There are few people as dedicated and loving as my friend Avery Hudson. She is loyal, loving, and steadfast in her friendship and uplifting nature. AKA she makes everyone feel like a super star. So when she asked me last week to make her mom a carrot cake, I was so so excited!!! Because in a lot of ways, Avery is a carrot cake.

Just stopping by with a cutie pie fluffy pink, white, and gold cake for the sweetest new earthling, baby Georgia! My best friend Olivia’s sister Ava had the most beautiful little girl a few weeks ago and I was just so excited, so I made a cake to celebrate that matches the colors in her nursery. Imperfect frosting and meringue kisses but for my first themed cake I’ve learned a few things.

A recipe that mixes the best carbs and savory flavors that always remind me of Christmas morning when we would eat a combination of bagels and lox and egg + sausage breakfast casserole.

When I was 8 or so, I loved (and still love) Christmas so much that I wanted it to be perfect and last all day, so I would make Christmas itineraries that outlined the day hour per hour.

Example: 6am: wake up and put on Christmas pajamas, 6:15am: put the kettle on the stove for hot cocoa, 6:30am open stockings.

You can’t make this stuff up.

I was like the Christmas rule maker, opening 1 present every 10 minutes for maximum Christmas cheer, only to pause for breakfast and savoring every last bite of our bagels and lox in front of our hotter-than-hell farmhouse fireplace, grinning from ear-to-ear as we read Santa’s letter that he left on the counter.

So as a nod to Christmas mornings + warm pastries, I made the tiniest, miniest galettes filled with dill cream cheese + topped with lox, red onions, and capers.

Soups and carbs are my love language, so this butternut chicken pot pie with buttered sage biscuits is the love of my life. Armed with a chicken pot pie-esque inside mixed with the best parts of a butternut squash soup and topped with crispy flaky biscuits, there is a warm and coziness that brings back memories of those freezing cold, yet soupy-warm Idaho tundra-like winters. Snow as high as the roof line, igloo forts in the front yard, checking to make sure the pigs were still toasty warm in the barn after a -20 degree night.

I put together this meal plan to help bring new flavors and seasonal produce back onto grocery lists for those who are short on time but value their nutrition, time, budget and flavor. There is more to food and cooking than meal prepping basic produce and consolidating it into a bowl, which I did countless times during my years in college. I’ve had a good amount of friends ask me specific questions about cooking, like what to buy, how to change up their routine and what to do to bring flavor without sacrificing clean eating and quick meals. Cooking doesn’t have to be time consuming or difficult, so I wrote this seasonal meal plan to help!

In the Gunn household, my mom has been known to be the queen of snack trays and party platters. Since we were kids, she would make us these elaborate snack trays for our weekly tv show marathons with combinations of gold fish, mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, and basically a everything in child’s wildest dreams. Now that we’re older and all three of us are allergic to wheat and traditional dairy (tragic, I know), we are more keen to snack trays like this one, full of goat cheese gouda and sliced truffle salami.

As crazy as it may sound, last Christmas the entire state of Idaho ran OUT of aperol. My mom, rightfully so, was in distress since she had been wanting to make them for our holiday parties. I’m guessing the Idahoans reallllly like their aperol spritzes, especially when it gets cold, which is why this is the perfect after-work/pre-party/party/post-party drink. Or just because, you do you.