I’ve been overwhelmed with all of your supportive blog comments + tweets about my latest Project Food Blog post! Thank you all. Always! If you haven’t voted, it’s open until Thursday. This has been such an exciting opportunity to be a part of and it’s thanks to you that I’ve made it this far!

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To say that Sunday was an awesome day, would be an understatement.

I had a smile plastered on my face all day long. It was hard to fall asleep Saturday night, and I sprung out of bed on Sunday! Why? Well, because visitors were coming!!

The lovely Abby + Jessica!

What do you do when you have bloggers coming to visit????

Start cooking!

I also prepared little Ohio-themed goodie baskets for the girls! Everything was fresh from Shaker Square farmer’s market. If you’re in Cleveland, you must go check it out!

Enter the acorn squash. I just love acorn squash! This recipe was from this month’s edition of Vegetarian Times magazine. The prep was a bit time consuming, but fairly simple. The hardest part was cutting open the squash! It’s always so hard to cut raw squash, even with sharp knives! Then, I had to cut a hole in the center and scoop out the seeds + goop.

Then, so they will sit flat while baking, you have to shave a small piece off the bottom of the squash.

Don’t cut too much off the bottom, or this will happen. Oooops. No problem though! This one was salvaged!

The stuffing was a South American veggie ragout. It was SO amazingly flavorful. The different textures worked really well together.

Before the girls came over, I prepped the squashes and got the soup/stew mixture ready, then popped it in the fridge. My mom picked up lunch for us from a delicious Mediterranean restaurant, Aladdin's.

hummus + baba + tahini yogurt sauce

pita + falafel [the falafel was to.die.for!!!]

Such a fun lunch spread! My mom ate with us, and we chatted NON-STOP, while shoveling in the food. I met Abby on my last trip home, but just met Jessica for the first time that day. There was not ONE second of awkwardness. I talk to both of these girls multiple times per week and love them dearly. Just makes it even better that we had the chance to hang out!

Next, we headed to the Cleveland Botanical Gardens, which were just gorgeous. We had such a good time and practiced our photography. The lighting was really great, although a tad chilly.

Jessica is HILarious. SO spunky + bubbly + just amazing.

Abby has the best stories, and is so kind and adorable. A pleasure to be around!!!

I adore them both. HOW could you not?

Abby made sure we didn’t get lost. Just like with our last visit.

They had an amazing + HUGE herb garden! We crouched down to waft in the smells. MMMM

Flax!

Purple kale! I should have used this for my wedding bouquet! Could have massaged it into a salad with my dinner. ;)

When we arrived home the squash were just about done in the oven. I gave my mom instructions on the final steps, [basically just filling the hollowed squash] and she popped them in the oven before we got back.

Jessica, doing her photo thang!

Check out Jessica’s post. She took some amazing shots and also had some really sweet things to say about our day. :)

I think she was checking to see how many vegetables were inside…hehehe If you know Jessica, you know she’s not too crazy about veggies! However, she said she loved this [and I believe her ;)].

Make sure to check out Abby’s post, recapping our day as well. It was beautiful. She had some really amazing things to say not only about our day + our friendship, but the blogging community as a whole.

Jessica brought dessert! 24 mini pumpkin cupcakes + raw macaroons, that I forgot to photograph, because I was too busy eating them. :)

I love these ladies like I have known them my whole life. Without this amazing community, I wouldn’t have found them, or all of YOU. I feel so very lucky.