Author: Brent Schrader

Sardine and Scallion Salad

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This sardine and scallion salad is inspired by a local business owner and chef in the town where I grew up: Sheboygan, Wisconsin. A woman named Toy was famous for her international grocery store, restaurant, and very popular cooking classes. She was generous with many of her recipes, but kept a few ‘up her sleeve’ that nobody could seem to wrangle from her.

This salad is one my mom recreated during Easter weekend, almost entirely from memory. It has some reminiscences of a Thai fish salad, as I attempted to reverse engineer the recipe through Google, and is a nice change of pace from your more traditional tuna or chicken salad. We hope you’ll enjoy!

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Spicy Thai Eggplant and Basil

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We’ve commented before that our local Thai restaurant is one of our favorite places to dine out or get delivery when we’re not in the mood to cook or eat leftovers. A recent favorite of ours is a spicy eggplant and basil. At first I thought this would be too difficult to figure out, but SURPRISE—this is pretty straightforward.

I hope you’ll give this spicy Thai eggplant and basil a try. If you’re not a big fan of spice, halve the Thai chilies and remove the seeds. If you like it hot, enjoy the recipe as is. It starts with a slow burn and a lingering heat, but never gets too out of control. It won’t leave you with tears or sweats, but will certainly light up your taste buds. We think you’ll enjoy this paleo Thai eggplant and basil.

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Lomo Saltado (plus FREE bacon)

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Lomo Saltado is a Peruvian dish that resembles both a stir fry and steak and potatoes. Often served with rice as well, it consists of marinated steak, onions, spices, and french fries. We were excited to try this recipe because we love hearty home-cooked meals from around the world, and it was an opportunity to try out some amazing meat from Butcher Box.

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Kale Salad with Pomegranate Vinaigrette

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Kale salad. It’s nearly impossible today to go to a restaurant or pre-made salad section of a grocery store without running into a kale salad. We now have the added gift of kale growing in our yard! We’ve taken advantage of this, and brought this nutrient-dense, leafy green with us to my parents’ house for Easter dinner. What we put together is pretty great, and it’s ridiculously easy to boot.

Even my dad, who does not like kale at all, liked this salad. Part of it is the freshness of real vegetables, but the other half is the salad dressing. Even if you can’t stand kale, make this pomegranate vinaigrette and keep it in the refrigerator for your weekly salads. It isn’t hard, and you’ll thank us later.

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Copycat Costco Asian Cashew Chopped Salad

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As a matter of convenience, among other things, Heather and I are frequent shoppers at Costco. Most Saturdays, while I’m at my second job, she takes our meal planner and grocery list and gets a lot of what we need from the big-box warehouse. Costco has great employee benefits and is a company we can get behind, not to mention it recently passed up Whole Foods as the top seller of organic food in America—pretty cool stuff.

Unrequested Costco blubbering aside, they have some great pre-packaged salads and mixed greens that we rotate on a regular basis. The salad dressings usually end up in our trash, due to the poor ingredient quality, but otherwise the salads give us an easy option to spice up our vegetables. Our friends Matt and Stacy recently cracked the salad dressing to our other favorite Costco salad, so we felt encouraged to do the same. This asian cashew chopped salad is full of flavor, and will feed you and your family for days. We know you’ll enjoy it.

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