The Naptime Chef

I hope you all celebrated National Grilled Cheese Day yesterday! I’ve been celebrating it all week on behalf of my new roll this spring as the national spokesperson for Arla Dofino cheese. I am so excited about this partnership because I am a bona fide cheese nerd and I totally love their product. Last week I celebrated the beginning of our partnership with a launch in New York City at an amazing food space called Freshmade. In honor of National Grilled Cheese Day, I worked with Arla Dofino to create a few upgraded grilled cheese sandwiches featuring the brand’s delicious Creamy Havarti cheese. The cheese melts beautifully and is an easy upgrade on a traditional grilled cheese. You may have even seen my #HavartiParty images from Arla Dofino’s Grilled Cheese Day celebration this week!

For my next weekly fish meal using High Liner Foods’ delicious prepared fish, I am focusing on salad. It isn’t because I am on some crazy health kick. It is because this Parmesan Crusted Tilapia was totally made for Caesar salad. It might not seem obvious at first, but is so much better than just serving it with rice and vegetables. The Parmesan crust mimics the same flavor usually found in Caesar dressing, and the breaded coating means you can skip the croutons, too.

I am not a big fan of jarred mayonnaise, but homemade mayonnaise, or aioli, is the most amazing thing ever. Add garlic and it is even better! Not only does it taste like garlic heaven (as you know, I am a big fan of garlic), it is incredibly versatile. It is terrific on a sandwich, used as a dip, or even tossed with leftover roast chicken to make a mean chicken salad. Lately, I’ve been loving it as a basic dip for vegetables. It is a great way to make our nightly vegetable snack a little more interesting and it is so easy to make.

With spring just around the corner I am starting to think about asparagus. It is usually one of the very first vegetables I buy when our farmer’s market reopens and I can’t get enough of it. One of the very things I plan to make with it is this awesome asparagus soup. My friend, Lauren, made me something similar last fall and I’ve been thinking about it all winter.

Last month we embarked on our first ever sugaring off experience and it was such a blast. Inspired by my friend Aimee, we tapped the healthy sugar maple in our backyard to see what would happen. As it turns out – a lot! This year was a learning curve for us. Next year we’ll definitely tweak our methods to make the process more efficient with a higher yield. Here is how it all went down:

Pairing up with my friends at Sea Cuisine to talk all about fish tacos was a no brainer this year. I adore tacos (who doesn’t?!) and their recipes for getting them on the table with minimal fuss and maximum flavor are perfection. Last week I talked about the classic Baja fish taco. I have never been to the Baja peninsula, but if the fish tacos are that delicious I’m putting it next on my destination vacation list. This week we are highlighting another family-friendly recipe that is perfect for weeknight meals or casual weekend entertaining.

Even though I have a fairly solid go-to salad formula, I still need to change it up now and then. The other day I was assembling a slideshow for Babble and came across this amazing looking dish. As I mentioned last week, I love roasted garlic (sorry, Edward Cullen), and practically eat it like candy. What I find so unique about this recipe is how the strong flavors of raspberries, roasted garlic, and cashews mingle together so well. No one item cancels out the rest. It really is a symphony of sweet, crunchy, salt, and nutty which is exactly how I like to compose my salads.