Health(ier) Sloppy Joes

With so many mouths to feed, my mom did everything she could to stretch her dollar at dinner and keep her recipes simple.
That meant that a lot of our meals featured ground beef, from meatloaf to spaghetti to tacos to chili, there wasn’t a ground beef dish my mother didn’t have a recipe for.
And then there was my favorite of them all, Sloppy Joes.
The Sloppy Joes my mom made always included ground beef, onion powder, a Sloppy Joe seasoning mix, and potato rolls. The sides typically included an iceberg lettuce salad, on special occasions we would also get Ore-Ida french fries.

Thai-Style Pulled Pork

Happy Birthday Dad, [almost]!
I swear that this recipe has nothing to do with my personal love and veneration of Thai cuisine and everything to do with making something nice, spicy, and meaty for Dad.
I know, how thoughtful of me.
Just because my kindness happens to come through via my Thai-food obsession, it doesn’t mean that this post is about me.
It’s my way of celebrating Dad’s birthday and definitely the best way I know to give gifts. Edible gifts, foods that are gifts, gifts that can be used to make food, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…
So this is my way of saying — through the language of food — HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
And if this gifting opportunity for Dad doubles as a chance for me to have Thai-flavored pulled pork sandwiches, it’s totally a win-win situation.

Cauliflower Bagels

You guys asked for this recipe.
And who am I to deny it to you?
You (yes, you, you know who you are!) specifically requested the recipe for the cauliflower bagels sans the BLT part.
Because you needed the calorie count for the bagels alone.
Because you didn’t care for the bacon (like really?), tomatoes (again, really?) or lettuce (okay, I get it).
Without further ado there you have ‘em, cauliflower bagels, in all of their glory!

Pesto Chicken Salad

Even though I’m swamped with work at the moment — dealing with tons of deadlines, endless paperwork, emails, and all sort of tiresome things on my real life agenda — I’ve decided to focus my daydreaming on something more aspirational: what to cook on a lazy summer evening.
And though the current heatwave we’re experiencing is not too bad, I’m not brave enough to venture outside of my air-conditioned cave, fire up the grill, and make some grub.
Instead, I stayed in and made some delicious mayo-less Pesto Chicken Salad.

Creamy Tomato Soup + Cauliflower Crust Grilled Cheese

Eating soup in the summer is an act of defiance — especially during a heatwave.
I’m not talking about eating cold soups such as gazpacho or vichyssoise. I’ve never been a fan of gazpacho. It makes me wish I had tortilla chips while at the same wondering why I am eating salsa with a spoon.
I’m talking about hot soups what warm you from the inside out. Soups you crave when the wind is howling outside, snow is falling, and all you want to do is curl up on the couch with a blanket and a warming bowl of homemade soup.
But when outside it’s 95º and humid, with not even a hint of breeze, and clouds of mosquitoes hum looking for breakfast, eating hot soup means disobedience.
That’s the kind of rebel I am.

Grilled Ratatouille Muffuletta

The Muffuletta is a sandwich that hails from New Orleans. It’s sold in bakeries (and street carts) as an entire loaf of bread, cut in half and layered with a piquant olive spread and various meats and cheeses. A whole muffuletta can easily feed four hungry people.