Roasted Cauliflower Salad with Italian Sausage, Tomatoes, Kale, and Basil Vinaigrette (Low-Carb, Gluten-Free)

You won't miss the pasta in this Roasted Cauliflower Salad with Turkey Italian Sausage, Tomatoes, Kale, and Basil Vinaigrette.

I guess I'm having a little fling with cauliflower because this Roasted Cauliflower Salad with Turkey Italian Sausage, Tomatoes, Kale, and Basil Vinaigrette is the latest in a string of fun cauliflower experiments.  In the last few months I've shared Cheesy Baked Cauliflower Tots, Roasted Cauliflower Salad with Feta, and Fried Cauliflower Rice with Shrimp, and all of them had that special something that means the recipe is going to be a repeater in my kitchen.  That's also true for this latest cauliflower experiment where I used roasted cauliflower as the base of the salad and combined it with browned turkey Italian Sausage, cherry tomatoes, and barely wilted kale.  If it's a bit hot to use the oven where you are, use a toaster oven to roast the cauliflower.  (And I should probably be sharing something like this pasta salad the week of Father's Day, but unless dad is a cauliflower-avoider, I promise this salad is so delicious you won't even miss the pasta!)

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Kalyn's Kitchen Picks: Prepworks Progressive Fresh Herb Keeper (and Ten Favorite Recipes with Fresh Herbs)

Keep your fresh herbs much longer in the fridge with this Progressive Fresh Herb Keeper.

Are you a fan of using fresh herbs in cooking?  I love all types of fresh herbs, and for years I've been growing basil, parsley, mint, rosemary, thyme, dill, French tarragon, and sage.  But one herb I've never had any luck growing (either outside or in my kitchen window herb garden) is cilantro.  And if you're a cilantro fan you know that fresh cilantro doesn't keep well in the fridge, which is why I was so excited to discover this Prepworks Progressive Fresh Herb Keeper.  This plastic herb keeper will keep cilantro good in the fridge about 10 days, (and maybe longer but my cilantro doesn't stay around longer than that!)  You fill the bottom of the herb keeper with water up to the line, snip off the ends off the bunches of cilantro, and push them down into the tube so the ends are in the water.  Of course you can use this for other types of herbs too if you're not a cilantro fan!

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Slow Cooker Spicy Brown Rice and Black Bean Cheesy Bowl (Vegetarian, Gluten-Free)

Use the CrockPot to cook this Spicy Brown Rice and Black Bean Cheesy Bowl and keep the kitchen cool.

When you live where it's hot in the summer, using the slow cooker to cook amazing food without heating up the house is one of the best tricks I know.  In fact, on my slow cooker site I feature Slow Cooker Summer Dinners each year, and this Slow Cooker Spicy Brown Rice and Black Bean Bowl would make a perfect summer dinner cooked in the CrockPot.  It took me a couple of tries to get this recipe just right, and for the final version I had the wild idea of cutting up some cubes of string cheese and stirring them into the rice and beans mixture for the last 30 minutes of cooking time, so this is a spicy brown rice and black bean cheesy bowl.  Everyone likes cheesy don't they?  I tested several versions of this out on my niece Kara and her family, and they gave the thumbs up to the version with cheese, but it's definitely optional if you prefer it without the cheese.

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Recipe for Spinach Salad with Bacon Dressing (Low-Carb, Gluten-Free, Can Be Paleo)

It only takes the tiniest bit of bacon to add great flavor to this Spinach Salad with Bacon Dressing!

(For Phase One Fridays I feature Phase One Recipes from the past that have been my personal favorites, and this flavorful salad dressing with a little chopped bacon is something I've been making for years.  The recipe has been hanging out way back in the archives on the blog since 2005 without a single photo, and I finally remembered to take some pictures to update the post!)   

Spinach salad with bacon is a culinary classic, and in the very early days of my blog I came up with this spinach salad that features a slightly creamy dressing with chopped bacon.   It only takes the tiniest amount of bacon to make this Spinach Salad with Bacon Dressing really taste amazing, and I use pre-cooked bacon and then crisp it in the microwave and blot away as much fat as possible, so if you're someone who normally avoids bacon because of the saturated fat, please do not call the bacon police!  There are endless combinations of ingredients you can add to the salad besides the bacon dressing, but sliced mini-peppers, olives, sunflower seeds, and Feta like you see in this photo is probably my favorite.  And if you're not adverse to a little bacon once in a while, this bacon dressing is also fantastic drizzled over sliced tomatoes!

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Roasted Barramundi with Tomato and Olive Relish (Low-Carb, Paleo, Gluten-Free)

My niece Kara and I both loved this Roasted Barramundi with Tomato and Olive Relish.

A few weeks ago I had a fun cooking day with my gorgeous niece Kara, and we came up with this recipe for Roasted Barramundi with Olive Relish.  The recipe was so good that Kara has already made it at home (and sent me the photo) before I managed to get it up on the blog!  We tried this out when Kara was doing the Whole 30 eating plan, and for people who care about such things this recipe is completely in line with Whole 30 or Paleo eating, and it's also South Beach Diet Phase One.  But even if you don't care the tiniest little bit about any of that, you should make this because it's amazingly delicious, and easy to make after a long day at work.  If it's getting warm where you live, I recommend roasting the fish in a toaster oven to keep the kitchen cool.

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Summer Means Basil Vinaigrette, and Things I'm Thinking About on Tuesday (6-3-14)

Grilled Halibut with Basil Vinaigrette, and it must be summer because I already have Basil Vinaigrette in the fridge!

It's feeling like summer, and recently I wanted to make some Basil Vinaigrette, which made me realize how much I'm seriously missing the garden from my old house.  Last year I tried growing a few vegetables and herbs on the deck and in the kitchen window, but even though they started out well, the plants on the deck didn't produce much and keeping herbs watered in a sunny kitchen window turned out to be a challenge.  So last week I decided that while I plan for my future greenhouse (hopefully next year!) I just had to plant some things outside.  I do have parsley, several types of sage, French tarragon, thyme, and Greek Oregano by the front walk, but I was missing a few of my favorite herbs, so I got some visiting nephews to carry up the containers I'd used on the deck and planted a row of big pots by the front porch.  Now I have pots filled with basil (x2), rosemary, flat parsley, dill, and mint, and can happily cook with herbs all summer long!  And I've already got Basil Vinaigrette in the fridge, so life is good at Chez Kalyn.

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South Beach Diet Phase One Recipes Round-up for May 2014 (and an announcement)

Kalyn's Phase One Recipe Picks for May 2014 were Baked White Fish with Onions, Peppers, Olives, and Feta, Stir-Fried Broccolini with Oyster Sauce, Fried Cauliflower Rice with Shrimp, Sugar Snap Peas, and Red Pepper, Shrimp and Black Bean Salad with Cilantro, Cumin, and Lime, and Baked Eggs and Asparagus with Parmesan.

It's summer, and if I needed a reminder I got a good one when I looked at the bookmarks where I save recipe links to feature here every month and realized I didn't have one single soup, stew, or chili recipe this time.  I like a good bowl of soup as well as the next person, but I couldn't be happier to say bring on the salads! But before we get to the food, I want to talk a little about these round-ups.

This post makes 74 months of writing monthly South Beach Diet Phase One Recipes Round-Ups for the blog, and times have changed.  I still love the South Beach Diet, but now a lot of people reading my blog follow other types of low-carb or grain-free eating plans.  (That was the reason I gave the blog a makeover last year, adding new tabs so recipes could be sorted by diet type.)  After asking for opinions on Facebook and giving it a lot of thought, I've decided to make the monthly round-ups more broadly focused, hopefully making them more useful for people who aren't strictly following South Beach. I'll still include recipes that are South Beach Diet Phase One of course, but I also want to spotlight interesting recipes that are Low-Carb in general, Paleo, Whole 30, and possibly others. As always, all the recipes in the round-up will be grain-free, making them Gluten-Free as well, and there will be some type of labeling system to make it easy to see which recipes are Phase One or another plan. That new format will be coming next month; hope you like it. And if you have any thoughts about this, please share them in the comments!

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