You know what May means, right? Time to celebrate mothers! Simply put, our moms are the best. Many of them are scattered all over the country, far away from us in Los Angeles. That doesn’t stop them from sending care packages when we’re sick, finding time to video chat despite time zone differences, and making us feel crazy loved. Like all the time. Here’s to you, moms. You’re amazing.

Click on the photo below and it’ll automatically start downloading – then make it your desktop background.

We here at GMS have been working on a little something to get our creative juices flowing. We love creating recipes and photographs of those recipes for y’all, and we love having our dear from Megan illustrate things for us monthly for our desktop calendar as well as infographics now and then to show you guys how to make life a little easier in the kitchen.

Now that most people have a phone that takes pictures too, and most people take a photo (or five) every day, we figured we’d host a monthly challenge to get you to look outside the normal and find beauty in all things simple.

So, for the month of May, we hope you’ll join us in using our words (thanks to Megan for creating the graphic above!) to help you create something – whether it be a photograph, or a drawing, or another form of art (crafts, painting, sketching, sand art, you get the idea…) we hope you’ll follow us on Instagram (@garlicmysoul) and join us as we make May a little more creative. Use the hashtag #createeverydaymay with your photos, and we just might feature them here in our roundups of our fave photos from the week!

A while back, Lauren (hi, BFF!) asked me to make congee. You know, to test it out. I didn’t even know what it was at the time, so I had to do a little research.

Congee is a basic rice porridge that goes by many names and has many styles of being cooked in Asia. The basics are the same: rice, a liquid, and lots of time simmering over low heat. It is a perfect food to use as a base to make other things (think of it like a savory oatmeal, in the sense that add-ins are encouraged and welcome!) and is the perfect sick-ward food, too. It is warm, delicious, and soothing.

I made mine with one cup of basmati rice and nine cups of liquid; I used 4 cups of chicken broth and 5 cups of water, and I let mine cook until I liked the consistency for about four hours.

Ingredients:

1 cup rice
9 cups liquid
1/2 tsp salt (optional)
parsley
lemon juice

1. Combine rice and liquid over medium heat. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer until consistency desired is reached; usually 2-4 hours.
2. Once consistency is reached serve hot with parsley and a squeeze of lemon juice (or choose your own toppings!)

What is your go-to sick food? Do you stick to toast and chicken noodle soup, or does mac and cheese make you feel better?

A couple weeks ago, we got the chance to visit Homeboy Bakery in downtown LA thanks to the good people at King Arthur Flour who organized the “Bake for Good” tour. The bakery is one of several social enterprises run by its parent organization, Homeboy Industries, which works to serve high-risk, gang-involved men and women by providing a number of vital services and multiple job training sites. Homeboy Bakery is the oldest of these sites.

On our tour we caught a glimpse of the staff prepping fresh rolls, loaves of bread, and some gorgeous looking pastries.

We also had a chance to chat with some of the guys about their experience working in the bakery, what brought them to Homeboy, and the ways it’s been a positive force in their lives. Our little group of food bloggers was a bit shy about asking so many questions, but everyone we spoke to was warm and open with us about their experience.

The work that Homeboy is doing is worthwhile and moving on a number of levels, but I think what really hit home for Jennie and me is the way that food can create a community and how healing it can be. It’s a lesson we learn over and over again as it relates to our own lives — every time we make a new friend and invite them to dinner or bring food for someone who needs it — but it’s true everywhere. This was a good reminder that food has the power to bring anyone together, not just food-obsessed bloggers such as ourselves.

Please take a few minutes to learn about Homeboy Industries and consider ways you can help, even if it just means dropping by Homegirl Cafe to buy a cup of coffee and a baked from scratch pastry!

For a lot of people, us included, the week after Easter means finding ways to eat through all those hard-boiled eggs that you dyed on Sunday. If you’re struggling to incorporate eggs into your meals and the thought of another egg salad sandwich just doesn’t excite you, may we suggest a Cobb salad?

The basics of a Cobb salad are hard-boiled egg, chicken, avocado, tomato, blue cheese and bacon. In this variation, we swapped out sunflower seeds for the bacon to mimic that salty crunch in slightly healthier way.

The Cobb salad is a true California invention, so we recommend enjoying this outside in the sunshine if at all possible!

Let us know how you’ve been eating your leftover Easter eggs!