Tomato Cucumber Salad

I love this time of the year, fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, doesn't get any better!  Last night, after returning from a horrific experience at the doctors office, waited in the lobby for an hour before I was even called into a room, saw the doctor for 5 minutes and then waited another 30 minutes to do a blood test, after I went and complained that no one was helping me!!!!!  Good thing I didn't have to go back to work!

Tom and I decided to go to the movies and have "Date Night", but we wanted to eat something before we went, we had leftover stuffed poblanos (that will be in a future post) and I decided to make tomato cucumber salad with fresh basil and oregano, all from my garden!  I love it when I can "live off the land".

Tomato Cucumber Salad
1 large cucumber
2 large tomatoes
Fresh Basil
Fresh Oregano
Salt
Pepper
Olive Oil
Balsamic Vinegar

Start with peeling and cutting up the cucumber

 

Pick a couple good tomatoes, chop and add to cucumbers

 

Add some fresh basil and oregano

Toss this together with salt and pepper, olive oil and balsamic vinegar

 

I added some black olives, which my husband was not too happy about.  The great thing is I grew everything in this salad (except the olives)!

 

 

 

Spicy Chorizo Corn Chowder

When I browse thru magazines, the recipes I try to focus on have items that are growing in my garden.  This chowder recipe caught my eye immediatly because it has a couple of items from my garden, poblano chilies and fresh basil and it is pretty simple to make.

2 Poblano Chilies
12 oz chorizo, casing removed
4 cups fresh corn kernals, about 3 ears
2 cups chicken broth, reduced sodium
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1/4 red onion, thinly sliced
1/2 cup sliced basil leaves

The poblano chilies need to be blackened and have the skin removed, my husband does this for me on the grill, puts them in a zip lock bag for a few minutes and the skin comes off pretty easy. Let cool, remove stem, seeds and chop.

Cook chorizo, breaking up sausage, discard any fat.
Cut corn from each ear.
In a saucepan, add cooked chorizo, corn and chicken broth, bring to a boil and cook until corn is tender, about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Reduce heat to simmer, add cream and poblanos.
Ladle into bowls, sprinkle with onion and basil.

For some reason my computer did not want to load all the pictures, trust me it was yummy!

Thank you Sunset Magazine for the recipe!

The $5.00 Bill Savings Trick

I am going to share with you one of my money savings tricks, I have been doing this for a long time and everyone like to give me a hard time about it.  Whenever I get a $5.00 in my wallet, I pull it out and put it in a drawer, pretty soon those $5.00 bills are a few hundred.

Feeling Inspired

I was having dinner with some friends last night and we got to talking about blogs, of course I said I have a blog but haven't updated in awhile.  Well, my friend Kortney was telling me about her friend, Katie and her blog, I promptly looked it up, All Things Katie Marie, it was great!  After browsing for awhile, I wanted to jump up and get my blog going again, but decided to wait until the morning, that way I can sit, have a cup of coffee and organize my thoughts.

I originally created the blog to celebrate my Grandma Opal and the wonderful food she cooked.  I decided that I am going to evolve my blog into celebrating not only the great food my husband and I grow and prepare, but the values I have learned from my family and the things that are important to me.

Here are some of the topics I will be including in my new, updated version of Grandma Opal's Midwest Favorites:
 - Recipes
 - Exercise tips and tricks
 - Budgeting and money saving ideas

Thanks for the inspriation Katie!  Everyone please follow All Things Katie Marie!

Walnut Tartlets

On the 5th of July, my sister and I had plans to do some wine tasting with Auntie Maria and Grandma in Santa Cruz, our journey began by going about 5 miles out of our way to the Summit Store in the Santa Cruz Mountains to get some sandwiches, if you ever visit this area, you MUST go to this store, it is AWESOME! After we got our sandwiches, we were on our way to Santa Cruz, there is a group of wineries on Swift Street and a delightful French Bakery, Kelly's French Pastry.  The wine was good, but the Walnut Tartlets at Kelly's French Pastry were delicious, so were the French Macaroons.  Well, I decided I could make those little tarts, so I got up this morning, looked up a recipe on the internet, found one that I liked and dived right in.  The funny thing is, I was thinking I haven't blogged about my food recently and on my way home from my jog, I saw my friend, Trisha, from high school, she reminded me that I haven't updated my blog, so here it is, thanks Trisha!

First, I had to make the pastry, not too bad and I found out that I LOVE my Cuisinart food processor! I have had the mini tart pans forever, but I have never used them, they worked perfect!  I love to buy nifty baking contraptions, haven't used them all, but I shall start!

 

 

Next, I had to bake these little guys and make the filling, these are the ingredients for the filling, not really low fat, oh well, I am going off the diet today.

 

Next, I had to fill the tart shells with the yummy, walnut mixture

 

 

These went back into the oven, the recipe said to bake them about 25 minutes, I think it was a little too long, they got a little browner that I would have liked, BUT they tasted really good.

 

I am sure that I will have to do some more R&D on these, but I think they were a success!  I will have my sister try these tomorrow, after we get our workout done!

 

My hubs and Sarah have been in Colorado for a week for softball, they are coming home tonight, I can't wait to see them, I will try to get one of them to be a taste tester later on!