good morning! hope you have all had a wonderful week, and i hope your friday is lovely. i am looking forward to a weekend full of family and love as we celebrate my god-sister’s baby shower! so much fun. this week i have had some pretty boring meals, though i did test a fun recipe for the newsletter last night! i have a few more tweaks until i share.
results of a fun poll i did on instagram this week. monday’s dinner was 2 pieces of toast — one with avo, lemon, and tomato. the other with almond butter, banana, honey, and cinnamon. which would you choose?
now, onto the recipes!
grilled whole zucchini
this past weekend, we got the most perfect tiny zucchinis from the farmer’s market. when it came time for dinner, we thought about grilling them up like usual (sliced into long sticks), but since they were so small, we just tossed them with oil and salt and threw them on the grates whole! they turned out so yummy and had a totally different flavor and texture than usual. they were sweet and almost creamy. i cut mine lengthwise like a baked potato and sprinkled it with flaky sea salt. it was the perfect bite of summer. so, if you see small early-summer zucchinis at your market, i encourage you to try grilling them whole!
kale salad with sugar snap peas and mint
the trick to a delicious kale salad is to chop up the kale suuuuuper finely! then, once it’s chopped, add it to your bowl and sprinkle it with sea salt and a splash of oil. use your hands to massage the oil in. let the kale sit while you prep the rest of your ingredients. this helps avoid the fibrous kale issue in which you feel like kale is either too hard to eat raw or is too hard on your stomach. now that you know that, we can make a kale salad!
ingredients:
1 head of curly kale, leaves de-ribbed
4-5 mint leaves
a handful or two of sugar snap peas, cut diagonally
crumbled goat cheese (as much as you want)
1 shallot, minced
**optional** 1 peach or nectarine, sliced
dressing:
storebought version: whisk 2 tbsp fresh squeezed lemon juice with 2 tbsp storebought honey mustard dressing, a pinch of coarse sea salt, and fresh ground pepper
homemade version: whisk 2 tbsp lemon juice, 1 tbsp honey, and 2 tbsp dijon mustard with a splash of ice cold water. add coarse sea salt and fresh ground pepper.
make it:
finely chop and massage the kale, set aside.
cut the sugar snap peas diagonally and add to the kale.
chop the shallot and mint leave, add to salad.
season with coarse sea salt and pepper.
make salad dressing and toss the salad.
top with crumbled goat cheese and fruit (if using).
cocktails with wil: mai tai!
hot temperatures are already here. i don’t know when summer officially begins, but here in alabama it seems to have arrived. when the temps are high and the days are long, i really like to wind down with something bright and tropical. when i say tropical i think a lot of people cringe with ideas of fruity frozen drinks or floating pineapple wedges and sugar on sugar. this mai tai recipe is bright and refreshing without being a sugar bomb, it goes back to what a mai tai was created to be, not what it has become at dive bars and crab shacks. there’s only one ingredient that y’all may not have on your bar, but i promise it’s a worthy buy, and will last you forever.
classic mai tai:
2oz rum (some recipes call for a 2:1 mix of a white rum and aged rum respectively, i say use what you got, but always be open to trying something new)
1/2oz orange curaçao
1/2oz orgeat syrup (this is the ‘odd-man’ ingredient, but it is a MUST HAVE)
1/2oz fresh lime juice
1-2 mint leaves
throw all of your liquids in a shaker tin and shake. pour it into a glass with some of the shaken ice (that’s right you don’t even need a strainer for this one) and garnish with a mint leaf. that’s it. preferably enjoy on your front porch in front of a beautiful sunset and your jealous neighbors. cheers!
peach and cherry crumble / pie
i am no baker… but every now and then inspiration strikes and i feel the NEED to bake something. this weekend, i made a peach and dark cherry pie / crumble and it turned out so delicious.
i am going to make it again so i can write down the recipe and share it, but here are the main points:
cook peaches and pitted cherries over medium heat with a drizzle of honey to release the juices. remove the fruit with a slotted spoon. add in a few tbsp of cornstarch to the fruit. then to the pan, add about an oz of brandy, 2 tbsp of butter, squeeze of lemon, 1/4 cup of brown sugar, and tbsp of cornstarch and allow it to heat and reduce. add sauce and fruit to the pie shell and top with a mix of flour, oats, slivered almonds, butter and brown sugar. bake at 350 for about 30 min!