Starchy Side Dishes

Pesto Rice

August 25, 2021 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

Easy pesto rice is the perfect weeknight side dish for summer! Gluten free, buttery, and absolutely delicious. I love making this with store-bought or homemade pesto for a fun addition to plain white rice that is delicious with cast iron skillet salmon and broiled asparagus!

side view pesto rice with basil leave and pine nuts in blue bowl

Let us say hello to our favorite 30 minute summer side dish for dinner! Pesto rice. Which is, in fact, exactly what it sounds like: steamy white rice flavored with basil pesto, aka SUMMER RICE.

Let's make summer rice a thing. With butter.

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Vegan Potato Salad

July 27, 2021 by Lindsay 1 Comment

This vegan potato salad with no mayo is a super easy summer side dish that comes together with just a few ingredients! It tastes just like salt and vinegar potato chips, has tons of fresh herbs, and can be served warm or at room temp. I love it with cast iron skillet salmon for a delicious weeknight dinner, or as a summer potluck side dish offering.

Hello, hello flavors of middle school chip dreams wrapped up in some adult ingredients.

LOOK! It's a no mayo potato salad!

Listen, I love super fatty, carby side dishes in the summer. Seriously. A lot. BUT, I'm also into dishes that can feed a variety of dishes and are light enough that we can Eat All The Things and not feel uncomfortably full.

Like this vegan potato salad! This is one of those side dishes that goes with ANYTHING all summer, and the flavor combo is riiiight in the middle of salt and vinegar and sour cream and onion potato chips, aka heaven.

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Corn Risotto with Blistered Cherry Tomatoes

July 14, 2021 by Lindsay 1 Comment

Super easy corn risotto recipe that is perfect for using up summer produce! This version features roasted cherry tomatoes that get a little charred, a lot sweet, and are the perfect topping. This is a vegetarian and gluten free main dish or side option. Pair it with some cast iron skillet salmon for a yummy gluten free pescatarian dinner.

bowl of corn risotto topped with tomatoes on blue napkin

Because everything should have corn and tomatoes in it right now, you know? It's true.

Where we are, produce is so perfect this time of year, zucchini and squash and herbs and corn just everywhere. This corn risotto cozy from the creamy rice and fresh with corn and tomatoes that are amazing right now.

I love this recipe for summer, but it's for sure delicious year round with frozen corn and storebought cherry tomatoes. It's also really nice for late summer when the produce is still there but the temperatures mercifully dip a little bit.

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Vegan Pasta Salad with Roasted Veggies

June 24, 2021 by Lindsay 2 Comments

Yummy vegan pasta salad is the perfect summer side dish! I make this with any seasonal veggies I have on hand, pine nuts, and lots of fresh herbs and lemon vinaigrette for brightness. Change up the veggies, pasta shape, and herbs each time for a fresh take on this yummy, healthy side dish!

large serving bowl of vegan pasta salad with asparagus and tomatoes

I just finished the book Hello, Summer and tbh want to start all recipes like this with OH, HELLO SUMMER, but it feels kind of redundant.

Know that I'm thinking it, though.

This is, to me, the pasta salad to end all pasta salads. It's light, fresh, and full of summery flavors. I love that it's vegan because lots of different types of eaters can eat it, and almost every aspect of it can be switched up based on what you have on hand. Different nuts, veggies, fresh herbs, it all works.

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Quick 1-Skillet Lemon Pepper Pasta

May 10, 2021 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

Vegetarian one pot pasta, yes please! This one pan lemon pepper pasta comes together in under half an hour with just 7 ingredients. Classic lemon pepper seasoning flavor meets creamy, buttery pasta in this easy one pot pasta method. Pair this with an easy lemon vinaigrette green salad for a complete vegetarian meal.

Quick like....20 minutes tops, no chopping of any kind unless you count zesting a lemon, which you could fully skip if you'd like.

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Pan Fried Potato Chips

March 1, 2021 by Lindsay 11 Comments

Favorite pan fried potato chips are so easy to make yourself at home! These are a great lunch side dish or an offering for a summertime potluck. Just one russet potato makes enough to serve four people, and this recipe is done in an under an hour. I like Greek yogurt onion dip with these.

Let's make chips!

Because our lunches need a yummy side dish every day, right?

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Steamed Baby Potatoes

February 22, 2021 by Lindsay 13 Comments

My favorite baby potatoes recipe ever! Steamed baby potatoes are the easiest way to cook baby potatoes on the stovetop with just a few ingredients. I use baby yellow potatoes for this, but any small potato you enjoy works great! These are particularly delicious made into a meal with cast iron skillet salmon and a lemon kale salad.

Say hello to our new favorite GF side dish! Tiny baby potatoes, simmered and steamed and lightly crispy from butter + salt, tossed in any herbs you have, just super duper simple happiness all around.

These baby potatoes are simple and quick to make - I serve them all the time and just change the herbs I use so they go with whatever I'm serving them with!

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Potatoes Romanoff

November 5, 2020 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

What is Potatoes Romanoff? Only the best twice baked potato casserole recipe in the world! Envision: leftover baked potatoes, fused with cheese, butter, sour cream, and seasonings. I love this for a super easy Thanksgiving side dish that can be made ahead, but it's also delicious as a meal prep side dish served with my favorite marinated grilled chicken for dinner!

Great news!

We are staving off election and pandemic jitters with carbs and dairy.

What can I say except, you're welcome? (listening to a lot of Moana recently, Will's choice)

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Cracker Barrel Hashbrown Casserole

July 14, 2020 by Lindsay 8 Comments

This copycat Cracker Barrel hashbrown casserole copycat recipe is the perfect cheesy, tangy, make-ahead hashbrown casserole from the popular chain restaurant! This can be made in advance and baked in the morning for brunch, or eaten as a side dish all week long! Pro Tip: This is really really really good with Cajun Glazed Bacon on the side!

Oh, hey.

side view of plate with bacon and hash brown casserole.

How are you doing on restaurant food? Back in restaurants? Outside? Inside? More takeout than you've ever imagined? Missing everything like whoa?

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Easiest No-Knead Bread In A Dutch Oven

July 1, 2020 by Lindsay 15 Comments

Mark Bittman's no-knead bread (easy dutch oven bread) is the easiest, most foolproof path to artisan-style bread at home with just 4 ingredients and a little time. No special equipment, no kneading, this is the best homemade bread ever!

Mark Bittman does it again! I have been waiting and waiting to show you this.

Much like my favorite pancakes that we make at least weekly, this homemade no-knead bread recipe was a real game-changer for me.

It of course started in quarantine, as so many carb endeavors have, but I waited a few months to write about it because I wanted to be sure it worked every.single.time.

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Wildly Delicious + Easy Sausage Stuffing

November 18, 2019 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

aka my BIL Ben being all "omg but seriously what the f~ck is in this."

It's butter. And sausage. And REALLY good bread, just enough seasoning, and we find that really good sausage stuffing does not have to be really hard to make. In fact, this may be one of the easiest Thanksgiving side dishes to make and quite possibly the best stuffing ever.

I've seen stuffing with TONS of ingredients, sometimes so many that the stuffing becomes a meal in and of itself. I think those recipes are fun and interesting, but for Thanksgiving I'm really into basic recipes so that one thing on the dish isn't completely overwhelming to the rest of the plate.

Enter, this classic and easy sausage stuffing recipe. It's got really yummy flavors but just nine ingredients, stuff that is readily available, and can be made well in advance (a few days before your big meal certainly), baked, and reheated right before you eat.

The resulting sausage stuffing is super flavorful, tender with some crispy bits, salty and savory from the sausage and spices.

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Easy Corn Pudding

November 5, 2019 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

IT'S HERE IT'S HERE IT'S HERE.

The first Thanksgiving recipe of 2019!

I'm psyched. Thanksgiving recipes are so much fun to brainstorm, and we had the best time a few months ago coming up with some really delicious new recipes for you!

Up first: Jiffy Corn Pudding. It's made in a jif....ha...don't leave me. There are LOTS of things that are called corn pudding and corn casserole, and this version is as follows: cornbread mix to save us some time, corn because vegetables, spices for flavor, pepper jack cheese, sour cream AND heavy cream because it's Thanksgiving, crackers on top for crunch.

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Creamed Spinach Mac and Cheese

September 24, 2019 by Lindsay 1 Comment

this recipe is sponsored by microplane. they're offering a discount code to readers (see below!) and there will be a giveaway on Instagram later this week. be sure to follow along and enter!

Here's our new super duper easy one-pot dinner for fall!

I have been SO excited to share this with you. Creamed Spinach Mac and Cheese. It's one of those really nice unicorn dishes that everyone likes, that has veggies in it, that is comforting but not so heavy that we can't eat it on a Tuesday, checks a lot of boxes.

Let's break it down: We are boiling some noodles, and we aren't messing around with a roux/white sauce. We're stirring some dairy stuff together super quickly because we're hungry. Fresh nutmeg grated with Microplane's Spice Mill adds tons of flavor with zero effort, and garlic + handfuls of greens round the whole thing out. The resulting creamy mac is practically perfect in every way.

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Loaded Baked Potato Salad (for Labor Day!)

August 28, 2019 by Lindsay 2 Comments

Here's all we need to finish out the summer (or get ready for tailgating!).

How to make Loaded Baked Potato Salad recipe from funnyloveblog.com

Loaded Baked Potato Salad with all the creamy dreamy stuff dreams are made of.

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Crispy Smashed Potatoes + Garlic Butter Sauce

July 23, 2019 by Lindsay 3 Comments

The most yummy crispy smashed potatoes from Bon Appetit! This is one of my favorite tiny potato recipes: tender boiled potatoes smashed and drizzled with garlic butter sauce, then baked to crispy, salty, buttery submission. Make. These. Now.

Don't leave me. It feels good. Embrace it. The garlic butter, that is.

Sheet pan of crispy smashed potatoes close up with white napkin on the edge.

Hello and welcome to your new favorite side dish! These smashed potatoes are YUMMY, a word that honestly should be used to describe as many of your foods as possible. You only live once, potatoes are a vegetable, and garlic butter is the savory icing on the potato cake that we all need to use whenever we possibly can.

These garlic butter potatoes are, frankly, the ideal potato side dish. They go perfectly with some easy stewed cabbage, add some fish and chicken and here we go, dinner is handled?

These are my version of Bon Appetit's smashed potatoes: they're simple to make in just a few steps and the end result is a fluffy-on-the-inside, crispy-on-the-outside cross between mashed potatoes and french fries that is REALLY yummy. Trust.

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Leftover Mashed Potato Cakes + Apple Syrup

November 20, 2018 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

Continuing our leftover plan for the week! I feel like sometimes there are LOTS of leftovers of certain casseroles, especially heavier things. Maybe it's just our family, but if you make an 8-person casserole or side dish BUT there are 97 side dishes and people only eat a few spoonfuls of each thing....leftovers.

Like mashed potatoes! That we are going to fry into patties and top with stewed apples, latke-style. If these are inauthentic enough, feel free to re-purpose the idea for Hanukkah. Here's the recipe that I used for this batch of potato cakes.

Since Beck has gotten big enough to care we usually do a breakfast all together one or two days per week - usually on weekends when Jay is with us, but also sometimes Mondays call for pancakes made with all white flour and extra butter, and I'm not above that at all. I'm REALLY hoping to score some leftover mashed potatoes this week to make these on Saturday. They're super easy to make and you could definitely form them the night before and fry them right before breakfast, maybe throw some bacon in a skillet just for good measure.

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5-Ingredient Baked Smashed Potatoes

November 12, 2018 by Lindsay 3 Comments

Ok so we agree that the weather firmly dictates what we desire to eat, right?

Because today it is pouring rain and freezing and dark AND it's my first day alone with both kids, and is it too early to plan on making myself mashed potatoes for lunch? Or ordering a burger that costs $5 to be delivered for a 50% upcharge?

I'm not above it, is my point. Send funny memes.

Onward, though, in our Thanksgiving planning! We have about ten days to go, and these potatoes should a thousand percent be on your menu. They have very few ingredients and are ridiculously delicious thanks to a few tricks. The first trick is to boil the potatoes whole. This takes a bit (ok, a lot) longer, but the flavor of the potatoes stays IN them instead of floating out into the water, and the resulting texture is closer to a smashed baked potato, which I adore. The second "trick" is...a lot of butter and salt. I don't know a different way to say that, but butter and salt make potatoes taste amazing, so we use a lot of it here.

For make-ahead purposes, these could be made easily on Monday or Tuesday of next week, and then baked right before you eat on Thursday. Starchy sides hold up so well in the fridge, and I love them for that reason - anything I can make in its entirety before the day of the big meal is a huge win. ...

Baked Rice With Mushrooms

November 5, 2018 by Lindsay 1 Comment

Favorite baked rice that is one of the easiest casseroles to make! All the ingredients to into a baking dish (my favorite Staub, always!) and bake to a perfectly light, fluffy, mushroom rice casserole with onions that caramelize themselves in the broth and seasonings. YUM.

Hey, gluten free Thanksgiving side dish! With it being so early this year, I'm pushing hard to be sure we get all the recipes in this week and next for planning purposes, and then we have recipes to use up all the leftovers, YUM.

First, though, thank you for all the sweet words about Will! At 3 days postpartum I am totally healed and acclimated to having two children, and everyone is sleeping wonderfully, and the time change was obviously no issue for anyone.

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Quick + Easy Focaccia

October 18, 2018 by Lindsay 8 Comments

I couldn't wait. As promised, after we watched the first episode of Salt Fat Acid Heat (why are the episodes not in the order of the words in the title?), all I could think about was making focaccia. Ok maybe more all I could think about was eating focaccia, because the filming of the episode was so lovely and the language used with the imagery was just so compelling, I NEEDED to experience salty, oily-in-a-good-way bread ASAP.

The obvious hiccup being that I 1. don't bake and 2. have literally never made anything with yeast. Ever. And if we're being honest, 37 weeks pregnant with a messy house and full-time toddler and part-time job is really not the time to get all LET'S TRY NEW THINGS. Having a second child is new enough. Eating bread was the goal. Luckily, I had a package of pizza dough in the fridge that had all but tripled in size in the few days it had been in my fridge. Tripled! I bought it on a whim thinking that I'd make pizza for Beck as a treat, but I hadn't done so yet or told her about it, so I took to the interwebs to see if other people make focaccia with pizza dough.

THEY DO.

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Oven Roasted Home Fries

September 12, 2018 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

WELP, no one knows a dang thing about where Hurricane Florence will go, but nowwwww they're saying the storm might end up over us at some point. This means...well, who knows. We're pretty far inland, so even major storms coming our way have a good amount of time to slow down once they hit the coast. We get some wind and lots of rain and the occasional short-lived power outage, but overall nothing catastrophic in several years from a hurricane.

BUT STILL. We absolutely should reward our bravery for making it through this storm with fried potatoes to go with our fried chicken, right? Because hunkering down means nothing if it isn't calorie laden, especially if you're pregnant and mostly sober. Give me my calories in other ways. For the baby!

Even if you don't use carbs as rewards for getting through tough events, you could just...make these because they are delicious. The method was inspired by Molly Yeh's new Food Network show (which I love! have watched every episode! can't wait for more!), and is nice and simple for a weeknight dinner or breakfast/brunch situation, which we definitely need more of as the days get slightly cooler. The potatoes are boiled and then roasted with tons of spices, and the boiling can definitely be done in advance. Then, before eating, roast the potatoes and done! Crispy, buttery potatoes with tons of flavor that go well with just about anything.

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