I tried a new and easy recipe tonight. It needed to be easy because I'd spent over 3 hours at the endodontist today and wasn't in the mood for a time-consuming meal. But I looked on one of my food storage blogs healthyfamilycooking.blogspot.net and found this recipe for

Simple Ravioli with Toasted Walnuts!

 

 

I fixed a watermelon-blueberry-raspberry fruit salad and we also had a kale-chard-lettuce-spinach-cucumber salad as well. It was all delicious! The recipe calls for cheese ravioli but all I had was beef ravioli and we loved it.

 

Simple Ravioli with Toasted Walnuts

 

14 oz. ravioli

1/3 c oil (they say EVOO) I just used what I had

1/4 tsp. garlic

1 c. walnuts, roughly chopped

2 tsp. lemon juice

salt and pepper to taste

1/4 c. parmesan, I forgot this but it turned out great anyway.

 

1. Cook the ravioli according to the package directions. Drain, but reserve about 3 Tbls. of the water
2. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a medium skilled over medium heat
3. Add the garlic and walnuts. Cook until nuts are lightly toasted and fragrant. Do not burn, and keep stirring
4. Stir in the lemon juice, salt and pepper and the reserved cooking water from the ravioli
5. Add ravioli and toss to coat. Serve with parmesan sprinkled over top 

 

This morning I went up to Knapp's Orchard to pick strawberries! I was there about 10 minutes after they opened at 7:00am and yet I was still almost the 30th car there. You can tell it's the end of strawberry season. But I got some great strawberries and it was beautiful and they had a great view. And yes, I went by myself. When I get peaches I'm hoping Dad or my friend Michele can come. After I got home I packed some strawberries for Dad and dropped them off at his office. Then I headed to the Spokane Farmer's Market on 5th by Sacred Heart hospital. It's a small market but I managed to find some new items to try. Dad needs to eat more greens so I bought some chard and Kale to see if we like it. If we do, we'll plant our own next year. I also got a few peaches, a little fresh honey for Dad and pea pods for me. Oh my goodness they're sweet! So all this accomplished by 11:00am. I think I need a nap!

 

 

 



 

At our last Relief Society Meeting, Amanda Lee taught a class on bread making. She makes the best bread and she shared her Only-takes-an-Hour-Bread recipe. So I tried it but it didn't work for me. So today I went back to my tried and true recipe from the  everyday food storage.blog called, EZ Whole Wheat bread but I used white flour. Here's what I got!

 

 

Seriously, isn't this beautiful? Can't wait to try it with homemade strawberry jam!

It's amazing how each person has their 'special' recipes that work on a regular basis for them but not for others. It's good to try other recipes, but it's even better when you have a recipe that is consistently a success for you.



 

I truly did not realize it had been so long since I'd posted here. Wow! Where does the time go? So as most of you know Dad and I planted a garden out at Grandma Joyce's and Grandpa Dale's place. They have a huge amount of land and graciously shared since our neighbors were using Rondo's garden space. We planted onions, pumpkins, tomatoes, cukes and watermelons out there. The watermelons aren't looking too great but the pumpkins look huge! Hopefully we'll have cute pumpkins to share with the grandkids. We brought home some huge onions from the garden to use already! They are delicious! At home we have blueberries on one of our 3 bushes. Hooray! And the raspberry starts from Rondo's finally have started producing. They are great and I am enjoying them a lot.

 

Looks pretty good doesn't it?

 

My strawberries also are coming on great and Dad puts them in smoothies. He is an awesome smoothie maker. He uses bananas from the freezer, watermelon cubes that I froze last year and whatever other available fruit there is. You should ask him for his recipe. Trust me, they beat out any smoothie you could buy. We also planted lettuce and spinach which means we are eating a lot of salads and that is so great. I even made a strawberry, chicken, lettuce, spinach and homemade crouton salad for lunch! Fast food places can't beat that. And my flowers look amazing! I'll try to get pictures of the yard and garden soon.

 

So lastly, I had finally had had enough of the pantry. Why I didn't paint the inside of the pantry when I painted the kitchen, I'll never know. But Dad found a quart can of Antique white interior paint that was marked down to $4.00 at Wal-Mart and I started my latest project.  I cleaned out the pantry and painted and rearranged the items in my kitchen. I also threw out a lot of old spices and put the keepers in quart jars in my baking cupboard.

 

I used a dry erase pen to mark the jars, so the jars can be reused.

 

So now my pantry is clean, pretty and useful!

It's amazing what a little paint can do. I love this pantry now.

 

So long for now. I'm sure there's a project waiting for me somewhere!