babybloomr

I am REALLY full of salmon right now.

I ate my weight tonight in Asian marinated salmon that I grilled on a cedar plank. It looked a little somethin’ like this:

(The part of My Actual Salmon will be played tonight by this picture I found on the intrawebs.)

I fixed a side dish of Moroccan curry pilaf and a big green salad with a few early lettuce leaves from my garden mixed in. It was good!

Before you get too impressed with my mad culinary skillz, I’ll come clean and confess that this was not a slave-over-a-hot-stove-for-hours kind of meal. The marinade? Came straight from a bottle– Honey Asian Teryaki Sauce that I picked up in the fancy-schmancy food aisle at T.J. Maxx. (Ya’ll know I have a tendency to lose my mind and buy all manner of weird things in that aisle. I can’t help it. It’s like a sickness. However, at least I actually used this stuff– that Passion Fruit Applesauce is still sitting in my pantry.)

Also, that wonderfully healthy and trendy whole grain pilaf came from a pouch, courtesy of Kashi:

So there, I just outed myself! Believe me, I am not above using bottled this or packaged that– whatever it takes to get the dang meal on the table without cooking all afternoon. And you should probably also know that though Madi enjoyed it, Charlotte actually shuddered at the sight of it, like if I was trying to get her to eat cat food or something. She ended up nuking some leftover mac and cheese for her dinner. *sigh* Which is why her family nickname is “Meat ‘n Three.” That child has never met a white food she doesn’t like.

I’m trying to nudge the family towards healthier eating, though Lord knows I’m not what you’d call a health food nut, myself. I am a Southerner after all, I do indulge in red meat and the occasional fried food and I’ve inherited my Daddy’s sweet tooth– the man eats a bowl of ice cream every night of his life and has lower cholesterol than anyone in the family, go figure. But in this season of gorgeous fresh fruit and bountiful farmer’s market vegetables, I’m definitely going to try to broaden our culinary horizons around here.

Which brings me to…

What are some of your healthy food favorites? Let me hear from you! Recipes are welcomed, but even just a description will do. (Now, I’m not talking anything hard-core here– I don’t think the Taffs are going to be turning vegan any time soon, and the only person in the family who will even touch tofu is Madi and that’s only because I used to dip it in ketchup and poke it in her little mouth when she was a baby and too young to say, “WHAT IS THIS CRAP?!”)

One of my standard summer pasta dishes is Pasta Pomodoro, which is basically just angel hair pasta topped with chopped fresh tomatoes from my garden, snipped bits of fresh basil, and garlic tossed in a little olive oil. I like to add crumbled up feta cheese or fresh-ground Parmesan and sometimes throw in a handful of kalamata olives or marinated artichoke hearts. It’s fast, easy, delicious and lends itself to all manner of variations. I found a picture that shows a basic version:

Doesn’t that look good? If I wasn’t up to my gills in salmon right now, that would make me really hungry.

Anyway, jump in here and help me out you guys–let’s talk food!

I wanted to play catch-up with some pictures I’ve been taking but haven’t posted, so I thought I’d do it now in one big fell swoop! So this is going to be a potpourri, a melange, a smorgasbord, if you will. Also? Kind of Charlotte-heavy because this has been a big month for her–graduation from 6th grade, for crying out loud!

So without further ado, here is another entry in the Taff family scrapbook:

Let’s start with the graduation itself, shall we? This is Char receiving her diploma from her headmaster, Mr. Kenneth Cheeseman. Yes, this man works with elementary-age schoolchildren every day of his life and his name is Cheese. Man. He came with his own nickname, how handy is that?!  (We really like him, by the way, also Dr. Daniel Himes, the father of one of Char’s classmates who took photos of every child at the graduation, including this one.)

**Pre-graduation ceremony, posing on her way to the car– that necklace was a gift from us, it has a beautiful engraving of a tree on the front and the word ‘Family’ written all over the back.

**OK, now on to our Gatlinburg trip.

(By the way, Madi saw a bear! Right in the middle of the downtown area! She and Morgan Younce were walking around town after the concert and they heard a noise down an alleyway between two buildings and there was a dang bear dragging a trash can down the dark alley. Thankfully, it did not bite her on the ankle, so we don’t have a matching set of animals-munching-on-Madi scars…)

Here is a rainy morning view off of our chalet balcony– Smokies, indeed!

**Speaking of our chalet– this is a Still Life With Banana arrangement I artistically photographed one morning in the kitchen. Anybody know what that white flower is? I picked it growing wild on a vine right outside of our door– it’s like, 6-7 inches across, huge. Looks like a clematis, right? But do they grow wild? Anybody?