Warm Spinach Salad with Bacon and Sweet Potatoes

I was charged with bringing a salad to a friend's party on Christmas Eve. It being the holiday and all, I felt like it had to be a somewhat special salad. Kea likes spinach much better than lettuce (and last night I found out that a lot of other people do too) so I knew I wanted to make spinach salad. And I like green salad with potato in it--my mom started doing this a couple years ago. I finally settled on this recipe.

I didn't slice the sweet potato like in the picture because the text says 1" slices. So I did that first, but the pieces seemed so big so I cut them into chunks. I think next time I would just shoot for bite-size chunks. That seems like a good rule for items in salads. Roasting the sweet potato was really good; I think my mom just throws in boiled potatoes, but the roasted ones hold together better rather than getting smushed.

I also subbed feta for chevre cuz I don't like goat cheese.

Another challenge was that this is supposed to be a warm salad, but we had to drive an hour to the party. I kept everything separate--spinach in a bag, and sweet potato, bacon, and dressing each in their own Tupperware and then assembled when we got there. I thought about heating the potatoes, bacon, and dressing, but ended up not. Maybe next time I would heat the dressing cuz I ended up with some coagulated bacon fat stuck in the Tupperware. lol. Yummy.

It went over really well though. And people thought it was fancy. lol.

Sidetrack Bar & Grill, Ypsilanti, MI

Last week I heard about this place from one of my classmates. She said we had to try the fried pickles and sweet potato fries, and that the burgers were award-winning. We dropped by for beer and dinner on Monday night when a couple friends were in town.

First, the burgers. I don't really get what makes a burger award-winning. The burger was good, but... I don't know. Well, one cool thing was that they bring this bucket of condiments to your table, including a jar of pepperoncinis. Those are too hot for me but a few folks at the table loved 'em. And I can still appreciate free garnishes.

The pickles were fabulous. The first time I had fried pickles was at a diner in like... Iowa or Illinois or Wisconsin or something. I don't know, we were on a roadtrip from Chicago to Waterloo, IA. Why, you ask? That's another story--unrelated to food. The pickles, however, were fabulous. The only other placed I've had them is at Dave & Buster's, where they're served in slices, also good. Anyway, the ones at Sidetracks were spears and of course they were great. How can fried pickles be bad?

The sweet potato fries were also great. They were served with this horseradish/mayo/and maybe something else sauce. Yum...

There were animal heads mounted on the wall but they were pretty goofy, like bears and moose. Not being outdoorsy types, we couldn't figure out if they were real, but if so, moose are frickin humongous.

Anyway, I'm sure we'll head back to Sidetracks sometime in the future. It's a fun place, with a good selection of beer. And some of them are served in 25 oz. (aka huge ass) mugs.

30 Minute Shepherd's Pie via Rachael Ray

This recipe has been in my file for like a year. It looked kinda labor-intensive--I generally like recipes where you do the whole thing in one pot. I decided to do it now though since school's out.

It wasn't bad, though I did dirty a lot of dishes. It was my first time making mashed potatoes, my first time making shepherd's pie, maybe even my first time eating shepherd's pie. I don't think I even heard of shepherd's pie until high school or college, but it sounded good!

I used chicken broth rather than cream in the potatoes, but I think I would try it with cream next time. Cooking with cream is just foreign to me. Cooking with butter is even kind of new for me. I think I was a vegetarian when I first started cooking.

I couldn't find sweet paprika, so just used regular, but I think that's just for looks anyway.

We also threw some parmesan on top since the mashed potatoes were a little bland.

I would also put the onions in earlier than it says because I ended up overcooking the meat while waiting for the onions to cook.