avocado

Italian Avocado Salad

June 19, 2018 by Dana

This Italian Avocado Salad is everything avocado dreams are made of! Delicious, fresh ingredients, with a creamy homemade Italian dressing…. you really can’t go wrong here! Pair it with your favorite protein and you have a delicious meal! 🙂

I was at the grocery store today and had in my mind that I’d like to make an avocado salad with my Creamy Italian Dressing recipe. I have been trying to find new ways to eat avocados because of all the health benefits. This recipe is an avocado home run!

Not only was the recipe delicious, I found the PERFECT bag of avocados. Not too mushy, but not un-ripe. Small seeded so that one side doesn’t have to be completely uprooted to remove the seed. The skins peeled right off. I mean, in the avocado world I basically hit the jackpot! I was peeling those babies like YESSS this is avocado life.

*Side note: You should start peeling your avocados! A lot of the good nutrients are right under the skin and when we scoop them out instead of peeling we loose important stuff. Peeling also allows you to cut some pretty impressive chunks for this salad. I simply slice the avocado in half, then slice it into chunks when it is still in the peel. If your avocado is perfectly ripe you should be able to start peeling it from one of the edges. If you are finding it hard, slice the little nugget on the end off and you should be able to start peeling.

Keto Diet Update

This is the part where I talk about my diet, so if you aren’t interested just scroll. 🙂

I mentioned in my Keto Approved Burger post that I started the Keto diet. I’ll be 100% honest here, it hasn’t been unicorns and rainbows. I’ve had some ups and downs due to breastfeeding and being concerned about the safety during this time. I’ve gotten off track quite a few times but somehow I always seem to reset and start again. I’m on a roll this time, and hoping to continue!

Storing Your Italian Avocado Salad

We all know that avocados can brown very quickly! The dressing in this salad prevents this to a certain degree. I would suggest making the salad at the time you are going to eat it, and finishing it within a day or two. I’ve stored mine overnight and had no browning/turning to mush but the second day I finished it.

If you are making the salad for a gathering or picnic I would suggest putting it together 1-2 hours before you go. A bit of time in the refrigerator is great because it allows the flavors to come together, but isn’t enough time for the avocado to start looking funky.

One More Thing

My Creamy Italian Dressing recipe yields about 2 cups of dressing, which is a lot more then you will need for this salad. I cut the original recipe in half for this salad and it was plenty. If you’d like to have some extra dressing (it is super delicious), then you can double the dressing ingredients. In my original recipe I was using a food processor to make the dressing, however I no longer have that (long story), so I just used a bowl and a whisk. The food processor makes a thicker dressing, but you certainly can get away with just whisking super vigorously and making sure you pour your oil in slowly. I also omitted the red pepper flakes because I just didn’t think they would mesh well with the avocado.

Grilled Cilantro Lime Chicken & Guac

March 26, 2017 by Dana

Grab your tortilla chips and get prepared for some fresh guacamole and perfectly grilled chicken! This Grilled Cilantro Lime Chicken & Guac does not disappoint in the flavor department and takes only a few minutes to prepare. Weeknight grilling for the win!

Truth: I’m trying to fit more fruits, veggies, healthy fats, and lean protein into my diet. All winter I wasn’t taking into consideration what I was eating, and I found myself mostly snacking on carbs all day. In my Balsamic Glazed Grilled Chicken recipe, I discussed prepping meals ahead of time to try to balance my diet a bit more. So far it is working great, except when my husband comes home and eats all of the portions I made in advance. Meal prep fail! His job is super labor intensive, so I guess he gets a pass to go on this one. 🙂

Cilantro is super popular, but I feel it is so underrated! Every time I purchase a bunch of cilantro at the grocery store I:

Immediately smell it 1,000 times
Make a gorgeous salad with a cilantro lime dressing
Make fresh guac, of course
Start putting it on everything until it goes bad

But for real, this Grilled Cilantro Lime Chicken & Guac is one of my favorite uses for it. You just can’t beat a perfectly grilled piece of chicken, seasoned to perfection, bursting with bold flavors, and perfect for leftovers! I mentioned meal prepping earlier and this chicken made awesome salads the rest of the week for me. I tossed it with some dark leafy greens, a few tortilla chips as croutons, fresh avocado, cherry tomatoes, cheddar cheese, and my favorite ranch dressing. Yum!

Grilling Tips

I have a few grilling tips I’ve repeated here about 1,000 times but here goes again! I suggest generously seasoning your meat with coarse kosher salt and black pepper beforehand. This is an important part of this recipe because bland chicken is no good! Next, I would suggest using thin cut chicken breasts, or filleting and pounding your chicken breasts flat with a meat tenderizer. This also makes a huge difference in how your chicken grills, and eliminates that super fat part that contributes to uneven grilling and a bland end product.

Grilled Surf & Turf Tacos

February 19, 2017 by Dana

Tacos are a family favorite here, and these Grilled Surf & Turf Tacos did not disappoint! They are so quick to put together, and a perfect meal for any night of the week.

One quick thing to point out about life in general. Target now has organic flour tortillas and that means my life is basically complete. For years (I’m not kidding) I’ve been looking for a store bought flour tortilla that did not contain hydrogenated oils, also known as trans fats. I was able to find ONE product at Giant that did not. ONE. They are good, but I like options!

Now there are two! So I can now go to Target, get a latte from Starbucks, buy diapers, groceries, and tortillas all in one place. Yeeessss. 🙂

Not only did I find flour tortillas that checked out in the ingredient department, I also found a huge bin of Avocados From Mexico right next to the tortilla section. In the bin I found the perfectly ripened avocado. Not too mushy, not too firm, but right in between. It sliced so perfectly for these Grilled Surf & Turf Tacos. The best part… I wasn’t even there for tortillas or avocados!! haha In fact, I don’t even know what I was there for!

Only. At. Target.

In my Fiesta Grilled Chicken recipe I shared a spice mix that I use for grilled meats for tacos, burritos, quesadillas, etc. This recipe is exactly like that one, in that I just use a few spices and I’m done! No packets for seasoning, or out of the ordinary ingredients. I love these simple recipes and my family does too!

Speaking of packets… a friend was just over at my house the other day and mentioned that she has always wanted to make her own taco seasoning mix but she just didn’t know what to use. I got mine off of the back of a can of beans one day. I have honestly not picked up a packet since then. It is so simple! You can totally play around with ratios of course,and add in other ingredients as you taste test and figure out what you like the best. Per pound of ground beef I use:

2 Tablespoons chili powder
2 Tablespoons cumin
2 teaspoons adobo seasoning
salt and pepper to taste

The adobo seasoning does contain sodium, so I do go light on the salt. This recipe is similar, I’m just using steak instead of ground beef. Those 3 spices are the best together and are a great foundation for making your own taco seasoning. I’m sure I’ll be posting a ton of other recipes using them since my kids love this stuff and so do I!

Pork Carnita Bowl

September 5, 2014 by Dana

Let’s just get real here…. these Pork Carnita Bowls are ridiculous. Ridiculously good that is! So ridiculously good that my husband took one bite and said “This is way better than Chipotle.” EXACTLY what I was thinking all day when I was eating it. Yes, I was chowing down on the meat all day because I decided it would be a good idea to make it ahead of time. That turned out to be a horrible idea!

Why is it a horrible idea you ask? Because you will want to eat half of it before the rest of your family even knows it is in existence. You might even think up some evil plot to hide it from everyone and pretend it never happened just so you can have it all to yourself. I’m not saying any evil plots went on inside my kitchen today, but I definitely ate a good third of the meat before anyone else even had the chance to taste it. When my toddler caught wind of what was going on he was trying to smuggle handfuls of meat into the living room without being noticed. Not gonna happen on my watch, bebe, because I know all about them smuggling tricks. I’m the master smuggler with my expensive organic chocolate bars that I’m so NOT sharing with any kiddos. I know all about hiding in a corner or closet and quickly enjoying every delicious bite before someone notices. At which point I pretend like I have no idea what chocolate they are speaking of. Chocolate? Where? 😉

Just incase anyone was wondering what exactly a carnita bowl is, here is my super awesome step-by-step picture thingy for your viewing pleasure. It is basically just like a bowl that you would get a chipotle, minus the random ingredients they use. Speaking of random ingredients I now present you with my Chipotle public service announcement. If you don’t care please pretend like I’m saying this really quickly just like the person at the end of the pill commercial who tells you your probably going to just drop dead as soon as you take it. Here goes:

Chipotle is not healthy fast food. Their wraps contain partially hydrogenated oils (aka trans fats) and a bunch of other crap. They use genetically engineered soybean oil in all of their products. Just because they have cool bags and make claims like “grass fed” and “better” doesn’t mean they aren’t sneaking crap into your food. The End. Now please, look at my cool picture thingy! And while your at it Pin the picture thingy so other people can see how awesome it is.

Wow, that was awesome sauce, wasn’t it? 🙂 Now, let’s talk more about making the meat because I have a serious confession. You may have noticed, I don’t really do slow cooker meals. I know, I know, the new moms need slow cooker meals! But I’m over that phase right now (phew!) and slow cookers are just too boring for me. I need to be able to see the food and play with it while it is cooking because I’m just ADHD like that. I can’t bear the thought of putting my beautiful pork roast in a lonely, not to mention ugly (my mom got it for a wedding gift like 100 years ago and it is that baby poop green color. Anyone from that time want to explain that color to me?) slow cooker and leaving it all by it’s lonesome for a few hours. I mean, come on people, pork roasts need some lovin’ too and my ugly slow cooker isn’t doing the job. I just can’t. This is my officially official apology to all the slow cooker lovers. I’m sorry!

*This recipe would work wonderfully in a slow cooker though, so if your not as ADHD about food as me, give it a try!

So what did I do if I didn’t use a slow cooker? I simply used my stovetop on low heat for about 90 minutes. Yes, 90 minutes to all of this awesomeness. That potentially means you could throw this on the stove when you get home from work along with the rice, go do a bunch of crap that you didn’t really want to do, and come back to some wonderful carnitas. If you are more of a nacho, taco, or burrito person this meat would be amazing served in any of those ways as well.

Carnita Bowl Seasoned Rice

Ingredients:

2 cups rice
1/4 tsp kosher salt
generous sprinkle adobo seasoning
1 sweet bell pepper (red, orange, or yellow preferred)
1/4 cup fresh cilantro

Directions: Put rice, seasoning, pepper, and water needed to cook rice into a pot and cook according to package directions. When rice is cooked, fluff with a fork and add chopped cilantro.

Tex-Mex Potato Wedges

July 23, 2014 by Dana

I’m just going to throw this out there…. these Tex-Mex Potato Wedges are epic. So epic I’ve included a ridiculous amount of food porn! They are over the top delicious and possibly one of my all time favorite food creations. These potatoes do take a little bit more time to put together then your average baked potato wedge recipe but they are soooooo worth it in the end!

Here are the steps to making these amazingly cheesy and delicious wedges:

I’ve said this before and I will say it again… the key to the perfect oven baked potato wedges is boiling your potatoes before you bake them. This ensures you are going to get a really nice fluffy inside with a super crispy outside. Essentially that is what the perfect wedge is to me! The other important part of this recipe is seasoning the potatoes correctly. I’ve included the spices that I used, which are pretty standard tex-mex spices.

My secret weapon when it comes to the perfect looking potato wedges is paprika. You want color on your potatoes and paprika is going to do that for you. Although this recipe already has chili powder in it, I still sprinkled extra paprika on the potatoes just to bump up the food porn appeal! One last thing to note about the spices… measure your cumin people! Too much cumin will ruin these potatoes so I wouldn’t recommend going over 1/4 tsp.

As for the toppings, the sky is the limit! I topped mine with sour cream (which I consider essential), avocado, and fresh tomatoes. Of course we needed to throw in some fresh produce to combat all of the cheese!