Homemade vanilla ice cream is topped with a fresh peach sauce that just tastes like summer. This ice cream recipe is irresistibly creamy and totally addictive – top with the fresh peach sauce for a sweet treat so good, you’ll never want it to end.

Man, I get hearts in my eyes just looking back at these photos. Now I know everyone is all pumpkin this and apple that lately, but I’m still holding onto the last bit of summer! Labor Day weekend I visited my family in North Carolina – which feels a heck of a lot more like summer than Chicago! We went to the mountains to get fresh peaches from the cutest farm, and with it we made sangria AND this homemade peach sauce.

If you’ve never tasted the magic of homemade ice cream in an ice cream maker, you’re seriously missing out. Imagine that store bought stuff taken to like the thousandth degree of deliciousness. After tasting homemade vanilla ice cream, I’ve become a total ice cream snob – the kind from the grocery store just doesn’t do it for me anymore. Trust me when I say, this stuff is worth the effort. It’s creamy, smooth, full of vanilla flavor, and absolutely delicious.

Mmmmm. I like this ice cream so much I could marry it. …

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All the flavors of jalapeño poppers are stuffed into mushrooms and topped with a crunchy Panko topping. These Jalapeño Popper Stuffed Mushrooms are the perfect side dish or appetizer for any occasion. 

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A sweet white sangria recipe that’s easy to make and super refreshing in the summer! Strawberry Peach Sangria is the perfect way to use up fresh peaches.

If I didn’t love Chicago so much, I’d move to North Carolina in a heartbeat. During a trip to visit my family in NC, we visited a peach and apple farm in the mountains, along with a local winery that made their wine completely from local grapes! Since we returned home with an entire peck of peaches and 9 bottles of wine, we pretty much had no choice but to make a delicious Strawberry Peach Sangria.

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Sugar-free brownie mix and natural peanut butter are used to make this stupidly easy dessert recipe! Peanut Butter Brownie Bites are perfect to satisfy a sweet tooth if you love the combination of chocolate and peanut butter. 

It’s my birthday!

I’m just hoping Blink 182 was wrong when they said that thing about being 23 …

But I’m pretty confident that EVERYBODY likes you when you’re 23 … if you have Peanut Butter Brownie Bites to share.

These delicious bites of heaven are moist two-bite brownies that are stuffed with creamy peanut butter and topped off with chocolate and peanut butter chips! It really doesn’t get much better than that.

Although recipes using ingredients that come from a box aren’t really my “thing,” these Peanut Butter Brownie Bites are the exception. Plus, everyone should splurge on their birthday. And if you’re me, you celebrate the entire week … err month….

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All the flavors of jalapeño poppers are included in this easy and healthy whole wheat pita pizza recipe! With cream cheese, turkey bacon, jalapeños, and Cheddar cheese, these Jalapeño Popper Pita Pizzas are creamy and cheesy with just the right amount of heat.

Can’t. Stop. Eating. Jalapeños.

And cheese. I forgot how good cheese is.

I don’t know what it is about those little green devils that make me want to eat them every day! When we got a whole bag full of beautiful jalapeños in our CSA last week, my first thought was to pickle them for later. Then, I bought a package of cream cheese at the grocery store and ever since I’ve been turning EVERYTHING into a jalapeño popper recipe. See: Skinny Jalapeño Popper Stuffed Chicken.

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These skinny 2-Ingredient Peach Angel Food Cupcakes just use angel food cake mix and canned peaches to create a light, summery dessert that you won’t feel guilty about! 

I gained a new respect for bakers Friday. Does anyone else hate baking as much as I do? All the extra dishes and the measuring and the having to follow directions … it’s exhausting! This was one of two dessert recipes I baked on Friday afternoon, and despite the fact that they were two of the easiest recipes around, I was in need of a nap and a friend to clean my kitchen for me when I was done. My hat is off to you bakers out there.

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Chopped zucchini, sweet corn, and shredded Parmesan cheese fill these Cheesy Zucchini and Corn Baked Egg Rolls. This easy appetizer recipe is great to use up end-of-summer produce, and only takes a few minutes to assemble. Serve with marinara or pizza sauce!

When life hands you extra egg roll wrappers, an abundance of end-of-summer produce, and 20 minutes to spare, beautiful things happen. I had some left over egg roll wrappers from my Healthier Apple Hand Pies and it would be a sin to let those go to waste! These Cheesy Zucchini and Corn Baked Egg Rolls are a great summer treat to clean out the fridge.

Growing up near my grandpa’s farm, I always looked forward to sweet corn season. My sister would always try to be fancy and cut her corn off the cob – not sure if it was to be glamorous or just because she didn’t want corn in her braces. Either way, too much work. I dove in face first and came out with two cheeks full of butter….

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These Healthier Apple Hand Pies are made with egg roll wrappers – a lighter version of a classic apple turnover or apple hand pies that use pastry dough or pie crust! With warm cinnamon apples and a crispy outside, these hand-held treats just scream fall. 

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This Skinny Jalapeño Popper Stuffed Chicken is a healthier version of jalapeño popper chicken because it uses low-fat cheese and is baked instead of fried. This is a fool-proof chicken recipe that’s so easy to make and SO delicious.

Skinny Jalapeño Popper Stuffed Chicken is quite possibly my new favorite chicken recipe. I even considered making it twice in one week after I single-handedly finished off the first batch for lunches and dinners three days in a row. If you’re a fan of jalapeño poppers, you’ll LOVE this chicken dish. It’s stuffed with cream cheese, Cheddar cheese, jalapeño and more, then baked until the outside is crispy and the chicken is deliciously juicy.

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These Turkey Pesto Meatballs are lean, moist and full of flavor. Add any flavor pesto to this turkey meatballs recipe and you’ll have an amazing Italian dish that’s great with zucchini noodles or pasta. 

Meatballs are a beautiful thing. My mom used to make ketchup/brown sugar meatballs for us all the time and I would turn up my nose at the thought of eating round chunks of ground beef, but I’ve since come to my senses and warmed up to the beauty of the meatball. These Turkey Pesto Meatballs are made with lean turkey mean (because, health) and homemade Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto! If you’re not a lucky duck like me and don’t have sun-dried tomato pesto on hand, you can use any old basil pesto, kale pesto, or any pesto at all.

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