Today's Fattoush -Crumbled Pita Chip Salad recipe is one of my all-time favourite salads. I eat this at least 3 times a week through the cold winter months when everything is white and all I'm craving is green. With its crisp romaine lettuce, cucumbers, and tomatoes flecked with fresh herbs, crumbled pita chips, and a fresh-bomb garlic, lemon, and za'atar dressing, Fattoush -Crumbled Pita Salad lifts that winter dreariness for at least as long as I munch the salad. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do! It's salad time! And crouton time! I have a two-fer for you on this glorious day. How much do you love salad this time of year? View Post
Barbecue Bacon Ranch Chopped Salad | Make Ahead Mondays
I've told you before I'm a complete salad addict. I need salads. If I go more than a couple of days without them, I feel antsy. It's not the health factor (because you could probably argue that with the amount of croutons and other various crispy and greasy things I prefer to load onto salads they are no longer 'healthy' food) that keeps me coming back; it's everything else about salads that keeps me coming back. They're almost endlessly variable with a near infinite number of salad dressings, toppings, ethnic derivations, and styles. They can be hot, cold, and everywhere in between. While my all-time favourite is a mixing bowl size View Post
Balsamic Chicken Dinner Salad
You know those go-to dishes? The ones that you can't mess up and no matter how often you make them, you never tire of them? The dishes that you can make with your eyes closed and one hand tied behind your back? You are looking at one of mine. That, my friends, is a dish I've been making for almost two decades. It started as a recipe clipped from a Wegman's sales circular. Somewhere -about fifteen years ago- I made a couple of changes to the recipe based on what we had on hand and we liked it so much it stayed that way. Balsamic Chicken Salad. I have an almost Pavlovian response to the name of the dish I love it so much. Tender strips of View Post
Fresh Tomato Salad with Smoked Blue Cheese | Five Minute Recipe
This weekend, my mom embarked on an adventure. She decided to live a little more simply. Okay. A lot more simply. She decided to try giving up running water and most electricity a couple months ago and move into a building on our property where she could do that without committing to a piece of real estate. This weekend was the big move. My kids have always called her Nana and in the last month we've tagged "Free Range" onto the front of that. She is to be known, henceforth, as Free Range Nana. As part of the move, she plundered her own garden at her old rental property and brought down a goodly bowl of beautiful salad tomatoes. View Post
Asian Marinated Cucumber Salad
I have something special for you today. Yesterday, I gave you my husband's all-time favourite entrée. Today, I'm giving you his all-time favourite salad. Tomorrow, I'll give you his all-time favourite appetizer. If I believed in keeping secret recipes*, these three would be at the top of the list because they make you look so talented when you serve them. *But I don't believe in secret recipes or lessipe (leaving out an ingredient or process when sharing a recipe). In fact, you might have to pay me NOT to share a recipe with you. The true joy in food -at least for me- comes from sharing it. Refusing to share a recipe or a crucial step View Post
Honey Chipotle Oyster Crackers | Make Ahead Mondays
For today's Make Ahead Monday I wanted to go in a not-freezer direction. You know I love my freezer full of goodies, but there are certain staples I make ahead of time that have nothing to do with the chill chest. They're too good not to share and so? I shall share! I specifically wanted to talk snack food-slash-salad toppers. I have a thing for salads. It's my mom's fault. (Hi, Mom!) Every night we'd ask mom what we were having for dinner. Nine nights out of ten, her answer went something like this, "Some _____, a little bit of _________, a _________, and A BIG GREEN SALAD." As kids, my siblings and I didn't necessarily appreciate the View Post
Garden Couscous Salad
So. Is the room spinning or is it just me? I keep waiting for the opportunity to arise where I can kick off my shoes, lay on my back in the sand, find Bugs Bunny as Brunhilde hidden in the clouds, swim in a clear blue lake, and turn to a cooler fully stocked with everything I love to eat before winding up the evening singing songs and making s'mores around a campfire. *This view of what summer should be is based largely on how I spent every summer day of my youth. Thanks so much, Mom and Dad for a spectacular childhood . I blame you. In the nicest possible way. Instead, I've been running my children to play practice*, manning the View Post
Zesty Cold Quinoa Salad
Before I get into the quinoa salad recipe, I want to remind you all that you have one more week to get us your submissions for the The Second Tuesdays Déjà Food Event. We're really looking forward to seeing what you all do with your leftover makeovers. Now, back to business... Quinoa has been the hot whole grain of the food blogging world lately. My method for cooking quinoa is not the one most recipes require. Most often, recipes tell you to wash the quinoa carefully to remove the bitter coating that it naturally produces. I use the toasting method to remove the bitterness and add a little extra nutty flavor to the end View Post
Roasted Beet Salad with Herbed Goat Cheese
It is official. I am addicted to food blogger events. When I saw that Holler from Tinned Tomatoes was hosting her No Croutons Required event for July and that the category was vegetarian soups and/or salads showcasing herbs I was thrilled. I lovey love love fresh herbs. Since I have parsley and chives growing in abundance the question was not which herbs I would use, but how I would show them off to their best advantage. Enter my dairy goat farming friend from up the road. I occasionally get wonderful goat milk from her. Some of the best cheeses I've made have been from her goats' milk. Happily, she brought me about a gallon View Post
Cornbread Salad for the Weekly Cookbook Challenge – Part 2
Okay, so I should read recipes more carefully—in looking at the recipe for the original cornbread salad recipe, I see the instructions ‘coarsely crumble the cornbread into a good big bowl and let it dry for a few hours.’ So my careful slicing and cutting into cubes was definitely wasted effort. I salvaged it this morning by coarsely crumbling my nicely cubed bread into a bowl: I then put the bacon on to fry, and while that was going on, I chopped all the veggies and made the dressing. Veggies done, bacon fried till crisp and drained on paper towel, dressing all mixed, I was good to go. First, add all the chopped veggies and bacon to the View Post