Mediterranean Rice Salad

This is a great summer dish to feed a crowd. Bring it to your next BBQ or potluck – people will love it!

Favorite Taco Meat

When I put tacos on the menu this week, I went to the blog to search for the recipe to remind myself of what I needed to pick up at the store. I’ve been making this same taco meat recipe for a while now, I can’t believe I haven’t posted it here yet.

This is a very straight-forward and classic tasting taco meat recipe, but it’s made a lot healthier by sneaking in a ton of fresh veggies and it using fresh spices instead of those sketchy seasoning packets. Try it!

Broiled Bluefish with Herbed Lemon Mustard Aioli

I found ridiculously fresh bluefish for a ridiculously low price at the store so I decided to pick some up on a whim for lunch. I don’t think I’ve ever cooked bluefish myself before, but I remember eating it with a mayo topping at my family’s house on Cape Cod, so I decided to keep it simple and try my hand at that. I served this with some of the extra lemony aioli topping on the side and it was awesome.

Blueberry Pie Oatmeal

This is one of my favorite breakfasts. I usually make a big batch (double this recipe) on Sunday to put into 8 individual containers for Brian and I to take to work with us for breakfast. Reheating for a couple of minutes in the microwave makes the blueberries warm and sweet and tasting exactly like blueberry pie.

Italian Stuffed Artichokes

I like when Brian is a little scared when I am making something he is unfamiliar with. I get a sick joy out of semi-convincing him that what he’s about to eat may or may not be edible or may or may not be poisonous. That was definitely the case with these stuffed artichokes.

When I was cleaning the artichokes, I jokingly asked him what the first person who decided artichokes might be edible was thinking. He replied by saying that he wasn’t really sure that they were still, and repeatedly asked me, “you really ate these growing up??”. We did grow up eating artichokes in their whole form, enjoying scraping the “meat” from each tender leaf. I stuffed these artichokes with toasted breadcrumbs seasoned with a ton of garlic, nutty anchovies, and fresh parmesan cheese. Delicious.

Asparagus, Goat Cheese, and Herb Frittata

I suck at making omelets. They inevitably always end up as a “scramble” because I can’t flip an omelet to save my life.  A frittata is basically the answer to that because it requires NO FLIPPING. And, it will serve as a fantastic breakfast on the go for me all week long.

BLT Salad with Buttermilk Chive Dressing

I’ve had bad cravings for a BLT sandwich lately. You know the kind. Toasted, crusty white semolina bread, big slather of mayonnaise, crispy bacon, juicy fresh tomatoes, and crisp romaine lettuce. Gah, I die. Well, this is my summertime (aka lighter) version of the classic BLT. This salad makes a super easy and fast first course and it manages to accomplish the oh-so-rare combination of satisfying, yet still light. And it has bacon.

Escarole Soup with Mini Meatballs

I am yanking this one from the archives and re-posting with some upgraded pictures. From time to time I think of what a shame it is that some of these particularly yummy recipes I post are stuck in blog archives that will probably never get seen. This soup is just too good for that.

Today we had a lovely 70-degree humidity free day in Boston. This got me wanting to dust off my dutch oven, which during colder months is in heavy rotation, but is basically abandoned come May. I’ve been under the weather with one thing after the next over the last week+, so I went looking through my old posts for some comforting, yet light, old standbys.

Reading through the old post, I was reminded that the recipe is from the Sopranos Cookbook that someone had given me as a gift many years ago. Since James Gandolfini’s death (sniff sniff), Brian and I have been re-watching the series from the beginning and loving it. Although i am having a lot of mob-related dreams and I think I actually briefly considered blackmail as a solution to a real-life problem. Might need to cut back on The Sopranos.