Pickles

Fermented and Crispy,  Sliced or Whole

My garden gave me cucumbers this year. Big cucumbers. More than I could use in salads. Bigger than I could pickle whole. I have attempted fermented pickle slices in the past, but they always turn to mush. Eventually I just skipped sliced pickles and made them whole, then I sliced them afterwards if needed.

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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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