Recipes Discovered

Spinach, Orange, and Avocado Salad

Although it sounds like an odd combination (to me, at least), this salad has become one of my favorites for lunch. It’s easy to put together with just a few ingredients, and the flavor is just insanely good. The spinach is a little bitter, the orange is sweet, the avocado is creamy, and onion is tangy, and the sunflower seeds add just a little bit of saltiness. It’s delicious and easy, which is always good in my book.

Sweet Red Drunken Pasta Recipe

I have a new love of beets. They are popping up on menus everywhere these days, mostly in the form of salad, and are delicious. This recipe is very simple - combining pasta, beets, garlic, and a little Parmesan cheese. The beets are shredded first, so they cooked up pretty quickly and are super sweet. The recipe calls for cooking the pasta in wine, but I don’t think that added a lot of flavor to the pasta. Most the the color the pasta picked up was from being tossed with the beets. No matter how the pasta is cooked, it’s a delicious dish. And paired with a simple green salad topped with fried goat cheese, it’s an absolutely wonderful dinner.

Fried Goat Cheese Salad Recipe

Pulled Pork Sandwiches Recipe

I think Seth is getting a little impatient waiting for summer to come. He has been asking for everything barbecued recently. Who can blame him - with all the dreary weather we have had, I am ready for some sunshine as well. I made these pulled pork sandwiches last week, and I like to think they brought the nice weekend weather we just had. The pork was roasted in the oven for a couple hours, making it super tender before I pulled it apart and it in homemade BBQ sauce. Neither Seth or I really enjoy the vinegar based sauces typical of pulled pork sandwiches, so I opted for a ketchup based sauce. The cole slaw was especially for Seth, who loves it piled on his sandwiches. The creamy cole slaw did pair nicely with the smoky BBQ sauce. The sandwiches turned out great, and they also brought a sunny weekend, so who can complain about that?

Barbecue Sauce Recipe

Cole Slaw Recipe

Black Bean and Bulgur Salad

This “salad” is incredible simple, yet very tasty. It’s a nice alternative to beans and rice and to pasta salad, plus a great summer salad with no mayo. I simply sauteed a shallot for a minute before adding bulgur, water, chicken bullion, and sun-dried tomatoes. Once the water evaporated, about 10 minutes, I added frozen corn, rinsed black beans, diced red and green peppers, and seasoned it with cumin, salt, pepper, and red wine vinegar. Seth and I ate it at room temperature, and it was great. The peppers stayed crunchy, the corn was sweet, the sun-dried tomatoes were tangy. The dressing was simple, but added a lot of flavor to the bulgur. It was such a quick meal, but I thought it was pretty impressive.

While unpacking (still), I found an Irish cookbook that I had bought a long time ago. Seth’s family is very Irish, and I’ve always wanted to learn to cook traditional Irish food. I had Seth pick out recipes for a complete meal, and this is what he came up with.

We started with Mushroom Soup, which simply a lot of mushrooms cooked with potatoes, onions, garlic, and some stock. The recipe implies to blend the soup, but it leave it rather chunky, but Seth and I both prefer the soup blended smooth. It developed a very cream texture, similar to cream of mushroom soup. I used portobello, crimini, and white button mushrooms, which gave the soup great flavor. I served the soup with Brown Soda Bread, which is so incredibly easy to make. I mixed whole wheat flour with baking powder and buttermilk (I had to use more buttermilk than the recipe called for) together until a dough forms. I then kneaded the dough for a minute until it was smooth and baked until hollow. The bread was so good! It formed a nice crust on the outside, but was so soft and smooth on the inside. Seth wanted me to make it everyday. >> Read more