365: Week 20

May 12 | Late night move to yet another house.

Aloha Smoothie

When I flew back into Salt Lake City on Sunday night after spending 9 days lounging at the beach, I was greeted by snow!  I really do love snow.  In the winter.  On Mother's Day, it's a different story.

You'd think that the beach would be the thing to motivate me to eat tons of fresh fruit and sip on smoothies all day, but for some reason all I eat when breathing in the salt air is more salt and junk food.  I ate more potato chips in those 9 days than I will the rest of the year.  I ate burgers and fried chicken and lots of ice cream.  Besides a couple pieces of watermelon one morning, I don't think I saw fresh fruit.

So, when I got back, I was walking through the grocery store and immediately drawn to everything bright and juicy.  It's nice to be able to channel some of the beach into my daily life in the mountains too.  And until the rest of the snow melts, I'll just have to keep pretending.

Pizza Crust

For being a person who spends a lot of her time thinking about food, I'm really not all that picky of an eater.  Besides not eating seafood, I'm pretty much happy with anything edible.

The same cannot be said of people who fancy themselves "pizza aficionados."  I'm not talking about people that like to eat pizza often.  I'm talking about people who make their own dough.  They've developed their recipes and tested and redeveloped and retested.  They have notes that go on for pages about the temperature of the water and exactly how many times the dough should be kneaded at each step.

I can't be tied down to something like that.  I need the process to be much more forgiving.  Also, I don't think I'll ever call myself an aficionado of anything.  Maybe sarcastically.

365: Week 19

May 5 | The rose garden wasn't quite in full-bloom.

Banana Sheet Cake

Do you remember when the one kid in 'The Mighty Ducks' calls the other kid on his team a cake eater?  I never understood what it meant.  I always figured it was just some made up insult by the Disney crew so they wouldn't get into too much trouble.

According to Urban Dictionary, it's a slang term for a rich person.  Someone who can have their cake and eat it too.  Another explanation is that most people only get cake on their birthdays and other special occasions, so people who can have dessert all the time are spoiled.  Still pretty mild and fairly safe on Disney's part, but it's more of an insult than I thought when I first saw the movie as a kiddo.

Even though it's an insult, I would love to eat cake every day.  And I do eat cake a lot of days.  But when you're making your cake out of food that's on the verge of rotten, does that still make you spoiled?  Yeah, probably.

If you're tired of making banana bread out of your brown bananas, here's another option for you.  Bonus: it's covered in homemade cream cheese frosting!

Tossed Fruit Salad

Sometimes when you move away from a place, you miss everything about it.  Sometimes you miss a certain feeling you got when you were there.  Or the weather.  Or the people.  I've moved around a lot the past few years, and each place I leave has a unique set of things that I miss.

When I left Washington DC though, I'll admit, I didn't miss much.  I was so happy to get out of there, that I didn't think much about leaving.  Of course, we made friends there that I wish we could see more often, but I don't miss the traffic, or the stinky people on the metro, my job, the insecurity, or the noise for a second.

There are so few things that I remember fondly from my time in DC, but one thing that keeps popping back into my mind is Chop't.  If you don't have a Chop't near you (I feel ya), it's a salad chain that makes you a bucket of salad filled with whatever you ask for.  They chop it all up small (hence, the name), and it's probably the best thing in our nation's capital.

My friend, who might as well be a rabbit, would always get hers loaded up with carrots, peas, tomatoes, peppers, and then top it off with just a tiny bit of lemon vinaigrette.  I was never that healthy.  I'd get cheese, croutons, maybe some veggies, probably some fruit and then spoon on a pretty heavy dose of a cream-based salad dressing.

This tossed fruit salad is a combination of the two.  I'd say it makes a pretty good compromise.

365: Week 18

April 28 | Takeout pie.