Cottage Cheese Stuffed Avocado with Two Options

Perfect for eating on the deck with some pretty flowers nearby.

It's getting hot around here, and I don't mean in the good way.  I mean in the frizzy hair, damp underarms, I'm cranky and have lost my appetite kind of way.

Generally I don't eat a heavy lunch anyway because I get home from work late.  So I eat a light lunch around 1:30 and then eat supper around 5:30.  Most of my lunches are some form of leftover from the previous night.  However sometimes there aren't leftovers, or now that it's hot, I don't feel like messing with heating anything up.  On those days I make myself a salad, a pimento cheese sandwich, or my latest obsession - an avocado stuffed with cottage cheese.

Corn Tortilla Dogs

One day this summer I was standing in the middle of a 7-11 waiting for the 8 year old to finish up his "pit stop."  The hot dog roller caught my eye and as I watched hot dogs, taquitos, corn dogs, and batter covered round foods slowly turning on the heated rollers, I thought to myself "I bet I could make something like that at home."  Thus the corn tortilla dog was born.

Ham and Cheese Corn Muffins

The 8 year old has decided that he's tired of sandwiches.  Since he takes his lunch to school, this is a bit of a problem.  So I set out trying to find something that would be filling, have protein, be reasonably healthy, and would be packable for his lunch.

S'mores Trail Mix

Here's a quick, easy one for a day time hike or an overnight car camping trip.  We like to mix up a big batch of this before all of our camping trips so we can snack on it in the car or while we're waiting for supper at the camp site.  I like it because, while it's admittedly not the healthiest snack mix out there, it's fun and versatile.

Meal Plan Camping Style

Things have been a little stressful in good ways and in not so good ways around the Now Things Are Cookin' household the last few weeks, which is why the blog has been quiet lately.  My husband and his best friend have known each other literally all their lives.  They lived across the street from each other from the time they were babies until they graduated from high school and even roomed together in college.  Two weeks ago my husband's best friend's father passed away.  Both the family and my husband have been taking it hard.

Two days after the funeral, we took our annual  four day/three night (car) camping trip with three other families. We've taken this trip ever since the 8 year old was the 3 year old,  It's always a trip we look forward to every year, even after the disaster of a trip four years ago when it was 100 degrees every day and none of our campsites had any shade!

Bread and Butter Freezer Pickles

As I'm working on this post, I'm also chatting on Facebook with one of my parents' long-time friends, Marian, whom I haven't seen in more years than I can count.  When I was little, for a few years my parents, Marion and her husband, and another family all shared a large neighborhood garden.  It was quite large with lots of space for experiments - I remember the year they tried to grow peanuts! - and standbys.  Zucchini, anyone?

Peach Blueberry Garden Salad with Honey Balsamic Vinegrette

Okay, I have a small confession.  While I do love vegetables (I was that crazy kid who at age 5 would gobble up a plate of steamed broccoli and ask for more), I sometimes prefer fruit even more.  So if I can find a way to combine them into one meal, that's just about the closest thing to perfection I can get.

Pimento Cheese

When the weather starts to turn warm, my whole mood toward food changes.  Instead of heavy, rich, brothy foods, I want cold, creamy, fresh foods.  One of the things I tend to start craving is pimento cheese.

Broccoli Salad

My very favorite vegetable is broccoli.  Even as a young child, I'd get excited to learn my mother was fixing broccoli for supper, and because I was excited about it, she'd make sure I got broccoli as much as she could buy and fix it for me.  Normally I prefer my broccoli pretty much unadulterated.  Just a little butter and salt for me, please.  It's also good in fettuccine Alfredo and because I like it so much, I often add broccoli to that dish when I make it.  But I'm not crazy about raw broccoli.  Sad, but true.

Mock Chicken Salad

Many years ago I was very active in an online community for women and had a tight-knit group of online friends that I spent time with in chats and on message boards.  On one of those boards, we often shared recipes.  Many of the members of that community were also vegetarian.  Probably the most well known of those recipes, and certainly the one that was most requested, was one of our member's recipe for mock chicken salad.  The recipe changed each time it was written down and each time another member made it so that there are probably more variations of this recipe than anyone can imagine.

Deli Sandwich Skewers

So I have a confession to make.  I'm not one of those moms who whips up a beautiful packed bento style lunch for the 8 year old each day.  In fact he usually gets a sandwich, a container of fruit, and some other sort of "side" like cheese flavored crackers, graham crackers, cheese sticks, or fruit leather.  The fanciest I go is to spread cream cheese on a whole wheat tortilla and roll it up.  However yesterday school was delayed two hours due to "wintery mix," so I had extra time to do something special.