Hi again, and welcome back to my breakfast/brunch/lunch/dinner table! Because it is a beautiful summer and I’m bouncing between my house in northern New Jersey and my shore house in Margate, New Jersey, I have lots of food to share! Today’s focus: salads! Except these salads aren’t just any salads; they have everything BUT lettuce in them!! (However, some do have a bit of lettuce as an added item, but it isn’t the base of the salad.) This food blog post is (secretly) a tribute to my mother’s skills in the kitchen because most, if not all, of the featured meals in today’s post are made by my favorite mom/personal chef!
This first salad was one of my personal favorites! With a farro and kamut grain base, it had cilantro, peaches, tomatoes, cucumbers and sunflower seeds! It was super refreshing and the flavors blended together really well. Here’s a snap:
This salad was amazing, except that it wasn’t too good the next day; the peaches and some of the other add-ons were brownish the next day BUT IT’S OKAY!! Still super yummy!
The next two salads are being grouped together because they were very similar. With a whole-wheat pasta base, they both had grilled peppers and cauliflower (maybe you can tell what my family likes to eat?!). One of them mixed two shapes of pasta and the other had sautéed mushrooms AND a balsamic reduction. They were both super good and tasty.
This next salad may not be considered a “salad” to some, but it is a Caprese salad! Though there’s no lettuce (to continue the trend of the title of this post), my mom’s incredible Caprese salad has thick slices of tomato, big hunks of fresh mozzarella cheese (YUM) and fresh basil. Take a look:
Our outdoor plates and place settings have cute flowers on them 🙂
This “grainy stuff”/veggie mix was actually made by my sister! With cabbage, grilled cauliflower and broccoli, tofu and Brussels sprouts, this concoction was INCREDIBLE! I was also super pumped to get the leftovers for lunch at work the next day! So Madeline, this is your shoutout!
Look at these noodles!! This salad was with spaghetti, rice vinegar, cilantro and carrots. This asian-style salad was super fun and was served COLD!! Pretty game-changing if you ask me!
Okay so back to my sister’s cooking for a second… these next two salads were both made by her and brought out top-notch salad creativity. On the left was a salad with chunks of avocado, mango, pepper and blueberries with quinoa! It was served cold (of course) and the flavors of each chunk of stuff all complemented each other nicely. On the right was a cold peanut noodle salad with avocado, shaved carrots, basil and white sesame seeds in a HOMEMADE peanut sauce. It was really incredible and I commend my sister for making the sauce.
The last thing I’m putting up on here today is this plate of food. No, it’s not a salad, but instead it is an ordinary dinner from the other night. I’m putting it here because everything on this plate encompasses the great food we have every single night, all because of my mom! We have: roasted butternut squash, roasted Brussels sprouts, roasted potatoes and grilled chicken; this is pretty much my favorite and go-to dinner. Thanks, mom.
Now that you’ve taken a look at my lunch/dinner table at home, I bet you can pick out some of the serving pieces we always use (blue bowl, flowery plates, etc.). But surely summer is the best because of the great food I always have… and it comes right from my kitchen! And now that I’m at the beach, I’ve been snacking on ice cream from the Margate Dairy Bar and Two Cents Plain, Philly cheesesteaks from Dino’s, sticky buns from Casel’s, and waffles from Hannah-G’s! Stay tuned for a Margate edition of SimoneSaysFood! Ta ta for now!
Comments