Cheesy Zucchini with Garlic and Parsley

Earlier today I posted a garden update where I talked about my first zucchini of the year from the garden. If you know me and how I am about garden produce, you realize that before the day's over I'll have found a new recipe and cooked the zucchini. I'll make a serious attempt not to gush and moan too much when I describe how well this turned out, but it tasted fantastic, and I got to use some of the garlic from that big jar of garlic cloves too! If you have zucchini in your garden, or nice fresh zucchini from the Farmers Market, I highly recommend trying this.

Vegetables from the Garden: Update #5

A lot has happened in the two weeks since I posted my last garden update. This year the garden is doing well, even though I've been ignoring it recently while I've been off having fun. Some serious weeding is in order, so please ignore any weeds! (Links to commercial sites are merely to illustrate that type of plant and not an endorsement of the site. You can see the progress of the garden through the summer by clicking the label 2007 Garden Updates at the end of each post.)

Life is good on the day you harvest your first veggies! Today I harvested these 8-Ball Zucchinis and now I'm trying to decide what to make with them. I put an egg to show you how big they are. Actually I like to pick them when they're the size of the smaller one, but I didn't notice how big they were getting!

South Beach Recipes of the Week #32: Salads

If anyone's paying attention out there they might be saying, South Beach recipes of the month would be more like it! I know I'm overdue for one of these posts where I share low-glycemic recipes I find on my favorite food blogs, although there are still a lot of South Beach Recipes of the Week in the recipe archives. I've been seeing so many good salads recently, I wanted to spotlight a few that would work for South Beach Dieters. If you're not a South Beach Dieter, I bet they still look pretty good!

Photo by Ilva of Lucullian Delights

The first salad that caught my eye was this Minty Zucchini and Tomato Salad by my pal Ilva from Lucullian Delights. What a simple but great combination of flavors. Doesn't her food always look so good?

Grilled Lamb Chops Recipe with Garlic, Rosemary, and Thyme

When school got out, I undertook a little project to re-do the recipe index for Kalyn's Kitchen, something I'd been wanting to do for a long time. One thing I changed was to rename the Beef and Pork section to Beef, Pork, and Lamb. I've always loved lamb, and if I'm going to a nice restaurant, it's something I'm likely to order, so it's a bit surprising that this is the first recipe for lamb that I've cooked for the blog. These lamb chops were perfect, with just a hint of the red wine vinegar, rosemary, thyme, and garlic that they're marinated in before cooking. More lamb recipes to come, I promise!

San Francisco Memories and Lots of Food, but Not Enough Photos!

Last summer I went to San Francisco with my two gorgeous friends Mary and Jacque where we had so much fun we vowed we'd go every year. So this past weekend Mary and I returned to San Francisco to visit Jacque again. It was a great weekend of eating, drinking, shopping, meeting food bloggers, eating, drinking, shopping, watching parades, eating, drinking, shopping, and seeing the city. You get the idea: there was a lot of eating, drinking, and shopping!

Kalyn's Kitchen Picks: Christopher Ranch Garlic Cloves

If someone looked back through my posts labeled Kalyn's Kitchen Picks they might start wondering if I ever recommend things that don't come from Costco? Of course I do, but Costco has so many useful food products at incredible prices that they're a natural for me to recommend them. For example, how about this jar with three pounds of peeled garlic cloves which sells for $5.29 at the Costco in Utah. I know there are people reading this who would never use pre-peeled garlic, but I love this product, and unless you're a total garlic purist, how can you resist it at that price?

Sauteed Broccoli Rabe Recipe with Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Pine Nuts

It's now back to reality after four wonderful days in San Francisco and time to resume sharing recipes for some of the things I'm cooking. This lovely side dish was a delicious twist on broccoli rabe, which is often served with beans or pasta. This recipe was adapted slightly from Vegetables Every Day, one of my very favorite sources for vegetable recipes.

Reader Survey: Kalyn Has Gone to San Francisco, Please Talk Among Yourselves

I'm leaving this morning to fly to San Francisco, where I'm planning to have the most fun imaginable. I love traveling, and the flight is such a short one, I probably won't need to use any of Kate's tips on How to Make Travel Day a Little Brighter. I'm really looking forward to visiting San Francisco again with my great friends Mary and Jacque, as well as hanging out with some of my favorite food bloggers (and possibly even meeting another blogger who's visiting San Francisco if all goes well.)

Chicken Salad Recipe with Fresh Tarragon and Peas

If you're passionate about food, there may be a few food experiences you'll come to regard as truly life-changing. For me, one such moment was the first time I tasted sushi, and another was the time last summer when I made Gazpacho with my blog friends. Who would have ever predicted that when I spotted a simple recipe for Lemony Chicken Salad with Tarragon on Champaign Taste it would lead to another of those life-changing food experiences?

Leftover Steak Salad Recipe with Feta Vinaigrette and Kalamata Olives

I'm usually pretty creative about using up leftovers, but sometimes leftover steak kind of stumps me. I know, lots of you are thinking "Leftover steak, what on earth is she talking about?" But when I make something like Grilled Flat Iron Steak With Chimichurri Sauce or Cuban Flank Steak, there will always be leftovers. I don't like re-heated steak so a salad seems like a good way to use the leftover meat, and this salad made a great summertime lunch.

Where's the Recap for Weekend Herb Blogging #87?

The very good news is that Rachel is fine, which I'm sure everyone is relieved to hear. Apparently we had our wires crossed somehow on the date, and she has been away on a business trip and wasn't checking her personal e-mail so she didn't see all the entries coming in. Rachel will be working on the Recap and posting it as she adds entries over the next few days.

Roasted Asparagus Recipe with Soy-Sesame Flavors

Still counting down, only four more days until I go to San Francisco! This is another recipe where I get inspired by something I've made previously; the way I cooked this asparagus was inspired by the Roasted Radishes with Soy Sauce and Toasted Sesame Seed I made last week. This time I tried adding a tiny bit of sesame oil with the soy sauce, and the taste was fantastic. When I photographed this I wondered if I should have roasted the asparagus for a slightly shorter time, but when I ate it I realized that actually the dark color is mostly due to the soy sauce coating the asparagus. You can cook it for a slightly shorter time if you prefer.

Tomatoes Plus Herbs Equals Summer

I'm counting down the days now until I'll be going to San Francisco! Meanwhile, I've been working hard to get the garden in shape so it won't take too much maintenance later in the summer, when I'll be busy having fun. I like giving updates on how my garden is progressing, even though the photos I take outside often remind me of my limitations as a photographer! I waited too long today for ideal light conditions, so these are pictures I took with the camera on auto. Even if they aren't great shots, you can see that most of the plants are pretty happy around here!

Happy Father's Day to a Wonderful Father

It's Father's Day in the U.S. and I'm reflecting on how lucky I am to have such a wonderful father. This picture was taken in Alaska, I'm guessing about 25 years ago. I'm happy to see that he actually got to catch some fish himself, because most of my memories of fishing with Dad as a kid involve him saying "Will you hold my pole for a minute," and then *miraculously* we'd always seem to catch a fish just after Dad handed us the pole.

Recipe for Grilled Salmon with Asian Dipping Sauce

Not long ago I posted a recipe for Soy-Grilled Mahi Mahi with Korean Dipping Sauce. It was such a great recipe that a week or so later I made it for dinner when my former neighbors (and food bloggers to-be) Maria and Kym came to dinner. In the original post I'd mentioned that I thought this would be great on salmon, so I tried it on both types of fish for that dinner.

San Francisco Bloggers: Let's Do Lunch

If you're new to this blog you won't know that last year I had a great time in San Francisco with my friends Mary and Jacque. Not only did we have a fun trip, we decided to meet there every summer for a few days. We're visiting this year on June 22-25, which we found out after-the-fact is probably going to be a very busy weekend in the city!

Roasted Radishes Recipe with Soy Sauce and Toasted Sesame Seed

Yes, I do realize that radishes are not herbs, but thank goodness bloggers can write about any herb, plant, veggie, or flower, because I thought it would be fun to share this interesting recipe for Weekend Herb Blogging. I don't mean interesting like "Hmm, interesting." I mean interesting like, "Wow, this tastes great!" This was the first time I'd tried cooking radishes and I really liked them. I found the recipe in Vegetables Every Day, a cookbook I've been consistently pleased with every time I've used it. The recipe just called for radishes without specifying a type, but since I had those lovely white radishes, I used a mixture of red and white to make this look a little more colorful. And colorful it was, with a the crimson color of the red radishes seeming to melt into the entire radish as they cooked.

Kalyn's Kitchen Picks: Bella Sun Luci Sun-Dried Tomatoes

Today I'm going to be raving on about sun-dried tomatoes, a topic that makes me smile. For quite a few years I used to make my own dried tomatoes, and I still have the food dehydrator to show for it. That was before my beloved Costco started carrying these enormous jars of award winning sun-dried tomatoes for a price that's so ridiculously low, I can't even remember it. (Edit - checked the price when I was at Costco and it's $7.39 for two pounds of sun-dried tomatoes!) The tomatoes come from Mooney Farms, a California company which also makes pesto, pasta sauce, and marinades featuring sun-dried tomatoes. If there's no Costco where you live, this same brand comes in smaller jars at my grocery store.

Radish and Cucumber Salad Recipe with Peppers and Thai Basil

If you were paying attention yesterday you might have predicted something with radishes was coming today after I visited the Salt Lake City Farmers Market and came home with three kinds of radishes.  No farmers market where you are? Use radishes from your favorite store.

Salt Lake City Farmer's Market Opens with a Crowd of Food Lovers

Finally, after I've been having farmers market envy for weeks, the Salt Lake City Downtown Alliance Farmers Market opened this weekend. The market is held in a huge park on the west side of Salt Lake called Pioneer Park. In years past this place was most famous as a hangout for homeless people looking for place to sleep, but having the market there, as well as some great food destinations like Tony Caputo's Market and Big City Soup has done a lot to help revitalize the area. Of course there's also the love-it-or-hate-it Gateway Shopping Mall nearby, an outdoor mall with stores, restaurants, movies, Clark Planetarium, and the famous Olympic Fountain. Even though Gateway has now made it into Wikipedia, and it's a great place for tourists, I don't go there much. And since the Farmers Market is celebrating 15 years this summer, I give the farmers market all the credit for turning this area into a fun place to hang out.

Plenty of Tasty Offerings for Food Bloggers at Blogher 2007 Conference

Blogher is July 27-29 in Chicago!

First, my apologies if you're someone who comes here or signs up for the e-mail purely to get recipes, but actually, you do care about this, because I'm going to Blogher to learn how to make this blog better. If you read my blog last summer, you might remember how excited I was after I met other food bloggers at Blogher 2006. I couldn't believe how much I learned last year, and this year there's even more food-related content. If you're a food blogger, here are some reasons to be there when Blogher 2007 kicks off :

Easy South Beach Breakfast Recipes: Scrambled Eggs with Mushrooms and Feta

It's been a long time since I've posted a recipe for eggs, but this is something I made for breakfast this week and it really did taste quite amazing for such a simple recipe. If you're getting up late on a weekend morning and need something good to eat, this would be just the ticket. I won't be making anything like this today myself, because the Salt Lake Downtown Alliance Farmer's Market starts today, and I'll be there bright and early.

Garbanzo and Tuna Salad Recipe with Parsley and Red Pepper

Today we're having another bean salad featuring that wonderful tuna packed in olive oil that I wrote about yesterday. There were two things that inspired the ingredients in this salad. The first one was a suggestion from Valerie Phillips, the food editor of The Deseret News, Salt Lake's biggest newspaper. She had the idea of using sun-dried tomatoes as an ingredient in my White Bean Salad with Tuna and Parsley. But (this is how my mind works) when I went to make the salad I didn't have any sun-dried tomatoes and put some finely chopped red bell peppers instead. (Can you tell there may be another salad coming with the sun-dried tomatoes?)

Kalyn's Kitchen Picks: Tonno Genova Tuna Packed in Olive Oil

Recently I've been in love with the flavor of Italian tuna packed in olive oil, which I first found out about from a fabulous tuna salad by S'Kat. I posted my recipe for White Bean Salad with Tuna and Parsley, and recipes using the tuna with olive oil were popping up everywhere. Then there was an article about tuna in olive oil in the Salt Lake newspaper which has a pasta salad recipe I'm planning to try, and they were kind enough to feature my bean salad recipe in the article too.

Soy-Grilled Mahi Mahi Recipe with Korean Dipping Sauce

I hope everyone is admiring those lovely grill marks, because actually I had to cook this recipe twice in a week to get a piece of fish that looked the way I wanted. The first time, both pieces stuck to the grill, but they still tasted completely delicious, so it wasn't too much of a hardship to make this twice! It was a good reminder that oiling the grill grate is one of the most important things about successfully cooking fish on the grill. For the second batch, I used a product called Pam for Grilling, which is a spray that keeps food from sticking. It worked like a charm. You can also oil your grill with a paper towel dipped in olive oil with good results.

Chopped Salad Recipe with Shrimp, Cabbage, Jicama, and Cilantro-Lime Dressing

It's the first Monday I don't have to go to school, and I just hired a company to mow the lawn, leaving me more time for working in my garden, so life is good around here. In Utah, it's already so hot that when I worked in the garden today, by 9:30 A.M. I wanted to stop and come inside. I'm thinking about food that doesn't need to be cooked, and this is the perfect kind of thing to eat when it's that hot.

Lots of Herb Blogging Going On All Over the World

It's been another busy week of herb blogging around the world, as entries have been pouring into my e-mail box this week for Weekend Herb Blogging #85. I keep repeating myself, but once again I've been feeling like a proud parent with all the wonderful recipes people are creating. As my friend Alanna reminded me with this post, the best thing about food blogging is what you're learning along the way. I hope everyone else is learning as much as I am, but since school is out for the year, there will *not* be a test on this.

Flower Power: Garden Update #3

I'm still shouting hooray that it's finally summer, and around here, summer means gardening. I'm excited get the garden whipped into shape, and I'm planning to do some gardening later today. You can check the previous garden updates if you missed seeing what vegetables and herbs I'm growing this year. Even though I haven't been giving it too much attention the last few weeks, most of my garden is coming along. Here are a few things I noticed in the garden yesterday, as I enjoyed my first official day of summer vacation. (Links to commercial sites are only to illustrate that type of plant and not an advertisement or endorsement for the site.)

My sage plant is completely covered with flowers. I know I need to trim it, but I've been enjoying them so much I haven't been able to bring myself to cut the flowers off quite yet.