Weekend Recap and Recipes

Thank goodness I complain about the weather on the blog so much. I distinctly remember it being unreasonably cold all this spring, and in fact we did not get any real summer weather until late June. So to wake up this week to cooler weather already has been a giant buzzkill. Six weeks of summer is insufficient! For crying out loud, we just started getting good corn at the farmer's market!

The flamingo and I are issuing a protest about this.



Black Target dress, lilac Gap cardigan, black DSW sandals, an assortment of long silver necklaces and my silver Hive and Honey bracelets. It was Friday but I felt pretty dressy.




I've also been wearing my turquoise glasses with everything lately. I just like them, and I always gets tons of compliments.

It was Hubby's birthday on Friday; he never likes to celebrate it, but over the years I've gotten him to soften enough that he will let me take him to dinner. So he went fishing after work, and I got changed, and then we went to Bonefish Grill. Their fish is so good!




Me and George, filled with ennui over Hubby's birthday. Probably the best kind of present for him. :)
Gap polka-dot sleeveless blouse, Piperlime gold chain necklace, random collection of bracelets, light-wash Old Navy Dreamer jeans, orange Clark Long Pond sandals.


Daily Food Tracker: Friday
Breakfast: whole wheat waffle with syrup and strawberries
Lunch: Portillos chopped salad with mini muffin
Dinner: Out for Hubby's birthday. Watermelon martini, pompano and crab in lemon sauce, garlic mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli.

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Saturday was filled with good intentions, but got quickly derailed by good food and a good friend. Jessie and I planned to go to yoga in the park early in the morning, but we were both beat and my back was very stiff, so we bailed and hit the Green City Market instead. We stocked up on some great local treats, including my first ever carrot pickles. (It's very briny. I think I will rinse them off a bit the next time I eat one. But it was tasty!)




 After that, we dropped off six boxes of books for donation at Open Books, and full of goodwill and organic foodstuffs, we...went to the casino to lose some money and hit the buffet. LOL!

When I got home, Hubby was feeling creative, and made dinner. And a new cocktail.





Yes, that is a cucumber.




He made cucumber martinis, with muddled cucumber and cilantro. They were astonishingly good. Hubby also announced that the vodka-soaked cucumber slices were the best cucumbers he has ever eaten. A different kind of pickle, you could say. Ba-dum-bump!



Daily Food Tracker: Saturday
Breakfast: waffle with peanut butter
Snack: 2 hand pies, lamb and mushroom (at the farmer's market)
Lunch: cabbage salad, grilled caesar salad, fried chicken leg, pepperoni flatbread, orange chicken piece and some Chinese noodle/veggie dish, seafood salad sandwich quarter, peanut butter cookie, half cheesecake bite, chocolate covered strawberry (out at casino buffet so it was 3 bites of everything, except the cabbage salad which was crazy delicious and non-creamy!)
Dinner: 2 ears of corn, red pepper and garlic sausage on wheat roll with grilled onions and muffaletta, cucumber martini
Snack: fig newtons, Special K bar, glass of skim milk

Ugh. I had the munchies in a big way. And I was seriously carbo-loading all weekend! Hormones are hell on a diet.

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Sunday was another farmer's market, then chores and errands around the house. As you may have spotted in some of the pictures above, I picked up a mess of heirloom baby tomatoes on Saturday. I'm not really a tomato fan (I know!) but I just could not resist these. They were so cute and summery looking!




I couldn't figure out what to do with them; since they're not my veggie, the thought of a tomato salad did not appeal. But a frittata sure did!




I chopped up the tomatoes, cooked some peppered turkey bacon and chopped it in, and added blue cheese crumbles for the filling. Seasoned with kosher salt and Penzey's Mural of Flavor, added the eggs and egg whites, poured into a quiche pan, and baked for 30 minutes at 350. Doesn't it just look like summer? There's breakfast this week.





Daily Food Tracker: Sunday
Pre-breakfast: Special K bar (woke up hungry.)
Breakfast: honey corn muffin and fresh raspberries (both from the farmer's market. Jessie, the muffin was so good it did not even need heating up or butter. I barely even took it out of the bag before I started inhaling it.)
Lunch: 2 slices seeduction bread, BnPB, skim milk
Snack: tomatoes (trying a few while I was cutting them for the frittata)
Dinner: Heirloom lemon cucumber with rice vinegar and Greek seasoning. (First time trying one; I had to get it, it was a yellow, round cucumber! How weird is that? Result: not that different from regular cucumbers except the seeds were harder. Will stick with Kirby cucumbers in the future.)
Leftover chicken and carrots, re-grilled by Hubby.
Corn on the cob (one eaten, one cooked and cut off the cob for something delicious tomorrow.)
Grilled plums.

I made up for any lack of veggies with dinner, that's for sure. And now that I have had grilled plums and peaches, it is plums that win the battle. They're so rich tasting, juicy and tangy sweet. It's like eating purple. And I'm definitely making more grilled carrots tomorrow; they were just as delicious three days later as they were the day we first made them.

Both the plums and carrots are easy to make; I cut and prep them with their respective seasonings, then fold them into aluminum foil packets, and then hand them off to Hubby to grill. Hee!
Carrots take about 30-40 minutes on the grill, plums are about 15-20. Their seasonings:

Carrots -- Penzey's seasoned salt and minced garlic (don't even need to dehydrate it), few tablespoons of water and some olive oil
Plums -- brush with canola oil and cinnamon (Penzey's again, of course. You can really taste the difference.)

What's been your favorite grilled item this summer? Do you make one that most people would be surprised by? Do you have one I should try? (Please don't say tomatoes!)