Red, White, & Blueberry Salad
with Goat Cheese, Pinons, and a Honey Ginger Lime Yogurt Dressing
My foodie friend Justine over at Full Belly Sisters has been making red, white and blue foods like crazy lately … which got me thinking … I need to make a red, white and blue salad! It’s been in my head for a week, waiting to come to life. I’m so glad I finally took time to make it today (even though my son was upset with me for making something for myself since we had agreed to go out for lunch today … hey, it’s just a salad!)
Besides being just the right colors for the 4th of July, it’s got just the right mix of sweet, creamy, tangy and crunchy to make a super-delicious salad. Tangy goat cheese pairs so well with berries, sweet onions kick up the flavor just slightly, the pinons add a soft crunch and a slight sweet nutty flavor, and the lime and ginger yogurt dressing takes it over the top.
And you know what else? Before eating this salad, I felt tired and run down. But AFTER eating this delectable salad, my body felt so refreshed, revived, ready to go! Besides, all those gorgeous colors are a feast for the eyes …
Red, White & Blueberry Salad
with Goat Cheese, Pinons, and a Honey Ginger Lime Yogurt Dressing
- Mixed Greens
- Fresh Strawberries, washed and sliced
- Fresh Sweet Blueberries, washed
- Sweet onion, sliced and roughly chopped
- Pinon nuts and/or almond slices, lightly toasted
- Goat cheese crumbles
- Honey Ginger Lime Yogurt Salad Dressing (recipe below0
Honey Ginger Lime Yogurt Salad Dressing
- 1/2 cup fat-free plain yogurt
- 4 teaspoons of honey
- 1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
- Juice of 1/2 lime
In a small bowl, whisk all of the ingredients together until they are well mixed. Keep any leftover dressing in a covered container in the fridge.
By the way, Justine at Full Belly Sisters made a Red, White & Blue Salad too! Go check out her version.
This recipe was shared at Patriotic Potluck, Summer Salad Sundays, Scrumptious Sundays, Manic Mondays and Trick or Treat Tuesdays.
Almond Berry Granola
I don’t know what it is with me and breakfasts lately … all my posts seem to be about breakfast. Oh well, breakfast is important. What you eat in the morning sets the tone for your day, so you should make it good.
Granola is the perfect breakfast on mornings when you’re in a rush. Have it with fresh berries and milk, or sprinkle some on your yogurt or ice cream. Or just munch on it for a snack throughout the day. Besides, oats are especially good breakfast food. I was just reading about that yesterday.
If you’ve never made your own granola, just trust me that it’s SO worth it. The house smells heavenly while it’s baking and the result is truly fantastic. Oh so much better than the store-bought stuff. I’m really excited for the mulberries to come in because I think they would be just wonderful with this granola. I see the little baby berries starting on my beloved mulberry tree and I’m almost shivering with excitement. It’s the little things in life …
Almond Berry Granola
- 4 cups old fashioned oats
- 1 1/2 cups sliced almonds (or other nuts … I was thinking perhaps 1 cup almonds, 1/2 cup pecans might work even better)
- 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
- 3/8 cup basil strawberry sauce (recipe below) or strawberry applesauce
- 1/4 cup honey
- 2 – 4 Tablespoons maple syrup (or berry syrup), depending on how sweet you want your granola
- 1 1/2 Tablespoons olive oil
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1/2 teaspoon ginger
- 1/8 teaspoon cardamom
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt (optional … leave out the salt if you are watching your sodium)
- 6 oz. dried berries (I wanted to use strawberries, but couldn’t find any dried strawberries at the store. I dried a few strawberries myself, but it wasn’t enough fruit for my granola, so I added dried blueberries, cranberries, and cherries.)
Directions:
- Preheat the oven to 275 degrees. In a large bowl, mix the oats and nuts. Set aside.
- In a separate small bowl, mix the strawberry sauce, honey, syrup and spices. Microwave on high for a minute, stir, and then microwave 30 seconds more until the mixture is good and hot. (Or heat the mixture in a saucepan. Either way will work.)
- Pour the hot sweet sticky mixture over the nutty oat mixture in the bowl. Stir it all up until it’s well mixed.
- Spread all this wonderful stuff out into a thin layer on a large jellyroll pan (or other big flat baking pan with an edge to it). Set it in the oven and bake for about an hour and 15 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes. It should be browned to a lovely brown color and smelling fantastic. You can taste a little sample to see if it’s crunchy enough. If it’s not, bake it a little longer.
- Let the granola cool for a bit before stirring in the dried fruit. Store in an airtight container. It will keep for about a month or so. There’s NO way mine is going to last that long …
Basil Strawberry Sauce
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 1/3 cup water
- 1/3 cup fresh basil leaves
- 1 lb strawberries
In a saucepan, mix the sugar and water and heat to boiling. Add the basil leaves and cook about 5 minutes. Strain out the basil (or remove with a slotted spoon). Add the strawberries with the simple syrup in the pan, bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook until the strawberries are soft. Remove all the strawberry chunks and put it in a blender or food processor, add some of the syrup and puree to make an applesauce-consistency of strawberry sauce. Reserve the rest of the pretty red syrup for using in mojitos or over pancakes.
This recipe was shared at Tastetastic Thursdays and Weekend Potluck.
Maple Ginger Fruit Crostini with Basil
It’s a dreary, wet morning in South Dakota. Everything is very green and growing fast … I need to get out and pull weeds and tend my little garden. And I have some MORE grocery shopping to do … but first, I think we need a little color to brighten the day. Just looking at these little toasts makes me happy.
This is a little fruit crostini I whipped up last week for a snack. I was very pleased with it overall, but I have to be honest with you, I didn’t like the french bread as the base for this little toast. I think it would be much better on blueberry bagels or maybe some sugar cookies or snickerdoodles? Something that goes better with the juicy fruit. But I do have to say the maple, ginger, and basil in the cream cheese is oooh so good. The fruit mixture is just perfect with the sweet creamy cheese. You could toss on some toasted nuts as well. I think that would be nice. I’m not sure why I left off the nuts … ah well, you get the idea.
If you are serving this at a party or get together (they’d be marvelous for a brunch, don’t you think?), rather than making them all up like this, you could also serve the bagels with the cream cheese and bowl of fruit on the side and let the guests do the work of putting them together. But if you’re making them for a big crowd, you’ll need to double or triple the recipe …
Maple Ginger Fruit Crostini with Basil
- 3 Tablespoons maple syrup
- 3 teaspoons fresh ginger, grated
- 1 Tablespoon fresh basil, chopped
- 3 oz. light cream cheese
- Blueberry bagels (or other fruity bagels), sliced & toasted (or sugar cookies or snickerdoodles … just please, don’t use French Bread like I did …)
- 3 cups mixed fruit, chopped into little pieces (I used honeydew melon, blueberries, pineapple, and strawberries)
- A few fresh basil leaves, for garnish
- Toasted nuts, if you like. I think walnuts or pecans would be nice on these …
Mix the maple syrup, ginger and basil together. Take 2 Tablespoons of the syrup mixture and mix it in with the cream cheese. Mix the rest in with the fruit.
Toast the bagels, spread with the sweet ginger basil cream cheese, and top with fruit. (If you’re using cookies, I suppose there’s no need for toasting …) Garnish with fresh basil leaves and a few toasted nuts (if you’ve decided you want nuts).
P.S. You might notice I added a watermark to my images … I will be doing that from now on, just because, well, they are my images and I work hard on them. I really love it when people share my pictures and recipes, but I don’t like it when people post my words and/or pictures as if they had taken / written them. If you like my photos or recipes, please share, but just mention that it’s from Sumptuous Spoonfuls and give me a link back to my blog, okay? Thanks for understanding …
This recipe was shared at Everyday Mom’s Meals, Scrumptious Sundays, Weekend Potluck, Moosewood Monday, Tuesday Talent Show and Totally Tasty Tuesdays.
Rainbow Symphony Fruit Salad with Walnuts & Feta
on Wild Greens with a Honey Citrus Poppyseed Dressing
We made rainbow fruit kebabs for my daughter’s birthday party. Both of her parties, in fact (one for her school friends, one for her dance friends). The second party was smaller, so now my fridge is filled with fruit. Fruit in literally all the colors of the rainbow.
That just screams for a salad, doesn’t it?
Now, you could arrange all these pretty fruits over the greens in the shape of a rainbow I suppose. I just wanted a sprinkle of fruit amongst my greens, though. And a crunchy nut flavor with some salty, creamy cheese. The best part of this salad, I think, was each time I encountered a new fruit, the taste was a little different. But the greens, the dressing, the cheese and the walnuts held it all together so it was a constant symphony of taste with changing fruit highlights. Sort of like different singers singing the same melody, or different instruments playing the same tune. It felt a little like listening to a really good orchestra playing a beautiful piece of music … like being at the Symphony.
Rainbow Symphony Fruit Salad on Wild Greens
with Toasted Walnuts & Feta Cheese
- Greens of your choice (I used dandelion greens.)
- Fresh blueberries
- Honeydew melon
- Chopped fresh pineapple
- Fresh orange, peeled and cut into chunks
- Fresh strawberries
- Toasted walnuts
- Feta cheese
Fill your salad bowl most of the way with greens. Tuck the fruits in amongst the greens, sprinkle with a few toasted walnuts and a bit of crumbled feta cheese. Drizzle with Honey Citrus Poppyseed Dressing.
Honey Citrus Poppyseed Dressing
Okay this isn’t really a NEW salad dressing recipe … it’s a salad dressing transformation. I wanted that honey lemon, but I also wanted a bit of creaminess, a bit more sweet citrus taste, and some poppyseeds, so I just added them. I think you could get away with using the Honey Lemon Ginger White Wine Vinaigrette as is. Or you could go a different direction and just add some honey to the orange juice, yogurt and poppyseeds.
- 1 Tablespoon Honey Lemon Ginger White Wine Vinaigrette
- 1 Tablespoon fresh squeezed orange juice
- 1 Tablespoon plain yogurt
- 1/2 teaspoon poppyseeds
Mix all ingredients and drizzle over the salad.
Enjoy the symphony.
This recipe was shared at Mealtime Mondays, Totally Tasty Tuesdays, Trick or Treat Tuesdays, and Tastetastic Thursdays.
Double Berry Cinnamon Swirl Sleepover Cake
It’s the morning after my girl’s 13th birthday party. The house is so still and quiet. Two of the girls had to get up early to go to church. It was a challenge rousing the first one. The second one got up with only one “wakeup call”, and a third came upstairs shortly after that, stealing up the stairs like a mouse behind me. Suddenly she was standing there next to me … that girl is stealthy …
She and I made some more rainbow fruit kebabs, then she had a slice of this cake I made this morning for the girls for breakfast. She said it was amazing. I asked her what we should name it and we thought “sleepover cake” was the best name. We potted flowers in the flowerpot that she painted last night. I gave her a taste of my chai tea. She told me about her lake cabin and how she climbs the tree there and goes swimming and swings in her tire swing and she has a whole shelf of movies and a lake cat that sometimes steals fish and then eats everything but the head. Now she is out exploring the forest … and I am avoiding finishing my taxes, so I thought I’d share the sleepover cake recipe with you.
This is Crunchy’s recipe. I saw it last week and knew I wanted to make it for the girls for “the morning after”. I threw in some berries, just for fun. It bakes up nicely in a cast iron skillet.
Ah, now the rest of them are up. One by one they emerged from their beds, hungry.
Double Berry Cinnamon Swirl Sleepover Cake
Adapted from A Little Bit Crunchy A Little Bit Rock and Roll
Wet ingredients:
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil
- 3/4 cups sugar
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 1 egg
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1 cup whole wheat flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/2 tablespoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
- 3/4 cup blueberries
- 3/4 cup chopped strawberries, plus a few sliced strawberries for garnish
- 2 tablespoons chopped walnuts (I left out the nuts cuz my daughter doesn’t like nuts but personally I think it would be just heavenly with nuts)
Directions:
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. If you are using a cast iron skillet, place a 10-inch one in the oven to preheat. If you are using a loaf pan, grease it well and set it aside.
- In a large bowl, mix the wet ingredients, then stir in the flours, baking soda and salt.
- In a small bowl combine the remaining 1/2 cup sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg together. Add the berries and nuts and stir gently to coat them in the cinnamon sugar mixture.
- If you are using the cast iron skillet, remove it from the oven and spray with cooking spray (or melt a little butter in the bottom).
- Pour half the batter into either the cast iron skillet or the loaf pan. Pour half the berry / sugar mixture on top. Pour on the remaining batter and then the remaining sugared berries. Gently drag a knife back and forth to swirl, taking care not to squish the berries.
- Bake for 45-55 minutes if using the loaf pan. Bake for 20-35 minutes if using the cast iron skillet or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
This is a #berrylove post … Powered by Linky Tools
Click here to see all the other wonderful #berrylove posts!
This recipe was also shared at Crazy Sweet Tuesdays and Thursday’s Treasures.
Rainbow Fruit Kebabs
My daughter had a sleepover birthday party last night. We like to have at least one healthy food at her birthday parties … and it usually involves fruit. This year I suggested rainbow fruit kebabs. My girl wasn’t too excited about the idea until I showed her a picture. Then she was sold.
These were a huge hit with the girls at the party. They were gone in an instant. Somehow the fruit in a bowl just didn’t have the same appeal … well, food is always more fun on a stick, right?
These are super simple. All you need are fruit chunks for each color of the rainbow and some skewer sticks. Put the fruit on a stick in the order of the rainbow. Arrange them in a fan to make a rainbow.
We used:
- Purple: red grapes
- Blue: Blueberries
- Green: Honeydew melon
- Yellow: Pineapple
- Orange: Cantaloupe
- Red: Strawberries
This recipe was shared at Crazy Sweet Tuesdays, Totally Tasty Tuesdays, Thursday’s Treasures and Fit & Fabulous Fridays.
Berry White Chocolate Scones
There is a local coffee shop in our town that makes the best raspberry white chocolate scones. They only serve them on weekend mornings and if you don’t get there early enough, you won’t get a scone because they ALWAYS run out of them.
I used to crave those scones, and I would seriously pout if they ran out of them. It was funny though, my kids would not even touch them. They “didn’t like scones”, but they had never even tried them.
This recipe changed everything. Now I make scones at home, and I don’t know how I ever even got them to try them, but my kids both love them (although my son has now decided he likes them plain, without berries or chips, so often I mix up the batter without berries or chips and take half of it and shape up some vanilla scones just for him). I pick mulberries and freeze them just to make these scones in the middle of winter when we’re dying for a taste of summer. My family, my friends, my neighbors all know me for these scones.
I’ve made these scones many, many times and I have tried both raspberries and mulberries in the recipe. I’ve found that raspberries tend to fall apart, but mulberries hold their shape. My friend tried them with blueberries and she said that was really good. I wonder how they would be with cranberries? That would be lovely to make for the holidays, wouldn’t it?
These scones are the perfect thing for a lazy Sunday morning like today.
Berry White Chocolate Scones
Adapted from Dannon’s Summer Berry Scones
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
- 3 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon table salt
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- 6 tablespoons chilled butter, cut into little pieces
- 2 cups berries (mulberries, raspberries, blueberries)
- 1 egg
- 3/4 cup vanilla yogurt (or plain yogurt)
- 1 t. vanilla extract
- about 1/2 c. white chocolate chips (or more to taste)
- 2 tablespoons coarse sugar
Directions:
-
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
-
In a bowl combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
-
Stir in sugar.
-
Add the little pieces of butter and work it into the flour mixture with a pastry cutter or your fingers until the butter chunks are all broken down and the mixture resembles a coarse meal. (I use my fingers–it’s messy, but fun!)
-
Stir in berries.
-
In a separate bowl combine egg and yogurt and mix until blended.
-
Stir into flour mixture and mix until just blended (dough will be soft and wet).
-
Turn onto a floured surface and knead lightly 3-4 times. Pat or roll dough into a circle about 1/2 inch thick. Cut dough into wedges and place on a cooking sheet. Sprinkle scones with the coarse sugar.
- Bake scones for 12-14 minutes or until golden brown.
This recipe was featured on Home Savvy A to Z Homemade Monday:
