All posts tagged spinach

Smoked Salmon Salad

Hello Food Friends,

My roommate and I are trying to be super healthy, in part because of recent diet restrictions for us both (different reasons). One of the challenges we are both facing is finding filling food that is good for us, and tastes good.

So being the awesome person she is, my roomie has decreed if I make it she will at least give it a shot and we’ll narrow down our list of food yays and nays that way! Carte blanche on options to a fan of cooking….yeah I’m in creative heaven.

First up, we have a Smoked Salmon Salad that I made for us. This one is super easy as we just 1) prepare ingredients, and then 2) assemble ingredients, before 3) serving. Simple!

So prepping the ingredients. Here goes.

Smoked Salmon Salad Ingredient Preparation

Ingredients:
1 cucumber
1 zucchini
1 mango
1 package spinach/spring mix/other leafy greens (14 oz)
1 package smoked salmon (5 oz)
1 container baby/cherry tomatoes
2 cups fresh, uncooked snow or sugar snap peas.
1 container fresh sprouts (these are alfalfa sprouts)

Salad Assembly.
1. Heat 1 1/2 cups water, 1 tspn salt, and 1 tspn olive oil in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add peas and let cook ~10 minutes, until crisp but cooked fully.
2. Rinse the leafy greens and put into a salad keeper or salad bowl.
3. Slice the cucumber and zucchini into circle slices. Add to leafy greens.
4. Cut the mango in half, around the pit, and then dice (cut just shy of the skin for easiest way) the mango into little cubes. Add to leafy greens.
5. Rinse the tomatoes and add to the leafy greens.
6. Drain the peas and add to the leafy greens.
7. Rinse the sprouts and top the salad.
8. Slice the smoked salmon as desired (I did narrow strips), and top the sprouts with the salmon.
9. Serve and add dressing (a fruity vinaigrette tastes awesome with this one!)

Enjoy your creation!

Smoked Salmon Salad – Mmmm!

Serve, enjoy, and have leftovers for 3 days with the salad keeper preserving your yum-factor on your food! I wouldn’t go more than 3 days with smoked salmon. I will say, our salmon only lasted the day of and the following day, though the rest of the salad lasted another two days for both of us for lunches. Smoked Salmon. Mmmmm.

So hope you enjoy this one, and hope if you try this, or any variation thereof, that you’ll share it with me (and all the people who may read this post at any point in time)!

Craft You Later,
Beth

Grilled Bruschetta Lamb

Hello Again Everyone!

I apologize for the downtime, I have been taking copious pictures, notes and brainstorming sessions down, and just have been completely slack about getting posts up here on the blog. I am making a promise now to do way better from here on out, I swear! 🙂

Anyways, I wanted to start us back on track with a meal I made the other night using a slew of yummy ingredients. I stopped by at my friends at The Enchanted Olive and they were teasing me a bit about my slackness on the blog. So thank them for the boost and post here!

In their honor, and to give them a ‘thank you’ for kick-starting me back into my blog posts, I am posting a recipe that I created using quite a few of their creations (oils & vinegars below are all theirs!). So here goes, the Grilled Bruschetta Lamb, all for you!

Grilled Bruschetta Lamb, Grilled Corn, Bruschetta Salad, with sliced cukes & bread on the side!

Ingredients:
3 lamb chops
1 14 oz can diced tomatoes, drained
1 very small onion, diced (you can add more or less depending upon how onion-y you want it)
1/2 cucumber, diced
2 teaspoons chopped basil
2 teaspoons Sundried Tomato, Parmesan & Garlic Olive Oil
4 teaspoons Butter Olive Oil, divided
2 teaspoons Herbs De Provence Olive Oil
2 teaspoons Pecan Praline Balsamic Vinegar (specialty vinegar available only in the store, can substitute in any nutty vinegar instead though!)
2 teaspoons Fig Balsamic Vinegar
2 ears of corn, not shucked
2 cups Lettuce or Spinach

Directions:
*** Start your grill. Mine is a propane grill, so it didn’t take very long to heat, however if you have a charcoal grill – heat it up, heat it up! Once that is going, commence to making your food! ***
1) Drain your tomatoes, dice your onion and cucumber, and combine them in a small bowl. Add in your basil, olive oils (only use 2 tspn of butter) and vinegars and mix together until well blended. You now have your bruschetta!
2) Place your lamb chops on aluminum foil and top with the bruschetta underneath and on top. Let sit in the fridge for 10-15 minutes.
3) Take your ears of corn, and drizzle 1 teaspoon into each at the top of the husk so that it flows down into the entire ear of corn inside the husk.
4) Place your ‘buttered’ corn, still in the husks, directly on the *hot-and-ready* grill rack. You can peel off the outermost layer only, if you choose, if you don’t want to grill the entire husk. Leave on the grill for approximately 20 minutes, turning at least once.
5) Add your lamb to the grill, still in the foil, and leave for 10-20 minutes, depending on if you want the lamb cooked medium-rare or well done. I did this right next to the corn, and they cooked well side by side.
6) Remove items from the grill, shuck the corn, plate with additional bruschetta on top of the lamb, and enjoy!
7) For the salad, add your remaining bruschetta and other 1/2 of the cucumber to the lettuce/spinach, then top with your favorite dressing. May top with cheese if you want, but not needed for this salad!
8) Homemade Dressing (Extra): If you prefer, you can just drizzle the salad with the Fig BV and the Sundried Tomato Oil for a quick and scrumptious fix!

I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did when I made it, and for all of my friends at The Enchanted Olive – thank y’all for the inspiration you provide with your product selections!

Craft You Later,
Beth

To Olive or to Vinegar…

Hey everyone!

I am taking a break from beer today to discuss a new cooking shop find, courtesy of my friend Mary. We went a long period of time without seeing each other so, as friends, decided to remedy that last night. We also decided to get productive for her pre-wedding craft preparations.

Please Note: Mary has 2 cats who are adorable but insane (as cats are prone to being). 😉 Love you Dom & Bob!!!! So she needed someone there who they are timid around so we could actually get the crafts done without them becoming cat toys!

So I agree to bring a bottle of wine and Mary says she’ll feed me for helping her out. Because I really need incentive to a) see my friend, or b) be crafty. Hah! Again, I say HA! 😉

So without spoiling the craft ideas that she came up with for her centerpieces, which we put together, let me just say that the stuff she found at Hobby Lobby is freaking perfect for her. They are doing a Rockabilly/Rocker style wedding, and not so surprisingly Hobby Lobby had a slew of great stuff for this color and pattern wise. So we had fun doing that. But no pictures or more details until later… 😛 Nice try, though friends.

No, this entry is about food. Yummy delicious food. And a new take-all-my-money-and-give-me-yummies website that I found. In her travels, Mary found this GREAT shop in Santa Cruz, California, called The True Olive Connection. I. Am. In. Love. And so is my tummy.

So Mary made a delicious chicken, melt-on-your-tongue delicious chicken. To accompany this chicken, she steamed cauliflower and topped it with a bit of Brummel & Brown’s Yogurt Spread. Delicious again.

Then she poured some Serrano Honey Vinegar into a saucepan and sautéed some spinach. This added a bit of a zing to the spinach that was tempered by the sweet. It wasn’t too sweet, and it wasn’t too spicy – it was a perfect subtle balance of flavor. And delicious again.

Then we had the toasted bread and dipping sauce. You’ve seen many Italian restaurants (large and small) doing this – you combine olive oil with spices and sometimes balsamic vinegar, swirl it all together, and voilà – a dipping sauce that is heart healthy. This is even better. This is a dipping sauce to write home about. Truly. I did, twice, today.

Combine the following in a dish that has a lip around the edge – or a bowl: a few spoon-fulls of Blood Orange Olive Oil and half that amount of Dark Chocolate Balsamic Vinegar. Taste this and make sure you are sitting down. You will have a moment, I promise you. It’s like dessert but not. It’s bread with all the flavors of dessert and none of the calories of adding it in. It is heart healthy ambrosia. It is delicious. Oh, and I dipped my chicken in this wondrous concoction also – heaven! I love my dessert, but I didn’t need any after this. Just a nap. 🙂

To go with this awesomeness, I brought a 2009 3 Muses California Merlot (we had an accidental theme going here for Cali!), which was very yummy, slightly fruity with undertones of chocolate.

So yes this is Mary, not me, who is creating this wonderfulness, however we both love to cook. So when Mary saw my face, she had to show me the store name, and add in that they ship. So there goes part of a pay check, haha!

I am placing this order this week, and I plan to experiment weekly with these wonders – and have no fear, I will keep you in the loop on them! 😉
Medium Bottle Dark Chocolate Balsamic Vinegar
Medium Bottle Blood Orange Olive Oil
Medium Bottle Serrano Honey Vinegar
Sample Bottle Cranberry Pear Balsamic Vinegar (1/6)
Sample Bottle Blackberry Ginger Balsamic Vinegar (2/6)
Sample Bottle Black Cherry Balsamic Vinegar (3/6)
Sample Bottle Chipotle Olive Oil (4/6)
Sample Bottle Cilantro & Roasted Onion Olive Oil (5/6)
Sample Bottle Wild Mushroom & Sage Olive Oil (6/6)

I am already imagining different pairings for chicken, pork, turkey and ham for these delicious options. So keep watching to see what I come up with. But in the meantime, check out this little shop in Santa Cruz and see what you can think of to try. Let me know if you come up with any good concoctions!

Craft you later,
Beth

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All posts tagged spinach

Smoked Salmon Salad

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To Olive or to Vinegar…

youbettercraftaround

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What Have I Done For You Lately…

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All posts tagged spinach

Smoked Salmon Salad

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Grilled Bruschetta Lamb

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To Olive or to Vinegar…

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