Beet Pesto

I love a good pesto on pasta, burgers, as a dip, or on veggies. I love it made from basil and pine nuts, sundried tomatoes, or really anything. I just love that it's a super flavourful and vibrant sauce.

Today's recipe takes vibrant to a new level. It's a sweet, rich, and über vibrant Beet Pesto and it's perfect for serving in place of any of your favourite pestos.

If this recipe reminds you of something else you've seen on my blog, it might be because it's really similar to my Alien Spaghetti I made for Halloween last year! But considering this recipe has cheese in it and is a little hardier, I like it even more!

Winter Salad

It's still October, but I can feel winter's cold breath on my cheeks when I bike to work in the morning. And while most people wouldn't be excited about crafting up a salad for dinner this time of year, I think that's pretty much a perfect choice.

No, I'm not crazy or having a hot flash. I just mean a different kind of salad than a bright summer salad. I'm not using juicy, grilled peaches or fresh off the vine cherry tomatoes, instead I'm using cooler weather ingredients to make my perfect winter salad. It's full of bright citrus, bitter radicchio, walnuts, and dates. To me, it's a perfect winter salad and the thought of it gets me through those chilly winter bike rides (especially when it's paired with a glass of white wine!)

Thai One On

I never thought I'd be one of those girls that could order a salad for dinner and be satisfied. And, to be fair, normally I'm not satisfied. Normally I'm still hungry after eating just a salad.

But the salad I'm sharing today is different. It's full of Asian flavour, filling because of the peanuts, and incredibly healthy so you don't feel bad going back for seconds or even thirds.

Ok, so maybe I ate a lot of the salad and that's why I was full.... But I swear, it's a good one!

Ribbons of Happiness

My mom rarely let's me buy her anything, so when she let me buy her a spiralizer, I knew it must be something she really wanted. To me it just looked like another one use kitchen gadget, the kind that you keep in your cupboard to collect dust until you finally have that urge to pull it out and do that one thing it does.

I might sound a wee bit like an infomercial, but it does so much more than one thing. And it's so much fun to use too!

I have spiralizer so many fruits and veggies for salads, cooked my spiralized ribbons, and fried them too. I now love my spiralizer and use it often. So it's time for me to share another delicious recipe that can be made with a spiralizer or even just with a grater, a mandoline, or some crafty knife work. Your choice.

Bananas For Breakfast

There is nothing I love more than a leisurely long weekend breakfast. I love throwing a big breakfast for friends and enjoying one with my sweetie in our pjs. If you asked me to choose which I loved more, I don't think I could do it.

For BC Day this year, I made one of my most simple pancake recipes and topped it with a truly decadent sauce. It's a little reminiscent of bananas foster, but or so simple and perfect for a leisurely long weekend breakfast.

Ready for my Brandy Banana Nut Pancakes? Read on for the recipe!

Fungi Nights

If I had to eat one thing every single night of the week, I don't even have to think about what I would choose. I know it would be pizza. Pizza can be done in a million ways and not one of them are bad. Plus, almost every single pizza I've ever eaten contains cheese in some form and if you know me, you know how much I love cheese!

Today's pizza is my version of a fungi pizza. It's not a first date pizza because of all the roasted garlic and blue cheese, but it's certainly the pizza I'd choose to make for a 10th date. It's a real winner.

Once You Pop, You Can't Stop

It can be hard to find yummy vegetarian game day snacks, but yummy vegan game day snacks you can pretty much forget about. Unless you count raw veggies with hummus, but I don't that as a yummy game day snack. 

Veganricha made an awesome vegan Jalepeno Popper dip that I definitely count though. It is rich and cheesy but contains no cheese whatsoever. I made a few changes to Veganricha's recipe to quicken up the process but the original pretty delicious. It just takes a little more time than my version. 

Thai-ed Up

After I get home from work I have had days where I am completely exhausted. It's hot out, I've had a busy day, or I just don't feel like cooking. But I usually want to eat something healthy, so I'm not ordering a pizza.

Those are days I hope I remember this Peanut Butter Thai Noodle Salad recipe. This dish is no-cook, quick, healthy, and yummy. Plus it makes enough for leftovers for the next night and that's always a plus - if the dish is good!

Baby Beluga

I tried caviar once, but it wasn't for me. The texture was too weird and each mouthful was too salty for me to enjoy it. I'm just not that fancy a girl.

But when I heard about beluga lentils, I knew I'd love them. I love everything about lentils and a special lentil with a name that attributed to caviar? I am completely on board with that. It took me awhile to find beluga lentils (I found them at Bulk Barn, which really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who knows me), and I discovered I do love them. 

So for May's new ingredient of the month, here's a new recipe starring beluga lentils - Sweet and Spicy Sweet Potato and Beluga Lentil Salad. 

The New Tuna Salad

To continue my week of celebrating chia seeds, I created a really quick and tasty salad featuring my new Chia Salad Dressing. I never used to get completely full after eating only a salad for dinner, but my previous thinking changed when I dove into this salad with a salad dressing full of chia seeds and a lovely piece of seared tuna. 

Check out my recipe for Seared Tuna Salad with Chia Dressing below!

Bunny Love

Who doesn't love cookies? To me cookies symbolize a holiday because I always have some delicious little buttery morsels at Christmas, Easter, and other celebrations. While I might make a batch of chocolate chip cookies now and then throughout the year, I tend to choose to bake an easy cake rather than individual little cookies more often.

But considering how much I love cookies, I think that should change. And I think you might tend to agree with me when you see how perfect these Linzer Cookies came out. They're so much easier than you would ever guess!

Smoking Good

If it wasn't for Luke, I think that I would completely eliminate fish from my diet and become a true vegetarian. But since he loves fish so much, I have merely cut back on how much fish we eat. We try to eat sustainable and local fish and that's easier than you might think, especially because we live on Vancouver Island. 

Since today is his birthday, I've been making a lot of special fish meals to try and figure out his perfect birthday dinner. Because he has been talking about spending the day out on a boat, I needed a recipe that would quick to make and still special and delicious. 

I think I came up with the perfect dish, a Smoked Tuna Pasta with Preserved Lemon and Mint. 

Raw Cashew Love

As you might reminder, I told myself that I'd try a new food each month of 2014. I've done well so far and don't plan on giving up. So this month's new food is raw cashews.

Raw cashews are something you wouldn't want to snack on because they aren't roasted and salted into the cashews we typically know and love. But raw cashews are truly perfect for making a cheese-less cheese sauce and that's something worth talking about.

I learned about raw cashews and vegan cheese sauce from the Oh She Glows blog and cookbook and knew that I had to give them a try. I love cheese but scrubbing a pot from a cheese sauce is tiring and there's only so much cheese a girl should eat.

My recipe is inspired by Oh She Glow's Smoky Butternut Squash Sauce with Pasta and Greens, but I think the "secret" ingredients I added takes the sauce up another few notches. But you should try both recipes to know for sure.

Chocolate Decadence

I know how people say that diamonds are a girl's best friend, but I think that chocolate is the real way to my heart. Chocolate is something that always makes me smile, always makes me feel loved, and always tastes delicious.

The first time I had dinner with my step dad, he baked a delicious chocolate torte made from ground almonds. It was a great treat, so rich and decadent, and I'd love to taste it again. But since he's yet to bake it a second time, I decided to bake my own version. 

My version wasn't quite the same as his, probably because I had to bake it myself, but I'll still bake it again. It was easy and delicious, so it can't be beat. 

A Canadian Christmas Tradition

I don't know about the majority of people in Canada, but baking cookies is one of the biggest traditions we have during the holiday season. My mom and Nana used to bake tins of all sorts of types of cookies and froze them for the holidays. Then they would pull out little platters of them for dessert and tea throughout December. Now I do the same. 

The only thing that's different about my cookie baking is that I cannot decide on the list of cookies I should be baking. Any of my family could tell you Nana's list of holiday baking, but my list is ever changing. 

This year my cookie platters will have some of Canadian Living's new Cranberry Pistachio Tree Cookies, and as much extra effort as they are, I am very glad I made them. Just be sure to follow then recipe when it says to blanch and peel your nuts because it helps them stay a beautiful bright green. And learn from my mistake, you can actually buy shelled pistachios!

Super Quick Pad Thai

Quick dinner recipes have been calling out my name recently and I think it's because of the recent time change. I know that we gained an hour on Sunday, but now we are stuck with extra early dark nights. And those dark night trick me into thinking I need to serve dinner as quick as possible because it must be late! 

Today dish is a perfect dish for nights when I feel like dinner should already be on the table. It's a really quick Pad Thai that might make your family do a double take on how quickly you whipped it up. 

One Dish Veggie Thanksgiving

Since this Thanksgiving I won't be serving a turkey, I've been experimenting with lots of veggie friendly options for the big day. I have looked at tofurkey and quite honestly, I'm not impressed. They look a little grey and unappetizing. Instead I'm going the veggie side dish route and lots of them! 

Side dishes have always been my favourite Thanksgiving food anyway, so why not just enjoy lots of yummy sides? I'll make sure that there's some protein in there, but it won't be the star on the plate. It might be a mix of beans in a yummy filling served in a squash instead. 

Here's one of my first 2013 Thanksgiving experiments. This dish is almost exactly out of a recipe from last month's Canadian Living magazine. I just swapped their rapini for broccoli because I love broccoli and changed the dressing a little too. I think it turned out great!  

BrOc-tober Soup

It's October and time to start enjoying soups again. But to be completely honest with you, I made this soup on a chilly day in summer and saved sharing it with you until now because soups just seem more fall than summer. Plus calling this post BrOc-tober Soup was just too fun to pass up!

Although I change almost all recipes to make them my own, this soup recipe originally came from Martha Stewart's Meatless. I love that there's a can of protein filled beans in it to make it both creamy and filling. I would never have thought to use puréed beans in a broccoli soup, but now I know I'll do it again and again. 

Read on for the recipe!

Perfect Fall Pasta

As much as I don't want to admit it, it's September now and that means the first day of fall is near. But this year, instead of getting annoyed that summer is almost over, I'm going to embrace fall's delicious flavours and dive into some new comfort food. 

Today's dish may look underwhelming at first, but when you taste it you will find that it's packed with roasted veggie flavour!  The sauce is made from tons of roasted veggies that get puréed into a heavenly smelling and tasting concoction. I topped mine with sliced almonds for a little extra crunch and thought each bite was perfect. 

Now, just to be clear, I'm not saying I'm ready for cold weather, but I am ready for cold weather food! So cold weather, you stay away for just a little while longer, ok? 

Crazy Ingredient Challenge - Avocados and Caramel?

If I thought that last month's Crazy Ingredient Challenge of pairing cauliflower and chocolate was hard, this month's challenge of pairing avocados and caramel took it to another level. But I brought out my big guns too and I think that the dish I came up with was both delicious and featured avocados and caramel really well.

At first I wanted to make the infamous avocado chocolate pudding that I've seen all over the Internet and I thought I would drizzle a little homemade caramel sauce on top. But then I decided to really stretch myself and make a savoury dish that really let caramel shine. That how I came up with my Creamy Avocado Salad with Caramel Almonds.

Since I'm still thinking about the avocado chocolate pudding, I know it's something I'm going to make soon. So if anyone is wishing I made that instead, just wait because it might appear on Delish in a Dish soon! For now, read on for my yummy Creamy Avocado Salad with Caramel Almonds recipe.