Let me tell you all of the reasons I love a good antipasto salad, there’s quite a few! To start, it’s a great dish to make ahead. It’s one of those side dishes that almost always tastes better after the flavors hang out together in the fridge overnight. Another reason I love it is that it’s pretty easy to tweak and adapt to your guests preferences — leave out the salami for vegetarians, skip the cheese if someone is dairy free, and it works as a gluten-free dish too. We have a few carb-etarians in our family, so I’ll often add in some cooked cheese tortellini to make sure they’re getting enough pasta in their diet, wink wink. It also makes great leftovers after a party too; you can toss all of the ingredients over some mixed greens for lunch the next day or use the combination to make a flavorful pizza for a quick weeknight dinner. It’s a fool-proof side dish and one that I love to serve up for summer entertaining. Get the details on how I make mine below: 
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Pasta salad is pretty much my holy grail of summer barbecue menus; it’s always the side dish I most look forward to! I’ve probably tried dozens of recipes and variations, and love to tweak what I toss in every time I make it for a party. I got creative with a new twist on my classic pasta salad to gear up for Memorial Day weekend with this new recipe — Zucchini Basil Pasta Salad. It features my favorite pasta salad noodle shape — rotini — and lots of chopped up zucchini and squash, fresh basil, and crunchy pine nuts that add tons of flavor. I ate a giant bowl of it for lunch this week, so I can attest to the tastiness! Get the full recipe below: 
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Let me tell you my favorite thing about summer barbeques: the sides!! I go nuts for an herby potato salad, and have no self-control around a classic macaroni salad, I even love a good crunchy coleslaw. With Memorial Day coming up in about a week (where did May go?!) I wanted to add some new summer side salads to my repertoire. I’ve been on a BIG roasted chickpea kick lately, and love that it’s a healthy-ish snack that Jane enjoys too, so I wanted to find a way to work them into this recipe. I start off by roasting them in the oven with a touch of olive oil and an all-purpose seasoning – I love What’s Gaby Cooking Go To Blend, and Trader Joe’s 21-Seasoning Salute is another great option! Then I combined the roasted chickpeas with a flavorful, nutty whole wheat pearl couscous and some delicious herbs. The salad tasted really fresh and wholesome, and it serves really well at room temperature, which is perfect for outdoor entertaining! Get the full recipe below:
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Somewhere in all of this spring rain, there was one beautiful day of sunshine over Mother’s Day weekend and it felt glorious. We flew kites at the beach, ate oysters at little seafood shack by the water, and I mixed myself the most refreshing mom-reward cocktail. I’m calling it the limoncello mint sparkler, and it was so tasty. A little bit of honey and mint muddled in a glass, combined with refreshing limoncello liquor and topped it off with bubbly prosecco and more fresh mint. I used store-bought limoncello for this batch, but you can easily make some on your own (here’s my limoncello recipe infused with thyme). Get the recipe details below:
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The not-so-fun parts of food blogging are the recipe-fails that happen along the way to get to recipe-successes that actually make it onto the site. I had an idea for this berries and cream baked breakfast treat all the way back over the holidays last year. I originally tried this idea as more of a french-toast casserole and I just couldn’t get the proportions right, it was too dry or too sticky or not quite what my flavor vision had been when I thought it up. With Mother’s Day coming up this weekend, and Memorial Day just around the corner, I decided to give my idea another try after taking it back to the drawing board for a new approach. I ditched the french toast technique and instead used some good ol’ fashioned Pillsbury biscuit dough baked like a monkey-bread in a bundt pan. I layered some of the berries and cream cheese in the middle of the little cinnamon-sugar biscuit bites and then finished it off with a fluffy cream cheese frosting topping and more fresh berries. It took me 6-months to get it right, but the testing was worth it! Scroll down to get the full recipe:
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If I open a restaurant menu and see Mexican street corn listed as an option there is a 100% chance I’ll be ordering it for meal — it’s one of my favorites. I included a recipe for it in my cookbook, and a few years ago I made a dip-version of this dish for a dip potluck party I hosted (one of the most fun get-togethers I’ve ever thrown!). I thought I would resurrect the dish and give it a new twist, this time using fire-roasted corn which I always snag in the frozen food aisle at Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods. This version gets tons of flavor from the fire-roasted corn, spices and citrus, and the crumbly cotija cheese. You can make the corn dish and serve it as a dip, but I wanted to up the presentation game and spooned heaps of it into scoop-shaped chips for individual servings. These little corn bites practically disappeared when I made them, so make sure you pop a few in your mouth before you share them with guests — get the full recipe below:
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The fiesta-inspired recipes are rolling in this week and this is one of my favorites: Crispy Avocado “Fries” with a chipotle dipping sauce. I was testing this recipe recently while my brother was visiting and after the avocado fries came out of the oven we unintentionally shared the whole tray, hovering over the kitchen counter and going back for bite after bite. They’re addictive! A simple seasoned breading and a few minutes in the oven are all it takes to make these little bites; while they’re cooking I mixed up a dipping sauce with spicy chipotle adobo flavors, tart lime juice and sour cream to balance the heat. Make sure to serve these fiesta “fries” with a margarita, it’s the perfect pairing. Get the full recipe below:
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I have a couple of posts this upcoming week that cover one of my favorite party themes — fiesta! — just in time to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. One thing is for sure, it’s not a fiesta until the margaritas are served. I’ve never met a margarita I haven’t liked, it’s one of my favorite drinks and I decided to mix up a batch with summery twist for this new recipe. This sparkling strawberry basil margarita starts with a homemade strawberry simple syrup for sweet berry flavors, and then gets combined with tart lime juice, tequila and muddled basil. To give it that sparkling touch (and in my opinion, a really refreshing feeling) I topped each glass off with a splash of Topo Chico with lime. If you can’t find Topo Chico another lime-flavored sparkling water will do; and feel free to scale this recipe up to make it in a pitcher for bigger batches — just wait to add the sparkling water until you’re ready to serve! Get the full recipe below:
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I am making plans for our vegetable garden this summer and just added all of the first farmer’s market dates to my calendar because I’m so excited for peak produce season! Once it’s spring and summer veggie time I’m so much more likely to get in my greens, whether it be grilling them up or tossing them in a bowl of pasta. This recipe is an easy weeknight-dinner version of the noodles-and-veggies classic: pasta primavera. I make quick work of it by tossing some of the vegetables (peas and asparagus) into the water to cook at the same time as the pasta, and sautéing everything else (like carrots, broccoli, squash and mushrooms) in one big pan where I make the sauce before tossing it all together. You can mix and match any of the vegetables in the recipe to customize it with your favorites, or use up leftovers in the fridge. To give it an extra fresh and bright flavor I’ve made this version with a lemon-basil twist. The citrusy zest, a final squeeze of lemon juice, and tons of fresh chopped basil really liven up the sauce and cut through the cream and parmesan that coats the fettuccini. Get the full recipe below!
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I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: sometimes you just need a big bowl of pasta. This recipe uses one of my favorite pastas, tortellini, and crispy little bites of pancetta balanced with fresh spring veggies — english peas and sautéed leeks. Pasta is one of the meals I love to fall back on for busy weeknight dinners because you do so much with it in a short period of time! A few shortcuts I use are cooking the peas in the same water as the pasta (just add them in during the last few minutes of cooking time) and buying the pre-diced pancetta package at Trader Joe’s for perfectly cut cubes that crisp up fast in the pan. I even used some leftover chicken cutlets to top this dish to add in some protein; you could prep the chicken in advance to cut down on time. Get the full recipe below:
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