Tag Archives: sides

the Great Recipe Experiment: #8-Romano Zucchini Sticks

It’s been a busy spring.  So busy that I’ve fallen behind in my Recipe Experiments. But there’s one thing I never fall behind on:

Glee.

Yes, it’s true.  I’m a Gleek.  A huge one, too.  But I’m not alone.  There’s many of us.  We are legion.  We are loyal.  And we love to throw Glee parties and drink mojito slushies.  In fact, we had one such occasion this past Tuesday at the house of my fabulous friends, Brian and Rita.  We had a potluck dinner, complete with chicken marbella (delicious), quinoa (delicious), homemade bread (delicious), a corn-feta salsa (supremely delicious), more potato and corn chips than is probably healthy, homemade wine, the mojitos (of course) and these zucchini sticks.

Chase signed up to be the taster for this particular recipe experiment and he approves.  I’m in fact going to order a stamp that says “Chase Approves” and use it accordingly.  Seriously.  Well maybe not seriously.  But maybe seriously.  How much do stamps cost anyway?

This was a Parmesan zucchini recipe that I found originally on Cooking Light and then adapted a bit.  It makes a good appetizer, crunchy, delicious, and in there underneath the awesomeness and the bread crumbs is a vegetable.  So that counts towards your daily 5.  Just FYI.  And these are in fact so easy that I just prepared the parts of the recipe at home, brought it all to Brian’s and then assembled and baked them there.  About 5 minutes of prep, 20 minutes of baking and that’s all there is to it. Continue reading

Well Ain’t That Some Fancy Corn

The children of the corn give this two thumbs up

It’s officially summer here.  It’s sunny, it’s 80 degrees at 11am in the morning, my farm share is starting next week (!) and my husband can barely stand to go outside.  Yep, officially summer.

Every summer I seem to have a meal that I make on a regular basis, far more than anything else.  When I was 15, it was grilled chicken and rice.  Like every day of summer vacation.  Last year, it was hamburgers.  I seem to be coming into my groove when making burgers now.  It may sound weird, but ground beef brisket is the way to go, mixed in with a bit of ground pork if you’re of a mind, topped with a good flavorful cheese and onions that have been diced and cooked in butter with some dried herbs, and some guacamole.  But this year, this year my summer is apparently going to be embodied by simple evening meals of some good old grilled beef hot dogs and sausages.  Simple, quick, tasty, easy…perfect for hot weather, heavy on the sodium but light on my wallet.  But sometimes I feel the need to kick things up a notch and instead of slaving over an elaborate main dish, I instead serve the sausages simple and grilled (with some onions and peppers, of course) and pair them up with an awesome side dish instead.  Enter the corn. Continue reading

Green Goddess Potato Salad…

…for when those ribeyes you grilled just aren’t fatty enough.

The inspiration from this came from FoodTV’s 5 Ingredient Fix, during an episode of which the host made a side dish called “Green Goddess Rice.”  Josh and I decided to grill steaks tonight and were thinking of a side dish.  He ingeniously suggested using up some of the couple pounds worth of redskin potatoes we got from our farm share this week.  I thought, hmmm.  Rice, potatoes…both starches, right?  Sure.  Let’s just make a potato salad with green goddess dressing instead.

So…that’s what I did.

I steamed a bit over a pound of redskin new potatoes.  I figured the steaming would be good, as it would retain the most nutrients from the potato skin, which I would then liberally coat with a layer of fat.  Mostly healthy fat, though…right?  Right…?  Yeah.  Anyway.  Recipe below! Continue reading