Northwest Salad

We just got back from our honeymoon in Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver (ate so much great food – more on that soon!)

I also just started a new job this week doing marketing for an architecture firm which is super exciting.  Lots of big changes lately… 

I have to be up pretty early for work, so I’ve been packing my lunch the night ahead.  And after indulging ourselves on vacation, we’re trying to eat healthy and get back to a routine. 

It seems that every place we visited in the northwest had amazing salads – a lot of them including beets, sweet potatoes, avocado, and other ingredients I normally associate with fall.  I stocked up on tons of these ingredients at Trader Joe’s as soon as we got back from our trip, so we have plenty to keep us eating well. 

One of the non-traditional items we asked for on our wedding registry was gift cards to Joe & Son’s Olive Oils.  We already bought several varieties – including chipotle infused olive oil, Tuscan herb olive oil, and fig balsamic.  They are perfect for simple salad dressings (and we’ve used them to drizzle on popcorn as well). 

I’ve made a version of this salad 3 times this week already – it’s my new favorite lunch.  You can add or subtract ingredients as you like, but one of the things I like is that it has such a wide variety of ingredients.  You can include whatever veggies you like, or even add hard-boiled eggs, chicken, or other proteins. 

Northwest Salad

Ingredients:

• Baby spinach
• Sweet potato, peeled, cut into cubes, and roasted (follow this recipe to bake them…)
• Mushrooms, sliced
• Pomegranate seeds (removed from fruit – you can buy them pre-seeded or follow these instructions to do it yourself if you are patient)
• Steamed & peeled baby beets (Trader Joe’s sells these pre-packaged to avoid the mess and hassle…), sliced
• Trader Joe’s Harvest Grains blend, prepared according to package (it’s a mix of Israeli couscous, orzo, baby garbanzo beans, and red quinoa)
• Trader Joe’s Sweet & Spicy pecans (if you haven’t tried these already, do yourself a favor and buy multiple bags…), broken into pieces
• Marinated mozzarella, chopped (I got Trader Joe’s aka Trader Giotto’s which is in olive oil with spices already)
• ½ an avocado, diced
• Olive oil & vinegar dressing – we used Tuscan Herb Olive Oil and Fig Balsamic from Joe & Sons
• Freshly ground pepper

Directions:

Combine all ingredients & enjoy!  If you are planning to bring this for lunch, wait to add the nuts and the dressing to keep it from getting soggy (although this does hold up pretty well even with dressing…) 

Steak Tacos with Chipotle Cherry Salsa

 

Cherries are at their season peak right now here in Florida, so we bought a big bag of them last week.  Then, our neighbor Vimmi gave us even more since she was leaving town & had to clear out her fridge, so we had more cherries than we knew what to do with! 

This recipe was really easy and the salsa itself was amazing – the mix of sweet, tart, and spicy reminded me of this spicy cranberry cream cheese dip I made at Thanksgiving last year.  And the Trader Joe’s Habanero Lime tortilla shells were great – the bag said “medium hot”, but I’d really say they were just mild-medium…just a hint of spiciness.  I’d definitely make this meal again. 

Steak Tacos with Chipotle Cherry Salsa (adapted from Iowa Girl Eats)

Steak Ingredients:

• 1 pound sirloin tip steak
• ¼ cup balsamic vinegar
• 1 T Worchestershire sauce (I actually ran out the other day when we made meatloaf, so I omitted this ingredient…)
• 2 t. brown sugar
• 2 garlic cloves, smashed
• ¼ t. red chili pepper flakes
• salt & pepper

Salsa Ingredients:

• ¼ cup fresh basil
• 1 jalapeño pepper, seeded and chopped
• 1 T balsamic
• 1 garlic clove
• 1 t. honey
• 1 t. lime juice
• 2 cups cherries, pitted and cut in half
• salt and pepper

Rest of the ingredients:

• 1 onion, sliced thin (sweet onion would be better – we only had half a white onion)
• 1 T olive oil
• Pinch of sugar
• Flour tortillas (we used Habanero Lime from Trader Joe’s)
• Shredded cheddar cheese (pepperjack would have been good too)
• 1 t cilantro
• 1 cup spinach
• 1 tomato

Directions:

1. Prepare the steak marinade.  In a small bowl, whisk together balsamic, Worchestershire, brown sugar, garlic, red chili pepper flakes, salt & pepper.  Season steak on both sides with salt & pepper, then place in a Ziploc bag with the marinade and refrigerate for 1-4 hours (it doesn't look very appetizing here, but I promise, it will be delicious!)

2. Meanwhile, prepare the cherry salsa.  In a food processor, combine basil, jalapeño, balsamic, garlic, honey, lime juice, salt, pepper, and half the cherries.  Process until nearly smooth.  Add the remaining cherries and pulse until chunky.  Refrigerate until ready to use. 

3. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Add onion slices, season with salt, pepper, and pinch of sugar, then cook, stirring occasionally, until soft and caramelized, about 25 minutes. 

4. Let steak sit at room temperature for 10 minutes.  Grill on high heat 2-3 minutes per side (we just used our George Foreman, which grilled both sides at once, so we didn’t have to flip the steaks…)  Let steak rest 5 minutes before slicing thin. 

5.  Heat your flour tortillas on a skillet to warm them until slightly toasty.  Assemble your tacos as you’d like & enjoy! 

Trader Joe’s Wild Marinated Soy Ginger Cod

 

We always pick up new exciting foods on our Trader Joe’s trips.  Last time, we bought their Wild Marinated Soy Ginger Cod filets.  You can prepare them in the microwave, oven, or pan fry them – we baked them and it was so easy & delicious! 

We paired the fish with a caprese salad made with Trader Joe’s (Trader Giotto’s) marinated mozzarella cheese, which is soaked in olive oil and Italian spices.  The whole dinner took about 15 minutes to prepare!

Trader Joe's is located at 3808 W Swann Ave, Tampa, FL 33609 and is open 8am – 9pm every day.

Picnic at Honeymoon Island & Barley Mow Brewing

 

Lance’s sister & brother in law, Brandi & Jeremy, got us an awesome grill for Christmas, and we’ve been so busy we haven’t had the chance to use it until we brought it to Honeymoon Island the other day!  Before, we only had our little George Foreman, but this one is great because it’s compact enough for our small porch and it’s portable.

Last time we went to Honeymoon Island was back in 2011 – we had only been dating a month, and we took the ferry from there to Caladesi Island.  That was in the summer, so it was beautiful weather, but we didn’t plan for how cold it would be this time!  The highs were in the 50’s, but with the wind it felt more like the 40’s.  Luckily I brought a jacket, but it wasn’t really beach weather.  The ferry to Caladesi was closed due to the high wind. 

Originally we thought we’d set up by the water, but we moved to a picnic shelter to keep warm and make sure the grill stayed lit.    

 

Like most of our picnics, we made a run to Trader Joe’s first to pick up some food.  We bought their Spicy Italian Vino & Formaggio Chicken Sausages, baked beans, corn, peppers, and onions to grill.  We were going to just get some normal hot dog buns, but we saw that TJ’s had soft pretzel sticks, which was so much more exciting!  We topped the sausages with the veggies and Double Cream Gouda cheese (I also love the smoked gouda cheese at TJ’s!) 

We grilled the corn with Sriracha Kaffir Lime Rub from Williams Sonoma (a gift from my cousin Chris and his wife Marty). 

As an impulse buy, we bought some nuts to snack on – Thai Lime & Chili Cashews and Sesame Honey Almonds.  WOW they are both delicious.  The cashews at first bite didn’t seem all that spicy, but the chili hits you after a few seconds – make sure you have something to drink with these.  And the sesame almonds were really filling – they’d be a good snack to hold you over between meals. 

 

We had planned to grill pineapple as well, but we had way too much food already.  We walked it off on the Osprey Trail, which was a really nice little hike.  We saw an eagle in its nest – then another one joined carrying a fish!  There were also a bunch of armadillos along the trail. 

 

 

Lance’s niece, Lila, sent us a “Flat Stanley” a few weeks ago.  We had to bring him on adventures and document his experiences in a journal, then mail him back to her class in Pittsburgh so she could talk about his trip.  One of the pages asked what the landscape looked like in our area compared to Pennsylvania, so we brought him to the beach with us. 

 

Afterwards we checked another brewery off our map by visiting Barley Mow Brewing Company in Largo.  We kept hearing great things about their beer, and we weren’t disappointed.  The people were very friendly, and it was clear a lot of the patrons there were regulars. 

A photographer from Visit St. Pete Clearwater was there taking pictures of their Quackalope IPA, so Lance got a free beer for letting them take shots of him drinking one (I don’t think they’re online yet, but I did find a really great video they posted last month about the Craft Beer Trail!)

I especially liked the Son of a Seabiscuit – which is a sweet amber beer brewed with Serrano peppers.  I probably couldn’t drink more than one, but the small taste in the flight was the perfect way to warm up from the chilly weather. 

 

 

Honeymoon Island is located at 1 Causeway Blvd, Dunedin, FL 34698.

Barley Mow is located at 518 W Bay Dr, Largo, FL 33770 and is open 3pm – 2am Monday – Friday and 12pm – 2am Saturday – Sunday.