Recipe for Deviled Eggs with Green Olives, Capers, and Dijon

For green olive lovers, these deviled eggs are about as good as it gets!

These Deviled Eggs with Green Olives, Capers, and Dijon were one of the first things I made in my new kitchen.   I wasn't used to the abundance of light so the photos are not that great, and this is not the kind of thing I usually post for my Meatless Monday picks, although eggs are definitely allowed under the Meatless Monday Guidelines.  Despite all those things, I loved these eggs so much I had to share them.  I promise you, if you're a green olive lover (like my brother Mark, my sister Sandee, and myself) these deviled eggs are a "must try."  It's getting close to summer potluck weather, and if you take these to any type of summer gathering, I bet they will be one of the first things to disappear from the buffet table.

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Grilled Salmon Recipe with Sun-Dried Tomato, Olive, Caper, and Parsley Relish

This relish with sun-dried tomatoes, olives, capers, and parsley perfectly enhances the flavor of grilled salmon.

(Updated April 2013 with better photos and step-by-step photos.)  I first posted this Grilled Salmon with Sun-Dried Tomato, Olive, Caper, and Parsley Relish back in 2007, when my beloved Fine Cooking magazine had a feature about sauces to finish off grilled fish, and I thought this recipe idea sounded especially interesting. I made the sun-dried tomato relish, with slight changes to the recipe, and I loved the way it enhanced the salmon. When I made this in 2007, I gave some to my (former) neighbor Brooke, and within a day she had e-mailed to ask for the recipe! I highly recommend you try this delicious way to add that special something to grilled salmon, and I think it would taste wonderful on other types of fish or chicken breasts too. I'm consistently happy with recipes I find in Fine Cooking, and this recipe is something I'll be making over and over. Here's my version of this delicious relish and grilled salmon combination.

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Recipe for Spicy Broccoli-Jicama Salad with Red Bell Pepper and Black Sesame Seeds

If you haven't discovered how delicious jicama is, this salad is a great way to try it.

(For Phase One Fridays I highlight Phase One recipes from the past that have been my personal favorites, and this Spicy Broccoli-Jicama Salad with Red Bell Pepper and Black Sesame Seeds is not only delicious and colorful, but it's highly nutritious.)

Every so often I get infatuated with a certain ingredient and end up using it over and over until something new catches my eye.  Currently I'm really quite smitten with jicama, both for the crunch and the slightly-sweet flavor that goes well with so many other things.  When I'm creating my own recipes, the best ones seem to come about almost by accident when I start thinking about the ingredient I'm currently infatuated with, and suddenly a recipe idea will pop into my head. Those recipes don't always turn out to be keepers on the first try, but the second version was a winner for this Spicy Broccoli-Jicama salad. 

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Kalyn's Kitchen Turns Eight Years Old (and Kalyn Gets a New Kitchen!)

(Eight-Candle Cake Image from Bruce's Birthday Images and Links)

When I sat down at the computer and wrote this post eight years ago, I couldn't imagine what an adventure I was starting with this little food blog.  Since then I've retired after 30 years of teaching, met a lot of fellow food bloggers and become real-life friends with some of them, been inspired by the amazing women at BlogHer, been a speaker at a few food blogging conferences, remodeled my 100 year old house in Salt Lake City, got an amazing stove, built a raised-bed garden,  and started a second blog focused on Slow Cooker from Scratch recipes.

I've written 1,958 posts on Kalyn's Kitchen in eight years (!) and I'm grateful I now have a fabulous web designer as well as my nephew/cooking assistant Jake, who helps me test recipes to make sure they work when you try them in your own kitchen!   I also appreciate the ongoing design help from my brother Rand, who originally suggested I start a blog (and how can I ever thank him for that?)  Rand has created all the headers and other graphics you've seen on the blog through the years. 

Eight years have brought a lot of changes, and this year I decided on another big change and bought a bigger house in the town where I grew up north of Salt Lake.  As hard as it was to leave the house and garden I had lovingly refurbished and a neighborhood filled with nice people, from the time my father died in early 2011, I wanted a house big enough for my whole extended family to gather.  I found a wonderful house that's perfect for having family and friends over, and since I've been promising to share kitchen photos, that seems like a fun way to celebrate eight years of food blogging.  

But before I get to the photos, I want to give a big Thank You to my readers.  Without readers and your encouragement and comments there would be no incentive to keep blogging, and I'm tremendously grateful for the support you've given my humble little blog.  In last year's anniversary post on Seven Things I Know About Food Blogging, I mentioned my goal of staying focused on things that are useful for readers, and I'm hoping I can continue doing that for many more years to come!

And now, on to the new kitchen!

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Recipe for Easy and Amazing Roasted Asparagus with Gremolata

If you like asparagus, lemon, garlic, and parsley, this Roasted Asparagus with Gremolata is one of those simple recipes you'll make over and over.

I just shared the reasons I think you should add Gremolata to your cooking repertoire, and if you like asparagus this recipe for Easy and Amazing Roasted Asparagus with Gremolata is one of the first ways I'd suggest using that Gremolata once you've made it.  This is so good that I'm confident in saying that if you try it, this will become one of those simple-but-amazing recipes you'll make over and over.  And if you keep the asparagus in whole spears the way we did, it looks so impressive that your friends or family will never guess how easy this way to get to the table.  

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How to Make Gremolata and Recipe Ideas for Using Gremolata

Gremolata can bring the fresh-herb flavors of summer to your food all year round!

Anyone who's been following my blog for a while already knows that I'm a fresh herb enthusiast!  If you're a cook who's discovered the wonderful way that cooking with fresh herbs can enhance the flavor of foods without adding fat or calories, then it won't be hard to understand why I think everyone should learn how to make Gremolata.  This simple but profound combination of finely minced fresh lemon peel, minced fresh garlic, and minced fresh parsley adds freshness and a little zing to any food you sprinkle it on.  I used it recently to add that extra something to a pasta dish (recipe coming!) and I wasn't sure if Gremolata needed a post of its own, but when I mentioned it to several friends and family members, I discovered that this simple herb combination is not something everyone knows about!  So this post is my Gremolata Public Service Announcement for everyone who hasn't discovered it yet.  And best of all, in the dead of winter when fresh herbs are expensive and hard to come by, you can always get lemons, garlic, and fresh parsley to make this and bring a touch of summer to your cooking. 

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Roasted Garbanzo and Vegetable Salad Recipe with Garlic, Feta, Olives, and Basil

If you're not a garbanzo fan, make this with another type of beans, but you must try this salad where the beans are roasted with the vegetables!

When he was staying at my house, my brother Rand came home one day with a garbanzo salad from the market.  The salad was okay but not anything that was especially memorable, but doctoring up that salad to give it a bit more wow was what inspired this Roasted Garbanzo and Vegetable Salad with Garlic, Feta, Olives, and Basil.  And everything about the salad I came up with was perfect (if I do say so myself), including the way I roasted the garbanzos, red bell peppers, and red onions with garlic to add more flavor, the savory saltiness from the Feta and olives, and extra punch from sliced fresh basil added at the end.  I'm growing basil in the window of that new kitchen I keep promising to show you, but if you don't have basil I think chopped parsley would be delicious as well.

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Recipe for Pasta with Italian Sausage and Collard Greens

Collard greens, garlic, and red pepper flakes are tossed with browned turkey Italian sausage and pasta in this easy and delicious recipe.  If you haven't warmed up to collards, use any type of greens you'd like!

(Updated with greatly improved photos and better instructions, April 2013.)  This easy and delicious recipe for Pasta with Italian Sausage and Collard Greens was adapted from one of my most-used cookbooks, Mark Bittman's The Best Recipes in the World.  I've been cooking from this book since I first discovered it in 2006, and haven't found a bad recipe yet.   My version of this classic dish uses nutritious dark green collard greens, and I'm also using turkey Italian sausage, since it's lower in fat and turkey is one of the Superfoods.  I also used more collards and sausage in proportion to the macaroni to make this more nutritious. When I first made Hopping John Soup I discovered how much I liked collard greens, and the only time I might change when I make this again is to double the collard greens for even more veggie goodness.

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Recipe for Baked Swedish Meatballs

Swedish Meatballs made from lean beef and reduced-fat pork sausage are perfectly seasoned.

(For Phase One Fridays I highlight Phase One recipes from the past that have been my personal favorites, and these Baked Swedish Meatballs that I first made in 2007 are delicious and easy to make.  This recipe could certainly use a photo update, so I think I need to make them again soon.)

Way back in my recipe archives I have a recipe for Swedish Meatballs in Paprika Gravy. (I kind of cringe when I see some of those very earliest recipes now, although they did taste pretty good.) Then in January 2007 I spotted the Oven-Baked Swedish Meatballs from Anne's Food. When I saw Anne's recipe, I realized I'd never tasted authentic Swedish Meatballs with seasonings like ginger, cardamom, and allspice. Since Anne is blogging from Sweden, I trust her on this recipe. I decided I had to try them, and despite the fact that they weren't terribly photogenic, what a great flavor with all those lovely spices. I loved this recipe, and the fact that they're baked instead of fried was a nice bonus.

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Recipe for Chicken, Black Bean, Avocado, and Radish Salad with Lime and Cilantro

Grab some radishes and make this Chicken, Black Bean, Avocado, and Radish Salad with Lime and Cilantro.  (If you're a cilantro hater I'd just leave it out and double the green onion.)

I made this Chicken, Black Bean, Avocado, and Radish Salad with Lime and Cilantro several times to get the flavors just right, and when I was making the final version (with the addition of radishes for color and a little crunch) my brother Mark, his wife Lisa, and their daughter-in-law Lindy dropped by just as I was starting the recipe.  I convinced them to hang around while I made the salad and took photos, which might be the best excuse ever for a rather messy-looking bowl of salad that could have been styled a bit more carefully!  Being close enough for family members to drop in is just one of the things I absolutely love about the new house.  And by the way, I fed my visitors this salad, as well as leftovers from a casserole that hasn't made it to the blog yet, and both dishes were definitely a hit!

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Slow Cooker Vegetarian Pasta e Fagioli Soup Recipe with Whole Wheat Orzo (and the Ninja Cooker!)

I made Vegetarian Pasta e Fagioli Soup in my new Ninja Cooker, but you can use any slow cooker.

Pasta e Fagioli means simply "pasta and beans" and there are many variations of this traditional Italian soup.  If you have an Italian grandmother, this is the soup she probably made for you, or perhaps you've had a version of it at an Italian restaurant.  Either way, this soup is Italian comfort food at its best.  In Utah we're right smack in the middle of those spring weather fluctuations where the temperature can drop 20 degrees overnight, and this Slow Cooker Vegetarian Pasta e Fagioli Soup tasted great when I tried it out with my brother Rand on one of those chilly days.

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Recipe for Tomato, Pepper, and Garbanzo Salad with Sumac

A delicious salad with marinated garbanzo beans, tomatoes, bell pepper, and a generous amount of parsley!

(Updated with new photos and slight tweaks to the recipe; April 2013.)   I first made this salad in the summer of 2006, and I'd had it on my list of recipes to update for a couple of years now.  Then recently my store had a great buy on gorgeous yellow bell peppers, which seemed like an invitation to make this salad.  Of course you can make this with red or green bell peppers if you don't want to splurge on yellow ones, but I love the color they add.  The salad was inspired by a recipe I found in Sunset Magazine but some changes I made really upped the flavor. First, I drained the garbanzo beans, and marinated them in balsamic vinegar while I prepped the other ingredients.   Second, I put a very generous amount of fresh parsley, (although if you're not a parsley fan I think chopped fresh basil would be divine in this too.) Third, I used a combination of balsamic vinegar and fresh lemon juice for the dressing, which made the flavor a bit more complex.  Finally, I sprinkled the finished salad with a generous amount of Sumac, which I think always adds flavor to ingredients like this.

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Recipe for Slow Roasted Asparagus

Gorgeous spring asparagus is tossed with a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar and then slowly roasted until it's nicely browned and tender.  Perfect!

(For Phase One Fridays I highlight Phase One recipes from the past that have been my personal favorites, and this method of roasting asparagus at a lower temperature is one I've been using for years.  It's especially good for the larger stalks of asparagus you often find this time of year.)

It is officially spring, which means it's time for asparagus.  I'm hoping this simple recipe will remind you how tasty asparagus can be when it's coated with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and then slowly roasted so the vinegar slightly caramelizes. Nothing could taste better.  There are some good recipes in the archives where the asparagus is roasted at a higher temperature, but this recipe can be especially great if you want to cook something else in the oven along with the asparagus.  How about Turkey Pesto Meatloaf with Tomato Sauce or Deconstructed Stuffed Cabbage Casserole sharing the oven with this asparagus?

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Recipe for Hake Loins Baked with Tomato, Kalamata Olive, and Caper Salsa

I found lovely Hake loins at Costco, but if you don't have Hake you can use any type of mild white fish to bake with Tomato, Kalamata Olive, and Caper Salsa.

When you're living in a completely land-locked state like Utah, frozen fish is the name of the game, so I'm always checking at Costco to see if they have any new seafood offerings.  Recently I bought a package of Kirkland Wild Caught Hake Loins to experiment with.  I didn't find much about Hake in my cookbooks, but from checking Google I learned that Hake is often cooked with moist ingredients to keep it from drying out.  It was just a serendipitous combination of ingredients (and maybe memories of Grilled Salmon Packets) that led to this recipe for Roasted Hake topped with tomatoes, Kalamata olives, capers, red onions, and garlic, but the results were delicious. 

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Recipe for Vegetarian Lentil Taco Salad with Tomatoes, Olives, and Avocado

This Vegetarian Lentil Taco Salad with Tomatoes, Olive, and Avocado can easily be vegan if you skip the optional Ranch Dressing and cheese.

I guess I'm officially settled into the new house, because I had my first cooking session with my nephew/cooking assistant Jake, and we loved having the the new bigger kitchen so both of us have plenty of room to work.  The new house also has big windows and great light for photos, but I found there's almost too much light, and I'm going to have to do some experimenting to get the light filtered just right for food shots.  All those big windows are also going to make taking photos of the kitchen a bit of a challenge, but I promise some kitchen photos will be coming soon!  The house still has quite a few boxes to get unpacked, but on Saturday my brother Rand and I hung pictures and arranged my collection of African art, so the house is starting to look like it's mine.

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Slow Cooker Italian Sausage and White Beans with Sage (from Ilva and the Silver Spoon)

Italian Sausage and White Beans with Sage gets extra flavorful when the cooked beans, sausage, and sage are simmered in the slow cooker with tomatoes and ground fennel.

(Updated with new photos and better instructions, April 2013.)  Back in 2005 when I first started blogging, one of the first bloggers I "met" online was Ilva from Tuscany, who writes the beautiful blog called Lucillian Delights.  This recipe from 2007 was inspired by the White Beans and Sausages with Tomatoes and Sage that Ilva posted, and since she's in San Francisco this weekend speaking at the IACP Conference, I thought it would be a fun time to update this recipe with better photos.  I was sad that the timing of the conference came right after my move so I couldn't make the budget stretch to go meet Ilva in person, but I was definitely thinking about her as I enjoyed this delicious Italian Sausage and White Beans with Sage!

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Recipe for Roasted Wild Salmon and Asparagus with Double-Lemon Oil (Paleo, Low-Carb, Gluten-Free)

I loved everything about this ultra-simple recipe for Roasted Salmon and Asparagus.

(For Phase One Fridays I highlight Phase One recipes from the past that have been my personal favorites, and this delicious Roasted Wild Salmon and Asparagus combination is something I would make any time I could get fresh asparagus, but it's especially good this time of year when asparagus is inexpensive and in season.)

This is the type of super-easy, cooks-in-one-pan, tastes-amazing recipe that always appeals to me. Since it also has three of my favorite ingredients (salmon, asparagus, and lemon), I knew it had to be a winner.   And while I'm on the subject of favorite ingredients, possibly I should warn you that I've been on kind of an asparagus binge lately, so there will be several more asparagus recipes coming  over the next few weeks.  If you really don't like asparagus, for this particular recipe I'd recommend substituting fresh green beans, which are also delicious roasted and would taste great with the lemon oil. 

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Roasted Spaghetti Squash Recipe with Homemade Tomato-Garlic Sauce and Chicken Sausage Meatballs

Roasted Spaghetti Squash served with a simple homemade tomato sauce and chicken sausage meatballs is a quick and healthy dinner.

I'm not sure why I was a little slow to warm up to the idea of spaghetti squash as a replacement for pasta, because I certainly enjoyed it when I made Spaghetti Squash and Chard Gratin and Twice Baked Spaghetti Squash with Pesto and Parmesan.  Whatever the reason (and I can't blame everything on moving, can I?) this is the very first time I've ever cooked spaghetti squash to serve with tomato sauce, and it was really quite delish.  It's true you don't get the feel of biting into al dente spaghetti, but the trade-off for a low-glycemic Italian dinner is a pretty good one.  In this recipe I used Sabatino's Roasted Garlic and Basil Chicken Meatballs, which is another one of my Costco finds, but you can use any kind of chicken or turkey meatballs that appeal to you.

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South Beach Diet Phase One Recipes Round-Up for March 2013 (Low-Glycemic Recipes)

My favorite Phase One Recipes from March 2013 were Thai-Inspired Ground Turkey Larb Salad, Roasted Bell Peppers and Red Onions with Turkey Italian Sausage, Mediterranean Spinach Salad, and Spicy Sauteed Chickpeas with Ground Beef.

It's April, and I've been living in my new house for a week and one day, and I'm completely in love with the house.  It's a good thing, because after moving 25 years of accumulated stuff, I never want to move again!  During March, all that time spent moving meant a lot less time to spend cooking or looking for Phase One recipes, but somehow I still managed to find quite a few recipes to share for the Round-Up.  And the stress of moving meant way too much comfort food was consumed, so I'll be doing Phase One myself for a few weeks during April to try to get back on track!

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

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