Summer Treats

So summer has definitely taken over my life.  I have been keeping myself busy with random things as well as not making myself meals.  I am what everyone should call a "slacker," but while slacking I have for sure been enjoying myself with fishing trips, trips to the lake, and hanging out with great friends.  Well with all that out of the way I am  back to blogging.  I am making a new goal to get back into this and do at least two blogs a week!!  Seems like a big goal but I can do it.  So on that note lets get down to business...summer love.  

The garden is INSANE and I of course don't have an updated picture, but it is crazy.  The cucumbers have taken over, which is fine because I love them.  Today Matt and his parents picked seven, count them SEVEN cucumbers.  I am trying to perfect my cucumber salad.  

Tonight I started with my usual, two cucumbers thinly sliced along with an onion thinly sliced.  You then need to put these in a bowl or colander with a tablespoon of salt and let them sit for a bit.  Tonight I was antsy to eat so they didn't sit as long as they should but oh well.  Add a little white wine vinegar and sour cream and you have a great summer treat.  Oh I forgot the best part.....fresh dill.  I honestly think the dill makes the dish, so delicious.  I also just eat these cukes plan with some ranch.  I will have to learn to like them many new ways since I think we will have them until next year.

For dinner I felt the need to use some more garden goods.  Fresh basil is probably one of my favorite things to use.  I have the perfect recipe to use it in as well.  I am not sure exactly where the recipe came from but I am pretty sure it came from my Aunt Theresa.  

 Four ingredients and some pasta and you can make a great pasta and marinara sauce.  It is so simple.  I just took a 1/4 cup on olive oil and sauteed the garlic in it until it became fragrant.  Then I put two cans of diced tomatoes in and let it simmer for about 20 minutes.  Before serving throw in 8-10 chopped basil leaves, add some salt and pepper and throw over pasta.  This is so yummy and I love how quick it is to make.  Quick and simple delicious dinner with fresh ingredients from the garden!!  I think that is the part that makes me the most happy, that I grew some of my own parts of the meal!

Ok on to the amazing house I live in.....ugh.  So lets see in the past three week our newish tv crapped out, my cell phone crapped out, our a/c stopped working (this was by far the most horrible and expensive to replace), the kitchen drain was draining on the floor, the coffee maker stopped working, the sewer was backing up in our basement.....and Matt lost the only set of the truck keys.  I mean honestly, the ac breaking was enough.  I can finally use the phrase and mean it "when it rains it pours!"  One day at the house it was 90 and it felt better outside than it did inside.  Needless to say we spent a few nights at the in-law's (thanks for the hospitality Pat and Janene!)  The next big task was getting the crap out of the basement (literally)  thank goodness for this handy boyfriend I got.  Forty bucks will get you a roto rooter for four hours....and voila, poop be gone!!

Festive Feasts

For the first time in a long time, we had no plans this weekend and it was WONDERFUL.  It also gave me plenty of time to sleep in, drink some summer drinks and make some delicious food!!  Lets start off with the perfect summer drink...

 I am enjoying one of these as i speak, perfect blend of beer and lemonade.  So back to the task at hand, happy 4th of July everyone!!  In celebration of America's birthday (and a day off work) we decided to make some red, white and blue themed meals.  To start off bright and early we made homemade pancakes with blueberries, strawberries and whipped cream.

 We typically keep the dry mix in our cupboard at all times.  Regular pancakes are a weekend staple for us, but the fruit and whipped cream was a special holiday bonus.  I must say this might actually become a staple, I cut the blueberries and strawberries up and put them in the batter and then used more as topping.  They were freaking delicious.  The whipped cream just topped it all off, literally.  You must try these....not just on the holiday, more like tomorrow!!  Well since we slept in we ate late so lunch never happened today.  But dinner, ohhhhh dinner, it was so worth the wait.
So tonight we went with an oldie as the main course, steak with pepper cream sauce.  We actually used just one steak to feed both of us, that way we had more room for sides.  I have heard of the red, white and blue potato salad so that was my goal for tonight.  After sifting though numerous recipes, I found the winner, thanks Bobby Flay!  Grilled Red Potato Salad with bacon blue cheese vinigarette....sounds delicious right??  Well I can tell you positively that it doesn't just sound delicious....it is DELICIOUS!!

 Wow my mouth is still watering talking about the potatoes, but then we have to get to the cucumber salad.  This happened on a whim, we were at the grocery store and I saw cucumbers and I needed to have them.  I knew what kind of salad I wanted but I just had to find the right recipe.....here it is!!  Cucumber salad will be a need for some fresh summer meals.  I am very proud of my festive meals and new recipes.  I will be making all of these again and I urge you all to try them as well!  Happy Birthday America!!!

The joys of the Farmers Market

Ahhh summer, there really couldn't be a better way to start the day then hitting up the Des Moines farmers market.  We might have headed out a little late but we still made our first appearance today.  Our main goal for the morning was to try the pupusas.  Honestly I didn't know what they were before and I can't honestly say what exactly they are now, even after eating one.  It was good, I wouldn't have tried it if it wasn't for my friend that owns the Gooner stand at the market, I have mentioned this before, but seriously go get some gooners from him, you won't regret it.  Anyway, point of the post is that you never know what you are going to find and buy at the market, today it was elk ribeye.  Matt really wanted to find a meat stand and today the elk won out.  So after a quick trip to Fareway we started up on dinner.  Marinated grilled elk with asparagus that was topped with a vinaigrette.  

.I found the marinade for the elk by googling elk ribeye marinades.  And then i found the vinaigrette for the asparagus by checking out foodnetwork.com.  I have never had elk before and I must say I will for sure be having it again sometime.  The combination of the two were delicious, def a great summer meal.  

So on the note of meat, we feel that we are set for the rest of the summer!!  Matt is great at finding the sales on meat.  Although the price has gone up, he still found some great deals.  Today we bought two whole pork loins, I believe it was about 17 pounds total.  And it was about a week ago that Matt bought a 12 pound strip loin.  He likes to cut everything himself and then we vacuum pack everything.  Our freezer is officially full.  

Matt took the cruddy parts of the pork loin and used our handy dandy meat grinder to make some ground pork.  I mean look at the picture of the freezer, it looks amazing to me!!

As far as pictures of house projects or the garden....I got nothin.  I am hoping tomorrow we get a move on some more house projects, and today we visited the garden and most of it is looking fantastic.  The cucumbers and the beans have little flowers on it, which is super exciting.  Look for more updates soon!!

Dinner Party Idea

Ok, I realized I have been an absolute horrible blogger but I am going to try to change that.  My super busy time is now over so I am here to do a couple nights of food in one post.  Side note, my little brother got married this weekend and the wedding was AMAZING!!

Alright, so a few nights before this big day Matt and I whipped up a new DELICIOUS dinner.  It is a recipe that Alton made to use leftover garlic shrimp, but he also gave a recipe for his own garlic shrimp.  His Garlic Shrimp Casserole is pretty simple to make, and remotely quick with not a lot of ingredients.

Please take my advice and make this and LOVE it.  We will be making it again in the very near future.  So now this takes me to tonight's recipe.  I am thinking I need to have a Asian inspired dinner party.  Although this recipe is more of an intermediate recipe, I can promise you that it is well worth the extra effort.  So my dinner party idea is to have these Perfect Potstickers for an appetizer and then make the shrimp casserole for dinner and then i need to come up with some kind of asian desert, but I haven't gotten that far yet.  I will take this idea and make it happen at some point in my life.  Until then I will make both of these yummy recipes over and over again.

I learned how to fold them from the wonderful Gooners that I have mentioned earlier in this blog.  I just made some rice to go with the potstickers, since there isn't a whole lot else to go with this meal.  I scorched the first batch of these puppies but I got the hang of it the second time around.  My mouth is watering just thinking about these!!  Maybe if you are lucky, you can score an invite to my dinner party, although I need a kitchen table first!


Our landscaping project is still coming along nicely, just sort of a long process.  We went and checked on the garden today and it is mostly looking great.  Unfortunately we have a few causalities to mention, no more watermelon, eggplant (super sad about this) and no more onions.  We did add some peppers today, those took a bit longer to grow up from the seeds.  Matt also tried to harvest a radish today.....but no radish was found at the bottom.  Lets hope this isn't a trend.  

A Post for Thanks and Gratitude

Please be prepared for a slightly cheesy posting, and I don't mean cheddar, fontina or any other kind.  This posting is going to be dedicated to the boyfriend.  We have a foreclosed house, as already mentioned, and nothing would get done on this house without him.  Well in the past week we have had alot of progress, although it might not really look like it. 
Let's start with the stump.  When we first moved in to this house we had a big tree in the corner of the yard.   After the move in we had a slew of issues, starting with a leak in a pipe that was between the house and sidewalk, causing us to dig a five foot trench in the front lawn to fix the leak.

This was not an easy task with tree roots everywhere, in fact I would go as far as saying that it sucked.  After that fiasco we found out that the tree roots were growing in our sewer system causing it to back up into the basement. 

This was the result, and the concrete you see is a section of our driveway.  This was the last straw, we had to end the relationship with the tree.

This lead to a stump in the middle of our front yard....and it has been there for about a year and a half.  Which leads me to the present.  Last week Matt had some time off work, and he rented a stump grinder and turned our weedy stump filled portion of a white trash front yard, into the beginning of an actual complete front yard!

 Like I said earlier, it might not seem like alot but it is a huge step for us.  So again Matt, THANKS!
Ok moving on to the next big project.  As you can see in the previous picture, we started landscaping with the blocks last year, again another unfinished project.  In order to finish we need to get some cement blocks set in the back so the dirt won't all fall out.  Well today I can say blocks, cement, mortar, rocks and tools all purchased.  He even started on the project!  I can see progress and a beautiful planter in the near future!!

So today I just want to say THANKS to a wonderful boyfriend for working so hard to make our house a home.  I wouldn't be able to do this without you, literally I can hardly work power tools let alone shovel gravel.  I might not say thanks enough but I am extremely grateful for everything you do!!  I know laundry and dishes don't add up to all the things you accomplish, but it is all I am good at.  Hopefully I can learn so I can help out more.  LOVE YOU!!  (I warned you about the cheesyness)
Unfortunately I have no recipes or garden updates (but the garden is doing AMAZING) but I promise to change that this week!!  

Pasta a la yummy

After a long weekend, I am back!!  Tonight we finally made a new recipe, to be honest I am excited to eat the leftovers tomorrow for lunch.  We made penne with vodka sauce, it was super easy to make and delicious.  Not many ingredients are needed for this at all, I can honestly say that I will be making this recipe again.  

  As far as house projects, they are coming along at a snails pace.  It is really ok because we got a lot done in the garden, that is considered a house project right??  Over the weekend we got our garden spot tilled up, Matt added random things to help the soil (peat moss and gypsum) it is pretty clay like right now.  That was all on Friday night, on Monday we got to planting.  We quickly realized that our large spot would not house all of our plants.  I probably had about 60 tomato plants and I was only allowed to plant 12, such a bummer.  I better get a large yield out of those plants!!  I will probably end up planting some at home....just in case!  We are still tending to some little plants, pretty much all the peppers.  So when they get a bit bigger we will have to figure out where we can plant them.  As long as the coons, squirrels and deer stay out of the garden, we will be saving a bunch of money on produce.  We put up some fence and bought some animal stopper spray, keep your fingers crossed that it works!!

An oldie but a bestie

Tonight we went with an old standby, and probably one of the best things EVER!!  We discovered this recipe quite awhile back and have yet to be sick of it.  It all started with a huge hunk of strip steak Matt got on sale, so we needed something to go along with it.  Steak with pepper cream sauce is the perfect thing!  This sauce is beyond anything you have ever tasted before.  I typically skip the last bite of steak and just slurp up the sauce.  I also add it to whatever side dish we might be having, tonight it was a topping to my baked potato.  Seriously AMAZING!!  It is also pretty dang simple to make, so if you have steak and not sure what to do with it.....make this recipe for sure!  We also got to use a new fun tool in this dish as well, a mortar and pestle.  It is a fun tool and it is a nice and cool decoration for a countertop.

Unfortunately no new housing projects to report, kind of at a stand still.  The garden however is growing away.  The plants are currently still in the flats we planted them in.  They are just about too big for them, and they are started to get eaten by the local squirrels.  We still have to till the area we want to plant the garden....that should probably be a weekend project.  I can't wait for fresh produce!