My Cooking Spot

When Girl Meets Kitchen

Easy Restaurant Style Salsa

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restaurant-style-salsa

Spring and summer is here and my favorite thing is chips and salsa. I really think that I have an addiction.  I love eating it all summer long. This recipe is so good, and crazy easy to make. I made it with canned tomatoes, but if I could, I would use home grown tomatoes.

I wish I grew my own tomatoes, because there is nothing like the taste of fresh out-of-the-garden tomatoes. For real! Mmmm, my mouth is watering just thinking about it.

But, since I don’t have fresh, I just used canned, and this salsa was totally delicious. You can make a ton of it, and as long as it is refrigerated, it should last up to two weeks.

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Quinoa Arugula Salad with Beets, Peaches & Walnuts Tossed in a Pinot Noir Vinaigrette

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I just tried quinoa for the first time last year. I don’t know why I was scared of it. So I just avoided it. But last year, I had the opportunity to try it at a luncheon. I loved it! It has such a nice nutty flavor. The flavor was completely unexpected, but I really liked it a lot. I also like that fact that it is a healthy grain and yet gluten-free.

I chose to make a beet salad with quinoa to make it hearty and beets are in season right now. Once you roast them, they are some tasty treats. I thought that a red wine vinaigrette was the perfect accompaniment to the beets.

I made this delicious salad for my Farm-to-Table Potluck. You can see all the recipes from that event here. 

Arugula-Peaches-Beets Salad

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Quinoa Arugula Salad with Beets Peaches & Walnuts Tossed in a Pinot Noir Vinaigrette

Ingredients

    Salad
  • 3 cups cooked quinoa
  • 2 cups washed arugula
  • 2 medium beets (I used 1 red and 1 yellow)
  • 2 peaches
  • 1/4 cup chopped walnuts
    • Pinot Noir Vinaigrette
  • 3/4 cup Pinot Noir
  • 1 1/2 tbsp runny honey
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • salt and pepper

Instructions

    Salad
  1. Cook quinoa according to package instructions
  2. Scrub beets, wrap in tinfoil and roast at 375 degrees until easily pierced with a fork for about 45 minutes.
  3. Once beets are cooked, remove from oven and let cool. Peel off skins and chop into 1? pieces.
  4. In a bowl add the quinoa, arugula, peaches, beets and walnuts. Add beets at the last minute or after you have tossed in vinaigrette or you will have a pink salad, unless that is what you are going for!
    5. Vinaigrette
  5. In a bowl whisk wine and honey. Slowly whisk in olive oil. Add salt and pepper to taste
http://mycookingspot.com/quinoa-arugula-salad-with-beets-peaches-walnuts-tossed-in-a-pinot-noir-vinaigrette/

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1882nologo

Goat Cheese & Pesto Stuffed Chicken

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Happy Tuesday, friends! It’s Madison again from Wetherills Say I Do.

Do you ever try something at a restaurant and know that you have to make it at home sometime? Well that’s how this dish got started in our house. We went to a local restaurant called J.Peppers where I had the most divine meal ever. As you probably guessed, it was a chicken breast stuffed with goat cheese and pesto. Within a week probably, I redid the meal at home. Now it’s become one of our favorites!

We eat chicken a lot in our house and I love how easy it is to dress up chicken by stuffing it with some of your favorite ingredients. The other night I bought some goat cheese for another recipe and knew it would be a perfect weekend dinner to do our favorite stuffed chicken recipe! 

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Zucchini Ribbon “Pasta” with Almond Basil Pesto

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With bikini season around the corner, I have been looking for ways to cut some calories, but I don’t want to cut any taste out, because that never works for me. I am too much of a foodie. I have heard of using vegetables in place of pasta, but I don’t have a mandoline, or the machine that cuts the veggies into the cute spaghetti strings, so I had to compromise.

I decided to take a vegetable peeler and just peel my slices of zucchini into beautiful ribbons. I actually liked it a lot better. I have been trying to think of other vegetables that I could peel into ribbons. Eating healthy can be fun! Or so I like to tell myself.

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I also wanted to get some healthy omega vitamins so I decided to make an almond pesto rather than using the traditional pine nuts. I like the nuttiness flavor that the almond brings and the texture of the almonds replace the parmesan cheese that I did not add. However, you can absolutely add parmesan to this recipe, I just chose to exclude it to save some calories, and I didn’t miss it for one minute.

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