California Roll Salad

I love Japanese food (including edamame) and I love avocados. This salad is a great blend of flavors and the miso vinaigrette tastes just like something you could find in a Japanese restaurant. I would definitely make this again. I was too lazy to cut the nori nicely, so it was not as pretty as it should have been, but it was tasty.

This recipe was adapted from Shutterbean.


California Roll Salad

• brown rice, cooked and cooled (I made 2 cups for 3 people)
• 1 cup shelled frozen edamame, thawed
• 1 Tbsp rice vinegar
• 1 tsp honey
• romaine lettuce, chopped (or your preferred lettuce type)
• 1 cucumber, cut into small pieces
• 1 medium size carrot, shredded
• 4 tsp sesame seeds
• 2 sheets nori, chiffonaded
• 1-2 avocados, chopped
• 1 recipe Green Onion-Miso Vinaigrette (recipe below)

In a small bowl, mix the edamame, rice vinegar and honey together, set aside.

Set out your bowls and divide the ingredients evenly among them. Start with the lettuce, then drizzle dressing on top. Add rice, cucumber, carrot shreds, sesame seeds, and avocado to the lettuce. Drizzle more green onion miso dressing, top with nori, and serve. (Feel free to use more or less of the toppings per serving to taste.)

Green Onion-Miso Vinaigrette

• 1/4 cup red miso
• 1 cup roughly chopped green onions
• 3 tbsp rice vinegar
• 2 tsp minced ginger
• 1 clove garlic
• 2 tsp honey
• 2 tsp toasted sesame oil
• 1/2 cup water

Put everything in a blender and blend until smooth. Chill until ready to use.

Roast Acorn Squash

Wow...this was much better than I even expected. The combination of sweet and spicy flavors really went well with the squash. Super easy dish to make and tasty. Makes a wonderful side to any meal. Fun to just scoop out of it's own "bowl" with a spoon. (Sorry about the slightly blurry picture. It just did not want to focus for me and that was the best I could get.)

This recipe was taken from Minimally Invasive.


Roast Acorn Squash

• 2 acorn squash
• cayenne pepper, to taste
• kosher salt, to taste
• brown sugar, to taste
• 2-3 Tbsp butter, softened

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Wash and dry squash, then cut in half lengthwise (with the ribs). Scrape seeds and pulp from squash halves with a spoon. Smear one tablespoon of butter over the orange flesh of each half (no need to be stingy on this), then sprinkle with remaining ingredients. Place in a baking dish with cut sides up and bake at 400 degrees for 45 minutes to one hour, or until soft (I only needed the 45 minutes). The butter and seasonings will pool in each baked half, making a delicious sauce.

Grilled Rutabaga and Turnip Fries

Ok, so I learned last week how hard it is to cook (grill in particular) with 2 little girls who want to go in and out to the house with you (and I have to go in and out a lot when I grill). I grilled the "fries" in two batches (the second batch I tried sweating them to see if there was a need to get the fries tender inside (there wasn't a need). But unfortunately for my experiment, my inattention made the first batch of fries a tad on the burnt side (still tasty, but a bit more char than I would have preferred...and definitely not very pretty).


They were very soft fries...they definitely didn't get the crispy outside you get by frying, but yummy. It did have a tad more seasoning than they really needed, so I've cut the amount down in my recipe. Feel free to use your own seasonings, if you have something that goes well on fries, though.

This recipe is adapted from Judicial Peach.


Grilled Rutabaga and Turnip Fries

• 3 turnips, peeled
• 3-4 rutabagas (depending on the size - try for however many would make an equal number of fries to the turnips)
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1/2-1 tsp onion powder
• 1/2-1 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp chili powder
• olive oil, enough to lightly cover the fries

Preheat your grill on medium heat.

Cut your turnips and rutabagas vertically into halves (or thirds depending on how wide you want your fries). Then cut those pieces into long wedges about 1/2 inch thick. Toss with seasonings and lay on your preheated grill at 45 degree angles (this is where you want wedges as long as possible - I lost a few of the shorter fries to the depths of my grill during turning).

Cook your fries on direct heat for 7-10 minutes per side, watching carefully. Turn over when you see nice grill marks on the bottom (some fries might be turned sooner than others as there are hotter and cooler spots, so make sure to look at more than just one fry to determine whether they need to be turned). When both sides have cooked, check the fries to see if they're tender inside - if they aren't tender, place them on the cool side of the grill and cook on indirect heat until tender. 

Place on a rack to keep them from getting too soggy and serve. We had ours as a side with hamburgers and they worked so well together. (Though another thing I learned was hamburgers get cold faster than it takes to get kids settled with their own dinner...oh well. The fries were still warm at least - the more important part of dinner.)

Fiery Roasted Jerk Rutabagas

First off, when it says fiery, it means it! But it's not an instant heat, it creeps up on you as you eat them. I thought the flavor was really good. I would definitely do them again. I made them will some grilled pork chops with Penzeys Spices' Tsardust Memories seasoning on them, which complemented the rutabagas nicely.


[Try to ignore the lame Photoshop job. I forgot...again...to take a picture before I ate so I took one before I ate them for lunch and didn't care about getting a perfect picture at that point - but it turned out the bowl was SUPER bright and painful to look at...so there you go.]

The rutabagas were adapted from Girl Cooks World (and by adapted, I mean I used rutabagas where they used potatoes).


Fiery Roasted Jerk Rutabagas

• 6-7 medium russet potatoes, scrubbed and cut into a 3/4" dice
• 1 medium red onion, chopped
• 1 medium yellow onion, chopped
• 1  sweet bell pepper, chopped
• 5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 Serrano pepper, finely chopped (remove seeds if you’d like to lower the heat)
• 3 Tablespoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon allspice
• 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 Tablespoon Sriracha
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.  Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and toss well to coat.  Spread evenly on a lightly greased half sheet pan (I used a 9x13 dish).  Roast for 40-50 minutes, turning the potatoes once 20 minutes in, until the potatoes are browned and crisp (My rutabagas didn't end up crispy, but that may have something to do with the fact that they sat in the cooling oven with foil over them for about 2 hours until I ate).  For extra crispy potatoes, broil for a couple minutes at the end of the baking time, keeping a watchful eye on the oven to prevent burning.