we love summer!

Can you believe it's almost August? We can't! We left on June 8th for the mid-west. 5,145 miles, 8 states and 6.5 weeks later, we arrived back in SC on Sunday. We got to see tons of friends/family and participate in numerous memorable activities. Pictures will be on facebook sometime before we go back to school (August 8th :(.

Although we didn't do lots of cooking (did you see the dinner party we cooked for?), I did discover the world of health/food blogs and the genius of Google Reader. I never knew there were so many blogs out there! While it has been fun perusing recipes, it has also made me realize I'm not (and probably never will be) a good/dedicated blogger. I don't have the motivation to post everyday or even every week! Two things have helped me not become too depressed: 1- We are NOT professional bloggers and may even be considered workaholics from August to June & 2 - Our blog is called cooking in LAYMAN's terms. We didn't go to culinary school, we aren't professional photographers and we don't make our own recipes. But unlike many people we know, we cook 5+ nights a week (and enjoy it!) and we like to be pretty healthy.

Here are a couple recipes we've borrowed this week from blogs I've started following:

Gnocchi by Jenna

I was so excited about this recipe when I came across it! We just happened to have both basil and cherry tomatoes growing on our porch (Jeff should probably do a garden update ;)! We added some gnocchi & goat cheese and made a simple spinach salad and voila! I don't think I've ever had gnocchi before, but I liked it! I KNOW I came across a homemade gnocchi recipe, but now I can't find it anywhere :( If you have the time, that's another possibility for this recipe. If not, this is a super quick & simple meal. (sorry the quality of the photo isn't great...we used Jeff's iPad 2 from his new job as Instructional Technology Specialist at Muller Road Middle School :)

Adult Grilled Cheese by Caroline
Since we love caprese salads AND grilled cheese so much, we knew as soon as we saw this that we had to have it! After our gnocchi, we didn't have enough fresh basil for the pesto but luckily we happened to have a jar in the fridge. We stopped at the farmers' market (so good to be back!) on Tuesday for a beefsteak tomato and then picked out a not too processed bread at Kroger. We ate these for dinner Tuesday night, Jeff ate one for lunch yesterday, and we made small ones for a midnight snack last night (our dinner didn't go as planned - more on that next time). Needless to say we thoroughly enjoyed them (although I'm sure they would be better with fresh pesto)! After all of these prepared & consumed sandwiches, I realized today when I sat down to write this post that we didn't have a picture! So...I made another one for lunch today ;)

Hopefully all the blogs I've been reading will help us get motivated to blog more often. School starts soon though, so no promises!