Holiday salad...

I volunteered to bring salad to Thanksgiving this year. I love salad! I love making it, eating it... I guess you can say I'm kind of a salad snob. I came up with this combination last year for Christmas and made it again this year for Thanksgiving. It was just as wonderful as I remembered it! Which was good because there were lots of naughty Thanksgiving foods that could have covered my plate, but I tried to be good and ate a lot of this yummy salad instead.

Here's what's in it:
 - green leaf lettuce (my favorite kind to make salads with)
 - grilled asparagus
 - pomegranate seeds
 - blue cheese
 - candied almonds

The combination was pretty to look at and amazing! To candy the almonds I used about 1 cup of slivered almonds and 1/2 cup of brown sugar (brown sugar is supposedly low glycemic... I don't buy it. It's still sugar! But I did use it and pretended that it was okay to eat). Put those two things in a sauce pan over medium high heat. Stir until the sugar melts and coats the nuts. Make sure you watch them and stir the whole time... they can burn if left unattended. They will be a nice gooey brown. Then spread out over parchment paper and let dry. Break apart into salad.

** A little update on my new eating plan. It's going really great! I'm totally used to eating this way now. I don't feel hungry during the day anymore and I eat when I'm suppose to and eat things that are good for my body. Pretty great if you ask me! I'm kicking myself a little for going on about how the weight was "melting off my body". HA! Seriously, that's when it pretty much ended. I didn't lose another pound until a week ago and now I'm down 9 lbs total. Oh well... it's something right!

Thanksgiving was hard. I reserved my salad plate for the naughty foods and I did eat a few bites of mashed potatoes and gravy and two little delightful candied yams. They were so yummy, but I only let myself eat a little bit. Pie, was another story though. I told myself I could eat one piece of my mom's amazing lemon meringue pie which is my favorite in the whole world. Well... I at two pieces of lemon and one piece of chocolate pie! I know, so super naughty. Oh well. And then the next day I went to a going away party for my best friend who is moving and ate sushi. I was hoping they would have brown rice there for the sushi but they did not. So I totally ate white rice sushi which is a HUGE no no. Oh well. Now I'm back on track and feeling better about slipping last weekend. I feel better too confessing to all of you here. But I guess that's not too bad for 1 1/2 months of eating low glycemic right?

grapes, walnuts, and apples...

Aside from the stuff that we grew in our garden this year, we've been harvesting other food around the ole' pioneer house. I've been working so hard to get all of this stuff processed and in bottles/bags for winter. I'm starting to feel like the squirrel in our walnut tree... work work work work, gathering nuts for winter.

First came the grapes. The fences surrounding the property here are covered in grape vines! All different types of grapes in a whole variety of colors. For the whole month of September the yard smelled like grapes, it was amazing! I wasn't going to do anything with the grapes because we don't have a juicer and the one we found was $170!?!? (one can buy a lot of grape juice for that amount of money). But our friends had one that they weren't going to be using this fall so we borrowed it.

Oh boy...

Over a two week period of time we filled 102 quart jars with grape juice. INSANE!!! It took forever. Once I had the juicers going on the stove I didn't want to stop until I had all of the juice out of those little grapes, which made for some very late nights.

Sometimes I had to just admit defeat when situations like this happened at 1 AM... it was just time to call it a night and go to bed.

My awesome sister in law's came over during Priesthood session one Saturday night and stayed until 11 PM doing grapes. They picked, washed, and separated while I worked the juicers. Oh... and 14 kids between all of us were playing in the living room the whole time! It was a mad house, but we got so much done. It was so much better to do this with them instead of all by myself.

Trent did help (since this was his idea), but he would usually get it started and then have to go to work and I would finish it up. I was really happy when all of the grapes were finally gone and I was able to de-grape my kitchen! I don't think I will be doing this next year, it was sooooo much work.

There is the most beautiful walnut tree in the back yard that I'm sure is over 100 years old. It is gorgeous, and it makes hundreds of walnuts. They started really dropping a few weeks ago and we have been gathering them up everyday almost.

We have the walnut process down now. We rub the husk off with our shoe on the grass unless they fell off already out of the husk (those are my favorites). Then we crack them and put them on a cookie sheet and roast them in the oven for a bit. Once they cool off we bag them up, easy peasy... right.

Sad thing is... I can't eat walnuts. They give me canker sores if I eat them. So we've been making them for Trent and his family to eat. They are beautiful.

Last but not least, we picked a box of apples from Trent's grandparent's house (because we hadn't had enough craziness I guess) and we made a 8 quarts of apple pie filling. The rest of the apples we dehydrated into apple chips like we did last year. And with that I. am. DONE! None of this trunk full of apples this year. I would like to do something else with my life other than process and can food. I need a break, so we are calling it good with the apples.

*** I realize you may be wondering why on earth our apple pie filling is red. You see, for some reason I have yet to figure out, Trent thinks that apple pie is suppose to be red. I don't know why he thinks that, I'm blaming it on the fact that he is color blind. But every time we make apple pie he sneaks in the red food coloring and dyes it red. And my friends, sometimes you have to pick your battles, am I right? I let him have his red apple pie filling this year, with the agreement that next year they will not be colored, and if they are red there need to be some raspberries in there or something... no more fake dye.

Red apple pie anyone? Does that even look good to you? I don't get it...

Basil = Pesto...

It wasn't that long ago when I was first introduced to pesto sauce. One of our friends mom's made the most amazing asparagus/mushroom/squash/noodle stir fry ever that had a pesto and cream sauce and I was hooked. It was divine!!! I really don't think I'd ever had it before, but I loved it. I bought my first jar of pesto afterwards to re-make the meal... and it was a bit pricey as far as sauces go. For an itty bitty jar, I was surprised. So I don't use it or buy it a whole lot, but I wish I did. Ever since I've wanted to grow my own basil so that I could make my own homemade pesto sauce.

Well, my garden pesto was finally big enough to harvest and start making pesto this week!

We spent forever picking it and forever washing it... but my kitchen smelled so good!

I gathered my ingredients. Lots of pesto sauces use walnuts but they aren't very nice to my mouth so I went with pine nuts... toasted that is (brings out more flavor).

Not pictured was the olive oil.

 I threw some pepper in there too, just for fun.

So simple to make! I made two batches (6 cups of fresh basil) which only filled half of my quart jar. Guess I need to get some pint jars for this. I'm hoping to bottle it and have it throughout the year. Look at that beautiful bright green color! It just doesn't look like this when you buy it from the store does it.

I'm going to make Tracey's famous pesto stir fry on Sunday and I'll share the recipe here. It's one of my favorites, and I can't wait to try it with my own sauce.

Night in the desert...

Beautiful blue skies

Cows in every shade of brown imaginable

Quenching their thirst in the desert

Colorful Philly cheese steak sandwiches with orange and yellow peppers

Dutch oven style of course

Good friends

Good conversation

Perfect evening

Fish Taco Picnic...

We took some of our friends out of the heat of the city and into our favorite meadow for some yummy fish tacos last weekend. It was so nice up there! We practically had the meadow to ourselves.

I love this meal for picnics because you can prep most of it ahead of time, and it's so good! I made all of the fillings and put them in containers to bring along.

Pico de gallo (with and without onions), shredded cabbage, black beans, grilled salmon (and whatever sauce you like).



We brought a pan and our little butane stove to cook the corn tortillas there. This was nice because they have fire restrictions in our little mountain here, but no restrictions on stoves. And these taste so much better with nice hot tortillas.

They were delicious! Which is nice because I had quite the "authentic" crowd to please...

Not sure why I even try to cook Mexican food for my Mexican friends... seriously! They said that I passed though, which is nice! I'm trying to buy back my friends love {because she deleted me as her friend on facebook.... just kidding, not really. I think she will be my friend again now...}.

Entertainment for the kidlets was riding the big wheel down the hill...

And throwing rocks at cans...

Nothing like a refreshing night in the mountains with good friends and some yummy food.

Chocolate truffles...

This year for Christmas treats we made some yummy truffles. We did a variation of this recipe (I think we added a little butter in there somewhere). We heated up the cream until it was really hot (not boiling) and then added the chocolate and let it sit for about 5 minutes off of the heat before we stirred it all together.

We rolled them in coconut, crushed up candy canes, and cocoa. My favorite were the cocoa ones, I like the bitter mixed with the sweet taste.

These could be done up for Valentines too. Instead of doing the candy cane version you could roll them in red sprinkles or something... lots of possibilities here!

Quinoa...

I've been wanting to branch out and try quinoa for a while now. So I bought some and it sat in my cupboard for a week until my husband saw it and got curious. We tried it out one night and are completely obsessed now! It is so good! It has such great texture to it. I'm hoping to get this book for Christmas so that I can try out new quinoa recipes.

One night we whipped up this tasty dinner. It was so yummy! I've been trying to find recipes and meals that I can make without meat and I've been struggling at that. I'm not trying to go vegetarian or anything, but I just don't like being so dependant on meat to make a good dinner. But this is meat free! And it was awesome!


We cooked the quinoa with vegetable broth (2 to 1). Mixed in black beans, kidney beans, tomatoes, cilantro, corn, some cumin and pepper. It really was so good. We put it on warm corn tortillas with sour cream and some Gorgonzola cheese (another awesome recent discovery). It really was amazing.

The popular man of the night was Mr. Tapatio. I've never been a real hot sauce fan (I'd only ever tried Tabasco) but this is really good too. Nice spice, not an overpowering vinegar taste like most other hot sauces... yum!

Are you a quinoa fan? How do you like to eat your quinoa?

Limes...

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I love limes. I think that they are one of the greatest things on the planet. I love their tartness, and how they intensive the flavor of other foods. Limes are in season right now so they taste so yummy! We've been eating a whole lot of lime around here lately. Here are a few of my favorite lime recipes...





... Shrimp Tacos. I made these twice last week, and might be making it again tonight. I'm in love with this one. You season the shrimp with lime and the pico de gallo. It's just so fresh and yummy!


... Brazilian Limeade. Made this the other night after a long hot day and some time at the pool. It was wonderful! So lime-y! This one is a must to try (thanks Sarah!).


... Sprite + Lime. My favorite easy beverage. So good...


... Lime-Cilantro Rice. I haven't tried this one yet, but it's on the menu tonight! It reminds me of the rice they have at Chipotle, which I'm a big fan of. So hopefully it's great (I'm sure it will be). I'm even going be brave and try the pineapple with it.


... Pineapple Mango Salsa. This is another one that I am dying to try. A nice fresh summer salsa, loaded with lime. Lovely...

Cupcake in a jar...

I had a few little thank you's to take around this week and I wanted to try this cupcake in a jar that Cakies posted about a while ago. I think that they turned out darling! Not to mention they tasted fabulous too!

Coconut Macaroons...

Oh man, these are the best cookies ever. If you like coconut that is. We are coconut fans over here and we can not get enough of these cookies. I was looking for a good macaroon recipe around Christmas time and found this one over at all recipes. I picked this one because it said that it had won many first place ribbons at the state fair... ya sounds like a good one to me! Also, I like to cook, but I have a hard time with recipes that have a million different ingredients in them. I like to keep things simple and this is a very simple recipe.

Coconut Macaroons

2/3 cup all-purpose flour
5 1/2 cups flaked coconut
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper or aluminum foil.
In a large bowl, stir together the flour, coconut and salt. Stir in the sweetened condensed milk and vanilla using your hands until well blended. Use an ice cream scoop (or you know, a spoon) to drop dough onto the prepared cookie sheets. Cookies should be about golf ball size.
Bake for 12 to 15 minutes in the preheated oven, until coconut is toasted.

*** I like to insert my own little goodness in here. I think that most things taste better dipped in chocolate (at least when it comes to cookies) so I like to melt some semi-sweet chocolate chips and dip the cookies in that. Then I put them in the fridge for the chocolate to harden. At Christmas we also dipped the chocolate part into little crushed up candy canes. Very sweet and good!

Meg's salad...

Oh how I love a good salad. A few years ago I made a salad almost everyday for my lunch. It was my experimenting time, to see if I could master a good salad. I found a certain mixture of goodness that I haven't been able to stray from since. Every time I make a salad I make THIS salad. I love it. It makes me happy.

The goods...

lettuce (I like green leaf or the box of Costco greens)

tomato

avocado

craisens

feta

a little Parmesan cheese sprinkled on top

That's it! I try to keep these things on hand at all times so that I can whip up my favorite salad whenever. I rarely will add anything else to this... usually I make it without the feta because it's so dang pricey, but it's better with it!