Building a Salad

is really not all that difficult. Of course, should your fridge happen to be empty, then it does become a bit more complicated. I was inspired to add Salad Making to my list of talents by my friend Gloria O. I used to help her with learning the ropes of Quickbooks and in return, she would feed me this delicious “house” salad. I always raved over it (which is a sure guarantee that there will be a “next time”) because it was really was good!!

Tonight there was nothing prepared to eat in the fridge and since my kind sister thawed a chicken breast for me, I decided a salad was on the menu.

So I washed some greens, sliced a few things, threw it all together and voila!

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A salad was created. A regular Paula Deen, eh? Or not.

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This is what my kitchen looked like when I was finished so you can tell it took more effort than that. Either that or Paula Deen has someone cleaning up behind her. My salads vary a bit but tonight this is what it consisted of:

Bed of Romaine and Iceberg Lettuce
Avocado slices (to taste)
Green Soybeans (to taste)
Green Peppers (to taste) (beginning to see a pattern here? This is my version of a recipe.)
Tomato (ditto)
Purple Onion
Golden Peperoncini (those cool little peppers that Italian restaurants use in their salads)
Homemade Croutons (made with heavy sourdough bread, olive oil, and seasonings, baked in the oven.)
Fresh Cilantro
Monterey Jack Cheese
Grilled Chicken Breast (seasoned and grilled on our little George Foreman grill)
Ranch Dressing

Other ingredients not included but often used are crispy chicken strips (baked in the oven), hard-boiled eggs, grated carrots, feta cheese, roasted pumpkin seeds. Combine in any combination you want.

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The pepper jar

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Up close and personal. Ugh. They kind of look like a shriveled up something. But they are really good.

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Oh yeah. Two of my favorite seasonings. I use them all the time. Well, most of the time, anyway. They wouldn’t exactly be good in stuff like cereal.

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Another view of the salad just because.

The real reason I posted this was because I have a new lens for my camera and I had to try it out. It came in the mail today and was I ever excited!! See, Christy and I agreed to take wedding pictures for Ken and Carmel (yikes!) and I desperately needed a new lens. I already have 4 others but only one worked good for low lighting. One needs to be junked, the other one is junk without a tripod so I’m not as lens-happy as it seems. Well, what better way to practice than to shoot things around the house. So, you had to see my supper.

We enjoyed having Steve and Christy around last weekend! Christy and I had a little business meeting to get things a little organized.

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Oh, and the house. You haven’t seen that recently. We are still lacking grass but we are now proud owners of a sprinkler system. Hence the flags and multi-colored dirt. Our brother Henry came with Myron Mast to put it in and save us $. Chip, Jeff , Tyler and Eric helped too and they got it done in one day. Hit the water line twice and the phone line (my fault) once but those are all fixed now. Jeff and Eric are plumbers by trade so we had experts here to fix the water lines.

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Lois’ co-workers wanted to have a housewarming party for us and decided to combine it with a Pampered Chef party. We invited a few church friends as well and had about 15 ladies here last evening. We got to pick out some items from the catalog, then we got the points from the sale, and ended up with lots of goodies. We feel quite honored and overwhelmed by their generosity!

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You may have noticed this in the corner of my messy kitchen. We are having a Ladies Night Out tomorrow night. Going to a Mexican restaurant for supper and then coming to our house for games and dessert. Yeah, two kinds of cheesecake for dessert. This one:

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and a plain one with fresh strawberries for the topping.

No lens would be happy without taking it’s own portrait.

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Wowzers! Since I’m usually behind the camera, I forget how imposing they can look.

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Uhhhhh…. this one looks like a big mouth. Does the Veggie Tales song I Love My Lips come to mind? Good. It didn’t come to mine either.

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See, my mouth really isn’t that big.

Got to run before we get into an argument about that.

 

14 thoughts on “Building a Salad

  1. I am absolutely drooling for want of a salad! Pretty sure I could love on the like and be quite content~ House is looking great, and nice lens 🙂 (like I know a lot about them!)

  2. If you had all that in your fridge, it was not very empty.
    Are your lips that big? No. But your mouth may be another story. Before you get all ticky about that, it takes one to know one.
    Will you 2 come take my wedding pictures too?? Please? They are so ugly. and boring. and unedited.

  3. AMAZING salad!! I’m going to copy down those ingredients just for some new, fresh ideas… That looks perfectly scrumptious!

    And your new lense… That looks yummy too. I’m a bit dissatisfied with mine as well. The depth of field isn’t very good, and… maybe when I get rich I’ll have to ask you where you got yours. 🙂

  4. mmmm….. ur salad looks DELICIOUS!   makes me wish our garden veggies are ready to eat…. but, actually, they’re not even planted yet!!  but we’re planning to plant a total fresh-eating garden this year.  not enough time and energy (baby coming) to do large amounts…. so, hopefully, we’ll have lots of yummy salads like you just made me hungry for!

  5. Good grief – i think you must be bored. Pictures of salad and lenses and your own mouth…..go plant grass or something!! :] Or come clean my house, or give me a back massage or do your nails, or something….

    Okay – see you tonight – i’m sure you’ll be snapping pictures of our Mexican waiters and chips and salsa and stuff…….

  6. The salad looks delicious!…the cheescake delectable!   Congratulations on the lens I just might follow your footsteps. Oh, and I really like that first self portrait. 🙂

  7. A chef and a photographer…………you could start a business combining the 2.  I’ll let you work out the small details of that but it could really be a hit!  Just liked the idea.   The pictures…….well I guess my question would be where you would get them framed and how much it costs,I had a guy do some framing for me for a somewhat reasonable price so thats why I was thinking frameless,but I would like the price of canvas too just to see my options….and no I’m not in an hurry to have them. They’re for his office which isn’t dome yet,it’ll be a few months.   I can’t remember if I said something about maybe black and white….I don’t know.   Thanks…..Sandra

  8. question. . . did you really buy a digital camera?!  are they not the “funest”!  what adobe version do you have for processing?  sorry about all the questions, i kinda forgot about zanga, so am way behind!  oh, and the salad, made me wish for the power to pull it from the screen!! hehehe!

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