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!

house 8

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.

house 1

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.

house 2

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.

 

Thursday April 17, 2008

It’s been two weeks since the last post and I’m not sure where to start other than at the beginning. ha ha

Six of us ladies went to FL on a short weekend trip. We stayed in St. Augustine but went down to Orlando for Saturday, joining many other throngs of tourists at

orlando 3

Yup. It was Epcot. Lois was the only one out of our group who had been there before. When we left were drrrenched and I mean drrrrenched but it was well worth the soaking. It actually could’ve been downright hot had it not been for the showers. I didn’t get many pictures since I opted to not take my camera and I was glad later I hadn’t. I did get a few with Lois’ camera. Sadly we didn’t manage to get a group picture since Sunday when we were dressed for church it started raining again. We didn’t get to see much of St. Augustine because of the rain. We attended a Methodist church, which was having communion that Sunday. It was interesting to attend. Lots of readings and response readings and up and down in our seats. That last sentence probably doesn’t make sense but I don’t feel like re-wording it right now.

orland 2

We stayed at a resort at the World Golf Village. Due to rain and thunderstorms in the evenings, and being gone in the day, we got to enjoy these pools exactly 10 minutes. Notice all the water standing in the sand v-ball court in the right, center of the picture.

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Ah, yes. There were golfing options.

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LtoR: Lois, Katie, Myra, Ruth (visiting from IN) and Laurie. Becky was going to come along as well but then had to work.

We ate a yummy manicotti supper at the condo. Since the Epcot tickets were so expensive, we decided to save $ by taking most of our food along.

 shoes

There were beautiful gardens at Epcot and many lovely sights but like I said I didn’t take many pictures. I did think, though, that you needed to see my shoes. I had kind of the same dilemma as Christy and I finally found this pair that could be worn without socks (socks make my feet terribly hot). I can’t do flip-flops but these fit the bill. I thought they looked funny when I bought them and I showed them to Lois, thinking she would howl with laughter, but she thought they looked like me. Yikes! They still crack me up.

Some of you may remember that I had a bad spider bite lat fall, well, since then I’ve had several other sores that have been infected, not bites actually but some kind of infection. Lois was concerned that it might be MRSA (google it if you wish) and then last week when I got another infection, this time on my calf, and felt quite sick from it, she got my dr. to prescribe a culture. I went to OB last week when she was working and she did the culture. They processed it at the hospital and Monday the dr. called and said it was not MRSA (PTL!!) but it was a staph infection. We’re still puzzled as to why I’ve been getting them but at least we know it’s not too serious. If/when I get another one hopefully we change to another antibiotic and get rid of it for good.

I felt much, much better after being on antibiotics for 24 hours, which was a good thing. Lois and I were in charge of the food stand Saturday at our first basket ball tournament, a fundraiser for the school. We had grilled chicken sandwiches and hamburgers, chips, cookies, bars, etc. drinks, etc. It went well and they were very pleased with the amount that was raised. There was also a church bakesale the same day so everyone was involved somewhere.

Here are a few pictures from the tournament.

The action:

bb 4

bb 3

bb 2

bb 1

bb 5

The enthusiastic crowd:

crowd

 

The food stand:

food stand

The 3-point contest:

3 point throws

The tournament winners:

1st place

Second place:

2nd place

On a different note, is anyone else having problems with their xanga subs? I got 2 daily digest emails in the last 2 weeks, and then this am, there were 6 in my inbox. Strange.

Stuff – Thursday April 3, 2008

   Yeah, I’ve got a lot to say so ‘scuse the real newsy post. Dogwood festival last weekend, relaxing time (after the bake sale) with family for Phil’s birthday, lots of great meat grilled by my brothers, goofy neighbors over for supper (where, o where, are the pictures of that picturesque bunch?) Tuesday night, lunch with Sharon and Linda today. Oh, yeah, and I’m getting ready to go to St. Augustine/Orlando with the single ladies/youth girls from here in honor of Myra, our teacher.

A few pictures to finish off this really long post. Hope you haven’t gotten tired of reading yet.

morning light 2
I’ve been waiting for a foggy morning so I could get these oak trees and fenceline.

morning light 3

 

old dogwood 
Still can’t leave the dogwoods alone.

 

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I got this chest of drawers for a song. There was only one small problem

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 There was one small piece broken off. On the first picture it’s being held by gum . Just need a little gorilla glue to patch it up for real.

 

 

Later friends