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.

Roasted Root Vegetables with Brussels Sprouts

My husband declared in late October that he felt he needed to lose a little weight and try to eat healthier.  According to the USDA, he was, in fact considered obese.  And I have to say that in 6 months, he's lost 30 pounds just by changing his diet alone.

Easy Pizza Sauce

Before I went gluten free, we used to have homemade pizza a couple times a month.  To help us eat as healthy as we can and to save money, I decided I should start making my own pizza sauce.  After all, I'm making my own marinara, pizza sauce couldn't be difficult either.  And it isn't.

I found a good sauce we liked from Kitchen Treaty.  This recipe had everything we wanted in a pizza sauce.  Full of tomato flavor? Check. Just a hint of heat? Check.  Super simple? Check.  Easy to adapt? Check.  Freezes well? Check.  I adapted this sauce slightly to accommodate our tastes and my cooking style.

Beef Stew with Mushrooms

Last winter I found stew beef on managers special several times, so we ended up eating a lot of beef stew, vegetable beef soup, and beef tips with gravy over mashed potatoes.  Not that anyone really complained.  Even the 9 year old will eat the beef and the potatoes from beef stew.

Creamy Beef and Penne with Vegetables

Eons ago when I thought I was a good cook, and my husband did too, but in reality what I did was fake it with processed foods and shortcuts that may or may not have worked, I made a pasta dish I'd found in a magazine.  It had stew beef, mostaccioli pasta, and lots of vegetables.  I remember it being good, but for some reason I never made it again.

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?

Avocado Smothered Chicken

Avocado is usually one of those things in our house that ends up in salsa or guacamole and not much else.  I blame it on my husband who generally steers away from avocado.  However, lately he's been asking for a little avocado slices on the side when we have Mexican oriented food.

Mexicali Corn and Bacon Relish

Yesterday we went to a neighborhood cookout hosted by the family of one of the 8 year old's friends.  The cookout was covered dish, so I took the opportunity to add another dish to my covered dish/pot luck repertoire.  A few weeks ago I'd run across a recipe for bacon corn relish that sounded good but the flavor profiles weren't what I wanted.  So this dish is very much inspired by what I found, but really the only thing that stayed the same were the corn, bacon, and onions.

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.

Chicken of the Woods and Asparagus with Vodka Sauce

I love chicken of the woods.  It's a type of mushroom called a sulfur shelf that generally grow on hardwoods.  My favorite farmer at the local farmers market and his wife are fantastic mushroom foragers.  Anytime we have a day or two of heavy rains, they are out looking for oyster mushrooms, chicken of the woods, and morals. 

Creamy Cole Slaw

Cole slaw is one of those things I've struggled with trying to make for a long time.  When I was 16, I worked in the kitchen at a camp in a small town near the North Carolina - South Carolina state lines.  The head chef was a woman in her 60's everyone called Mama Ruth.

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.

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.

Bruschetta Crescent Pinwheels

In July or August I ran across a recipe for pimento cheese pinwheels made with crescent rolls and homemade pimento cheese.  It looked delicious, but I wanted something a bit different and slightly more gourmet for a PTA board meeting appetizer potluck near the beginning of the school year.
For inspiration, I wandered the gourmet foods aisle at the grocery store.  The thing that I kept going back to was bruschetta.  I thought the flavors of bruschetta would go nicely with cream cheese and by the time I left the grocery store I practically had a recipe written in my head.

Buffalo Chicken Wings

We don't watch a lot of sports around here because we're pretty strict about how much TV we let the 8 year old watch.  So generally when the 8 year old is awake or nearby, the TV is off unless he's indulging in his limited "screen time" for the day.  However we do like to watch the bowl games near the first of the year and we must watch the Super Bowl no matter who is playing.  And when we think of game time, our food of choice is buffalo wings.

Roasted Tomatillo Salsa with Avocado

A few weeks ago, I ran across a recipe from A Spicy Perspective for creamy roasted tomatillo salsa and bookmarked it because it looked so delicious.  The very next day at the community market I found some beautiful tomatillos at one of our favorite booths.  I knew we were having Beef and Bean Taquitos for supper that week, so I thought I'd give the creamy roasted tomatillo salsa a try to go with it.

Shrimp Etouffee

I've mentioned before my husband used to travel a lot and have a nice expense account to go with the job.  We've counted that he's been to nearly all the 48 contingent US states, a couple US territories and at least 6 foreign countries.  One of the things my husband likes to do when he travels is try new food and new restaurants.  He waxes fondly about certain meals or restaurants in particular.

Stuffed Eggplant and Patty Pan Squash

A few weeks ago I was looking for our vegetarian meal for the week and went to Allrecipes.com for inspiration.  One of the first recipes I stumbled upon was for stuffed eggplant.  I'd never stuffed eggplant before, but it sounded delicious.  Of course, I can't just follow any recipe exactly and in fact, this recipe I pretty much threw out the window except for the eggplant and the mushrooms.

Tomato Basil Quiche with Potato Crust

Nearly 20 years ago my roommate from college gave me a recipe for a quiche with a shredded potato crust. I don't remember now everything that was in the quiche, although I'm pretty sure it also had sausage in it.  I do, however, remember the crust.  At first it seemed weird, but over time, it seemed interesting and finally very good.

Summer Vegetable Quesadillas

A few weeks ago when the power was out, we stayed a couple nights with my best friend and her family who are vegetarian.  The first night we were all there for supper, she and I quickly brainstormed on something the majority of us would eat.  After checking her fridge for food she and I both owned, we realized I had an abundance of summer squash and tortillas.  She had zucchini, peppers, cheese, and onions.  Summer Vegetable Quesadillas were born.  Both my 7 year old and hers had plain cheese quesadillas with fruit and cherry tomatoes on the side.  Everyone seemed happy with supper.