Tag Archives: loaded baked potato

What’s for Dinner Wednesday: Loaded Baked Potato Salad

30 Jul
As a lover of loaded baked potatoes with bacon and cheese, I loved this recipe!

As a lover of loaded baked potatoes with bacon and cheese, I loved this recipe!

Potato Salad: a summertime menu staple.

Do you love it? I love it.

I love that and a good old pasta salad in the summer.

When I saw a recipe from Caramel Potatoes, one of my favorite recipe blogs, for Loaded Baked Potato Salad, I was totally inspired.

Bacon + Cheddar = two of my favorite savory add-ons and mix-ins. It sounded good! It sounded like my favorite kind of loaded baked potato.

I decided that the next time we made a potato salad, we’d do our own version of the Caramel Potatoes recipe, by adding on some shredded cheddar cheese and crumbled cooked turkey bacon. As you’ll see in their original recipe here, you can do a zesty Ranch flavored potato salad, or you can do as we did and just add the toppings. Our potato salad has mayo and hard boiled eggs in it, so I felt that the zesty flavorings might not be a good fit with our ingredients and I kept it simple.

When I think summertime, I think potato salad!

When I think summertime, I think potato salad!

We brought our side dish to a potluck party held near the water on a perfect summer evening and it got positive reviews, although some said they preferred a traditional, plain potato salad rather than a loaded potato salad.

So I’m now curious! What’s your opinion? Are you a traditional potato salad person or would you walk on the wild side and load it up a bit? What goes in your potato salad? Are you a mayo person or is there some other ingredient that you choose to use instead? Do you use red potatoes or something else?

Feel free to leave me a comment with your own potato salad secrets!

In the meantime, hope you’ll hop on over to the Caramel Potatoes blog and take a look at their recipes! I always find their recipes to be delicious and inspiring!

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My daily lunchtime dilemma…and a recipe

4 May

I dread the daily lunchtime dilemma.

I have such a hard time with lunch. I always have, even for my kids. I don’t love lunch unless it’s leftover dinner or unless it’s breakfast for lunch. But, if we have no leftovers and if I have had breakfast for breakfast and don’t want it again for lunch, I get kind of stuck. Some days my work schedule is such that I can eat a late breakfast and skip lunch altogether. Other days I have to eat lunch for lunch and I often just don’t know what to have.

This week I had one of those days. I’d done breakfast for breakfast and I was working from home so I had to eat lunch at home and there were no leftovers. I opened and closed the fridge a half dozen times, and the pantry closet never had anything new in it no matter how many times I looked.

Finally, I was completely starving.

Desperate.

I opened the fridge again, and I saw two things that struck my fancy that I hadn’t noticed before: leftover cooked bacon, and a fruit dip from my mom (one of my all-time faves) that had just a little bit left in the container. Somehow those two things came together in my head and I knew I had a fabulous little lunch in store for myself.

A few minutes on broil in the toaster oven and I had a crispy baked potato with bacon and cheese for my lunch.

Along with the leftover bacon, I pulled out some cheddar cheese. With the dip I pulled out a kiwi. I went to my potato bin and got myself the biggest baked potato I could find and I threw it in the microwave until it was cooked through. I opened it up, put in some butter, mixed it around and put the bacon crumbled on top. Over that, I grated the cheddar cheese.

I then put the whole thing in the toaster oven on broil for just a few minutes. When I took it out, it was crispy and piping hot.

It was delicious. I was in heaven.

And then, my mom’s almond fruit dip…this dip is so good! It’s great on strawberries, or on pineapple or on kiwi or really on just about anything. We’ve done grapes and cantaloupe too, it’s yummy.

This dip is great for company, or in this case, for me.

There was just enough left for me to make a little side dish for myself with the dip and a kiwi, although I could’ve skipped the kiwi. I’ve been known to eat this dip with a spoon. The kiwi was healthy though, right? Right.

It was perfect.

You too, can have my perfect lunch at your house!

Here is the recipe for my mom’s Almond Cream Dip, which according to my recipe card, she got from a 1982 issue of Good Housekeeping Magazine.

INGREDIENTS

One 3 1/2 to 3 3/4 ounce vanilla instant pudding

1 cup milk

1 cup heavy whipping cream, whipped

1 tsp. almond extract

DIRECTIONS

Prepare pudding using only one cup of milk.

Fold in whipped cream and almond extract.

Refrigerate if not served right away.

Enjoy! And tell me, what do you like to eat for lunch?

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