The Grilled Pizza Caper #Herbamare

I love pizza, but there are a few things I am not sure should ever be eaten on one and fish (besides the weirdly popular anchovies) is one of them. All that changed when I tried a smoked salmon flatbread at a restaurant though; it was amazing and seemed so easy to recreate at home.

All I did was grill up some pizza dough, top it with some herby cream cheese, smoked salmon, dressed baby kale, and crispy capers. It might sound like a lot of steps, but trust me, they are all small steps. I know you'll love this recipe.

One of my best tips is to use Sodium Free Herbamare when dressing your baby kale. There is a ton of sodium in capers so I try to cut back on it in the other parts of this dish as best I can. And using Sodium Free Herbamare is an easy way to do that.

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. 

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.

Luck of the Irish

It's March 16 today and I bet a few of you are planning on celebrating St. Patrick's Day today. I bet some of you are looking for green food to whip up, some of you are looking for an easy and yummy meal to soak up some of the Irish brews you'll be enjoying later, and maybe a few of you are looking for a recipe you can make for a date. Whatever the case, I think that today's dish will bring the luck of the Irish to you.

Today's dish is green, easy to make and filling, and fanciest enough looking to be perfect to make for someone special. It's only fancy looking though, so don't get worried. It's not really fancy...

Read on for my take on a Veggie and Shrimp Barley Risotto. It's inspired by one from Food Network Canada. 

The Ultimate Grilled Cheese

Sometimes I get a craving for a grilled cheese sandwich made on white bread with a Kraft singles or two. I don't know what it is about those sandwiches, but they remind me of being a kid! 

However, the majority of times I want a grilled cheese sandwich, I want the ultimate grilled cheese sandwich. This means no skinny pieces of white bread, I want something crusty and full of flavour. And instead of Kraft singles, I want a cheese that I'm not embarrassed to love. And rather just serving my meal with bottled ketchup, I want something a little more special. 

Reading this, I think I probably sound like a food snob. But if a girl can't dream big about a sandwich,  what can she dream big about? 

Read on for my Ultimate Grilled Cheese Sandwich, the one I wish all grilled cheeses were made of. 

Kitchen Sink Soup

I know I am ready for winter when I start filling my grocery cart and fridge with more food than I can possibly eat in one week. I just see yummy looking ingredients, detour from my carefully planned list, and fill up my grocery cart. Doing may make me seem like part squirrel, but it also has helped me to come up with really yummy recipes. 

Today's recipe is compliments of my having binge bought far too much kale, leeks, and carrots at the farmers market and from having stock piled too many dried beans in my cupboards. And I'm happy it happened because this soup was delicious! 

Flying Colours

Seeing a big rainbow on my plate always makes me happy. Maybe I'm like a bee collecting pollen, but I will always steer clear of the boring white and brown dishes and head towards the bright plates that call for attention. Luckily that's not a bad thing because colourful food looks beautiful and is super healthy for us too. 

When I told my sweetie I was making a beautiful purple sweet potato gnocchi for dinner, he asked that I serve us half purple gnocchi and take a little of the orange sweet potato gnocchi I had made and frozen out of the freezer so we could mix them up. At first I thought that sounded like extra work, then I realized how pretty it would look and got excited. 

I think my dish was a beautiful success and now my freezer has enough purple and orange gnocchi to keep us satisfied for awhile. So now I'm happy because it's all set for a day when I'm not in the mood to cook. 

French Food at Home

Whenever I go out to eat French cooking I always feel heavy on my way home. Sure, of course I love the way butter and cream tastes. But with each of those indulgent bites I know how I will feel for the next few hours. 

Today I am sharing one of my favourite French treats that doesn't make me feel heavy. I feel light, airy, and perfectly content during and after eating this meal. Add feeling good to the fact that the filling for these crepes is so versatile and you'll end up with a recipe that you'll keep turning back to.

Hot Stuff

I've said it a few times, but I'll say it again - I love lasagna. That being said, today's post isn't lasagna. It looks a little like lasagna, but there isn't any pasta and there are only three layers. I need lots of layers and pasta for something to be called lasagna. 

Today's post is delicious though. And although my recipe is a vegetarian dish, I've come up with a great alternative for my meat loving friends. Read on to find out the recipes for both!

Far Out Risotto

I almost always use arborio rice when I make risotto, but not today. Today I found a bag of another grain in the back of one of my cupboards and I thought I would try to make risotto out of it. 

Farro is a great grain; it has four times the amout of fibre as white rice and its complex carbs break down slowly so that you're full all day after eating it. 

Well, actually it's not true when i said was going to make risotto because you need rice to make risotto. I guess that means I'm making farotto!

A Whale of Kale Goodness

I don't think that anchovies, a tiny little tin of them, can count as meat. To me it's more like using chicken stock, just a little flavour enhancer. I know true vegetarians won't agree with me, but for me it works. 

Do you want to know the real best part of this meal, a part no one can argue with me about? It's that this dinner took only 20 minutes to get it to the table. And that included the prep time! 

Marv-elous Snack

The other day I shared a picture of a lemon cucumber and told everyone that the first person who could correctly name the veggie would get an appetizer created for them by me. 

The veggie was named pretty quick and my sister Mary was the first person to guess correctly. Mary told me that her favourite veggie was kale, so that's what will be in the dish that I am making just for her. 

Mary, or Marv as I like to call her, is a busy student; she's studying for two undergraduate degrees at the same time. So I wanted to make her an appetizer that didn't take much work, but would still taste great. 

One of Marv's degrees is involved with slugs and bugs, and while I wouldn't subject you to a chocolate covered snail, I think you'll find similarity between the shape of these appetizers and a snail. 

Ready for a taste? Keep reading. 

Dino-mite Side

When I head to a Farmer's Market, I feel like a kid heading to a candy store. I never know exactly what will be there but I know I am going to find a few treats to take home with me. And I know I am going love each and every treat!

Farmer's Markets make me feel happy because I get to support local farmers, I get to take home beautiful, fresh produce, and I find new types of produce that my grocery store doesn't carry. It's basically a no-lose situation!

The last time I was at a Farmer's Market I discovered a new to me type of kale. The stalks in the middles were almost non-existant and that meant less work in preparing my side dish. Plus the leaves looked cool, like a scaly dinosaur. Little did I know, but the kale is actually called Dino Kale! 

Ready to cook, I headed home and made an easy side that made me smile as much as I did at the Farmer's Market. 

I Dream of Tuscany

One day I will head off on a jet plane and spend a few weeks in Tuscany. I know that I will have to go on a diet beforehand and that will be one diet I won't mind at all.

Can you imagine all the glorious food that you could eat in Tuscany? Not to mention the wine! Yes, after eating cheese, bread, wine, pasta, olive oil roasted veggies, pizza, gelato, and everything else I could get my hands onto, I know I would gain weight.

But each pound would taste so good!

Thinking about the weight makes a little happier that jet setting to Italy isn't in the cards this year. And, for now, I am ok with just dreaming of Tuscany and experimenting with different foods I think sing of Italy.

Here is my last Top Ten Recipe in the Olivieri Taste of Home Lasagna Recipe Competition.

But don't worry lasagna lovers, I still have one more lasagna recipe to share with you that didn't make it into the Top Ten!

For the Love of Curry

I love curries, just don't make them too spicy and I will slurp up every bite. And even though I know that curry only means sauce, not a specific dish, I will always call my saucy, spicy dishes a curry. 

I will admit that learning that the word curry means sauce is recent discovery, but I don't care about this discovery. Everyone refers to saucy and spicy Indian and Thai dishes as curries and I'll only look like a food snob if I start doing any differently. 

But since I know that curry means sauce, I think that calling my Top Ten Recipe Chicken Curry Lasagna makes sense. I made a slightly spicy, curry paste based sauce for my lasagna and it turned out great. 

Did I win the Olivieri Taste of Home Lasagna Recipe Competition with this recipe? I don't know yet but I hope I find out soon!

The Holy Kale

Oh kale, how I overlooked you for so long....

I used to think kale was a throwaway, nothing interesting or tasting kind of veggie. I thought it was something hippies liked to eat because it was easy to grow, cheap, and seemed a little too much on the healthy side. 

But I am happy to say that I was wrong. Kale may be a hippie friendly veggie, but it tastes great and much easier to prepare than I previously thought! 

I have always known that you need to remove the ribs and stems of kale before you can eat it, but I used to lay each individual leaf on a cutting board and painstakingly run my knife around each stem. As you can imagine it took a long time because kale cooks down into nothing! 

Now, what I do is simply hold a piece of kale by the stem in one hand and my knife in the other. Then I swipe my blade along the stem along both sides and I'm done! No more laying each piece on a cutting board for me; I have way too many better things to do.