Greek Salads and Light Summer Sides

Have I ever told you about the time I walked into the dining room and found my daughter sitting at the table digging into a block of feta cheese like it was an apple?

Because that happened once- and she will never live it down.  :-)

That child, my far-less-than-before-but-nevertheless-picky eater, loves feta.

And I love it when either one of my kids expands their culinary comfort zone, so I'm all for it.

Which means that I often find myself making recipes that call for feta- and ensuring that there's a little left over in the fridge for her.

You know...maybe less than an apple-sized brick but enough to make her happy.

We've reached a point where she will eat tomatoes, peppers, and onions as long as they're cooked into something but we're still working on tolerating them in their natural state.  I decided to push her limits a little with My Big Fat Greek Salad.  Not only does it have her favorite cheese but two kinds of olives- and that child would eat an entire jar of olives if given the opportunity!

Long Breaks, Busy Days, and Quick Indian Meals

I've been at this whole blog thing for almost seven years now.

Seven years!

So much has changed in my life since then.

Seven years ago I was pretty new at being a stay-at-home mom.

I had a baby.

I certainly didn't imagine that present-day Nora would be back in school and taking math classes and working her tail off to keep everything in balance.

Yet, here we are, seven years later, living a life that looks very different than it did when I started this blog.

Flavorful Stew and Changed Minds

I used to hate sweet potatoes.

No, hate isn't quite the right word.

I despised them.  Loathed them.

No candied yams at Thanksgiving, no sweet potato fries- none of that for me, thank you.

I was resolute in my stance that they were one of the world's most disgusting vegetables.

Then I found myself the mother of a picky eater.

My son is incredibly limited in the foods that he will eat, and, while I will spare you the details, trying to convince him to branch out was a traumatizing experience for all involved.

Yay for sensory issues!

Anyway, it became evident early on that if I was going to get that child to eat anything with any redeeming nutritional value at all I was going to have to sneak it into him- a task that is far easier said than done.

Delicious Fried Foods and Bad Photos

So, I have something to apologize for- I have several recipes to share with you that have less-than-stellar pictures to go with them.

Sorry about that.

Dinner was ready, the lighting wasn't great, and my family was hungry so I rushed through them.

Oops!

I can be a bit of a perfectionist about things sometimes and it really irks me to share pictures that stink.

Just rest assured that the recipes they accompany do not stink.

In fact, they're pretty wonderful.

So just hang in there with me for a few posts, ok?

Warm Days and Fun Salads

I can't overstate the fact that I love side dishes.

So much.

Bring on that (often) carb-y goodness!

I want the pasta salads, the potato salads, and the grain salads.

I want the beans, the rolls, and everything else that you can fit on my plate.

My family might be dreaming of all of the grilled meats that summer barbecues bring, but me?

It's all about the sides.

I don't remember what initially drew my attention to this recipe, but as soon as I saw it I knew that I needed to make it.  It's absolutely perfect for warm summer days, so light and refreshing.  In all honestly I had it for lunch yesterday, so it's definitely capable of holding it's own as a meal in and of itself, however I think it would also hold up to some grilled chicken or salmon if you don't have vegetarian leanings.

Cranberry Orange Sauced Sweet Potatoes and A Break From School

It's incredibly hard to believe that in the past four months I've only found time to post once.

That's crazy.  Honestly, I've just been incredibly busy with school and these little posts have had to take a bit of a back burner.

I've been absolutely itching to cook, you just have no idea!

I've had an ever-growing list of recipes I want to try over the course of this semester and I'm so excited to have gotten through finals so that I can finally tackle some of them.

The other day it was cold, gray, and rainy- perfect weather for staying in pajamas and having fun in the kitchen.  One of the first recipes I tried out was for Cranberry Sauced Sweet Potatoes.

It just seemed kind of fitting given the holiday season and all.

I don't know about you, but I love cranberries.

Like love.

Guacamole: A Perfect Food?

Do you know how exciting it is that my daughter is finally old enough to give good food a chance?

We've moved past the kids menu and crayons phase of life and into the days of, "Mom, what's a filet?"

Quick answer: Expensive.
So um...how about I help you navigate that menu?

I have to say though, it's fun to see her choose grilled salmon over a burger at a restaurant these days.

Proud mama moments.

Few of those moments have made me more proud than when she proclaimed that she absolutely LOVED guacamole and started begging me to buy it or make it every time we went to the store.

'Tis The Season For Fresh Fruit & Salad With Peaches

We've been going through a lot of fresh fruit around here lately!

My countertop has been overflowing with pineapple, watermelon, mangoes, cherries, grapes, plums, dragonfruit, peaches...pretty much whatever I can get my hands on!

I mean seriously...$1.48/lb for cherries?

Uh, yes.
I think I'll take two giant bag-fulls and not even worry about weighing them at the store- I've been eating my weight in cherries lately with that kind of markdown from their normal prices!

 My husband has been stuck on peaches.

I love peaches too (try the Molasses Grilled Peaches I shared last summer- SO GOOD!), but he's been really into them this year.  He tends to forget that they're sitting there on the counter and doesn't really just slice one up to eat it, but he LOVES it when I cook with them, like when I made that Grilled Prosciutto and Peach Flatbread Pizza recently.

Roasted Beets 'n' Sweets Are Fall On A Fork

I have always always always hated sweet potatoes.

No sweet potatoes covered in marshmallows at Thanksgiving.

No sweet potato fries.

No sweet potato pies.

Just no sweet potatoes in general.

 Well...times they are a changing...my tastes seem to have matured a bit over the past year or so.

I think it was my discovery of the amazing adobo arequipeño at what was (until it closed- sob!) my favorite restaurant that got me to give sweet potatoes another chance.  It was a rich pork stew served on top of a sweet potato mash.  AMAZING.  I am so so so sad that place closed!

Anyway, my eyes were opened.

I've been trying out different sweet potato dishes (sweet potato and black bean burritos anyone?) a lot lately.  I think I've come to the conclusion that I just don't like sweet sweet potatoes.

I'm definitely down with the savory.

Did you know that mashed sweet potatoes are amazing with cheddar in a grilled cheese sandwich?

Dude.  Delicious.

Butternut Squash Soup: Another Score For The Soup File

I don't recall eating much squash growing up.

Correction: I don't think I ate squash growing up.

I remember one time my mom made a spaghetti squash that she bought from our local pumpkin farm.  She said that my dad loved spaghetti squash and so we were all going to give it a try.  I could be wrong...it may have been buttered and seasoned?  But to the best of my recollection it was just a pile of those funny yellow "noodles" on my plate.

Pretty sure I didn't finish my serving.

These days my tune has changed quite a bit and I really enjoy branching out and trying new ways to prepare squash.  It's all new to me actually.  :-)

Do you remember that Spaghetti Squash Pad Thai I made a couple of years ago?

So delicious!  Also super popular over on Allrecipes ever since it was published- 52 reviews and counting!  :-)

Hearty Spinach and Pasta Salad

It's hard to believe there was ever a time in my life when I didn't like spinach- it corresponded roughly with the years I didn't like brussels sprouts.

I must have been out of my mind (or your typical kid, though my daughter loves both!), because both are delicious.

These days spinach is one of my favorite greens to use in a salad- and for good reason.  It's light enough to work as a lovely salad green and hearty enough to stand up to heavier additions- like pasta for example.

Now, I love regular pasta salad.  In fact, it's one of the few ways I really eat pasta.

I can put away some pasta salad!

Which is why I rarely have it in the house unless there is company over to help finish it off, because I seriously can't be trusted with leftover pasta salad in the fridge.

Not Quite Peruvian Pickled Veggies

I stumbled across the most amazing restaurant about a year ago.  It's Peruvian- and lets be honest, I know absolutely nothing about Peruvian food, so I have no idea how authentic it is. What I do know is that the food this place serves is seriously up there with the best food I've ever eaten in my life.  

I've tried several of the appetizers there- causa limeña, yuca, plantains, etc.  I've had a delicious soup with quinoa.  I've tried my husband's chicken with passion fruit.  However I have only ordered one entree myself.  I'm sure the entire menu is delicious and I'm missing out on loads of good food but I just can't help myself, I have to order it every time we go- that adobo arequipeño is just too good to miss out on.  I can't imagine how anything could possibly be better than that dish!  Ohmygoodness it's tasty.  Pork stew over white rice and sweet potatoes...it's perfection.  Sitting there on the plate next to all of this goodness is a little pile of pickled red onions called Salsa Criolla.

When I saw a recipe for salsa criolla I knew I had to try it.

Confessions Of A Beet Lover

Confession time:

I LOVE pickled beets.  Love love love them.  I will go absolutely insane at any salad bar that has them- my plate at the Jason's Deli salad bar looks absolutely ridiculous loaded with those whole beets and whole hard-boiled eggs they have out.  They're just amazing, seriously.  

 Years ago- like almost half my life ago, actually- I had a beet-hating boyfriend.  One of our favorite restaurants back then, AJ Spurs, served salads with beets.  He used to order his with EXTRA beets and then put them all on my salad when they came.  lol He may not have been a keeper in the long run, but I love beets enough that I certainly remember that gesture.  :-)

My beet love runs deep.

I know, most people find this crazy.  I get a lot of shocked expressions from beet haters when they realize that someone actually eats those funky red things at the salad bar- it seems that the overwhelming majority of people seem to think that they're gross.

Quick and Easy Home Fries

When I think of fried potatoes I think of Saturday mornings with my dad.

 Every Saturday morning my mom would stay in bed reading her book and my dad would get up, watch cartoons with us, and then make pancakes and- often- fried potatoes.

Looking back from the perspective of a mother myself now I'm pretty sure they must have had some kind of a deal about Saturday mornings where my dad did the heavy lifting and my mom got to relax.

This is a deal I want in on.  I must speak with my husband about this ASAP.

Saturday mornings were dad time and healthy food was not on the menu.  This was time from Zack Morris and syrupy pancakes.  I miss the 80's.  :-)

Rich and Creamy Homestyle Mashed Potatoes

This has been a week of rough mornings.  Begrudgingly dragging my sleepy self out of bed each morning to get the kids up, ready, and out of the house.  I've been longingly awaiting the arrival of today- a day when I could sleep in (though "sleeping in" these days rarely puts waking up past 7am) and not awake to an alarm ordering me out from under the covers.

 So of course, after a week of gleefully looking forward to spending this morning cozily curled up in bed getting a little extra rest, I'm up.

I've been up.  Since 4am.

This hardly seems fair.  After staring at the ceiling and fiddling with my phone in bed for a couple of hours I finally caved and decided that if I couldn't sleep at least I could have some quiet time on the couch before the rest of the family awoke.  Of course when I peeked in on the kids I found that my son was also wide awake before the sun and he promptly hopped out of bed to join me.

:-) Couldn't really ask for better company on this couch this morning.

While sleep may have escaped me cuddles and Spongebob with Little Man are a pretty sweet alternative.

The Time I Cried Over Cobb Salad and Other Fun Tales

I once broke into tears because my cobb salad was missing its hard boiled egg.

Seriously.  That hard boiled egg was part of the perfection that is the cobb salad at my favorite restaurant and the thought of not having it in every delicious bite- paired with avocado and bacon in one bite, grilled chicken and blue cheese in the next- literally brought me to tears.

Of course I was like 9 months pregnant and starving, so that might have had something to do with it. ;-)

Mom's Potato Pancakes

My mom's potato pancakes were one of my favorite breakfasts when I was growing up.  She didn't make them often (I'm sure if she'd had a food processor to speed things up I might have enjoyed them more frequently!) but when she did make them I'd absolutely stuff myself on those golden, crispy little pancakes.

When I got a little older I realized that her "potato pancakes" were also called latkes and are often served during Hanukkah.  Apparently they're often served with sour cream or applesauce, though we always just ate them plain.  My daughter even likes to eat them with ketchup- they are kind of like a hash brown's tasty cousin.  :-)

Zucchini Tots - My New Favorite Side

I thought I was done with writing about zucchini recipes for the year, I really did.

I've gone a little crazy with them, but they've received such great feedback I couldn't help but share this one more.  It's the last, I promise!  I think I promise.  I promise for now at least :-)

We already know that I love dippable veggies, right?

These definitely fall into that category.  They're so much like tator tots in size and consistency, I had a hard time stopping myself from eating the whole batch.  Seriously.

Ingredient-wise they're a lot like the Zucchini Patties I wrote about a couple of months ago, but rather than parmesan and mozzarella they use cheddar and they're baked in a mini muffin tin rather than being pan fried.

Roasted Asparagus with Sea Salt and Parmesan

My mother absolutely hates asparagus- as in, she has a 60ish year-old story she has related to us countless times about hiding it from her mother behind the drapes when she was a child to avoid eating it.

Needless to say, she didn't cook it for us when we were kids- ever.

In fact, I remember the exact moment when I tried it for the first time...

It was the 4th of July, 1997- I was 15.  I remember this because we ate in front of the TV that year rather than the kitchen so that we could watch the Mars landing.

My mother and sister were visiting my grandma in Wisconsin and my dad and I were celebrating the holiday with close family friends.

Somehow asparagus came up in the conversation and when our host, Sue, heard that I had never even tried it we dropped everything and drove to the store.

Garden's Bounty: Zucchini Patties and Homemade Marinara

I'm relatively new at gardening, in fact this is only my third year planting a garden of my own.  I've really been blessed with beginner's luck and a bountiful garden from the beginning.  I've also learned that just because I can grow something doesn't mean that I should grow it...

My first garden was chock full of different veggies- tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant, four types of bell peppers, an accidentally purchased lemon verbena plant, cayenne, jalapeños, poblano peppers, banana peppers, cucumbers, watermelon, honeydew melon, and cantaloupe.

I had a LOT of stuff going on out there- to be honest, more than I needed, especially pepper-wise.

My second garden was was just as large but the variety of plants was pretty pared down- tomatoes, jalapeños, banana peppers, zucchini, and cantaloupe.