Carrie Saum

We had no turkey, no casserole dishes heaped sweet potatoes or creamy green beans, no pies made from scratch, no beautiful table settings or nice dishes to heap our non-existent feast upon.

The Internet has told us that instead of selling our wild summer children to a band of traveling performers, we should go swimming with them instead. At a beach or at the pool, your choice. The Internet also told us that us moms should get over our silly body issues and just play! Have fun!

Heating up a kitchen while you are doing your level best to not become human molten lava is always the goal during summer, no matter where you live. I prefer batch cooking if I can make that happen, and never, under any circumstances, do I turn on my oven. Unless I'm baking a birthday cake or maybe some hand pies.

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Here are my favorite ways to infuse my body with energy that actually aren't hard and take almost no effort. You don't have to be pregnant to use these ideas, so don't worry. Although, you might make a baby in the process.

I also kind of feel like whatever I do eventually put in my body needs to be quality and filling and full of nutritious goodness. This is hard on mornings when it literally feels like all I can do to make toast. Sometimes I look at it, contemplate it fresh out of the toaster and briefly wonder if I really need to spread the almond butter on it. Because effort.

Summer is officially upon us, and with it comes epic family vacation plans sure to generate tales of your family’s (mis)adventures for years to come.

Whoever Waldorf is, I love their style of salads the most. Fruit, celery, creamy goodness. It's hard to go wrong. I mean, you CAN go wrong, but you shouldn't because that would be silly.

I say this: Stop fat-shaming my toddler son. Fat will not make him fat. Fat does not make him unhealthy.

The result was a gorgeous, decadent, crispy-edged-and-soft-in-the-middle caramelized cookie skillet straight from heaven. It filled our entire building with sweet almond and fig baked goodness.