About the Author

Robin is the author of For All Who Wander, her relatable memoir about wrestling with doubt that reads much like a conversation with a friend. She's as Southern as sugar-shocked tea, married to her college sweetheart, and has three children. An empty nester with a full life, she's determined to...

(in)side DaySpring: things we love
& you will too!
Find more at DaySpring.com
(in)side DaySpring:
things we love
& you will too!
Find more at
DaySpring.com
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  1. It’s a new day around here and we’ve been opening the doors (oven) a lot on Monday nights and tonight it’s my daughter 17th birthday celebration (we like to celebrate on the day of). And to my surprise she’s requested something I created without a recipe. An open face meatball sandwich … in which we use that premade cheese bread for the base and the crockpot for the meatballs … add a super sized bowl of some really fresh greens and Ta dah! Dinner. No need to get crazy with the clean cause most guest are seventeen 🙂

    • Sounds like a delightful way to celebrate; what a simple but tasty-sounding dinner :). (Happy birthday to your birthday girl!!)

  2. I enjoyed Shauna’s story of traveling with her dad and owning her assignment to find the food for their dining experiences. How brave! How delightful!

    I prepared the Goat Cheese Biscuits last week for my sister and me to sample. I added some fresh herbs (thyme and chives) to the mixture. Oh my! They were so delicious and we ate waaaaay too many in one sitting. : )

    The next day, I sliced and toasted the biscuits under the broiler with a smidgen of butter to enjoy with a salad. It was yummy all over again!

    There just aren’t any herbs or spices I avoid. I love growing fresh ones right outside my back door. When winter comes, even though mild in Georgia, I mourn the loss of my fresh basil and tarragon. Fresh herbs and spices bring such great life to the dishes I prepare.

    For the record, I love autumn because I live in the hot and humid South. When those days release into the cool crisp days of fall, I celebrate!

    I am so enjoying the book, the book club, and the videos!

    Great job, y’all!

    • Amy,

      Oh, how I’d like a herb garden right outside my door; but our area is shady. And……I’m too lazy to walk to where it’s sunny. Oy….obviously I need convenience but you make it sound soooo appealing.

      • Robin,
        Before I had an herb garden, the grocery store produce section kept me supplied in fresh herbs. Ideally, grocery stores would carry them loose rather than packaged in order to buy just what you need for the week. : )

  3. Making a recipe my own: I make a green bean side dish that my husband loves. I think the original recipe called for olives, chopped vidalia onion, blue cheese, and Italian dressing. I nixed the olives (husband doesn’t like them. Boo hoo!) for the 1st try. After a couple of tries, my husband said he wasn’t crazy about it, so I switched the dressing to a homemade balsamic and used gorgonzola cheese, and all of a sudden it was magic. He gobbles it up. Vegetable Victory!

    My sister in law used fresh basil in her lasagna a while back, and we have discovered that it’s our new favorite spice. Another find was this Jamaican Worcestershire-like sauce called Pickapeppa that my neighbor gave us after we chatted about sauces and our husbands’ love of spicy stuff. It’s not at all spicy, but it’s ever so yummy. I add it to stir fries with some Teriyaki sauce, and it makes my tummy so happy.

    I really can’t do spicy very much — so I stay away from hot sauce, cayenne and cumin. I love the taste, but they don’t sit well with me. I found that I am not a fan of tarragon either — every time a recipe calls for it, I find myself not enjoying the final product.

    This past week was busy with parties — my step son turned 26; my hubby turned 53, and my husband turned 92. Plus, we had friends over for July 4th. We tried to keep it simple. I made Paula Deen’s broccoli salad (my husband’s favorite) and baked beans, and Bruce grilled chicken and steaks. I have finally discovered that adding a little apple cider vinegar to the beans gives them the perfect wang.

    I am really enjoying the book — Shauna’s stories about her dad reminded me of traveling with my parents. Mom worked for the airlines, so we traveled quite a bit when I was in high school. My dad is a serious foodie — he loves to cook and create in the kitchen.

    I think your home and your kitchen are very symbolic of you heart. By inviting friends over to my space and breaking bread with them, I am opening my heart to them — which is the core of the Gospel. We are to love well.

    • Oh, Lyli,

      You sound totally at home in the kitchen; I think your friends would be able to pop in without notice and you’d still show hospitality. THAT’S a gift.

      And PICKAPEPPA! YES! My in-laws introduced it to me a while back and a few drops make a big difference. Love that you mentioned it here. 🙂

  4. I really loved what Shauna shared about her father’s encouragement of trying the tastes of a place to get to know it. I want to adopt that with our own kids! I DO have a picky eater, she actually had somewhat of an actual disorder with her eating and handling textures and it has been a crazy unforeseen challenge. She is doing so much better now at 2 1/2 yrs old but I still find myself bringing her own food wherever we go. Maybe it’s time to just start letting her experience other people’s cooking. I do so want her to be open to trying new things and not be afraid of different foods.

    I have loved Shauna’s encouragement to be more flexible with recipes and to substitute flavors and ingredients. I notice that, like Angie said, I’m so afraid to mess it up. But on a couple of occasions I’ve been making something and realize part way through I don’t have a certain (pivotal) ingredient and I’ve just intuitively substituted and been surprised with how well it turns out. I’m learning that it’s okay to loosen up and have some fun and be ok with mistakes here and there! That “risk” might turn into a new discovery.

    This book really is encouraging me to open up our home and table more often and to bless and love others with how we nourish them. It’s not a performance or a production or a way to measure up. It’s a way to LOVE and to bless and to say to someone “You matter and we want to know you better.”

  5. I too have been learning how to make a recipe mine. I’ve always been a follow it exactly type person so afraid of messing something up. I’m learning to stop being so strict and starting to experiment with different spices and ingredients. So far we’ve had a few not so great but still edible ones, but we’ve also had a couple of really good ones!!

    I’m really enjoying this new found freedom of trying new things!

  6. Yes, I’m loving this whole thing! The book, vids, discussions, interactions, ideas, inspirations, community, and fellowship. I’m enjoying the whole feel of it.

  7. I loved the book so much that I bought it for a friend and took it to her last weekend when we were invited there for dinner… along with the blueberry crisp. Everyone loved it. I have made it at least 3 times since and she has made it several times this week already! I keep rereading chapters that really speak to me. I’ve always loved to cook, but Shauna is reminding me to relax more about not having my home “perfect” enough for entertaining. Thank you for that. It’s freeing.

  8. “Eat what they eat.” Wisdom! It is super hard to have some of my friends over because they are super duper picky. And then I have to be mindful when certain kids come over because they only eat a handful of foods (dino nuggets, mac and cheese, pbj, strawberries (don’t mix the fruit!!), and spaghetti). Anyhow, I love that maybe their kids are experiencing new foods when they come visit us. I’m usually a by-the-recipe type of cook because my dad, who owned a restaurant, is a chef and he showed his love for us was cooking for us, and he never really taught us. Hubby is a real foodie, so we love trying new things, and now that our girls are a little older, we are trying to involve them more in cooking new foods. 🙂

  9. I loved this video – and section of the book – and loved hearing her talk about her father and his impact on her tastes, her love of food, and the way she lives her life. We didn’t travel much in our family, but the foundation of my cooking comes from my father. He was the cook in our house as I grew up, and was completely masterful in the kitchen.

    Not in a fancy, Top-Chef kind of way, but in a comfortable with his environment; knows what he likes; doesn’t have to measure much kind of way. And this is how I grew up cooking. Grabbing a handful of this, throwing in a bit of that, testing to see if a sauce is ready by smell or by taste – it’s wonderful and freeing, and only gets complicated when someone wants to share your recipe (I can’t tell you how many friends have gone through my cookbook – finally put together after all these years – and looked at a recipe with a baffled frown and said, “but how do you know what to do with this?”)

    Shauna’s honesty and transparency in her writing encourage and inspire me – both in my own writing and in my thoughts about sharing my home with others. I so often get stuck in the idea that I need a camera-ready, Martha Stewart-esqe home, menu, and accessories in order to invite people in, when in truth, having tasty food, a welcoming home, and a heart for God would do just fine. I’m laughing and crying my way through the book and enjoying every bit of it.

  10. Late getting here. This is one of my favorite parts of the book so far. My husband and mother in law often tell stories about traveling through Europe based on the restaurants and meals they ate and no matter how many times we’ve heard the stories, we never get tired of them. Now, we enjoy traveling with our kids too and we talk about the bananas and avocados we ate in Rwanda and the curry we had in London and the French restaurant we frequent in Charleston because it reminds us of Paris. Reading this chapter took me away to another place, on a day I needed it.

  11. I like how Shauna says that it is okay to change a recipe to suit your tastes and needs. I have been doing this with recipes, but kind of feeling guilty about it! People will ask where I got the recipe for something, and I tell them where, but then have to tell them that I “messed it all up.” 🙂 So glad to have permission from Shauna to change it up how I like!