Spring Break and Blogher Month in Review

Not only is today the first day of my Spring Break, but it's also the end of the month! Time to review the things I've written this month for Blogher Food and Drink. Some readers have let me know they love these links directly to my articles, great if you have a slow internet connection and have a hard time loading the Blogher site.

Utah Food Writers Celebrate March Madness at the Metropolitan

If you're a new reader of Kalyn's Kitchen, Friday Food Porn is a bit of fun where I share photos of things I "may or may not" have eaten that week. I started doing this when I first got a good camera and was taking photos of everything edible. South Beach Dieters may need to cover their eyes, since Friday Food Porn can be seriously not-South Beach Diet friendly.

Recipe Favorites: Sun Dried Tomato Pesto or Spread

If there was ever a recipe that deserved to come back again as a Recipe Favorite, this would be it! In fact, last September when I made this I called it "condensed summer in a jar" and "one of the best things I've ever tasted." Now that signs of approaching summer are finally coming to Utah, I'm craving these kinds of tastes again.

Easy Recipe for Greek Salmon Cooked in a Grill Pan

I love cooking salmon on an outdoor barbecue grill, but when it's too cold for outdoor grilling I use a stovetop grill pan so I can still get those lovely grill marks. This is a great way to "grill" fish or chicken breasts for people who don't have an outdoor grill too. It's also a wonderful way to cook vegetables like zucchini or eggplant.. My grill pan is a cast-iron one I got at Sears, very inexpensive and similar to this one from Amazon.com.

Recipe for Roasted Turnips with Balsamic Vinegar (Easy South Beach Recipes)

Sometimes I create recipes, and have no memory of where the idea came from. In this case, it started with me thinking "I wonder how roasted turnips with a bit of balsamic vinegar would taste?" I had turnips I hadn't gotten around to using in soup, so I heated my lovely new counter-top convection oven and tried it. I was very happy with the results, which is saying something since I never liked cooked turnips too much before I started eating the South Beach Diet way.

South Beach Recipes of the Week #27: Salads for Spring

Some weeks seem like they just fly by. I can hardly believe it's time again for South Beach Recipes of the Week, those healthy, low-glycemic, and delicious-looking recipes I find on great food blogs and spotlight. For me, this week's all about the arrival of Spring, and when Spring gets here, people start thinking more about salads. (If you're in the Southern Hemisphere, my condolences!)

Cilantro Salsa Dip Recipe

People are always asking me, "How do you come up with your recipes?" When someone asks me this, I laugh, because most passionate cooks always have a huge pile of recipes they're planning to try someday. This recipe is one that had been on my pile for years, torn out of a magazine I've long forgotten the name of.

Heart-Healthy Shrimp Dip served with Veggie Dippers

There's a new event called The Heart of the Matter, sponsored by Ilva from Lucullian Delights and Joanna from Joanna's Food, who both have an interest in healthy cooking. An event for heart-healthy recipes is something I want to support, especially since the South Beach Diet was created to be a heart-healthy way to eat.

South Beach Recipes of the Week #27: Cabbage (hold the Corned Beef)

If you're familiar with St. Patrick's Day you know Corned Beef and Cabbage are meant to go together on that day. Over a year ago I posted Corned Beef with Veggies and Horseradish, and cabbage was certainly one of the vegetables. (Warning: good recipe but a very bad photo from my old camera.) When I posted that recipe I mentioned that the South Beach Diet doesn't recommend corned beef, due to the high fat content. I'll be cooking corned beef on Saturday, of course, but it's definitely a "once in a while treat" for anyone who's serious about South Beach.

Chicken and Quickly Roasted Asparagus served with Tahini Sauce

Have you noticed I've been on a bit of a kick with asparagus recently? It's due to a very good sale at the market two weekends in a row, so first I made Roasted Asparagus with Garlic and then Asparagus with Basil Pesto. The recipe today is one I found when I typed "chicken and asparagus" into Epicurious.com, and it's destined to become a favorite, no question.

Recipe Favorites: Butternut Squash with Rosemary and Balsamic Vinegar

Some things are just so good you'll want to cook them over and over. That's how I've felt about this recipe ever since I first made it in November, when I suggested it as a good Thanksgiving dinner alternative to candied sweet potatoes. Not to mention that it has balsamic vinegar, which is good on so many things! If you like butternut squash at all, give this a try. I promise it will become one of your favorites too.

Recipe for Balsamic Chicken and Mushrooms

There aren't too many things in the kitchen more versatile than balsamic vinegar. I think it tastes good on beef, as a marinade for chicken, on greens, on arugula, and of course to make restaurant quality salad at home. Whenever I see recipes featuring this versatile ingredient they nearly always sound good to me. A dish with sauteed chicken, balsamic vinegar, and mushrooms caught my eye on Dine and Dish, who found the recipe on RecipeZaar.

Kalyn's Kitchen Picks: Uncle Ben's Converted Rice

If you enter Uncle Ben's Converted Rice into my search bar, you'll find I've written about it many, many times. I just checked, and if Google is to be trusted, it's 339 times I've mentioned this product. That goes up to 340 after this is posted, and for anyone who's wondering, Uncle Ben's is not paying me anything to write this. Is anyone wondering why I like this rice so much?

Roasted Spicy Cauliflower

If you read food blogs very much, you can find lots of recipes for Roasted Cauliflower. In my own recipe archives I have Alanna's Roasted Cauliflower, a recipe that turned out to be the very first post my friend Alanna made on A Veggie Venture. There seems to be pretty universal agreement that roasting is a great way to cook cauliflower, so when I saw this recipe for Roasted Spicy Cauliflower in The South Beach Diet Quick and Easy Cookbook, I had to try it. The recipe called for red pepper flakes, and although I had a few different types in my pantry, I knew just what I wanted to use.

Turkey and White Bean Chili with Chocolate

For Utah visitors coming from the article in the Deseret News today, welcome! Thanks to Deseret News Food Editor Valerie Phillips for the great job spotlighting my blog and mentioning some other food blogs too. If you're new to this whole idea of finding recipes on blogs, here's a list of good ones I spend far too much time reading! I do have some regular Utah readers, a lot of them people who've googled Cafe Rio Salad Dressing and found the recipe I posted. If you're a new visitor and want to see more recipes, visit the recipe archives at the top left. You can also find recipes using the search bar, if you have a certain food in mind.

Vietnamese Cabbage Salad with Chicken and Cilantro

I spend plenty of time visiting other cooking blogs and admiring the delicious-looking food. Despite that, I hardly ever actually cook recipes from other blogs. It's mostly that I rarely make a recipe the way it's written, and while I don't mind "improving" on the recipes of cookbook authors, it seems a little different to do it to a recipe from a fellow blogger. However, when Glenna from A Fridge Full of Food, posted this recipe for Vietnamese Cole Slaw, the minute I saw the recipe, I knew I'd be making it.

Recipe Favorites: Chicken with Roasted Lemons, Green Olives, and Capers

This was a dish that I absolutely loved, and since I posted it just before Thanksgiving when a lot of people were distracted with thoughts of turkey, I decided it should be featured again as a Recipe Favorite. The recipe, which came from The Bon Appetit Cookbook, has roasted lemons, a unique ingredient slightly similar to preserved lemons because the lemon peel is eaten. If you didn't want to fuss quite so much, I think this would still taste great with just the green olives and capers. If you want to see step-by-step instructions, you can find them at the original post.

Weekend Herb Blogging #72 Recap The Seasons are Changing?

I can hardly believe it myself, but here we are at Weekend Herb Blogging #72. The way the entries were pouring in this weekend, I'm thankful I decided a long time ago that I wouldn't do pictures when I'm hosting. This way you'll have to visit the blogs to see the photos! And since my usual lovely green headings were somehow eaten by Blogger last time (read the comments; I never did find out what happened) I guess I will forego those too. I hope what I'm writing is interesting enough to make up for the lack of visual stimulation.

A South Beach Diet Success Story

Don't You Love That Smile?
I'll be back with a recipe later today, but here's something I thought people might find interesting. No, this is not me, but if you're reading this blog, you probably already know about how I lost 42 pounds and became a food blogger. You might have even seen my list of Ten Reasons I Love the South Beach Diet. Sometimes I feel like a bit of a split personality in my blogging life, because although I'm pretty much committed to the South Beach Diet way of eating, I'm just as committed to having Kalyn's Kitchen be more than a "diet" blog. More than anything, this blog is about great-tasting food.

South Beach Recipes of the Week #26: Eggs

South Beach Recipes of the Week are those delicious, low glycemic index recipes I find on my favorite food blogs and share with readers looking for South Beach diet friendly recipes. This week I'm doing recipes with eggs, a perfect South Beach food. If you're not interested in the South Beach Diet, no worries, I bet these recipes will still sound pretty good.

Recipe Favorites: Black Bean, Rice, and Cilantro Salad

There's no question that this is one of my favorite recipes, and it's a recipe that's gone through a couple of incarnations. I first called this Jeanne's Wedding Salad, created about 15 years ago for a party honoring the wedding of my friend Jeanne Zeigler, someone I've lost touch with through the years. (Jeanne, do you ever google yourself? Maybe you'll find this someday.)