Recently, a request for salad ideas came across the Plummelo radar (thanks, Melissa Boyd!). So we started hunting. And it has us inspired.

Today is looking to be a scorcher where we are–the kind of day where you want to get your outdoor activities in early and the kind of evening where you want to avoid baking yourself in the kitchen or sweating over the stove. The kind of night where you want to retreat to the patio after dusk with a glass of white that’s been chilling in the fridge. (Maybe even add an ice cube!)

What is the dinner solution for a hot summer night? We’re serving up salad. We found some great ideas. The bonus? You get your fill of fiber-rich, heart healthy veggies. (Okay, some of these salads have a few extra not-so-good-for-the-figure yummies like bacon and cheese, but everything in moderation, right?)

Photo from Epicurious

If you haven’t tried quinoa yet, add it to your list. It is a grain-like crop, much more readily available now than it was even a few years ago, probably sold with the rice and barley in stores that carry it. We kind of think of it as a cross between couscous and barley–it tastes more like barley with the consistency of couscous, and therefore lends itself to lots of great uses.

Use this recipe as more of a guide than an absolute. Cook the quinoa according to package directions. If you use the recipe instructions to cook the grains (covered and over high heat for 20 minutes) your result will be a burned mess.

Mix the cooked quinoa with as many colorful and crunchy raw or blanched veggies as you like. If you toss the quinoa with the spinach while it is still hot, you’ll get the very nice wilted effect. It’s a great idea for a new CSA shareholder like me, who is all of a sudden buried in scads of vegetables I might not buy all together in one week.

The instructions are somewhat elaborate as to how you should arrange the salad, but there is no need to stress about this. You can make it as artful and composed as you like, or do what I did: toss the hot quinoa together with the spinach and some roughly chopped dill, and then add in the vegetables all mixed together. Toss with the vinaigrette. It looked lovely.

Raw pumpkin seeds are not something I see often in my travels, but this is a nice element in the salad, so I think you can improvise with toasted pine nuts or almonds for a similar effect. I also added a quarter of a red onion I had leftover in the fridge. Sub asparagus for the broccoli or increase the quantity of radishes if you have some to use up. Try a red or green pepper in place of the cucumber, or skip the beets if you don’t care for them.

There is no reason why this dish can’t be a meal in itself, and I would definitely make it for girlfriends for lunch. However, serving it as dinner would absolutely not fly in my house, so tonight we had it with grilled mahi mahi skewers and that seemed to do the trick. I think it would be a great side dish to bring to a summer party.

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Robin Horrigan is a stay at home mom to a 6-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter. She is the cruise director for her busy family, keeping the calendar full of the stuff that makes life worth living, but leaves plenty of time to shop for shoes. When they’re all at home, you’ll find the Horrigans knee-deep in chocolate chips and cookie racks, baking treats together that celebrate the four seasons and even the silliest of holidays.

Quick, name the first three eggplant recipes that come to your mind. Go on! I’ll give you a minute.

OK? Let’s compare lists:

Baba ghanoush, I bet you got that one! That’s the smoky-sweet Middle Eastern dip made with roasted eggplants and tahini. Excellent barbecue side dish.

And eggplant parmesan, another good one even though it tends to be on our no-no list these waist-watching days. It’s a rich and gooey casserole made with slices of deep-fried eggplant layered with sweet tomato sauce and fresh mozzarella.

What other recipes did you think of? Maybe ratatouille? Possibly Greek moussaka? For such a sexy vegetable (yes, sexy! Just take one look at those glossy curves and tell me otherwise!), there seems to be a surprising lack of ideas about what to do with these purple globes. At least until we step outside of the box–or recipe–and start getting creative!

Pick eggplants that are very firm, feel heavy for their size, and have very taut skin. Older eggplants tend to get bitter, so try to buy them as fresh as possible and then use them within a few days. Also, smaller eggplants are usually sweeter than those huge hulking ones and have fewer seeds to deal with.

Once you get them home, there are a few ways we can go about preparing them. I love to roast whole eggplants until the skin is crispy and the insides are creamy. You can do this on the grill, in a 400° oven, or even in a dry skillet on the stove top. Just keep turning the eggplant until the skin is completely blistered and the vegetable starts to look collapsed. When it’s cool enough to handle, I split the eggplant and scoop out the insides for baba ghanoush, soups, pasta sauces, and even quick stir fries.

Alternatively, you can cut eggplant into thick slices or cubes. Salt them first to draw out some of the bitterness and season them throughout, and then rinse off the pieces before cooking. Thick slices can be roasted on the grill or under the broiler, while cubes can be sautéed in olive oil or stewed in a tomato sauce.

No matter what, the key to creamy, delicious eggplant is giving it time to cook. This might take longer than you expect! Taste a piece of eggplant every so often or poke it with a skewer–it should be completely soft with no sponginess or resistance. If the eggplant seems like it’s burning before you think it’s done, turn down the heat a smidge or add a little water to the pan to help it steam.

When it comes to flavorings and recipes, we can take some inspiration from world cuisines. Eggplant can be found in almost all of them, from Indian curries and Italian pastas to Chinese stir fries and Middle Eastern braises!

In what recipes do you love using eggplant?
(Images: Emma Christensen, top, and Martha Stewart)

Emma Christensen quit her office gig when the cooking obsession started taking over and got herself enrolled in culinary school. She is now a full-time freelance food writer with a mild obsession for making complicated and finicky recipes (Exhibit A: homemade croissants). Working from a small apartment kitchen, she dreams of one day having an actual pantry and a garden bigger than her windowsill. More of Emma’s writing can be found on Apartment Therapy: The Kitchn, the Chicago Tribune, and the Columbus Dispatch.

My father carving a beautifully roasted lamb, my brothers exclaiming over the silky texture of the chilled soup, the children relishing their brussels sprouts… it just doesn’t happen.

What does happen is that the kids are hungry long before the meal is ready, they need their plates of food dished first, something spills to soak the tablecloth and there are 17 requests for refills and other accompaniments all at different moments. By the time my sister in law, my Mom and I all sit down to actually eat our own meals, we’re sweating and exhausted. And our chilled soup has actually gotten warm.

For Easter this year, my solution to the usual chaos is a Barefoot Contessa-inspired casual brunch buffet that has foods to please the adults as well as the kids with very few modifications. I’ll do a station outside the kitchen for coffee, juice and the Peach Bellinis. The Sour Cream Coffee Cake and dessert will be made a day ahead of time. I have a double oven, so the Orange Baked Ham can go in one while the asparagus roasts in another (small kitchen hint: if you only have one oven, try steaming the asparagus instead of roasting–it will still please people). Hands’ on tasks: arrange the salad, carve the ham, and scramble a huge pan of eggs. This will leave me plenty of time to enjoy the short as well as the tall folks in my family, no sweating required.

I’ll put aside a little bit of fruit from the Fruity Spinach Salad for the kids, and I’ll need to omit the nuts from the coffee cake recipe because of an allergy, but otherwise this menu will please the entire crowd. Lastly, my friend Eleanor’s genius idea of turning a simple pan of brownies into Easter Brownie Cups would charm even the most hard-hearted adult. View her instructions here. I found the edible Easter grass at Target.

The great thing about brunch is that it is so easy to add to and change without messing with the overall theme of the meal. If this menu is too sweet for you or you need another dish, try a wild rice salad. Need more bread? Brioche and fruit butter or fresh bagels and flavored cream cheeses would be perfect. Happy Easter!

Photo courtesy of Eleanor Touchet

Celebrity chefs, magazines and cookbooks inspire me to strive toward better end products in the kitchen. But if I hear one more time about homemade chicken stock that I can “just throw together when I keep a bird carcass and vegetable trimmings in my freezer,” I might throw in the towel and call for pizza. Sometimes I like to pretend I’m Rachael Ray making a 30-minute meal, and I’ll really time myself. It’s doable if I’m organized–and many of her ideas are inventive and delicious. The caveat is that sometimes I use every pot, bowl and spoon in my house and subsequently spend an hour cleaning up. After all the time I have spent channeling Rachael, do you think she might let me borrow her staff to take care of the aftermath?

I am constantly looking for shortcuts that cut down on shopping, cooking and cleanup time that will not result in a lower-quality end product.

Three ingredients I rely on that allow me to pull together my favorite dishes on the fly are bottled minced garlic, bottled minced ginger and boxed broths. Sure, garlic keeps for a while, but eventually it does get that green sprout; the stink is impossible to get off my hands after I’ve minced it; and every garlic press I’ve ever owned has kicked the bucket within a few months. A piece of fresh ginger does keep in the freezer for months–just as Rachael says it does. Wonderful! If you can remember that you’ve got it and then find it behind the popsicles.

Homemade stock? I do this after a holiday when I have roasted a turkey. But 360 days of the year at my house are all about boneless skinless cuts of meat that cook quickly at the dinner hour. Homemade stock is just not a regular occurrence. Boxed broth adds flavor to so many things I cook without adding any extra fat.

Purists may balk at the use of these shortcuts. I’ll readily admit that as much of a food snob as I have become, I don’t notice the difference when I’m whipping up a quick sauté at 6:30 on a Tuesday night. Keep an open mind and experiment with these three shortcuts. I have a favorite brand of broth (Whole Foods 365) and bottled minced ginger (The Ginger People), but the garlic seems to be the same no matter which brand I try. I throw it in salad dressings, mash it into softened butter, make garlic bread… my family is none the wiser that I didn’t peel and chop the stuff.

Over Thanksgiving seven years ago, my husband suggested we get a crock pot. I have no idea where this came from since this is the man who cooks nothing but the occasional Thanksgiving turkey or Christmas roast. But I thought he was onto something. After all, we had an infant at the time and another mom friend of mine had been raving about the simplicity of dinner in the slow cooker prepared during naptime.

Next thing I knew, the slow cooker appeared under the Christmas tree, complete with a recipe book that I think contributes to the negative image of the slow cooker (read: lots of recipes using cans of soup and cheese sauce). I was a bit hesitant about embracing the crock pot, as I had a notion that they were relics leftover from the 1970s. But slow cookers seem hip now, with Williams-Sonoma selling $300 All-Clad versions and a plethora of more sophisticated cookbooks to maximize their results.

We are in prime slow cooker season, so I have been testing some recipes recently. Last weekend I made Real Simple’s Slow Cooker Smoky Pea Soup. The whole family enjoys split pea and ham soup, and true to its name, this one was really simple to make, and was tasty though it felt like cheating. Confession: technically I did cheat since I did not use a ham hock; I used a diced ham steak, but the results are equally good. It also provided enjoyable lunch leftovers for a few days.

Speaking of cheating, here is my favorite slow cooker trick: pulled pork. We invited some good friends over for a casual Sunday dinner a few weeks ago. I decided to make pulled pork in the slow cooker. I literally placed a boneless pork loin roast in the slow cooker and covered it with a bottle of barbecue sauce, put the lid on and let it go for about 7 hours. Once cooked, I shredded it, tossed it in the sauce, and served it on yummy, oversized pretzel rolls. Our friends raved. I had to confess it was a complete cheater’s meal. This dinner of pulled pork sandwiches, roasted sweet potato wedges and a green salad required literally a 5-item purchase at Trader Joe’s: the meat, the barbecue sauce, the rolls, a bag of sweet potatoes and a bag of salad!

Maybe next time I shouldn’t confess just how easy the slow cooker makes my life and just let everyone think I’ve been slaving over a hot stove all day.

Photo credits:

Girlfriends will find any excuse to get together. And what better way to spend a cold Saturday than with food and friends. In order to justify our absence from our husbands and kids, we decided we’d better find a way to benefit them as well.

And girlfriends trust each other. Girlfriends share their opinions about everything–recipes and food are no exception. Most women I know are always looking for their next batch of great recipes, so we decided to get together and test some out.

The ultimate goal was to come home with four meals to enjoy throughout the week (or stash in the freezer for a busy night).

We accomplished several things during our three hours together this weekend: quality time, trying new recipes, and preparing meals to take home for our families. Here is how it went.

I invited 5 girlfriends who, like me, are busy moms who are into cooking and trying new recipes but are short on time. Six people was the perfect size. The dads planned on staying home for some quality time with the little ones.

I looked through my recipes on Plummelo for a few important criteria: little to no cooking on prep day; highly freezeable; no more than about 10 ingredients each; and using relatively inexpensive ingredients. We narrowed it down to 4. We wanted to start out with an attainable goal.

I saved these 4 recipes to My Recipes on Plummelo and emailed them to my friends so they could save them into their recipe boxes as well. I put the recipes into My Plans and then into My Shopping List.

Here was the part where Plummelo really saved the day in this planning process: Once the recipes were in my shopping list, Plummelo adjusted the servings for me!

For 6 people, we needed everything times 6 (for a grand total of a lot of food). The recipe showed number of servings as 4, so I entered 24 (4 x 6), and the Plummelo shopping list automatically changed all the quantities for me (for example, 1 1/2 cups of ricotta became 9 cups of ricotta).

I then hit “Email Shopping List” on Plummelo and sent the combined list to my friends. We divvied up the shopping by section of the grocery store (which was also easy because the Plummelo shopping list is divided by category, such as Meat, Produce), and each went grocery shopping on our own schedule and planned to arrive with the assigned items.

One friend and I hit Costco for all the meat, and the others went on their respective treasure hunts. I was surprised at how little effort went into the shopping when we divided and conquered.

The day of, I packed it up the food and a few essentials (including my favorite knife), ready to take to the hosting friend’s house. We allowed 3 hours for our cooking adventure, with some time built in for girl talk and munching on freshly baked muffins.

We started out with the Chicken Marbella. One team of two trimmed the chicken thighs, another team minced garlic (of course, with the garlic gadget!), and another team measured spices, olives, capers, and prunes. In no time our chicken was marinating in the bowl, and we divided the massive quantity into 6 Ziploc freezer bags for each family to pull out on the designated night.

The routine went like this for the remaining recipes. Chopping and dicing, dividing and conquering (and washing some dishes in between). Meal prep is much more fun when it is organized in advance and shared with good friends. It’s also more fun digging into a huge bowl of ground turkey when wearing plastic gloves! We had a lot of laughs about food favorites and not-so-favorites, cooking blunders, and each other’s techniques, and fed each other bites of blueberry muffin while we worked. It didn’t seem like work at all.

It took us two and a half hours and $37.50 per family (that’s less than $10 per meal) to make 4 delicious meals that are ready for our loved ones to enjoy. Economies of scale definitely pay off!

Now we each have 4 new recipes in our repertoire and 4 new meals for the week. And after receiving a big thank you from more than one of the husbands, I know we have a hall pass for another girls’ afternoon out.

Try planning a cooking day with your friends. Let us know how it goes.

That was the usual routine in our house.

Under my roof there are two working parents and three active kids (one with food allergies, which made finding recipes often tricky), for a total of five hungry bodies. Preparing for dinner–from thinking about what we wanted to eat to making a shopping list to getting to the grocery store to starting to chop the vegetables–was never easy. The “process” was disorganized and disconnected.

When you love to eat and you want to cook a delicious, healthy meal for your family but you’re short on time, you need a solution. We were in desperate need of a more efficient meal planning, preparation, shopping, and cooking process from start to finish.

That, in short, is how Plummelo was born.

I’m not only the founder, but I’m also a daily user. Not to mock the Hair Club for Men slogan, but Plummelo fixed just about all of our former problems in meal planning.

Here are a few of the major hurdles my wife and I were encountering (pre-Plummelo):

Old problem: My recipes are scattered. Some in a recipe box, some in the pages of an old magazine, some in miscellaneous computer files, some in my head. If I found a recipe online, I had trouble finding it again. New solution: My recipes are all in one place. Not only are they categorized, tagged, and searchable, but I can rate the ones we love and delete the ones we don’t.

Old problem: The hardest part is figuring out what to cook this week. New solution: I can quickly browse my recipes, look at what other people on Plummelo are cooking, and get new ideas.

Old problems: Making a shopping list from my recipes takes too long. New solution: Now I don’t even have to write out the shopping list. I can drag and drop my recipes for the week into My Plans and Plummelo automatically populates a grocery list for me. My wife can hit “Email Shopping List” and it comes to my iPhone and I can pick up the groceries on my way home! (Note: iPhone app to come in 2010!)

There is so much more Plummelo will be doing to help connect more of your cooking world and keep your kitchen life organized.

Give Plummelo a try this week.

One that I like to use as the base is Three-Bean Chili. Packed with tons of protein, and nutritious, filling, and inexpensive ingredients, chili keeps well for days, can be made to the individual’s taste, and provides opportunities to create new meals out of it. I make this on a Sunday and actually look forward to the prep and cooking time because I know I am setting myself up for a week of good eating. If everything else gets crazy, I know I will have a homemade dinner each night with a few minutes of prep time.

See below for photo credits

Note: This recipe is vegetarian, but if you’re cooking for meat eaters, just brown some ground turkey or beef, and stir it in.

Make cooking the chili fun! Put some music on, get your friends, spouse, or kids involved, and experiment according to the flavors that you and your family enjoy. If you have kids that are old enough, let them help stir or give them a couple of bowls and spoons to play with while you cook. Once the chili is all set, you can plan out your dinners for the rest of the week. Here are a few ideas for making a simple chili into easy weeknight meals.

Monday
Rice and Beans
Mix ½ cup brown rice with ½ cup chili (per serving). Add hot sauce if you’re adventurous.

Tuesday
Hot and Crispy Salad
Serve warmed chili atop a bed of shredded romaine lettuce, spinach, and shredded cheese. Make two servings and save one for Wednesday.

Wednesday
Wrap It Up
Mix a serving of Tuesday’s salad with 1 teaspoon of plain yogurt and roll into a whole wheat wrap or stuff into hard taco shells.

Thursday
Chili Empanadas
Roll out store-bought pie dough or puff pastry dough into large squares. Spoon chili into ½ cup servings. (I would suggest using a slotted spoon to move the chili so that the liquid is as drained out as possible.)  Scoop chili into the middle of each square, fold dough, and seal around the edges using a fork to press down and create a decorative edge. Bake according to dough package directions or until golden. These empanadas not only make a great dinner, but they are also a perfect party appetizer.

Friday
Your Call
You made it! Hopefully the variations using your weekend chili have kept you satisfied. For Friday, either go out to eat… or mix a cup of chili with a cup of vegetable or chicken broth. Adding liquid will thin out the chili into a delicious soup. You may want to add additional spices or hot sauce at this point as the flavors may be diluted by the broth. At this point, you could also add leftover rice from Monday or small cooked pasta to the dish to add some more heft.

These are just a few ways you can create multiple dishes from a one pot meal. Get creative, change up the ingredients, and get cooking. Don’t forget to comment and let us know how your variations worked.

Photo source:

You might want to pull it out of hiding. The slow cooker can be a busy person’s best friend, especially if yours comes with a removable pot that allows you to do the meal prep work at night, then pop the pot into the base the next morning to get the cooking started.

I enjoy making many things in my slow cooker, and nothing beats coming home after a long day at work to a hot meal that I didn’t have to spend hours cooking. Slow cooker meals also use fewer pots and pans, meaning quicker cleanup.

This time of year, soup provides an easy way to serve a complete meal that is healthy, economical, soul soothing, and provides leftovers that taste even better the next day. Chicken soup is the gold standard of soups, but there are certainly variations to jazz it up, which I highlight below.

Here is a basic recipe I use for slow cooker chicken soup, plus three ways you can take a chicken soup base and create an entirely new dish.

The night before you will be cooking the soup, prepare all of your ingredients by chopping the chicken and vegetables. Place the vegetables in your slow cooker pot (if removable; if not just use a bowl and transfer in the morning) and store in the refrigerator overnight.

In the morning, pour the stock over the vegetables, add the chicken, olive oil, and pepper. If you are cooking for less than four hours, use the high setting on your slow cooker. Otherwise, set it to the lowest setting. Half an hour to an hour before you are ready to eat, switch the setting to high. Ensure the chicken is fully cooked before serving.

Serve soup with whole grain rolls and salad for a filling winter dinner.

Here are three easy variations on the basic chicken soup recipe:

Italian style: before cooking, pour in a can of drained, rinsed white beans and 2 cups chopped escarole. Before serving, place a scoop of pesto, jarred or homemade, in the bottom of each bowl. The heat of the soup will melt the pesto and bring its basil and garlic flavors throughout the entire bowl.

Mexican style: before cooking, pour in a can of drained, rinsed black beans, a jar of salsa, and chopped jalapenos (if you are adventurous). For presentation and a delicious crunch, cut flour tortillas into thin strips, sauté in olive oil until golden, and arrange on top of the soup.

Thai style: before cooking, grate 3 tsp. ginger root into the rest of the soup ingredients along with 2 tsp. red curry paste. Before serving, add a can of coconut milk and juice of one fresh lime and stir thoroughly.

Soup can be made a little more fun for kids by adding alphabet pasta, something that our mom did when we were little.

Leftovers are good for up to three days (in the refrigerator). The soup can also be frozen in single-serve containers and reheated at a later date.

Stay warm and healthy this winter with an easy soup that is ready for you at the end of a busy day. What else do you like to make in your slow cooker?

Meghan Malloy is a guest blogger for Plummelo. She works as a Marketing Communications Manager in the publishing industry. On the side, she writes the blog Travel Eat Love, for the love of food, wine, travel, and the everyday adventures in life. She resides in Boston, MA with her husband and two cats. For more cooking ideas from Meghan, please check out her blog at traveleatlove.com.

Photo sources:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiwanja/ / CC BY 2.0