A Week of Salad - Thursday

I am writing this post at 5:30 in the morning because I couldn't sleep which is quite odd since I am completely exhausted! One more night of VBS to go and one more salad to make this afternoon. Actually I am kind of having fun with my week of salad and it might continue for a couple more days!

Yesterday I had to work at one of my cleaning jobs so when I got home I only had about 15 minutes to get lunch fixed before Miles came home. I should have had more time, but I locked myself out of the house where I was cleaning, and I had to go to the neighbor's house to use the phone to call poor Traci. She had to have her morning interrupted to come back and let me in. She told me not to go out or I would lock myself out before she left. I told her I usually never do, which really isn't true after I think about it, because I clean the windows on her front door every week and step out to do so. It didn't even dawn on me until I had cleaned all four windows and went to turn the knob. Someone make me a dunce cap or wait patiently for my VBS brain to go away and my real brain to return!

Back to salad..... When I am in a hurry we have a favorite salad that usually consists of cucumbers, tomatoes, feta, chicken sausage, and my homemade mustard vinaigrette or a light Ceasar that we like. But yesterday I was in the mood for something a bit more summery.

The lettuce was the rest of the red leaf and a 50/50 mix of organic baby spinach and a spring mix. The spinach was the perfect choice for this salad. I added strawberries this time and left out the tomatoes. I also added walnuts for some crunch and decided that I would rather have more of a balsamic dressing then the mustard dressing. It goes better with the strawberry thing. I had already sliced up the chicken sausage and cooked it in a small pan quick in case you are wondering.

I really have a thing for fruit on my salad. It looks pretty and it also adds a unique flavor to just about any salad combination.

When I sat down to eat this Faith said, "Strawberries on a salad? Where's the cucumbers?" Ooops! I forgot the cucumbers. I am blaming that on VBS brain as well. I got up and chopped a few slices quick otherwise my salad wouldn't have had much vegetable content. I love cucumbers!

If you want to make it easy on yourself there are several balsamic dressings you can buy ready made that have very little calories. I like Newman's Own in particular but it is pretty easy to whip one up as well. I like to make a homemade Greek dressing that has the same ingredient list but uses white wine vinegar so I just subbed in this balsamic from Whole Foods which is quite good by the way! I left it out of the picture but you do need olive oil for this dressing as well. I used my handy dressing mixer again (that is what we had leftover in the container) and of course I didn't measure. I know I drive some of you crazy. Sorry.

I also used these four ingredients- onion powder, garlic powder, basil, and oregano. It is better to use fresh garlic, but I was in a hurry. If I had fresh oregano or basil I would use that too but this works fine also. I should probably just learn to measure for all of you who need me to be precise but here is my best guess on the measurements.

2-3oz. of olive oil

2 oz. aged balsamic vinegar

1 Tbsp. Dijon mustard

1 tsp. onion powder

1 tsp. basil

1 tsp. oregano

1 tsp. garlic powder or 1-2 garlic cloves minced

Give it a stir or whisk and taste. Add what you feel is lacking. If the mustard or vinegar taste is too strong then add more olive oil. I suppose the reason I never measure much when making dressing is that I am just looking for a good flavor. You can't mess it up too much so give yourself a little freedom to just dump!

It was a very refreshing salad and I am already thinking about my salad for today!

Now for the fun part..........last night's photos!

                                                                                    

We have the MOST AWESOME crew leaders! The kids really get to know their leader and get attached to them and these leaders make the week so fun for them!

      

     Learning about what Jesus did on the cross for us.

       

   Laying our "sins" on the cross and asking Jesus to forgive us for them.

        

           This was a beautiful picture and a great visual for the kids.

         

This is my daughter and her fun personality caught on camera. She absolutely adores going to VBS every night. She will be sad when it ends tonight.

         

And some running and screaming just because that is what kids do best. I bet these children have been sleeping very well every night.

I think I might go back to sleep for a bit now. I will be up late tonight getting everything put away at the church. I am hoping I can leave there before 11pm.

Want to come help me anyone?

            





A Week of Salad - Wednesday

We are nearing the end of the week so quickly! After all the work on VBS it always surprises me how fast the week actually goes. We are having so much fun!

I am also having fun with my salads and these posts! I do love salad more than the average person but I hope you can see that by making it a little different each day it isn't such a bad thing to eat it for lunch for a whole week! Maybe I can challenge you to try a week long salad fest and give up your fast food lunch and see how much better you feel.

For yesterday's salad I decided to go with an Asian flair. This is really an old Pampered Chef recipe I believe with a few tweaks of course.

The lettuce was a mixture of leftover red leaf that needs to get used up and a mix of red and green organic baby romaine. I also added carrots, radishes, snap peas, red onion, sliced oranges, and the best part was the crunchy oat bran sesame sticks on top.

  

To slice the oranges cut your orange in half horizontally and then take your knife along these natural divisions to score it it. You can peel the orange first so it will just kind of fall into those pieces as you cut but I like to avoid as much pith as I can when putting orange on a salad so I went around the circle with my knife too then peeled it back.

I made a homemade dressing again yesterday too. There is a great recipe right on the side of this Pampered Chef dressing maker I use all the time. I didn't follow it exactly of course because that is against my nature as you know. I used about 2 or 3 ounce of rice vinegar, 1 or 2 ounces of less sodium soy sauce, 1/4 tsp. ground ginger, 1 large garlic clove, minced, one packet of Stevia, and not nearly as much olive oil as they wanted me to!!! I think I used about 1/4 cup. You can use less vinegar and more olive oil if you don't care for it as much as we do.

Miles commented on how much he liked the orange in the salad. He said he was surprised at how good that flavor was in there! I agree so don't be afraid and don't skip it if you try this salad. I liked that I got a couple different veggies in there, the radishes and snap peas, that are not my normal go to salad fixings. I do love them both but for some reason just don't put them in my salad enough! I should mention that Miles also commented when he came and sat down, "That is one good looking salad!" So men, you too can enjoy a week of salad for lunch.

Some Rainer cherries on the side! I am not much of a cherry lover but I do like the Rainer kind. I always buy a couple containers to enjoy when they start putting them out in the stores. Maybe it is the Rainer name that draws me to them.

I am from Washington state after all!

Now on to my VBS pictures of the night............

It would not be VBS without these crazy ladies! This year their names are Marley and Flash. Faith is still calling the one dressed as a pilot "Panda Patty" because that was her name last year. They make our VBS spectacular and SUPER fun for our kids,

Nothing like some Minute To Win It games for the 5th grade group.

I am not bossing Sarah around! I am telling her to look back at last year's VBS pictures of us together because she has lost a ton of weight!

Throwing huge tube a loons through the hula hoops was super fun!

Our mission project is raising money for mosquito nets for kids in Mali. We are STUNNED at how much money the kids have brought. Our goal was enough money to buy 25 nets. They cost $6.00 each. Last night we had raised enough to buy 90 nets!

Isn't this the kind of fun kids are looking for at VBS. Crazy! I love it!

Only two more nights to go and we are having a blast!



A Week of Salad -Tuesday

Hello everyone! We had another super fun, exciting, energetic, night at VBS yesterday. We apologize if your kids came home soaking wet! Why kids want to get soaking wet I will never understand????? That is the most miserable feeling to me and having to endure the rest of the night like that would make me crazy. But if you are between the ages of 5 and 11 there seems to be this incredible pull just dragging you through the sprinkler and telling you to stay right in it instead of running quickly out like you are supposed to!! They all came out smiling too!

So on to my salad for lunch Tuesday. I really decided to change it up yesterday and eat a kale salad instead of a regular lettuce salad. Kale gets a bad rap sometimes. It can be a bit of an acquired taste, but if you will follow a few preparation steps it will be a million times more enjoyable I promise!

This recipe came from a blog I follow Oh She Glows. It is called Weekend Glow Kale Salad and I absolutely loved it!!

It was filled with this huge portion of goodness! Chopped cucumber, sliced grape tomatoes, diced carrot, chopped red, yellow, and orange mini pepper, raisins, sunflower seeds, red onion, walnuts, and avocado that I did slice up. That is a lot but I loved every last thing in there and wouldn't make the salad without any of them!

It makes such a beautiful salad too. I actually went back for seconds, and thirds, and my husband commented that I must have been famished. I said, "Nope! I just love the salad that much." I even took the leftovers with me to dinner at the church last night.

As I said before there are some things you must do to make your kale taste delicious and not so bitter. First and foremost you must remove these stems. This is where most of the bitterness lies. I just pull the leaves right off. 

The second thing you MUST do is massage or squeeze the kale. Yes she is a little high maintenance. It is quick though so just indulge her.

Just stick your hands in and start squeezing the kale like this. It only takes a couple minutes and you will start to feel the kale get softer. It will even deepen in color.

Do you see the difference in how full the bowl looked above and after you have broken down some of the fibers it looks a little more wilted. It is supposed to look like this. That way it doesn't scratch your throat going down. You can also put a little olive oil or salt in the bowl before massaging it to make it even more silky.

The third thing you can do is pour your dressing over and let it sit for about 15 minutes so it can really soak in. Kale is a hearty green and even after its had a massage it can still handle a little soak which you would really never do with any other green. I used Angela's recipe for Tahini and Lemon Dressing and guess what folks, I didn't change one single thing and I even measured! I poured all of it over the kale and all my prepared ingredients and gave it a good mixing. Don't be afraid to use your hands again and really get that dressing mixed in. It is a bit messy but the results are amazing!

There are other varieties of kale that you might find more enjoyable such as dinosaur kale, baby kale, lacinato, and Tuscan, if you are lucky enough to live where you can buy them. Around here we get curly kale or organic curly kale! Kale is on the Dirty Dozen list so you might want to consider buying it organic.

Lightened Up Tahini- Lemon Dressing

From Angela at Oh She Glows

Yield: Just under 1 cup of dressing
Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup Tahini
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (about 2 lemons)
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast or a bit more, to taste
• 2-4 tbsp Extra virgin olive oil, to taste
• 1 tsp kosher salt + freshly ground black pepper, or to taste
• 3 tbsp water, or as needed

Directions:
1. In a food processor, add all ingredients and process until smooth. Makes just under one cup.

Now for a couple VBS pictures from last night. I have troubles narrowing the picture selection down you know!

Getting soaked not just wet of course!

Fun experiments in the Imagination Station Room!

Lazarus coming forth from the tomb! I love the smile on his face.

A little ping pong ball dropping from the upstairs balcony of the youth center for our new class of middle schoolers coming up.

They had to retrieve all the balls as quickly as they could. They were having a blast!

Can't wait to see what tonight will hold!



A Week of Salad -Monday

Hello faithful readers! There are probably only about two of you left. This is VBS week for us. That means that I don't have to cook dinner all week long because a team of people will be doing it for me at the church every night. I love that. I am busy enough with a million other details so I am thrilled that I don't have to think about it. It also means that there will be some things for dinner that I probably wouldn't normally eat and so I will try to eat very healthy for breakfast and lunch and make sure that I get lots of veggies in to both of those meals. I will eat some celery and nut butters with breakfast and perhaps salsa on my eggs and drink V8 at breakfast. The easiest way to do that for me at lunch though is a big salad. I thought it might be fun and get me actually posting again if I did some simple quick posts of the salads I am likely to eat everyday for lunch this week.

So here is Monday...................

Red leaf lettuce, left over rotisserie chicken, sliced mini cucumbers, chopped tomato, diced red onion, and half an avocado sliced up.

For the dressing I used my home made mustard vinaigrette. You know how much I hate to measure but here is a fairly good guess for you.

3 oz. olive oil

1 oz. white wine vinegar

2 large cloves garlic, pressed

2 Tbsp. honey

2 Tbsp. Dijon mustard

You might have to add more honey, mustard, or vinegar to your taste.

Yummo! Loved the avocado on this salad.

I thought it might also be fun to have a VBS picture of the night. So here we go for Monday...............

Now you know why I have been too busy to blog or even cook much for that matter. This is a sea of excited children! We had a record 178 kids there last night. Monday night is usually our lowest night so I am anxious to see how the week progresses.

It was a super fun night!

Now I must hit the ground running for the day!

Vegetable Frittata

You know sometimes you just want breakfast for dinner, right? Nothing else sounded very good the other night and I was in a hurry and feeling like I hadn't cooked for my family in several nights. These words might have been spoken to my husband the night before, "I am too exhausted. You figure it out!" I had to leave to run a quick errand for VBS and when I came back he had figured it out. I was still to busy to even eat so I finished my tasks for the night and ate popcorn and celery with Sunbutter for dinner, no lie!

So Thursday night I decided to redeem myself. I thought about making pancakes because the kids would both love that, but I have really been trying to eat a little better amidst my busyness,which = fewer carbs and I had eaten at Qdoba for lunch with the other VBS ladies. Tortilla soup was awesome there along with my perfect portion size quesadilla by the way!

So I clicked on to one of my favorite blogs, Kalyn's Kitchen, for a phase one egg recipe. Three out of four people in this house like eggs and I decided to make the other one eat it anyway! Plus this recipe had a decent amount of veggies in it which made me super happy.

Start by adding these ingredients to the pan; one smaller zucchini diced fairly small, about half a red onion, 3-4 green onions, 2-3 minced garlic cloves, a dash of pepper and some basil and oregano, which I did add after I took this picture. Saute that mixture for about 5 minutes in a bit of olive oil.

Then add one can of diced tomatoes drained very well. I pressed all the liquid out with my spatula. I also picked fire roasted tomatoes because that is all I had but I LOVED the flavor that added and will always do that when I make this now.

Let that cook for about 3 more minutes. My picture isn't blurry. It is just steam.

I should have warned you at the beginning to get your eggs ready so you can just dump them in at this point. I had already cracked 6 eggs and scrambled them in the bowl with a little milk. Pour them in and stir them gently.

While that was cooking I grated some fresh Parmesan into the pan. Just a guess because you know I don't measure but I probably ended up with 1/2 cup of Parmesan. This Pampered Chef grater makes it very, very fine and light though so if you are using pre-shredded you may want to use a little less.

I also stirred in about 1/4 cup of feta cheese at this point making it more Greek of course but also very delicious.

I stirred gently for several minutes as the eggs continued to cook. I think I cooked this on lower heat for about 7 minutes. I am guessing again though. You want the eggs to be nearly finished with not too much liquid left. You can see that it was still pretty liquidy at this point. I just continued to move the egg around trying to let the liquid run down to the bottom of the pan.

A frittata is meant to be cooked in an oven proof skillet so it can go directly from the pan into the oven to finish cooking, but I do not have an oven proof skillet. It is on my list of wants. So I moved it to this Pampered Chef stoneware and pressed it firmly into the bottom. I topped it with a bit more feta and few of the green onions I had left.

Then I placed it under the broiler for about 5 minutes. I would have liked to have left it in there for a few more minutes but my family was sitting at the table waiting to be served already. For goodness sakes I guess this is a restaurant! Next time I will either use more eggs or a smaller pie plate because it was also a bit thinner then I had hoped for using this dish. I think it also needs to sit for just a few minutes to firm up a bit so it is easier to cut into pie shaped pieces.

It was however the best thing I have made in quite some time! I haven't cooked much lately either so that wasn't really saying much now was it? Husband and son approved! They scarfed theirs down and remarked several times how good it was. Daughter actually ate hers and she hates eggs! She said she liked it but she also asked how many bites she had to eat in order to have dessert. She has a one track mind.

I served mine over spinach because you know my rule about eating something green. I didn't make the kids eat the spinach this time though. I guess I was feeling nice. Next time I might just cook the spinach right in there. I did actually eat some toast with this meal but only because it was sprouted grain bread which is pretty good for you.

This one is my very favorite and as you can see it comes from Trader Joe's. We always buy a few loaves and freeze them when we go there. They last quite a while for since we don't eat a ton of bread. I should mention that we do keep it in the fridge after opening. I like this one best because it isn't as dry as some of the others can be so it is great for toast and sandwiches.

Only 8:37am on Saturday morning and I have actually finished a blog post! Now maybe you still have time to make this for breakfast this morning or maybe not by the time I edit all my spelling and actually type the recipe. Perhaps for dinner tonight. You must put it on your to do list if you don't get to it this weekend. The very best part of making it for dinner Thursday night was that I got to eat the leftovers for breakfast Friday morning which = AWESOME!

Here is the link to Kalyn's recipe and my recipe typed below that. I did make a few changes but nothing major. Just the fire roasted tomatoes and Parmesan instead of Mozzarella. I also left out the Spike seasoning and used milk in the eggs instead of cream. Her method was also a bit different.

Kalyn's Greek Frittata

Vegetable Frittata

1 zuchinni, diced into small pieces

1/2 a small red onion, diced

2-3 cloves garlic, minced

4-5 green onions, diced

1/2 tsp. dried oregano

1/2 tsp. dried basil

pepper to taste

1 Tbsp. Olive oil

one can fire roasted tomatoes, drained very well

6 eggs, beaten

1 Tbsp. milk

1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan or Mozzarella

1/4 cup feta cheese + more for topping

Directions: In a large oven proof pan saute the zuchinni, red onion, green onion, garlic, basil, oregano, and pepper in the olive oil for about 5 minutes. Add the well drained tomatoes and cook for another 3 minutes. While this cooks, beat eggs with milk in a bowl. Add eggs to pan and cook for 5 minutes or so until eggs are barely starting to set. Add Parmesan and feta stirring it gently a few times to let the eggs cook. Watch carefully until most of the liquid is absorbed. Leave in oven proof skillet (or transfer to oven safe dish if you don't have one). Top with remaining cheese and a bit of green onion and place under the broiler for about 5 minutes. Watch carefully. Remove when cheese it starting to brown and let set for a few minutes to firm up. Slice and serve.