pumpkin Puree from Pumpkins! You can use any type of pumpkin for this. Pumpkin Puree can be used in cooking and baking year round! Use this for pumpkin cookies, pies, cakes, pancakes and more!

So you know I love pumpkins.

You know I love baking and cooking with pumpkin too (pumpkin cookies! pumpkin pie! pumpkin pancakes!)

So if you grow your own pumpkins, or will be getting a pumpkin in October to decorate your house with, you can use that pumpkin for much more than making your home extra beautiful (pumpkins are lovely, they brighten up everything). You can also eat them!

There is delicious pumpkin puree waiting for you inside every single pumpkin wishing you would cut it open and scoop it into brownie mix. Trust me, they tell me this. My pumpkins talk to me, what they don’t talk to you?

Easy Pumpkin Puree

Pumpkin puree is so easy to make! The hardest part is the emotional attachment of cutting your pumpkin in half. I always tell myself I’m going to be strong then I end up almost crying and taking goodbye pictures with it. I always always talk to my pumpkins during this process, I just want them to know it’s going to be ok when I cut them up and put them into the oven to bake then process them until it’s smooth.

Nov 13 2018

Easy and fluffy Apple Pancakes recipe! This is one of my family’s favorite breakfast meals because it tastes like apple pie! I always make this quick recipe during apple picking season!

Apple Cinnamon Pancakes

What’s not to love about these easy to make pancakes? They’re easy to make, fluffy to serve and delicious because they taste just like apple pie!

The recipe uses 1 cup of finely chopped apples that gets mixed in with the batter. This guantees that each bite has a little bit of apple in it! During the Fall, I love the combo of apple and cinnamon, so these pancakes are so delicious to me!

Nov 08 2018

SLOW COOKER Green Beans Recipe with Tomatoes! This easy recipe cooks fresh green beans, tomatoes, potatoes and bacon in a crock pot for 4 hours. This is a healthy dish makes for delicious vegetable side dishes that you can serve over rice or as a side dish to chicken or Thanksgiving holiday dinners. This has been become one of families favorite healthy thanksgiving recipes!

Vegetable Side Dishes

With the garden season almost complete for the year, I constantly want to come up with new recipes to try, especially those that will make yummy vegetable side dishes. With pounds of green beans and potatoes just dug up, I wanted to create an easy meal that could use all of them.

At my home, vegetable side dishes are quite popular with the entire family – adults and kids. So, I decided to create a rainbow side dish with all these veggies that everyone would love!

For more vegetable side dishes, try my other green bean recipes.

Nov 07 2018

Easy Peanut Butter Christmas Sugar Cookies recipe! This is a homemade cookie recipe, just like Grandma used to make! These cookies are decorated with sugar sprinkles on top! These are the best cookies for families, cookie exchanges and kids!

Christmas Sugar Cookies Recipe

There’s 48 days until Christmas, but who’s counting? Ok, I am! To get you in the holiday spirit I wanted to share with you one of my favorite holiday cookie recipes, Peanut Butter Christmas Sugar Cookies.

These are everything a sugar cookie should be: soft, chewy, melts in your mouth and delicious. I love soft cookies like my Cream Cheese Christmas Cookies, but I love these even more because they’re made with peanut butter!

To make them fun for the holidays, I added green sugar sprinkles on top of each one. These are perfect for serving your family, giving as a gift and of course Santa loves them! And I mean SANTA really loves them (wink, wink!).

Nov 02 2018

CREAMY and HEALTHY Sweet Pepper Soup! This easy dinner recipe combines sweet peppers with chicken broth and rice. This gluten-free recipe is easy to make and can easily be turned vegetarian by using vegetable broth. This is the perfect soup for using up a bunch of peppers! Make sure to serve with some crusty Italian bread!

Sweet Pepper Soup

I was craving fresh soup a few nights ago so I came up with this Sweet Pepper Soup recipe. I was going to make my typical stuffed pepper soup but I wanted something more creamy. This soup tastes fantastic with fresh sweet peppers, and it’s absolutely gorgeous to loook at!

The recipe calls 1.5 pounds of sweet peppers and 1 jalapeno pepper. The jalapeno pepper adds a tiny bit of kick, but not too much heat at all. In fact, even with the jalapeno pepper, this soup is completely family friend for adults and kids.

This soup is delicious, definitely a year round favorite especially in the Fall months when we’re craving a big bowl of soup! It’s the perfect soup to use up a overabundance of peppers if you have them too!

If you have any leftovers (I doubt you will – it’s that good!) you can easily freeze this soup to serve later on. We love this soup so much I will often make 2 batches – one to serve for dinner, and one to freeze.

Oct 31 2018

Easy to make fruit puree pouches – perfect for baby and toddler! My daughter is anemic, so I came up with this Spinach Sweet Potato Fruit Pouch recipe to give her more Iron Rich foods! She loves these!

Food for Anemic Toddlers

When we went to our 15 month old doctor’s appointment, we found out that Enceladus was anemic and that she needed more iron rich foods in her diet. She was drinking too much milk, which was causing iron not to be absorbed.

Iron Deficiency is fairly common with toddlers, especially when they drink a large amount of milk everyday. On average, doctors say toddlers shouldn’t have more than 24 ounces of milk, but even at 16 ounces of milk a day Enceladus was anemic.

Always being one to try to naturally cure things, I came up with this Spinach Sweet Potato Fruit Pouch, which helped her get her iron levels to where they needed to be!

Many of my readers loved my Butternut Squash baby food, Baby Pumpkin Pancakes and Sweet Potato Cookies, so I hope you love this recipe too!

Iron Rich Foods

Leafy dark greens are one of the best sources of iron, such as spinach or kale. If you wanted to substitute kale for spinach in this recipe, go for it! I find that spinach works for taste and in general, kids love it in fruit puree! Sweet Potatoes are a great iron rich food too, so that’s why I’m including both spinach and sweet potatoes!

Oct 30 2018

Cheesy Broccoli Stuffing Casserole recipe made with Stove Top! This is one of my family’s favorite Stove Top Stuffing Recipes to make! This is a easy dish made with frozen vegetables, cream of chicken soup, rice and Velveeta cheese! It’s one of my favorite meals to make with Leftover Thanksgiving stuffing!

Leftover Stuffing Recipe

Are you asking yourself “What to do with leftover stuffing?”? This is one of my favorite dishes to make with leftover stuffing! No matter what stuffing you have, just follow the recipe and add your own stuffing! It makes for a great casserole a few days after Thanskgiving when you’re sick of turkey!

What’s one of my favorite parts of Thanksgiving? No, not the pumpkin cream pie. And no, not watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Although I love both of those. My favorite is…..

LEFTOVERS!

Oh baby, I love leftovers!

It’s like Thanksgiving for a week straight! Each night is turkey in new ways, mashed potatoes on the side and plenty of vegetables. One night it’s turkey sandwiches covered in homemade gravy. The next night is Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday again. And then comes the casseroles.

What do do with leftover stuffing?

This Cheesy Broccoli Stuffing Casserole is my favorite Stove Top Stuffing Recipes! Not only does it make a perfect side dish for holiday meals, bu it’s the ultimate leftover meal using a bunch of stuffing. And what else do I love about leftovers? Saving money. Thanksgiving dinner is great because it’s literally 1 meal that feeds you for the next week.

This casserole besides being cheesy and delicious and mouthwatering and made of dreams (I like it, ok!) only has a few ingredients. There’s stuffing, frozen corn and broccoli, cream of chicken soup, white rice and cheese.

Oct 29 2018

PAMELA’S Slow Cooker Pork Chili is made with BACON and SAUSAGE! This pork chili is one of the easiest crockpot recipes with diced tomatoes and beans! If you’re looking for dinner ideas to make as your family’s favorite comfort food dinners, then this it! Ready in 6 hours on LOW. Serve with shredded cheese and a big piece of crusty bread!

Crockpot Recipes

With the temperatures feeling like single digits, I’ve been craving a nice (big!) bowl of warm chili. But without having to put too much energy into it! That’s when I start looking for dinner ideas that involve my favorite kitchen tool- the crockpot.

I decided to up my chili game one notch and create Pamela’s Pork Chili filled with bacon and sausage! Doesn’t it look delicious? It tastes it too!

Oct 26 2018

EASY Halloween Stuffed Mummy Peppers recipe for parties and kids! These mummies only require 3 ingredients and make the cutest appetizer for a party! This is one of my favorite Halloween food ideas! Thank you Cacique® for sponsoring this post. Visit your local grocery store to pick up your fave Cacique® product for a delicious dinner tonight!

Halloween Recipes for Kids

I am so excited to share these Halloween Mummy Peppers with you because they are so cute, I’m not sure I can handle keeping them a secret anymore! So here they are!

They’re so cute, right? And even better, they are so easy to make! If you’re looking for the perfect finger food recipe for Halloween parties – then look no further!

Oct 24 2018

EASY Moist Banana Muffins Recipe made with yogurt! These healthy muffins only need 2 tablespoons of butter and 1/4 cup brown sugar! My entire family thinks these are the best muffins for breakfast and dessert!

These banana muffins might be my proudest baking moment this Fall – they’re so soft and delicious! They’re made with simple ingredients that you probably already have in your kitchen! The addition of yogurt in the batter makes them moist and tasty. They have become my favorite breakfast and afternoon snack (to be served with some tea/coffee as an afternoon “pick me up!”).

If you loved my mini banana muffins and mini coffee cake muffins, then you’re going to love these full size Moist Banana Muffins!

Moist Banana Muffins Recipe

Not only can yogurt be your favorite breakfast food, but did you know you can easily combine it into baking to make baked foods lighter? That’s right, think moist cakes, cookies and muffins – all good candidates to make with yogurt! Because these are banana muffins, I used Stonyfield Organic Banilla yogurt which has the perfect combination of banana and vanilla for this dessert!

Oct 23 2018

Real Mom Review of the Lotus Travel Crib, the lightweight pack and play that makes flying and airports so easy! Great for toddlers and babies! Trust me you need this!

The Best Pack and Play

When we were looking for a “pack and play”, I found that none of them were fitting our needs. We wanted something light, easy to travel with, and honestly, I wanted something that matched our modern apartment aesthetic. What’s a girl got to do to get a travel crib that doesn’t have hideous prints on it?

Then I found the Guava Family Lotus Travel Crib. It was everything I wanted.

Best Travel Crib

Yes, let’s get my favorite feature out of the way. If you’re going to travel with this, from airport to hotel, and everything in between, you can wear this in bookbag style. I can easily wear this and get through airport security while carrying a toddler, so you can too.