Epic Fail & A Success

We now only have 1 day of 'freedom' left! Jeff has been busy getting ready for 600+ students and teachers to receive and effectively use iPads in the next 2 weeks while I've been...shopping :) I bought 4 pairs of shoes in 3 days. I think this means it's about time to go back to school so I can't be tempted!

As we've been exploring more with recipes from other blogs and tryin

g to be more conscious of what we eat (i LOVED my 4-week cleanse with Katie at Rooted Wellbeing), we've consumed quite a few amazing meals in the past week. Tonight, I'm sharing on of those meals along with a failed meal. Good news or bad news first? How about bad...

We were really excited when I found this Gazpacho recipe! I have been reading Jenna's blog for a couple months now and featured one of her meals last week. She has recently started blogging for the PBS Fresh Tastes Blog. We had almost everything in the fridge for this recipe and it has been HOT lately so we thought it would be perfect! Not so much :( The first bite was quite tasty, but the more we ate the stronger and more overpowering the red onion became. We put our soup back in the blender and added more lemon juice, V8 and anything else we could think of. Unfortunately, the leftover soup is still in our fridge until I'm brave enough to try it again. Jeff already had an aversion to red onion and this may just have sent him over the edge! So if you like red onion (lots!) or if you play around with the proportions, this could still be a good one for those hot summer nights. It's pretty and tastes very fresh!

We definitely didn't lose our faith and tried another of Jenna's recipes. This time we were not disappointed! I love when I come across a new recipe in my reading and realize we have almost everything for it. This one was no different and we highly recommend this quesadilla for all occasions! We made a few small changes - fresh sauteed peppers and onions with spinach. Next time, I would add more chili powder...I like it spicy! But I think the pictures speak for themselves...

Enjoy!

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!