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Easy Summer Side Dishes

July 21, 2020 By Holly Leave a Comment

Summer time is my favorite for entertaining. Grab a cold bottle of wine, throw something simple on the grill, and add an easy summer side dish or two and you’re all set. This year, thanks to the global pandemic, gatherings are smaller and simpler but that doesn’t mean we don’t all need a few good side dish recipes for those socially distanced gatherings. These recipes are simple, healthy, and easily made ahead of time. You can serve them cold or at room temperature. They are also easily scalable to feed a larger group! I promise, with these Easy Summer Side Dishes, summer entertaining can’t be easier.

Easy Summer Side Dishes

01. Roasted Carrot and Quinoa Salad
I love this dish for so many reasons. It is just about the simplest thing in the world and is packed full of flavor and nutrition. You can make the quinoa and vinaigrette up to two days ahead, keeping them in separate containers until the day you are planning to serve it. Don’t have fresh parsley? Try it with basil instead. Not a fan of golden raisins? Leave them out. Don’t have pine nuts? Toasted almonds would be great, too. The possibilities are endless.

Roasted Carrot and Quinoa Salad

02. Skillet Roasted Broccoli with Lemon Shallot Vinaigrette
Another healthy yet hearty side dish, I love this both piping hot and at room temperature. The lemon shallot vinaigrette really adds a great pop of flavor to the broccoli. The pine nuts give a great salty crunch! I love to double this for entertaining.

Skillet Roasted Broccoli with Lemon Shallot Vinaigrette

03. The Best Herbed Picnic Potato Salad
When we developed this recipe last year, our intent was to have a potato salad without a mayonnaise base. We love a classic potato salad, but as doctors, we don’t love worrying about summer heat and food poisoning. This potato salad uses pickled onions, capers, and lots of fresh herbs to pack it full of flavor. You won’t miss the mayo. We promise.

Vertical Herbed Picnic Potato Salad with Pickled Onions

04. Curried Cauliflower Quinoa Salad
If you’re looking for easy summer side dishes, this one completely fits the bill. The quinoa salad uses curry and a few other spices to put a spin on your typical picnic fare. Cauliflower is tossed in a little coconut oil and the beautiful spices and roasted until just golden. It then gets mixed into a big bowl of fresh quinoa and coated with a light, tangy vinaigrette. Pine nuts give it crunch and salt. You can easily make the quinoa and cauliflower a day ahead and toss it all together the morning you are going to serve it.

Still looking for side dish inspiration? Why not give these recipes from fellow food bloggers a try? I know I can’t wait to make them all!

Grilled Corn & Jalapeno Slaw
Strawberry Avocado Salad with Candied Pepitas
Easy Cucumber Salad

Filed Under: Side Dishes Tagged With: entertaining, summer

We threw another Dinner Party…and it was epic!

September 27, 2019 By Lane 4 Comments

We have a lot of new followers since we threw our last big dinner party! I can’t wait to show you all what great fun was had through all nine courses. Read on to see what we did, why we did it, and how we did it!

Grilled Grapes and Burrata
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Filed Under: Cookbooks, Entertaining, Lifestyle Tagged With: courses, dinner party, entertaining, friends, Ottolenghi, simple, supper club

Lemon Rosemary White Bean Dip

May 21, 2019 By Lane 4 Comments

Here in Minneapolis we finally saw our first 80 degree day.  Everyone flocked outside to take advantage of the amazing sunshine.  People congregated on driveways, at parks, around our 10,000+ lakes.  Just so dang happy to be outside!

But as the temperatures go up, and everyone gathers outside, snacks are needed.  Like this Lemon Rosemary White Bean Dip made with Fresh Crush Rosemary Olive Oil from the Queen Creek Olive Mill. Perfect for a summer gathering (or really ANY gathering).

Don’t trust me?  It’ll take you FIVE minutes to make it this delicious dip and you can see for yourself!

Lemon Rosemary White Bean Dip in a bowl

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Filed Under: Appetizers, Dips, Snacks, Vegetarian Tagged With: appetizer, cannelini beans, casual, dip, entertaining, lemon, olive oil, Queen Creek, Queen Creek Olive Mill, rosemary, vegetarian, white bean, white bean dip

Salmon with Lemon and Dill

March 7, 2016 By Lane 2 Comments

Salmon Butter Dill

I was once afraid of making fish.  Very, very afraid of making fish.  I was even afraid of buying fish (unless at a restaurant of course)!  It seemed like such a mystery!  But then my daughter, who was a super picky eater, starting ordering salmon in restaurants (She was about 6, and shunned most kid foods)  I cannot count the number of strange looks we got from waitstaff.  As you can imagine, this got expensive fast.  At about the same time I bought a cookbook (sense a recurring theme here?) that had a salmon orzo salad in it that looked amazing.  This was all happening around the time that I was just learning to cook and I have to admit, I was initially at a loss.  But all roads pointed to learning to cook salmon at home, so that is what I did….

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Filed Under: Main Course Tagged With: Butter, dill, entertaining, lemon, salmon, sauce

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We are Lane & Holly, the creators of With Two Spoons. We are friends, coworkers, mamas, and home cooks. Our belief is that community is built around the table. Come along as we share our kitchen adventures.

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