Joy in the Kitchen!

  It has been cold and snowy white as far as the eye can see where I live!  This week the temperatures are supposed to be above freezing for the first time in several weeks!  I mean high 30's!  Absolutely balmy!  When we're this far into winter, I'm always ready for some peeks into spring.  Though we are several weeks away from the snow melting enough to see the ground, I enjoy including this colorful, fresh salad in my menu!  It's a lovely reminder of the garden harvest I'll enjoy this summer.  This is more of a throw-it-together sort of dish rather than one needing exact measurements, but I have some guidelines I use as the base of this dish.   I make it in this quantity for myself for lunch, or I leave the garbanzo beans out and add another cucumber and a little more olive oil and lemon and use it as a side dish for the family at dinnertime.   I've never been a fan of vinegar and oil dressing on salads, but I love, love, L...

Summer is coming!!!  It's time to start thinking cool meals for warm summer days!  Salads are always a hit in our home and my teenage girls especially love pasta salad.  This delicious pasta salad is packed with flavor and pretty simple to assemble.  It travels well in a cooler to those summer potluck holiday meals.  Perfect! Chicken Bacon Ranch Pasta Salad 1 12-16 oz. package of shell pasta (Large or small), cooked until tender and drained. 2-3 boneless, skinless chicken breast, cooked, cooled, and diced (We like it grilled best but boiled is great too!) 2 C. Ranch Dressing thinned w/ a little milk - appx 1/4 cup. 4-6 slices of bacon, fried until crispy and crumbled (I like to use 6 slices of precooked bacon) 1 C. celery, sliced 1 avocado, peeled and cut into chunks and sprinkled with lemon juice to prevent browning. 1 can black olives, sliced Green onion, Optional Mix all of the above ingredients together saving a few pieces of avoca...

We have a family reunion this weekend!  LOVE all the visiting, fun activities and FOOD!  We spend the weekend in my parents orchard.  We stay in trailers or tents.  Friday through Monday.  We only have to travel a mile to get there!  This year we have a Pirate theme.  Saturday evening our meal is potluck.  Bring plenty of grub to share.   Sunday roast beef is provided and we provide the side dishes and dessert.   The kids have requested Cookies Salad for one of the dishes we take.  It's easy and they love it.  (so do I but I'm making it "for the kids", right?!)   I won't even consider trying to remember to take a picture of it... too many other things on my mind this week.  BUT  I wanted to share the recipe with you in case YOU need a terrific side dish to take. I always double this for my family. Cookie Salad 1 C. buttermilk 1 8 oz container cool whip 1 small box instant vanilla pudding 2 small cans...

Spring Break is here and that leaves more time for playing in the kitchen with the kids!  I love the days the kids are home and we're not rushing off to school, hurrying to get homework done, dinner eaten, scriptures read and kids in bed by 8pm.  We're going to take advantage of the time off this week to play.   One of the fun things about cooking is, that even though we're on break from school, we get to practice a fair bit of math while we're having fun!  If we have 3 people that want Crescent Dogs, and 2 people want 2 Dogs each.... how many do we need to fix?  Our strawberries were huge!  We cut them in 4 pieces.... how many will each person get when we divide those evenly?  If I were working with younger children I'd work more on colors when we strung our skewers.  :)  So much learning just HAPPENS in life! Crescent Dogs are super easy because we use a package of the refrigerated crescent roll dough.  This time we used Pillsbu...

Dave and I were able to enjoy a Date Night at home again!  I've been itching to try a new recipe or two, and it's fun to cook new things for just the two of us.  (The little girls don't always appreciate dishes out of the norm. Silly girls. lol )  Last month Mom took me to Johnny Carino's for my birthday.  We had their Bowtie Festival, which was chicken, bacon, tomatoes and onion in Alfredo sauce, tossed with bowtie pasta.  Divine!   I had shrimp I wanted to use, and figured I could make up the rest.  It did come out similar.  My sauce was thicker, and I think I would have LOVED freshly grated Parmesan cheese, but I just had a jar of pregrated in the fridge.  Often, we end up with regular tossed green salad with ranch dressing, but last night we tried Mandarin Almond Salad and it was a wonderful change!  We'll have both dishes again!  If I hadn't been trying to watch our portions, I would also have served a small loaf of crus...

Yesterday was my birthday!  It is tradition at our house, that you choose your own birthday meal. (We also have a couple of fancy plates the birthday person gets to choose from.  They are from the dollar store but you wouldn't believe how much we look forward to this tradition!) I chose ham, scalloped potatoes (my Mom's recipe - it is THE best!), corn, and this Smooth and Creamy Pear Jello Salad .  Lucky Mom that I am, I got to fix my own dinner too!  LOL!  (I'm sure many others of you Mom's out there share this priviledge. lol )  My sweet daughter Audra made my cake.  Chocolate with chocolate frosting. I should have taken a picture. YUMMY!  Thanks Audra! I'm just featuring this Pear Jello Salad today.  It is absolutely wonderful.  It would work nicely as a light dessert as well.  I could eat a whole batch by myself.  I don't, but I could.  Just so ya know. ;o)  I used Lime flavored jello this time, but you could...