Thai Curry Zoodle Soup

Thai Curry Zoodle Soup

Thai-Chicken-Zoodle-Soup-5You’re probably thinking, wow that’s such a gorgeous picture! You’ve gotten so good at taking crisp, clean, beautiful pictures of your recipes!

But in full disclosure I didn’t take these pics.

Nope.

I wish. I’m working on getting better at staging my food and having more white space in my pictures, but I’m not there yet.

Carolyn at All Day I Dream About Food posted this recipe and I knew I had to make my own version of her soup. But we ate it so quick I didn’t even get to snap a picture! haha. Kidding

I made this soup and made a few small tweaks. I’m sure it wasn’t bad to begin with but I seem to be incapable of following a recipe line for line without putting my own spin on things.  🙂

This is the perfect healthy and delicious soup. I LOVE thai flavors and this is a healthy, low salt, and low sugar way to get it in my mouth PRONTO. And will Fall setting in around us, you gotta try this!

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ALWAYSSUMMER (5)So easy right? I really don’t know why I didn’t think about putting zoodles in soup before…? And with just putting the hot broth over the zoodles, they cook perfectly and you don’t end up with a mushy mess.Thai-Chicken-Zoodle-SoupAs stated before. I adapted this recipe from All Day I Dream About Food. You need to go and take a look at her website! Carolyn posts some really great stuff. Like today, she has a new post on Caramelized Onion Pizza. UMMM yes please, I can get into that.

Anyway, to ease some of my guilt on  being lazy and not taking my own pictures for this post, please go take a peak at the great work she’s doing over at her blog!

Thank you all for stopping by! I hope you have a wonderful weekend and I’ll “see” you next week!

xoxoxoxo

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Summer Radish Salad

Summer Radish Salad

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Summer is almost over?! Is this a joke? This summer flew by in the blink of an eye for me.

With the wedding planning and then the wedding and then our magical trip to Italy (remind me I should do a post on that) I feel like summer just began. But Autumn/Fall is my favorite season by far so I’m ok with it 🙂

With the end of the summer season comes Labor Day. Labor day is filled with family and fun and barbecues and cookout and food and drink! This year we don’t have many plans, Jake coaches football so the Labor Day weekend won’t really include traveling or big parties for us.

Buuutttttt

If you have Labor Day plans and need an awesome side dish, I’ve solved your problem for you!

This Radish Salad is patriotic(it’s red) delicious(anything with lemon and parsley is ok in my book!) and it’s healthy, oh and one more thing, b.e.a.utiful!

ALWAYSSUMMERTada.Super duper easy peasy.

A super helpful trick is that I use THIS handy dandy tool to chop all the radishes up nicely and evenly (not to mention insanely fast) and it works like a charm.

wpid-wp-1440960244291.jpgWe will definitely be making this again soon. Thanks for stopping by and checking out the blog and I hope you had wonderful weekend!!!

xoxo

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Butternut Squash & Arugula Quiche

Butternut Squash & Arugula Quiche
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HAPPY FRIDAY! 6 words for you. Thank. God. It. Is. The. Weekend.

I had what I’m going to call the longest week EVER at work. But I have a super fun weekend planned. I’m heading to the twin cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul) to visit my best friend everrrr. She just moved into her and her husbands first official house and I cannot WAIT to see it and help her celebrate being a homeowner and settle in! 🙂

It’s also my birthday on Saturday! 26! Nuts. But I’m sure we’ll get into some shenanigans like we always do when we’re together. Excited!

But before I head out on my fun filled weekend I had to share what I call “the best thing I think I’ve ever made” with you. (I actually said that when I tasted this). This GORGEOUS and delicious dish can be made for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack time… you name it!

I used crumbled goat cheese as my cheese and it was seriously perfect. I recommend that but as with all of my recipes, use anything you want! It’s all about experimenting and having fun, & I suggest you try with this, pronto.

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Like I said, I used goat cheese and it was to. die. for. Also you can easily make this so quick. Use store bought pie crust (like me) use pre cut up butternut squash(like me) (you can find this in the natural foods frozen section of most stores, otherwise Trader Joes has some!) if you use some of those handy shortcuts you have a wonderful delicious and somewhat healthified dinner in no time at all!

4Like it looks so good. I think I drooled.DSC_9387 copycan’t stop
won’t stop

Do yourself a favor and try this. Then come back and tell how you liked it! oh and MOST importantly, have a wonderful weekend!!!!!

xoxo669058772380712020613

Chicken Broccoli Quinoa Casserole

Chicken Broccoli Quinoa Casserole

FOREVER

HEYOOOO!

It’s Friday again! I love posting on Friday. They are such a happy day and everyone is in a great mood!

Sooooo this recipe is a total copy cat of my major girl crush, Lindsay over at Pinch of Yum. If you are on Pinterest at all, I 100% guarantee you have one of her posts pinned to your recipe board. She is a source of never ending amazing, well, everything! Food, Recipes, pictures, helpful blogging tips and tricks, laughs, inspiration….ok, like I said, girl crush.

I get so many recipe inspirations from her! Her and her hubby, Bjork, started Pinch of Yum a few years ago as a side fun thing and it morphed into their full time job and all their dreams come true! They are like a blogging, social media, power couple- and I want them to adopt me. kidding.

So I saw this recipe in my inbox one day and it struck a chord. Jake is always saying how now that I focus on healthier food for us, he misses the cheesy casseroles and pasta and this and that. Well this looked like the perfect solution, keeps me happy with veggies and quinoa and only a little cheese and keeps him happy because it tastes amazeballs and he’ll think it’s loaded with cheese.

WIN.WIN.

It was really good! I had a little trouble getting all the water to absorb into the quinoa, but I just left it in the oven for a little longer until it looked the consistency I wanted. Of course I can never follow a recipe word for word so I made this my “own” in a few ways…. made this gluten free and used almond milk since my stomach can’t really do dairy milk. Also spiced it up a little by using red pepper flakes. I loved the way mine tasted but here’s the original Lindsay version.

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But here is my version. Deeeelicious. You have to try it for yourself.

INGREDIENTS
2 cups reduced sodium chicken broth
1 cup milk (I used unsweetened almond)
1 teaspoon chicken or vegetable bouillon powder
½ cup flour (I used GF all purpose)
2 cups water, divided
1 cup uncooked quinoa, rinsed
¼ cup already cooked and then crumbled bacon (optional but not really 🙂 )
1 pound boneless skinless chicken breasts
2 teaspoons seasoning (I love Penzeys Mural of Flavor but any basic blend you like will work)
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
¼ cup shredded Gruyere cheese (although you can use whatever you would like)
3 cups fresh broccoli florets

INSTRUCTIONS
Sauce: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and generously grease a 9×13 baking dish (not kiddint- be generous, it really sticks to the sides). Bring the chicken broth and ½ cup milk to a low boil in a saucepan. Whisk the other ½ cup milk with the bouillon seasoning and flour; add the mixture to the boiling liquid and whisk until a smooth creamy sauce forms.
Put it all together: In a large bowl, mix the sauce from step one, one cup of water, the quinoa, and bacon and stir to combine. Pour the mixture into the prepared baking dish. Slice the chicken breasts into thin strips and lay the chicken breasts strips over the top of the quinoa mixture. Sprinkle with your seasoning of choice. Bake uncovered for 30 minutes.
Broccoli: While the casserole is in the oven, place the broccoli in boiling water for 1 minute until it turns bright green and then run under cold water. Set aside.
Bake: Remove the casserole from the oven, check the mixture by stirring it around in the pan, and if needed, bake for an additional 10-15 minutes to get the right consistency. When the quinoa and chicken are cooked and the sauce is thickened, add the broccoli and a little bit of water (like 1/2 cup) until the consistency is creamy and smooth and you can stir it up easily in the pan. Top with the cheese and bake for 5 minutes, or just long enough to melt the cheese. You can hit it with the broiler to get a pretty golden color if you want too. TADA

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And then eat it up! Sooooo tasty. And pretty relatively guilt free!

Eat Laugh CraftSo you have two take aways from today:

1) Make this recipe and come back and tell me how you liked it.

2) Go check out Lindsay and Bjorks site Pinch of Yum, if you haven’t already that is 🙂

OH and one last thing:

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY! ❤ ❤ ❤ I hope you all have a fabulous weekend. As always thanks for stopping by!

xoxo

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*This post contains no sponsored or affiliate links. 

Chicken Fajita Pizza

Chicken Fajita Pizza

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Helllooooooo fabulous readers!

So can you believe it’s September? I can’t. Although I’m pretty happy about it. Fall is hands down, 1000%, no doubt about it, my favorite season. Today I went for a walk and it was still a nice day (75) but the air was cooler and the breeze was awesome, and it just got me so excited for Fall to come. I’m all prepped for it. I have THESE amazing new boots in brown (thats dad!!!) and I am just pumped for the first day I can wear them! Also have some new scarves and a beautiful jacket (similar). Not to mention some pumpkin recipes 🙂

Jake and I also have our engagement pictures this fall! Sometime in October so we have that to prep and look forward to! Tonight I’m going to Jake’s football game (he’s the coach) and yesterday the regular season football season started (on a bad note for my beloved pack) but none the less all signs point to Fall!!!!!! And I’m loving every minute.

As summer comes to an end you may be drowning in some veggies (hello tomatoes and peppers!!). Here is a great way to use them up. So delicious. Jake loves anything pizza related and I enjoy that you can make so many different varieties.

I modified the recipe to this a bit- feel free to add/change/remove anything you don’t like 🙂

INGREDIENTS:

1 (11 oz) package Pillsbury pizza dough (although I made my own with this. THE BOMB!)
1/2 cup salsa
1/4 cup re-fried beans
2 cups shredded cooked chicken
1 1/2 cups red, green and yellow sliced peppers or jalapenos depending how much you like heat!
1/4 cup sliced onion
2 cups shredded cheese of your choice
2 tablespoons freshly chopped cilantro, for garnish

DIRECTIONS:

– Heat oven to 400°. Stretch dough to the size of a jelly roll pan. Or follow the directions of the Pizza crust you are using. Once it’s ready to have toppings do the following:

– Mix together the re-fried beans and the salsa in a small bowl and then spread salsa mix over crust as the base.
– Sprinkle 1 cup of the shredded cheese over salsa.
– Top with chicken, bell peppers and onion and then the rest of the cheese.

– Bake according to crust directions or until cheese has melted and pizza is starting to brown around the edges.

– Garnish the pizza with fresh cilantro and some avocado if you’d like.

Sooo good!

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There you have it! Another delicious pizza idea in the never ending world of pizza possibilities! Thank you for stopping by and don’t forget about the awesome giveaway coming up this month on the blog!!

xoxo

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Links:

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