Simply Me

Summer Bounty

Every weekend, I tell myself that *this* is the weekend I'm going to sit down and actually work on a scrapbook layout.  The lack of layouts posted here should be your first clue that this goal rarely happens. It is a shame too.  I have tons of great pictures and even more digital scrapping supplies than any one person could ever use, yet there are no new layouts created.

Except for today that is!! I give to you "Hello Sunshine" a layout about the garden we planted this past summer.

The papers and elements came from The Daily Digi's  monthly kit #30 (June 2011). The kit name is "Sandbox Summer" by Fayette Terlouw at Pickle Berry Pop / the Ettes digital scrapbooking site. You can see what others did with the same kit over at The Daily Digi by clicking HERE.  The layout is courtesy of a template from the "Stuffy Collection" by Simply Tiffiany Studios at Design House Digital.

Hello. My name is Joy and I am a strawberry saladaholic.

No, really, I am. I put together this salad for a gathering after a funeral at church yesterday. I based it roughly on a salad I have had at the The Manor Tavern. I was going to make my own dressing but when I discovered this Marzetti Strawberry Chardonnay vinaigrette, I decided to save myself the hassle.

Can I just say that was one excellent decision? In the end, the salad consisted of baby red and green romaine lettuce, strawberries, red onion, feta cheese and candied walnuts plus the vinaigrette. I simply cannot get enough of it.

Today, I had to go to the store to get more strawberries and more lettuce. I was at a different store and discovered two Raspberry versions of the Marzetti vinaigrette:  Light Raspberry Cabernet and Rasberry Walnut vinaigrette. So, I bought some raspberries too!   With strawberry season just around the corner, I cannot wait to use local grown strawberries in this.

Girls Night Out - RA Sushi and "West Side Story"

My daughter and I went out last night. I gave her tickets at Christmas for the Broadway Across America show "West Side Story" in Baltimore at the Hippodrome Theater.  I wanted to "document" the event so I had Tom take our pic before we left:

 Because we both love sushi, I also added a dinner at a Baltimore sushi restaurant that I had heard about for some time now:  RA Sushi.  

 

Driving downtown is not something I do often and I'm not very comfortable doing so. It is always such a relief when that part of it is over. We easily found the restaurant but I didn't see any close by parking garages. Everything was either private or street parking. I was starting to get anxious over the matter (timing was somewhat tight) when we found great parking in easy walking distance. And because it was street parking, we spent $3 instead of $20.

We were immediately seated in RA Sushi. Talk about noisy!! The place was packed. The environment is dark except where the huge windows are on one side of the restaurant. It has a warehouse feel to it with ceilings they may have been as high as twenty feet. We immediately started trying to make heads or tails of the menu placed in front of us. Thankfully Kim, our great waitress, came over and helped make some great choices. We mentioned that we had to be out of there by 7:30pm in order to allow enough time to get to the theater. When she brought back our drinks, she let us know that she got our order in ahead of a large party to ensure there wouldn't be any delay.

Our first item was the RA Chips and Salsa:

RA CHIPS & SALSA 

Spicy tuna tartare mixed with cucumber, avocado & fresh salsa; served with wonton chips.

This was really good!!  I highly recommend it!

Next came these:

The rolls on the the long plate were from their Signature Sushi list:

ULTIMATE SHRIMP TEMPURA ROLL

Spicy kani kama crab mix, cucumber & shrimp tempura rolled &
topped with seared tuna & avocado

The others are maki (a cut roll) sushi rolls:  spicy tuna and spicy scallops. We get these at our local favorite sushi restaurant, Toki Sushi in the Rocks Springs Shopping Center.  I really like the spicy tuna better than our favorites from TS but we both agreed we liked the TS spicy scallops a bit more. We unanimously agreed the Ultimate Shrimp Tempura rolls with the seared tuna were out of this world good.

We dug into our dessert so fast we forgot to take a photo!   So I borrowed this from their website:

SWEET MOCHI TRIO

A traditional Japanese dessert—ice cream wrapped in sweet rice cake; mango, strawberry & vanilla flavors garnished with sliced kiwi & strawberries

Our order didn't have any of the mango flavored cakes, but the vanilla and strawberry were simply fabulous.

Kim volunteered to take our picture before our dessert came out:

Not sure why my face is *that* red, but attempts to color correct weren't working, so I left it as is.

We made it out of there in plenty of time, while managing not feeling overly rushed in the process. Now the hard part! Getting from RA Sushi to the Hippodrome required driving through the heart of downtown. As it was almost 7:30pm, we were well passed rush hour traffic, thankfully. Google Maps came through for us as we had no problems making our way there. Still, this was a welcome sight!

The show itself was great. It was the first time I went into a show not already knowing the music. I also really didn't know much about the story beyond two warring gangs called the Jets and the Sharks. The choregraphy and dancing were fantastic. Sometimes it was hard to decide who to watch! I thought the actors playing the title characters, Tony and Maria were really good (Ali Ewoldt was just lovely in this role). The actress playing Anita was an especially good dancer and singer.

The small role of Glad Hand was played by Stephen DeRosa to perfection. Bravo!

The drive home was uneventful and we were safely tucked into our beds by midnight. It was a perfect night out with my fabulous daughter. 

 

 

Ash Wednesday: Lent Begins

So, we're still working on new dishes for our weekly menus. With the beginning of Lent, I needed to be sure we had some fish options available.

I bought a 5lb box of haddock at the store on Sunday. We're not big fish connoisseurs but Tom and I do like haddock. 

I went back to Taste of Home website and searched on "haddock" and came across several good, low calorie options. This is the one we tried tonight:  Tomato Baked Haddock. The website doesn't have a picture so I took my own:

It was quite tasty and will definitely be in the rotation again. Only Casey turned his nose up at it. 

I made two slight alterations to the recipe. I added a small amount garlic powder along with the salt and pepper. I also used no-salt added tomatoes.

Recipes

I'm guessing that I've mentioned before on this blog that I'm not a fan of cooking. I love eating, but cooking it for myself has never been in my top 10 favorite things to do.

Then some things happened:  the economy tanked, husband lost his job, husband began a diet program of his own design, to name  a few.

The combination of these things and others meant that regular eating out was no longer an option. This lazy cook had to come up with meals for the family on a regular basis. This isn't too difficult in the summer, where grilling and fresh fruits/veggies keep most everyone happy.

All too quickly, summer passes and winter comes blowing in. I don't grill outside in temps below 60. We sputtered along with some family classics but this often left Tom in the cold because the calorie values were not within his daily limits. Lean Cuisine has become a very good friend to him.

Now, I give him a TON of credit. He began his diet on January 1, 2010 and hasn't stopped. He's lost close to 70lbs and is keeping it off. I need to lose weight too but am not ready to go it the way he has. I did start feeling a little guilty about leaving him hanging most nights to figure out what to eat. 

A "diet" cookbook was recommended to me by someone I know on Two Peas in a Bucket. The book was from Taste of Home called Comfort Food on a Diet. I bought it last fall. My initial perusal didn't seem to find much that I thought the bulk of the family would be thrilled with, so I put it aside.

At the beginning of the year, I resumed my Family Calendar & Menu habit. I find that if I plan out meals two weeks at a time, I can be assured I have the necessary ingredients on hand and work around various schedules. Meals that take a little longer aren't planned for night where the schedule is tight. And knowing ahead of time what is planned for dinner on a given night actually takes some of the pressure off.  The calendar/menu is placed on the fridge so everyone know's what's coming up both in terms of scheduling and dinner each day. Here's what a typical two week period would look like (at the bottom of each day lists the entree for that evening's meal):

It became clear that many of our favorites were things Tom would no longer eat in an effort to maintain his weight loss. Admittedly, many of these meals are high calorie or the kinds of meals that he feels he can't just eat what is considered a "normal" portion so he would rather not eat it all. He didn't complain at all. He'd simply make himself something else. 

I find myself facing two weeks worth of days to fill with some meal idea and it didn't take long before I couldn't come up with enough stuff to fill a whole two weeks without repeating meals. And you know how boring that gets. FAST.

So, I pulled out the Comfort Food on a Diet cookbook and had a closer look. My fresh eyes started finding more recipes that I thought at least had the potential to satisfy 2 or 3 out of the four of us. I threw caution to the wind and starting adding new recipes to my repertoire. 

I thought I'd share one we had again tonight that has been a pretty big hit. I'm not a big beef fan but even I found this quite to my liking!  It's called "Swiss Steak". If you do a google search for "swiss steak" you'll find a huge variety of dishes that are called swiss steak and look completely different! This is a tomato based version. 

You can find the recipe on the Taste of Home website by clicking HERE. I served it over a small portion of rice. Tom is not a big vegetable eater so he sticks with salad while Casey and I had steamed broccoli. Sarah missed out because she had already eaten out with her beau. 

I'd also add that the recipes I've started using from this book are not difficult to make and go together quite quickly. This recipe takes an hour or so to cook (to get the chop steak tender) but probably only 10 minutes to prepare, maybe less. This makes it an even better recipe in my book!

Merry Christmas Eve! - Entry #9

Italian beef...done!

I was starting to think it would never get to the "falling apart" stage. I have either the slowest slow cooker ever, or I opened it too many times. My guess is that it's most likely my fault it took 11+ hours on high to finally get there. 

Along with the beef we had fried potatoes and a salad. For tomorrow, I  made Polish sausage with sauerkraut. I like having sauerkraut with my turkey. My husband likes the sausage. I must say that I like Johnson's Italian sausage better. 

Now, it's time to feed the horses and start wrapping. Yes, I'm an idiot who waited until NOW to wrap the gifts. Thankfully, I should be able to do it within an hour or two. The nice thing about kids getting older is that their "toys" are more expensive so there is less to wrap :P  It's all about that silver lining, don'tcha know!

Merry Christmas Eve! - Entry #4

The pumpkins pies are done! Next on the agenda? Some picking up around here and some light cleaning :)

Merry Christmas Eve! - Entry #2

First up out of the oven:

Philly 3-step cheesecake with chocolate chips and chocolate crust

 

Merry Christmas Eve!

Today, I should be relaxing and spending time with the famdamily. 

Instead, I waited until today to wrap, bake, clean, etc. Doh.

So, I decided I will capture the day in photos. Just to keep me moving forward :P

I'll start with our final version of our Christmas card. I love how it turned out but I'm a little tiny bit worried that some  of the recipients will be disappointed that there's not a pic of the kids included. Still, I love this so much: 

Christmas Postcard - 2010

Front

Back

A lovely lady by the name of Kaitlin drew the picture of our horses for me. We met on a miniature horse forum/message board. I loved her work and when she showed us a Halloween pic, I realized what I wanted to do for our Christmas card this year. Kaitlin took my ideas to heart, reviewed the photos and info I sent for each horse and produced this amazing work of art. I used my digital scrapping supplies to build a 5x7 postcard. 

You can see more of Kaitlin's work here:  See more of Kaitlin's work!

Now, back to what it is I'm doing today. I give you this picture first:

Dinner = Italian Beef (courtsey of Burning Feather)

For many weeks, I've seen posts on Two Peas in a Bucket's NSBR forum regarding a recipe posted by a member named "Burning Feather". Her real name is Carla, but it's more fun to reference her screen name :P Anyway, I passed by these posts for the most part but one day, my curiosity got the better of me. Upon reading rave review after rave review, I decided this was going to be our Christmas Eve dinner this year. I definitely needed something that could take care of itself all day and this fits the bill perfectly. I hear tell that you can't screw this up. We shall see!

Check back for more updates!

More Green Beauties

Tom loves cherry tomatoes, so when I bought the tomato plants this year, I made sure to get several of those. Cherry tomatoes are like candy to him. I love them on salads. I need to get some good fresh greens and find a fabulous summertime dressing to go with them. Some boiled egg too sounds excellent.