We weren't kidding when we said we yielded a lot of kale in our garden! Almost looks like a forest. That's Daniel busy cutting some kale for me. We also cut a bunch and gave away to family and friends. There's more if anyone wants some!

We grew a mix of purple and green kale so we used both to make the kale chips. You can't really taste the difference between the two, but it's nice to have variety.

The stem has to be removed because it's really tough to eat, so I just sliced the leaves down the middle, then into smaller bite-sized pieces.

Make sure you thoroughly wash and rinse the kale leaves. Since we grow everything organic, there are some bugs that like to hang out under the leaves, so I make sure they are gone! The kale leaves need to be dry before it's seasoned, so I like to put it into my salad spinner to spin all of the excess water out. (One of my favorite kitchen tools!)

Scatter the kale leaves onto a lined baking sheet (either with foil or parchment paper), and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and a splash of red wine vinegar. Then sprinkle with a little salt and pepper. It goes into the oven at 350F for about 10 minutes until you see it shrink and getting crispy.

This method to make kale chips is commonly used but be creative and use different seasonings to give it more flavor. I've also tried adding paprika, garlic powder, and apple cider vinegar before baking. As you can see, I have made this a lot at home, and I wanted to experiment with various seasonings. For this post, we wanted to add something special for the kale chips, and that's herbed butter for dipping. For those who are picky eaters, you know butter may change their minds! The results of your kale chip should be extra crispy and light - almost like it's melting in your mouth. Beware: they are highly addicting to snack on, but who cares, it's good for you!

Tastefully Simple sent us a package of sauces (as shown): Pomegranate Chipotle Sauce, Bayou Bourbon Glaze, and Merlot Sauce.

This simple meatball mixture is composed of: 1/2 lb ground beef, 1/2 lb ground pork, 1 cup Italian breadcrumbs, 1 egg, 1/3 cup shredded carrots, 1/3 cup grated onion, 1/2 tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp salt, and 1 tsp pepper. Mix it all up!

Now for the fun part--okay, more like the messy part. Shape the meatballs into 1 to 1.5-inch balls. We want them to be small enough so it's easy to pop in your mouth to eat.

What I like to do with my meatballs is brown them first in a skillet over medium heat. This helps brown up the sides and give it that nice texture. It should take about 3-5 minutes to brown up.

Transfer the meatballs to a parchment-lined baking sheet and brush on some Bayou Bourbon Glaze. If you don't have this, any other sauce or glaze that you like will work.

It looks nice and sticky! Now, place this tray into the oven at 425F for 8-10 minutes until cooked through. You can brush it again during the baking process.

Whether you pick up this meatball with a toothpick or a fork, you'll be sure to devour the bold flavors of the Bayou Boubon Glaze en-wrapped in a moist and tasty meatball. It's a great dish to serve as an appetizer for any event - especially "Game Day" parties! We all know how much the guys looove to eat meat!

To make the roasted garlic infused olive oil, we peeled 8 garlic cloves and poured in 1/2 cup of extra-virgin olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper. This went into a 375-degree oven for about 25 minutes until the garlic starts to brown. Since we are using a lot of garlic, it's best to cook it down because you don't want it to be too strong in the spread.

The ingredients we used for this recipe are: 12 oz. of black olives (it's best if you use Kalamata), 2 tbsp capers, 1 tbsp anchovy paste, 2 tbsp sun-dried tomatoes, 1 tbsp Dijon mustard, 1/2 lemon juiced, 1 tsp red wine vinegar, 2 tbsp fresh chopped parsley, 2 tbsp fresh chopped basil, 1/2 tsp fresh thyme, 1 finely chopped bay leaf, and 1/4 tsp crushed red pepper.

All of the ingredients goes into a food processor, along with the roasted garlic and olive oil.

The mixture gets pureed until it looks almost like a paste.

Meanwhile, it's time to work on the bread to go along with our olive tapenade mixture. We used Nature's Pride Country White Bread; the crust was trimmed off and each slice was cut into quarters.

We heated a pan with some butter and browned the bread until it was toasted. You can also do this in the toaster or toaster oven. You want the bread to have a crisp to it.

This batch yields about 1 1/2 cups of Roasted Garlic and Olive Tapenade, so it's perfect to bring to parties or have as an appetizer for your own events. As you can see, it's very easy to make; in fact, if you don't care for the roasted garlic portion of the recipe, just add 1-2 fresh garlic cloves into the processor with the olive oil. Either way, the end result is going to taste fabulous. You get the saltiness with the capers and anchovies, the freshness of the herbs, garlic, and sun-dried tomatoes, the sourness from the lemon juice and red wine vinegar, and of course, the boldness of the olives. It's a great combination that you can enjoy in so many ways - as a spread on the crusty bread or crackers, as a dip with chips, as a condiment with vegetables or chicken, or even tossed with cooked pasta!

For us, we enjoyed it in the company of good friends at the Temecula wineries on a gorgeous day. Trust me - this Olive Tapenade goes very well with any kind of wine! Cheers to that!

The Egg Salad filling starts with boiling 10 eggs. The most time-consuming part about making this is peeling the shell, which I loathe. As you can see, some of my eggs were brutally tortured during the process, while I spared the other ones with a cleaner shell removal.

Now the fun part: break up the eggs in a bowl using a fork until its crumbly. Then add 1/2 cup mayo, 1/4 cup relish, and 3 tbsp Dijon mustard. (Use light mayo to make it healthier.)

For extra flavor and kick, add 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper, 1/2 tsp paprika, salt, and pepper. Taste and adjust seasonings if desired.

Spread your choice of sandwich bread with butter (this helps keep the sandwich from getting soggy), then spread on the Egg Salad mixture. Using a serrated knife, cut off the edges of the sandwich.

Depending on how you like the tea sandwiches to look, you can either cut them into 3 symmetrical rectangles, or into 4 triangles. You will yield more if you cut them into triangles, but I think the rectangles look more elegant.

For the Chicken Curry with Cranberry filling, I boiled 1 lb of chicken thighs then pulsed it in the food processor until it's shredded. This gets dressed with 1/2 cup mayo, 1 diced celery stalk, 1/3 cup chopped dried cranberries, 3 tbsp Dijon mustard, 2 tsp curry powder, and salt & pepper. Adjust the measurements if you want a stronger curry flavor or vice versa.

Chicken can get dry, so additional mayo or Dijon will help keep it moist. Both mixtures for the tea sandwiches can be prepared a day in advance; just refrigerate then spread on the bread right before the party starts!

If you don't have cranberries on hand, you can also use raisins. This helps give the sandwich a nice sweetness while the celery gives it that fresh crisp.

Besides tea sandwiches, the girls also feasted on Mini Sliders, Mini Frittatas, and other bite-sized dishes. Keep everything small, simple, and delicate - just like tea parties are supposed to be.

This Wonderland tea party wouldn't have been complete without this amazing custom-made red velvet cake done by my friend Julia of Cakes by MJ. It was just too pretty to put a knife through it, but somehow we still managed to stuff our faces with the deliciously moist cake. A fun, successful, and satisfying Bridal Shower, indeed!

We used a Bartlett Pear which is distinctive of it's bell shape and green skin. This kind of pear is perfect to use for baking because it holds up to the high temperatures and doesn't get mushy.

Once you have all of the ingredients ready, all you have to do is take a slice of prosciutto (cured ham) and place a rectangular piece of pear on top. To that, add a freshly sliced piece of Parmesan cheese and top it with some caramelized onions.

The prosciutto helps secure all the fillings so its wrapped up nice and pretty. Pop this into the oven at 400-degrees and bake for about 6-8 minutes until the prosciutto crisps up and is lightly browned.

To make this appetizer extra special, we drizzled balsamic glaze on top which gives it that sweet and tangy boldness to the dish. It goes really well with prosciutto and Parmesan! You'll be gobbling up these appetizers in no time because your taste buds will love the sweet and salty duo of this savory appetizer. We hope you give it a try... since it's our own unique version of a Prosciutto-Wrapped Pear!

On a baking sheet, we halved our cherry tomatoes along with garlic cloves and drizzled it with extra virgin olive oil and sprinkled a blend of Italian seasonings on it with some salt and pepper. We popped it into a 225-degree oven and slowly dried it for about 3-4 hours. The time will depend on how juicy your tomatoes are. Just keep an eye on it every so often.

They should look like this when it's done, all shriveled up and ready to be eaten. The seasonings really gets absorbed into each tomato and the dehydration process just makes the flavors very concentrated. And yes, they still keep their nutritional value!

We made little appetizers to eat with our home-made Oven-Dried Cherry Tomatoes. We simply took a pita bread and cut them into triangles, then added freshly grated smoked gouda cheese and topped it with the tomatoes. We crisped up the bread and melted the cheese in a toaster oven to achieve a delectable appetizer to enjoy.

If you prefer goat cheese like me, then you can spread it on to the crispy pita and top it with the oven-dried tomatoes for a delicious treat. If you don't have pita bread on hand, you can just use crackers. Either way, you will never want to eat store-bought sun-dried tomatoes again when you can make fresher ones that taste 10x better. To preserve it, just add olive oil to the jar. Another good idea: make a lot, jar it, and give it away as gifts! Who wouldn't appreciate that?

Back in March, we had posted this picture of us planting the different types of lettuce in our square patch. This was the size it came in from the nursery.

Two months later, this is the size of the lettuce heads! Not bad, huh? From the left, we have the Sierra lettuce, then Bibb, and finally Freckled. In the back, we started to put other varieties in pots (like Spring Mix, Arugula, etc). Once we harvest the lettuce from the planter, we transfer the ones in the pot to the ground because it grows much faster.

Having a nice salad blend at our convenience is wonderful! I make sure we get our daily dose of fiber!

I prepped all of the ingredients that I wanted to add to the ground beef. I used about a cup and a half of shiitake mushrooms (2 oz. when dried which I soaked in hot water for half an hour, then removed the woody stems and diced them, as shown), 1 cup of glass noodles (prepare according to package), half cup of minced shallots, 3 minced garlic cloves, 2 chopped green onions, 3 tbsp chopped pickled ginger, and 2 chopped Thai chilies.

In a large pan, brown 1-1.5 lbs of ground beef and drain excess fat and liquid. Next, combine the shallots and garlic and cook for a few minutes, then add the shiitake mushrooms, pickled ginger, green onion, and Thai chilies. Now pour in the sauce (1 tbsp Hoison, 1 tbsp soy sauce, 2 tbsp Oyster sauce, 1 tsp sugar, 2 tsp cornstarch, 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar, 2 tsp sesame oil). Taste and adjust seasonings to your preference. When everything's good, turn off the heat and toss in the glass noodles (since it's already cooked and you don't want to get it soggy). Note: Printable Recipe below!

Spoon the mixture into a lettuce leaf and dip with some Hoison sauce and Sriracha. I like how the Sierra lettuce has a nice pocket that's perfect to stuff. You can also use Boston Bibb or Butter Lettuce.

These Beef and Shiitake Lettuce Wraps are fun to eat because you basically help yourself at the dinner table. There's not much fuss in making this simple dish and it's up to your imagination on what ingredients you want to use, like chicken instead of beef, or bamboo shoots instead of shiitake mushrooms. Either way, when you want to have a low-carb meal, this is definitely the way to go!