Summer Travels and Pico

With the passing of Memorial Day my summer has officially begun. Every year we begin our summer with memorial day travels (never invite us to a cook out, we won't be in town!). We are either in Florida with my family or in Harper's Ferry with Matt's family. And since I like to travel during the summer I find it to be an excellent way to start things off :)

This year we were in Harper's Ferry. Our first mini vacation with 3 kids! Evie & Laurence enjoyed boating, swimming in the pool & getting more candy than any child should have at the memorial day parade (why is it that every parade in Iowa has to have at least 50 tractors in it???). Aria enjoyed dozing by the pool :) Mommy enjoyed boating, reading, tanning (okay, burning), and a slightly crazy girls night with her sister in law. What a wonderful way to begin the summer!

My lovely sister in law, Jenni, made us some wonderful Pico De Gallo to snack on over the weekend and I decided I needed to figure out a recipe for it! I like it better than normal salsa because I feel so healthy eating it :) So, here is the recipe I threw together today, one of the things I love about this is that you can change it up as much as you want!

Pico De Gallo
                                   

1/2 Red Onion, chopped

1/2 Green Pepper, chopped

1/2 Can Corn

1/2 jalapeno, deseeded & minced                                   

2 Cloves Garlic, minced

Cilantro, minced

1/2 teaspoon Salt

1 lime, juiced 

4 Roma Tomatoes, cored, deseeded & chopped                                  

Combine everything and enjoy!

Orzo? For Sale? Or So? Or is though?

Well, I just had a baby. Okay, not just, about 7 weeks ago :) Things have been crazy! So crazy in fact that Laurence managed to dump a water bottle full of water on my phone. So now I have a new phone. It's pretty and purple and has some kind of cool name (something like Electric, Fire, or Rhyme) It also has this totally awesome feature: I can now dictate text messages, emails, facebook statuses, etc! This has provided me with loads of entertainment. I recently attempted to send the following text: "No gyro stand..." (I had been told that there was a man selling gyros at our local farmers market) It ended up looking like: "No year o stands. period." It also doesn't seem to recognize the word Orzo, it thought I was saying everything from "For Sale" to "Or so"... This made my weekly menu planning on my spiffy new phone on my spiffy new menu planning app amusing :) So, here is a recipe for "Or is though". Evie and Laurence love this recipe :)

Orzo with Parmesan and Basil

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 cup uncooked orzo pasta
• 1 (14.5 ounce) can chicken broth
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil

1. Melt butter in heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Stir in orzo and saute until lightly browned.
2. Stir in chicken stock and bring to boil. Cover. Reduce heat and simmer until orzo is tender and liquid is absorbed, about 15 - 20 minutes.
3. Mix in Parmesan cheese and basil. Season with salt and pepper. Transfer to shallow bowl. Garnish with basil sprigs.                 

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