BROOKLYN FARM GIRL - Brooklyn Farm Girl

Creamy Celery and Egg Noodles Soup

Oct 18 2017

Creamy CELERY and Egg Noodles Soup recipe! This easy vegetarian soup is filled with vegetables and served with egg noodles for a hearty, healthy dinner! You can even add chicken in it for more protein! It’s a simple and delicious way to eat your vegetables, even kids like it! Whenever I ask myself “What should I do with a head of celery?” this soup is always the answer!

We’ve had good success with growing celery in the garden for the first time this year. With the end of garden season in sight I’m left with a few beautiful heads of celery hanging out in my refrigerator. This leads me to the question of the week “What should I make with lots of celery”?

Sure there’s the easy route of cutting celery up and dipping it in peanut butter for a delicious snack, but I wanted to throw my apron on and come up with something new for the celery. It was the first day where it felt like Fall, the weather was crisp and chilly and so I was craving something warm. Ta-da, Creamy Celery and Egg Noodles Soup was born!

This soup is creamy, delicious and is filled with enough vegetables to make this a healthy comforting soup! This soup uses 1 whole pound of celery. Most recipes call for just using the celery stalks but I wanted to use everything, so that’s what I did – celery stalks, leaves, everything! The leaves have so much flavor (and scent!) to them that they deserve to be enjoyed too!

Oct 16 2017

NO BUTTER NEEDED Fluffy Waffles! This easy breakfast recipe calls for applesauce instead of butter making these waffles a healthy option! I love these homemade from scratch waffles, they are so fluffy and my family always says they’re the best Saturday morning breakfast!

There’s something about Saturday morning that makes everyone want a home cooked breakfast. For many it’s the time to relax with the family and take a breather from the work week. As a little girl I always looked forward to Saturday morning breakfast, usually shared with a girlfriend of mine that would sleep over on Friday night. As soon as we woke up, we would head downstairs to watch Saturday morning cartoons and wait for Mom to bring in delicious smelling breakfast! Sometimes it would be cinnamon rolls, sometimes it would be blueberry pancakes and sometimes it would be the fluffy waffles! With a craving for waffles I wanted to relive my childhood Saturday mornings so I made these No Butter Needed Fluffy Waffles! I hope you like them as much as I do!

I love “No butter” recipes for a few reasons. First, how many times have you wanted to make a recipe and went to grab the butter to find out you were either all out or only had a tablespoon left? It’s happened to me too many times! Secondly, no butter means healthier, which means you can have more waffles! So you can see these No Butter Needed Fluffy Waffles are a total win. Isn’t it great how that works out?

Oct 13 2017

Another week, another big vegetable haul! As we wind down the garden season this year, we are still left with a bounty of vegetables to pick! Last weekend we had over 100 pounds of vegetables to bring back to New York City so let’s dive in to see what we’re still harvesting Upstate!

To summarize we picked tomatillos, dry beans, pie pumpkins, celery, corn, potatoes, onions, broccoli, carrots, jalapeno peppers, bell peppers, beef tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and roma tomatoes! Whew! That’s a lot of vegetables!

Oct 10 2017

Review of the SNOO Bassinet from a mom who’s baby had colic for 12 weeks! We love the Snoo and it helped her so much to sleep through the night!

Have you heard of the SNOO bassinet? I like to describe it as the most modern, beautiful, amazing, life changing baby bassinet ever. If there’s one item we couldn’t live without (besides food and diapers) in Enceladus’s first 3 months it would be the SNOO. SNOO, I love you. I love you so much.

If you follow me me on social media or read back posts you will know that for the first 12 weeks Enceladus had a pretty severe case of colic. To be blunt, it was terrible for everyone involved and we went through a dark emotional time. At around the 12 week point we started to see the light and at 14 weeks I can safely say she conquered colic. WHEW! (For those parents dealing with colic, this article helped me SO much. I would read it in bed at night after bad days and it made me feel commodity with the author.) During her 12 weeks with colic, we tried everything. Not only was she crying 8 hours a day but she would not nap during the day, it was a nonstop day of baby tears and anger from wake up to bed time. I googled everything to try to help her colic. We bought every product marketed as colic relief. You name a swaddle, gripe water, sleeper, rock and play, pacifier, bottle, formula, probiotics etc and I will tell you we tried it without much success. We saw the pediatrician multiple times and tried acid reflux medicine. At around 9 weeks I was ready to cut off my pinky finger and give it up in a human sacrifice to solve her colic because it was heart breaking to witness. The one thing that kept us sane, and sleeping, during the 12 weeks of colic was the SNOO.

Oct 08 2017

SLOW COOKER Meatball Potato Casserole with a creamy beef gravy is delicious! This easy to make crockpot recipe is perfect for busy weeknights! This Italian Meatballs dish uses cream of mushroom soup and is filled with vegetables including potatoes, carrots, celery and onion! My husband officially declares this one of his favorite meals! This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Carando®. All opinions are entirely my own.

When my husband tasted this meal, his first words (with eyes closed) were “This is good. Real good.” I immediately agreed! Not only does this Slow Cooker Meatball Potato Casserole taste great, but it smells amazing too! Don’t you love the way your home smells after you’ve been slow cooking a home cooked meal all day long?

For this dish, we’re slow cooking Italian meatballs, potatoes, carrots, celery, and onion in a delicious cream of mushroom soup/beef onion mix gravy to make one delicious casserole!

The recipe calls for 1 pound Italian-Style Meatballs. I used Carando Abruzzese Italian Style Meatballs, which are blended with cheese and herbs.

Oct 02 2017

EASY, OVEN ROASTED Tomatillos Recipe! This tomatillo sauce is DELICIOUS and can be used as a soup stock, chicken tacos salsa, served over rice and so much more! This recipe is canning and freezing friendly, perfect for preserving a overabundance of garden tomatillo plants!

This year our tomatillo plants did a great job in producing tomatillos! We started growing tomatillos a few years ago on the roof and they were so successful, and easy to grow, we made them a permanent plant in the garden. Of course, when we first started growing tomatillos I think we had 6 plants, but as is garden life, now we’re up to 20 something plants. In all honesty, it might be too many tomatillo plants for the average person but if you love salsa verde and tomatillos as much as me it’s just the right amount! One reason why I love growing a overabundance of tomatillos is becase I get to make Oven Roasted Tomatillos!

These Oven Roasted Tomatillos are so easy to make and are perfect for the answer to the question “I have too many tomatillos, what can I make?”. Not only can you serve them immediately for dinner (recipe ideas below!), but they freeze and can amazingly well! I just froze 10 full bags of these Oven Roasted Tomatillos so I make make Slow Cooker Chicken Tacos in the Winter! Who doesn’t love garden goodies on a cold Winter day?

Sep 29 2017

We took our 2 month old baby on a 11 hour road trip and survived! Here’s everything we brought with us and other tips to make it a success! This post is in partnership with buybuy BABY.

Next week Enceladus will turn 3 months old and she’s already a road trip expert! We took a road trip to North Carolina when I was 35 weeks pregnant so it’s no surprise she’s comfortable with long drives already! A few weeks ago we headed to Maine for a friend’s wedding and I fell in love… with Maine! It was my first time visiting and it is BEAUTIFUL! I’m not sure if we visited during peak season, but I couldn’t get over how beautiful the coast was. I’m already considering that this might need be our yearly vacation spot!

Seriously, isn’t it beautiful? I feel like every spot we went to had postcard worthy views!

Sep 27 2017

EASY Apple Waffles recipe! These healthy waffles include fresh shredded apples and cinnamon! They are simple to make for a Fall breakfast! Serve with maple syrup on top!

Can you smell Fall in the air? Nope, me either. In NYC it’s in the high 80’s and it doesn’t feel like Fall is around the cornet yet. But that doesn’t mean we can’t pretend it’s Fall and make Easy Apple Waffles for breakfast! These waffles are delicious and use fresh apples in the batter!

Do you go apple picking? We love visiting the apple orchards in Upstate New York and discovering new apples (while picking them straight off the tree!). My other favorite part of visiting an apple orchard is the barn that sells apple donuts and fresh apple cider! Yum! I love spending my morning apple picking and then enjoying doughy apple donuts for lunch! These Easy Apple Waffles are super soft – just like donuts!
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We Grew Celery For The First Time!

Sep 22 2017

Not only did we grow a baby for the first time this Summer but we also grew celery for the first time! Garden high 5!

We usually stick with our usual plants but this year we were feeling adventurous so we added celery to the garden mix! For time reference the seedlings were transplanted to the garden on May 17 and then celery was picked in September! We still have a few plants growing!

Sep 20 2017

Welcome to my new series “Motherhood Thoughts”. If you follow me on Instagram you know I’m pretty revealing in my Stories about how hard Motherhood has been for me. What I realized is that Brooklyn Farm Girl hasn’t dove into Motherhood as deep as I share on social media. I had a hard time deciding how to transition the blog, if I should even write about the baby, or keep it garden and recipe focused, but then I realized that Brooklyn Farm Girl is now Brooklyn Farm Mama and being a Mother is a huge part of my life. Traveling through the first 2 months of Motherhood has been a journey. Every day, I experience something new. Heck, some hours I experience something new. I’ve had such a outpouring of feedback on my Instagram Stories from other Mothers who have gone through it, I decided I’m going to share on the blog now too. If you just come here for recipes and nothing more, you can skip these posts and that is totally ok. But if you want to get to know me, Pamela, then go ahead and read on. I plan on doing these posts bi-weekly as a diary to look back on. The post will be scattered with non connected paragraphs of what I experienced that week. Hope you like it.

Enceladus was asleep, it was the middle of the night, around 2AM and suddenly our cat Xanadu meowed. Again and again and again. Xanadu was in our bed in the middle of Matthew and I. Enceladus was in her bassinet next to the bed. Matthew and I turned to Xanadu, pleading with our eyes, whispering “Please stop meowing!”. She continued. “Meow, Meow, Meow”. Enceladus stirred in her bassinet. Then I did the unthinkable, I scolded our cat. Our cat was meowing because she was happy and I told her to stop meowing. I still feel awful for this.

Enceladus has started to giggle. I am officially the funniest person in the world to her and it makes me feel awesome.

Blank walls are also hilarious to her.

Cutting baby’s nails are terrifying. The first time we cut her nails was when she was 2 days old and we cut her finger. She screamed for a minute and then moved on with life, but it still haunts us. When she came out of my belly, she had Edward Scissorhands esque nails and was constantly cutting her face. Nowadays, we’re still terrified of using nail clippers so I bite her nails. Yes, I cut her nails by putting her nails into my mouth and biting them like a Barbarian. I googled it though and lots of other Moms do this so it’s totally ok to be a animal to my baby. Now if only I could work on that sharp big toe nail of hers….

The microwave door closes so loudly! It’s not until you have a sleeping baby in your house will you realize how loud some things are. I now fear the microwave while she sleeps.

Sep 18 2017

EASY, SLOW COOKER Cherry Tomatoes recipe! This healthy cherry tomatoes crockpot recipe is ready in 5 hours! Serve these as a side dish, or they make a great sauce on pasta for dinner! You can preserve by canning or freezing them! I love serving them as a Thanksgiving comfort food side dish alongside green beans!

If you haven’t noticed from my past few recipes, I’m kinda obsessed with my slow cooker right now. With a new baby and a garden in full harvest our slow cooker has been saving us (and my sanity!). August and September is always tomato season and we’re left with baskets filled with beautiful tomatoes, ranging from cherry, beef and roma varieties. My favorite cherry tomato recipe is this creamy sauce, but I wanted to try something new with them so I threw them in the slow cooker and hoped for delicious results!

The verdict? They’re AMAZING! At first taste my husband said “These tomatoes are something!”. They sure are!

Did I mention this recipe is EASY? All you need to do is throw the cherry tomatoes into the slow cooker with a onion, olive oil and salt. Give them a stir and let the crockpot do the rest of the work. After 5 hours, the tomatoes will cave in, releasing their sweet juices and you’ll have delicious Slow Cooker Cherry Tomatoes to serve!

Sep 15 2017

Looking for EASY Halloween recipes? Make this A&W Root Beer Bundt Cake with a spooky black sugar glaze on top! Every party needs drinks so serve this SIMPLE 3 ingredient Eyeball Orange Sherbet Punch with scary candy eyeballs! This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of A&W® and 7UP®. The opinions and text are all mine.

Boys and girls of every age, wouldn’t you like to see something strange? Come with us and you will see….this, our town of Halloween! This is Halloween – my favorite time of the year! What’s not to love? Halloween is when I start seeing Brooklyn brownstones decorated with ghosts on the porch and zombie arms coming out of gardens. It’s when you see people dressed up as dinosaurs without anyone even looking twice (I admit this is NYC so that isn’t that strange to see). It’s when you can throw a Halloween bash with friends and families, bake a A&W Root Beer Bundt Cake, serve Orange Sherbet Halloween Punch and have a blast!
Looking for EASY Halloween recipes? Make this Root Beer Bundt Cake with a spooky black sugar glaze on top! Every party needs drinks so serve this SIMPLE 2 ingredient Orange Sherbet Punch with scary candy eyeballs!

To get you excited for the best holiday of the year – I did just that! I threw an early Craveyard party! But what’s a party without good food?

Because every party needs a cake, I made a Bundt Cake with A&W Root Beer and decorated it with a black sugar glaze (spooky) and festive sprinkles on top.

EASY Root Beer Bundt Cake decorated with black and orange sugar glaze icing is a perfect Halloween dessert! This amazing cake is a party hit and is the perfect mix of pretty and spooky! It's a easy DIY recipe that kids can help bake too!

Sep 14 2017

Today I’m spoiling Toes with Today with Meox Mix Simple Servings and showing you all the ways we love her! This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of The J.M. Smucker Company. The opinions and text are all mine.

This past July our baby (the furry one) turned 2 years old. Can you believe that Enceladus was born on Toes birthday? How’s that for knowing our cat family is aligned with some type of animal magic in the world! Looks like July 2 will forever be the day where we throw a birthday party filled with presents, cake and Meow Mix cat food.

We never planned on adding a 5th cat to our family, but in typical cat family fashion, it just sorta happened. A neighbor found Toes in a restaurant’s back yard. Toes is a long haired beautiful Maine Coon, so she isn’t your standard “street cat”. The woman put up “found cat” signs in the neighborhood and online. No one claimed her. The woman was going to take her to a shelter that didn’t give high hopes, so I stepped in and said we would take her and find her a new home. By finding her a new home I didn’t think it was going to be our home, but after I met her for the first time, I came back to our apartment in tears and told Matthew we had to save her, we had to adopt her, we had to love her, we had to spoil her, and she was meant to be in our family. So that was that. The next morning Toes arrived at our door and along with her came the biggest loving heart you’ve seen in a cat. How did this cat that immediately jumped on my lap, purred, and head butted my chest end up on the street? I don’t know, but I’m sure glad we were able to save her.

Sep 11 2017

EASY SLOW COOKER Cabbage and Kielbasa recipe! Throw Beef Kielbasa, Cabbage, Onions and Potatoes in a crockpot and dinner will be ready in 6 hours! I serve this healthy dish over egg noodles with rolls – my family LOVES this comfort food meal!

I am back with another slow cooker meal! Even though it’s not even Fall yet, I’ve been loving my slow cooker this Summer! It’s been a life safer to have a delicious dinner ready when time management isn’t on my side! With a beautiful cabbage picked from the garden, I was contemplating what I should do with it. Recently we’ve been loving Slow Cooked Green Beans, so I decided to throw the cabbage to in the slow cooker too! Boom – this Slow Cooker Cabbage and Kielbasa dish was created!

Besides cabbage, throw in potatoes and onions to your slow cooker, alongside some beef kielbasa. I’ve made this recipe a few times in the last month and we love adding carrots in it too!

Sep 10 2017

Join me and Enceladus for our morning tea time walk! Mom finally gets to enjoy tea again! This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Straight Up™ Tea and Albertsons Companies. The opinions and text are all mine.

I love tea time. It doesn’t matter if it’s morning, afternoon or night… if you say, “Let’s do tea!” my response will always be “yes!” With the arrival of Enceladus, my daily routine has significantly changed, mostly because I have no routine any more… it’s whatever baby says, I do! One thing we both agree on is that we start the day off better if we go for a morning walk after her first feeding. After she’s done gulping her breakfast, I’ll throw on the carrier and we’ll head out for a 2-3 mile walk around the neighborhood. During this time she usually naps and I get to see the outside world and enjoy some daily sunshine.

Aug 30 2017

SLOW COOKER Green Beans and Tomatoes! This easy recipe cooks fresh green beans, tomatoes, potatoes and bacon in a crock pot for 4 hours. This is a healthy dish 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 meals!

With garden season under way I’m constantly wanting to come up with new recipes to try. With pounds of green beans, potatoes just dug up and the start of the tomato season I wanted to create a easy meal that could use all of them. I googled “Slow Cooker Green Beans and Tomatoes” but surprisingly nothing existed that actually used the crock pot so I decided it was time to make my own recipe!

Even though it’s Summer time I’ve been making slow cooker meals a few times a week because it’s much easier with the baby. While wearing her I can quickly cut up the veggies, prepare the rest of the ingredients and toss everything in the slow cooker. Last week I made this Slow Cooker Green Beans and Tomatoes dish and it was such a hit that I had to share it with you!

Aug 28 2017

Check out the BEFORE and AFTER of our shipping container home! With hard DIY work, we turned a used shipping container into a tiny house. The shipping container sits on 7 acres of land in Upstate New York next to our vegetable garden and green house. With fresh paint, new flooring and colorful furniture we were able to make our dream vacation home on a small budget!

Remember when we bought the raw shipping container?
Remember when we painted the interior of the shipping container?
Remember when we redid the flooring of the shipping container?

Well you guys……it’s done (for now!). Here’s our Shipping Container Home Reveal!

A quick little note about the project if you’re a new reader. We bought land in Upstate New York to build a eco friendly weekend home. We’ve always been interested in recycling a shipping container to use for a Summer getaway, so that’s what we did. The shipping container sits on 7 acres of land, next to our vegetable garden and greenhouse. The goal of this project was to make a simple, economic getaway so we could run away from NYC on weekends and unplug. The entire project took about a year and a half but it would have went quicker if we didn’t get pregnant and have a baby in the middle of it! Also Winters are brutal in Upstate New York so we didn’t get up much during those months. We have thoughts of expanding the shipping container into 2 or 3 stories and making one side of it all glass windows but we’re still unsure of our next step. For now, it serves it’s purpose so enjoy the reveal! Thanks to Hayneedle for working with me on this project!

Aug 23 2017

CUCUMBER PEPPERMINT Tea is my favorite Summer drink! This homemade cup of green tea includes cucumbers, peppermint, honey and a splash of lemon juice to make a healthy and fresh drink. You can drink it hot or iced. The health benefits of this tea are great so I love drinking it every morning!

In August we start to see the Summer harvest really start to shine. Tomatoes and peppers are picked by the basket, corn is starting to be made, watermelons grow a few on each vine and the cucumber plants are snaking through the beds. When we grew cucumbers on the roof in containers they would spread similar to pumpkin and watermelon plants, and now that we’re growing Upstate they continue to spread and become friends with the kale, cabbage and other nearby greens.

With our Summer cucumber harvest I usually rely on my Half Sour Pickles recipe and call it a wrap, but I decided to use some of our cucumbers to enjoy in this refreshing Summer friendly Cucumber Peppermint Tea! This tea uses 2 garden favorites, cucumbers and peppermint. Peppermint is a great herb that grows easily in gardens and in pots for smaller spaces. If you don’t have a garden space, no worries, you can grow it on a fire escape or windowsill just as good. Peppermint produces quickly so make sure to keep picking the leaves so the plant keeps growing! One easy way to use the plant is to drink 1 cup of this Cucumber Peppermint Tea every morning to start your day!

Aug 21 2017

Looking for the perfect NYC stroller? Get the UPPAbaby Vista! You won’t regret it! Read this post for a full review of why it’s the perfect city dweller stroller to grow with! This post is in partnership with buybuy BABY.

When we found out we were going to have a baby I began obsessively researching every type of baby gear that we needed. One of the biggest decisions was what stroller we should get. I knew luxury was going to come at a cost, but I also knew that I was going to be spending a lot of time with Enceladus in the stroller so I was ready to splurge on the perfect stroller. After reading countless reviews and going back and forth on 2 specific strollers we purchased the UPPAbaby Vista and couldn’t be happier!

My wishlist for a stroller was:
It had to be a sidewalk warrior. I wanted sidewalk cracks, bumpy roads and slower walkers (kidding..sorta) to fear me.
I wanted a smooth ride. Due to the increase construction in our neighborhood I didn’t want Enceladus to wake up immediately after leaving the house.
I wanted lots of storage. The more room to keep numerous bags and be able to grocery shop, the better.
I wanted ONE stroller, from newborn to a few years old.
I wanted ONE stroller to grow with incase one baby becomes two babies one day (calm down!).
I wanted it to look really cool.

Now let’s check each of those off…

Aug 17 2017

This week’s garden harvest includes lots of greens! Join me as I show you what’s growing in our garden!

Yup, it’s true! Even though this Summer has been life changing and we’re both sleep deprived, we’ve kept the garden up and running! Although the garden has received less care and time due to the arrival of our July baby, it’s still producing wonderfully and we’re picking baskets filled with vegetables! So let’s look at this week’s harvest!

Right now it’s all about the greens! We’re picking kale, cabbage, broccoli, tomatillos, green beans, sugar snap peas and jalapeno peppers. Tomato season is about to start so we picked our first cherry tomatoes which I immediately threw up in the air into my mouth! Not pictured are the potatoes and onions which I totally forgot about – sorry!

Creamy Celery and Egg Noodles Soup

No Butter Needed Fluffy Waffles

This Week’s Harvest Includes 67 Pounds of Tomatoes!

How the Snoo Helped Our Colic Baby (And let us sleep!)

Slow Cooker Meatball Potato Casserole

Oven Roasted Tomatillos

Enceladus’s First Big Road Trip to Maine!

Easy Apple Waffles

We Grew Celery For The First Time!

Motherhood Thoughts: Please Stop Meowing

Slow Cooker Cherry Tomatoes

A&W Root Beer Bundt Cake & Eyeball Sherbet Punch – EASY Halloween Recipes!

Toes, let me spoil you!

Slow Cooker Cabbage and Kielbasa

Morning Tea Time Walk

Slow Cooker Green Beans and Tomatoes

Shipping Container Home Reveal Before and After

Cucumber Peppermint Tea

Strolling Around NYC With UPPAbaby Vista

This Week’s Harvest Includes Lots of Greens!