Garlic Chile Sauce

My husband enjoys all things spicy and will use this garlic chile sauce on everything.

Yellow Squash-Zucchini Fritters

As you can tell, I am definitely on a squash/ zucchini recipe "kick" since I have so much to use up from my CSA box. We have made these fritters several times now and they are husband and kid approved. 

Red Beans and Rice

With the weather getting cooler, my mind turns to soups and other comfort foods. This recipe for Red Beans and Rice is really delicious and it makes enough for leftovers or to freeze for future meals.

Creole Shrimp

It's that time of month again when I peruse the pages of my recent Cooking Light magazine and re-vamp one of their recipes for my dinner table. I really enjoy this magazine for the new ideas it inspires, but don't necessarily agree with several of their ideas of "healthy" foods  (often their elimination of butter or healthy fats of any kind as well as subsitutions with low fat or no fat milk and their use of "fake" foods like margarine). However, these types of ingredients are easy to replace with more nourishing options.

In their latest issue, the June 2013 magazine, I found a wonderful shrimp recipe that my family thoroughly enjoyed. In fact, it was so good, it will likely be on the regular rotation and I hope you will enjoy it as much as we did. Here is the link to the original recipe. I've changed it up a bit below.

Escarole and Beans

For those of you who regularly peruse my blog, you know that many of my recipes are from my grandma - traditional, Italian cooking that not only tastes delicious, but is incredibly nourishing.

Rice and Lentil Pilaf

This would be great to make on a Sunday so you could have quick and easy lunches all week. If you use a vegetable stock, this is vegetarian.

Homemade Hot Sauce (Tabasco Style)

My husband is so wonderful--he shares my time with work and this blog and happily tests out all the things I make. I am not sure he is the best test subject, because he mostly says everything is delicious, but it's certainly good for my self-esteem.

This past weekend he made a hot sauce in the style of Tabasco Sauce, which we had always purchased and kept in the house (prior to making this recipe) and which does not appear to have weird ingredients. But we grow a lot of peppers every year and even husband appreciates the value of foods with ingredients we can follow directly to the source. So this year, he made this sauce and it is even better than the store-bought kind.

Bolognese Sauce with Green Olives

I love pasta. I mean, looooove pasta. And one of the most disappointing parts of transitioning to a real food lifestyle (for me) was eliminating pasta, since it was primarily made using white flour. However, as food choices have improved over the years, there are now really great alternatives to the white flour pasta noodles of days past and my family enjoys pasta once or twice a month now. If you have not tried the Jovial line, I highly recommend it. This meat sauce goes really well with whole wheat pasta, brown rice pasta, or even rice. Or get creative and try serving over gnocchi, pierogi, spaghetti squash, Portobello mushrooms, or even potatoes.

Baked Beans

For this recipe, baked beans is actually a misnomer because they are not baked at all. Although you could bake them, if you are so inclined, but I don't think it's necessary. However, the name "Barbeque" Beans doesn't really work either because barbeque sauce is not a dominant ingredient (and it's optional). So, baked beans it is, but even easier since there is no baking involved!

Simple Pesto

If your garden is anything like mine, you're looking for something to do with a ton of basil right about now....

Roasted Beet Salad

I recently had the opportunity to spend some time in Raleigh-Durham and had a really great dinner with friends at a popular local restaurant with a highly acclaimed up-and-coming chef. One of the courses included a beet salad and, while I had not really been a big fan of beets in the past, the salad blew me away and changed my opinion completely. While everything they served was very good, the beets were really special. That meal, combined with the really wonderful health benefits of beets and the fact that they are in season now, inspired this dish.

 

  

Cream of Mushroom Soup

Cold winter days bring out my desire to cook soups of all kinds. Cream of mushroom is such a warm, comforting soup and really pretty quick and easy to make. Also, you can make a double batch and freeze for all those recipes calling for cream of mushroom soup so you aren't tempted to buy a quick and easy, but processed "frankenfood" can of the "old standby". This soup calls for simple yet nourishing ingredients and I really think you'll love the creaminess and wonderful flavor.

Lemon Chicken

I had lunch with a friend of mine, Tracy, and she mentioned that she made lemon chicken over the weekend that turned out really well. I had a bag of Meyer lemons in the refrigerator that I needed to use up and this was perfect.

Try serving this quick dish over Soba noodles, a thin noodle made from buckwheat flour. Buckwheat is actually a fruit, although often categorized as a grain. Buckwheat noodles are low in fat, and one serving contains 4% DV of fiber and 28% DV of protein.

Spanish-Style Cod in Tomato Broth

This recipe is from the November 2011 issue of Cooking Light, page 50 (the Super Fast section). I changed the recipe a little and we served ours with bulgur rather than brown rice since we were short on time.

White Clam Sauce

This recipe is from my grandma and I have been making it in the same way since I first started to cook. It is so delicious and so very easy, I hope you enjoy it.