#Blogmas Day 13: Short Stack Editions

My best friend Cate shared these super cute cookbooks from Short Stack Editions with me this past week, and I was totally inspired. They include recipes centered around a specific ingredient which would be perfect for someone with a favorite food (did someone say broccoli?) or for people with a CSA box who knows without a doubt that there will be tons of surplus fruits and veggies during various parts of the season. But most importantly, the covers on these are beautifully illustrated. I would love to have each and every volume in my kitchen, but could easily pick and choose the ones that will work best with my own cooking lifestyle. These are one of my top gift ideas this season, and super affordable at $14.00 each! How about you guys? What's your favorite food to cook with? Leave a comment below!

1  Eggs  |  Volume 1

2  Buttermilk  |  Volume 4

3  Lemons  |  Volume 13

4  Prosciutto de Parma  |  Volume 14

5  Brown Sugar  |  Volume 12

6  Corn  |  Volume 10

#Blogmas Day 11: Holiday Wish List - 2016 Planners

It's that time of year where you really start to wrap your head around the fact that it's about to be a new year. Whether you start getting your resolutions ready, or you at least try to get your affairs in order, a new year totally feels like a new beginning. And sometimes even just the feeling of a new beginning is important for keeping things in a busy, overwhelming life feel fresh, new, and fun. This also happens to be the perfect time to start the new year right with a planner. In the digital age, I know my phone and computer calendars keep track of my appointments and office obligations, but there's just something so charming and fun about keeping personal plans, birthdays, and other fun fetes in a beautiful agenda book. And why stop there? There are meal planners, diet planners, grocery planners, even content planners for bloggers and vloggers and people who work from home. I put together a few planners that I either have and am currently using, or have had my eye on for a while now. They would make excellent holiday gifts for someone special who's looking to grab 2016 by the horns and live their best-ever life!

1  Kate Spade 2016 Planners  I'm currently using the gold polka-dotted planner and it makes me so happy to look at it every day.

2  Skinnytaste Meal Planner I've blogged about this before, and I'm loving using it to plan out my meals (and grocery shopping/cooking schedule) for the week.

3  The Erin Condren LifePlanner This planner has a huge cult following on the internet. People create products specifically for it, they blog and vlog about it in Plan With Me videos on YouTube – it is kind of like the Rolls Royce of agendas.

4  Ban.do 2016 Agenda  These are so cute, and the design is flawless. I love the look of these planners, and they come with super cute stickers. This would be an amazing gift for someone in high school or college, but hurry because they are selling out fast!

No Takeout November | Skinnytaste Meal Planner

Hello, November! I can not believe how quickly time is passing these days. Sunrise/sunset... Okay, moving on. I have a friend who's doing a No Spend November and she is basically my hero. If any of you have done something like this successfully, and saved a quick and easy thousand dollars in the process, my hat's off to you! Truly, I think I would die. But the idea inspired me to take an honest look at where most of my money goes each month (cough, cough, takeout/restaurants/bars) and I've isolated something I can SAVE BIG on without going berserk.

No Takeout November, for a New Yorker, is definitely still a sacrifice in order to save big. I typically buy breakfast, lunch, and usually dinner from various restaurants ranging from Dunkin Donuts (coffee + breakfast at work), to my favorite local Mexican restaurant (a dinnertime favorite), to Domino's Pizza (yes, I am the worst New Yorker ever...my boyfriend will be the first to point this out). Hear me: It is ridiculous to eat 3 meals out every. single. day. And, trust me, it adds up fast. Also, when left to my own devices and spur-of-the-moment decisions, I am just NOT a healthy eater. So cooking healthy for myself is a secondary benefit!

My go-to website (and cookbook) for healthy, easy, delicious recipes is skinnytaste.com and so imagine my surprise when I found that she recently released a companion to her amazing cookbook that was a tool specifically for meal-planning and calorie/activity tracking. Enter The Skinnytaste Meal Planner. It seemed like perfect considering my No Takeout pledge.

Image from Kittsona

It's got a spread at the beginning of each week to plan your meals, which I'm using to establish which nights of the week will be "cooking nights." Since I am still as busy as I ever was, and life doesn't take a back seat to my No Takeout plans, I will try to keep these to 2-3 a week, maximum and try to knock out the bulk of my planning and shopping on Sundays.

Then for each day of the week, there's space to track everything you eat (amazing if you're trying to be cognizant of that) as well as a cute space for activity tracking! Sure hope I manage to do more of that as well, but I also know the importance of focusing on one goal before conquering another.

I'm very excited about this No Takeout November project, and will definitely let you all know how it goes! Wish me luck!

Remember That Time I Wrote That Book?

Well, it's only been a year and three months, but I finally got around to having a photographer, Cameron Winchester, take some glamour shots of my CSCA award winning senior thesis, For Kids: Nutrition Education, for my portfolio! I'm super happy with how they turned out. Plus, you could never tell how legit my little ole' book is just from regular old page files. Check it out!

Images copyright Jenna Brucoli, sick photography by Cameron Winchester

Farm-Fresh

Here's a freelance project I've been working on, for an organization based near Columbus. I've had so much fun working with photography on this piece, since I rarely get to use it in my everyday work. There's something so gorgeous about green plants, fruits and vegetables. This is a work-in-progress as of now, but I've been enjoying it so much, I had to show you guys! The structure of the piece is folded into fours. When it opens, the back is the full chart.

Designed by Jenna Brucoli

A Mystery

Why is it that immediately after you eat an apple or a pear, you are hungry again...even if you weren't even all that hungry to begin with? That'll teach me to have a healthy snack at 2:30pm.

Note: One of my New Year's Resolutions is to eat more fruits and veggies. I've been doing quite well so far. Apples and pears, however, may not make the cut...

Photo from here

For Kids: A Closer Look

So, I remember promising more of my thesis to those friends and family who wanted to see how I spent a non-exaggerated 15-20 hours/day Spring Quarter prior to my graduation. Well, today you are in luck, folks. I wanted to share with you some of the pages of my book, as I prep them to zip off to the Index Awards in Copenhagen! (More on THAT later)

I am well aware that these images aren't the best...I'm working on it. But for now, please enjoy a more in depth (albeit very low-quality) look into my senior thesis project. And please click the images for a larger view!

{All images copyright protected by Jenna Brucoli}

For Kids: Nutrition Education

You all may remember me talking about my thesis project, which I completed before graduation! I am excited to share with you all that it is currently featured on the web at The Living Principles, and you can view my project here! Thanks very much to my thesis advisor, Paul Nini, for posting it.

{Images by Jenna Brucoli}

It's Official

After much contemplation, and few months of quasi-practice paired with a lot of reading up on nutrition, I have decided to take the plunge and go Vegetarian. I am very excited about this change in my life, and have already noticed myself feeling better and better as I slowly eliminated meat from my diet. Now I am going to go all the way and cut it out entirely. I am definitely a beginner in this endeavor, so if anyone has any advice, I would love to hear it!