Here at GMS, we recently realized we hadn’t made tacos for you guys! How could we have been so silly?! So we immediately fixed that and made these fish tacos, and made some delicious sauces to go with them – including chimichurri sauce that even I liked (which is huge, because I hate cilantro!)

First up, let’s dive into the chimichurri sauce. Spoon it on your tacos, marinate your meat in it, or just eat it on crackers…just kidding about that last one…maybe.

Chimichurri Sauce Recipe:

1 bunch parsley, leaves finely chopped
1 bunch cilantro, leaves finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 cup olive oil

Think of this as pesto’s cilantro-y cousin. It was great on steak and fish tacos, and I can’t wait to use it as a marinade for a big ole steak.

Next we have pico de gallo. I don’t think we’ve ever posted about it, but we make it all the time for carne asada or just to have as fresh salsa. It’s basically equal parts tomato, jalapeno, onion (we use red), and cilantro. Dice them all, sprinkle with salt, squeeze a little lime juice over the top, and you’re ready for chips!

Pico de Gallo – a pinch of salt, squeeze of lime juice, and equal parts:

cilantro
tomato
red onion
jalapeno

Last but certainly not least is this remoulade we made specifically for our fish tacos. This stuff was creamy, flavorful, and just perfect on flaky fish.

Remoulade:

½ cup mayo
¼ cup sour cream
1 tsp chili powder
1 tbsp lime juice
1 tbsp chopped parsley
¼ tsp coriander
s/p

Mix ’em all together and enjoy with your fish tacos – you will not regret it!

These three were definitely a hit in our kitchen, and will be added to the rotation! What is your favorite type of taco, and what do you top it with?

I tried it out this recipe as I’m trying to incorporate more whole grains into my cooking and have not as of yet been brave enough to try making something using teff.  I came across this recipe over on the Spoon Fork Bacon blog and as it called for fontina, a favorite cheese of mine, I decided I had to give it a try and was glad I did.  These cakes could be paired with a protein for dinner or eaten solo for breakfast.

This recipe strikes a good balance of being simple, with such instructions as, “combine all ingredients in a bowl” and being time intensive, the cakes cook for 10 minutes each, five minutes on each side.  I highly recommend the roasted garlic and lemon aioli, it was beyond delectable; the cayenne and garlic gives it a nice punch.

I would recommend using a large griddle to allow you to make more at one time and spend less time frying.  That being said, during the time intensive frying times, I was able to do a whole sink full of dishes and clean no less than three kitchen cabinets, so it was not time wasted.  This is a good recipe to make while you have other dishes cooking in the kitchen as the prep work for it is easy and most of the time is relatively passive.

What whole grain recipes have you been making lately?

Summer is slipping away over here on the west coast….are you losing it, too? In honor of one last great summer bounty at the farmer’s market, we decided to bring you a recipe to use up those zucchini, heirloom tomatoes, basil, and corn.

This pasta was basically an ode to everything that’s great in the world of summer veggies, and can be adapted to whatever you have lying around, dying to be used at the end of summer!

Ingredients:

1/2 cup basil
1 cup heirloom cherry tomatoes
1 cup corn
2-3 cloves garlic
1 medium zucchini (or baby zucchini, about 5)
juice of one lemon, and zest
1 cup shaved parmesan
1 pound pasta (we used a small kind, it makes for better bites)
s/p

Directions:

1. Make pasta according to the box instructions.
2. Meanwhile, chop garlic and basil, half tomatoes, shave or chop zucchini, juice and zest lemon.
3. If you’re using frozen corn, throw into the pasta water for last 2 minutes of the cooking.
4. Drain pasta, reserving 1/2 cup water.
5. Mix water with lemon juice, toss with pasta. Add veggies, parmesan cheese, and mix well. Salt and pepper to taste.

What veggies are overflowing your fridges?

Hey everyone! Today is a special day here at GMS – it’s been four years since we started blogging! Four years ago, Corelyn and I had a wild idea to start a blog. We had been friends for a year, had already taken over Thanksgiving and cooking for our friends in general, and we thought that a cooking blog sounded pretty good.

Back in 2009, we used a point and shoot camera. We photographed while we cooked, when we remembered. We didn’t edit our photos. We posted embarrassing “selfies” before that was even a thing. By December, we had 882 visits to our site.

In 2010, we got an upgrade, moving our site over to its own URL, and had Jeff redesign it for us. We added pages, we started to using a better camera, and we started paying attention not to just what we wanted to cook, but what other people wanted to learn about cooking. We had just over 4,500 visitors this year.

2011 came around, and big changes happened at GMS. We did a photoshoot with Mary, and we had our good friend Jessica design us a logo. This was the year that Corelyn moved back east, which meant we were blogging long-distance, which was a challenge, but ultimately brought great things for GMS. To help ease the burden of long distance blogging, we added Rebecca, George, and Melissa to our crew, We grew, again, and had about 13,000 visitors in 2011.

In 2012, Jeff got a better camera, and we started using the camera we use now (a Nikon D800), and we started getting serious about our photography. We started styling our food, and tried to focus our recipes on cooking that everyone could do – healthier, easier, faster, even more delicious.

Corelyn moved back to California, and the GMS kitchens were reunited, bigger and better than ever, with 25,000 visitors. To celebrate Corelyn’s return, we had another photoshoot (that we promise we’ll have more photographs of soon!) We also started a partnership with Fanboy Comics that gets our creative juices flowing every month!

Now, we find ourselves in 2013. At the beginning of this year, we started editing our photos in earnest, dedicated to bringing you the most beautiful photographs we can of the food we spend so much time creating. We’ve continued to add contributors, coaxing Mary to bring even more of her beautiful photographs to the site, and adding another type of cooking with Ellen’s paleo posts. This post marks the 736 post of GMS. We have five regular contributors, several guest bloggers, a monthly FBC post, and countless opportunities to work with others in the blogging world. We’ve had 65,000 visitors this year. And we couldn’t have done it without all of you.

So thank you, GMS readers, for all you do for us. You keep us happy, you remind us why we blog (and cook), you keep us creative. You do our dishes, you help us with photographs, you let us bake you the cakes we want to make for your birthdays. You let us come visit you and cook and photograph and incessantly tweet and post on social media.

You don’t get mad when we plan our hangouts around food, or grocery shopping trips, or markets. You let us make every event about a new dish, you let us force feed you. You like us on Facebook, you agree to guest post once a month, you tweet at us, and you let us post on your blog. We are so thankful for all the people we’ve met over the past four years, and we’re so glad of the friendships we’ve built around the blog.

We love you all, and we hope you’ll stick with us for another four years. Happy Birthday, Garlic, My Soul.

I am so excited that we had the chance to make butterscotch pudding. Corelyn doesn’t love sweets, but butterscotch is her fave pudding, and it’s mine, too. In honor of National Butterscotch Pudding day, we whipped up this recipe and went to town!

Now, the secret to butterscotch pudding is in the brown sugar – but this recipe steps it up, caramelizing the brown sugar first. Overall, the pudding was amazing, but it didn’t have quite the butterscotch taste we imagined – so we’ll have to just make it again. The things you do as a food blogger…

Top with milk chocolate ganache and whipped cream, and you have yourself a heavenly treat that will make any bad day turn around, and any good day a great one. We hope you find the time to have some butterscotch pudding today, whether it’s homemade or not – and if you’re willing to be our taste testers…well, we have a cooking day comin’ up this weekend…