Pinterest Sunday Dinner

Pinterest Sunday Dinner

One of my favorite lunches to eat out is Olive Gardens all-you-can-eat soup, salad, and bread sticks.  I am head over heels for their Zuppa Toscana, a creamy yet spicy sausage and potato soup with kale.  Yes, kale.  It looks like this.

That's my homemade version from a recipe I found on, of course, Pinterest.  Yes I am obsessed with Pinterest, but it just makes my life so easy.  No searching through cookbooks for that one recipe I saw that one time.  Pin it, make it, bam!  Done.  Anyway, we do Sunday dinners together in my family every week, and I like to take a turn every now and then to give my mom a break.  But lately nothing has sounded good, so I had to make something new.  Soup and salad is great and easy.  You can find the recipe for Zuppa Toscana here...http://getcrocked.com/2011/10/23/crock-pot-zuppa-toscana-copycat/ I may get lost in this blog sometime soon, I am obsessed with making dinner in the crockpot.

But I didn't feel like Olive Garden salad, even though you can find their dressing recipe in a heartbeat on the Internet.  I actually don't like their salad that much, it's just kind of meh.  So I decided on our families favorite salad, literally called That Good Salad.  My mom found the recipe in a Taste of Home cookbook, like, 15 years ago and we've been making it ever since.  I think every person in my family who cooks knows the recipe by heart.

Large bag of Romaine (I always buy the big bag from Sam's club.  We eat that much of it!)
1 cup shredded Swiss
1/2 cup shredded Parmesan
1/2 cup toasted slivered almonds
1 lb bacon, diced and cooked
Croutons, usually a cup or two, as many as you like
3 Roma tomatoes, diced (you can use whatever type of tomatoes you like, as many or few as you like)

Dressing-
1/4 cup lemon juice
3/4 cup oil
2-3 garlic cloves, minced
salt and pepper to taste.
Mix well in a jar or Tupperware.  If it sits for a bit the flavors come together really well.

Pretty much just put all of the salad ingredients together in a large bowl and toss with dressing.  It really tastes best if you dress the whole salad together, so do it just before you are ready to eat it.  Also, very important to the taste I feel is fresh ingredients.  No microwave bacon, or bottled lemon juice, or minced garlic from a jar.  It just tastes...different.  We seriously eat this every few weeks at our house, it's THAT good, hence the name.

For dessert, I made what my mom calls Lemon Lush.  I also found this on Pinterest, but the recipe has been around for forever.  I love it because it tastes like a cookie I love covered in pudding.  I did double the crust recipe, because when I put it in the pan it just didn't seem like enough.  We also decided it would taste amazing with chocolate pudding instead of lemon!http://www.grandmaskitchen.com/recipes/treasured-desserts/luscious-lemon-delight/




And here is a picture of my super cute sous chef! He is always such a big help ; )