The Tomato Soup You Are Going To Crave

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This is, without doubt, bar none, the best tomato soup I have ever tasted. I’ve been making this soup almost weekly to satisfy the craving for the past six months. It’s that good. 

If you have someone in your family who doesn’t like tomato soup, this three-ingredient crockpot recipe is the one you can use to convince them otherwise. It has made diehard fans of me and my boys.

The BEST Tomato Soup

3 Ingredient Tomato Soup

Inspired by a spaghetti sauce that my friend Christi told me about years ago, Marcella Hazan’s Tomato Sauce, this crock-pot tomato soup recipe includes butter as a key ingredient. And let me tell you, it makes a world of difference.

You’ll need just three ingredients to make this recipe: tomatoes, onion, and butter.

The fats from the butter balance out the acidity of the tomatoes and onions beautifully. This is not the sweetly acidic version from a can that you may have experienced as a child. This crockpot tomato soup has a rich, savory taste you will relish.

This is a slow cooker recipe, but you’ll notice I’ve also included stovetop directions. So, feel free to make it however you find the most convenient. I reach for the crockpot most often myself, but for an easy lunch, the stove is my go-to.

Crockpot Tomato Soup

Slow cookers or crockpots are an appliance of which I have more than one. If you are an avid slow cooker user like I am, you might understand the need for more than one. So, let’s talk about my favorites:

First up is this 6-quart slow cooker that has a locking lid. These crockpots are fantastic for transporting foods. Mine has gone everywhere from church potlucks to barbecues, game nights to Thanksgiving dinner. However, fair warning, these slow cookers run crazy hot. Low is closer to a boil than a simmer, the warm setting actually simmers. So trust me when I say HIGH is high.

My everyday slow cooker is this 8-quart Crockpot. It’s my go-to appliance for cooking large roasts and big batches of chili. Fun fact: did you know that a full 4-quart cooker, actually cooks more slowly than a half-full 8-quart cooker?

For just cooking a few pounds of chicken to shred for enchiladas or other smaller recipes, this 3-quart version is perfect.

Thanksgiving has become a breeze since I have mastered how to h

Lemon Cake with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

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Lemon Cake with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

a photo of a square slice of moist lemon cake topped with lemon cream cheese frosting and a thin slice of fresh lemon on top

This lemon cake with lemon cream cheese frosting has a soft crumb and is packed with delicious lemon flavor. The cream cheese frosting is sweet and tangy, making it the perfect pairing for the lemon cake!

Easy Lemon Cake Recipe (From Scratch!)

I absolutely love lemon desserts. Lemon tastes bright and sunshine-y, and I think the slight tang is so delicious in cakes and cupcakes.

So today I’m sharing this lemon cake with lemon cream cheese frosting. It’s a moist lemon cake made in a 9×13-inch pan that’s frosted with a tangy lemon cream cheese frosting. It’s an easy lemon cake recipe, and it takes much less effort than making lemon cupcakes or a lemon layer cake.

What I loved so much about this homemade lemon cake recipe is that the lemon flavor tastes bright and fresh, without being tart or bitter. It’s deliciously sunny, and flavorful without being overpowering. If you love lemon desserts, this lemon cake with lemon cream cheese frosting is the perfect recipe for you.

I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

What’s Needed to Make Homemade Lemon Cake?

To make the lemon cake from scratch, you’ll need:

  • All-purpose flour
  • Baking powder
  • Baking soda
  • Salt
  • Unsalted butter
  • Granulated sugar
  • Eggs
  • Vanilla extract
  • Sour cream
  • Buttermilk
  • Lemon juice and zest

And to make the lemon frosting, you’ll need:

  • Unsalted butter
  • Cream cheese
  • Powdered sugar
  • Lemon juice
  • Salt
  • Milk

You can find the measurement for each ingredient in the recipe card at the end of the post.

How to Make Lemon Cake with Lemon Frosting

This homemade lemon cake with lemon cream cheese frosting is a cinch to make! Here are the basic steps to mastering this recipe:

  1. Prep: Preheat the oven and grease a 9×13 pan.
  2. Dry Ingredients: Sift or whisk together all the dry ingredients in a medium bowl (flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt).
  3. Rub: In a small bowl, combine the sugar with the lemon zest and rub the sugar and zest together with your fingers. This activates the oils in the zest creating bigger and bolder flavor.
  4. Wet Ingredients: In a large bowl with an electric mixer (or in the bowl of a stand mixer using the paddle attachment), beat together the sugar and lemon zest mixture with the butter until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs and vanilla until combined.
  5. Stir: Turn the mixer to low speed and add the sour cream, lemon juice and buttermilk and mix until combined.
  6. Combine: Slowly add in the dry ingredients and mix until a few streaks of flour remain.
  7. Bake: Pour the cake batter into the prepared baking dish and bake as

The Little Things Newsletter #408 – Life, laughter, and lots of great food!

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Welcome to the weekend, my friends! It’s been a gorgeous week for walking outdoors here in Ohio, despite a couple of tornado warnings – those were a first for this desert girl! I’m grateful that we didn’t have any property damage near our home and we’re praying for all of the families in Logan County who suffered so much loss. 

My mom has been visiting this week and we’ve enjoyed the time with her. She’s headed home today, and just in time to keep our house from feeling too empty, my brother and his fiance arrived last night to spend next week with us. (Have I mentioned how much I love having friends and family visit??)

ON THE BLOGS THIS WEEK:  Do you like Reuben sandwiches? If so, you might go a little bit crazy over these corned beef sliders – my family sure did!

Corned beef dip is a creamy, cheesy, slightly tangy dip generously filled with chunks of corned beef along with a bit of sauerkraut and caraway to give it that unmistakable Reuben sandwich flavor.

Hearty meatballs, sweet pineapple, and colorful bell peppers are tossed with your favorite barbecue sauce and simmered in the slow cooker to make these sweet and sour meatballs that the whole family craves.

Gently sauteed in maple syrup and butter these maple glazed carrots are a side dish that disappears fast every time I make it.

Crispy cauliflower, toasted bread crumbs, and nutty, savory parmesan are wonderful together in this scrumptious side. This roasted garlic parmesan cauliflower is snackable right off the pan.

Bursting with the sweet tang of blueberries in every bite, blueberry compote is one of my favorite ways to top a serving of crepes, a no-bake cheesecake, or a bowl of ice cream.

Rum raisin ice cream is full of rum-soaked raisins mixed in custardy vanilla ice cream with a hint of rum. This recipe is a little bit old school and a whole lot of creamy delicious.

What I’m CRAVING: These California roll sushi bowls look so good! They’ve been stuck in my head for a couple of days now. 

My FAVORITE THING this week is this water bottle. Here’s the deal. We own a lot of water bottles. If there’s an addiction to trying new water bottles, I may have it. However, I’m obsessed with this water bottle. I’ve been trying to up my water drinking game and thi

Friday Faves 3.15

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Hi friends! Happy Friday! I hope you’ve had an amazing week. We’re heading off on a little weekend adventure – I’ll share the fun over on IG stories!

I’m also diving into High Performance Health modules and am so excited about this content.

What do you have going on this weekend? I’d love to hear what you’re up to!

(sourdough and Mazer. The perfect combo)

It’s time for the weekly Friday Faves party. This is where I share some of my favorite finds from the week and around the web. I always love to hear about your faves, too, so please shout out something you’re loving in the comments section below.

Friday Faves 3.15

Read, watch, listen:

The great joy of returning to your childhood hobbies. I relate to this so much! I’m singing in the symphony choir, taking Spanish lessons, and who knows, maybe I’ll start playing piano again.

Tips to boost your joy.

If you’re looking for weeknight meal inspo, check out this post.

Excellent podcast episode about menopause.

Fashion + beauty:

Maybe my internet sleuth friends out there can help me. I got this dress in this week’s RTR unlimited shipment and I LOVE it. It’s classic, the color is fun, and I can’t find it anywhere online. To buy it through RTR is $300 and I don’t love it that much 😉 Any ideas?? The brand is Derek Lam.

Derek lam dress.

(A little peek at the new floors! They look a million times better.)

New Vuori goodies! Vuori is my favorite spot to order athletic clothes right now. The quality is amazing, the colors are gorgeous, and they’re well-made and flattering.

I got this tank and this pair of shorts:

another energy tank (my fave out of all of them) and these bike shorts

and a new jumpsuit. I have a few Vuori jumpsuits and this year’s verison is even better. It has a waistband, built-in bra (!), and tapered legs, in the same dreamy fabric.

Fitness, health, and good eats:

New-to-me cookbook find. A friend raved about this one, so I ordered a copy! I’m excited to tr

My personal healing plan

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Sharing my strategy and how I’ve decreased inflammation and resolved some health issues over the past year.

***Warning: this post contains red eyeball pictures. If that freaks you out, please feel free to skip this post! 

Hi friends! I hope that you’re having a great week. Ours has been spent slowly putting the house back together – I’ll share some pics of the new floors soon!- and getting ready for spring travel and adventures.

For today’s post, I wanted to share a bit more about my health journey over the past year and my plan.

Please keep in mind that I’m not a doctor, and this is not medical advice. If you’re struggling with your health, please reach out to your doctor and get the support you need. Also, please don’t take, “you’re going to have to live with this” for an answer. There have been a handful of times in our family where I was told that was the case and it was not true. Sometimes you need a third or fourth opinion, but someone is out there who can help you. You can heal, and you deserve to feel amazing.

This time last year, things went wacky with my eyes. It was a pretty stressful time – the Pilot was traveling a lot, it was dance competition season, and I had to do a few of the dance competitions, and the big Disney trip for the parade solo parenting. It was all fun stuff, but it was a lot. We were getting ready for our end-of-the-year party, planning for Liv’s first communtion, and I was pushing myself the hardest I’d ever pushed with strength training and intervals.

I don’t want to recap the entire story with my eyes – I have a post here, and a podcast episode here – but the nutshell version is that they were neon red for many weeks, and the multiple eye doctors had differing opinions on what caused it. At first they thought it was pink eye – I did antibiotics and it didn’t resolve, and kept coming back – and something had triggered it. The only thing that kept the inflammation down was very intense steriod drops. One doctor wanted me to take them for three to four months!

I kept getting different answers, and after seeing multiple eye doctors, and my PCP, who helped me do some digging, we learned a few things:

– I had blepharitis, which was inflammation of my eyelids, MGD (meibmoian gland dysfunction) and dry eye

– Two markers for Lupus came back positive (ANA and DS-DNA)

– Something was causing inflamamtion in my body

The Lupus thing kind of made sense to me. I’d had random stress rashes over the years, and sometimes my hands would ache. I figured it was because I spent so much time on my phone and typing. I felt low-energy, like all the sleep in the world wouldn’t make me feel rested, and had a hard time recovering from my workouts. I would do one really hard workout, and not be able to work out again for 3-4 days afterwards. I started to get sick more frequently… and when I had the flu, I was in bed for 9 days. I knew something was causing my immune system to be on high alert.

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