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!

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

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.

The pepper jar

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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:

and a plain one with fresh strawberries for the topping.

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

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

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.

See, my mouth really isn’t that big.

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