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Urban Bliss Life on Instagram

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Here for my new COOKBOOK? Click here to Pre-Order the Ninja® Foodi™ Pressure Cooker Meal Prep Cookbook today!

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Everything's better with bacon! 🥓⁠
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If you know me, you know I love bacon.⁠
And breakfast sandwiches.⁠
And meal planning.⁠
So it may be no surprise that the very first recipe in MY NEW COOKBOOK (available for pre-order today!!) is for these totally meal-prep-friendly Bacon & Egg Breakfast Sandwiches.⁠
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🥓🍳These hearty, mouthwatering breakfast sandwiches are on page 25 as part of my Week One Meal Plan, appropriately titled: Everything's Better With Bacon! ⁠
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✨✨Starting today, you can pre-order my Ninja Foodi Pressure Cooker Meal Prep Cookbook!📚 ✨✨⁠
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👉🏽 Tap the link in my @urbanblisslife bio to pre-order my cookbook on Amazon. Or, copy & paste: https://amzn.to/3foZVo7⁠
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Happy Friday, everyone! 🎉⁠
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📚 As some of you know, I’ve been hard at work on a special project recently. I’ve been writing my very first COOKBOOK (!!!) and I’m so excited to share more details (including the cover and how to pre-order your copy) with you soon! ⁠
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Be sure to keep an eye out for my official announcement next Tuesday! ⁠
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In the meantime, I thought I'd do a quick #FridayIntroduction for some of the new faces around here (HI!! 👋🏽)⁠
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🇵🇭🇺🇸 I'm a first generation Filipina-American, born in Guam. We moved to the US when I was 2. ⁠
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🍝 Pasta forever & ever, amen. I cannot live without pasta. All the pasta, all the time! ⁠
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👩‍👧‍👦 My kids are 14 & almost-17, and they are my whole world! 💖 But, you won't see them on my public social media feeds. They're pretty amazing and I'm so proud & honored to be their mom! ⁠
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✈️ Top places on my travel list once we can travel safely again: back to Japan, Portugal, and Ireland; Thailand, Scotland, Croatia, Southern Italy (been to Northern Italy a few times), Spain.⁠
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🧗🏻‍♀️ I'm an adrenaline junkie and love jumping off mountains for paragliding, photographing from doors-off helicopters, zip-lining everywhere.⁠
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📺 If you watch my YouTube videos and Instastories, you may see me hop on & off a step stool while cooking. I'm super duper short - about 4'10-½" (that ½ is important!😆). ⁠
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🥂 I love bubbly. It goes with everything!⁠
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💗 I beat breast cancer in 2019, which is a weird sentence to write because honestly, that's a journey that stays with you forever. Some of you know what I mean. 💕⁠
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💻 I'm an OG blogger - I've been publishing Urban Bliss Life since 2004. UBL became my FT work a few years ago, and I absolutely LOVE working on it every day!⁠
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That's a little about me. Now tell me about YOU!⁠
What's your FAVORITE FOOD, WINE, or place to TRAVEL❓⁠
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I made these Mushroom Empanadas a couple of days ago and found out today is National Empanada Day! ⁠⁠
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🥟 An empanada is a type of baked or fried pastry with filling. It is thought to have come from Spain, but you’ll find variations of empanadas also common in Southern Europe, Latin America, and the Philippines🇵🇭. The name comes from the Galician verb empanar, and translates to "enbreaded" – wrapped or coated in bread.⁠⁠
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Do you have a favorite place to get empanadas in your hometown or when you've traveled❓⁠⁠I had some amazing memorable corn empanadas at a coffee shop in Union Station in Denver.
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What are your favorite empanada fillings❓⁠⁠
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Recipe for these delicious mushroom empanadas coming soon. I am in LOVE with these empanadas!! ⁠⁠
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It's National Coffee Cake Day! Celebrate with the Number 1 recipe on the blog: Banana Crumb Coffee Cake! 🍰⁠⁠
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⭐ Christine on Pinterest said: "I’ve made this recipe 3x in the past week and a half. Last 2 times I did a double recipe and it comes out perfect every time. 😋😋 Such a good recipe!" ⁠⁠
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🔗 Tap the link in my @urbanblisslife bio for the recipe! Or copy & paste: https://www.urbanblisslife.com/banana-crumb-coffee-cake/⁠⁠
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Travel Tuesday Daydreaming ✨ Destination: Spring wherever you are 🌸⁠⁠
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🌸 These blossoms brighten my day on our daily walks with @urbanblissdog. Now our own dogwoods and cherry blossom trees are in full bloom and they are simply stunning. I can't imagine I will ever NOT be mesmerized by these beautiful trees. Such hopeful reminders that no matter how difficult the winter, there is always spring blooming soon after.⁠⁠
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In the spirit of the resilience of spring blooms, I wanted to share this quote. I shared it on one of my personal private accounts a while back, and it's message is one that has shaped my life through the years.⁠⁠
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✨ I hope it inspires you today to DARE MIGHTY THINGS, friends! The only true failure exists in the lack of trying.⁠⁠
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“It is not the critic who counts; ⁠⁠
not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles,⁠
or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.⁠
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; ⁠⁠
who strives valiantly; ⁠⁠
who errs, who comes short again and again, ⁠⁠
because there is no effort without error and shortcoming...⁠
who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, ⁠⁠
at least fails while daring greatly… ⁠⁠
FAR BETTER IT IS TO DARE MIGHTY THINGS, ⁠⁠
to win glorious triumphs, ⁠⁠
even though checkered by failure, ⁠⁠
than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy⁠ nor suffer much,⁠
because they live in the gray twilight⁠⁠
that knows not victory nor defeat."⁠⁠
-T. Roosevelt⁠⁠
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🌸 Do you have cherry blossoms, dogwoods, and magnolia trees blooming where you live? I'd love to know where you go to see them in full bloom! ⁠⁠
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Happy Monday! Let's make something EASY and oh so yummy tonight that the whole family will love. ⁠
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✨ New on the blog, I've got an Air Fryer Ravioli recipe that I make about once a month. I usually have it for lunch with a salad (because: balance!). It's still so much healthier than the traditional frying method of making these delightful bites. ⁠
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🍝 Serve it with your favorite homemade or store-bought pasta sauce or pizza sauce. And it's seriously so good with a big ol' salad. ⁠
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🍷 For dinner, pair it with a nice Bordeaux red blend.⁠
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🔗 Tap the link in my bio for the recipe. https://www.urbanblisslife.com/air-fryer-ravioli/⁠
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✨ I hope you all enjoy a wonderful start to the week! ⁠
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Happy Easter to all who celebrate! 🐇🌷

🎂 My daughter's birthday was yesterday. Pandemic or no pandemic, when it's my kid's birthday, you bet we're celebrating somehow!
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🍓🍍🫐🍊She made this beautiful fruit board. I made a sugar cookie cake 🍰, cookies & cream cupcakes 🧁, pumpkin spice cupcakes 🧁, brunch totchos 🍳, chocolate chip waffles, lumpia 🥟, and of course, lots of bacon 🥓. ⁠⁠
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💗 It was just the four of us, plus my parents (who are fully vaccinated-- YAY!). It was a beautiful day so we were able to celebrate outside. ⁠⁠
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🍽️ If you love to eat, our house is the place to be and I am so excited to have people over again in the hopefully-near-future! I miss feeding my friends!!⁠⁠
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I hope you all have a lovely, relaxing, love-filled Sunday. ⁠⁠
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Food confession: I LOOOOOVVVEEEE deviled eggs. 🥚❤️ Love 'em. I can eat a dozen in one sitting if you put them in front of my face. I will not be able to resist.⁠⁠
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But, I don't love *making* deviled eggs. They can be finicky and take too long, and I just want to eat all of the flavors together without all the fuss.⁠⁠
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🥚 Enter: hard-boiled egg appetizers. Same yummy flavors, but SO much easier and faster to make!⁠⁠
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🥓 On the blog I've got variations for Bacon & Egg apps and Veggie & Egg apps. 🔗 Tap the link in my bio for the recipes!⁠⁠
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🎉 Hope you all have an EGG-cellent Saturday and Happy Easter ahead for those who celebrate!⁠⁠
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https://www.urbanblisslife.com/easy-spring-egg-appetizers/⁠⁠

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Happy April!🌷

There’s A LOT happening here this month. And since my daughter’s birthday is right before Easter, we’re keeping Easter meals low key.

🥕 These Garlic Rosemary Glazed Roasted Carrots are a super simple, EASY, crazy delicious spring side dish.
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🥕 Carrots are one of the few vegetables that every single person in my family enjoys eating. We eat them with almost every single dinner. They go with literally EVERY meal you can think of, but especially delightful bountiful spring feasts!⁠

🥂 They also go well with a glass of unoaked Chardonnay.
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👉🏼 Collecting recipes for your Easter menu? Be sure to SAVE this post!⁠
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🔗 Recipe link is in my @urbanblisslife bio, or copy & paste: https://www.urbanblisslife.com/garlic-rosemary-roasted-glazed-carrots/⁠
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👗 Wear the dress. ⁠⁠
👡 Buy the shoes. ⁠⁠
🍷 Drink the good wine.⁠⁠
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Or stay home in fuzzy slippers and comfy cozy pajamas and drink the good wine. 🍷 (<--this is usually me! 😜)⁠⁠
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Either way, the point is: drink the good wine!!🥂🍾⁠⁠
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I hear too many stories about people who save "the good wine" for a special occasion... and by the time they finally open it, the wine has gone bad. Or there is never an occasion special enough and so the wine just sits there, sad and forgotten. ⁠⁠
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✨ Life doesn't happen later, folks; life happens NOW. Tomorrow is not guaranteed, for any of us. So crack open that bottle you've been saving up for a "special occasion" -- and make this Wine Wednesday that special occasion!⁠⁠
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🍷 Alain took this pic of me on our 20th wedding anniversary. After dinner, we popped open a bottle of the 2017 History Windrow Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon ($75) by winemaker Melissa Burr of @StollerWine. Windrow Vineyard was the first commercial vineyard planted in the Walla Walla Valley in 1981. This is a sophisticated, soave Cab Sauv: dark cherry, marionberry, lush earth, cassis. Mmmmm so good!⁠⁠
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👉🏽 Swipe to see a closer shot of the bottle. Can you see the cool etched design on the label? ⁠⁠
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What "good wine" will you be cracking open next? Happy Wine Wednesday, friends! Cheers!!🥂🎉⁠⁠
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Hey Hey! Thanks for stopping by! I'm Marlynn - a cookbook author, writer, photographer, and mom of two teenagers + a lovable lab retriever. Here you'll find my fast, easy, and delicious recipes, wine pairings, and travel guides. I hold a WSET 2 with Distinction in wine, and am studying WSET Level 3. Member: Society of American Travel Writers (SATW) and the International Food, Wine, and Travel Writers Association (IFWTWA).

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