Tag Archives: Summer

Sesame Cucumber Salad

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Garden produce season is alive and well here in the Midwest, which means since our house is the pit-stop in between my parents house in Iowa and our family’s cabin in Northwest Minnesota, we get regular produce deliveries from my parents. Right now we have yellow squash, zucchini, cucumbers and 5 million jalapenos. It’s been pretty hot and humid in Minnesota, so I’ve been eating fresh [cold] cukes a lot. I threw this salad together the other night, it’s really easy and has great flavor. The coconut aminos (soy sauce substitute) adds the perfect sweetness to the nutty sesame flavor.

Sesame Cucumber Salad

  • Cucumbers
  • Sesame oil
  • Coconut aminos
  • Sea salt
  • Garlic salt
  • Chili flakes
  • Sesame seeds

Slice cukes and drizzle oil and coconut aminos over top (more or less depending on how much sauce you prefer, I wanted it to be a light flavor), then sprinkle with sea salt, garlic salt and chili flakes. Toss, and then top with sesame seeds last so they don’t get soggy.

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Avocado Smash Toast

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I shared a picture of what I made for lunch today on my Instagram (@the3llls, those are L’s) and my personal Facebook page, mostly because it was too tasty and pretty not too and I’m obsessed with food. But for those that aren’t a part of either of those communities, I wanted to share here as well. I happen to have an abundance of fresh garden tomatoes from The Tomato Lady (aka, my mom), so I’m using them in all sorts of ways. Here’s a super simple lunch that’s quick, tasty, and filled with nutrients. Plus, the options are endless with avocado smash toast (I don’t eat bread often, but more in the summer for things like this or with radish sandwiches, etc.). Appreciating the last of what summer has to offer!

Avocado Smash Toast

  • 2 slices gluten-free bread, toasted/broiled (I use Canyon Bakehouse)
  • Grass-fed butter
  • 1 avocado, smashed
  • Garlic salt
  • Sliced tomato
  • Sea salt/black pepper
  • Olive oil

Pretty simple, really. Toast bread, slather with grass-fed butter while bread is warm so it’s melty. Top with the smashed avocado and sprinkle with garlic salt. Top with sliced tomato and fresh ground sea salt and black pepper. Drizzle lightly with a really good quality olive oil. Holy hell! Enjoy 🙂

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Avocado Nectarine Salad

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All the summer fruits are ripe for the picking! That means summer salads that are refreshing in the heat, especially if you’re in, you know, Phoenix! Wowza.

Avocado Nectarine Salad

  • 1 avocado
  • 1 nectarine
  • Olive oil
  • Sea salt
  • Black pepper

Dice the avocado and nectarine, drizzle with olive oil (I want to emphasize and HIGHLY recommend a really good quality olive oil. Like from Greece, no fake US olive oil. Thanks to hubs for bringing me real olive oil on his way home from deployment – holy shizz), sprinkle with sea salt and enjoy! Refreshing, filling and full of nutrients.

Avocado Nectarine Salad 2

4th of July Sangria!

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I typically always drink red wine – it seems to be as a person with type 1 diabetes, just about the only thing I can drink that a) I enjoy the flavor and variety, but more importantly b) it has zero impact on my blood sugar. Bonus, it goes well with cooking and Frank 😉

This 4th of July we had friends over, played yard games (dubbed the 1st annual Swanson yard game olympics), grilled (read: grazed on food allllllll day) and drank. It was such a fun day!

Because I didn’t want to drink red wine all day – too “heavy” and it was warm and slightly humid, I decided to try and make a more minimal-to-none, diabetes blood sugar spiking version. I’m also not a huge fan of sugary drinks in general, they give me crazy headaches and make me feel puffy and gross (especially the day after). I googled all sorts of recipes and didn’t care for any of them, so I ventured out on my own. The result was a light, refreshing, flavorful sangria that I loved and our guests did as well! Plus I got a new sangria pitcher out of it 🙂

Sangria

  • 1 bottle merlot
  • 1 bottle raspberry road (Carlos Creek Winery – wine tasted here recently)
  • 1/2 cup blueberries
  • 1 cup quartered strawberries
  • 2 sliced oranges
  • Club soda

Combine everything above except the club soda into a pitcher and refrigerate for at least 6 hours (overnight would be fine). When ready to enjoy, pour into a sangria pitcher and add 4 (mini) 10 oz bottles of club soda. My family recently wine tasted at Carlos Creek Winery in Minnesota, so I picked up a bottle of their raspberry road for this recipe, but I think any fruitier flavored wine would work. [Disclaimer: I almost added some raw honey, but decided before I did to let the fruit sit in the wine and see how it tasted = result, no honey needed].

Light, refreshing, flavorful and especially on a warm summer day 🙂

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Cinnamon Fruit Salad

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Happy first day of July (WHAT)! It’s really feeling like summer lately (although it was 55 here at my house in Minnesota this morning, brrr), so it’s salads of all kinds with grilling and more grilling.

A couple weeks ago my mom and dad were here for the night before we all headed to a weekend at the lake for Summer Solstice. Seth and I cooked up a fabulous dinner for the four of us, grilled steaks, grilled hash browns with peppers/onions and cheese, grilled eggplant and cinnamon fruit salad.

I had three very ripe mangoes that needed to be used before we left for the weekend, so I cut them up into pieces and tossed them in a bowl with fresh blueberries and cantaloupe. I then squeezed the juice of two limes over the fruit, a shake of raw coconut sugar (maybe 1/8 cup?) and a sprinkle of cinnamon (roughly 1 tsp). It really doesn’t take much cinnamon to flavor the salad – I went light because my dad isn’t a huge fan of cinnamon, and I was surprised at how cinnamon-y it still was. There was a small serving leftover, and it kept great in the fridge until it was finished with breakfast the next morning.

You could easily change up the fruits, but it was a nice flavor change from regular fruit salad!

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