Craving a fresh salad with substance? This cauliflower salad recipe might be right up your alley. It’s crunchy, chewy, bold and unexpected. You’ll love this salad if you enjoy fresh Mediterranean flavors and reach for raw cauliflower on veggie trays.

Yes, this salad is made with raw cauliflower. The only cooking you’ll need to do for this recipe is toasting the almonds for a few minutes. The cauliflower soaks up the flavors in the vinaigrette during a 30-minute rest.

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Romesco sauce is an unforgettable sauce. It’s bold, zippy and full of roasted tomato and pepper flavor. You know how much I love sauces, and romesco is a great one.

Romesco originated in a city called Tarragona in Catalonia, the northeastern-most region of Spain that touches France. Tarragona is a port city, and the fishermen there made romesco sauce to liven up the day’s catches. I enjoy romesco sauce on roasted and grilled vegetables, and much more.

I know I said this already, but I love sauces. Sauces have the power to bring together basic staples, like leftover cooked rice and vegetables, and turn them into a meal you can get excited about.

I especially love sharing sauce recipes from around the globe. Sauces offer us insight into other cuisine’s key flavors, and make me want to travel to taste the originals. Sauces can transport you to another place, whether that’s another part of the world or tasting the next best thing in your own kitchen.

As you’ll read, I made a few substitutions to make this romesco sauce easy to make with basic American grocery store ingredients. I think you’ll love it.

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Trying to eat better this year? I know, it’s extra-hard when it’s freezing cold outside and delivery pizza is just one call away. This warm, fresh yet hearty salad is the perfect solution. It packs well for lunch, too.

I really love the combination of garlicky farro with roasted cauliflower and salty feta and olives. Farro is an ancient grain related to wheat that you should be able to find in the health section of grocery stores. It’s nutty in flavor, freezes and defrosts well, and offers some heft to salads.

Fresh greens, sliced avocado, and lemon round it out. This seasonless salad is bursting with bold Mediterranean flavors.

You might recognize this salad from the archives. We have a lot of new visitors this year (hello and welcome!), and I’m trying to make sure my favorite recipes have appealing photos.

I love revisiting existing recipes because they give me more creative energy to devote to new recipes. I’m working on a new batch this week and can’t wait to share the results with you.

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How about eggs for dinner tonight? I’m in love with these creamy scrambled eggs with spinach, goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. This is all-season comfort food right here, and an excellent recipe to keep on rotation for busy weeknights. This flavorful variation of classic scrambled eggs will make a great impression at brunch, but they’re also simple enough to serve on a regular morning.

If you take nothing more away from this recipe, remember this: Goat cheese in scrambled eggs is a very good idea. It’s heavenly. Luxurious. Sophisticated. So easy and delicious, it feels like cheating.

The inspiration for these eggs came from the burst cherry tomato, basil and goat cheese scrambled egg toasts in my cookbook. It’s one of my favorite breakfast recipes in the book (ok, they’re all my favorite).

I wanted to change it up and use more seasonless ingredients, like spinach and jarred sun-dried tomatoes. I used a generous amount of green onion, which is mild and offers just enough addictive allium heat without overwhelming more delicate flavors. It’s just delightful.

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The past month has been a whirlwind. First up, cookbook launch! I never thought the day would come. Then, celebratory girls’ night, my grandma’s birthday in Oklahoma, Ali’s bachelorette party, Memorial Day, Jordan’s baby shower, Ali’s amazing wedding, and another girls’ night (shown here).

The days are long, and I’m planning more trips for this year and next. Catching up and celebrating with friends and family has been so restorative. After all those celebrations, I’m simultaneously eager for another excuse to go dancing and looking forward to more lazy nights in with Cookie. Post-cookbook Kate is ready to take on the world.

Believe it or not, for years after I started sharing recipes on this blog, I was still nervous about cooking for people in real life. I used to get nervous butterflies before anyone took a first bite. Maybe you know the feeling.

Now that the book is finally finished, I’m so desperate to make up for lost time that I’m practically bribing friends to come over so I can cook for them. I have a whole cookbook’s worth of obsessively-tested, new favorites to make for them.

For this edition of girls’ night, though, I made a new recipe. It’s a combination of two recipes from ages ago—this baked Mediterranean feta dip (here’s an improved version) and this tomato basil salad, which was hardly a recipe but look at Cookie.

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Yesterday was not my day. I made a very dumb, very expensive mistake, and I need you to tell me you have made a very dumb and expensive mistake before, too. I hit the side of my car against… a pole. A stationary pole.

To be fair, the turn requires a sharp right past the pole, and there is no curb to protect cars from hitting the pole. Yet, I have driven by this pole 100 times without hitting it before. It happened in broad daylight outside my favorite local health food store, as I was on my way to buy these tortillas.

I called my mom, drove home and put these expensive tortillas to good use. I made quesadillas, with hummus instead of cheese! Did you know that’s an option? I stumbled upon this idea after successfully testing a variation of quesadillas with vegan sour cream instead of shredded cheese for my cookbook.

As a dairy eater, believe me when I say that that vegan sour cream recipe (available in the book) is absolutely delicious. I often prefer it to the usual dairy options because it’s lighter and plant-based, and it has inspired me to find more non-dairy solutions. I wondered later, “Could I make quesadillas with hummus, too?” Yep!

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I have a challenge for you (and me) today. I challenge us all to start making a giant fresh salad on Sundays, so we can eat salad all week long.

Starting with this gigantic, colorful, dare-I-say the best Italian chopped salad. This Italian chopped salad recipe is bold, vibrant and truly irresistible. It’s the perfect accompaniment to your favorite Italian meal, and it’s also a nice hearty salad on its own.

When you have a really great salad in the fridge, you might even reach for it before you grab the bag of chips. Happened to me! I’ve enjoyed four iterations of this salad over the past couple of weeks (especially the final version you see here), and I’m still craving more.

The motivation behind this salad recipe came when I ordered an Italian chopped salad and a pricy Neapolitan pizza down the street. I requested the chopped salad without the bacon, and it was definitely missing that salty, savory, gimme-more edge without it. Crispy bacon is the only meat I ever miss…

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Have you ever ordered a kale salad on a first date and tried to gracefully consume a meal of giant, wayward kale leaves? Awkward. Regretful. Ugh. I’m on a mission to change that. I won’t quit creating new kale salad recipes until we can all walk into a restaurant and consistently receive a great kale salad. Based on some recent experiences, I declare that my work here is far from done.

Here’s how to make a kale salad that’s better than those sad restaurant salads. First, remove those tough ribs from the kale, chop it into bite-sized pieces, and massage it to minimize the poky factor and improve the flavor. (Yes, massage it. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it’s worth it! See instructions below.) Drizzle in a bold salad dressing and toss until it’s completely coated (I always use more dressing on kale salads than other green salads). Add some fun flavors and textures and you will have yourself a great kale salad.

I say all of this to defend kale salads against mentions that they’re “too trendy” or overdone. But kale salads, when made properly, can make truly delicious, crave-able meals. Those kinds of meals don’t go out of style. Right? Let’s make kale salad a classic like pizza and mac and cheese. We’ll all be better off for it.

This salad is the mac and cheese of kale salads, if you will. It’s creamy thanks to a bold tahini dressing, which makes this salad seem way more indulgent that it actually is. I packed in more flavor and texture with freshly toasted sunflower seeds and briny olives and pepper rings that I cannot resist. Chickpeas offer some protein and up the hearty factor. I’ve been craving heavy, cheesy comfort foods lately, but I legitimately can’t wait to get home and polish off this kale salad. I hope you feel the same!

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Finishing a cookbook, or any massive project, really, is terrifying. A few nights ago, after I stayed up too late looking for any remaining last-minute issues, I tossed and turned while Oxford commas and the names of various ground spices bounced around in my head.

I finally woke up from a dream that I skateboarded, belly down, all the way to my parent’s house. I arrived to find that my family had eaten all of the chocolate cake. Dad!

Last night, I reviewed the book for the final time—truly, the last time—to make sure all of my requests had been implemented. I sent it back, fully apprehensive, with my mind full of second-guesses and self-doubt. Did I overdo it on the dog pictures? Are people going to take this book seriously? It’s very colorful. Are the recipes in the order that they should be?

That margarita photo that I was so proud of last year—I want to redo it because the ice cube is out of focus. It’s too late. And the little clock icon isn’t in quite the right place on page 197. Surely they can fix that part. (Update: they fixed it.) Send help, or wine. I’m losing it over here.

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This lentil salad is beyond delicious. In fact, I was tempted to make it a last-minute cookbook addition instead, but decided you should get it right away. It’s a Greek-flavored alternative to classic lentil salad, and I hope you love it as much as I do.

The salad features black beluga lentils, which are my favorite lentils for salads. They’re called beluga lentils because they resemble caviar. I like them because they cook in about 25 minutes and retain their shape nicely.

As humble and inexpensive as they are, lentils are true super foods. They’re loaded with protein, fiber, iron, and more goodness. Their flavor is super earthy, so they go well with other strong, zippy flavors, like the bold red wine vinaigrette I used here. I added chopped spinach, sun-dried tomatoes, olives and herbs to round out the salad.

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