Recipe ramblings

 

As I mentioned last week, I've tried a few new recipes lately.  The recent hot, humid weather prompted me to go through a stack of main-dish salad recipes that I'd saved.  The potato salad with kielbasa, above, is a Woman's Day recipe I've had for years but had not tried.  It's very good!  Below is the rest of the recipe:

Another salad recipe I've saved for years but never tried is this Hearty Pasta Salad from an older issue of Taste of Home.  

Photo from Taste of Home

For the meat, I used cut-up smoked turkey and it was very good.  I didn't use either carrots or celery as I was really crunched for time.  Instead I used some frozen petite peas, thawed in a strainer under hot running water.  I also added a good bit more lemon juice to the dressing.  1/4 teaspoon is a pretty small amount.

When we visited Nevada this spring, my sweet daughter gifted me with a copy of Taste of Home's Healthier Cooking.  It has so many good recipes in it!  This Slow-Cooker Chicken Taco Salad is one of them.  I've made this multiple times now,  and it is SO delicious.  That entire magazine, in fact, has such a variety of great recipes that it is well worth owning.  Very few, if any, ads. 

Photo from Taste of Home

I used that taco salad recipe while we were staying and working at a Christian camp early this summer.  It was so easy since I cooked and shredded the chicken at home, then brought it along in a container along with bags of salad mix, cherry tomatoes, avocados, shredded cheese and a bottle of ranch dressing.  It made for quick, simple, nourishing meals after busy work days.

 Another new recipe I recently tried was for Quick-Pickled Red Onions.  I kept seeing this condiment mentioned on people's blogs, so I finally bought a red onion, found a recipe, and went for it.

 

Photo from Martha Stewart

We both enjoy onions on burgers, but seldom have them because we are still tasting the onions for days afterward, it seems.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that we could put these pickled red onions on a turkey burger or a sandwich with no ill effects at all.  Now I am looking forward to trying these out in the company of grandson Sam, known in his family as the Condiment King when it comes to burgers.

I can't forget to share this recipe for low-carb Cream Cheese Chicken Stuffed Peppers!  I tried this one day when I had some colorful sweet peppers to use up and this recipe happened into my email inbox.  I happened to have all of the ingredients on hand.  This is a super recipe by Karly from Buns in My Oven.

Photo by Karly from Buns in My Oven

This is a scrumptious recipe and so easy!  My hubby could not stop raving about how delicious these stuffed peppers were and that there is no need to ever make them any other way. 

Lastly, I want to share an eggplant recipe: Slow Cooker Eggplant Parmesan from Anne Wolfe Postic.  Someone gave my local daughter a very large eggplant; in fact, it seemed like two large eggplants that had grown together.  Their family doesn't really care for eggplant, so she offered it to me.

 

Photo from Pixabay

The weather was so hot at that point that I couldn't even think about making moussaka or eggplant parmesan in the oven as I ordinarily might.  My hubby suggested looking for a slow cooker recipe, and this is the one I found.  It was also too hot to think about making my own marinara, so I used the jarred kind.  This eggplant parmesan turned out so, so good!  I loved the fact that, although the eggplant slices are dipped in egg and crumbs, they do not need to be fried.  Again, this was a recipe my hubby raved about and declared there was no need to make eggplant parmesan the regular way ever again.  I really think he's right!

There are my recipe ramblings from the past few weeks.  Maybe you'll find a recipe you want to try among them.