Recipes Discovered

Strawberry Vinaigrette Recipe

I wanted really unique, flavorful salad dressing the other day, so I changed up a strawberry vinaigrette recipe I had. I switched out the strawberries for blueberries and cut the sugar down to about a tablespoon. In a blender, I mixed blueberries, lemon juice, sugar, vinegar, and olive oil until it was smooth. I put the mixture into a bowl with some poppy seeds, and then poured it over a salad. It was a bit tart, but it did have a unique flavor. I’ll have to try the real recipe at some point, but this was a yummy start.

Spaghetti Squash Recipe

Meatball Recipe

Marinara Sauce Recipe

Since my mom is careful about the amount of carbs she eats, her and my dad don’t have pasta much anymore. My dad loves spaghetti and meatballs though. There is a type of squash that the flesh separates into strings and looked just like spaghetti (obviously called a spaghetti squash). Luckily, my family likes pretty much any vegetable and the spaghetti squash makes a great substitute for pasta.

The squash is really easy to cook. I cut it in half and scooped out the seeds. Then, I put it in a glass dish, cut side down, with about an inch of water. It took about 40 minutes to bake and become tender. Then I scraped out the flesh and served it with sauce and meatballs, just like spaghetti.

The squash is a little sweeter than pasta and is a little thinner than traditional spaghetti. I would compare it to angel hair pasta in size and texture. It is delicious on it’s own but it also taste great with spaghetti sauce and is an excellent substitute for diabetics watching their carb intake.

Key Lime Guava Shrimp Recipe

While I was flipping through a Travelhost magazine, I saw a picture of this shrimp recipe that looked outstanding. The recipe was really simple. The shrimp is just sauteed in butter with a little bit of salt and pepper. For the sauce, I used the blender to mix together guava paste, key lime juice, ginger, soy sauce, and parsley until it was smooth. I served the sauce along side the shrimp with brown rice and broccoli.

The sauce had a very strong, tangy flavor that went really well with the simplicity of the sauteed shrimp. I thought it would be too sweet because of the guava pasta, but the key lime juice balanced the sweetness and the parsley brought a freshness to the sauce. The sauce also paired nicely with the brown rice, giving it a zing of citrus. Strangely enough, my key lime guava shrimp looked absolutely nothing like the picture in the Travelhost magazine, but they still tasted good.

Mango BBQ Sauce Recipe

Smokey BBQ Sauce Recipe

Seth is a big fan of BBQ sauce, and he is fairly particular as to what the perfect BBQ sauce should be. It should be smokey and sweet, with a little bit of a tangy and it should be very thick. I am a little less particular when it comes to BBQ sauce, but I thought I would try making two different ones to see if I could come up with something acceptable.

The first was a mango BBQ sauce. I knew it wouldn’t have the smokey factor, but I thought it would be thick because of the fruit and also sweet and tangy from the molasses and vinegar. The recipe combines onion, red pepper, garlic, salt, pepper, allspice, vinegar, molasses, Worcestershire sauce, lime juice, and tomato juice together in a skillet. That mixture is then poured into a blender with a diced mango and jalapeno peppers. The recipe calls for 2 or 3 jalapenos, but I didn’t want it to be too hot, to I only added one. >> Read more

Guava BBQ Sauce Recipe

I generally like my bbq sauce on the sweet side, so when I saw this recipe for guava bbq sauce, I had to try it. It’s easy to make. Just simmer guava paste (I found it in the Mexican food area at my grocery store), red wine, orange juice, lime juice, Dijon mustard, garlic, honey and salt together until it forms a thick, syrup sauce. The recipe said 15 minutes, but I think I simmered mine more like 30 minutes. The sauce it definitely sweet, actually a little too sweet for me. It had a good flavor with hints of orange and citrus, and it actually did go well on a cheeseburger, but I think the sweetness would be too overpowering for anything else.