Recipe for Raw Baby Kale Salad with Apples, Sunflower Seeds, and Lemon-Dijon Vinaigrette

Raw Baby Kale Salad with Apples, Sunflower Seeds, and Lemon-Dijon Vinaigrette!

There's no doubt about it, I'm seriously smitten with the Earthbound Farm Baby Kale Mix that suddenly appeared at the Fresh Market store by my house.  I've been buying it every time I see it at the store (and so is everyone else apparently, because about half the time they don't have any.)  Making a salad with the raw baby kale was a snap and I loved this combination with raw baby kale, apples tossed in a lemon-Dijon vinaigrette, and crispy sunflower seeds adding a little crunch.  The dressing for this is slightly sweet, so maybe this would be a good one to try out on family members who are on the fence about raw kale.

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Recipe for Thai-Inspired Turkey Mini-Meatball Lettuce Wraps

Turkey Mini-Meatball Lettuce Wraps with spicy Thai Flavors!

(For Phase One Fridays I highlight Phase One recipes from the past that have been my personal favorites.   These little mini-meatballs are served inside lettuce leaves with a spicy Thai-flavored dressing, and I could eat this every day!)

It was pure serendipity that I discovered this recipe for ultra flavorful little turkey meatballs, served inside lettuce leaves with a spicy Thai-style sauce, some diced cucumber, and fresh mint. I didn't have anything like this in mind when I thawed out a pound of ground turkey; I was actually thinking about using it in the Horseradish Meatloaf, before I changed my mind. So there I was with a pound of turkey that needed to be used, and when I need recipe ideas in a hurry, I often stand in front of my wall of cookbooks and just flip through books, using the index to see what recipes I can find for that ingredient. I found this recipe in The South Beach Diet Taste of Summer Cookbook, but this is a recipe I'd enjoy all year, maybe substituting cilantro for the mint when it's out of season.

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Kalyn's Kitchen Celebrates Seven Years, and Seven Things I Know About Food Blogging

Hard to believe it, but I have been blogging for seven years!

(Edit:  Thanks to David Burger from the Salt Lake Tribune for this nice feature about me, and how fun that he timed it to come out at the same time my blog was having a birthday!) 

Kalyn's Kitchen is turning seven years old today, and I almost missed the party.  For some reason I was thinking Wednesday was my blog birthday, but then I started writing this and realized it was April 24, 2005 when I sat down at the computer and wrote my first post.  That's how this whole blogging adventure got started!

For my birthday post I'm going to take the day off from cooking and reflect a little about blogging.  Last year I posted Six Life Lessons I'm Learning from Blogging, and this year after reading posts asking If Food Blogs are Over and Can You Make a Living Writing about Food, I decided to share Seven Things I Know About Food Blogging.  I don't consider myself a blogging expert, but I know what I know!  Of course, opinions about all things related to blogging are widely varied, so these thoughts may or may not resonate with you if you're a fellow blogger.  For readers who are not bloggers (i.e. normal people!) I hope you don't mind having the focus on the mechanics of blogging for a change.  And for everyone reading this no matter what it is that brings you here, thanks for visiting, and please chime in with your thoughts in the comments!

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Recipe for Whole Wheat Orzo Salad with Kale, Chickpeas, Lemon, and Feta

A delicious healthful salad with whole wheat orzo, kale, chickpeas, lemon, and Feta.  You could use brown rice or quinoa for a gluten-free version of this tasty salad.

A few years ago I discovered 100% Whole Wheat Orzo Pasta, and I've used it to make a few tasty pasta salads since then.  If you're not familiar with it, orzo is a type of pasta that's shaped like large grains of rice, and if you don't want to bother finding the whole wheat orzo or for a gluten-free version of this salad, cooked brown rice would make a fine substitute.  Of course it won't surprise anyone that I took a fantastic-sounding salad with spinach and switched out the spinach for kale.  I used regular curly kale so we trimmed it and wilted the kale for a minute, but if you had Earthbound Farm Ready-to-use Organic Mixed Baby Kales you could just give the kale a few rough chops and throw it in the salad.  We also added some cumin into the dressing for this salad, which gave it a bit of a Mediterranean flavor.  No matter what version of this salad you end up with, we thought this delightful combination of flavors was a perfect meatless meal.

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Recipe for Sauteed Asparagus with Melted Gorgonzola and Pine Nuts

This Sauteed Asparagus with Melted Gorgonzola and Pine Nuts tasted amazing

(For Phase One Fridays I highlight Phase One recipes from the past that have been my personal favorites.  This recipe was first posted in 2006 as part of Asparagus Aspirations at Seriously Good, sponsored by blogger Kevin Weeks.  Kevin passed away last week, and I'm dedicating this recipe to his memory.  His insight and cooking expertise were something he shared freely with many people, and he will be greatly missed.)

When I first made this recipe in 2006, I said "At the risk of sounding like I'm completely lacking in modesty, let me say that this was one of the best tasting things I've ever eaten in my life!"  Now years later this is still one of my favorite ways to cook asparagus, even after I lightened it up a tiny bit from the original recipe. I'm still on a bit of an asparagus binge around here, and when I made this to take new photos I ate about half of it for lunch that day.  You can see the original picture after the step-by-step photos, and if you're joining my asparagus binge you'll find lots more ideas for cooking asparagus after the recipe.

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Tuna Pasta Salad Recipe with Lemon, Green Olives, and Cucumbers

When I started looking in the pantry for something to eat, this Tuna Pasta Salad was the happy result!

Pasta salad.  When I say that do any particularly memorable pasta salads come to mind?  You're lucky if they do, because I think pasta salad is always in danger of being a bit boring if you don't make sure to use strongly flavored and interesting ingredients.  I'm happy to report this pasta salad experiment I concocted recently was loaded with flavor due to good quality tuna in olive oil, chopped Spanish green olives, and a generous amount of lemon juice and zest in the dressing.  I also added finely chopped baby cucumbers for a little crunch, and I happily ate this all day long the day I made it.   

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Recipe for Mediterranean Salad with Hummus Dressing, Olives, Capers, and Feta

A great salad with Mediterranean flavors, made from ingredients I had in the fridge!

(Updated with step-by-step directions and better photos, April 2012.)   I first made this salad five years ago on a Saturday when I hadn't gone to the grocery store all week, and wanted to find something more interesting to eat than plain romaine lettuce salad. Luckily I found the big tub of Meza Hummus from Costco and remembered a recipe where hummus is blended with lemon juice and olive oil to make a unique dressing.  This recipe turned out to be a salad that tastes of everything that's complex and interesting about Mediterranean flavors, and it's been repeated many times since then.

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Recipe for Southwestern Quinoa Salad with Black Beans, Red Bell Pepper, and Cilantro

Luckily this Southwestern Quinoa Salad is loaded with healthful ingredients, because it was hard to stop eating it!

Lots of people are becoming fond of the South American seed product called quinoa (keen-wah).  I knew quinoa had become mainstream when I noticed you could buy a giant bag of it at Costco, and although I resisted for a week or two, eventually I bought one of those huge bags and stored it in the freezer.  I've made a lot of tasty things with my big bag of quinoa, but this quinoa salad with Southwestern flavors in the dressing may be my favorite quinoa dish yet.  Besides the cumin-lime-chile flavors in the dressing, I loved this because the crunch of the red pepper, the softness of the beans, and the slight chewiness of the quinoa was such a nice combination of textures.  The salad stayed good in the fridge for days, so it would be perfect to make on the weekend and take for lunch during the week.  And if you haven't tried quinoa yet, this may be the recipe that will turn you into a quinoa fan.

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Kalyn's Kitchen Picks: Earthbound Farm Ready-to-Use Organic Mixed Baby Kales

This ready-to-eat baby kale is a great product for anyone who's trying to eat more greens!

This ready-to-eat organic mixed baby kale from Earthbound Farm is another one of those products that made me think about jumping up and down and squealing when I spotted it in the grocery store.  My love for kale is well documented, and although I don't mind prepping bunches of kale, this mix of ready-to-use baby kales is so perfect for raw kale salad that I know it will help me to eat more kale.  This is also just the amount of kale I need when I'm making some kind of egg bake, breakfast casserole, or soup with kale.  So far I've only found this at the Fresh Market in my neighborhood, but it's such a brilliant idea that I'm guessing it will be appearing in more stores soon!

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Roasted Asparagus Recipe with Creamy Tahini-Peanut Dipping Sauce

Delicious roasted asparagus with a tahini-peanut dipping sauce.

(For Phase One Fridays I highlight Phase One recipes from the past that have been my personal favorites.  I love the tahini-peanut dipping sauce here and think it goes perfectly with roasted asparagus!)

Don't you think there's something special about asparagus when it finally comes into season in the spring? Before I started blogging I wasn't nearly so much of an asparagus fan as I am now. A lot of my asparagus apathy was because I'd mostly eaten asparagus cooked in water, a method which can simmer out a lot of the flavor. When I fully entered the ranks of the food-obsessed and started reading lots of blogs I learned about roasted asparagus, grilled asparagus, and sauteed asparagus. Since then I've been on a yearly spring quest to find as many new asparagus recipes as I can. This roasted asparagus with tahini-Peanut dipping sauce was a fantastic success. The sauce was slightly adapted from Chicken and Quickly Roasted Asparagus with Tahini Sauce, but the added peanut butter produced a thicker sauce and I subbed agave nectar for sugar or splenda. This is a recipe I can't wait to make for guests.

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Easy and Amazing Recipe for Barely-Cooked Carrots with Tahini, Lemon, Garlic, and Sumac Dressing

Slightly-crisp carrots with a dressing of tahini, lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, and sumac.  Mind-blowingly good!

Allow me to introduce my new favorite way to eat carrots.  And if you even barely entertained the thought that cooked carrots might be a little boring, dismiss that idea immediately!  The entire time my cooking assistant and nephew Jake and I were tasting this recipe we kept remarking on how neither of us was that crazy about cooked carrots, but these barely cooked carrots with a dressing of tahini, lemon juice, olive oil, a generous amount of minced garlic, and Sumac were positively addictive.  We ate most of them warm, but I had a a few bites left that were refrigerated overnight, and they tasted fantastic cold out of the fridge as well.

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Recipe for Roasted Salmon and Asparagus Salad with Mustard Vinaigrette

Quickly roasted salmon and asparagus, served on baby greens with mustard vinaigrette.  The perfect meal for spring!

(Updated April 2012 with step-by-step instructions and better photos)  Usually when I'm updating an old recipe that needs new photos I try hard not to change much about the recipe in case people have it bookmarked, but when I looked at this recipe for a warm salmon and asparagus salad, the original method of marinating the salmon and then grilling it while you roasted the asparagus seemed so labor-intensive compared to how I would make it now.  This time I simply roasted the asparagus a few minutes, added the salmon that I'd rubbed with my favorite Szeged Fish Rub, and the result was a wonderful salmon and asparagus salad like you might get at a fine restaurant.  I'll include both sets of directions in the recipe, but the simple method of roasting both asparagus and salmon gets my vote!

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Vegan Asparagus Salad for Spring with Tomatoes, Hearts of Palm, and Chives

A lovely salad for spring with asparagus, tomatoes, hearts of palm, and chives.

I love to pull things out of the fridge or pantry and experiment to see what I can come up with, and this salad combination started with the Hearts of Palm I was so excited to find back in stock at Costco.  I had fresh asparagus in the fridge and chives growing in the garden, both of which seemed like they would be good with hearts of palm, and then I added a few of the small grape tomatoes I start buying in the spring when I'm craving the flavor of tomatoes.  Mixed with a lemony vinaigrette, this salad was a great side dish for Herb Encrusted Grilled Salmon.  And when I can have an easy meal that includes hearts of palm, asparagus, and grilled salmon, I'm a happy camper.

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My Favorite Recipes for Deviled Eggs (plus deviled eggs recipes from my food blogging friends)

So many interesting ideas with deviled eggs!

Every year when people start finding my post about How to Make Perfect Hard-Boiled Eggs, I know it must be almost Easter.  That post also has a lot of ideas for using hard-boiled eggs that I've collected through the years.  I love boiled eggs, even plain with a little Vege-Sal, but my favorite thing to make with hard-boiled eggs is definitely deviled eggs.  Nowdays I often use partly fat-free greek yogurt to replace some of the mayo in my favorite deviled egg recipes, which makes them into a very diet-friendly snack.  Happy Easter everyone, and if you should find yourself with some leftover hard-boiled eggs tomorrow here are some ideas you might like.

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Recipe for Asparagus and Fresh Mozzarella Frittata with Parmesan and Chives

A delightful frittata with asparagus, fresh mozzarella, Parmesan, and chives!

 
(For Phase One Fridays I highlight Phase One recipes from the past that have been my personal favorites.  I love all types of frittatas, but this version with asparagus and pieces of fresh mozzarella is one I love to make when I start getting fresh chives in the garden.)

Since I've been raving about how much I love the Bel Gioioso Fresh Mozzarella Pearls I found at Costco, I thought I'd show you one more thing I made with them, plus some asparagus tips my sister Pam gave me. (Thanks Pam!) If you're one of the people who commented you can't find the fresh mozzarella pearls, this recipe is one where you could substitute regular grated mozzarella, but the fresh mozzarella was wonderful melted into eggs like this. I also loved the fresh chives, which are flourishing in my garden this year, but sliced green onions would work too.

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Easy Recipe for Barely-Cooked Asparagus with Basil Pesto

Barely Cooked Asparagus with Basil Pesto is ultra easy and flavorful.

(Updated with new photos and step-by-step instructions in April 2012.  There hasn't been much cooking going on while I've been trying to get better, but before I got sick I cooked my first asparagus of the year and re-did the photos for this favorite recipe from 2007; enjoy!)

Lots of people love the archives section I call Easy South Beach Recipes, where I feature tasty South Beach Diet friendly recipes with five ingredients or less. This one is a combination I stumbled on by accident years ago on a day when I had fresh asparagus and noticed a jar of pesto in the fridge. The pesto turned out to be fantastic with lightly cooked asparagus.  When I made the recipe again recently to take better photos, it was even better with my homemade Basil Pesto with Lemon, something I always make and freeze when my garden has an abundance of basil.  But even if you use basil pesto from a jar, I promise that this will become one of your favorite ways to cook asparagus.

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South Beach Diet Phase One Recipes Round-Up for March 2012 (Low-Glycemic Recipes)

Kalyn's favorite Phase One Recipe from March 2012 was definitely this Spicy Thai-Style Cabbage Slaw with Mint and Cilantro.

(I've finally finished this round-up, which was delayed by me being seriously under the weather.  Thanks again for all the get-well wishes everyone, and happy Cooking!)

I know, I say this every single month, but has another whole month really gone screaming by?  Not that I'm complaining about the arrival of April, the month when spring delicacies like asparagus start appearing in the stores.  Of course in Utah it can still snow in April or May, so I try not to get my hopes up too much for good weather.  Spring-like recipes have been appearing all during March, and I'm happy to be sharing some really fantastic South Beach Diet Phase One Recipes that I've posted on Kalyn's Kitchen or found on other blogs during the month, including my personal favorites that I'm now spotlighting every Friday for Phase One Fridays.

(You can use the label Low-Glycemic Recipe Round-Ups to see all the posts like this one.)

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Hot Tea and Chicken Broth on the Menu (and this is not an April Fools Joke!)

Nothing but hot tea and chicken broth has been on the menu at my house!

It's April 1, and if I wasn't incredibly sick with a terrible cough, body aches, a fever, and chest congestion, I'd be posting the Phase One Recipes Round-Up for March 2012 today.  I actually worked on it yesterday for a couple of hours before I gave up, called my gorgeous niece Alyson to bring me cough medicine, and then retired to the chair.  And last night I finally gave in and went to First Med, so hopefully I will soon be on the mend.  I'll be back as soon as I can!