MamaManagement

Spring had finally sprung! Hurrah! Time to move more and eat lighter. Which means...it's SALAD TIME! Soooooo..... Here's a yummy salad recipe. It's my new Southwestern Chopped Salad with Cilantro-Yogurt Dressing. And it would be fantastic enjoyed as a nice, light dinner on a warm evening while relaxing on your back patio. It's pretty simple, maybe 15-20 minutes to prep. Feel free to tweak your salad ingredients with what you like-- though I really recommend the creaminess (and healthfulness) of the avocado, if you like them. You could certainly add chopped tomato, just get rid of the watery insides so it doesn't get soupy (or use grape tomatoes). Also, tweak the dressing as you like it. The way I've written the recipe, you'll end up with something slightly sweet (because of the honey) and with a little southwestern flair (because of the cumin and cilantro). If you like more bite to your dressing, decrease the honey and up the cumin and maybe throw in som...

Salad dressing is a funny thing. I find most restaurant salad dressings to be yummy, but most bottled salad dressings to be yuck. (Especially ranch…I don't know what they do to bottled ranch dressing, but it's terrible and they need to stop.) Consequently, I typically don't enjoy an at-home salad nearly as much as I do a restaurant salad (which I have been known to swoon over). That was, until I started making my own salad dressing. For some reason, I was sort of afraid to make my own dressing for a long time. I remember staying with my cousins in Chicago many years ago when I was doing an internship in the city, and my cousin, Nancy, would always make her own dressing for our salads. I would watch in amazement as she, without measuring anything, seemingly randomly put various ingredients into a bowl and whisked them up, and moments later I would have a deliciously dressed salad in front of me. But it all seemed a bit wizard-behind-the-curtain to my 21 year old self. I...

Okay, so I know it's not Summer yet...hell, it's just barely beginning to look like Spring around here...but this is such a tasty little salad that I had to share so you can enjoy it all Spring and Summer long. Here's the thing with salads, for me: I love a great salad when I'm out at a restaurant, but most of the salads I make at home are just "fine." I think I've finally figured out why. Store-bought salad dressing generally sucks. And every salad should have some sort of toasted or candied nut on it. I think that might be it. Here's something else I just learned: making incredibly yummy homemade salad dressing is ridiculously easy! I don't think I'm stretching the truth when I say I do not plan to buy bottled salad dressing ever again. I have had three different homemade dressings in the last month and all were both easy and DELICIOUS. So this little ditty I'm sharing with you today is a fabulous mix of flavors...strawberries + su...