Confessions of a Foodie by Belle Calhoune

Okay! I'm about to come clean. My family loves to eat out at restaurants. In good times and in bad, we tend to seek comfort in a nice restaurant where we can eat and talk and bond. There's something about eating at a new venue that feels particularly exciting to us. Will the food be good? So-so? Do they serve Sangria? Are those Yelp reviews truthful? Will it become a family favorite?

Chicken and waffles seem to be all the rage at the moment and we've enjoyed some all around the world. The best had to be Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles in California.

For me, food is a joyful thing. And I've come to realize it's something to celebrate. When my brother was terminally ill he lost his appetite. For the first time in his life he didn't want to eat and the smell of food made him sick. I think it reinforced to me the idea that life is short and one never knows when things in your life will change. SAVOR the moments...as well as the food.

These are some pictures from our Paris trip. I smile when I look at the earthy looking dish with the potatoes. It was really exciting to enjoy different cuisine.

Earthy French food..it was delicious.

My daughter and I at a cafe on the Champs Elysees! We enjoyed the best mussels. 

Sometimes I decide not to post all my dining pics on my author page because I don't want to give the impression that we eat out all the time. It's usually for celebration purposes, and since life has been good lately, we've had a lot to celebrate. Praise the Lord! But in the future, I'm going to share more, because enjoying food is a wonderful thing. Recently we celebrated Fourth of July at my sister Karen's house and she brought out a dessert my mother used to serve us. It brought back all those wonderful childhood memories and it felt like my mother was sitting right there with us even though we lost her back in 2000.

When I was growing up in a family of seven we rarely ate out. I totally understand why. I wouldn't eat out if I had to pay the tab for five kids either! But when we did it was usually while on vacation or the occasional seafood outing in Cape Cod where we had a summer house. We recently took my dad out for father's day at a seafood place on the South Shore of Boston. There's nothing better than fried clams and scallops!

Fried Scallops. Sheer perfection. No one does seafood better than Massachusetts.

I still believe dining out as a family is a celebratory thing. Graduations! Honor roll! My daughter's first big job in New York City! A film deal! We celebrate it all! And I love it.


A different take on chicken and waffles at my niece's graduation celebration.

Spicy fish taco wrapped in lettuce.

Italian food. Lasagna, one of my all-time favorites.

Who among us doesn't love a churro? With chocolate sauce?

Calamari, one of our favorite dishes. 

French toast with flair!

Apple crumble with vanilla ice cream.

Bolognese...my all time favorite meal. I've eaten it in more restaurants than I can recall.

Edamame. It's so good...and good for you.

Dining out is enjoyable for my family. It allows us relaxing time during which we can catch up on the day to day stuff and talk about goals and dreams. Recently we went out for Mexican food and I spotted this sign. It still cracks me up!!! 

Tuesday Routines

by Jill Kemerer

I'm blessed to be the manager of our household. I stepped into this role years ago, and one of the first things I learned was I needed a system. It took me a long time to find the system that works for me. I'm not afraid to change it if it's no longer working. Let's face it, we all go through seasons of life where we're stretched thin financially and/or with too many things to do and not enough time.

Photo courtesy of Pixabay

Honestly, I often feel as if I have too many things to do and not enough time. I often wonder will I ever get it all done? I can't answer for you, but for me--no, I will never get it all done! I've accepted that!

Since today is Tuesday, I thought I'd share my Tuesday routine. First of all, I wake up and smile because Monday IS OVER. Yes! Since I loathe Mondays, I decided to jam all my big chores and errands into them so I can look forward to the rest of the week. Mondays mean making a meal list, grocery shopping, paying bills and doing laundry. Blech. But Tuesdays? Tuesdays I'm excited to work!

After waking up early and slipping into some workout clothes, I head downstairs to brew coffee and possibly load the dishwasher if we failed to do this the night before (confession time: we usually have dishes in the sink in the morning). Then it's an easy breakfast, Bible study and prayer. At 9am, I either do a 25 minute exercise DVD or I take a brisk 30 minute walk. When I'm finished, I change, fix my hair and throw on some makeup.

The next hour is usually spent on business/marketing things like creating my work to-do list for the day, checking email, posting to Facebook, Twitter, G+, etc... When that's finished, I either work (write, plot or edit) for an hour or take an early lunch. After lunch, I'm back in my office to tackle my most pressing to-do items.

At 3pm I usually take a break to talk to my kids when they get home from school. In the summer, I just grab a snack and keep working. If it's baseball season and my son has a game, I start making dinner at 3:30. Yes, it's ridiculous, but we won't be home until after 8pm, and I'm not cooking that late! Tonight we have game and it's an hour away, so I won't be cooking at all. We'll have Subway instead.

If there's nothing on the schedule, I tend to work until 5 or 5:30pm. Sometimes I get caught up in a project and work later, especially if I'm on deadline. The only work I do in the evenings is writing and scheduling blog posts or finding pins on Pinterest for my plotting boards, and I don't do that every night. It's important for me to have time for my family or to just chill out and read or watch television.

I love being blessed to work from home. The ability to make my own schedule? So, so fabulous! And Tuesdays are one of my favorite days of the week because I have a clear schedule to do what I love best--write!

Do you have a routine? Do you love Tuesdays?

Thanks for stopping by!

Jill Kemerer writes Christian romance novels with love, humor and faith for Harlequin Love Inspired. Jill loves coffee, M&Ms, fluffy animals, magazines and her hilarious family. Visit her website, jillkemerer.com, and connect with Jill on Facebook, Twitter and sign up for her Newsletter.

Special Moments in a Writer's Life

Sometimes God drops special moments into an author’s life to let her know her work matters. That happened to me recently. I received a Facebook message from someone in my hometown, a woman I’d been acquainted with all my life, though we were never close friends. She wrote to thank me. Why? Because of her brother, now in his sixties, who had never read a book in his life. He’s dyslexic and struggled just to read and write enough to hold a job. I never knew that. Back in those days, dyslexia wasn’t diagnosed. Kids were just ‘slow’ or ‘dumb’. This brother saw that I had written a book and since he knows me, he was curious. He told no one about this until later, but he picked up my book and read it cover to cover. He couldn’t believe he’d done that. He couldn’t believe he’d read a whole book. Moreover, he couldn’t believe he’d enjoyed it. Now he wanted to read another. When he told his family about it at a large family gathering, they wept. All of them knew about his lifelong struggle with reading. I wept too.


I’m amazed sometimes at the ways God uses the work of my hands. Amazed and blessed.