This was not a big nor exciting week. I was just kicking about my everyday life.
What I intended for our meals
1. Big salad meal
2. Veggie meal
3. Fundraiser w/ meal
4. Crack chicken, green beans, tossed salad
5. Steak, baked potato, tossed salad
6. Tacos with all the fixings
7. Grilled tuna steaks, mashed potatoes, broccoli salad
Daily Joys and what we actually ate:
Monday: My Beloved Sister went with me to my happy place. For those of you who might not have known, Monday was National Junk Food Day. so the choice of what to help them make was easy. What could be junkier than Frito candy, with Fritos, corn syrup, Hershey bars and m&m's. It was an outstanding success with each participant wanting seconds.
Monday dinner: And how do you follow midday Frito candy?
Tacos with all the fixings
Tuesday: It was hot and I started a new book. It was pretty easy to do little other than stay inside and read.
Tuesday dinner: We both grew up having and loving summer night veggie dinners.
Squash casserole, butter peas, collards, cucumber tomato onion salad
Wednesday: The day was hot and I decided to mainly repeat what I had done Tuesday, which is exactly what I was doing until I got a phone call from Sluggy. She did not sound good at all, but hopefully has turned the Covid corner.
Should I mention that the more than a little warm temps have left the pool water just slightly cooler than bathwater.
Wednesday dinner: It was just too hot to fire up the grill. Format change!
Seared tuna steaks with buerre blanc sauce, fake mashed potatoes or baked potato*, steamed broccoli
Thursday: We had a lot of running around to do (stuff I could very easily have done myself, but TheHub wanted/needed to go anywhere). TheHub managed things so we would be out at lunch time and he was able to get his eating out at lunch fix (or so I thought).
Thursday dinner: We had eaten a pretty big lunch at a Thai restaurant. Dinner was every man for himself.
Sandwich or broccoli salad
Friday: We had been planning to go to Niki's West all summer. TheHub invited Son2 and DIL2, along with MBS to have lunch with us there. It is the ultimate meat and three restaurant. It is cafeteria style with 6 or so entrees and 20 or so vegetables (including that veggie mac and cheese), several salads, breads and desserts.
It is always packed at lunch so we met at 1, which should have been after the lunch hour business rush. Nope! They had four queue lines which were filled, with folks still pouring through the door.
This is one of those few places where a long line moves very fast, for the servers (and there are a lot of them) are somewhat like the Soup Nazi from the old Seinfeld show. You do not dawdle and if you have brains at all you peer through the queue lines and have made your decisions before you even pick up your tray to start down the line. Next time, I will suggest going at 1:45. By then the line crowd had thinned considerably.
Worth the drive (it is across town) and standing in line? You bet
Friday dinner: I had a veggie plate and TheHub had eaten turkey and dressing with 2 veggies for lunch. I was not about to fix (southern term meaning make, not to be confused with fixing which means about to, i.e. I'm fixin' to run to The Pig) dinner.
Egg rolls **
Saturday: Our neighbor has her 2 nieces from Tennessee staying with her for a week. She had asked me earlier if they could come swim, which was fine with us as long as they had an adult with them. After they left I asked her if the girls enjoyed it. She told me they both wished they could turn into mermaids so they could stay. They will be here through Wednesday, so I told her to bring them back whenever she wants to.
Saturday night we went to The Sounds of Summer (Independence Place Fundraiser). We did enjoy the band who played a lot of old Motown classics, but the highlight of the evening was the performance by the participants.
Try to imagine a stage filled with participants doing an interpretive dance to Elvis Presley's "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You" while the participants with mobility issues sat and twirled silver streamers.
Following the dance, drums were brought out and each participant was given 2 mallets. They had been practicing for several weeks and each had a different rhythm they were to beat (from very simple 1 beat per measure, to more complex ones changing every other measure) while Sly and the Family Stone's Thank You (for lettin me be myself, again) blasted over the p.a.
I don't know what I loved more, the drumming or to see each of them singing the chorus, "Thank you . . .again". I could have easily cried happy tears.
Salad, roast rice pilaf, green beans, cheesecake
Sunday: I picked pears, then peeled and cut them and put them in a pot with every intention of making pear jam. It was going quite well until I turned the temp up and walked away for a few minutes. Instead of pear jam I had this pear caramel concoction. I was not about to waste my sure jel on it. Instead I canned it and will present it as caramel pear ice cream topping, and never mention it was a mistake.
I still have enough pears to make another stab at the jam.
I live kind of on the side of a big hill and have a huge sky expanse.The upside of all this blasted humidity was a gorgeous full rainbow I could stand in my front yard and enjoy for several minutes before it disappeared into the ether.
Saturday dinner. TheHub stopped at Publix on his way home from the driving range.
Rotisserie chicken, coleslaw
What we might or might not eat this week:
1. Big salad meal
2. Veggie meal
3. Pork chops, mashed potatoes or baked potato, sautéed vegetables
4. Out to eat (Have a club minimum we need to use by the 31st)
5. Possibly out to eat again (Son2's birthday celebration)
6. Crack chicken, coleslaw, rice
7 Burgers and all the fixings
Books read in July:
Holly
Eruption
You Make It Feel Like Christmas
It's Not Summer Without You***
The Second Chance****
Have a great week staying on plan, going off plan, or with no plan at all.
May all your weeds be wildflowers.
Anne
* I will not make TheHub eat the mashed cauliflower fake potatoes and keep baking potatoes on hand to nuke for his dinner.
**Aldi staple that just needs to be thrown in the air fryer. I keep them in the freezer all the time. We split them and each get 2 1/2 egg rolls.
*** Second in the series I am reading in tandem with Pip
**** Not the Daniel Steele book by the same name, but the Charlotte Butterfield book
Your meals all sound delicious and it sounds like a pretty nice week for you. I can only imagine how awesome the performance at the fundraiser was. Things like that always bring me happy tears. I hope Sluggy is on the mend, it sounds like she had a really rough time after the trip.
ReplyDeleteI love all the participants of Independence Place, but seeing them onstage preforming while grinning ear to ear was spectacular.
DeleteI like a dinner of all produce. I remember growing up and having pretty much corn on the cob, cucumbers, and whatever else was abundant. Imagine in my childhood I did not like fresh tomatoes now, I could eat them like apples.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid our summer meals were almost entirely veggie meals with an occasional protein thrown on the grill. But to be honest nearly everyone I knew growing up ate like that during the summer.
DeleteMy best friend and backdoor neighbor hated tomatoes, so I ate them in front of her to gross her out.
I was not familiar with Frito candy, but am intrigued. Now I want Fritos. 😀
ReplyDeleteI had never heard nor made it before but it was surprisingly tasty and easy to make. Perfect for National Junk Food Day
DeleteLive and Learn for last comment.
ReplyDeleteHow I'd have loved to see Sounds of Summer put to Motown!
ReplyDeleteThose fake mashed potatoes were served at Thanksgiving some years ago ... but even using the OOO drops, it was an epic fail. Live and learn!
I have made it and it was Ok but now I just buy the Kevins brand in the packaged meat section of Publix. Periodically they are BOGO and I buy multiples and stick them in the freezer for later. I do add a few of the OOO drops to it which does make them better.
DeleteIt sounds like you had a great week! I'm glad I'm not the only one who loved veggie meals growing up. I remember having sheet pan veggies with some rice and absolutely loving it! I might need to put that in my meal plan for this next week.
ReplyDeleteIn the summer when produce is so fresh, it is one of my favorite mealds
DeleteI would say you had a good week, with time at your Happy Place, as well as the Saturday night event. I'm sure your enthusiasm was matched by the participants.
ReplyDeleteI do love being with the participants but there was something magical watching them on stage. Even the more sedate participants were ding their thing and grinning from ear to ear.
DeleteWe had vegetable meals fresh from our garden and loved them.
ReplyDeleteWe have always loved them too. I even freeze some veggies so we can have them throughout the winter
DeletePractical Parsimony above.
ReplyDeleteI think it's a pretty good week. Going to fix some burgers for my husband today.
ReplyDeleteI do like a good juicy burger heaped with all the fixings (except cheese. I am not a big cheeseburger fan)
DeleteI love corn chips, but, haven't had them in a long time. I have never had them with chocolate and peanut butter, but, I imagine they taste wonderful, both sweet and salty at the same time. :)
ReplyDeleteIt was a sweet salty gooey chocolatey bite
DeleteI miss the meat and three restaurants as they've all closed down here. We had all vegetable plates growing up too, they are the perfect summer dinner. The performance sounds fun, I’m glad you had a good time.
ReplyDeleteWe still have several meat and threes around town. 2 are very close to our house and they are the ones we go to most often, but Niki's West is the mothership of them all.
DeleteLovely menu... Im desperately trying to persuade hubby to try Tuna steaks...with no luck so far. Glad you had such a good week
ReplyDeleteWe both love fish and I have tuna steaks in the freezer all of the time. It is one of the quickest meals I can make.
DeleteThe only reading I have been doing are case files. Your reading list sounds far better! When I fully retire, I swear I am going to curl up with a stack of books (and chocolate) and read for a week! It has been thundering for an hour here. I sit under an air conditioner at work and I am sitting under an air conditioner at home right now because it is HOT but not a drop of rain, at least not yet. The power blinked. I bought a delicious muffuletta sandwich from the deli sandwiches at Mark’s Mart in Selma. I have not tried the Northport location. I also love their bacon wrapped chicken pinwheels but decided it was too hot to cook that or the ribeye from there. I love their meat selection. I am sure you have far more places to pick delicious meat from in the Birmingham area than I do. Cindy in the South
ReplyDeleteMark's Mart has a shop in my burb now. I have not been yet but it is on my list to go. I want to try the chicken swirl. New York Butcher shop here has beautiful meats but $$$. ThePig closest to my house also has beautiful meats and a butcher who will go out of his way to make sure you can get whatever odd request you have.
ReplyDeleteWe are planning to go to the 5 and Dime in Selma next week, just for lunch and a little fun.
How fun. Lannie’s bbq down from the Vaughn hospital is great if you are fond of bbq. Mark’s Mart is on Old Marion Road in Selma and 219 ( I think that is road number) has cheese straws that are fabulous! I work about 45 minutes south of Selma but our main office is there which is why I go there. We cover five counties… lol. If you never go to Camden try Jackson’s Station across from the bank on Broad Street. They are known for their chicken (Zuckerberg and his wife stopped there to eat when visiting the area) and it is good. Cindy in the South
DeleteThat's funny that you mentioned Jackson's Station. We are going to Gee's Bend Saturday and plan on eating in Camden
DeleteQuilts!!! So gorgeous! The festival is the first weekend of October I think also! Pecan on Broad is another eating place in Camden but to be honest, I have never eaten there. It is down the street from Jackson Station and they also have a little gift shop where I have bought Christmas gifts. I have never eaten at Gates Lodge which opens at 5:30 I am told, but it is supposed to be really good. Oh and back to Selma, Tallyho restaurant is supposed to be fab and opened evenings but I have never eaten there either because I turn into a pumpkin at dark and don’t go out anywhere unless called out for work. Cindy in the South
DeleteOh and if you ever go through the town of Marion in Perry County where MMI is located, I recommend the catfish at Lottie’s Restaurant which is fantastic, or The Shack, which is kind of a dive bar, has decent food also.
DeleteSorry for the epistle. Cindy in the South
I appreciate all the info.
DeleteI wish I liked vegetables. I like salad, but as far as cooked vegetables , I can only bear roasted carrots, green beans, broccoli or corn on the cob. And, since I am the one who cooks, I decide what gets served, and rarely is it something I dislike, so we don’t get a lot of cooked vegetables, but almost always have salads.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, I had to process (3) 5 gallon buckets of plums over the past several days. I got a friend to take quite a bit, and the rest was processed into a batch of jam, a batch of plum sauce, and a tart. Now that we have plum sauce, I will be making mu shu pork or chicken down the road. But while I was process, meals left a bit to be desired! Baked salmon, fish and chips, frozen pizza and steak which a kid offered to grill served with…salad.
-Meg B.
I understand about cooking when processing is going on. I wish I could find someone with excess from a plum tree. I love plum sauce and have made and canned it before by former plum source died. (the tree not the person)
Delete