Category Archives: grain-free

Tuna and White Bean Salad

I made this tuna salad today for a potluck picnic lunch. The weather was beautiful and the salad was perfect. I made it nice and lemony and it was a hit. The lemon and the arugula are such a good contrast to the beans and the tuna.

I mostly followed the recipe; besides adding extra lemon juice (I used the juice of two lemons), I also soaked my chopped onion in cold water to mellow it before draining it and mixing it in, and I added a third can of tuna.

Since I don’t have leftovers from this batch, I think I will have to make it again soon just for me.

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Salted Dates with Mini Eggs

This is my new creation–delicious Medjool dates stuffed with mini eggs and dusted with salt.

In the kitchen in my office, we have a counter where treats collect. One day, we had both mini eggs and dates, so I felt I had to stuff the dates with mini eggs. I pitted the dates and was busy stuffing mini eggs inside them when a colleague walking through suggested adding salt. Brilliant.

So the result is this delicious bite that features the creamy sweetness of the dates, milk chocolate with a candy crunch, and salt to tamp down the sweetness and boost the intensity of the dates’ other notes.

I like too that it is appropriate for Easter, Ramadan and Passover, all at once. Quite a happy accident.

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Cevapi with Quick Pickled Onions

Recently, my office just did something we hadn’t done in three years–have a potluck lunch together.

Because the World Cup was on, we made that our theme. We wrote out the names of the 24 countries that made the cut on slips of paper and then passed around a bowl for people to choose a slip from. My slip read “Serbia” and I knew immediately that I would make a version of cevapi, their spiced meat sausages.

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Horseradish Mayo

I love mayo on hot, crisp French fries. Even better is mayo with a bit of zip. I had some leftover steak from a dinner out, so I decided I needed to have steak frites at home. So for dinner I had cold, beautifully cooked steak with hot fries and tangy mango, and some red wine on the side. A feast!

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Fried Plantains

I was on vacation in the Caribbean recently and had a ton of delicious food while I was there. One of my fondest memories is of dinner at a rib shack that included your choice of any three sides with an order of ribs. I chose coleslaw, beans and rice, and plantains. Ever since, I have been thinking about eating plantains again.

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Figgy Pudding: We won’t go until we get some!

I have been rereading Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher novels. I recently started Murder in the Dark, which is set in the Christmas season, and got to a chapter which starts with an epigraph about figgy pudding from “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” The obsessive part of my brain kicked in, and I started researching figgy pudding recipes.

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Radish and Cheese Spread (with Fries)

When I was a kid, I loved a sandwich spread my mom used to make: grated radishes and cheddar cheese, with a bit of mayo to hold it together. I ate it as a sandwich filling, on toast and on crackers.

Now that I avoid bread products, I had been trying to come up with new ways to eat it. I think it would be lovely on a bed of lightly dressed greens. And it might be quite good blended with grated cabbage.

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Fried Onions, Pickled Eggplant and Banana Peppers with Cheese on French Fries

Some time ago, I bought a large jar of pickled eggplant. I like eggplant and was curious what the pickled version would be like. I had no idea how to use it, though, so I googled it. Of course, most of the answers involved bread products (sandwiches, crusty bread). And while I do use bought bread products occasionally, I try not to eat them too frequently.

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