BBQ Chicken Salad

The days are longer, the sun is shining, and I feel summer coming! I love summer food. The barbecues, the watermelon, salads, the popsicles, did I mention watermelon?  A family favorite of ours is BBQ chicken salad. It is incredibly fast, delicious, and screams summer.

Chimichurri (or Green Gold)

Our society has a bit of a love-hate recipe with Gwyneth Paltrow, and I'm no different. I subscribe to the GOOP newsletter, but I regularly end up deleting it with an eye roll. The recommendations are often completely out of touch with my normal-person lifestyle. $400 cleanses? Travel guides for the Hamptons? $900 candlesticks? That said, the woman knows how to cook, and I'm a big fan of her cookbook "It's All Good." Although not all recipes in the cookbook are slam dunks and a few are plain ridiculous (fish roasted in salt anyone?), there are also some real winners.

Homemade "Ranch" Dressing

We are big condiments fan at our house. I think we have 10 different mustards in my fridge as we speak (not kidding!). They are so fast and easy to add flavor to a lot of meals. One condiment or dressing that my kids and husband love is ranch dressing, but I have such a hard time buying or even using the bottled stuff full of 1000 ingredients. So per usual, I remade a classic into a Natalie-approved but family taste-approved dish. Behold, a diary, sugar free, preservative free ranch that is delicious.

Broccoli-Bacon Baked Omelet

Over the past few months I have been striving to get a good portion of veggies in during breakfast. It's so easy to pour a bowl of cereal, but it lacks so much good, hearty nutrition. Plus veggies are filling, low in calories, and pack in a lot of nutrients. Long story short, eggs with veggies seem to be my go-to filling breakfast because they pair easily with vegetables.

The other day our friends came over for a General Conference breakfast and brought a quiche. It's been so long since I had had quiche, and I forgot how delicious it was! I really wanted to make one, and then I remembered how calorie-laden and fatty pie crust can be. I like to save that for a special occasion, not just a throw-together any night of the week meal. I realized that a baked omelet is pretty much just a crustless quiche, so I threw together this beaut and it completely lived up to my hopes. Yum. 

You only need eggs, milk, bacon (I LOVE pre-cooked bacon for this type of thing), broccoli, and an onion. Easy.

Cauliflower Rice n' Greens Black Bean Bowls

I really, really love rice and beans. Really. Sometimes I think I should have been born in Brazil because I'm just crazy about it. When I was in college, one of my roommates introduced me to her family's favorite recipe for rice and beans and I was immediately hooked. It called for rice, beans (duh), lime juice, salt and pepper, avocado, and green onions. It was simple, tasty, and really easy on my college budget. I may even admit to eating it EVERY DAY for a week or so. (Poor college student, remember?)

I still LOVE to make up this black beans and rice recipe, but nowadays I have to scale back a bit on the rice consumption. This particular recipe was born when I came home after a particularly long day to a particularly empty fridge. All I could think to make was rice and beans, then it dawned on my that cauliflower rice would be a much better alternative. After Claire posted her excellent tutorial on making cauliflower rice, I started making up a really simple cauliflower rice and greens dish and I knew it would complement the dish well. Fortunately I had a package of cauliflower rice squirreled away in the freezer and a few handfuls of leftover greens. Thank heavens for hoarding tendencies.

The recipe is really simple and perfect if you are cooking single servings. I live alone and it can be really tricky to find recipes that don't leave you sitting with gallons of leftover chili (or whatever). I don't know about you, but there are only so many days I can gag down leftovers before throwing in the towel and ordering pizza.