Recipe for Greek Cabbage Salad with Feta and Thyme

I'm home from California where I had a wonderful time at the BlogHer Food Conference, enjoyed many lunches and dinners with fellow bloggers, and spent a few days visiting my stepsisters who live in California. I'll be writing more about the conference (and those lunches and dinners!) but first here's a new recipe for all the readers who don't really care about blogging conferences. I'm crazy over cabbage, and love everything with Feta, so when I saw this recipe for Greek Cabbage Salad on Culinate, there was no doubt that I'd be giving it a try. I loved this interesting new take on cabbage salad, which I only adapted the tiniest bit from the original recipe. If you don't have fresh thyme, I think there are some other herbs that would work here, but I wouldn't use dried thyme.

Recipe for Wilted Escarole Salad with Kohlrabi, Radish, Lemon, and Parmesan

I love discovering foods that are new-to-me and turning them into friends. Escarole is one of those ingredients I was quickly intrigued by, but I confess after I heard about this interesting type of greens that can be eaten cooked or raw, it took me a while to try it. Actually, when I was first getting to know it, more than once I brought escarole home, only to have it go bad in the crisper. Maybe it was that feeling of escarole regret that spurred me on to make a salad with this head of escarole, which might have been a day or two past it's prime, but was definitely still good when I rescued it from the crisper. I checked Food Blog Search for inspiration and remembered Molly's Escarole Salad with Avocado and Parmesan, and I was also intrigued by how The Chocolate Lady had recommended a bit of marinating time in her recipe for Non-Cooked Escarole. I also had a bulb of kohlrabi my sister had given me, and some radishes in the fridge, and that's how this salad with escarole, kohlrabi, and radishes was created.

Recipe for Grilled Halibut with Southwestern Rub and Tomatillo Salsa

I'm still in San Francisco, where today I'll be speaking on a panel at the BlogHer Food Blogging Conference about Food Blogging Best Practices. This grilled halibut is something I cooked last week using the Tomatillo Salsa with green chiles roasted on the grill, but you could also use the Southwestern Rub and idea of green salsa on fish with any other type of white fish. Halibut is something I haven't cooked much the last few years because it's expensive, but I decided to splurge when Costco had wild Alaskan halibut at a better price than I'd seen for a while (plus my 84 year-old dad had wistfully commented that he hadn't eaten halibut in a long time, and I wanted to make it for him!)

Recipe for Low-Sugar and Flourless Zucchini Muffins with Pecans (Gluten-Free)

Thanks to my uber-talented brother Rand for the new blog header on Kalyn's Kitchen! By the time you read this I'll be in San Francisco hanging out for a few days with some of my food blogging friends before the BlogHer Food Blogging Conference gets started. (I'm actually staying in California nearly a week, and although I'm working on some recipes to auto-post while I'm gone, there might be a bit less action than usual around here for a few days.) I made these muffins a few weeks ago, and now the garden is winding down, but by the time I get home I'm guessing I'll have at least a few monster zucchini begging to be made into something tasty like this.

Recipe for Tomatillo Salsa with Roasted Green Chiles, Cilantro, and Lime

Many years ago one of my friends got a food processor and told me she was going to make salsa. At the time I'd never made salsa, and I thought it sounded very exotic and complicated. Of course, now I realize that if you have fresh ingredients and some idea of the proportions, it's pretty hard to make a bad batch of salsa, even without a food processor. This post is about the salsa I made with the green chiles I roasted on my barbecue grill (plus some of those volunteer tomatillos from the garden) but if you have the fresh tomatillos, I'm thinking you could still make pretty tasty salsa using canned roasted chiles. And remember, making salsa is an art and not a science, so if you'd like a little more or less of one of the ingredients, feel free to improvise.

How to Roast Anaheim Green Chiles on a Barbecue Grill

Recently I spotted some Hatch Green Chiles at Whole Foods and couldn't resist buying them, partly because my blogging friend Karina had just posted Roasted Green Chile Stew and talked about the annual chile roasting ritual in New Mexico. I love roasted chiles, and since I have that new natural gas grill, I thought it would be fun to roast them on the grill.

Recipe for Cheese Crackers with Almond Flour (Gluten Free)

These gluten-free crackers made with almond flour and cheese were so addictive it turned out to be a good thing I only made half the recipe when I tried them! They're from The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook by fellow food blogger Elana Amsterdam from Elana's Pantry. I received a review copy of the book, and although I don't need to eat gluten-free foods, I found a lot of recipes that look interesting. I'm looking forward to meeting Elena next weekend when we're both on a panel about Food Blogging Best Practices at the BlogHer Food conference in San Francisco.

Friday Night Photos: 2009 Garden Update #9 (The Herbs are Flourishing!)

For anyone who's forgotten (or is new to the blog) Friday Night Photos is a feature I started to encourage me to practice using my camera for something besides carefully staged food shots. It's fun, but lots of times the pictures show how much I have to learn as a photographer. Let me make it clear that these are not what I would consider good photos! I have a new lens, so I wandered out into the garden in the early morning and took a few photos, and when I saw the pictures I realized I should have bumped up the ISO (and a few were so blurry they were immediately deleted.) But even when the photos are bad, I do like remembering how the herbs are growing, and this year's crop of herbs has been stellar. I have two boxes (2 feet X 10 feet) with herbs, so starting from the west, on the end we have lots of basil. It's definitely time to give the basil a good trimming and freeze some basil, but I've made quite a few batches of basil vinaigrette the last month, so it's been a good year for basil.

Recipe for Whole Wheat Spaghetti with Garlic, Chard, and Pecorino-Romano Cheese

Swiss Chard is one of those greens I'm not sure I ever tasted before I started growing it in my garden, but I liked the flavor right away when I tried it. I also love the way you can snip off chard leaves as they get big and the plant will keep producing more leaves all summer and well into the fall. That cut-and-come-again quality makes chard a gardener's dream plant, especially in Utah where so many leafy greens don't do well once the hot summer weather gets here.

Friday Night Photos: 2009 Garden Update #8 (Fun Times Taking Photos in the Garden)

It certainly hasn't been an ordinary summer at my house, and I've already confessed that the garden I normally pamper and fuss over has been sorely neglected this year. But even a relatively unproductive garden can be a real source of pleasure. I recently got a new lens for my camera, and these are just a few random shots I had fun taking. Above is one perfect sunflower, shot in bright sunlight.

Recipe for Fattoush (Lebanese "Crumbled Bread" Salad with Sumac and Pita Chips)

Fattoush is a Lebanese "Crumbled Bread" Salad that's flavored with lemon juice and Sumac.

It's only been four days since a reader named Lori send me this recipe for Fattoush, but I've made the salad three times and it's already become one of my go-to summer salads when I have tomatoes, cucumber, parsley, and mint in the garden. Thank you Lori for this wonderful recipe, and now I'm kicking myself for all the times I saw Fattoush on a restaurant menu or another blog and never tried it!

Recipe Favorites: Zucchini and Green Chile Breakfast Casserole

(Updated and added to Recipe Favorites September 2009) This zucchini breakfast casserole with cottage cheese, sharp cheddar cheese, zucchini, and green chiles is a great answer to the "What shall we make with zucchini?" opportunity that gardeners face every year. Breakfast casseroles with zucchini are something I make every summer when I have a surplus of zucchini and I'm running out of ways to use it. This version is a recipe where a bit more or less zucchini won't matter, but to keep the zucchini from being watery in the finished dish, I trim away some of the inner white part, and then saute it with the green chiles for extra flavor. I use drained low-fat cottage cheese here to make this creamy without a lot of added fat, but you can also just use more cheese and skip the cottage cheese if you prefer.

Ten Grilling and Salad Recipe Ideas for Labor Day Weekend 2009

I'm not sure whether Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, or Labor Day is the top grilling holiday in the U.S., but I'm guessing plenty of people will be grilling this weekend. If you want grilling ideas, definitely check the Holiday Recipes in the archives where I've already done a few collections of recipes for summer holidays. For Labor Day I thought it might be fun to spotlight my ten favorite new grilling and summer salad ideas from Summer 2009. You might remember that I didn't have my grill for much of the summer this year, so when I finally got it back I wanted to make up for lost time! I'd have to say the Grilled Salmon Packets with Tomatoes, Olive, Garlic, Thyme, and Saffron were probably my favorite new thing to cook on the grill this summer; I made these twice for guests and a few more times just for myself!

Friday Night Photos: 2009 Garden Update #7 (Documenting My Love for Green Zebra Tomatoes)

This hasn't been the greatest gardening year at Chez Kalyn. The summer started out with weeks of rain, I was seriously distracted by house renovations, and then I got mixed up on my renovated sprinkling system and the tomatoes went for weeks with no water. Most of my plants are just surviving, but the one very bright spot in this year's gardening adventure is the discovery of Green Zebra tomatoes. Every year I try a few new tomato varieties, so when a fellow gardener suggested that I might like Green Zebras, I got one plant (even though I had been unenthused about Striped Zebra tomatoes last year, so don't get confused and buy those instead.) Now it's official, Green Zebras are my favorite tomato of all, bumping Brandywines out of the top spot!

Recipe for Low-Sugar and Whole Wheat Garden Harvest Cake with Zucchini, Apple, and Carrot

Low-Sugar and Whole Wheat Garden Harvest Cake

Labor Day signifies the impending arrival of fall and harvest time, and this Garden Harvest Cake is a great way to celebrate the bounty of the season. This may be the first time I've gotten a recipe from Twitter, but when Addie sent out a link saying it was the most searched for recipe in the Austin American Statesman recipe database, I had to take a look. When I saw this recipe for a cake with zucchini, carrots, and apple, I thought it would be fun to make a low-sugar and whole wheat version. I didn't have the right size pan, so mine turned out a bit flat, but otherwise I loved this recipe, especially the way you see flecks of carrot in the finished cake. Some people might consider this more of a bread than a cake, but the apple and carrot do make it sweeter than most zucchini bread. I ate my cake mainly for breakfast, celebrating the fall weather and enjoying the harvest.

Recipe for World's Easiest Grilled Zucchini and Sausage Kabobs

It just doesn't get much easier than these Grilled Zucchini and Sausage Kabobs!

(Updated and added to Recipe Favorites September 2009) I'm engaged in a long-term project of going back in the archives and updating earlier posts that have good recipes, but ghastly photos or instructions that could be more clear. This idea from 2006 is one that I've used many times with different types of sausage, and truly, these have to be the easiest kabobs in the world. There are a few ways you can do the kabobs, depending on how much time you want to invest, but even if you just stick the sausage and veggies on skewers, brush with Italian salad dressing, and grill, this is a pretty good tasting easy dinner.

South Beach Diet Phase One Recipes Round-Up for August 2009

Kalyn's favorite phase one recipe for August 2009 was
Zucchini Carpaccio with Lemon, Herbs, and Goat Cheese

Even though I'm fairly committted to reading other blogs looking for South Beach Diet phase one recipes for the monthly phase one recipe round-ups, at the end of the month I'm always surprised by how many great-sounding phase one recipes I find. That's especially true this month; this may be the biggest round-up so far, with lots of salads and gazpacho and not one breakfast recipe this time! One of my goals in doing this is to show that phase one really isn't that hard, and lately I've been getting quite a bit of feedback on the Kalyn's Kitchen Facebook Page from people who are using these roundups, which is fun! However, even if you have no interest in the South Beach Diet, I'm guessing some of these recipes will sound pretty good, so enjoy!