Pretty Little Apron

shallot

Creamy White Cheddar Baked Corn

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cheddarcorn3 (1 of 1)

Corn. The glue that holds all Holiday meals together. Don’t think so? Try omitting it sometime, and everyone will just keep wondering “What’s missing here???”


I have to admit, I’ve been a corn lover my whole life. As a child I absolutely despised veggies, but corn…we got along just fine. So obviously, as an adult and a chef, I look for ways to make corn even better then it already is. I’ve found a winner here….ding, ding, ding! 🙂 Corn + cheese = yes! It doesn’t really take a genius to figure that one out though, so let’s just say I took an obvious combination and upped the ante a bit by adding a touch of white wine and a layer of crispy Fontina cheese on top!

And now… I bring to you…more processed food confessions from my childhood. Boy, I hope my parents decided my blog was too  much of a snooze-fest to even read anymore because I’ve been calling them out for all the crap they fed me as a child a lot lately! I’m just going to assume they aren’t reading and proceed to call them out yet again! The cheese whiz, the frozen pretzels, and now the Kid Cuisines (among lots of other crap). I mean, seriously…why? And who? Who goes to the grocery store and thinks processed junk food in plastic containers that you cook in a microwave seem like a good idea? Apparently my parents thought it was quite nifty because let’s just say I ate Kid Cuisines a few times a week for a few years. I’m still alive! But no wonder I was fat and awkward!

In their defense, I really loved those things. I came home from school, watched Nickelodeon, ate my TV-dinner. The life of a 90’s kid! My favorite Kid Cuisine was the tacos (ok, is talking about this crap getting creepy yet?!?!?). I refused to believe the tacos had beans in them (THEY DID) because I thought I hated beans. I also was quite the little chef because I always mixed the corn and cheese sauce and it was the best combo ever. Hence…. this recipe!

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One really important step in this recipe is making sure your frozen corn is defrosted! If it isn’t defrosted it will make the sauce runny when it defrosts in the oven. I made the same mistake one time but quickly fixed it by adding a few tablespoons of flour and baking it for a few more minutes. Flour fixes everything!

*I recommend looking for frozen corn that is organic/non-GMO verified! I used sweet corn that I froze this summer, but store bought is perfectly fine as well!

baked corn

Tex-Mex Potato Wedges

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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:

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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!

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Hand modeling jobs… here’s my audition! Come on… you know you want these beautiful un-manicured hands for your next job! 🙂

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Strawberry and Poppy Seed Salad

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strawberry salad


We’ve discussed store-bought dressings and how horrible they actually are for our health a few times before. To catch anyone who missed those posts up, turns out store bought dressings are nothing more then highly refined and cheap oils, MSG, abbreviated chemicals, and preservatives. My theory on store-bought dressings is this: If you are going to make a beautiful and nutritious salad why pour a bunch of crap on top of it? It kind of defeats the whole purpose! The other problem with store bought dressings are the unethical companies who make them. They love to pretend they are using olive oil, when in fact if you turn the bottle over you will see the main ingredient is soybean oil. Why label the front “Olive Oil” when olive oil is the 5th or 6th ingredient? Nothing makes sense about the marketing tactics they use, and I hate to see consumers who are trying to be healthy be fooled by these companies!

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With that being said, I am so happy to share this recipe with you! Nothing says “summer” quite like a strawberry and poppy seed salad. My favorite season is summer simply because of the delicious local produce stands that pop up along the country roads of Central Pennsylvania. I love, love, love local strawberries that are red throughout, small, and sweet. They are vastly different then the grocery store strawberries, and so much tastier!

 

For the salad I used dark, nutritious, leafy spring mix along with feta cheese, strawberries, and walnuts. For the dressing, all you have to do is put a few simple ingredients into a food processor, and drizzle olive oil into it. After the oil is in, add the poppy seeds and your done! There is no reason to even use store bought dressing when making your own healthy dressing is this easy!

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Whole Wheat Greek Pasta Salad

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I have been eyeing the beautiful packs of multi-colored cherry tomatoes at the grocery store ALL summer long. Each time I go, I put the pack into my cart and walk away. My kids scream, we grab a few other things, and inevitably I always end up back in the produce section talking my little self out of my way kewl pack of multi-colored tomatoes. Until today… when I put them in my cart and told my colorful produce loving self that today was the day I was taking these babies home! *yessss*


Little did those colorful cherry tomatoes know they were going home with a Greek Pasta Salad loving food blogger, and in their near future they would be slathered with an amazingly delicious homemade vinaigrette and made to mingle with some feta cheese. After that they would be gobbled up for lunch, then again for an after school snack, and again for dinner. Yes, I ate this 3 times today! I shamelessly pulled that bowl out of the refrigerator and devoured those cherry tomatoes and all of their friends like it was going out of style… FAST! So fast I left 4 noodles for my son’s lunchbox tomorrow. *SMH* So now, due to my shameless lack of self control, I will be up earlier tomorrow to prepare something else for him. Might be time to break into that freezer stash of hot lunches… on the 2nd day of school. 😉

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The pasta I use in this recipe is whole wheat, because if you’ve been following along you know we don’t mess with that refined stuff. I used a pasta that I could not find a link to on Amazon, Whole Wheat Gobbetti made by Bionaturae. I love their products, and highly recommend any of their varieties if you can’t find the Gobbetti. And seriously.. what the heck is Gobbetti anyways!?!?!

 

 

 

Summer Strawberry, Cucumber, and Feta Salad

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summersalad4 I have to say, I am loving strawberry season already! Nothing beats the fresh, local strawberries we get that are tiny, red, and sweet! I have been putting them in literally everything, including this awesome salad. This salad is a huge hit at summer picnics and parties because it is different and addictive. If you take this to any function this summer, don’t expect to bring any home. 🙂 The dressing of this salad is my homemade red wine vinaigrette. Click here to get that. I promise it is super simple and contains only a few ingredients. I don’t have a specific measurement for the dressing to go on the salad, but with any salad, just eyeball it and only add a little at a time. Remember, you can add more but can’t take dressing away once it is already on it.


Complete Meal Monday: Garlic, Shallot, and White Wine Flounder with Spinach, Watercress, and Strawberry Salad

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At times it is easier to find inspiration when you have the whole meal in front of you! I decided to start doing complete meal inspiration to help viewers visualize what unprocessed and real dinners look like. I get a lot of questions about what we eat, and while some of the recipes give a little insight, this lays out exactly what we eat in a meal. I’m not able to attach two recipes to one post, so for the red wine vinaigrette for the salad click here.

The Fish


We love fish, especially Flounder (sorry I know I need to mix up my fish recipes!). I think part of eating unprocessed foods is using different ingredients and keeping it fresh. My husband and I were both thinking about shallots for some reason so he picked up a few at the grocery store, and BAM! I have a brand new recipe to share. He tends to get random things at the grocery store which is awesome because so many new recipes of mine come from him picking up unexpected items each week. If you are just getting into eating unprocessed foods one of the best things to do is try new things, and fill your refrigerator with fresh produce and herbs. I made a nice white wine sauce to bake over this flounder, which included butter, shallots, garlic, lemon, white wine, and fresh parsley. Not only is it beautiful, it tastes amazing!

The Salad

I can’t stress this enough.. making your own dressings is an essential part of eating unprocessed foods because store bought dressings are some of the worst products on grocery store shelves. It gets even worse because almost all of the companies making bottled dressings use unethical labeling to trick consumers into thinking they are getting a quality product. In reality 95% of bottled dressings are made of soybean oil, MSG, preservatives, and unlabeled ingredients under the “natural flavors” loophole. I’ve talked about Hidden Valley Ranch, so I won’t go over that again. However, sometimes vinaigrettes slip through the cracks because people assume they are just oil and vinegar. Here are the ingredients in WishBone’s Balsamic Breeze Salad Spritzer (I couldn’t find the Red Wine one online, hopefully they don’t make it anymore):

Ingredients: Water, Balsamic Vinegar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Soybean Oil, Salt, Distilled Vinegar, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Onion Juice, Garlic Juice, Xanthan Gum, Natural Flavors (Soy), (Sorbic Acid, Calcium Disodium EDTA) Used To Protect Quality, Wine, Sulfur Dioxide (Used To Protect Quality).

These ingredients just make me sad. I would honestly look at this product and think it was a healthier alternative to regular bottled dressing because you just spray it on. The only ingredients this product should have are olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and spices. I have NO idea where the high fructose corn syrup, EDTA, or emulsifiers came from. Shame on WishBone for tricking consumers like this!

With that being said, this salad is one of my favorites! I’m a feta lover, and the saltiness of feta cheese pairs perfectly with strawberries. I also threw in some walnuts, spinach, and watercress and had a delicious salad loaded with tons nutrition. I mentioned previously, I can’t attach two recipes to one post, so if you want the dressing recipe click here. To make this salad just desired amount of ingredients with a small amount of dressing and enjoy! A little bit of this dressing goes a long way!

 

Red Wine Vinaigrette

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redwinevin

I love this dressing on a spinach salad with feta, strawberries, and walnuts. This can also be used in place of Italian dressing in pasta salad recipes, or use for marinating chicken. It is super versatile and easy to make!