English Cucumber

Sweet and spicy beef, kimchi, edamame, and a cucumber salsa make these Korean inspired nachos addictive.

Tacos loaded with all the ingredients of an authentic Thai Panang Curry

Sweet and spicy tempeh and cauliflower is placed on top of a bright and tart plate of noodles.

I really think that udon is the future of pasta salad. Seriously this noodle is so chewy and perfect for cold preparations. I made this pasta salad with leftover taco meat and mixed it with yogurt and ponzu and it made a fantastic side dish for a bbq. You read it here first folks. Udon is the future of pasta salad.

I had a handful of different cravings at the grocery store on my way to my friends place. I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted but I knew we were grilling. I started to go into the direction of an italian pesto-like pasta salad with some grilled sausage, but then I got the usual cravings for Vietnamese rice noodles I have all the time. I ended up sort of combining the dishes into something fun and delicious.

If you told me 5 years ago that my coffee table would not only host my own cookbook, but also a cookbook written by a friend of mine, it wouldn’t even be something that my brain could grasp and I would probably just laugh it off. But here we are, and that sentence is a reality.

Nick from Macheesmo was a once rival, turned friend and also powerful ally in the world of food blogging, and his book Love your Leftovers, comes out in a few days! Love your Leftovers is an epic tome of meal planning that teaches you how to cook in large batches and then repurpose the leftovers into dinners later in the week. Nick is modest on the cover when he says there are “over 100” recipes in the book, because many of the recipes feature variations and twists with full ingredient lists. I asked him what the true recipe count was, and he said it comes to 187!!!

As I flipped through the book wondering what to cook the other night, the Vietnamese Noodle Salad that uses leftover grilled flank steak caught my eye (because I could eat vietnamese noodle salads every day of my life) and it did not disappoint.

Super spicy potato salad inspired by Vietnamese ingredients and bland potato salads everywhere!