Grilling & Salads

As promised, I went through my file of Pinterest recipes... and quickly lost interest in a lot of them. It has been 100 degrees in Memphis now for just long enough for me to not want to turn my oven or stove on for the duration of the summer, and we are now in grilling mode. So many of my pins are slow cooker, oven or skillet based, I decided to table that project for the fall. We did do a couple though!

Spaghetti with parsley pesto: delicious! I ate a really large bowl.
Mojo verde for veggies: meh. Too garlicky.
Chicken gyros: the chicken was awesome (I grilled it), the sauce was underwhelming, and I would just replace it with something like this.

So instead, our meals have been looking like this:

• Tex-mex flank steak (basically just rub with chili powder, cumin and salt) with grilled corn, tomato and avocado salad with a honey lime vinaigrette. 
• Grilled rare sesame crusted tuna (use black and regular sesame seeds, just coat the fish, no other steps) with sriacha lime mayo (mix equal parts mayo & sriacha, splash of lime juice), rice (I love my rice cooker!), and Japanese spinach with sesame and soy. This meal is a Garen favorite.
• Grilled veggies from the farmers market tossed with some olive oil, grilled shrimp, leftover honey lime vinaigrette

We try to eat "clean" year round - minimally processed, avoiding all those nasty GMOs, but it is so easy in the summer when you can go to the farmers market and just stock up. I don't think my husband has much interest in the grill, so I'm the grillmaster in this house. I throw dinner on around 5:30 while Claire plays nearby with her outdoor house and water table and we have dinner handled long before the evening gets too late.

The other thing we've been eating more of are salads. And, I finally figured out two tricks.

First, don't bother buying salad dressing. I guarantee most of you have the ingredients for salad dressing in your house. Lemon juice? Olive oil? A balsamic or champagne or wine vinegar? Dijon mustard? It is so much cheaper, avoids all of those preservatives, and tastes much better.  Second, don't put dressing on your salad. Put dressing in the bottom of a large bowl, and then put your greens on top and then toss gently. Your greens will be evenly coated. I'm sure someone told me this years ago, but I didn't listen so I'm telling you now.

Happy clean eating this week!