side dish

Roasted Spiced Brussels Sprouts

November 20, 2019 by Lindsay 1 Comment

One of my best "use the oven at all times" Thanksgiving tips: plan an easy side dish that can roast or broil while the turkey rests and is carved.

EVEN IF you have a few casseroles that need to reheat at the same time, having one veggie that comes out of the oven fresh right as you're ready to eat makes a really nice balance to what can be a pretty heavy meal.

This technique can apply to tons of veggies, like this 5-minute asparagus from last year or these broiled lemon green beans. This year, I'm doing spiced, roasted Brussels sprouts. They get washed/prepped early in the week, then tossed with butter and spices early in the day. It's a raw veg, so no need to clog up fridge space. They hang out on a baking sheet prepped and ready, roast in the oven while the turkey gets its beauty treatment, and done! A vegetable for those of us that like some vegetables with our butter.

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Crispy Garlic Butter Smashed Potatoes

July 23, 2019 by Lindsay 3 Comments

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

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.

I wrote on Instagram yesterday how much I love this Southern-style cabbage for a quick weeknight side dish. These garlic butter potatoes, I'd argue, go perfectly with said cabbage, add some fish and chicken and here we go not sorry about two side dishes that use butter, know what I mean? These Crispy Garlic Smashed Potatoes are 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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Roasted Carrots with Bacon

June 24, 2019 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

On New Year's Eve of....last year? this year? how do we describe this? the one that just happened. Let's start again.

Roasted Carrots with Bacon from funnyloveblog.com

The last time we had a New Year's Eve, Jay and I went to a fancy dinner with our best friends. It was excellent. Will was just a few weeks old, we felt free, and the food was fabulous.

The dinner was one of those "four courses choose one thing each course" fixed price special event dealios, and for most of the courses we each chose different stuff so we could try everything. And almost without fail, the vegetables were the best things on the table. I'm talking pate vs a raw cauliflower thing, greens vs pork belly - on paper, the meat stuff should have been the best.

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Bruleed and Curried Carrots

November 7, 2018 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

Continuing our Thanksgiving prep! Enter...a newish way to eat veggies with lots of butter in them. I like carrots in almost all forms, but they can definitely feel like an afterthought or boring vegetable. We roast them at home a ton with olive oil, salt, and dried dill - that's probably my favorite way to eat them.

My family never did carrots at holidays, but I think the boiled-in-sugar version is common, or at least was in the 80's, in many families. I think carrots (I always picture them at cafeterias like this) boiled in butter and sugar are delicious, and that was kind of the impetus for this recipe. We boil the carrots in stock, butter, and spices, then broil them with some coarse sugar for a fake brulee effect. The end result is tender, flavorful, and so warming from the spices.

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Sugar Snap Pea Salad

July 24, 2018 by Lindsay 1 Comment

This Southern-style sugar snap pea salad is WHAT YOU NEED for hot summer day. Perfect for meal prep, a cookout, or potluck, the creamy dressing, salty bacon, and crunchy, snappy peas form the most delicious summer side dish ever. This version is gluten free!

Southern = it has bacon.

Here's our new favorite summer side dish! We are all about sugar snap peas, and this time of year when they're actually GOOD and we have a chance of finding them locally we have them around all the time. We eat a lot of raw veggies as snacks with hummus or ranch, but turning them into quick side dishes to go with grilled meat or to take to a potluck is another favorite thing to do with peas especially. There are tons of variations of this salad, and I made mine with a combination of classic Southern flavors (bacon, mayo) with some extra brightening flavors from lemon juice and fresh herbs. The combination of creamy/salty with herby freshness is SO good, and of course it goes without saying that while not a perfect superfood, this is a better choice than, say, the exact same salad base with potatoes or pasta instead of a raw veg.

Raw veggies balance bacon, is my aesthetic.

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Pimento Cheese Squash Casserole

July 9, 2018 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

Oh hell yes.

Hi! How was your weekend? We had a great one, including being at home with Beck all day Saturday and not leaving the house. We did yard work, hung some remnants back on the walls from the construction on our house, watched TWO movies, and cooked a boat-load, which was fun but also a benefit to eating out on the weekends means the kitchen isn't so ridiculously dirty all of the time. Cue me spending Monday undoing our all-at-home weekend.

So this casserole. This time of year we seem to find ourselves with tons of squash and zucchini, all of the time. My grandparents grow it, it is super cheap at the farmer's market, cooks quickly, lasts for awhile in the fridge, reason after reason to keep it around at all times. Mostly we saute it with onions and salt and pepper for a quick dinner veg, but sometimes, especially when we have a ton of it, we need to go old-school and decadent, you know? This is that. It's definitely a vegetable and definitely vegetarian, but other than that I'm not going to scream at you about health benefits.

This casserole is made on the stovetop and includes almost all of the seasonings from my favorite pimento cheese and traditional squash casserole. Ritz crackers are a must for topping, and you can bake the casserole for a few minutes and eat it immediately or keep it in the fridge for a few days and heat it up for dinner one night this week. Make-ahead friendly!

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Momofuku's Pan-Roasted Brussels Sprouts w/ Vinaigrette

April 26, 2018 by Lindsay 1 Comment

I almost hesitate to tell you what kind of vinaigrette because half of the earth will immediately be like EW GROSS NO X OUT.

Because, folks, the utter magic of this dish comes from a heavy hand of fish sauce, which I'm perfectly aware freaks people out, even though I don't pretend to understand why. I think most fear is really just fear of the unknown, though, so if you get to know fish sauce, you will love it and not be scared of it. Boom.

The fish sauce in this application alllmost acts like soy sauce, just a salty earthy umami flavor, not fishy at all, similar to Caesar dressing which gets its flavor from anchovy but doesn't taste like fish either. The dressing here also features garlic, hot peppers, and lime juice, and the huge punch of flavor with the stinky-in-a-good-way Brussels is absolutely wonderful.

The Brussels sprouts, for their part, are cooked half in the skillet half in the oven, super quickly, to get some crispy edges + tender but not mushy insides. The sprouts get dark at the edges and bright green throughout, and tons of fresh herbs add to the brightness of the flavors.

My friend Emily introduced me to this dish, and I've made it three times in as many months, which is a lot for us because we cook a bunch of different things AND like Brussels lots of different ways. The last time I made these I actually had leftover dressing and sprouts so the next day I shredded the Brussels on my mandoline and tossed them raw with some of the leftover dressing, and they were GOBBLED up. I may have liked them more than the cooked version of the recipe, I honestly can't tell.

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Simple Pan-Seared Parmesan Brussels

March 15, 2018 by Lindsay 1 Comment

Five ingredients, 20 minutes, perfect side dish, boom.

But let's back up. I went to brunch at this new hipster place recently for a friend's birthday, and it was .... predictably brunchy yet good. Beermosas, runny eggs on everything (no thanks), and the promise that "if you like this you should come back for dinner," which I totally want to because I don't like eggs. Make no mistake, the brunch itself was fabulous, I was child-free, the conversation was amazing, and we ordered some dish that included fried Parmesan Brussels sprouts as a base to a grit cake and a poached egg. My friend (we were sharing) got the whole egg, I got extra sprouts, all was right with the world.

The gist was this: the Brussels were definitely fried, but then tossed in COPIOUS amounts of Parm after the cooking process, so there was this great contrast between the cooked veggie and shredded cheese, which I loved. For this method, I did a pan-sear + oven cook to avoid the fat and stink of frying. The result is similar but healthier, and extra parm and crushed red pepper over everything makes this our new favorite way to eat Brussels. You will need an oven-safe skillet, usually cast iron or stainless steel, but I have some nonstick skillets that can be in the oven at high temperatures, so there are lots of options for cooking this dish.

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Easy Asparagus Casserole

November 2, 2017 by Lindsay 28 Comments

Super easy and healthy asparagus casserole that comes together in just a few steps. This is perfect for Thanksgiving, Easter, or any meal that needs a yummy low carb side dish! This is one of funnylove's most popular recipes with over 30k likes, shares, and saves!

Thanksgiving is three weeks away, can we talk about that?

We are having two big meals this year, one at our house and one at my parents'. We get to see both families, cook some and eat some, and I.Can't.Wait.

So we need to start prepping! It still feels like a long way away but....three weeks is not long, guys. Not long in the slightest. I'll make a huge long list of my favorite Thanksgiving sides in the next week or two, but let's start with a new one that has the BEST flavors and is super simple. Easy asparagus casserole! The fancy feeling of a veg that isn't green beans with the comfort of cheese and Ritz crackers.

Also there is mayonnaise in here and I don't want to hear a thing about it, it tastes delicious and you 100% will not know it is in there, mayo-haters. I see you, I validate you (I'm kidding, this isn't a mental health issue), but trust me the flavor added is a good one, and the texture is important.

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Oyster Mushrooms Rockefeller

March 29, 2017 by Lindsay 2 Comments

Oyster Mushrooms Rockefeller is the most delicious vegetarian version of traditional oysters Rockefeller. Toasty, slightly-slimy mushrooms, garlicky, butery spinach, and crispy bread crumbs on top. This is a lovely side dish but also really nice on toast for an appetizer or lunch.

Oyster Mushrooms Rockefeller Recipe from funnyloveblog.com

FINALLY VEGETARIANS CAN HAVE SOMETHING SLIMY TOO!

I know, you're welcome.

So, if you've been reading for any length of time you know that Jay hates all mushrooms except for oyster mushrooms. He says I spend too much on purses, and I'm like THEY'RE ALL THE SAME STOP BEING SNOOTY. But also I love mushrooms and if this is the only kind I can get it's not...a dealbreaker, you know? Not at all. Jay also loves oysters and, if I'm being honest, I can eat maybe 2 before I'm totally done. I like the flavor, don't mind the slime, but I have a fear of seafood grit aka dirt aka sand in my food. If I get one teensy gritty feeling between my teeth I am DONE for the entire meal.

I have no clue how to avoid grit in seafood. I buy it at good places, I clean it how I think you're supposed to. Mussels to me are the worst offenders. What am I missing?

So, we made Oysters Rockefeller, but with a big hunk of local mushrooms we found. They're pretty classic - butter, spinach, parsley, garlic, bread crumbs and parm. The mushrooms get roasted the in the drippings from the garlic (garlic butter, guys, garlic butter), and it's a side dish, salad, appetizer (over bread duh), or lunch. You pick!

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Cornbread Oyster Dressing

November 17, 2016 by Lindsay 2 Comments

It sounds gross but it's not!

This is a new dish for me, and one that I only know about because of Jay. This was his request for "something new for Thanksgiving," and I'm doubling it as his Birthday Blog Dish, which isn't a real thing but should totally be a real thing. Jay's birthday is on or around Thanksgiving (13 days before Beck's interestingly), but he's not into desserts much (we don't eat them that often, and he's more into calories elsewhere), so it's not terribly practical for me to throw a huge cake around here once a year. Because I'd end up eating it all.

But! This he's totally on board with. A family friend that we've had several holidays with makes a version of oyster dressing which, best I can tell, is something of a New Orleans invention. It's not supposed to be fishy necessarily, but super savory and umami-ish from the salty oysters and bacon. Like any stuffing it can be made well in advance, but it does need oven space right before the meal - should that factor into any of your meal planning.

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French Onion Shortrib Pull-Apart Bread

September 21, 2016 by Lindsay 4 Comments

....in which we break the internet.

Or maybe the world really has gone to hell in a handbasket and you people have no soul, I don't know which it is some days.

But if anything was going to save the world, it would be this little number. It's our first new football recipe for 2016, but it would also be a PERFECT showstopping appetizer for a holiday party (omg how are we talking about the holidays seriously can't deal) or even, say, a mother effing Wednesday night. It's bread and meat and cheese, which are basically ¾ major food groups, the 4th being wine.

The short ribs are indulgent here and, honestly, you could use any beef you like (shoulder, chuck roast) that will relax and shred nicely in a stewy situation after a few hours. The flavors end up like the richest French onion soup you've ever dreamed of, and there are whole garlic cloves simmered in the sauce to boot. Then we shred the beef, stuff it into bread with GRUYERE, for sobbing out loud, and dip it in the beef/onion juice to solidify the best time you've ever had watching football no matter what your feelings on the actual game are. Guaranteed.

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#tbt Green Chile Rice

August 11, 2016 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

It's a real-time #tbt! In that I made this this very week, took it on vacation, served it at a friend's house with tacos, and currently have leftovers of this very dish in my fridge.

We're starting low carb next week, I guess.

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5-Ingredient Asparagus Quiche

May 18, 2016 by Lindsay 1 Comment

I didn't set out to make this some kind of heroic 5-ingredient thing, it just happened. 1, because I'm lazy, 2, because I'm REALLY lazy and didn't want to make pie crust.

Anyway. Last year at the beach when Jay broke his leg my sister-and-brother-in-law (all the hyphens mean that they're BOTH my in-laws, right? riiiiiight) made this killer quiche for breakfast one day. I'm really seriously not a huge quiche fan, but I am REALLY a pie crust fan, so I can be talked into quiche in the right circumstance. The base recipe (cream and eggs) is from the fam, and add-ins are SERIOUSLY up to you. Cheese, broccoli, bacon, mushrooms, onion, garlic....I've done this a thousand ways and it turns out wonderfully every time.

Let's make it!...

Creamed Spinach Stuffed Sweet Potatoes

February 11, 2016 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

Super delicious twice baked sweet potatoes filled with your favorite sides for steak dinner. These stuffed sweet potatoes are filled with creamed spinach and topped with crispy fried shoestring onions.

Ok so here's Valentine's Day part two, and it's what you do if you are the "let's cook something nice, aka steak" type of person. I kind of am that person, mainly because my growing-up family was NOT a red meat type of a family. Still isn't, in fact, unless I cook it for the whole lot of them.

Which I'm wont to do.

This, as most of my recipes are, was Jay's idea. He suggested doing a potato that involved lots of classic steakhouse flavors that would go with steak. So that's exactly what I did. We have roasted sweet potatoes, then we scoop them out and mash them up with garlicky creamed spinach. Then the whole thing gets topped with crispy onions, and steak goes on the side. Super crispy on the outside, rare inside, salt sprinkled over, thinly sliced. That's my fav type of steak, no matter what the cut is.

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Spicy Candied Bacon

February 3, 2016 by Lindsay 4 Comments

This spicy candied bacon recipe features just a few ingredients and a quick bake in the oven. Oven baked bacon means no mess, and sugar + spices give huge flavor for the best appetizer, brunch item, or snack! Bacon should always be a snack, let's just agree on that.

Well, well, WELL.

The vegetarian husband has glazed us some bacon.

Last week when we had the epic snow that was very non-epic, my sister stayed the night because her power went out (a light breeze knocks the power out on her street, it's really remarkable), and since calories don't count on snow days Jay made us burgers on Saturday. They were EXCELLENT and involved caramelized onions and super juicy patties and onion buns, but the best part was this bacon on top of the burger. It was so good, in fact, that I decided it could stand alone, and boy can it. I made this last week for my fairly-healthy, mostly-vegetarian family, and it was GONE in approximately 4 seconds.

Now, the Green Jar Spice is famous in our family, we all keep a can around and find that it just fixes any number of sins food-wise. If you have another Cajun or Creole seasoning you like, by all means use that. You can also use my recipe for homemade blackening seasoning if you'd prefer - it's completely up to you.

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Buffalo Oven Fries

December 28, 2015 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

Ok, so I fully intended to save these for the Super Bowl, but then I realized that 1. that is a long way off, 2. these are delicious, and 3. there is football this week! Right now! Not to be ignored!

So I'm showing you these now. I actually made them a few weeks ago while I was still pregnant on a Saturday when we were organizing baby things and watching football as a family of 2, which is really weird to think about. Now there's a BABY in a swing next to me that I am supposed to take care of. Fo life.

I'm cool with it.

Anyway. These potatoes. I absolutely love buffalo anything, as has been displayed on this blog throughout the years. One of my fav dishes is a buffalo chicken wrap, the kind you can find at almost any sports bar, and dang if it's been awhile since I've had one. I'm more of a ranch + buffalo kind of girl, but blue cheese will work in a pinch for sure. The problem with 99% of buffalo stuff in restaurants is that it really doesn't work for vegetarians, so I try to make a few things here and there without meat so that Jay can have the buffalo flavor minus the meat.

All THAT to say, if you have football-watching plans this weekend like we do Thursday at 4pm, you might want to shop for ingredients for this snack - they'll disappear in a heartbeat and are oh-so-buffaloey.

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Baked Tomatoes with Parmesan

November 2, 2015 by Lindsay 1 Comment

Ok, now that it's November I don't feel as bad presenting you with alllll these side dishes. Because Thanksgiving is right around the corner and we need to PLAN, man. We do!

Jay's birthday this year fall ON Thanksgiving and that makes me super duper happy. There will be cake.

And maybe there will be this side dish! Our tomato was super duper strange this year in that the tomatoes didn't start happening in our yard until September, so we ended up with a ton of fresh-but-not-great tomatoes that are still coming, actually. Since they weren't wonderful even though they were straight from the plant they were better to cook with, and this is one of the things I made! You can use old tomatoes, yucky tomatoes, or just regular old Roma tomatoes that you can find year round that frankly never taste that great. Whatever you can find is just fine - the topping is really what we're all about anyway.

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Salt and Vinegar Potatoes + Yogurt Chive Dip

October 19, 2015 by Lindsay Leave a Comment

We made this twice in the first week we came up with it and have never had any leftovers. More than 10 people have tried these, and unanimously agree that OMG WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH THE POTATOES?

Well, I'll tell you.

The potatoes themselves taste like Salt and Vinegar chips, and the dipping sauce tastes like Sour Cream and Onion chips. So we have two kinds of chips that are really good, and then we made them into a grown up potato dish, and now we are famous among the potato lovers in our family, which is everyone.

Who doesn't like a new way to cook potatoes? They're cheap and filling and delicious and when drizzled with butter right before roasting no one is usually terribly mad at you.

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Sausage Celery Rice Casserole

September 21, 2015 by Lindsay 2 Comments

We need to add more comfort food to our repertoire, now and always, but ESPECIALLY on weeks when it might rain all weekend and be "cold" in the 50s. Yes, yes we do.

This recipe was sent to me by my mother-in-law after I texted her something like "Jay says there used to be some kind of a rice celery bake that you made, was that real?" Apparently it is. Boom, recipe in inbox. This is one of those throwback cream-of-whatever kinds of recipes that everyyyyyone used to make for weeknight dinner types of deals. Except for my family, which didn't really groove on casseroles.

Me, however? I love it. Jay, however, is all "but we are trying to eat healthier, right?" and I'm all "no, NO. we are eating all the carbs," and he's all "but I used to be faaaaat" and I'm all "I'm eating for twoooooo," and then I realize that I cook 97% of the things in this house anyway and why are we even having this conversation and then I make what I want.

But, in this case, I used brown rice so it's healthy, ok? OK!

When I actually made this recipe for the first time after learning about it, I used this recipe as my guide and then modified it based on what I had in my cabinets and what I wanted to achieve. My version is below, but check out the original recipe too if you'd like!

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