Well, now summer is in full swing, as was obvious from the size of our CSA pick-up this week! There were almost twice as many veggies as last week: several types of lettuce, spring onions, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, swiss chard, radishes, and sugar snap peas. Yum!
With all that fabulous, fresh lettuce, I tried another taco salad recipe this week, Southwestern-style Shrimp Taco Salad. I think I liked this one even better than the one we had last week with chicken. My mom was visiting and loved it! One of my sons liked it better than the other one (because he loves all seafood), and the other said he likes the more traditional one better. Both of them, of course, groaned, "Salad for dinner again?" but everyone seemed to enjoy it.
Since they've been complaining about me trying too many new things lately (they prefer my winter style of cooking with soups, stews, roasts, etc.), I reverted to a few old favorites the rest of the week, with some of our lovely CSA veggies on the side. We had Spicy Crusted Chicken one night (a very simple baked crunchy chicken recipe) with orzo. My mother was very impressed with the orzo side dish, though all I did was add a can of chopped tomatoes and a quarter cup of jarred pesto!
And one night, we had plain old spaghetti with meat sauce, a kid favorite.
We went to a potluck dinner last night at a friend's house. I kept it super simple. We brought a bowl of watermelon chunks and blueberries and a Black and White Bean Salad, a classic Cooking Light recipe (so old that it's not online!). It's very easy - one can each of black beans and white beans, chopped red and yellow bell peppers, chopped fresh tomatoes, sliced scallions, 1/2 cup salsa, 1/4 cup red vinegar, salt, pepper, and chopped cilantro. It looks very colorful and tastes delicious! It's my go-to summer potluck recipe.
Hope you are enjoying food and cooking this week, too!
(P.S. Summer has just begun so there is still plenty of time to join my Big Book Summer Challenge! It is as easy-going as summer itself: you only need to read one big book (400 pages or more) by September to qualify...so join the fun!)
Lately since my boys and I are home more, I've been fixing salads for lunch and nobody complains because they're used to having to fix their own lunches, so they're just happy that I made them something. Then there's leftovers for my husband to have with dinner. I'm going to try your bean salad recipe, I love bean salads. :-)
ReplyDeleteI'll have to give that shrimp salad a try. Fortunately we love salads so much that even just the two of us can keep up with our full-share CSA
ReplyDeleteThat summer salad recipe sounds perfect for this week - it's going to be in the 90s and humid every day, and I'm trying to plan cool things for my meals so that I don't skip eating!
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