Welcome to the weekend, my friends! We’re headed to the Pend Oreille River (in the Idaho and Washington area) this weekend to spend several days vacationing with my sister’s family. I can hardly wait! 

And lest anyone think we’re leaving an empty house behind and talking about it here – spoiler alert, we’re not. But in the meantime, if you have a favorite casual restaurant suggestion in the Newport, WA area, I’d love to hear it.

ON THE BLOGS THIS WEEK:  With an abundance of sweet ripe berries, fresh green spinach, chewy pasta, and a bright and flavorful light balsamic dressing, this strawberry spinach salad is an unexpected and delicious pasta salad.

The best ever bbq meatloaf is here to add variety to your dinner table. Take an easy meatloaf recipe and make it more delicious with the addition of tangy barbecue sauce. 

Follow this super simple guide on how to boil corn and you’ll be enjoying summer’s best in no time at all. Sweet, buttery goodness will be yours!

Is it really summer if you don’t have crazy amounts of zucchini and corn? Whether you’re hitting the farmer’s market for a deal or growing zucchini like it’s your job, this simple yet delicious side dish pairs these two classic warm weather vegetables!

What happens when you combine a classic chocolate chip cookie recipe with white chocolate and freeze-dried raspberries? You wind up with a batch of absolutely irresistible white chocolate raspberry cookies. 

The best ice cream cookie sandwiches start with the best ever perfectly chewy cookies. I’m happy to tell you that I’ve found the cookie recipe that works perfectly when frozen.

You need these buttery sweet chocolate chip cookie dough bites in your life. Each one is filled with miniature chocolate chips in a bite-size chunk of snackable cookie dough!

What I’m CRAVING: It must be the season for porch sitting and cocktail sipping because I’m craving both my friend Meseidy’s whiskey smash and my brother-in-law Jason’s mai tai. It’s a good thing we’re on vacation this week, because both of these are going to be happening soon.

My FAVORITE THING this week is this Hitster game. Y

Weekly Menu Plan – Jun. 17 to Jun. 23

Take the stress out of meal planning with our weekly menu plan! Featuring delicious and easy recipes for every day of the week, this menu plan will save you time and keep your family well-fed.

Monday: Low Calorie Dinner – Lean Pesto Tilapia [+Video]

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Tuesday: Mexican Chicken Burrito Bowl

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Wednesday: Ground Beef Stroganoff

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Thursday: Melt in Your Mouth Buttermilk Pancakes [+ Video]

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Friday: Delicious and Healthy Coconut Curry Chicken Burger [+Video]

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Saturday: Cheesy BBQ Chicken Zucchini Nachos Recipe

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Sunday: Easy Traeger Smoked Chicken Breast

READ: Weekly Menu Plan – Jun. 17 to Jun. 23

Glazed Lemon Snack Cake [+Video]

A bright lemon snack cake that is dense but moist, soaked in a lemon syrup and topped with a lemon glaze. This one is for all you lemon lovers out there!

This recipe started out as a white cake but I couldn’t resist the lemon and ended up with this tangy, delicious beauty. I haven’t regretted one second of it! In fact, I’ve never regretted any lemon cake recipe I’ve ever made!

A snack is a small amount of food that you eat between meals, so if this is a snack cake recipe, you can technically have at least two, if not three, pieces in one day. One between breakfast and lunch, another between lunch and dinner, and since it’s a cake, one more for dessert! Follow my logic there? Ha!

What Ingredients are Needed for Glazed Lemon Snack Cake?

There is lemon in all parts of this glazed cake…lemon lemon lemon! We will start with the ingredients for the cake and then a few more for the syrup and glaze. Let me just state right up front is that you will want to have about 5-6 lemons to make all the components of the this recipe. Here is your grocery list:

Cake

• Dry Ingredients: All Purpose Flour, Baking Powder, Sugar, Salt and Lemon Zest
• Wet Ingredients: Butter, Vegetable Oil, Eggs, Milk, Vanilla, Lemon Extract, Almond Extract and Lemon Juice

Lemon Syrup

• Butter: adds richness
• Sugar: adds the sweetness and helps thicken the syrup
• Lemon Juice: adds flavor and tartness
• Vanilla: adds flavor

Lemon Glaze

• Powdered Sugar: adds sweetness
• Lemon Juice (or Milk): If you want bright white glaze, use milk. If you want more lemon flavor, go with the lemon juice.

The measurements for each ingredient are listed in the recipe card below.

How to Make a Glazed Lemon Snack Cake

I’m going to walk you through the steps of making this cake. It is super simple and you’re going to love the bright lemon flavor in every step. Let’s start with the cake…

Cake

• Preheat the oven and prepare an 8×8″ square baking pan with parchment.
  • PRO TIP: Spray the pan, line it with parchment and then spray again.
• Mix the wet ingredients in a large bowl.
• Add the mixture of dry ingredients and mix until there are no big clumps.
• Pour batter into prepared pan and bake.
• While the cake is baking, prepare the syrup.

Lemon Syrup

• Combine all the ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat until the better melts. Stir to combine.
• When the cake is finished, poke it everything with a toothpick.
• Pour the lemon syrup all over the top.
• Let the cake cool completely (at least an hour) before adding the glaze.

Read more

Traeger Smoked Ribs

These Traeger ribs are coated in a bold dry rub and smoked to mouth-watering perfection! They fall right off the bone and are perfect for picnics and BBQs!

The Best Traeger Ribs Recipe

When I went out to South Carolina to meet Cade’s family, he took me to a traditional southern restaurant to try real southern BBQ for the first time. It was delicious!

I couldn’t believe that a dry rub was all that they needed as I’d only had ribs slathered in sauce, but more important than that, they were falling off of the bone. The tenderness could not be beat! I was sold! Since then we’ve tested and tested rib recipes and this one is one of the best smoked rib recipes ever.

We have several rib recipes on the blog that we love, like our slow cooker Asian sticky ribs or our smoky BBQ Instant Pot ribs. They are all different in cooking techniques and flavors, but this is our first smoked ribs recipe — you’re going to love it!

Make a batch of homemade BBQ sauce, and get ready for your mouth to water, your fingers to get messy, and for these Traeger smoked ribs to become a regular on your menu! They are the best ribs I’ve ever had!

Traeger Smoked Pork Ribs Ingredients 

These Traeger pork ribs are flavored both with a dry rub and additional flavorings that are added halfway through the smoking time. A dry rub is simply a blend of dry ingredients that gets rubbed on meat before smoking or grilling. 

Here’s what you’ll need to make the best smoked ribs: 

• Pork Ribs 
• Smoked Paprika
• Dark Brown Sugar
• Black Pepper
• Garlic Powder
• Cumin
• Kosher Salt
• Cayenne
• Honey
• Dijon Mustard
• Apple Cider 

Keep scrolling to the recipe card down below to find the measurements needed for each ingredient.

What Are the Best Ribs for Smoking?

We prefer St. Louis style ribs for smoking, but baby back ribs would also work great. St. Louis style ribs cook fast and have great flavor. Baby back ribs are meatier and may take a little longer to cook to a safe temperature. Spare ribs also work, but they tend to have less meat on them and will need even less time to smoke.

How to Smoke Ribs

We’ve given detailed instructions on how to make smoked pork ribs in the recipe card below. Are you ready for tender ribs that melt in your mouth?? Here are the basics to mastering this Traeger ribs recipe: 

1. Combine the smoked ribs rub ingredients in a small bowl and set it aside.
2. Mix together the mustard and apple cider and brush it all over both sides of the ribs (be sure to remove the silver skin first!).
3. Then, generously

Grilled Flank Steak- My Favorite Balsamic Marinade

There’s nothing quite like a perfect grilled steak and so I’m sharing my secrets on Grilled Flank Steak and my favorite balsamic marinade. 

We went over to one of our friends’ home the other night for dinner. We brought the meat and salad and they supplied side and dessert (oh my gosh it was the most delicious strawberry shortcake. A true favorite of mine!)

I got this recipe from a girl I went to Elementary and Junior High School with. Fast forward 5,000 years, we became friends on facebook and the rest is history! 

Anyway, this is hands down our new favorite way to cook flank steak. If there is one meat recipe you try from me this weekend, make it this one. You will love it forever.

What is Flank Steak?

Flank steak is a somewhat tough but lean cut of beef that is long and flat. It is still quite flavorful but it mostly benefits from a marinade that tenderizes the meat.

Prepared this way, marinated, cooked quickly at high heat, and thinly sliced, flank steak practically melts in your mouth.

What’s in the Marinade?

At first glance, this flank steak recipe might look like a lot of ingredients, but you’ll likely have most of them in your pantry or fridge already. Here is everything you will need…

• Soy Sauce– This adds a lot of flavor and a touch of salt to balance out the sweetness in the marinade.
• Oil– Vegetable is what we use, but you could use olive oil.
• Dark Brown Sugar– Dark brown sugar gives a touch of sweet and balances the salty of the soy sauce, but we prefer dark brown sugar to add a little more depth of flavor.
• Worcestershire Sauce– Umami is the flavor you forget about. Yes, there’s sweet, salty, bitter, sour but did you know umami is that earthy goodness? Worcestershire enhances that in a beef marinade.
• Dijon Mustard–