Butter Garlic Shrimp with Green Beans and Cherry Tomatoes

This is my favorite summer dish.

It's super easy.

Usually when I want to cook something new or unknown I browse through some cookbooks or online. I look at a variety of similar recipes and then decide what to do based on what ingredients I have. Most times, I just throw stuff together. Luck is a huge part of it! :)

My favorite meals are the simple + fresh ones.

Growing up, I really hated seafood. Now, I love it! What was I thinking? 

So here's the deal: we never splurge on fresh seafood! We just get bags of frozen shrimp and tilapia from Costco. It's the best.

I grilled up the shrimp in butter (yum!), garlic and a pinch of salt. Once it started to brown, I added fresh green beans (not from my garden...but COMING SOON!) and a bit of water. I let it all cook down, added a bit more salt, freshly ground pepper, fresh basil/cilantro (yes, from the garden!) and then last minute added some cherry tomatoes (not from the garden but...again...COMING SOON!). Once things were nice and tender....I ate.

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Zucchini!

Everyone loves zucchini, right? So far, one of the best things about my garden is the quantity of fresh zucchini I'm getting. The plant grows like a weed! Thankfully, we have just the right amount (so far!)

This week, I've started to experiment with the delicious green veggie. Breaded and fried zucchini chips are the best. I've made them a couple different times but until now, I've yet to perfect it. I finally got the batter/frying right when I added loads of Parmesan/mozzarella cheese and salt. Healthy, right?

While frying these in oil turned out great, I prefer to bake them. It's much healthier and totally easier. So I tried to bake some, but I was without Panko bread crumbs, so they turned out just alright.

Tomorrow (unless I'm lazy), I plan to make this recipe instead:

Baked Zucchini and Sweet Onion Dip

There is a beautiful recipe and tutorial to go with it too! Can't wait.

Today, I tested out a new zucchini bread. I'm sad to say that I lost by bested, most trusted banana bread recipe. I wanted to use the same recipe and just substitute the zukes... And I totally don't remember any of the measurements (except lots of brown sugar!). So I traveled to Pinterest and found a decent recipe here. I would amend the recipe to add more sugar (of course!) and maybe a little more oil or less flour (something to make it a bit more moist...)

But it's delicious enough to nibble on all day!

Zucchini Bread

Yield: 1 Loaf

2 cups flour

3/4 cup Loosely packed brown sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup canola or vegetable oil

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

about 1 1/2 cups freshly grated zucchini (with skin)

1.     Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2.     Grease a loaf pan (preferable a stone loaf pan but it is not necessary) with a little oil and butter and then bounce flour around in the pan to coat.

3.     In large mixing bowl beat together the oil and sugar.

4.     Add vanilla and the eggs (one at a time) and beat in between.

5.     In a separate bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together and then add to the wet mixture and beat until blended. Stir in zucchini until fully incorporated. Use spatula to pour evenly into pan.

6.     Bake for about 50-55 minutes. Test with a toothpick by sticking one in the top of the bread and making sure that it comes out dry.

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Only $30 a week?!?!?!

These people only spend $30 a week on groceries! Can you imagine? Yes, there are only two of them and yes, they don't eat/buy meat. But holy smokes...if only we were that good at grocery shopping!? Our goal is $250/month ( or ~$60-65 a week).

Usually we try to go "big time" shopping every 1-2 weeks and then 1 or 2 small trips in between to get fresh stuff.

It hardly ever happens this way though...we ALWAYS spend way way WAY more.

Menu planning is helping out a lot though. And the garden.....oh the garden! :)

Oh well....

We. just. like. food.

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It's a Jungle out there!

I know you all have been wondering where my garden posts have been! :) I've hesitated posting all my gardening pictures because well...they are plants. How exciting can they get? It makes me a little worried...I mean if I've got 15 pictures of veggies to post, how many pictures am I going to eventually end up posting of my children? But for now....vegetables are all I've got (oh and Lily!) :)

It was pretty difficult to leave my gardening obsession behind for 3 weeks while we were in So.Oregon but we bought an automatic water timer, so I knew my plants would be fine, But I didn't expect so much growth! It's awesome!

A few days before we left - June 27th -

What the tomatoes look liked after - July 21st -

Here is another tomato plant before and the raised bed after (yeah, the beans look a little yellow from so much water, but they are greening up now!)

Hot Banana Peppers!

Love these funky Marzano roma tomatoes!

With 3 cherry/grape tomato plants, I am going to have a TON of tiny little tomatoes! 

Potted plants: cherry tomato, spicy thai peppers, basil

The 3 weeks away summer harvest

I also ended up with HUGE squash plants! Seriously, every time I look at the plant more zuchinni has grown. It's awesome and I'm not complaining....yet!

Lily loves spending time with me in the garden.

So this is what I'm looking forward to:

Green beans!!!!

The onions didn't get very big...but I can't wait to see how they taste!

Most of the lettuce that was left bolted (got bitter) and I should really pull it up. But look at how awesome it is! We'll see if it flowers anytime soon and some of the smaller plants actually still taste ok (although, i'm really sick of lettuce!)

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Sara Bareilles + Joshua Radin

I love Sara B. Cheyenne loves Joshua Radin. It was the perfect evening! I can't believe I've gone 25 years without going to a concert at the Britt.

Thanks to Cheyenne's 15-year-old love for Mr. Radin....we got to meet him! And he totally told me that Portland is his favorite city! And he wasn't just saying that....Love...

Ok...so if you didn't believe me before, now I really look like a 12 year old with my braces, swooning over a pop star....sigh.

The best part of the night was when Sara came back out for an "encore" performance and she sang a really beautiful a capella version of "Gravity." Well, that in of itself would have the best moment of the night, but what was even awesome(er) was that 10 seconds into the beautiful, but quiet song, a lady totally tripped over some chairs right in front of us. Cheyenne and I just died laughing. Once I finally got myself under control , there was another silent moment and a neighborhood dog started howling. It was hilarious!

Love The Britt.

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This is why I love my husband. Isn't this hilarious? 

Dan helping with the sailboat - SF

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San Fran

To celebrate my mom graduating from her nursing school (yay mom!), Dan, Chey and I went to San Francisco for a short weekend trip. Although, most of my pictures of the actual pinning ceremony didn't turn out well, I am super proud of my mom and we had a fun, quick weekend together! Jerry took us out on the sailboat and I took advantage of my hilariously beautiful sister for a funny mini photo shoot. One day she'll let me do one of her and Ryan for reals...

By Dan (don't you love the sparkly shine on the metal?)

Cool art in a SF neighboorhood

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YW Girls Camp!

This week I found out that I've been asked to help out at our church's summer Girls Camp! I'm pretty excited. I love YW and working with teenagers! I've really only been to camp myself a couple of times when I was an older YW, so it should be fun. Camp is from Aug. 1st-6th in Willamina (northern oregon, sort of by the coast).

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Harvests!

 

We came back from our camping/track/painting long weekend in Eugene (to be posted about later) and there was much to harvest in the garden! We have WAY more lettuce, spinach, arugula, etc than we could ever eat! I bagged it all up and gave a gallon sized bag to one of the neighbors. We have 2 left (plus 2 more bags I picked today!) Luckily, my neighbor was happy to receive it, so I think I can pawn more off on her later this summer! Most of the lettuce is picked by now...I didn't really mean to plant so much, but after the cat attacked my garden, I planted A LOT extra, just in case. Well, it ALL grew! It's been delicious, but salad greens don't store for very long...

Anyways, as I'm getting into this whole gardening thing I've decided to try and grow a few things over the fall/winter. I have some good plans for onions, carrots, beets, and GARLIC! Can't wait.

But first...my tomatoes, peppers and spring carrots need to GROW! :)

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