Mason Jar - Greek Salad

We had company this weekend so I didn't get to dabble in a new recipe.  Greek salad is one of my favs for the summer, it's light and filling.

I chose the wide mouth Kerr jars from Target over the Ball jars because they are more uniform in size and if you decided to eat straight from the jar you wouldn't get dressing hands!

You can also see in my pic that there are two salads layered differently.  

Ingredients:

Kalmata Olives and Juice

Thin sliced red onion

Diced cucumber

Feta cheese

Chicken

Romaine lettuce

Greek Feta Dressing from Trader Joes OR Newmans Greek

There's no set amount for each ingredient, layer to taste.  I will say though that the onions can get a little strong.

Left Salad

Hubby doesn't like olives of any kind.  He also works from home so I left his dressing out so he could choose how much or little to use.

Right Salad

For me, the more Greek the better!  I chopped up 6 olives, a little onion, 1.5 tbsp olive juice and 2 tbsp feta dressing for the bottom of my jar.  Followed by chicken, feta, cucumber and lettuce. 

What I'm trying to say here is do what works for your family.  There's no wrong way here. 

July - Summer in Full Swing

July 1-4 Vegas Baby
Our friends Molly and Andrew came to visit from Mexico.  We hardly ever get to see them so we took this opportunity to treat them to a weekend away.

I can't post all the pictures so here's the highlights:

We played sequence with m&ms for board pieces while making up a new guessing game called I Am. You can only ask yes or no questions to figure out what item you are (determined by opposing team), trust me this is hilarious especially when your drinking....err juice. 

We walked through the endless casinos playing/posing with novelty items like gigantic necklaces. 

We found a place that served deep fried lobster tail and lobster ice cream, tried both.  

Ate dinner at a country bar that had a disco bull.  Went to the aquarium at the Mandalay hotel, where I met a piranha and Andrew had his head in the mouth of a alligator.  Stuffed ourselves at a Brazilian buffet with the best chimichuri I've ever tasted.  Saw Vegas the show compliments of our time share.  Did lots of shopping.  Walked the strip at night then has midnight sushi.  Woke up late shopped some more, had lunch and enormous dessert at Serendipity 3.

July 18-20

I took advantage of a miss scheduling at work and some time share points that needed booking and took a little trip to Palm Springs.  It was intended to be a relaxing craft weekend but it didn't turn out like that with a 2 yr old in tow.  We did have a good time watching movies, playing in the pool and getting our toes done. 

Then rush right home for Taryn's recital and Aileen's baby shower....

Show ran till almost 7 pm, didn't make the shower went home to crash instead.

July 21 Family Dinner

Our first time having the whole family over since moving to the house.  Like my Brady bunch pic? My parents, grandparents, aunt, cousin, sister, bro in law and his parents...the whole kit and caboodle.

My grandparents have an affinity for grilling; my potato salad came out so good the first time that I made it again with traditional BBQ baked beans corn and burgers!  We also had mason jar margaritas and pineapple upside down cake.

I love my hubby 

July 27
No Shoes Nation tour

One if the best concerts ever! Eli Young Band, Eric Church, Kenny Chesney, my little country head was about to explode!  Hubby bought me a "crazy girl" baseball tee, I love it so much I'm having a hard time not over wearing it lol.

July 30

Turned 32, mom brought me some delicious perfume.

Mason Jar - Dijon & Fig Glaze Salad

My latest fascination is mason jars. They are charming, country, space efficient and eco friendly. As you saw in my last post I've gone pin crazy on smoothie recipes and salads. I spent my Sunday testing new smoothie recipes and making mason jar salads.

I've also been looking into the differences between paleo and primal eating.  I am a lover of cheese, primal allows dairy.  I really shouldn't be doing dairy because of my auto immune deficiencies but as I'm dipping my toes back into the paleo pool I'm not going to cut it just yet, starting back with cutting grain and processed sugars.  You'll see some cheese etc in my recipes so change to fit your needs.

Dijon Fig Pear Champagne Glaze Salad

This glaze recipe was originally found on Trader Joes website.  I never cook a whole chicken because its just the 2 of us plus I prefer boneless skinless breasts, so I modified this slightly to fit my taste/need.  Usually I marinate and grill my chicken but in this case I'm using the glaze as my salad dressing.  Hubby kindly pre grilled a bunch of chicken for me so I could chop and go.

4 tbsp champagne pear Gorgonzola dressing

1 tbsp Dijon mustard

1 tbsp fig butter

Stir in a dish and microwave for 30 seconds to meld all the flavors. 

If your grilling chicken go ahead and start marinating, leave a little on the side for dipping.  If your making your salad wait for it to cool before placing in the jar.

I'm no expert here but I was told its all in how you layer your jars.  You want dressing on the bottom (be careful not to splash up on the sides) followed by meat and/or items that can marinate in dressing without falling apart, then comes your hearty veggies like cucumber, bell pepper, mushroom etc. and finally leafy greens

In my salad I chose glaze, chicken, cherries, candied walnuts, cucumber and romaine.

What do you like in your salads?

Smooth E Operator

I know its been few and far between that I've been able to post anything.  The short story of it all is that we're short staffed at my work and I've been working 13 hour days (that's right people, I'm gone from 5am to 7pm)  The sad side effect is that I've been eating out for all my meals because I leave so early and come home so late I'm to exhausted to prepare anything.....and now I've gained back all the weight I'd lost plus some more.  BOO.

Upside, Hubby bought me a Ipad so in my down time at work I've been on Pinterest, pin pin pining away paleo recipes.  By some miracle I had 6 days off in a row and decided to actually try some of these recipes and really try to get back on track with paleo eating.

These are my trusty tools:  IPAD and Blender.  I also picked up this snazzy mortar and pestle at Costco, a few of these recipes called for ground flax seed.  I also heard that ground chia seed helps thicken smoothies and is amazing in Omega 3.

This did take quite a while to cut up all the fruit and read each recipe so I don't have pictures of them all.  Instead I'm posting the pretty pictures from the blogs they came from, followed by my modified recipe, when you click on the picture it will link you to the original recipe.

Why modified you ask?  I'm allergic to banana (the base of most smoothies), I had to use the fruit on hand and some had to be paleo-fied.

Strawberry Sunbutter & Spinach

http://www.coffeeandquinoa.com/2013/03/strawberry-spinach-sunbutter-smoothie/

• 2 cups frozen strawberries
• 2 large handful spinach leaves
• 3 Tbsp sunbutter
• 1cup unsweetened almond milk
• 1.5 Tbsp maple syrup
• 1Tbsp ground flax seed
• 2 tsp apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon

I doubled the original recipe and it filled 2 mason jars perfectly.   This smoothie is pretty delicious, especially if your a peanut butter lover like my hubby is.  Sun butter is the perfect sub, Trader Joe's has a pretty yummy jar for under $5.

Mango Orange

http://oursavorylife.com/a-super-hydrating-paleo-smoothie-recipe/

1 cup frozen mango's

1 orange, peeled

2 apricots

1 cup almond milk

1/2 cup 100% pure coconut milk

Chia Seed and Ground Flax optional

Bright citrus flavor, the apricot didn't blend down to well though.  If you don't like chunky smoothies I would leave it out.

Pina Colada

http://www.vegalicious.org/2011/02/04/pina-colada-smoothie/

• 2 cups pineapple (I used frozen from Trader Joe's)
• 1 cup mango
• 1 can coconut milk
• 1 cup pineapple juice
• Chia Seed and Ground Flax optional

This was my favorite, the only down side was it was a little to acidic drinking it all at once, but that could just be me. I still have one more jar of this so I'm going to definitely try again.

At this point I was feeling pretty confident in my smoothie making ability's and decided to wing it.  I had purchased some pre cooked beets at Costco, super healthy....super disgusting.  Picture me, dumping 3 juicy beets in the blender, dancing in the kitchen singing "turn the beet around, blah blah blah, the passion".  It didn't matter how much fruit I put in the blender it was not going to cover that taste.  I even dumped half out and tried to salvage it.  No Bueno.

So we scrapped that batch and moved on.

Very Berrylicious

http://www.thegraciouspantry.com/clean-eating-super-berry-smoothie/

1 cup blueberries

1 cup strawberries

1 cup blackberries

2 big hand fulls of spinach

1 tablespoon chia seeds (I added ground flax too)

1 cup unsweetened almond milk 

Another fav of the Hubby's, he loves anything berry and definitely better than beets!

Here are my little beauties in the freezer, each batch filled 2 jars. My mom bought me blue ball jars at Target.  I also bought larger jars to make salads in more on that to come and more smoothie recipes too.  I found some with avocado base, that should be interesting.

June 2013

I'm so behind and my OCD won't let me blog out of order!  I have half a mind to just scrap these missed months posts but I don't want to forget these little moments so I'll try to blow through these to get to the meaty stuff. 

June 8

Alyssa's grad party

Remember in mays post the madness that was my desk?  That was the creation of little Missy's graduation gift of a years worth of photos and mementos her mama cleverly snuck away.  I was glad to provide my artistic abilities.

June 14

Book club

Ms. Lindsay did an amazing job with our china themed party.  She choose the book Shanghai Girls by Lisa See.  The details in the book were so intricate you could picture everything.  It was so emotional and raw, incredible page turner, I had to get the second book because I had to know what was going to happen next!

As always we do what we do best eat, talk, kiss babies, eat, talk and eat some more!

June 16

The entire month of May my sister and her hubby were touring Europe. (Yes jealous!)

We had them over for Sunday dinner, I made my first ham and tried my hand at grandma's potato salad.  I did pretty darn good too.  My lovely sister brought me these delightful goodies, soap from Paris, bowls from Italy bracelets from Spain.  All in my favorite color, aqua!  It looked so pretty like this I left it to display in my book shelf.  

June  22-23

Yearly I put on a craft day which has affectionately become known as CYBO (craft your brains out) for 10 delirious hours of crafting food and games.  I normally to do it at a local high school in a big room but my connection retired so we were on the hunt for a new location.  Only problem is we were so used to the nice accommodations and being free is a big plus!  Another change this year was that I now have a house to host in, so I took the challenge of fitting 15 crafters between 3 rooms. 

I think these girls look pretty happy.

Blur of May

Sunday May 4

Well we kicked off May with a Air Show at my work.  I took my favorite boys, Hubby, my Dad and Ryan along with some of his friends.   I work on a small airport that was hosting this show, so we got free front row seats.  It was so cute watching the boys get so excited at each taxiing plane.

I let each of them have a turn taking pictures, made sure they were really careful using the neck strap and all…

The best part was everyone got to get into our helicopter, play with the buttons and wear the head sets.

Look at these beaming faces!

Then the party foul happened.  When we were packing up to leave my hands were full of bags, chairs, food etc.  Somehow I let the camera strap slip and dropped it right on its face! 

Thankfully just the UV filter broke and not the actual lens.  So grateful that the camera guy suggested we buy the filter for just this reason!  The next day at work I had to have one of the guys in the shop break loose the filter because it bent on the threads.  OUCH.  Still no damage to the actual lens, which is amazing. 

On our way home Dad Ryan and I made up a song about Ryan’s Floppy band aid from a cut he’d gotten earlier in the morning.   Maybe you had to be there but it was super funny to us…. Remember Ryan’s 9.

Floppy band aid came from my dad

Floppy band aid it’s all he had

Floppy band aid made from a tree

Floppy band aid it protects me

Floppy band aid I pick at it so much

Floppy band aid it hurts to touch

Floppy band aid my skin is white

Floppy band aid I’m glad it’s night

Floppy band aid covers my scab

Floppy band aid is such a drag

Floppy band aid don’t know what to do

Floppy band aid it lost its glue

Floppy band aid I started to rub

Floppy band aid came off in the tub

Floppy band aid I got a new cut

Floppy band aid it’s on my Butt!

Saturday May 8
My desk looked like this pretty much the entire month of May.

I've been helping a friend make a memory book of her daughter Senior year as a graduation project.  It's a surprise so everything stays at my house. 

This shot of Zoe cracks me up.  She's such a clingy little bugger, always under foot.  I always tell them "go outside, be a dog!"  She found out that she can hop up on the flower bed and peek into the window to see what I'm doing.

Tuesday May 14
My Dad turned 55 today.  We don't celebrate birthdays, but I still think turning 55 is pretty cool.  Nice even number.  I love my Dad.  He's my favorite guy in the whole world next to my husband.  I got him a nice card at trader joes, it had a cute retro 50's dad on the cover saying "Fatherhood, Someone's gotta do it" for father's day but blank in side.  Wrote him a little thank you note for being such a great Dad and bought him some cupcakes.  If you know my Dad, you'd know he has a insane sweet tooth.

Saturday May 18

We had our first bon fire of the summer.  I saw this commercial, have not clue what it was actually for but it had smores in it and I thought "Mmmmmmm Smores" and quickly sent out a mass text for our friends to come over for cards and a fire.

We had a really nice group of young couples with lots of kiddos. 18 in total.  We all started out around the fire pit, but eventually the guys split to play poker and the girls stayed talking about babies and the latest news. 

Even grown up boys are dumb.  My friends husband toasted a mashmallow on his finger.

Gave the kids glow bracelets and flashlights and let them go nuts.

All in all it was a great night and every one went home happy and full of sugar.

May 24

We started our trip to Seattle and Canada for my parents 36 yr Anniversary.  There's so many pix for that it needs a whole seperate post.

Aprils Missed Post

I know its been a really long time, nearly 3 whole months since I've blogged.  We've just had a lot going on that I'll get into in another post.  In the mean time I notice that this little post never got to make its debut in April. 

Friday April 12

I hosted book club at my house for the first time.  I picked my favorite book ever, The Glass Lake by Maeve Binchy.  It's set between London and a small town in Ireland so I picked pub food for the theme.

I found this super cute little tea pot at World Market, reminded me of Big Ben.  I sat it on a stack of books by the same author and set out some teas.

What's more Pub like than a little beer?  Whilst at World Market I asked for a recommendation on Irish beers, I'm definately not a cono sur of any sort.  I was told that Wexford's was a cross between a blonde beer and cream soda, Delish!  Sounded like it would go great over vanilla ice cream, so I got everything in place for Beer Floats!!

We had a small showing, a quaint group of 4 got to sit around the kitchen table and drink wine. 

I found the best red I've ever tasted.  So not a red drinker, but this little baby was so smooth.

Along with our beer floats we had Pork and Cabbage sliders, Potatoes, Traditional meat pies and

soda bread with Dublin butter.

YUM

Saturday April 13

Our local scrap store closed (sad face) on the last day of March.  I'd really grown attached to the lady's that worked there in the past 5 years.  The only good part is that I totally scored on the going out of business sale and stocked up on supplies.  I even got a hanging rack to beautifully display all my treasures (stickers, embellishments, etc)

I have a gigantic clear cookie jar that houses my ribbon stash.  Since it was a lazy movie watching afternoon I decided to copy a technique I learned from Paper Craft Princess Cindy and band my ribbons with strips of brown paper bag.  They look so much better now and I'm able to find things much easier than dumping out the whole jar.

Sunday April 14
Curly Hair dont Care & the coffee that gets the morning going.

April 21

Went to visit my sissy in San Clemente to get my hair done before she rendezvous off to Europe for a month! We enjoyed the sunshine, had a nice hawaiian dinner and she made these delicious drinks with milk, cinnamon and chocolate whip vodka!  I'm a sucker for mason jars and colorful straws so had to snap a pic.

April 28

We got Zoe Monster....which we talked about here.

Thats it for April, now I'll move on to the blur that was May.