Strawberry Lime Granitas

Yum, yum, yum, yum, YUM!  This little recipe is just way too easy and delicious to skip!

It's a bit like an amazing strawberry-lime slushy popsicle you eat with a spoon.  And with only 3 ingredients, and no need for an ice cream maker, it's seriously your new favorite thing.  You can mix this up with other fruits (watermelon, anyone?!) and citrus; just follow the same basic steps.

Shrimp and Pasta Salad

'Morning!  I did some whirlwind cooking over the weekend, and came up with a couple of great summertime recipes.  Hurrah!

This one is a gussied-up version of a basic shrimp salad.  It was tasty straight from the recipe, but I amped it up by adding pasta and capers.  The pasta adds some carbs to balance things out, and is an inexpensive way to make the salad go further.  It would definitely be great with a whole wheat or gluten free pasta, so use whatever you like best!

A Coffee Blackout

Let’s talk about the color of that coffee up there.  What color would you call it – Taupe?  Beige?  A nice creamy caramel?  Certainly not the color of coffee straight out of the pot. 

Which brings me to the point of today’s post: I need your help.  I’m now resolutely on a mission to wean myself off coffee creamer, and I’d love all the help I can get.  

Lime & Salt Popcorn

Know what they say about the best laid plans?  Exactly.

I had planned to make granitas yesterday, but instead of 90+ degree sunshine, we got cool and glorious rain.  Couple that with a free HBO weekend, and my Sunday suddenly became all about movies on the couch.  And what better snack than some jazzed up popcorn?

Meal Planning

Happy Friday!!  What have you all got planned for the weekend?  Anything fun for me to be jealous of?  We're talking about going downtown to watch some crazy Redbull Soapbox races, but other than that, we don't have much going on in the way of fun.  Chores are a given :)

I just wanted to drop in and let you know that I've added a new Tab up top there.  Yeah, "Meal Planning."  Sounds tremendously exciting, I know.  But when a friend recently asked me for menu ideas, it got me to thinking.  See, every Saturday morning, I sit down with a trusty notepad, the grocery ads, some cookbooks, and a steaming cup of coffee.  Preferably, on our back patio, if the mosquitoes are off attacking someone else in the neighborhood.

Sugar Cookie Bars

Oh boy.

So this is what I threw in the trash on Sunday.

I know.  It doesn't look half bad.  So let me explain...

Let's first talk about pan sizes and baking times.  We all can pretty much bet that if you spread a bowl of cake batter into a 9x13" pan it's going to take longer to bake and bake up taller than if you spread that exact same bowl of cake batter in a 13x18" pan.  Right?  A wider pan means the batter will spread more thinly, turn out shorter, and take less time to bake.  Ok.  So now that we're on the same page -

Lemon Brownies

(aka Lemon Poundcake Bars)

Because sometimes, I really just want to bake.  With super-processed white flour and boatloads of sugar and a few sticks of butter thrown in for good measure.  I've missed my normal baking, so yesterday, I decided to just embrace it and have some fun in my kitchen.

I came across these bars on Pinterest and thought they sounded perfectly summery.  In all honesty, the recipe is pretty much my Vanilla Poundcake recipe, using lemon zest and juice instead of vanilla.  Which, of course, means it's soooo good.  A fantastically moist lemon poundcake bar that's both buttery and light, with a zesty glaze that ties it all up with a bow.