Salad Inspiration

Looking for a bit of help in getting salads on your table?

I recently found this article - 101 Simple Salads for the Season - on another blog and thought I'd share it here. Sometimes it seems easy to get in a vegetable rut and forget about salads. Then, when you remember how wonderful salads can be, it takes work to make them creative. So, here are 101 ideas to get you going...

Meal Plan Monday

Back to the normal meal planning this week. I'm already getting excited about starting my Trader Joe's meal plans/shopping list for the fall. I just saw our city on the "official list" on their site. Can't wait!

I'm just going to list the meals this week.

Meals -
Monday - Chicken Salad Wraps & Cucumber/tomato salad - picnic by the pier
Tuesday - Fried Rice
Wednesday - Quesadillas
Thursday - Leftovers
Friday - Egg Salad Sandwiches & Potatoes (see how to hard boil an egg perfectly)
Saturday - Pork BBQ - we have friends around for fireworks and stuff
Sunday - Leftovers or Chicken Salad Wraps

We basically have everything we need, but may need to pick up more eggs. Then we'll also get stuff at Farmer's Market on Wednesday morning and then again on Saturday morning for fruits and veggies to go with our meals.

Happy meal planning to you this week! Don't forget to check out the other Meal Plans over at Organizing Junkie!

Farmer's Market Love

How can you not LOVE this time of year? Especially when there is a wonderful farmer's market a block away every Wednesday and Saturday.

A regular highlight - an early walk on the pier, brewing coffee while stretching, and then walking to the farmer's market, picking out fruits and veggies while sipping coffee and munching on a cinnamon donut from a local cider mill that sells them at the farmer's market. Bliss.

Meal Plan Monday - easy homemade ingredients

Later this week we'll take a look at our meal plan for the week again. So, for today, I thought I'd share a few more recipe links for ingredients to dishes instead of meals themselves.

Baking mix like Bisquick

Cooking dried beans

Taco Seasoning

We also like to make our own biscuits instead of using Bisquick, since we don't buy that anymore. Last year a friend told me that she makes her's from scratch and so I looked up a recipe. I'd made them with the master mix (above), but realized they are really easy to make without that mix as well. It is so easy and they are really good. That way, you know exactly what's going into them too.

So, here is the recipe I've adjusted a bit from the original one I got (and this is how I mix it to not have to use more than one bowl...do it how it works best for you).

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees
• Melt 2 tbsp. butter in a bowl
• Add in 1 cup flour (I use 1/2 wheat & 1/2 white flour) - just put on top of the butter
  
• 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• Pour in 1/2 cup milk
• Mix all ingredients in the bowl - mix well
• Bake for 10-12 minutes
• Makes 5-6 smaller biscuits, double recipe for larger biscuits
  

Summer Simplicity

Meal Plan Monday - Recipe Links

A few more new recipes to try out this week since we are still away - a few eHow recipes I wrote up...

Roasted Chicken

Tuna Melts

Quick Quesadillas

We love roasted chicken and usually get at least 2 meals out of it, if not a third. We use leftover chicken for sandwiches, meat & potato quiche (from last week's Meal Plan Monday), and stir fry.

Hope you're having a good time planning your meals! If you need other ideas, check out the other Meal Plans over at Organizing Junkie. I know some of those have links as well.

Life Together - its a long one

A friend recently sent this series of quotes from a book/memoir that she had just finished reading. It's called The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan - I haven't read it, but have been thinking about friendships a lot recently since she sent this and the e-mails that followed.

I guess I am just amazed at the beauty of relationships and that somehow we get to live life together. Even when they (relationships) are hard and especially when they seem perfect, I think about the peace and simplicity that deep relationships bring to life.

If I'd written it, I'd feel it was too personal to share, but since it's from a published book :)...

Anyway, its below if you'd like to read through it. Basically, it celebrates the deep friendships that are there in the crap and there in the happiness.

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"We'll confer about jog bras, and contractors and pediatricians. We'll gossip about babysitters, teachers, in-laws. We'll speculate about who had a shot of Botox, who cheats on their taxes, who cleans until midnight.

We'll celebrate each other's achievements: opening an exercise studio, a corner store ,a jewelry business. We'll celebrate our kids' achievements: making the traveling team, singing in the choir, learning to knit or speak French or play the flute. We'll borrow eggs, earrings, extra chairs. We'll throw birthday parties for each other and stain the rugs and shatter the wineglasses and mark up new counters with the odd slice of lemon. We'll worry about who seems down, who looks tired, who's drinking more and more. We'll say things we'll wish we hadn't and have to find a way to regain each other's trust. Things will break, they always do. Many will be fixed.

We'll fret over our children: too shy, too angry, too needy. We'll brainstorm ways to help them become more resilient, patient, lighthearted. We'll protect them--fiercely--pulling little bodies from the deep end, double-latching windows, withholding car keys.

We'll bury our mothers and our fathers--shuttling our children off for sleepovers, jumping on red-eyes, telling each other stories that hurt to hear, about gasping, agonal breaths, hospice nurses, scars and bruises and scabs, and how skin papers shortly after a person passes. We will nod in agreement that it is as much an honor to witness a person leave this world as it is to watch a person come into it.

We'll admire each other for a fine creme brulee, a promotion, a finished marathon. We'll commiserate about commutes, layoffs, mortgage rates, the High School Musical soundtrack. We'll confide in each other about feeling anxious or angry or uninteresting or how many pieces of Halloween candy we accidentally ate from our kids' bags. We'll confess that we text while driving or that we should be having more sex or that we yell at our kids every day. We'll admit that we believe in God, Jesus Christ, Heaven and Hell, or that we don't.

People will drift in and out. Book clubs will swell and thin. We'll write someone off and they'll reemerge later and we'll remember both why we loved them and why we let them slip away, but we'll be softer and we'll want them back.

We'll give up things together--caffeine, Tylenol PM, catalogs, social smoking. We'll take up things too--morning walks, hybrids, organic dairy, saying grace. We'll persuade each other to bake, sell, fold, stuff, paint, and write checks for our favorite non-profits.

We'll diagnose each other's brown lawns, torn muscles, basement odors. We'll check each other's heads for lice, and examine new bumps and moles, and listen to lists of symptoms. We'll teach each other how to set a ring tone, make a slide show, download a movie.

We will call and say, 'I heard the news' and whatever the news is, we will come running, probably with food. We'll insist on second opinions, lots of rest, and the best surgeon. We will face diseases, many kinds, and will--temporarily--lose our hair, our figures, and our minds.

Eventually, someone who's not supposed to die will--maybe one of us, maybe a husband, God forbid a child--and all this celebrating and confessing will make certain essential comforts possible. We'll rally around and hold each other up, and it won't be nearly enough but it will help the time pass just a hair faster than it would have otherwise. We will wait patiently and lovingly for that first laugh after the loss. When it comes, and it will come, we will cry as we howl, as we clutch, as we circle. We will transcend, ladies. Because we did all this, in that worst moment, we will transcend."

Meal Plan Monday

I know I'm behind this week! Sorry to those of you who came looking for the meal plan yesterday!

This week we head to a camp that Clint is speaking at, so we'll only be around till tomorrow anyway. So, instead I thought I'd just post some links to recipes that we use.

Meal recipes to check out -

Easy Pulled Pork BBQ

Meat & Potato Quiche


I'll be passing along some other great recipes next week! Be sure to check in on Monday.

Happy meal planning to you this week! As always, check out the other Meal Plans over at Organizing Junkie!

I've been reading up on Trader Joe's...

Have I mentioned my love for the place? Smile.

John Shields (former CEO of Trader Joe's)...

"'At the end of 30 days, if you're not having fun, please quit.' They'd look at me with these big eyes. You spend most of your life at your job. If your not having fun, get out of here."

(from The Trader Joe's Adventure: Turning a Unique Approach to Business into a Retail and Cultural Phenomenon)