Summer Food

Those of you that know me even a little bit, know that I do NOT consider myself a cook at all. I like to eat, but cooking has never been my favorite thing. My domestic talents seem to lie with sewing rather than creating interesting meals, so recipes need to be easy, and not involve a bunch of unusual ingredients. I tend to eat the same things over and over, particularly for breakfast and lunch. I also know myself well enough to know that if I don't have my meals planned out a little bit, I am NOT going to take the time to prepare something that is healthy, but will instead turn to filling myself up on unhealthy snacks from the pantry.

So, here it is summer (a somewhat eternal summer for me, now) and I'm home a good part of many days. I've been trying to have healthy foods available in my fridge (fruit and such), and have planned several dinners to cook each week so that I won't be eating out as much or snacking. This morning, I realized that I had a grilled chicken breast in my refrigerator that needed to be used right away, so I invited Callie over for lunch and whipped up my favorite chicken salad.

For those of you that find yourself struggling with difficult recipes and not enough time, this recipe is super simple and quick to mix up.

1. Using my mini food processor, I finely chopped the chicken.

2. One chicken breast was more than the two of us could eat at one meal, so I bagged up half of it and popped it into the freezer for another day.

3. Since my chopper was out, I also chopped up a handful of pecans and added them to the bowl of chicken.

4. I like grapes in my chicken salad, but only had 3 grapes in the refrigerator?? What's with that?? Well the grandkids did just leave a few days ago.

5. No one in my family likes mayonnaise, including me, so I use it VERY sparingly--just enough to make things stick together.

6. That's it! Stir it up and spread it on a sandwich round.

After sharing that with Callie, she shared a simple recipe with me---Zucchini Frittata. Using this recipe as inspiration, I adapted it to fit what was in my refrigerator this evening. I used eggs, 2% milk, 3 slices of cooked bacon, sliced yellow squash and fresh cherry tomatoes from my garden. The recipe works best using a cast iron skillet (which I don't have), so I used a stoneware quiche pan instead. It was super simple to make and looked really nice when I took it out of the oven.