Summer = Salad.

Picnics, parties and heat make for quick and healthy recipes you can throw together on the fly.

This salad is great to take to a party with friends or make for dinner on a night when you don’t want to turn your oven on because it’s a million degrees outside.

 

Mikey and I both LOVE Broccoli Crunch Salad with a strong passion. It is unfortunately, like most delicious things, full of sugar and fat…so I made up a lighter version that tastes pretty close to the original.

The longer you let the broccoli sit in the dressing the better it will taste. I used honey to sweeten mine but you could add brown sugar and Mayo (I used greek yogurt) if you want to make it a bit more like the original recipe.

I hope you had a wonderful holiday weekend! Mikey and I stayed in Chicago for the first half of the weekend and then went camping with friends about an hour north of the city. It was a nice relaxing weekend filled with lots of food and drink! This salad is a great way to start a detox after a weekend of gluttony!

This is his “I’ll pretend I’m sleeping/not interested in your food and then pounce the second you look away” move. He tries it every time, but I’m on to him now.

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I have very specific memories of tuna salad from my childhood.

I hated it.

We had a lot of silly and fun family traditions when I was growing up and one of them was our Sunday tradition.

We would wake up and have donuts (which I didn’t love as a kid. I know, I was insane). Then we would pile into the car and go to church and Sunday school. After church my Mom would buy the newspaper at the tiny grocery store in town and we would head home for a delicious homemade brunch.

We would then impatiently wait for our cousins to pull into my Grandma’s driveway across the street. My brother and I were blessed to grow up with our Grandma and Grandpa across the street from us for a few years. It was the best. Every Sunday my Grandparents would have everyone over for football, food and fun. We spent the summers down on the water and the winters in the basement playing dress up (the boys played Atari and traded basketball cards).

My cousin Brook and I would always cry when it was time to go home because we knew that meant homework/winding down to go back to school on Monday. We called them the Sunday night blues. I still get them after a super fun weekend comes to an end! I had a super bad case of the Sunday/Monday/entire week blues a couple weeks ago after an amazing weekend in California at Coachella. Those blues were entirely too hard to shake, but I think I’ve recovered…

So anyway, back to the Sunday tradition….We would then head back across the street, meltdowns subsided (or not) and my Mom would do snack-dinners. We would have popcorn, or nachos, cheese and sausage with crackers…and sometimes my Mom would make tuna. It was usually just for her, no one else really ate it in the family, but I remember I always wanted to like it.

It looked so good smushed between two pieces of toast and she would always offer it to me…but no matter how hard I tried, I always hated it. I wanted it to be chicken.  Tuna was just a bit too fishy for me.

I’ve grown up a bit now and my taste buds are officially mature! I am proud to say I will eat just about anything (aside from certain body parts that should remain on an animals body and not in my stomach). So all that to say…Mikey and I will have tuna salad from time to time, but I never like to make it with mayo. I just have a hard time smothering healthy food in a blanket of fat. Even if it is delicious fat. So I made up this recipe and used some ingredients I had on hand to make a little homemade and lightened up sauce. It turned out great!

This recipe is similar to my Basil Parmesan Chicken Salad, which is one of the most popular recipes to date on my blog! It’s delicious and super easy for lunches, especially with the warm weather that ( has to be, please!!?!) is on its way.

Also great in a wrap with lots of hot giardiniera!

 

 

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This is my favorite side dish/salad of all time.

I make this slaw at least once a month and Mikey and I usually consume the entire bowl in one sitting…

It is spicy, sweet and salty all at the same time. It has a great crunch from the cabbage, carrots and peanuts and the Sriracha gives it a great kick of heat.

I have made this salad for multiple parties and people are always asking me for the recipe

Slaw (or coleslaw) was one of the few “vegetable” dishes I liked as a kid. We all know I was very picky when it came to practically everything in life…but creamy coleslaw was one of my favorites. My other fav was the Ramen noodle slaw with sunflower seeds and cabbage (if you don’t know it, I’ll put it up on the blog one of these days. High in sodium, low in nutrition. It’s amazing).

Mikey and I have gotten into many a heated debate over what’s better: Vinegar vs. creamy based coleslaw. I like creamy and he likes vinegar…the same goes for BBQ sauce. I like sweet, tomato based and he likes vinegar based.

Mikey grew up eating at a BBQ place called Russell’s Barbecue…Yes, I know what you’re thinking. “Bethany, that was your maiden name, it must be the best place in the whole world.” Mikey would say it is and so would his entire family. Unfortunately…they have vinegar based sauce and coleslaw…I’m not saying that I won’t eat my face off at Russell’s and soak my pulled pork in their BBQ sauce, I’m just saying that when it comes to vinegar based vs. tomato based…My heart is with the sweeter of the two (that’s not really a surprise for someone with a giant sweet tooth) and I don’t consider that authentic BBQ. (Remember: This is only my opinion, please don’t hate me).

That was a random tangent since I’m not sharing a BBQ recipe or a normal coleslaw recipe…but none the less, I think you should make this Asian slaw the next chance you get.

The longer it sits in the refrigerator the better. The flavors combine and the dressing soaks in to the cabbage and carrots. It is AMAZING.

P.S. It usually has 1-2 cups of  shredded carrots which I did not have on hand. The slaw was still amazing but i recommend you include them. They are listed in the recipe below 🙂

 

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Burrrrrrrrrr.

Fall has come to Chicago.

It is cold, rainy and super blustery.

It smells like wet leaves and soggy grass and I am SO in love.

I busted out my scarves, jackets, hats and boots and have already made a few different pots of soup. This hearty lasagna soup is perfect for these cold, overcast days – AND, Mikey was obsessed with it (because lets be honest, Mikey is obsessed with anything in a red sauce/Italian seasonings).

Hope you are enjoying your fall so far…go make some soup!

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Mikey is training for the Chicago marathon and ran 16 miles through the cold rain about 3 weeks ago. His body wasn’t pumped about it and decided to shut down. He got super sick and it held on tight for 2 (very long) weeks.

As we all know, one of the best cures for the cold/flu is chicken noodle soup.

 

I made a large pot of this comforting soup and although it didn’t heal him as quickly as I hoped it would…I like to think it made him feel a little bit better.

 

After lots of rest, soup and vitamins, Mikey is finally feeling healthy again and has been able to continue with his training (phew).

Plus, this made a REALLY big batch of soup. So I stuck about half of it in airtight containers and put them in the freezer for the chilly weeks ahead.

 

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