Foods of late summer's past...

Well, it's been awhile. Again. People seem to be asking me if I'm still cooking, and despite the inaction on the blog, I am! Really.

Summer was a bit crazy. Work of course (that's one thing that's different from when I was in school). Not working, but real work. Grown-up work. And then we had a sort of spur-of-the-moment move that ended up not being quite as quick and easy as we initially thought it would be. But the good news is we now have a new kitchen to play in! Packing all our kitchen equipment and utensils in is a bit of a puzzle, but it's working for us.

Above photo courtesy of Evelyn Kritler.

There were also some lovely trips down to Oregon and to the coast with my family for our annual trip to Arch Cape. We had fun cooking for the family again this year, but the food pictures are definitely lacking from that week of the summer, unfortunately. However, Zack had an incredible cooking endeavor...think homemade marshmallows. Uh yes. He had talked about it for awhile and I'll admit, I was kind of like, "whatever." Call me crazy, but I am not the hugest marshmallow fan. When we have s'mores at the coast, I'd rather just eat the graham crackers and maybe a couple pieces of chocolate. Ha. Well, let's just say...huge success. And Zack's cool factor increased even more so after that trip.

Pearl barley risotto with corn, parmesan, basil, and sliced turkey breast.

The photos you see here are just a scattering of some yummy things we made in August and September. My first risotto (with pearl barley), which consisted of a lot of standing in the kitchen whilst stirring. There was also some killer chicken salad, a recipe for which I need to re-find in a library book that has been returned. We had some really tasty grilled sandwiches; one had ham, thinly sliced granny smith apple, and swiss cheese. Lots of muffins..."French toast muffins" (which didn't really taste like French toast, but were very delicious), banana chocolate chip muffins (best banana muffin recipe I've found thus far), and blueberry cornmeal muffins (which was just a must taking my corn obsession into consideration).  Whole wheat penne with skinny asparagus and tomatoes. Salmon with a cilantro sauce and carrot quinoa to name another. I'm telling you, Costco has wild salmon fish fillets (packaged separately and frozen), and it's a good way to go. Pull out a few fillets at a time and it's always fresh. We just got some halibut, so you may see some creations with that coming soon.

Healthier chicken salad sandwiches.

Ham, swiss, and granny smith apple grilled sandwiches with succotash.

"French toast" muffins.

Banana chocolate chip muffins.

Blueberry cornmeal muffins.

Whole wheat penne with skinny asparagus, tomatoes, and basil.

Salmon with cilantro sauce and carrot quinoa.

Moving on. I'm on a new endeavor. Meal planning. Okay, I know this is making me sound ultra-organized and maybe slightly obsessive compulsive, and I was thinking the same thing until I read this Seattle Times article titled How to create a customized meal plan. And yes, this article is probably geared towards families or people with kids, but whatever, what they talk about is really helpful.

Now I'm not going crazy with this, but I have extracted a few great ideas from this article. It makes a lot of sense to create a sort of "weekly menu" and then save these menus (if they turn out to be good) to re-use in the future. I mean if you think about it, sifting through recipes and really planning for meals takes time. Especially if you are trying to eat healthily, and even more so if you shop at multiple places to save money and/or to buy fresh. So obviously this could get really boring if you just use your old menus and don't continue to search for new ways to cook and new ingredients to try. But I'm not too worried about that. Be back soon. Cheers.