With an abundance of sweet ripe berries, fresh green spinach, chewy pasta, and a bright and flavorful light balsamic dressing, this strawberry spinach salad is an unexpected and delicious pasta salad that is certain to become one of your family’s new favorites.

Strawberry Spinach Salad

This is not your average spinach pasta salad. With strawberry season on its way (and blueberry season not far behind), this strawberry and spinach salad should be on your radar as you plan your summer meals. It is the perfect light lunch or side dish for a summertime dinner.

In the abundance of pasta salad recipes, there’s something especially irresistible about the sweet bite of berries in this particular dish. I often use a combination of strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries for a uniquely delicious combination of flavors and textures.

A sprinkle of goat cheese adds a salty, savory tang that ties all the flavors in this salad together. I’ve used both honey goat cheese and regular goat cheese in this recipe and they were both delicious.

Strawberries are the ultimate sweet bite in many of our favorite recipes. I’m always amazed by how much flavor strawberries add to a simple salad. As it turns out, pasta salad is no exception!

While I often use a combination of blueberries, blackberries, and strawberries in this particular strawberry spinach pasta salad, if you don’t have all those types of berries you can easily substitute with all of one kind of berry.

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5 Minute Avocado Salad

This avocado salad is bright and fresh and only takes 5 short minutes to make! Creamy avocados topped with a simple tangy dressing, toasted pine nuts and chunks of manchego cheese. It’s just a lovely salad!

Avocado is one of my love languages. They are pretty much the best little fruit ever. I mean, how many foods out there can you eat for any and every meal? They are healthy and satisfying. They are beautiful and so creamy. Throw them on some toast, mash them into guacamole, add them to a taco, wrap them with bacon, blend them into a dressing, or in this case, make them the base of a salad. Winning, winning, winning!

Ingredients for Avocado Salad

I love coming up with new salad recipes and this one is a little out of the box (i.e. I didn’t find another salad quite like it out there on the interwebs) but it seriously just works! All you need is a few avocados, a couple of simple ingredients for a zesty dressing and a few fun add-ins that just make dish come alive! Here is what you will need:

• Avocados: you’ll want ripe hass avocados, see my section below on how to pick ripe avocados
• Lime Juice: fresh is best, like by far the best
• White Wine Vinegar: combined with the lime juice, this is just the acid you want to balance out of the creamy richness of the avos
• Manchego Cheese: a semi-hard Spanish cheese made from sheep’s milk that is buttery in texture and similar in flavor to pecorino romano
• Pine Nuts: toasting the pine nuts gives them a little crunch and enhances their flavor
• Salt: adds and enhances flavors
• Cilantro: adds a fresh herby pop of flavor and is my favorite herb to pair with avocados

The measurements for each ingredient can be found in the recipe card at the end of this post.

Possible Substitutions:

Ok, I realize that some of these might not be common ingredients to have on hand, so here are some possible substitutes, but I highly recommend hitting the grocery store and trying the original recipe.

Avocados – no substitutes here because nothing can replace the heaven of an avocado

Lime Juice – you could try lemon juice, but lime and avocado just belong together

White Wine Vinegar – try red wine vinegar or rice vinegar (not seasoned)

Manchego – pecorino romano, asiago or monterey jack are ok substitutes

Pine Nuts – pistachios, toasted almonds or chopped cashews

How to Pick a Ripe Avocado

There are few things better than a perfectly ripe avocado and there are few things worse than an over- or underripe avocado! To pick a r

Our Favorite Campfire Dessert – Banana Boats

Banana boats are a campfire recipe from my childhood! Warm fire-roasted bananas topped with marshmallows and chocolate chips with the whole family sitting around the campfire laughing and making memories. It just doesn’t get much better than that!

Discover the simple steps to creating delicious and decadent campfire banana boats, filled with your choice of toppings. We are sharing photos of all our favorite creations to inspire your minds and tastebuds. We can’t wait for you to enjoy this tasty summer dessert!

Saved By Banana Boats

Childhood is really hard.

It’s wonderful for sure and if you’re like me you have a little inner ache to climb your way back to it. But there’s a lot of growing pains, literally and figuratively to endure. Thankfully we had our camping trips and lake visits that smoothed out any roughness of life.

And banana boats.

We had many banana boats.

Who thought up such a magical creation and let children’s hearts fly free with the unwrapping of a simple piece of aluminum foil and charred banana?

Growing up we only did chocolate chips and marshmallows, but all these years later we’ve got a plethora of talented kids to lead us to new adventures, even with this classic camping dessert.

What is a Banana Boat?

A banana boat is like a s’more and a banana split fell in love and had a baby. It takes a few things from each parent and is perfect! Banana boats consist of bananas sliced down the middle, stuffed with yummy toppings like marshmallows, chocolate chips, nuts, m&m’s, caramel, etc. and then wrapped in foil and cooked over the campfire. It is a favorite campfire recipe of ours!

What is the Difference Between Banana Boat and a Banana Split?

A banana boat does not have any ice cream in it and is cooked over campfire or on a grill. It does have many of the same flavors and joy that a banana split brings though! In fact, we even made a banana split inspired banana boat for this photo shoot which can be seen below. Banana boats are a fun alternative for a campfire dessert rather than s’mores.

Ingredients for Banana Boats

The ingredients list for banana boats are simple…bananas and whatever toppings you want to put on them. I will share a section below for all the toppings we’ve tried. You can really let your imagination and taste buds run wild on this one!

H

Welcome to the weekend, my friends! The start of our summer has been a whirlwind of visits with family and friends. I’ve enjoyed it so much. Sunny days, rainy days, and everything in between, Ohio never fails to make me smile. 

ON THE BLOGS THIS WEEK: Jammy hard boiled eggs are fantastic on their own with just a bit of salt or when added to salads, sandwiches, and pasta. These are perfectly set boiled eggs with firm whites and “jammy,” slightly runny yolks. They’re egg heaven!

Creamy deviled egg filling creates the dressing that coats each bite of this deviled egg potato salad. Chunks of potato and hard-boiled eggs are tossed with the dressing to make the ultimate potato salad for anyone who loves deviled eggs.

This bacon asparagus frittata makes everyone at my table so happy. It’s so easy to throw together and get this meal to the table, whether for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Eggs serve as such a versatile backdrop, against which the crispy bacon crumbles, fresh asparagus, and parmesan cheese really shine. Even if you’re not a big fan of asparagus, I recommend trying this.

Creamed peas and potatoes is a delicious side dish that is wonderfully simple to make. The tender pop of English peas adds a wonderful texture to the softness of baby potatoes in this recipe.

Glazed cherry pie bars are an easy treat you can make with canned cherry pie filling or with a batch of homemade pie filling. These bars transport nicely and are perfect for any summer picnic, potluck, or party.

This strawberry and Oreo icebox cake highlights your favorite summer flavors with a simple four-ingredient recipe that you can make in about 15 minutes! If you enjoy classic strawberry shortcake and maybe don’t love turning on the oven to make scones or biscuits in the middle of summer, this dessert is likely to thrill you.

Creamy and rich with an abundance of chocolate chunks that melt in your mouth, Black Raspberry Ice Cream is as iconic a flavor in Ohio as the chocolate and peanut butter “Buckeye” flavors that are also popular in every ice cream shop here.

What I’m CRAVING: Salads! So many recipes have caught my eye recently, I have a long list of new salads to try. This Read more

Creamy and rich with an abundance of chocolate chunks that melt in your mouth, Black Raspberry Ice Cream is as iconic a flavor in Ohio as the chocolate and peanut butter “Buckeye” flavors that are also popular in every ice cream shop here.

The first time we flew out to Ohio to look at houses, our realtor and now friend, Stratton Alt (highly recommend him for anyone house hunting in the Columbus area!) took us to Graeter’s Ice Cream.

Oh. My. Word. Their most popular flavor is Black Raspberry and it was love at first taste for this girl. I’ve been obsessed with it ever since.

You may notice that this is a more complicated ice cream recipe than I typically share with you. Please do not let that stop you from making this, my friends.

I’m telling you right now that this recipe, this custard-style ice cream recipe, is everything you love about Graeter’s Black Raspberry Chocolate Chip Ice Cream in a homemade ice cream recipe that you can make whenever you’re craving it.

No matter where you live, whether you’re lucky enough to have Graeter’s ice cream in a shop around the corner or at the grocery store, you too can enjoy and fall in love with the most popular Graeter’s ice cream flavor.

I typically make Philadelphia-style ice cream without eggs. So, naturally, I tested this recipe using our favorite easy vanilla ice cream