Grilled Vegetable Salad

This meal was inspired solely from a trip to the farmers market and it was so good I’ve already made it twice. It is so good because the vegetables are locally grown and so fresh, and also preparing vegetables on the grill give them such a good flavor, and it’s a great way to make a salad more unique. I used grilled asparagus, summer squash and zucchini, but you can really use anything you want ! After slicing and grilling all of the vegetables, I just mixed them into a bowl of spinach. Again, I love making salads with spinach because it does the same job as lettuce but you get so many more beneficial vitamins. Also, the spinach leaves are sturdier and hold up better, as compared to a bag of spring mix salad for example. Both times I made this salad, I made a homemade balsamic vinaigrette / dressing to go with it. It was just a combination of almost equal parts oil and balsamic vinegar, and then maybe some freshly pressed garlic and one or two teaspoons of Dijon mustard. It was a simple yet delicious dressing to go with a simple yet delicious salad !

Pickin's Dinner

I was hanging out at the Waterman's house, just chilling and drinking stick wine with DMa. Stick wine, aka Cantina Zaccagini, can be described as "a dashing wine with exuberant and savory flavors of juicy black fruit, coffee, chocolate and vanilla, with tannins that are smooth as silk." Its absolutely delicious and very please to drink with a meal or on its own.

**note the stick - hence the name stick wine

After drinking a bottle, we decided we were getting hungry for dinner. We were trying to think of a restaurant in town that we could get some good take out from, and really couldn't come up with anything that sounded appealing. Instead we headed into the kitchen to see what we could come up with ourselves. The end product was quite impressive and better than any take out available in Westborough !

DMa had a recipie she wanted to try out - breaded baked artichoke hearts. It was a very easy and healthy recipe. Open a can of artichoke hearts, dip them into an egg, dip them into some bread crumbs, put them on a baking sheet, bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes. DMa also whipped up a delicious dipping sauce for these bad boys. Again very easy - not so healthy. It was a combination of mayonaise, half a clove of crushed garlic, and a squeeze of lemon juice. This dish was tasty and would be a great appitizer or side dish for almost any meal.

Baked artichoke hearts and reheated take out buffalo chicken fingers.

While DMa was working on that I was brainstorming what I should make. The recipe she had was printed out from a cooking website, and had a list of other dishes on it as well. One of the dishes listed was a salad with quinoa. Quinoa is a super grain ! Its very high and protein and provides a complete set of amino acids for the human body. It is also a great source of fiber and is gluten free. It is great to add hardiness to salads, or can be served with herbs and spices as a side dish similar to couscous.

I took this idea as inspiration and raided DMa's pantry and fridge to come up with the rest. The end result was amazing, if I do say so myself. I combined spinach, black beans, roast corn, fresh tomatoes, roasted red peppers, Mediterranean dressed quinoa, and lemon juice. When I was making it, I was a bit nervous that I was making too much and no one would really like it, but it was definitely gone in 15 minutes, and me and DMa ended up making it again the next day for lunch !


To make the Mediterrainian dressing for the quinoa, DMa equally combined a sweet pommegrante paste, a mildly spicy red pepper paste, pommegrante molasses, and pommegrante balsamic vinegar. This definitely added a lot of flavor to the plain grain and took the salad from decent to spectacular. These ingredients can be found at a Mediterranian or ethnic foods specialty market.


We thought the entire meal was sooo delicious. Our enthusiasm may or may not have been affected by the fact that by the time we finished dinner we were two bottles deep in stick wine.

3 Pepper Salad with Shrimp

This recipe was influenced by one of my favorite bloggers, Jenna from Eat,Live,Run. I used her shrimp taco recipe for inspiration and made a salad with three different varieties of peppers, avocado, and corn, along with other delicious and fresh ingredients. The peppers I used ranged from sweet to hot and spicy, and the variety gave the salad a lot of bright colors.


It was really simple to make. First, I chopped up the cilantro, tomato, peppers, and avocado and put them into a bowl of spinach. To cut the avocado into chunks I used a technique my friend Sandra always uses : cut the avocado in half the long way, pull it apart, cut into it a few times horizonally and vertically, and then flip the peel inside out and use your fingers or a spoon to release the chunks you have made. This is a good technique to give the pieces and even size and to help them keep their shape - because sometimes avocado can get pretty slimy and messy (mmmm guacamole !!).


I used frozen shrimp so I defrosted them under warm running water, pulled off the tails and threw them in with the rest of the chopped ingredients. While they were defrosting, I boiled some water and cooked an ear of corn in it for 5 minutes, then cut it off of the cob and combined it into the salad. The final touch was roughly 3 tablespoons of lime juice.

This salad was sooo good ! So many colors, textures, and flavors - it was completely satisfying and still super healthy. My favorite was the contrast between the sweet corn and the spicy pepperocini. I will definitely be making this again, and next time I will put in more of the spicy pepper !

Ingredients :

2 cups of spinach

1 fist sized bunch of cilantro

1/2 yellow bell pepper

1/2 poblano pepper

1/4 spicy pepperocini pepper (I was afraid to over do it with the heat, but next time I will definitely use 1/2 of the pepper)

1 black avocado

1 medium sized vine tomato

1 cup of frozen shrimp

1 ear of fresh sweet corn on the cob

3 tablespoons of lime juice