My 10 year blogaversary is quickly approaching. July 20th is the fateful day that I published my very first blog post - in 2011!!! 🙌🏻 For those of you who have followed the blog from the beginning (aka. my mom) - THANK YOU!!! I know those initial years of blog posts were not very engaging. I'd go as far as to say that my first attempts at writing a food blog were downright cringeworthy. Safe to say that it took some time (years, maybe) for me to navigate the world of blogging and find my writing "voice". No matter how awkward and agonizing the first few years of blog posts might have been, I can never delete the posts because I still reference those recipes. The quality of the recipes makes up for my poor articulation.😅 Those posts are also the place where I go when I'm feeling nostalgic and I want to see pictures of my kids from ten years ago. 😭 My very first blog post was a recipe for Shrimp Salad. The post was a total of 11 sentences and exactly 1 picture of the aforementioned salad. 🍤 I still go back to that post every summer though, because we love that recipe for Shrimp Salad. I recommend that you check it out if you're looking for a great summer salad recipe. #Lowqualitywriting-highqualityrecipe. 🤣 I feel like I should have titled this recipe - the evolution of a salad. It's hard to believe that I started out attaching a single photograph to a recipe. Now I feel like I've progressed to the opposite end of the spectrum. I include pictures of every single ingredient, pictures of the process and multiple angles of the finished product. 📸(There has to be a happy medium.😅) As you scroll through this post - you can literally watch the salad come together from beginning to end in pictures. 🥗 This wasn't necessarily planned - but when I have beautiful ingredients like ripe, red strawberries and crisp, green lettuce - I can't help but photograph them. 💁🏻♀️ Strawberry Avocado Salad Dressing 1 Tablespoon balsamic vinegar 1 Tablespoon brown sugar 1 Tablespoon olive oil 1 clove garlic, minced 1/4 cup salt 1/4 teaspoon pepper Salad 1/2 red onion, sliced thin 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon sugar 1 teaspoon white wine vinegar 1/2 cucumber 1 cup strawberries, quartered 1 head butter lettuce, torn into pieces 1 cup alfalfa sprouts 2 ripe avocados, sliced thin 1/2 cup fresh basil leaves 1/2 cup walnuts, chopped
Drizzle with dressing just before serving.
In my very first blog post, I promised to be honest with my readers. Being completely transparent isn't always easy - it's hard to admit a failure. Sometimes it's not a complete disaster either. Some recipes just needs some tweaking to make them better. For example, this salad, in my opinion, would be better without the garlic in the dressing. A minor change to the dressing would really take this from good to great. Ciao!
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If you think being a food blogger makes me some sort of dinner party hostess extraordinaire - you couldn't be more wrong. 😅 I awkwardly stumble and fumble my way through dinner parties just like a lot of you. One of my biggest challenges is coming up with menus that everyone on the guest list will enjoy. The goal is to avoid offending my guests or possibly be even worse - having them leave my house hungry. 🤣 Just like Ella Fitzgerald sings, "You like potato and I like potahto. You like tomato and I like tomahto,". Eating habits are personal and the like-dislike balancing act is even more crucial when it's not just my stomach on the line. Coconut is a seemingly innocent fruit, but it's as polarizing as north and south. It can cause quite a conundrum. I'm a huge coconut fan and I feel like my life would be less fulfilling without it, but I recognize that the flaky texture is too much for some to bear. I put my own feelings about coconut aside when I plan menus for guests, and I refrain from making anything with the fibrous one-seeded drupe. It's another story though when I bake for myself or close friends that I've already vetted for food preferences and allergies. Bring on the coconut cake, the macaroons, the coconut rice and the coconut chews! Coconut Chews Crust 1/2 cup butter, melted 1/2 cup sugar 1 cup all-purpose flour Filling Ingredients 2 eggs 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla 1/2 cup light brown sugar 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour 1 cup shredded sweetened coconut
Bake 20 minutes. Cool completely. At the risk of offending the non-coconut lovers - these chews are the BOMB! 💣 They're easy to make, they're sweet and buttery and loaded with delightfully flaky coconut.
Ciao! Happy Memorial Day!! How do you celebrate/commemorate this special holiday? I make red, heart shaped pancakes on Valentine's Day, green milkshakes on St. Patrick's Day and mashed potato frosted meatloaf cupcakes on April Fool's Day so it should come as no surprise that I'd make something red, white and blue for Memorial Day. 🇺🇸 I'm not so good at putting up holiday decorations around the house but I always make sure that we have a themed, color coordinated meal to celebrate special days. 😊 I mean is it really Easter without Jello eggs and sugar cookies decorated like vegetables? 🥕😅 Traditionally, people fire up their grill for Memorial Day and cook up burgers and meats. 🍔 So if you're looking for a healthy side dish or a vegetarian alternative, consider this delicious Summer Grain Bowl this weekend. It's full of fresh summer vegetables, crispy spinach, crunchy seeds, savory goat cheese and a bright citrus herb vinaigrette. 🍋 I just love fresh summer produce. After a trip to the strawberry farm this morning, I made a quick stop by the farmer's market on my way home. I just can't resist a home grown watermelon, some freshly picked corn or a basket up perfectly ripe tomatoes. Now that my frig is stocked with fresh summer produce, I'm ready to make my red, white and blue summer grain bowl for my Memorial Day. 🌽🍅🥗 Summer Grain Bowl 1 cup pearled barley or farro 2 cups spinach 1/2 cup fresh blueberries 1/2 cup cherry tomatoes, halved 1/2 cup fresh corn 1/4 cup crumbled goat cheese 2 Tablespoons roasted pumpkin seeds Lemon Basil Vinaigrette 2 cups fresh basil 2 Tablespoons red wine vinegar 2 cloves garlic 1 whole lemon, juiced and zested 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup olive oil
Top with crumbled goat cheese and pumpkin seeds. Drizzle with lemon basil vinaigrette. I'm rarely on time with my holiday blog posts. #obviously Most of the time, I post my recipe 3-4 days AFTER a holiday. 😬 And yes, I'm aware that Memorial Day isn't until Monday - but better to be early than late I guess. 🤷🏻♀️ My excuse is that if I post early, you have time to go out and shop for ingredients and still make this delicious recipe for Memorial Day on Monday. It was my plan all along. 😂
Ciao! Have you taken the Chick Fil A versus Popeyes Chicken Sandwich challenge? Yea, I know - I'm super late to the game but ... better late than never. And, because I'm not one to pass up a good old fashioned chicken sandwich debate - I decided to test these two delicious sandwiches for myself. Last week I bought one Chicken Fil A original chicken sandwich and one Popeyes original chicken sandwich. I brought them both home and shared them with my taste tester. (After 27 years of marriage, he's gotten really accustomed to being a guinea pig for my food experiments.) 😅 He never complains and he has less than discriminating tastes BUT - he's got a lot more experience in the fried chicken sandwich world than I do. 🍗 You can't live in Georgia without being exposed to a Chicken Fil A chicken sandwich at some point so this was not the first time I've tasted a sandwich from Chick Fil A. This was, however the very first time that I'd ever purchased or tasted a Popeye's Chicken sandwich. The Popeyes chicken sandwich is pictured on the left and it's clear that this was the larger sandwich in every way. If you look closely at the picture of the sandwiches cut in half, you might notice that the chicken in the Popeye's chicken sandwich is less compressed than the Chicken Fil A chicken breast. I could actually see the juices in the Popeye's chicken. 👀 More importantly - Which sandwich tasted better? That's a loaded question. I preferred the flavor of the Chicken Fil A chicken sandwich but the texture of the Popeye's sandwich. The Popeye's chicken not only looked, but also tasted less processed and slightly less salty than it's counterpart. I felt like there was way too much mayonnaise on the Popeye's sandwich though and if I ordered another, I would order it without any mayonnaise at all. As for my taste tester - he liked both sandwiches. There were no complaints about either one. (And not even a crumb left on his plate.) I accept full responsibility for that. He's learned that it's usually in the best interest of our marriage to keep his opinions about his dinner to himself. 🤣When I pressured him to choose one, he hesitantly admitted that he preferred the Popeye's chicken sandwich slightly more - mostly because it was bigger. 😅 The most ironic part of this whole experiment is that unless it's for "research purposes", I probably won't order or eat another fried chicken sandwich for a really long time. 😬 I'm more of a grilled, baked, poached and broiled chicken sandwich kind of girl. So why didn't I pick the two most popular grilled chicken sandwiches to taste and compare?🤷🏻♀️ The reality is that the chicken salad world is much more in my comfort zone than a fried chicken sandwich. Even though I don't blog it very often, I make a lot of chicken salad. I start with my basic recipe and then I throw in whatever ingredients I have on hand to create unique chicken salad creations. Today, I decided to recreate a delicious chicken salad that I had at our local chicken salad chain restaurant. Hope you enjoy. Fruity Chicken Salad 1/2 rotisserie chicken, shredded 1/4 cup light mayonnaise 2 teaspoons dry Hidden Valley Ranch dressing mix 2 Tablespoons chopped pecans handful of red grapes, halved 1/2 fuji apple, chopped 1 stalk celery, chopped salt and pepper, to taste
There's nothing specific about this recipe. A handful of this and a pinch of that. That's the way that chicken salad is. A little of this and a little of that. I'd love to hear about your favorite chicken salad creations. Send me your recipes.
Ciao! Celebrate!!! 🎉 That's what we do in the Spring. We celebrate EIGHT family birthdays between March and May. Not to mention St. Patrick's Day, Cinco de Mayo, Mother's Day and Easter. Hardly a week goes by, that we aren't exchanging gifts, cutting into a cake and toasting another trip around the sun. 🍾 Not gonna lie - I really love all the Spring parties and festivities. Organizing desserts for all of these parties is my forte but keeping myself organized so that everyone receives their gifts on time - now that's another story. 💁🏻♀️ In my world - it's not a party without a proper dessert to commemorate the event. It doesn't have to be a traditional three layer cake with buttercream roses and candles to be an official birthday cake. We celebrate birthdays with apple pie, a pile of donuts and strawberry shortcake. After all, when you celebrate that many special occasions in 92 days, you've got to mix it up a little. This year, since we're all spending our Spring in quarantine and not gathering with families, we've had to get more creative about celebrating birthday's from afar. Raising a glass to toast a birthday while practicing social distancing is the new norm. 🍷 Sangria has become my new go-to cocktail for birthday celebrations either alone or with a friends. (Less than 10, of course.) After all, it combines three of my favorite things: red wine, fresh fruit and sugar!!! What's not to love? Sangria 2 cups burgundy wine 1 cup brandy 1/4 cup lime juice 1/4 cup lemon juice 1/2 cup sugar 2 cups club soda 1 lime sliced 1 lemon sliced 1 orange Combine wine, brandy, lime juice, lemon juice and sugar. Add orange, lemon and lime slices. Add club soda, just before serving. Serve over glass of ice. My dad provided the wine for this batch of Sangria. It is the perfect compliment to the brandy and fruit. I've learned to make double batches of this thirst quenching libation because everyone LOVES it. Including me.
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