Better Home Cooking Basics: #56 Butter Bread with Mayo for the Best Ever Grilled Cheese.

I love a good grilled cheese. The bread is buttery & crispy & the cheese is melty & gooey. When you get a good one you know it & there is nothing better. I’ve tried endlessly to make the perfect grilled cheese at home but it wasn’t until recently that I found this life (or grilled cheese) changing tip in Bon Appetit that I was able to perfect my grilled cheese sandwich. The key - the secret to the best grilled cheese is MAYO!! Who knew? I’m personally not a mayo fan but you don’t taste the mayo with this method, you just taste nutty, brown, crispy, toasted bread. What’s even better is your cheese gets all melty & gooey just like you’ve always dreamed!

So without further adieu, this is what you do:

Better Home Cooking Basics: #16 Swap Out Mayo & Sour Cream with Greek Yogurt

If you’ve made any of the recipes on this blog you’ll notice I’m a fan of using Greek yogurt.  It’s thick & tangy like sour cream but it's also packed with protein & I just feel better about eating it.  If you’re making a dip (think of that packet of french onion soup mix you mix) with sour cream  swap it out with Greek yogurt. You won’t be able to tell the difference & you might even feel a little lighter on your feet.

If you’re making tuna for lunch swap out the mayo with some Greek yogurt. Same reward here.

Check out more better home cooking basic tips here. 

Sweet & Crunchy Wasabi Tuna Salad Sandwich

After a conversation with my girlfriends Allison & Natalie about jicama I had a craving to whip up some tuna salad that my sister & I used to live off of during our early post-college days when she managed a restaurant & filled our bellies with fresh food. Jicama if you have never had it is crunchy like and apple but not as sweet. I'd compare it to a love child between  an apple and a potato. You really must try it if you never have.

This recipe is inspired by Tossed's tuna salad but I jazzed it up with one of my favorite Trader Joe's products: wasabi mayo.

Read more for the full recipe.

Honey Mustard

I'd pick mustard over mayo any day of the week. This mustard (that I learned how to make while working at Immaculate Consumption in my collegiate years), although simple to make, is so flavorful that you'll wanted to put it on everything. Oh, & it's also mayo-free (read: fat-free!).

Ingredients:

• 1 part honey
• 1 part dijon mustard

Make it!

1. Mix the honey & mustard together until combined thoroughly.  Store in the fridge in a squeezy bottle & serve it on everything from sandwiches to salads.

Crab Cakes with Sriracha Mayo

The other night I crafted these crab cakes, or shall I call them crab piles, for a quick dinner.  It's true I should have let them sit in the fridge so they could stay together but who wants to eat at 10pm on a school night?  Not this girl & definitely not the guy she married.  So I carefully flipped my piles in a saute pan & well they still got a nice crispy crust & were tasty enough to serve & eat.

To learn how I (should have) made these crab cakes click through for the recipe!