Today’s Smashed Cucumber Salad with Chicken Satay and Red Curry Peanut Sauce will be my first recipe of 2019 and I’m thrilled. Believe it or not, salad paired with a simple protein is what I eat 90% of the time. It’s the type of meal that fills me up but leaves me feeling light. The antidote to weeks of gravy, stuffing and all manner of chocolate. This is not a resolution-oriented recipe per se, because, let’s face it, that red curry peanut sauce is not devoid of calories. No, this Smashed Cucumber Salad is what I would call enlivening. It’s spicy, crunchy, refreshing and full of umami. It’s a different kind of comfort food for a different kind of comfort. And, if like me, you had a bit too much cheer this holiday season, this salad is exactly what your body is asking for.
You’ll have to forgive me if this entry is a touch distracted. I’m currently residing on cloud nine and I guess the air is thin up here because it’s hard to think straight. And why have I relocated to a such a lofty height? Well, on Monday night I received the 
This Pesto Barley Salad looks really healthy, right? Balanced, vibrant, and potentially packed with a good stack of vitamins. It looks that way because it is! I know this is a shock, especially after 
Some of my earliest memories are centered around meat and potatoes. Every Sunday my family would pile into the car and head over to my grandmother’s house for dinner. Without fail she’d always serve a roast alongside a mountain of mashed potatoes. My sister was a roast beef kind of girl, but I was in it for the roast pork. I loved that roast pork not because it was brined or smoked to rosy pink perfection. My grandmother wasn’t that kind of cook. She grew up on a farm, fussing was not in her DNA. No, what I loved about her roast pork was the applesauce that accompanied it. It was one of the first times fruit and meat crossed paths on my dinner plate and it was certainly not the last. Today’s Apricot Stuffed Pork Chops are just another by-product of a food obsession hatched in my formative years.