Crispy Cracker Coconut Mounds

Alternate title: Dipping Things in Chocolate is Hard.

I recently learned that the reason a lot of people don’t like coconut (according to two people I know who don’t like coconut) is the texture. I don’t really get it. Do these people just not like sweetened shredded coconut? What about desiccated? What about fresh? Or big dry flakes? I feel like there are way too many coconut types and applications to just give it a blanket dislike. I’m the kind of person who loves coconut, both in flavor and texture. I truly think it makes everything better. I was the kid who wished for Almond Joys at Halloween, who requested chocolate cake with coconut pecan frosting for every birthday, and who poked a hole in the bottom of every chocolate in the box, until I found the coconut one. I’m that person.

Strawberry Balsamic Vanilla Sodas

I’m going to keep this pretty short and sweet.

Classic Deviled Eggs

There are a trajillion deviled egg recipes on the internet. Fancy ones with Dungeness crab on top or truffle oil mixed in. Spicy ones with sriracha or horseradish. Deviled eggs with bacon, goat cheese, and avocado. Southern, southwest, and buffalo deviled eggs. I even saw a recipe for breaded, deep fried deviled eggs. Whoa! And, for every crazy, fusion-y, fun deviled egg out there, there are probably 3 takes on the classic version.

Sesame Sriracha Egg Salad

Here's my second egg salad experiment. And, I must say… this one rocks. It rawks, even. 

Before we get to the goodness of this recipe, can I tell you something sort of embarrassing? So, I've had lower back pain on and off for years, and recently, as I've amped up my outdoor running for spring, my backs been killing me. So I went to a sports rehab doc, and guess what? My glutes aren't doing their job, forcing all the effort on my lower back. Basically, in a nutshell, my butt muscles aren't working right. So now, in order to retrain my muscles to do what they're supposed to do, I have four weeks of PT. To relearn how to walk. My butt is broken.

In other news… Sesame Sriracha Egg Salad! After my deconstructed egg salad, I was brave enough to try a mixed up version with lots of fun flavors. This has sesame oil, soy sauce, and sriracha, and the flavor totally kills. So, so good. I seriously want to eat this every day. Egg salad convert!

Sesame Sriracha Egg Salad

This is the 4-egg version, which basically made two overloaded baguette slices. Double the recipe for more, or cut in half for less.  

1 teaspoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon Sriracha

2 teaspoons mayonaise

1 teaspoon sesame oil

4 hardboiled eggs

Salt & pepper 

Baguette slices

Micro greens or spring greens

Extra Sriracha

Black sesame seeds

Whisk together soy sauce, Sriracha, mayo, and sesame oil. Chop eggs in fairly small pieces, add to mayo mixture, and gently toss to combine. Salt & pepper to taste. Top baguette slices with greens, a big scoop of egg salad, an extra squirt of Sriracha, and a sprinkle of black sesame seeds. 

Egg Salad No. 1

This is the time of year where all my online feeds fill up with egg salad sandwiches. Which I hate. Well, used to hate.

I’ve mentioned here before that my whole life I had a major hate-hate relationship with eggs, until about five years ago. Now it’s sort of love-hate. I eat a ton of eggs. Love ‘em over medium, baked, scrambled, and sometimes even hardboiled. But I still have a few weird leftover hang-ups from my egg hating days. Like, I don’t want to eat eggs that other people prepare. And I don’t like watching other people eat eggs. And until this week, I hated egg salad sandwiches.

My egg salad memories from childhood are squishy and smelly. Amanda loved the things, and would really disgustingly eat them in front of me since she knew it grossed me out. Since egg salad is all over the place around Easter, I started a little convo about it on Facebook. And, kind of to my surprise, it turned out that everyone loves egg salad sandwiches.

You guys also told me on the 'book that you like dill and green olives in your egg salad. I decided to work with that. But I was still a little nervous, picturing a smelly, mushy mound of squishy egg salad, so I decided to go the deconstructed route: baguette slices with tangy green olive and mustard tapenade, micro greens, sliced hard-boiled eggs, and dilly mayo. 

GUYS! This is actually good. Really good! Hey egg salad, I’m not afraid of you anymore! You hear that? I’m not afraid of you! Sorry, quick Home Alone tangent. Anyway, my first foray into egg salad gave me enough courage to try a mixed up version… today you get deconstructed, and later we’re doing a little somethin’ somethin’ with everyone’s favorite bright red hot sauce. Stay tuned for that one!

Deconstructed Egg Salad Sandwiches

1/2 cup mayo 

2 tablespoons fresh dill

Sea salt

1.5 cups green olives

2 teaspoons grainy dijon mustard

Hardboiled eggs

Baguette slices

Micro greens (I like the Trader Joe's micro greens, but sprouts or spring greens work too)

Dill fronds
Sliced chives

Salt & pepper

Add mayo, dill, and a pinch of salt to blender, and blend until combined. Taste, and add more dill or salt as needed. Scoop into a dish. Once blender is thoroughly scraped out, add olives and mustard, and blend until combined and chunky, but not totally pureed. Scoop into a separate dish. 

For each baguette slice, spread a bit of the mustard tapenade, add a handful of micro greens, sprouts, or other greens, a layer of thinly sliced hard boiled eggs, a pinch of salt and pepper, a drizzle of the mayo (I add mine to a ziplock baggie with the corner cut out to pipe), chives, and a bit of fresh dill. Make as many as your heart desires! 

Carrot Cake Smoothies

I had this recipe ready for you guys earlier this week, but decided it was probably a bad idea to post it on April Fool’s day. Then you’d be all like “Oh, it’s not actually a carrot cake smoothie, its cake…right?” I’m sorry. It’s really a smoothie, no jokes here. There is no cake.

But, also not a joke: this smoothie is really good! And it’s good for you! And, if you’re gonna be filling your Easter keister up with a ton of ham, potatoes, deviled eggs, Cadbury cream eggs, homemade ricotta, coconut cakes, lemon pies, and other pastel-inspired goodies (like I will), then a pre-feast smoothie might be in order.

This smoothie has all the makings of a good carrot cake, minus the cream cheese frosting, butter, eggs, and cake parts. Carrots, coconut, nuts, and spices get all whirled up in your blender with other good and creamy things like coconut milk, bananas, and dates. It’s almost a carrot cake shake, rather than smoothie.

If you’re feeling really festive, you can top it all off with toasted coconut and chopped nuts. And also… that remaining coconut milk? Go ahead and whip that into a smooth and fluffy whipped cream. It’s really like the icing on the cake…or the smoothie shake, if ya know what I’m sayin’.

Carrot Cake Smoothies

Serves 2

5 medium-large carrots, peeled and roughly chopped

1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

1/2 cup coconut milk (if you're using remaining for whipped cream, be sure to use a full fat version)

2 large dates, pitted

1/2 large banana

1/4 cup almonds or other nuts

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

Pinch of fresh nutmeg and ground cloves

2 cups of ice

Toppings:

Toasted coconut

Chopped nuts

Whipped coconut cream

Place everything except ice and toppings in blender, and blend until smooth. Add ice, and blend until smooth. Pour into smoothie glasses or jars, and serve with toppings. 

Ham Fried Rice

Fried rice is my go-to for quick weeknight dinners. It's super duper easy, I always have the ingredients on hand, and it's pretty tasty. My fried rice is totally not the greasy Chinese take-out version, but I love it so much. I crave it. 

For the rice, you can either used leftover rice, you can throw some rice on to boil when you get home from work, or you can even pop into the takeout place on the way home and grab a little carton of cooked rice. Don't judge, but I have a secret. I'm in love with Trader Joe's microwavable frozen individual brown rice packets. It seems more like real food than some of those other pre-cooked rice packets. And I love the nutty flavor and toothsome chew of brown rice. I try to keep peas in the freezer at all times too. Not only are they perfect for tossing into rice, but also pasta! And I mean, got a black eye or sore muscle? Instant ice pack! Can I tell you another secret? I also keep un-cooked bacon in the freezer, and then when I make fried rice, I just cut off a few chunks from the frozen slab o' bacon and throw it in. Add an onion, garlic, egg, some soy sauce, and lots of black pepper… and that, my friends, is dinner.

With Easter just around the corner, I thought this would be the perfect time to talk about fried rice, since you can totally throw some of that leftover Easter ham in there. Yep, Easter-ham fried rice. It's a thing. At my house anyway. And if you bake your ham with brown sugar, oh man. That sticky sweet sugary ham is puh-erfect in fried rice. I would even go as far as to recommend stashing a hunk or two of ham from your guests just for this purpose. You'll thank me later. 

Ham Fried Rice

Serves 2-4

Unlike some fried rice recipes, I like to mix the raw egg in with the rice, so that it almost coats it and cooks all around it, versus having chunks of scrambled egg. Check out my 'technique' in the instructions. 

2 large eggs

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon coconut oil

1/2 large yellow onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 cup frozen peas

1 cup cooked, diced ham

3 cups cooked rice

Fresh ground black pepper

Sriracha

In a small bowl, add eggs and soy sauce, and beat until combined. Set aside.

Heat a large non-stick skillet or wok over medium-high, and add coconut oil. Once the oil is shimmery, add the onion. Cook onion until just starting to brown, about 5-6 minutes. Add garlic and cook for another couple of minutes minutes (don't let garlic burn). Add peas and ham, and cook for a minute or so, until warm. Add rice and stir so everything is combined and rice is warm. 

Push rice mixture to outer edges of the wok and pour the egg in the middle. Let it sit for a minute or so, so that it's starting to cook on the bottom but is mostly still liquid, then start stirring, mixing the cooked egg into the raw egg. Slowly start stirring the edges of the rice into the egg mixture, until eventually there's no longer a well in the middle of the wok. Stir until everything is combined. Then sort of flatten the rice out, let cook for a few minutes, and flip it (with a spatula). Flatten once more and cook for another minute or so. This ensures that the egg is cooked, and it makes a nice crispy crust. 

Season to taste with black pepper and sriracha. I love lots of black pepper in mine! 

Wordless Wednesday: Easter Dinner

For Easter, Amanda and I made an amazingly delicious dinner inspired by some of our favorite recipes, food blogs, and food magazines. We gorged ourselves on shaved Brussels sprout salad with pineapple poppy seed vinaigrette, roasted radishes with lemon brown butter and fresh chopped radish tops, asparagus and cheeses tart with buttery homemade puff pastry, crispy pommes anna with herbes de provence, Amanda’s crazy-good brown sugar pulled ham, and individual pistachio meringues with vanilla whipped cream (using our vanilla beans from Moorea) and strawberries soaked in orange flower water.