This post is created with America’s Dairy Farm Families and Importers, in partnership with the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy. However, the views and opinions included are my own.

My kids love asking for parfaits when I offer to make them as an afternoon or after dinner snack (aka dessert). I started making parfaits years ago and they get excited about eating them every single time. Parfaits are not only pretty to look at, but they can be filled with some pretty tasty ingredients. With my recent trip to a local dairy farm here in Florida, as well as a trip to a dairy farm in Rhode Island, I can’t help but think about and appreciate the hard-working families that are really behind the wholesome dairy, like the Greek yogurt in these parfaits, that my family enjoys. You can read more about my experience at the farm here.

Whether I’m making a parfait for me or my kids, I always go with whatever combination of seasonal fruit, yogurt, nuts or granola I have on hand. This particular parfait was inspired by one of our favorite fall fruits, pears. We love pears this time of year, and you can pretty much always count on finding a tub of good vanilla Greek yogurt and nuts in my fridge too. Call it a snack or call it dessert (or even breakfast!), a parfait like this creamy Greek Yogurt Parfait with Pears and Walnuts always hits the spot.

To make our parfaits extra tasty (and fancy!) I like to spice them up a bit. I added a sprinkle of cinnamon and ginger and a drizzle of sweet honey and it was the perfect touch. I like to chop the fruit and the nuts to the same size so that it’s easier for each spoonful to have a taste of everything combined. The perfect flavors for fall and my kids absolutely loved the combination.

You can make the parfaits with traditional layers, or if you are in a crunch for time and just want to keep it simple you can add your ingredients to a bowl and enjoy it all the same. If you are looking for an entertaining idea for breakfast or brunch, set out the ingredients separately and offer a build-your-own-parfait bar.

Greek Yogurt Parfait with Pears and Walnuts

Yield: 2 parfaits

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups vanilla bean Greek yogurt
• 1 pear, chopped small
• ground cinnamon, for sprinkling, to taste
• ground ginger, for sprinkling, to taste
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• honey, for drizzling

Directions:

1. Add 1/3 cup of Greek yogurt into the bottom of parfait glass. Top yogurt with chopped pears and sprinkle with cinnamon and ginger, to taste. Add chopped walnuts and drizzle with honey. Repeat layer, then top with a dollop of yogurt.
2. Serve immediately for best presentation or cover and refrigerate for up to 6 hours to serve later.

This post is created with America’s Dairy Farm Families and Importers, in partnership with the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy. However, the views and opinions included are my own.

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One big thing I’ve been doing lately is trying to cook from my cookbooks more. I have a huge cookbook collection that I covet, yet sadly they are just sitting pretty on a shelf in my kitchen the last couple of years. How did that happen? (The internet, that’s how). Well, things are changing. My kids have heard me talk about how I miss cooking from my cookbooks and they’ve been pulling some off the shelves and onto the kitchen table lately so that we can look through them and find something to try. This has been fun for all of us!

I bought this cookbook last year when it came out – Aarti was one of my FAVORITE Next Food Network Star contestants and I watched her show regularly after she won her season (did she win her season? I can’t remember now). Total sadness that it is no longer on air. My daughter loved her show too, and my husband and I pretty much were introduced to Indian food because of her (LOVE). This recipe for Kheema comes from her cookbook and made it to our meal plan this past week. We loved it.

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The week between Christmas and New Year’s is my favorite week of the year. I always feel more relaxed, refreshed and ready to take on whatever lies ahead in the start of the new year. I love looking back on the blog while writing posts like this and seeing what I’ve cooked over the last 12 months. For someone who didn’t’t know what to make for dinner more than half of the time, I didn’t do half bad.

I can’t thank you enough for visiting Aggie’s Kitchen for recipes, this blog fulfills me more than you know and I appreciate all my readers, friends and family who have supported it and me over the years. Hope you are enjoying the holiday and I wish everyone the best in the upcoming year. Bring on 2016!

Here are the Top 15 Most Popular Recipes on Aggie’s Kitchen from 2015: 

1. Creamy Avocado Lime Dressing

2. Slow Cooker Split Pea Soup

3. Mexican Slaw Salad with Black Beans

4. Slow Cooker Asian Citrus Pork Tenderloin

5. Honey Balsamic Roasted Brussels Sprouts

6. Slow Cooker Pesto Chicken Melts

7. Strawberry Grapefruit Ginger Smoothie

8. Apple, Celery, Walnut Salad with Honey Dijon Vinaigrette

9. Roasted Red Peppers with Pesto and Goat Cheese

10. Greek Village Salad

11. Almond Peach Kefir Smoothie

12. Taco Turkey Black Bean Rice Bowls

13. Spring Beet and Goat Cheese Salad with Walnuts

14. Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Brussels Sprouts with Pecans

15. Kale, Red Pepper and Goat Cheese Frittata

From the past:

Best of 2014 – My Favorites and Yours

Best of 2013 – My Favorites and Yours

My 12 Favorite Meals of 2012

Bye Bye 2011

Top 5 Favorites of 2009

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Click here to pin this Chinese Five Spice Pork Chops with Broccoli recipe!

One of my goals for the upcoming new year is to start cooking from my cookbooks again. I have a pretty massive collection of cookbooks that I cherish and love, but sadly don’t cook from as much as I used to. Over the years, I’ve become accustomed to creating recipes from scratch to share here on the blog and my cookbooks have been neglected in the process. One of my recent cookbook purchases is a fantastic and practical cookbook called Sheet Pan Suppers and today’s Chinese Spice Pork Chops with Broccoli was inspired from it.

Today’s post is also for this month’s Recipe Redux – the Recipe Redux is a monthly recipe challenge where we focus on a theme and recreate a recipe with a healthier twist. This month’s theme was Grab a Book and Cook, so I was excited to do just that! Since the Recipe Redux is celebrating it’s 54th month we were to find a recipe on page 54 or 154 of a nearby cookbook and reinvent a healthy version of it. I picked up Sheet Pan Suppers and found a recipe using an ingredient that I was defrosting for dinner – pork chops. It happens to be on page 123 (oops!!) because I missed the little page detail until later (I blame my holiday brain!).

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The strawberries have arrived, the strawberries have arrived! You have no idea how happy it makes me to see Florida strawberries back in our grocery store. Our season starts in December (hard to believe I know) and I think it’s safe to say that strawberries are probably the most consumed fruit in my family. We go through strawberries like crazy when they are in season (whether from Florida or California).

For the most part, we eat strawberries as is for snacks and as part of our meals. I pack them almost everyday in my kids’ lunchboxes and throw them into spinach salads too. My daughter spotted these Strawberry Banana Muffins (they are whole wheat – bonus!) over my shoulder on Pinterest last night and made me promise I would make them for her.

Of course, strawberries in smoothies are a given. I made this Strawberry, Grapefruit and Ginger Smoothie the other afternoon from the Clean Slate cookbook (I’m giving away a copy of it with three other healthy cookbooks – don’t forget to enter!). I found it in a section of the cookbook that is dedicating to “rebooting your system” and drinking to your health. There are 8 pages filled with smoothie and juice combinations and honestly, I want to try every single one of them. This Strawberry, Grapefruit and Ginger Smoothies falls into the “detoxifying” category and is recommended to drink whenever you are feeling sluggish (or to prevent feeling that way). I’ll take one every day.

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Click here to pin this slow cooker pork tenderloin recipe!

I’m back with another pork tenderloin recipe. The Roasted Chili Maple Pork Tenderloin I shared back in November was my introduction to cooking with pork tenderloin and it turns out many of you love this cut of meat too. I’m amazed how much my entire family loves it and I can’t believe I have avoided cooking it for so long.

This time, I decided to try something different and cook it using my slow cooker. Yep, that tenderloin was cooked in the slow cooker and finished off under the broiler. I tried this new-to-me-method after seeing a recipe for Teriyaki Pork Tenderloin in The Healthy Slow Cooker Revolution cookbook from America’s Test Kitchen (if you missed it, I’m giving away a copy of this cookbook plus 3 others this week here). I wanted so bad to make the Teriyaki Pork Tenderloin recipe but I was missing some pretty key ingredients so I had to improvise and try something a little different.

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The post Slow Cooker Asian Citrus Pork Tenderloin Recipe appeared first on Aggie's Kitchen.

Raise your hand if you love a good stir fry. (My hand is raised high – and so are my family’s hands too.)

Stir fries are a busy weeknight’s lifesaver. They are simple, healthy and quick. A no brainer really if you think about it. All it takes is a little prep (those precut bags of veggies at the grocery store come in real handy if you are really short on time) and a good wok.

Here are a few more healthy dinner ideas for you.

I’ve been lacking in the good wok department for quite some time. I have not had much luck with woks over the years for some reason. They have always seemed to get warped and become lopsided on my cooktop and the inside of the wok gets a little sad looking after some time.

Swiss Diamond recently sent me their 14″ Nonstick Wok to test out and I am so impressed. The quality is amazing. It’s a huge wok (and comes with a glass lid) so you can easily make stir fries packed with veggies your whole family will love – like this Chicken and Vegetable Stir Fry I made this week. Their nonstick coating is made with real diamond crystals (pretty cool, huh) and they are made of heavy-duty cast aluminum with a flat bottom so no warping, tipping or spinning will be happening.

I’m excited to offer the same wok to one lucky reader too – see the below the recipe to enter the giveaway!

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Last fall, shortly after my baby was born, a friend of mine brought me some lunch. She brought a salad, some apple chips and a bowl of pumpkin soup. That pumpkin soup seriously rocked my world! It was made with ‘real’ pumpkin, not from canned pumpkin (I’m not knocking canned pumpkin – I use it all the time – but what a difference!) and it was pureed and topped with a drizzle of roasted pumpkin oil. So gourmet! (and incredibly thoughtful because let’s face it, lunch like that wasn’t happening very often during those early baby days!)

(bringing food to a mom of a newborn – best thing ever!!)

I remember feeling so healthy after eating that soup, knowing it was just a bowl of pure goodness. Normally I prefer chunky soups but for some reason, a squash soup like that pumpkin soup or this Slow Cooker Curried Butternut Squash Soup is just perfect pureed smooth.

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As much as I love salads, I haven’t been into them so much lately. I think I’m kind of bored with them maybe? That’s really what it is. We all get into our routines with what we eat, and variations of my super salad just hasn’t been cutting it these days. This salad though, this salad got me and my friend Julie excited last week.

This simple Asian Chopped Salad was the result of what we thought were going to be vegetarian dumplings. We created a vegetarian filling to try in a dumpling but to be honest, I wasn’t thrilled with how they were turning out. While Julie was cutting out her dumplings into a round shape with a biscuit cutter, the outer scraps were collecting into a pile on the cutting board. Being from the “waste not” mentality, I couldn’t bear to throw them in the trash, so I fried them up in a little bit of oil until they were crisp. We added them to our “reject” vegetarian dumpling filling and voila – this amazing salad was born.

I love everything about this salad. The crunch from the veggies and the fried wonton scraps makes it so good. And the dressing was incredibly simple – a little rice vinegar, sesame oil and soy sauce.

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Last week my friend Julie and I had a play date. We’ve been wanting to get together for a while, and even though she lives just a little over an hour from me, it seems like it’s always hard to find the time with both of our busy schedules.

We talked about cooking up some lunch, playing with our cameras and just hanging out but little did I know that our time together was going to stir up both of our creative juices in the kitchen. Personally, I’ve been in somewhat of a cooking slump since the holidays, really not in the mood to try anything new…basically it’s been survival mode around here with lots of easy pasta dishes and big pots of soup. That’s not a bad thing. But I’ve missed the excitement and energy I get when I start playing around in the kitchen, and of course I’ve been wanting to share new stuff with all of you!

Our plan that day was to learn how to make Chinese dumplings together. It’s one of my kids’ favorite things to order when we pick up take-out and something I’ve been wanting to get better at making at home. Well, it turns out, Julie was a natural at putting these dumplings together. They turned out delicious and my kids scarfed them down at dinner time. I’m seriously so excited about making them again and experimenting with different types of fillings.

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