Springtime Potato Salad
w/ Lemon Butter Vinaigrette

Every year I think I look forward to spring more and more. I swear OVERNIGHT the trees are blooming and plants are popping up! I can hardly believe it’s May already. I appreciate all the seasons but I think that Spring may win my heart.

With Spring, the warmer temperatures, and more daylight comes an abundance of growing crops and more fresh local food. Right now I’m seeing tons of spinach, ramps, asparagus, radishes, a few peas, mushrooms (it’s morel season guys!!) among other leafy greens. This salad brings so many of those ingredients to the spotlight and allows you to eat fresh local food with ease.

Not only is it beautiful and colorful but it’s pretty easy to whip up and has enough protein(with the lentils added) to be a light dinner by itself or it makes the perfect side for a grilled dinner or BBQ (Memorial Day anyone?!).

If you’re like me and love the taste of butter (REAL butter & this is my favorite) then this salad will most likely become your new ~~favorite~~ obsession. The rich butter vinaigrette really takes this thing to the next level & I’m already rationalizing 67 other things I can put it on.

Experiment and make it your own. I’d love to hear your renditions.

Seriously, how beautiful is this though? And tell me I’m not the only one who is a sucker for teeny tiny baby potatoes. ❤ Baby New Potatoes

My mouth is watering. Hope you enjoy!!

xoxo

Gnocchi w/ Browned Butter, Pancetta, & Sage

Well as you are about to see, this is NOT by any means a low fat recipe. But I assure you it is by EVERY means, delicious.

I mean letzzzz get real. Butter, pancetta, sage, are there flavors more comfy cozy for fall? Nope!

I had a lot of leftover sage from a butternut squash soup (maybe coming to the blog later?) recipe that I had made and needed to use it up. Butter and pancetta sounded like the perfect accompanists for it so I threw them all together and came up with this deliciously rich quick dinner.

Even while eating it Jake said, “Oh man, this is delicious. This isn’t very healthy for me is it?”

But sometimes I think we should just enjoy the flavors and not worry about “healthy” vs. “unhealthy”. Which is exactly what we did. Enjoyed it and savored it and savored it some more. ALWAYSSUMMER (1)

I really love the prepackaged Gnocchi that Cost Plus (World Market) has. It’s cheap, not full of any weird or unpronounceable ingredients and tastes delicious. You can even order it online if you’re not lucky enough to have a store close to you. And I say lucky because I’m convinced that they cannot produce or sell an item I wouldn’t be thrilled to have either in my home, in my stomach or on my body (home decor, food, jewelry/clothes in case you were confused) 🙂 Pancetta and bacon are very similar. Basically the same except for one small step. Both are usually cured pork belly but while pancetta is done after the curing step, bacon is then smoked afterwards. Typically it’s a cold smoke and it’s never heated, which is why both pancetta and bacon need to be cooked before eaten. (Different from prosciutto which has been cured a little differently and for a much longer period of time and can be eaten without being “cooked”). There’s your food lesson for the day!
We have our first snow fall in the forecast for this weekend. I suppose can’t be that bent out of shape about it, we’ve had such a mild fall and it’s almost the end of November. Maybe if we get enough this year, I can finally go snow shoeing as we couldn’t last year!