Episode 4.14 - Fresh Summer Recipes In Under An Hour

Your next summer menu doesn’t need to be complicated to feel special. I’m sharing what we’ve been cooking lately at Gia’s Italian Kitchen, starting with a seriously satisfying quinoa salad that’s built for real life: roasted asparagus, spinach, cranberries, toasted walnuts, and a bright Italian vinaigrette that gets extra punch from Dijon mustard. It’s fresh, colorful, and easy to serve for guests, but it also shines as a weeknight dinner when you want something healthy that still tastes like a treat.

All the recipes are on my website:

https://giasitaliankitchen.biz/recipes-mangia

I also walk through my favorite simple trick for raw kale: massage it with olive oil and sea salt and give it time to soften. That one step takes kale from chewy to tender and makes the whole salad feel more balanced. If you want to make it a full meal, I share easy add-ons like roasted chicken or salmon, plus how to prep the quinoa and dressing ahead so you’re not rushing at the last minute.

Then we go sweet with gluten-free peanut butter oatmeal cookies that are basically baked “protein ball” energy: banana, honey, vanilla, peanut butter, oats, cinnamon, and eggs. They store beautifully in the fridge for quick snacks, and yes, I admit to an extra swipe of peanut butter on top. 

Finally, I put backyard rhubarb to work with a bright pink rhubarb syrup, then turn it into a rhubarb mint mojito idea for the Fourth of July.

If you like practical recipes, make-ahead tips, and seasonal cooking that stays fun, subscribe, share this with a fellow home cook, and leave a quick review so more people can find the show.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, this is Kelly with Gia's Italian Kitchen. It's been a couple weeks since we've had a blog post, but I wanted to let you know what we've been doing over here. We've got some amazing recipes on social media. I'll put the links here. If you are not a social media fan, that is totally cool. I'm putting all of these on my blog as well on my website so that you can get to those without going to any social media platforms if you don't want to. But they are there if you want. So what did we make?

Quick Hello And Recipe Links

SPEAKER_00 0:36

We did a beautiful quinoa salad with roasted asparagus, and I made an Italian vinaigrette with a little bit of Dijon mustard in there. It was delicious. We had kale, which I love kale, and kale is so healthy for us. I usually massage the kale with a little bit of olive oil and sea salt for at least a half hour before getting ready for your salad or whatever you're doing with it, unless you're cooking it, so that it

Quinoa Salad With Italian Vinaigrette

SPEAKER_00 1:10

can kind of wilt and soften up and get a little milder if you're eating it raw. Um some fresh spinach leaves in there, and then um oh, some low sugar cranberries through in there, um, whole walnuts that we toasted, and then made a big salad with this. It was amazing. So check out the recipe for that. It really isn't that hard. Um, and a lot of this you can actually do ahead of time. I made the quinoa like the day before, made the vinaigrette the day before, just throw this in the fridge, and then really all you need to do is throw things together when you're ready for your guests to come over, or maybe it's a weeknight dinner that's a great weeknight dinner. Um, you can even throw some roasted uh chicken or salmon in there just to make it a full meal. That is um delicious as well. Then for dessert, or for actually, I'm keeping these in the fridge for a little snack. These gluten-free peanut butter oatmeal cookies. They're so good. It's they're basically like a protein ball, but there's eggs in there, so you're gonna bake them. Um, but it's bananas, honey, vanilla, peanut butter, oats, cinnamon. It's so good. Um, but then you bake them to get the eggs. Um, so they officially are cookies, but they're they're kind of like protein balls that you bake. But I've been just keeping them in the fridge and just eating one or two of those when I need a

Gluten-Free Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies

SPEAKER_00 2:42

little snack or um actually with a meal, like you could eat those with the salad just to have a little bit of um the oats give you kind of a little bit of um I guess a carb if you feel like you need a carb, although there's quinoa in there. Um, but they're so good. And actually, after about um, they've been in the fridge almost two weeks now, and they're totally fine. But of course they're drying out a little bit. I've got them in an air airtight container, but um I'm still eating them because I'm actually, and this is probably bad, but whatever, I'm putting a little bit of peanut butter on the cookie and eating the peanut butter with the cookie as almost like a little glaze. Um, so just a little treat there. Um, because it's yummy and I love peanut butter. Um, okay, so the third one that that I did this week was actually gearing up for the 4th of July. So I have rhubarb in my yard and I never use it because I like I'm a chef, but I'm not a baker. So um, and I like to bake like I'm doing my sourdough. I do love to bake, but if I'm gonna make a pie like a rhubarb strawberry pie, I'm just gonna eat the whole freaking thing, and I don't really want to do that. So the rhubarb kind of sits there and uh

Rhubarb Syrup And A Mojito Plan

SPEAKER_00 4:08

nothing happens to it every year. So when we were driving home from Colorado a few weeks ago, I don't know if you caught all of those. If you didn't, um, a lot of videos, and I did do a podcast just to kind of summarize our little food tour or my food tour when we were in Estes Park, Colorado. Um, lots of good restaurants out there. But anyway, uh saw this recipe for rhubarb syrup, and I was like, ch-ching, that's what I want to do with my rhubarb. So it's a simple syrup, and I actually do less sugar than water. Typical is one-to-one, but I just trying to get it kind of less sugary, but you can do the one-to-one, and then um the rhubarb, and you and you slice it up and simmer that, and then strain it off. And it is this beautiful bright pink syrup. Uh, so then what are we gonna do with that? Well, um, for next weekend, 4th of July, rhubarb mint mojito. Holy crap! How does that sound? Mint, lime, this rhubarb simple syrup, rum club soda or sparkling water, whatever. Oh my goodness. Well, that's the end of that. I'll post all the links in the notes. Have a great night. I hope you check out the recipes. Let's get cooking.