Balsamic Spinach Salad with Gorgonzola and Hard-Boiled Eggs

As I mentioned, there's been a lot of gardening and not a lot of cooking going on around here. On the weekend I planted Celebrity tomatoes, Lemon Boy tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, zucchini, yellow squash, cucumbers, peppers, rosemary, silver thyme, French tarragon, variegated marjoram, flat parsley, basil, and Thai basil. I also have oregano, sage, curly parsley, more rosemary, and more mint that survived the winter but need to be weeded. I'm still looking for a couple of heirloom tomato plants, for sure Brandywines, and I also want to plant some spaghetti squash, butternut squash, arugula, swiss chard, and eggplant. Whew!

South Beach Recipes of the Week #30: Season Opener Tomatoes

In Salt Lake the weather is decidedly summery, and there's a lot more gardening than cooking going on right now at my house. Yesterday I fantasized about Sliced Tomato, Olive and Goat Cheese Salad and remembered how much I love the day you get your garden tilled. It's going to be lots more gardening today, including tomato plants actually going into the ground, so it will be a while before there are sliced, fresh tomatoes from the garden.

Recipe Favorites: Sliced Tomato, Olive, and Goat Cheese Salad

When I planted my garden last year, I declared the day you get your garden tilled is the best day of the year! It's garden tilling day again at Kalyn's Kitchen, and my generous brother Dave is outside right now tilling my garden. I know I talk about Rand on the blog a lot, since he's the one who helps me here, but the truth is all my brothers and brother-in-laws help me more than anyone can imagine, and I love and appreciate them all so much.

Grilled Lime and Chile Chicken with Mango and Red Bell Pepper Salsa

Yesterday I shared the recipe for this Mango Salsa with Red Bell Pepper, and I promised I'd be right back to show what I served it with. I've always been fond of creating my own recipes, and this recipe is one I made up more than ten years ago. Since then I tried Grilled Fusion Chicken from Sunset magazine, which had similar ingredients, but the end result was quite different. This chicken has a very pronounced lime and chile flavor, which I thought was a perfect match for the fruity salsa. If you're not that much of a fan of lime, you might like the Grilled Fusion Chicken with the salsa instead.

Mango Salsa with Red Bell Pepper

I recently received an e-mail from the National Mango Board about a promotion designed to get people to think about mangos. They offered to send me a "Cinco de Mango" kit, and since I love mangos but rarely cook with them I thought it would be fun to see the recipes they recommended. So that's how I came to be writing about mangos for Weekend Herb Blogging, where this week the host is the lovely Glenna from A Fridge Full of Food. Today I'll tell you a little about mangos and how to make this amazing mango salsa (with cilantro, did I mention the cilantro?) Tomorrow I'll be back to show you the Grilled Lime and Chile Chicken that went perfectly with the salsa.

Shop, Cook, Shoot, Eat, Edit, Blog, Publish, Repeat: Kalyn's Kitchen Turns Two Years Old!

Let's start out this little birthday celebration with a story about how Kalyn's Kitchen came to be. I started the South Beach Diet in July 2004, after an old boyfriend visited me and I realized how much I hated being fat. And I was fat; probably not as fat as I looked in this before photo, but fat enough. By early 2005 I had lost about 35 pounds, and everybody who'd known me as someone who loved to cook and eat wanted to know how I was doing it. I started sending out recipes on an e-mail list, which quickly became a bit of a pain. Then my brother (the fabulous Rand) suggested I start a blog as a place to store the recipes so friends could find them.

Warm Red Cabbage Salad with Bacon and Goat Cheese

When I was a kid, my mom used to make a type of bacon and cabbage salad that everyone in our family loved. Her salad had lots of bacon, and even used bacon grease and vinegar as the dressing. This cabbage salad is a lot healthier, but just as tasty.

Recipe Update: Baked Tilapia with Onions, Peppers, Olives, and Feta

This was a recipe I created when I first started my blog. After I'd lost weight on the South Beach Diet, people started asking me for recipes and for months I sent them out on an e-mail list. As more and more people asked to join the list, my brother convinced me to start a blog, and Kalyn's Kitchen was born when I posted about 20 recipes in a couple of days time. The recipes were all without photos and truly I had no idea of what the whole food blog thing was even about.

Cilantro-Lover's Leftover Chicken Salad

One of the biggest challenges for anyone who really likes to cook is to develop great recipes out of leftovers. I'm talking about recipes that will transform leftovers into something you'll love to eat: things with completely different flavors than the original dish. For me, one of the biggest leftover challenges is rotisserie chicken. I'm a fan of those Costco rotisserie chickens, which taste great when you take one home on Friday night, but the next day I want that chicken transformed into something else entirely. This recipe is one of my latest creations for leftover rotisserie chicken.

Balsamic Spinach Salad with Mushrooms, Onions, and Feta

Not long ago I posted Spinach Salad with Bacon and Feta, which was really yummy. Then last week I was cooking dinner for my dad and stepmother. I had some spinach and wanted to make spinach salad for them, but she doesn't eat pork, so I came up with this version which has red onions and sauteed mushrooms instead of the bacon.

Easy Chicken Cordon Bleu

Easy and relatively diet-friendly Chicken Cordon Bleu

I've been through my archives, updating recipes that don't have photos, and this is a super-easy version of Chicken Cordon Bleu that was one of the things I ate regularly when I first started cooking the lower glycemic index way. This one is changed a bit and lightened up from the recipe I first posted, with less cheese, less half and half, and a bit of seasoning on the chicken before browning. I also used Canadian Bacon to reduce the amount of fat, and all these changes make the new version more South Beach Friendly.

Six Great Ways to Cook Asparagus! South Beach Recipes of the Week #29

Asparagus is my pick for South Beach Recipes of the Week, since I've been on an asparagus kick lately. Slow Roasted Asparagus is my most-used basic asparagus recipe, but there are so many ways to fix this perfectly low-glycemic vegetable. Here are some asparagus recipes I've found from my favorite food blogs. Whether or not you're a South Beach Dieter, bookmark these recipes if you're an asparagus lover like me.

Recipe for Roasted Carrots and Turnips with Balsamic and Herbs

Ok, so this is my blog and I've decided I can include this in Easy South Beach Recipes if I want to, even though technically it has six ingredients, not five. (Here's the plan. We're lumping the fresh rosemary and fresh sage together and calling them herbs, which gets it down to five ingredients. What do you say?)

These Are Not My Easter Shoes!

When I was a kid, one of the things I loved about Easter (besides the candy, of course) was getting new shoes. My mother always made frilly Easter dresses for all the girls in the family, and we got new shiny patent leather shoes for church. In a family of ten kids, getting new shoes was something that didn't happen all that often, so it was always a wonderful sign of a new season.

Carrot and Parsley Salad and Spotlight On Cancer Fighting Foods

I rarely have time for blog events, with teaching school all day and the commitment to Weekend Herb Blogging every week. However, sometimes there are events I really think will benefit my readers. When Chris of Mele Cotte reminded us that April is Cancer Control Month and announced an event to spotlight Cancer Fighting Foods, it seemed like a topic that people would appreciate learning more about.

Easy Recipe for Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Pesto

You may have noticed I've been on a bit of a pesto binge around here! I ran out of last summer's frozen pesto and bought a jar of this wonderful concoction, so I've been using it like mad. So far my favorite new uses for pesto from a jar have been Asparagus with Basil Pesto and Leftover Chicken Pesto Salad, both so easy and soooo good! Now these roasted sweet potatoes tossed with a bit of pesto are getting added to the list. With less than five ingredients, this qualifies to be called an Easy South Beach Recipe, and let me tell you, it doesn't get any easier.

No April Fools Joke, We're Still Blogging About Herbs, Plants, Veggies, and Flowers!

It's Spring in the northern hemisphere, and April Fool's Day everywhere. I did see some fun jokes on various blogs today, but decided against trying to "fool" the Weekend Herb Blogging readers. Actually I am so excited to be on Spring Break that I can barely sit down at the computer, and that's no fooling at all. I'm going to be posting a little sporadically this coming week because I have a friend and then a relative coming to town on different ends of the week.