taco salad with cilantro lime cauliflower rice

Oh summer.  Fresh ingredients abound.  My little garden is already reaping some harvest.  I've got big ol' heads of romaine, so I figured it was high time to bust out a salad.  I'm not a big salad fan, but if I do enjoy a salad it's got to have more to it than just lettuce and dressing.  Give me a chevre, walnut, pear salad, or a blackened salmon caesar.   One of my favorite more-than-just-lettuce salads is a taco salad.  I had just picked up a head of cauliflower to make some cilantro lime cauliflower rice and it sounded like a perfect addition to a yummy taco salad.  Cilantro lime cauliflower rice was a staple when I was doing Whole30, it's so savory and filling.  Add it to a taco salad with some aged cheddar and spicy dressing, and it's a filling salad for a warm evening on the patio.  Yum!

Ingredients for Cauliflower Rice (via

Popular Paleo

)

½ of a large head of cauliflower or a full one if it's on the small side

½ yellow or white onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

½ cup cilantro, chopped

zest of one large lime

juice from half a lime

2 TBSP coconut oil

Salt and pepper, to taste

Instructions

1. Grate the cauliflower or use a food processor to get a "rice" texture.

2. Heat a large pan to medium-high and add the coconut oil.  Once the oil is melted, add your onions and garlic and cook until the onions are translucent, a couple minutes.

3. Add the cauliflower and cook until it's just cooked through, about 5 to 7 minutes.

4. Add in the lime zest and juice, fresh cilantro, and salt and pepper to taste, and mix together!

For Salad:

Diced Onion

Diced Tomato

Romaine Lettuce, chopped

Corn

Grated

Kerrygold Aged Cheddar

Cauliflower Rice

Hot Sauce for dressing (or use a southwest-type dressing)

My favorite way to make salads is to put everything out in dishes separately and let people build their own salads, that way they can choose their own ratio of ingredients and leave out the ingredients they aren't a fan of.  Throw everything together, toss with dressing, and enjoy with a summery beer on a hot evening!

#FLASHBACK FRIDAY // bohemian vibes

Bohemian Vibes // June 2, 2011

As of yesterday I have two weeks until I move out of my apartment and back into the Winne! This means I'm starting my two week work out regimen so that those young whippersnappers don't totally run me into the ground! I'll be doing a lot of running around up and down hills and doing all sorts of work, so I feel like it'll be a good idea to have some sort of endurance and conditioning built up before I get there. I'm actually pretty excited about it all. My life here in Tacoma is pretty sedentary. Since all of my work is online, I spend most of my time sitting on my butt in front of a computer screen. I try to ride my bike as many places as possible to counteract this, but still, I'm not as active as I'd like to be. I think being at camp will be very nice and invigorating, though I don't doubt that no matter how much physical preparation I do, I'll still have my ass whooped!

dream come true dress/courtesy of threadcase :: bag & headband/gift

belt/gift shop in Calico,CA :: shoes/minnetonka :: ring/forever 21

This dress was sent to me by my new sponsor Threadcase. It's so lovely and summery! It has more of a bohemian vibe than most of the things hanging in my closet, but I like it! I'm trying to figure out how to reconcile all the different parts of me that manifest themselves in my style. There's the rock and roll me, the vintage me, the artsy me, the hipster me, the pin-up me, and so on. They all seem to battle for the front when I stand in front of my closet and unless I have a clear cut idea of exactly what I want to wear I just end up putting on what feels like a hundred different outfits until one seems to feel right. And even then sometimes I'll throw something together that feels like it's nice and then looking at outfit photos I'm like.. ehhhh? But anyway, this outfit is not like that. It is lovely and I felt quite good in it! I threw this dress on the second I got it out of the package!

punk rock princess

When it comes to giant, poofy, tulle skirts, my answer is always, "YES."  I mean, come on, why the hell not, amirite?  So what if this is a totally impractical outfit for daily wear.  Sometimes you just have to put on a giant skirt and rock the hell out of it and feel awesome about it.  Go on, girl, g'head with your bad self.  That being said, you may want to rethink your giant poofy skirt aspirations if it's over 80 degrees outside.  About 5 minutes into this shoot I was sweating balls and feeling very muggy inside my fortress of tulle.  Luckily beads of sweat don't show up too well in photographs.  Plan your tulle adventures accordingly, people!

skirt

/courtesy of

shabby apple

:: top/courtesy of

spotted moth

necklace/francesca's collection ::

shoes

/courtesy of

modcloth

shades

/courtesy of

bonlook

forgetful seasons

ou know summer has arrived when you start getting a sandal strap tan lines.  I did a bunch of gardening with these sandals on, so I had a nice dirt layer "tan-line" but then when I took a shower to wash off the dirt, the lines didn't go away.  Officially summer!  We've been barbecuing and gardening and farmers market-ing like summertime pros.  Summer always throws me for a loop.  I'm so used to bracing for cold when I leave a building, and now when I go outside it's perfectly warm and pleasant.  Now I have to brace for going into buildings with overly ambitious air-conditioning.  I think I prefer that kind of bracing though. Washingtonians are notorious for complaining about the weather regardless of what it is: rain, snow, sun.  They can find a reason to hate it.  Nine months of complaining about grey and rain and then the first week of hot summer weather and we're all, "Waaah! It's hooootttt."  I went to Target the other day to buy a fan and the entire shelf of box fans was empty.  I'm pretty sure Washingtonians forget that summer exists every year.



dress/modcloth :: sandals/courtesy of moorea seal :: necklace/courtesy of musana jewelry

don't worry, be yonce

ridays at my gym are leg-day and last Friday I wore this shirt because I knew that Queen Bey would get me through all the squats and lunges.  Alas, I am still sore three days later.  Oof.  Even the power of Yoncé can't heal 170 calf raises.  Yowch.  On Saturday Dan and I drove up to spend the afternoon with his parents and grandparents and I'm pretty sure I was walking around with the same hobble as his 80+ year old grandma.

I didn't really mention it here on the blog, but if you follow me on Instagram you know I was home in Alaska last week.  My mom is trying to clean up the house now that the nest is empty of all the kids, and after living there for almost 20 years, it's a tall order!  A lot of our stuff is still there being stored, so I went through boxes of my old stuff and tossed a ton of stuff and picked a few things to save that will eventually get shipped down here.  It was an interesting few days, sort of reliving my entire life through all the knick knacks, journals, and photos I'd squirreled away over the years.  Everything from my preschool teacher-parent journal, to boxes of fancily folded passed-notes from my BFF and high school ex-boyfriend.  Stuffed animals, homework, horse show ribbons, yearbooks.  It was interesting to be confronted with so much of my past all within a couple days.

On my last night in town, I dumped out the box of notes from my high school ex-boyfriend on my bed and decided to read them.  All of them.  I knew it was a toxic, unhealthy, manipulative relationship, but reading over a year's worth of his notes all in a few hours was, well, heartbreakingly illuminating.  I found myself both ragingly irate at how he treated me, and devastated for the girl I became while I was with him. I sobbed for her, surrounded by a pile of crumpled, scrawled notes.  I wept for the precious time she wasted trying to manage his emotions and psychological issues.  I cried thinking about how powerless my parents felt watching him writhe his way into my life. I watched, retrospectively, as he tried to shrink that wild-hearted girl into a little safe box where he could control her.  And then I wiped the tears away and the next morning took every last note and burned them.  At first I felt compelled to watch them crumble amidst the flames until ever last one was consumed, but then I decided I wouldn't waste another second of my life on that boy and walked away as they smoldered.

I've done a lot of burning-things activities over the years at retreats, camps, etc., but being able to physically burn that relationship away, even though it was a relationship I hadn't given a thought to in years, burning away all those manipulative words... it was good.


 
top + jacket + shoes/courtesy of modcloth :: tights/target :: bag/courtesy of fossil