How to make our 4 favorite easy pasta salads: Italian, Mexican, Greek and Asian. Plus tons of add-ins to make it your own!
One of my favorite go-to recipes on a busy day when I really don't feel like cooking is a good pasta salad. I can easily whip up one of these easy pasta salad dressing recipes to suit for whatever we're serving, from Mexican to Asian flavors, and then add in whatever...
6 creative ways to use seasonal summer berries beyond just eating them out of the basket
It's berry season, and we're overloading on them, to say the least. Whether it's the great prices at Costco or the buckets you're getting at the strawberry picking farms, local farm stands, or greenmarkets, we've got some more berry recipe ideas if you want to go...
Weekly Meal Plan: 5 meals my family requested this week
The hardest part of meal planning right now is that I am doing A LOT of it. With no camps, no sports, and cancelled vacations, it feels like I am running a small Bed and Breakfast. And to be perfectly honest, it is easy to get burned out trying to plan meals that will...
10 easy backyard camping recipes, from breakfast to dessert, that give you a taste of the great outdoors in your own yard.
It's a bummer for those of us who love camping in the warmer months, but it looks like we'll need to be camping in our backyards this year and thus, making use of some backyard camping recipes to keep things fun. For a little background, National Parks are fully...
Frozen Margarita Pie! Strawberry Bourbon Shortcake! Indulge in these 12 boozy desserts for Father’s Day.
Raise a toast to all the great dads this Father's Day! And if you're close enough to be able to (safely!) clink glasses filled with his favorite libation, I'd like to suggest you also consider one of these 12 boozy desserts for Father's Day. They're all decadent,...
Weekly meal plan: 5 easy and delicious meals for the week ahead
Another weekend is here, which means it's the time we're starting thinking about what to feed our families next week. So as we do every Friday, we're sharing some delicious meals that will make your dinnertime easy and your family happy. Grab your pen and make your...
15 delicious Father’s Day food gifts supporting black-owned businesses
The team at Cool Mom Picks has always dedicated ourselves to amplifying small businesses of all kinds, and to showcase diversity in the brands, books, advice, and even recipes we feature. But we know that over the past few months, there's been two great changes we're...
Weekly Meal Plan: 6 amazing meals from Black food bloggers you should totally be following
Editor's Note: To say that this past week has been an especially hard one is an understatement -- particularly for our Black friends, family, neighbors, and readers. We have always done our best on this site to be inclusive in different ways: by amplifying diverse...
Weekly meal plan: 5 no-cook dinners for the week ahead. It doesn’t get easier than these.
It's time to think about planning dinners for next week, and if you're as tired of cooking (and meal planning) as I am, then I think you'll love this entirely no-cook weekly meal plan. No, this isn't transitioning you to a 100% raw diet. But we're looking for...
Necco Wafer fans rejoice! At least one thing is going your way this week.
At a time we're all looking for just tiny glimmers of joy and good news in our days, here comes some. At least if your'e a fan of Necco Wafers. It seems...Necco Wafers are back! For real. After two long years away. They're basically the same as you remember them from...
70+ of our favorite summer grilling recipes, from burgers to veggies to dessert
Why yes, it is time to start bookmarking all the best summer grilling recipes out there. And here we are to help! After two long months of cooking soooo many meals, I'm pretty excited that Memorial Day gives me an excuse to make more use out of that grill, and our...
Weekly Meal Plan: 5 perfect meals to kick off the beginning of summer. Oh, and a perfect cocktail, too.
This Monday officially kicks off the unofficially beginning of summer with Memorial Day. And Memorial Day cookouts. While holidays feel a bit different for most of us right now -- or a lot different -- I am still determined to bring some normalcy back to our lives...
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9 helpful tips for making a homemade gingerbread house. Learn from my successes….and uh, failures.
I never thought I'd be the person offering tips for making homemade gingerbread houses, but you know, 2020. Chalk it up to the baking bug so many of us caught in 2020, but my kids and I attempted our own homemade gingerbread houses for the first time this year....
We love these 10 festive ways to package Christmas cookie gifts | Holiday Gifts
Even if you've picked out your perfect Christmas cookie recipe already, you might be looking for ways to package those Christmas Cookies as gifts. Though the big crowded cookie swap I usually attend every December is canceled this year due to the pandemic, homemade...
What to make for a smaller Thanksgiving this year: 8 ideas to help you see it as an opportunity
So many of our readers and friends are asking about what to make for a smaller Thanksgiving this year. While this may be the prudent choice, I know it still comes with a lot of feelings. So many of us are skipping travels plans and raucous gatherings with...
12 of your favorite tips to save money on groceries: We’re stealing all of them!
We always want to save money on groceries, but now more than ever. In fact, on a recent Cool Mom Eats Instagram post, Terre N. mentioned that her grocery bills have seemingly doubled since Covid struck. And, boy, can we relate. One side effect of all this...
8 spectacular Halloween dinner theme ideas for a fun, safe night at home
With lots of families looking for trick-or-treating alternatives this year, one of Liz's suggestions was to host a fun Halloween themed dinner with the kids. Which, by the way, is a great idea for teens who may have outgrown trick-or-treating too, or a fun option...
Recipes
5 nights of comfort foods: A meal plan to get you through heck of a week
2021 is going to have to shape up soon, because we didn't think we'd be hitting the comfort foods so hard right now. How are we coping with the early sunsets, cold weather, anxiety-provoking news, and kids that still need love and care and feeding? Um, with mac and...
These are my 13 favorite new recipes I discovered for my family this year. Pandemic silver lining!
One of bright spots of 2020 is that I have discovered so many amazing new recipes for my family, stemming mainly from my newfound love for meal planning. Yes, meal planning! Who would have thought? Pre-Covid, I really was more of a wing-it-at-the-grocery-store kind...
DIY hot chocolate bombs make the best last-minute food gifts: 4 recipes, from super simple to OMG
Hot chocolate bombs have been blowing up (heh) my Instagram feed lately, so I decided to find some great recipes to make my own hot chocolate bombs at home. And wow, so many! It turns out that whatever your commitment level, you can find a DIY hot chocolate bomb...
10 of our readers’ favorite pie recipes for the holiday season. Move over bread, we’re baking pie!
Several weeks ago, a member in our Recipe Rescue group sent out a plea for your favorite non-pumpkin, non-pecan, non-cherry/apple/strawberry rhubarb pie recipes (to please a picky husband, should that matter), and our readers all seriously delivered. What a...
Save time and money with 5 slow cooker dinners under $10 each! | Meal Plan 233
Budget slow cooker dinner recipes are my whole mood right now. I don't know about you, but I'm short on time with the holidays here, not to mention all those holiday gifts taking a healthy bite out of my budget. So for this week's meal plan, I planned out...