Asparagus Breakfast Skillet

School has begun. My world, like most Moms, begins before the light of day has reached me. I am not a morning person. If I want to get a workout and shower in before I become my kids personal shuttle then I have exactly 15 minutes to get breakfast on the table. Real breakfast, full of real whole foods.

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Black Olive & Cilantro Dressing on Egg & Avocado Salad

We eat a lot of salad, especially in the summer when I just want to eat lighter meals in the heat. Even though kids are heading back to school and talk of Fall fills the air, the heat will not leave our area for a couple more months. So salads are still on the menu. The best way to keep salads from becoming boring are to change up the dressing. Really salad dressing is the star of any good salad, at the very least an award winning best supporting actor. Making salad dressing is far easier than spending what feels like f-o-r-e-v-e-r reading ingredient labels on the multitudes of commercial dressings (why am I reading the labels? to avoid soy, rancid vegetable oils, hydrogenated oils, added sugars, GMOs, food coloring, chemicals I can't pronounce, preservatives and who knows what else).

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Mayonnaise

I have tried so many different mayonnaise recipes since I began exploring this real food stuff 6 years ago. Most of the real food mayo recipes use olive oil and I just couldn't get on board with the taste no matter what kind of seasoning I added in. I have tried bacon grease mayonnaise, Mary's oil blend mayonnaise, and just about everyone of my favorite bloggers mayonnaise recipes. I finally started playing around with oils that I had never had in my kitchen before; such as avocado oil and liquid coconut oil, to come up with my go-to mayonnaise. 

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Apple Cheddar Jalapeno Salad

We have a lot of apples right now. We spent a beautiful day last weekend picking a ton of apples, most of which will be turned into applesauce, apple butter, and if possible a batch or two of cider. First I have to figure out how to use my kitchen aid attachment for making the applesauce (that is tomorrow's project), until then I have apples to use. I made a quick lunch out of leftover tacos that I had previously served with avocado. My kids love avocado, so we didn't have any leftover and one lonely fish taco is not a meal. So using what I happened to have on hand I made a salad (or kind of a slaw, perhaps?) that goes exceptionally well with tacos and is a touch fancier than the avocado and sea salt I served the day before.

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Simple Stovetop Popcorn- No Special Equipment Needed

 

For the longest time I thought a popcorn maker was needed to make good popcorn. I grew up with an air popper or microwavable bags. When I started learning about traditional food I still assumed I needed special equipment and sought out special stovetop poppers with fancy cranks. It was pretty cool to turn the crank and watch everything pop through the special glass window, but it took up precious room in my kitchen and only had one use. When it broke I didn't want to replace it. Instead I grabbed my stainless steel soup pot with a glass lid and gave it a try. It worked. It was fast and easy. Almost as fast as microwavable bags, but a thousand times better (better tasting and better for you). Today my three boys and I gathered around our stovetop to make a special cinnamon and sugar treat for our snack time.

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