Roasted Corn Salad

I chose Roasted Corn Salad for this weeks recipe because I noticed the fresh corn on the cob in my local grocery store and it is priced really low -- 4 cobs for $1! I love fresh corn on the cob so I thought I would like this recipe....

I need to double check the recipe book, I noticed Melanie mentioned she cooked her corn first, but I didn't see it tell you that in the book and I actually just roasted mine along with the vegetables on my outdoor grill?

The only thing it didn't tell you to grill was the fresh tomatoes (not pictured above). And for the record you will see I only have 4 corn cobs and not 8 because I halved this recipe. The recipe says it will make 6 cups and I knew it wouldn't all get eaten so I just decided on making half that amount. You can see the recipe over at Mel's Blog.

So, you simply grill your veg, then chop everything up and place in a bowl. . . .

pour on the oil and balsamic vinegar dressing and chopped basil and mix together - that simple! but was it that tasty?

Verdict: Sad to say I wasn't impressed with this dish :-( I really wished I was, I mean I love everything in it, love the corn, love red bell peppers, squash, red onions - I just love all that fresh stuff, so why didn't I like the dish? I honestly thought it was too 'greasy'! I think I would have preffered to just scoop this dish up with a tortilla chip WITHOUT the dressing. That way it would have tasted fresh and crispy I think. I also would have preferred a fresh cilantro taste rather than basil. This dish reminds me more of a fresh salsa and cilantro is a must have in that case, whereas basil is more for a pesto dish (just imo).

Jason wasn't too impressed with this dish either. Honestly, after the first few tastes the rest went in the fridge and I thought I might try it later on top of chicken. Later never came, I took it out the next day and gave it a try... by then it was just cold and greasy, so it went in the trash :-(
Sorry PW!

Hotspots!

As I mentioned yesterday, Melanie is still on vacation and won't have computer access until she gets home late tonight, so our PW recipe will be posted tomorrow.

Today I thought I'd show you a few more 'not so pretty' photos (in the hopes it motivates me to make them pretty, then share with you the 'after photos later this week!).

HOTSPOTS! I bet you all have them. They are what Flylady refers to as those 'unattended areas' that if left alone will eventually take over. I have a few of them around the house. Here's the worst one (imo) . . . .

This is the side table next to my 'spot' on the sofa! As you can see it's full of yarn and needles and I'm afraid to say it looks like that most of the week. I haven't taken an 'after' photo because it STILL looks like that this morning. By showing you today I hope it makes me wanna go clean it up later and share a nicer photo later this week ;-)

Another 'hotspot' is this area above the kitchen sink, mainly to the right of it as you can see.

This picture is taken looking in to the kitchen. It's where Jason first walks to as he comes in the door, where we drop the mail once we bring it home and just about anything else you can think of, as you can see. I've tried putting a small basket there but to be honest it looks just as messy. So, I've decluttered that area, moved everything and left a yankee candle there and placed a basket of 'stuff' out of site (I'll show you where later this week).

And finally, upstairs in the game room, I have this . . . .

When I first put that table there (after getting the new kitchen table for downstairs) it looked like this. . .

And as you can see, that's not the case today! I still have my sewing machine out from doing Cheryl's cushions, and I'm afraid it has to stay there a little longer because I need to do some smaller cushions for her before I put it away.

Those are my hotspots! I hope to clear them up this week and I'll be more than happy to show you the 'after' pictures :-) So, where are your hotspots? Do you dare share them with us?

Sunday Musings . . . . June 14th

Hello it's me - it's Monday - and I'm just writing my 'Sunday Musings' now (which I told you would happen!) I had such a lazy day yesterday and just couldn't get motivated to do anything!

I was trying to take photos all weekend of my latest knit - a drop stitch shawl (which is now listed in my Etsy shop). It's so difficult taking good photos. I think when you're trying to sell something it's very important to get very good pictures, clear and closeup but I feel like I'm failing miserably :-/

I'm also busy right now trying to read my book for book club - the meeting is this Thursday. We are reading 'The Lace Reader' by Brunonia Barry, but it's not really my cup of tea. I'm already on to page 220 and no one has read a piece of lace yet! It seems to be more of a murder mystery story. I'm determined to finish it though, I always enjoy the meetings and of course now I want to know what happens in the end!

Speaking of books I've been looking at some that I can read with Kristen this summer. We went to Half Price Books at the weekend to look around. Kristen said she wanted a new book to read. Apparently she's been reading a lot at night before she goes to sleep and had finished a 'Pokemon' chapter book that she's had on her shelf for a while. She picked a book called 'Molly Moon'.

A few years ago I read Charlotte's Web with her. I'd never read it before but we both really enjoyed it. Ever since then I've wanted to try and read a classic of some sort with her now and then. We later read James and the Giant Peach - and after reading both books we watched the movies too.

Someone suggested 'Julie of the Wolves' a while ago for Kristen to read, so I'm ordering that today from Amazon. If any of you have any other books your kids liked to read, I'd love to hear about them. Or if you've read any good books yourself feel free to recommend them for me :-) I love talking about books and finding new ones to read. I thought of reading the Tales of Despereaux but Kristen told me last week that they'd just read it in class!

OK, with all that said I must confess I don't have much else to write about this week. It was a nice lazy uneventful first week of summer. I think this week I need to start writing notes down about what we do each day so I can write a little more on Sundays.

I'll be back tomorrow with a post about 'Hotspots' (courtesy of FlyLady) because Melanie won't have computer access until late Tuesday night so we are postponing our PW recipe until Wednesday.

Have a great Monday, and thanks for dropping by.

What to write about....

I don't like going 3 days without a post, but I can't think of what to write about this week! When hubby stays off from work I feel like I get behind on everything - that was the case yesterday. While it was lovely that Jason took the day off and we took Kristen out to lunch to Cici's Pizza (her choice, and if I never go back to that place it would be fine with me!) I found the day just flew by and I didn't get a chance to come on here and post like I had wanted to. But that's ok, hubby taking the day off work to be with us is always a treat :-)

I'm still behind on a lot of stuff though.... something I will just have to try and fix over the coming days (or even weeks). Can I just say that eating 'all you can eat' pizza yesterday was not my idea of fun. I am so in to 'eating healthy' that eating pizza just doesn't appeal to me. Usually on a weekend my 'eating healthy' goes out the window and I indulge in 'junk' stuff, I'm going to try and not do that this weekend.

I do plan on having a lazy weekend though, just knitting and reading. I am behind on my book club read! I need to read at least 40 pages a day (reading The Lace Reader) or I won't finish the book by the meeting date next Thursday. So, with that said I'll jump off here, wish you all a wonderful Saturday and I'll try and get back tomorrow to post my Sunday Musings (I said I'll try... it could well be Monday, you know that) ;-)

Keeping it Real

I'm going to share some pictures of my kitchen with you today! I'll forewarn you now, they won't be 'pretty' pictures. Usually when I share them of my home it's when I've cleaned everything up, perhaps changed things around a bit or added something new, then I show off the pretty 'after' photos and I look forward to all of your ooohs and ahhhhs in the comments :-) But not today . . . today I'm keeping it real!

Remember I mentioned 'Flylady' last week, well I've started reading the emails I get sent and I'm taking 'babysteps' just like Flylady says. I want to do it this way because when I think of all the stuff I need to do to get this house in order and clean I really do feel overwhelmed, and as I said before I find that at the end of the day nothing really got done at all!

Flylady breaks your housecleaning down in to 5 zones and this week we are in zone #2 which is the kitchen. For the life of me I can't seem to keep this room clean and decluttered, but I'm gonna give it my best shot from now on. Our first mission on Monday was to 'Look Up' - set your timer for 10 minutes and clean away any dusties and cobwebs that we see, then clean the top of your fridge! I have to be honest I didn't see any dusties on my walls or ceiling so I went to look at the top of my fridge and I'm gonna share with you what I saw . . .

Arghhhhhhh! LOL, terrible isn't it - but I'm not ashamed because I KNOW I am not the only one that has a fridge top that looks like that (I added the smiley face just for you all before I took the pic) :-) This task took all of about 3 minutes, and look at the pretty 'after'. . .

Ahhh, much better. Shame only me knows how clean it looks though! (oh, and all of you do now too, so it was worth doing).

One of the very first things Flylady tells you to do is 'shine your sink'. You can see exactly how to do it if you CLICK HERE. I've been shining my sink all week. . . .

THIS is not acceptable any more:


THIS is:

I still have a long way to go but I'll get there one 'babystep' at a time - do you feel like joining me? Let me know if you find this motivating and I'll share with you next time how I tackle my 'hotspots' - the Flylady way of course!

PW's Chicken Spaghetti - again!

Melanie is on vacation this week, visiting her friend in Atlanta, so she picked a recipe from the PW Cookbook that she'd already made before and had taken photos of. It just so happened that I had already made the dish too. It was the very first recipe I tried when I first got my cookbook - Chicken Spaghetti. This is posted on my 'cooking blog' but I'm reposting the pictures (and verdict) here so you don't have to click on over there.

I made this my first recipe to try because I was intrigued that this is the only 'casserole' Marlboro Man will eat - I wondered how good it could really be? You can find the recipe HERE on Ree's cooking site.

(and just for the record, you'll find much nicer photos at that link too)... but here's a few of mine: some of the ingredients...

everything is basically thrown together...

poured in to a dish with more cheese added on top... and popped in to the oven,

and here it is right out of the oven...

and I tried my best to get a good close up 'yummy' shot...

Verdict: Overall it is very tasty, the amounts of seasoning and liquid were fine for me, I didn't have to add any more. I did make a couple of changes, first being I didn't have a fryer chicken, I used just two large chicken breasts that I had defrosted the day before, I boiled these in water and then just shredded them. I didn't use the 'stock' from this but opened a can of chicken broth and used that instead.

The only thing I would change if I made this again (and I'm sure I will, it makes a great easy dish and would be nice with a crispy green salad and fresh bread) is I would saute the onion and bell pepper. PW doesn't say to do so, but to me the onion just wasn't cooked enough after 45 minutes, and I found the onion a little too over-powering. In saying that, we had more of this heated up a day or so later and the onion taste was a little less strong then, but I'd still like to cook them first next time just to taste the difference. A little more cheese wouldn't come amiss either!

After reposting this recipe I feel like actually making this casserole again this week! I just defrosted chicken breasts today to use this week so I may take two of them tomorrow and throw this thing together again ;-) I deliberately have a jar of pimentos in the pantry for this very recipe. If you're wondering what to make for dinner one night this week, give this a try.

Linking to Tasty Tuesday at http://beautyandbedlam.com/

Tempt My Tummy Tuesday at http://blessedwithgrace.blogspot.com/

Sunday Musings . . . . June 6th

Well, I did start this post yesterday (when it was Sunday) but obviously didn't get it finished. I enjoyed a lazy day instead just knitting while Kristen and Jason played with the new 'Mario Galaxy 2' that I bought them for the Wii. We also went out for lunch together to the Chinese Buffet again (as much as I like that place I told Jason I wouldn't want to make it a habit to eat there.... it's so easy to eat waaaaaaay too much!)

So yay, school is finally out for Summer :-) No more getting up at 6am for many many weeks. In saying that, I was still up at 7am this morning with Jason. He usually doesn't get up til nearly 8am but needs to get in to the office a bit earlier this week so I told him I'd get up with him (cos that's what good 'wiffies' do!) LOL :-)

This weekend we hung out with our neighbors, Cheryl and Steve as they had friends in from CA. We sat out on our front porch on Friday night, while the kids played with the sprinkler toys.

Cheryl took this picture of Kristen and posted it to her Facebook photos so I 'borrowed' it to post here - that is one happy little girl!

I seriously need to start making notes about what we did during the week, I've once again forgotten, or is it the fact we didn't do anything that makes it hard to remember?

I started 'Flying' again! Told you about that on Thursday :-) Today is my first day, so to speak of trying to clean and declutter the 'Flylady' way. I'll let you know what I did and keep you posted (and perhaps even motivated) next time I blog.

I listed a few things in my Etsy shop! Thanks everyone for stopping by and taking a look. There is only one thing left in there again, so I need to get busy knitting more. I think I may start to focus on some 'winter' knits too. That doesn't sound appealing when it's 90 degrees outside, but that's something I will need to do if I want to be one step ahead of the season. No point in starting to knit winter items in the Winter, or it will be Spring before I get them finished and listed!

Well, it's 8.30am now. Jason has just left for work, Kiki is just waking up and I'm off to get another cup of coffee and think about what to have for breakfast! Have a wonderful start to your week everyone and thanks for stopping by :-)