In 2023, people spent nearly 60 percent of their food budgets on food prepared outside the home (Forbes). That's crazy! But also fairly accurate for my own family's food budget in recent years. With so many people eating out all the time, it makes sense that in that same year, there were nearly three-million professional cooks in the United States, and the industry is expected to keep growing (Bureau of Labor Statistics).

That's good news for anyone who is currently working or who dreams of working in the culinary industry. These jobs aren't going anywhere anytime soon, and CulinarySchools.org can help get you on the right track. While the site specializes in helping aspiring culinary students find the right school and career path, it's got a lot more to offer, including weight loss, body fat, and workout calculators, measurement conversions, tipping calculators, a blog with lots of great info, and cooking games for kids.

As a mom, one of my primary goals is to foster my child's interests. One thing my daughter loves is cooking. She wants to help in the kitchen in any way you'll let her, and she absolutely loves watching cooking shows. She frequently makes up games involving restaurants or cooking and plays food-themed games on her tablet. So when CulinarySchools.org reached out about their cooking and food-related games, I couldn't pass up the opportunity.

Y'all know I love a good online game resource, especially one that's free and doesn't rely so heavily on ads, and CulinarySchools.org delivers. All of their games are free, and only a few have ads. Mostly, the ads are in the sidebar so they're not invasive at all.

The goal of the games is to help familiarize kids with "food, farming, cooking, the culinary arts, the restaurant business, and hospitality-related careers." There are seven categories - food education, serving eaters, other fun food-themed games, brain, sports, arcade, and holiday - with lots of subcategories in each. Most games run on html 5, which makes them optimal for both mobile devices as well as desktops.

As I browsed the literally hundreds of games on the site, I saw a lot to be excited for. First off, the site design is deceptively simple. There's nothing really fancy about it -- no flashy graphics or ads jumping out at you every five seconds. You don't have a ton of tabs to work through to find a game; it's all on one page with links that will jump you to the corresponding category, or you can just scroll through. I was surprised by the number of games in each category and appreciated all the nods to older games from when I was younger.

So let's talk about the games. There really were a lot to choose from, and I tried quite a few before landing on the four that I wanted to talk about for this post. Since this is a food-related site with a goal of fostering future culinary artists, I tried to focus on food-related games, but there was one retro-inspired game that I could not pass up.

Let's start with my favorite of the games I played, which has absolutely nothing to do with food, but this Mario-style adventure brought back so much 90s nostalgia for me. It really was so much fun to play and honestly a little addicting. In fact, it kept distracting me every time I sat down to write this post!

The game itself is really simple to play. You use the arrow keys to move and jump. You start with three lives, just like in the original Mario. When you die, the level starts over. If you use all three lives, it kicks you back to the first level to start completely over; so far, I've not found a way to gain more lives. So long as you do not use all your lives, when you return to the game it will remember where you stopped previously and put you on that level, so that's nice.

In terms of the levels, they are set up very similarly to the original Mario game for the old-school Nintendo. You know, the one where the games were cartridges that you had to blow the dust out of? There are green things that resemble the mushroom guys, the flowers with teeth in the pipes, and even a version of the turtle ducks. No mushrooms that I've seen, but there is a star in the first level that gives you the power to run into any of the bad guys without dying.

So essentially, if you love old-school Mario, give this game a try. I promise you will not be sad that you did!

I think we always manage to find a Scooby-Doo-themed game to try out, and this one was amusing. Your goal is to build the biggest sandwich possible. Scooby and Shaggy have the bottom piece of bread for their hoagie and the toppings are dropping from the ceiling waiting for you to catch them, but watch out for the dynamite! If you catch one of those, your sandwich goes splat all over Shag and Scoob. Although admittedly, that part is pretty funny.

This game is a little tougher to play because it's not keyboard controlled. You use your mouse for everything. Whichever way you want Shag and Scoob to move, you click on that side of them. It might just be my computer, but I found the click-to-movement to be a bit slow, especially when the gameplay speeds up, which happens whenever you catch a glowing sandwich ingredient.

Okay, so this game is definitely geared toward older kids or adults. Essentially, you're running a coffee stand and have to figure out the right ratio of coffee to sugar to price to attract customers. You also have to take into account the day's weather.

You start out with $30 to buy your inventory, then you adjust your recipe and set your price, and finally open up shop for the day. As the day goes by, you'll have dozens of customers passing by and sharing their opinions on everything from the weather to your recipe to the price. Once the day is done, you use the input from their comments to make adjustments for the next day.

Don't go into this game thinking that it's like all the other diner and food-cart style games you've played in the past because it isn't like that at all. You don't actually interact with the customers. The actual game play is in the prep work for each day, which involves a lot of math, so this is definitely not for everyone, but I am determined to figure out the perfect ratios to have one successful day!

Let's finish things out with another nostalgia-inducing game. Fruit Slice Frenzy is very reminiscent of  the Fruit Ninja game I used to have on my phone back in the day. This game works very similarly. Fruit is tossed up and you have to slice it in half to get points, but you have to watch out for the bombs that get tossed in as well.

You start the game with three lives. Each time you hit a bomb, you lose a life. If you slice more than one piece of fruit in a row, you get combo points. The levels have "frenzy mode" in which the fruit flies faster and in bigger groups and "boss mode" in which you have to repeatedly slice one giant piece of fruit before it falls.

I was trying these out on my desktop computer, which is not touch screen, so my game play was directed by my mouse. As with the sandwich-stacker game, I felt like there was a delay between my mouse and the actual game, but it's probably just my computer. On a touchscreen device, it would probably be faster.

In conclusion, CulinarySchools.org is a site of many flavors and one that you can feel comfortable letting your kids play games on. Let me know which games are their favorites in the comments!

It's the time of year where I feel the most stylish and put together, if I'm being honest. Our summers are so hot that styling goes out the window in favor of staying cool. Fall and winter are hard to be seasonally appropriate because it just doesn't get cold enough for all the warm, cozy layers. But spring -- well, spring is almost perfect temperature wise.

I've been talking a lot lately about transforming my closet to fit my current lifestyle. Over the winter break I purged a lot of items from my closet: stuff I haven't worn in the past few years, things I just don't love anymore, clothing that's not age appropriate, etc. This helped me to identify the things I really love and the gaps I need to fill.

Here's a look at some of the most recent things I've bought with spring (and teaching) in mind.

 
What a wonderful way to start off this year's One Woman Book Club. This was a book written to be savored, which admittedly is a pretty big change of pace from my typical reading these days - books that can be devoured in big gulps, often in one or two sittings. This, however, is a seven-course meal meant to be enjoyed over an extended amount of time, which I absolutely did.

This is a full-length novel, well over 400 pages with the audiobook version lasting 12 hours. It is the story of three seemingly-unconnected people and a magical building that is honestly almost a character on its own. Despite the title of the book, there is not a ton of focus on an actual bookshop, although there is a lost manuscript and a lost person. Because there are three main characters, this story is told in triple point of view but only spans two timelines. There are heavy romance themes throughout but it's never the full focus.

To avoid spoilers, skip to the end of this post.

The main underlying plot line in this book is the story of Opaline, a Dublin book dealer during a time when women were still expected to get married, have babies, and run the household. When her mother and brother demand she marry a man she does not know let alone love, Opaline flees to Paris where she begins working for Shakespeare and Company, a renowned bookstore frequented by authors. While in Paris, Opaline meets and falls for a book dealer named Armand, but their romance is doomed to failure. When her brother unexpectedly shows up in Paris with her stilted fiance, Opaline, with the help of Armand, her boss, and the Irish author James Joyce, flees to Dublin where she stumbles into the position of shop owner. While there, she develops feelings for her married landlord, then falls back into bed with Armand and becomes pregnant. During this time, Opaline has been on the hunt for and discovered an unpublished manuscript written by Emily Bronte. Before she can celebrate the find of a lifetime, her brother shows up once again. This time, there's no one to save her, and Opaline's brother has her committed to an asylum. She gives birth while incarcerated, and the baby is taken from her, though Opaline is led to believe it was a stillbirth. She eventually manages to escape and returns to her shop where she meets and falls in love with a German POW. When the war ends, he must return to his home country, but eventually he makes his way back to Dublin. However, in the interim, Opaline decides that her brother must pay for all the evil that he's done and works with a newspaper to expose him. Before the article is published, she returns to her family home to confront him about his deeds. That confrontation reveals an awful truth: who Opaline believed was her brother is really her father. She also learns the truth about her baby, though she does not find her during her lifetime.

I must admit, Opaline's story was my favorite of the three, and I could have read a book just about her, but the other two characters, Martha and Henry, play an important part in Opaline's full story, and we mustn't forget the bookshop, which has a story all its own.

Let's start with the bookshop. It was originally a library located in another country. When the town had no further use for it, they decided to tear it down, but one man could not stand the thought of that happening, so he purchased it and relocated it to Dublin where he rebuilt it and turned it into a shop. The building possesses a magic of its own that is only revealed to those who believe it. The shop revealed itself to Opaline, then with her disappearance and eventual death, it concealed itself while waiting for the right person. That person was Martha.

Martha arrives in Dublin desperate to escape her abusive husband. When she sees an ad for a housekeeper, she figures she has nothing to lose. Upon meeting Madame Bowden, Martha's not sure if this will work out. Her new boss is eccentric to the extreme and very demanding, but beggars can't be choosers, and thankfully the gig comes with accommodations in the basement of the mansion. It's through her room's window that Martha meets Henry. Henry is in Dublin searching for Opaline's bookshop and in turn the Bronte manuscript. He just knows the shop should be where Madame Bowden's house now sits. He's even pretty sure he saw it once, though he won't admit it because it sounds ludicrous. Somehow, Henry convinces Martha to help him, but their relationship is on rocky footing. She's afraid, and he's not actually available.

Slowly, the bookshop begins to reveal itself to Martha, though she has no idea what's actually happening. When it presents her with a book, Martha reluctantly starts to read it. Soon, she's absorbed in the story and begins to piece the puzzle together. Her relationship with Henry seems to be getting firmer, but when Henry disappears unexpectedly with no explanation (his note was not delivered), she decides to cut him out of her life completely. Then her abusive husband finds her and tries to literally drag her home. Thankfully, Madame Bowden is there to intervene in such a way that Martha's husband will never bother anyone again.

Eventually, Henry returns to Dublin. He's tied up his loose ends, made some reconciliations with his family, and is ready to fully commit to Martha...except she won't see or talk to him. Good thing Madame Bowden is on his side and helps get the two back together. Henry explains his absence, Martha forgives him, and they discover the truth of the bookshop together.

This really was a lovely story, though I feel like the blurb did not actually prepare me for the truth of the story. It made it seem as though the bookshop transported the characters into some kind of alternate world, which is certainly not the case.

It is steeped in literary history. Opaline, and in turn Henry, are searching for an unpublished manuscript by Emily Bronte. It is widely believed that after writing Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte was working on a second manuscript that was never published before her death at a young age. Some scholars believe her sister, Charlotte, actually destroyed it. Regardless of what actually happened, a manuscript has never been found.

The bookstore that Opaline worked at in Paris - Shakespeare and Company - did exist. It was founded by Sylvia Beach, an American publisher, in 1919 and was in operation through 1941 when the Nazis occupied Paris. The store was a gathering place for authors, including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scot Fitzgerald, and James Joyce. Beach actually published Joyce's controversial book, Ulysses, which was rejected by all other publishers for being obscene. Interestingly, in 1951 a store by the same name opened in another location in Paris, and it is still open today.

My last outfit roundup came right after our major southern snow event, which is still causing a bit of chaos weeks after the snow is gone and the weather has fast-forwarded a couple of seasons. Seriously, it's been 80 degrees this week, y'all. Anyway, we missed basically a full week of school, had to shift our state-mandated benchmark testing, and are still figuring out how to adjust our lesson plans to ensure we cover all the things we need to before end-of-year testing...and we've still got two week-long breaks in our schedule between now and then!

We're also preparing for the regional and state hog shows, which are now only a week away! That means lots more time spent at the barn. Alexis's Odyssey practices have ramped up, too, with longer weekday practices and more weekend practices. The regional competition is less than a month away now.

So life has been incredibly busy these days. But I have been dedicated to documenting my outfits over the last two weeks, at least on work days, so I've got ten whole outfits to share with you! Let's dive in to what I've been wearing.

This brings us to the first Friday in February, and once again I did not dress for Valentine's Day. However, this dress does come in several Valentine's-appropriate options so not a total loss. I've had this particular one for a couple of years now. It's listed as the "green" option, but as you can see, it's not really all that green. I guess you could consider the bottom a really light sea-foam, but classifying this as a "green" feels like a stretch. Anyway, it's a great dress.

My boots are several years old from ShoeDazzle. The exact style is no longer available, but the Hally is really close. I wear a 7 wide calf.