summer meals

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Grilled Vegetable and Grains Salad

July 2, 2011 in Uncategorized by traveleatlove | 7 comments

Happy weekend! We have all sorts of fun plans that include a trip to Newport, visiting family, and hopefully, if all goes well, lots of time on the boat. If you are grilling and looking for a healthy side dish or perhaps even a dinner for your vegetarian guests, I have the perfect thing. Inspired by some beautiful, local zucchini and zucchini squash, this dish is super simple and utilizes some store-bought ingredients to make it something you can toss together very quickly.

You will need 3 medium sized zucchinis, summer squashes, or a mix of the two.

You will also need a half cup of a good bottled vinaigrette, unless you want to make your own, which is fine. I was purposely looking to cut corners here to get dinner on the table fast. I put my vinaigrette into the food processer with four cloves of raw garlic, crushed red pepper, and a squeeze of my Gourmet Garden basil to make it my own.

Once the dressing was all set, I heated up about a cup and a half of chickpeas I had already soaked and cooked the day before. I also cooked, according to package directions, half a package of Trader Joe’s Harvest Grains Blend, one of my favorite products ever. I love the texture!

The last step was simply grilling the veggies and assembling the dish. Right before serving, I poured in the dressing and tossed the grains and chickpeas to blend them together with it. A little sprinkle of salt and ground black pepper, and we were good to go!

I adore the flavors of grilled vegetables so much that I had a giant pile of them for dinner a few nights ago. May as well embrace summer as much as possible!

I love how healthy and easy this grilled vegetable salad is, and as I said earlier, it really is a complete vegetarian meal.

What are you cookin up this weekend?

Tags: dinner, Food, recipe, side dish, summer meals, vegan, Vegetarian

Not my Week

June 8, 2011 in Food by traveleatlove | 16 comments

Hi friends! Happy Hump Day. I am having one of those weeks. Here’s what has happened so far:

Friday: Frustrating day of work. Went shopping at Trader Joe’s on Boylston Street, paper bag full of groceries ripped across the bottom in the middle of Boston. Hoisted grocery bag from underneath to try to contain, and the bag cut my face. No, really. And no one offered to help, kind of like the time I fell in Boston and people stepped over me. Starting to see a pattern. . . yes that I am clumsy. But also that people here aren’t the nicest. Later that day, I stepped off of a curb and twisted my ankle.

Saturday: freak boat crash resulting in possibly very damaged boat (the upside, no injuries)

Sunday: stress preparing all day for an interview

Monday: Frustrating work day – for real, why does no one respond to emails or voicemails?! Have we become THAT busy that a simple yes/no/maybe response is just too taxing?

Tuesday: Realizing work (and $$) is slowing down for the summer, had the T door slammed just about on my arm before the driver drove away, frustrating day, had a runner spit into the wind. . . and it came back and hit me, frustrating evening trying to plan a client event . . . like the kind of thing that makes you want to bang your head against a wall

Today: Woke up, stepped in cat vom in my bare feet, have some sort of issues with my eyes again, and my allergy hives continue to pop up, and still no response from the person I am trying to plan an event with. For next week. I am starting to dislike the general population.

Today it is taking every ounce of energy left not to just say forget it all and sit on the deck in the sun.

Speaking of sun, it’s a scorcher out there and looks like it will be for the next two days. When it gets hot outside, the last thing you want to do is create an elaborate meal inside.

Blogger inspiration, in the form of Michelle’s tuna burgers, to the rescue!

I always keep tuna on hand, but we actually rarely eat it. Burgers were a simple, not very labor intensive option. All I needed to heat was one pan!

I started with two cans of tuna, drained, and an egg, breaking up the chunks of tuna to incorporate all of the egg.

I added about a cup of panko break crumbs and a few shakes of this “It’s a dilly” dill and lemon seasoning. It is quite tasty.

My burgers were not nearly as pretty as Michelle’s. They totally fell apart and I had to kind of smoosh them back together.

But that was okay, because they tasted great, had lots of protein, which I tend to fail on in my diet, and took just a few minutes to cook. Served with some pickles, an easy corn salad, which I will post later, and this, my favorite mustard.

Trader Joe’s Hot & Sweet Mustard – good on anything from sandwiches (turkey,cheese, spinach, avocado, on whole grain for me!) to pretzel sticks to cut veggies, this mustard packs a tiny bit of spice balanced by a lovely sweetness.

So there you have yourself a pretty easy, almost no-cook summer dinner, inspired by the blog-o-sphere!

I am ready for this week to be over now. . .

What’s happenin’ with you? Are you having a good week?

Tags: burgers, Food, summer meals, tuna

Strawberry Salad with Grilled Scallops

June 7, 2011 in Food, recipe by traveleatlove | 13 comments

Strawberries, scallops, and peppery arugula all taste like summer to me. After a long winter, there is nothing I crave more than strawberries. Well, maybe heirloom tomatoes, but they don’t arrive until later in the summer, and I don’t want to rush things.

Strawberries, plump and red, if you are lucky, juicy enough that they are more than a little messy to eat, are perfect on their own. We all know that they make a happy union with shortcake and cream, and who doesn’t love a strawberry cupcake? I foresee myself making all of the above, but this past weekend, I wanted a strawberry and scallop salad.

Salads are the essence of summer, their simple preparation welcome after a day in the sun. I started this salad by cleaning and slicing strawberries on the beautiful Oxo cutting board I got at Eat, Write, Retreat.

I paused for a second to smell the sweetness of the raw scallops before putting them on a piping hot grill pan. I love how a fresh scallop smells as much as I love the taste. I did my best not to move them around in hopes of getting a golden brown, caramel color on each side.

While I left the scallops alone, I plated fresh arugula, strawberries, and crumbled goat cheese, finally adding the scallops when cooked through. They took no more than six minutes total.