As the only female in our home, there aren’t a whole lot of pink things floating around the house. Pink isn’t even one of my favorite colors (despite the fact that my 4 year old insists that as a girl, I am required to have pink or purple as my favorite color), in fact, it is noticeably absent in most rooms, especially when compared to my friends with daughters.

Even in cooking, aside from artificially dyed foods, pink is rare.  Other than certain fish and meat, pink is not a common food color.  But it was with delight that I made pink pickles last week.  Let me explain...

One of my good friends has a sweet, sweet little two year old little girl.  Her older brother is good friends with R and G, and recently she tagged along with her big brother for a play date.  I was in heaven:  I was able to do all sorts of girlie-girl play, stickers, coloring (my boys like to draw, but coloring, not so much) and the like.

Our garden is sprouting out zucchini at an incredible pace.  Add in the zucchini we are receiving through our Community Supported Agriculture Cooperative (CSA), and it is fair to say we have a good amount of zucchini with which to cook.  My guess is that if you have zucchini growing in your garden, you have a bumper crop too.  Zucchini grow from small to huge in mere days and each time I walk through our garden, there’s a new crop.

Here’s a fun recipe to try with zucchini, whether home-grown or store bought.  I took the components of bruschetta, an Italian appetizer that is essentially bread, with garlic, tomatoes, olive oil, salt and pepper and jazzed it up and stuffed the zucchini with them.  The result was delicious, a new favorite way to serve zucchini.

Bruschetta Stuffed Zucchini

2 zucchini
1 tablespoon olive oil

Do you have a repertoire of meals you keep in your back pocket when you are busy and aren’t feeling particularly creative?  The recipes you know pretty much by heart and can go to the grocery store, without a list, and purchase the items for your meal.

Most weeks, I am cooking at least a couple new meals or dishes.  But when my creativity fails me or when we are just too darn busy to allow me time to experiment in the kitchen, we have a list of probably 8-10 meals that we fall back upon time and time again.  

Side note:  if you don’t have an idea of a few meals that you can know the ingredient list without looking, I highly encourage you to do so.  I can’t tell you how many time this “list” has helped me during a grocery store visit in which I realize I need another dinner for the week.  Your list of meals need not be fancy or complicated, it could be as simple as pasta with jarred sauce or a chopped salad.

It wasn’t that long ago that low-carbohydrate and no-carb recipes, meals and diets were all the rage.  I had a co-worker who went no-carb for bit, and while he was committed to his meat-cheese-limited vegetables diet, it just seemed off-kilter to me.  One idea did stick with me though from the days of typing next to a eat-no-carbs friend, and I recently resurrected the idea to jazz up a summer salad of tomatoes and basil.

Salad Caprese, the simply delicious salad composed of fresh tomatoes, fresh basil and fresh mozzarella is a staple in our summer diet.  Sprinkled with a light dash of extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper, Salad Caprese tastes like summer, pure and simple.

And while I have yet to meet a fresh Salad Caprese I don’t love, this quick and easy take on it has also found a special place in my heart.  Using freshly shredded Parmesan cheese, cooked over a skillet, you can create Parmesan crisps in place of using the fresh mozzarella.

In my family it is practically the law that you make sure you have enough food for family gatherings to feed 2-3 times the people that plan to attend.  I come from a long line (on both sides of my family lineage) of hospitable folks who consider it almost a sin to not have enough food for everyone to fill full to the max and to have a bag of goodies to take for the road.

SPH and I share this food philosophy so invariably when we host folks we have leftovers.  Most leftovers keep quite well, so one of the greatest joys of hosting a big, delicious food gathering is reliving it the next day or so with the remaining morsels of yum.  

One leftover that doesn’t do so well though is bread.  There’s a reason that if you go to a bakery they sell day-old bread at half the price:  old bread’s appeal fades quickly.  But recently we’ve given an Italian spin to what to do with leftover bread, using it in a bread salad or panzenella.

Our CSA has provided us with fresh, locally grown, pesticide-free spinach for the last three weeks.  The spinach is just beautiful for salads, but since R is not a big salad fan, I’ve tried to come up with some creative ways to use all the spinach.

I’ve had my fair share of salads for lunch, since along side the spinach we have received red and green leaf lettuce and other various types of greens.  This week I waved the white flag and decided I’d had enough of salads and started brainstorming ideas for new ways to use the spinach.

My mind jumped to a rice and spinach bake that my mom used to make eons ago.  I don’t have the original recipe, but I started thinking about how I could make a main dish course out of the spinach.  I used my mom’s old recipe and what I could remember of it as a launching point, then decided to make it a Greek rendition, with feta cheese.  I replaced the rice with quinoa to ensure the dish would have complete protein, and voila, Spinach Feta Quinoa was born.  

Spinach Feta Quinoa

I sometimes joke that my only exposure to seafood before I met my fish-ophile husband was canned tuna.  Not entirely true, but the large majority of my seafood meals pre-1996 surrounded tuna from a can.

Memorial Day weekend is upon us and with it, the unofficial start of summer.  No matter what your weather this weekend, this unique fish recipe will have you dreaming of the tropics.

Poaching fish is a new technique for me, and while it intimidated me for awhile, I have discovered that it is really quite easy and very healthful.  Instead of a broth or water-based liquid for this recipe, I used light coconut milk.  Paired with ginger and lime it evokes images of tropical beaches, sand and an overall easy breezy attitude.

Add whatever vegetables you choose and alter the fish to fit your budget and taste.  I used tilapia, a widely available, sustainable and affordable fish.

Poached Coconut Fish

1 teaspoon vegetable oil
3 cloves garlic, minced

(Don’t forget to enter the Le Creuset give away!  I’ll choose a winner randomly on Friday, May 13th.)

This May I am challenging you to try “Meatless Mondays” in your family.  I continue this week with another recipe to inspire you.  Last week I shared an easy baked tortellini, today a recipe made with whole wheat couscous.

Welcome to May—a happy month of flowers, Mother’s Day and if you happen to be like my mom or dad, wedding anniversaries.  During this happy month of May, I challenge you to try something new:  during this month of May, try celebrating Meatless Monday.