. Loving Every Moment .: Mmmm... Sweet Summertime!

I love spring, don't get me wrong. I love the flowers, the cool breeze, and just the overall feeling of life being renewed. However, I have begun to crave certain aspects of summer... the food and yardwork. I love the fresh vegetables, lemonade, and barbeque. I also love the smell of freshly cut grass, watching my summer flowers grow, and anticipating the growth of my elephant ears Andrew and I planted last spring. This weekend, I thought it would be nice to pull in some of those summertime foods and enjoy. Andrew and I are doing our best to eat healthy instead of just grabbing whatever is easiest. We're doing well so far!!

First, I created a very yummy veggie salad. I cubed a yellow squash, cucumber, green pepper, red pepper, cauliflower, vidalia onion, asparagus, and grape tomatos. After I combined all of the veggies, I covered them with vinegar and sprinkled a little sugar, salt, pepper, and parsely to taste. We let the veggies sit for an hour or so while we enjoyed a nice afternoon walk. We then drained most of the vinegar from them so they didn't soften any more, and enjoyed a healthy feast of brown sugar tilapia and fresh veggies.

Today's menu consisted of:

Tortilla pizzas! To create these delicacies, I sautéed chicken, asparagus, onion, and minced garlic in Sherry cooking wine. I also added salt, pepper, and parsely to taste. While these were cooking to perfection, I spread tomato paste (which is verrrry healthy for you!) on tortillas (which were sadly not whole wheat). When the toppings were done cooking, Andrew helped me prepare the pizzas which we finished by sprinkling with shredded parmesan cheese... the good kind, not the nasty powder. These baked at 400 degrees for about 7 minutes. Needless to say, they were gobbled up too quickly to photograph! ; )

Tomorrow's menu consists of barbeque chicken and burgers, asparagus, and more of the veggie salad! Mmm! I can't wait!

In fact, this is asparagus we grilled a few weekends ago. I chopped the ends off of these yummy treats, sprinkled lightly with lemon, salt, and pepper...placed a few dallops of olive oil butter, and garnished with parmesan cheese. We wrapped them in aluminum foil and grilled to perfect. Yum! My mouth is watering already for tomorrow's lunch!!!

Now... to move on from food. I am going to post a few pictures of our yard after the first mow of the season. These were taken a few weeks ago, but I just got Andrew's camera, and this weekend's weather wasn't conducive to picture taking.