This is the second post in a new weelicious series called DIY: BUFFET.

Hopefully you’ve had a day or two to give DIY: Oatmeal Buffet a try. If not, I’ve got another great DIY: Buffet dinner recipe for you, the one that actually inspired this whole series.

Everyone in our house has enormous affection for tacos, so when I came up with this taco bar concept, my kids’ taco love escalated to taco fanaticism. Getting to make their tacos “their way” gave them a great sense of pride. I like to set out all the components in colorful bowls with spoons and let everyone go to town personalizing their meal.

Beware: I’ve seen three fist fulls of grated cheese get shoved into their tacos so help kids when needed! You want everyone to be able to pick them up. Chloe has a habit of stuffing her taco so full she can barely pick it up! Sometimes I even take a clean rubber band and fit it around the tortilla a few times so the kids can hold their taco without everything falling out.

The best part of this simple meal is that you can prepare the toppings earlier in the day. You can also pre-cook the meat, so all you need to do is reheat it come dinner time. This is one of those dishes I double, or even triple, to ensure we have leftovers for school lunch or even dinner the next couple of nights. Can you say twofer!?

When each person in your family gets to build their meal the way they want it’s amazing how much better they eat!

Watch this video to pick up a few tricks I use to make even the most unloved foods become immediate favorites!

This is the first post this week in a new weelicious series called DIY: BUFFET.

A few months ago I hit a speed bump at mealtime. Every day I was whipping up the dishes I know to be among my kids’ favorites yet Kenya and Chloe were rejecting them.

“I don’t want it like that!”

“I don’t like it!”

“I’m not eating it that way!”

SAY WHAT?!

The whining and protesting rang in my ears like nails running down a chalkboard. One night I finally had enough and attempting my most motherly sense of calm I said to them, “Fine, then you make your meal the way you want it,” and proceeded to put out the bowls of food for them to serve themselves. It sparked an idea.

While I always like to get the kids involved in some facet of preparing our meals, at that moment I realized that the amount of control they have over how their meal appears on their plate can have almost everything to do with how much they will eat. Even if your kids are generally good eaters, it’s not realistic to believe you will always make meals that they will be excited about, so giving them some added say at the kitchen table can go a long way.

This leads me to my new mealtime obsession: the DIY buffet!

As a kid, whenever my parents took us to a self serve restaurant my brother and I would be over the moon. My favorite one was a place in Louisville called KT’s. They would serve you a perfectly cooked plain hamburger or bowl of salad greens and the rest of how your meal turned out was entirely up to you. The buffet bar was stocked with everything from peanuts to pickles and you could make your dinner exactly the way you wanted it. I don’t think eating was ever as much fun for us kids.

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be offering up a few of my favorite easy home buffet ideas, hoping it will inspire your kids to want to eat even more of the good food you’re making them at mealtime. Today’s DIY plan is for oatmeal.

I make a lot of different recipes for breakfast during the week, but oatmeal is always at the top of my list. Whether you make it effortlessly in the crock pot or traditionally on the stove top, oatmeal is a heathy, nutritious dish that fills your family’s bellies and gets their day off to a great start.

There is nothing better than giving your kids a little oatmeal ownership by setting up an easy breakfast buffet for them. Simply put out all of their favorite toppings and let them pick and choose how they want to adorn their bowls for a personalized, DIY morning meal experience that does a body (and mommy) good!

I always get uber excited for the holidays to come, especially now that I have kids.

The next one on the calendar to look forward to is Memorial Day. That means picnics, barbecues, kids running around the swimming pool blowing bubbles, and more fun start-of-summer activities.

On the menu for our Memorial Day celebration this year is Southern Style Pork Tenderloin, Potato Fans, Healthy Nachos, Cucumber Salad, Lime Mint Soda, Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Fruit Wands. I’m guessing you’ll be doing a lot of cooking too, which means a pretty hefty grocery bill to accompany the fun.

Well, thanks to Challenge Butter, one super lucky weelicious reader will be heading to the supermarket with a $250 grocery gift card as well as a gift basket filled with an array of Challenge Butter products! Just tell me below what you use butter in or on most often!

Butter really is better!

Easy Giveaway Details:

Prize: One (1) lucky weelicious reader will receive one (1) $250 grocery shopping gift card for all your Memorial Day BBQ needs plus one (1) Challenge Butter Gift Basket. I have not been compensated in any way. All views and opinions expressed are my own.

Duration: This giveaway will be open until Thursday, May 23rd at 11:59pm.

Who Can Enter: Open only to residents in the USA.

How to Enter: Leave a comment below — one entry per email address only please. For more chances to win, share this giveaway on Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook with the hashtag #WeeliciousGiveaways, and leave a separate comment letting me know you’ve done so.

How Winner Will Be Chosen: The winner will be chosen at random and will be notified via email. The winner will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be chosen.

I love eggs.

My husband loves eggs.

Our kids LOVE eggs.

There are plenty of reasons for our family’s ouef adoration and whenever we eat eggs in the morning I feel good knowing that my kids are heading out the door to school with a good dose of protein in their bodies. Kenya and Chloe are pretty happy when they see eggs on their breakfast plates, but add the word pizza to the equation and they will certainly tell you I’ve gone gangbuster delicioso!

That’s what happened when I paired two of our families favorites together in this one simple recipe.

Feel free to make this meal your own and top your pizza with cooked bacon, breakfast sausage, or any of your other preferred breakfast toppings.

While you’re at it, have some early morning fun and get the kids involved in making their own pizza. It’s easy to do and you’ll send everyone off for their day with egg lovin’, happy bellies!

The first thing you would smell entering my grandmother’s house when I was a kid was bacon. She must have fried it up once or twice a day. She even kept the drippings (which she used to cook everything in) in an large mason jar on a shelf over the stove. I mean why cook with olive oil or butter when you’ve got bacon grease on hand? Bonkers good!

There are pros and cons to the different ways of cooking bacon, but as this video will show you whether you choose to do it on the stove top or in the oven, it’s easy to turn out incredibly crispy, crunchy scrumptiousness whenever the mood suits you!

Our family is blessed to have the greatest caregiver of all time. Nilva is family and most days I don’t know how I could pull off anything without her. I may be pretty proficient in the kitchen, but occasionally things get really crazy and I need help preparing a meal. Even during those weeks when our food supply drops to dangerously low levels and I can’t make it to the supermarket, I never stress because Nilva has the incredible gift of being able to create the most amazing meal from a bare refrigerator and pantry.

That’s why I always try to keep a bunch of simple foods in the freezer like shrimp, vegetables, and meat, so at the very least we can quickly defrost something to have for dinner. The night Nilva first unveiled this turkey burger recipe I had been expecting to eat with the kids when I got home but was informed upon my arrival that they had already eaten everything without me. Considering the fact that Kenya seems naturally inclined towards being a vegetarian, I knew Nilva must have made something that night that tasted magical.

Weeks later I asked Nilva for her recipe — which uses oatmeal for added nutrition — and I made it for dinner. I put out lots of toppings so everyone could jazz up their burger as they pleased. While I like my mine with tons of pickles, Chloe prefers sauerkraut, Kenya desires a dip of ketchup, and hubby likes his simple and unadorned. But however you enjoy them these burgers are a no brainer for last minute, healthy, weeknight meal!

I’m obsessed with kitchen equipment. Always have been. I admire and respect the tools in my kitchen as a carpenter, gardener or mechanic does theirs’. I feel so passionate about my kitchen toys in fact, on occasion I’ve written about some of them for the Food Network’s Product Puree.

The right kitchen tool can make all the difference in the way your food looks, tastes and feels with it’s feather like pieces in every bite. This Asparagus Ribbon Salad is a perfect example.

Spring is here and emerald stalks of asparagus can be found all over our local farmers’ market. I’ve been cooking with it non stop. One of my favorite ways to prepare asparagus is to grill the spears with tons of lemon like this, but I also love them sautéed with sugar snap peas or even in a gorgeous quiche (this one is perfect for Mother’s Day, just sayin’).

But back to the salad. I spent last week using one of my most favorite inexpensive kitchen gadgets, this impressive OXO peeler, to create it. The peeler glides over the asparagus, transforming them into delicate ribbons of loveliness. I even enlisted my kids for the preparation, letting them adorn the salad with dressing, a light sprinkling of almonds, and grated parmesan. Together we created something simple yet enticing for our whole family.

When I was around 5 or 6 years old I had my first taste of pound cake. I remember the entire experience vividly as it revolved around my next door neighbor, Kate’s, grandmother from Pawley’s Islands, SC and her legendary recipe. Whenever I went over to visit and her grandmother was in town, I knew a slice of that pound cake was in my future. At that point most of the desserts I had tried were quite sweet and in the form of a cake, cupcake, cookie or bar. This was nothing like them. Light, tender and the perfect amount of sweetness in every bite in a big dome shape.

When I was trying to think of my dream dessert for Mother’s Day this year using my favorite standing mixer, pound cake immediately came to mind. I really wanted to make a cake in the shape of a heart with swirls of fresh raspberry throughout and it turned out even better than I could have imagined. So yummy that I think I’ve made six or seven in the past two weeks alone.

This year for Mother’s Day I’ve teamed up with KitchenAid and their Cook For The Cure program which has raised more than $9 million benefiting the Susan G. Komen Foundation. To read more about the amazing work they’re doing you can read here!

I love my mama. I miss her when she’s not around. And I wish she was here now so I could bake her this cake again. Luckily I got to make one for her in my standing mixer when she was in town visiting me a few weeks ago. She gave it the thumbs up so it seems like the perfect recipe video to post in advance of Mother’s Day.

This luscious Pink Poundcake is packed with fresh raspberry swirls not to mention all the extra love you put in it making it with your own two hands.

Happy Mother’s Day!