A hectic week

Wow, did these past two weeks speed by! My dad unexpectedly graduated from college last weekend. He wasn't planning on finishing till Christmas but the college worked his schedule around a bit so that he could walk with his fellow classmates and then finish up two more classes during the summer. So... he graduated and then we went on a quick vacation to Taos for a few days. It was beautiful!

I made THREE new recipes today. I was quite ambitious :) And exhausted by the end of it. They all came out great though! Thank you, Pinterest!

Magic Cookie Bars

Vegetable Pancakes with Sour Cream

And Salisbury Steak 

It was a delicious meal!

Not much else happened this week. The summer might be changing for me drastically as I have a job opportunity in Idaho for 10 weeks. I'm not sure it will actually pan out but if it does, I might have to revise my whole summer thought process! I'll keep ya'll updated!

Scrumptious Living

One of my summer bucket list items is to make a new recipe every week. I'll probably do more than that over the course of the summer, but the goal is at least one. This week, I made Hawaiian Chicken Kabobs. The recipe link is HERE and my modified recipe (because I AM my mother's daughter and can't follow a recipe for the life of me!) is below. The marinade/sauce was wonderful. My chicken was a bit dry because 1) I didn't marinate the chicken overnight and 2) I defrosted it in the microwave. I just didn't think about dinner until a couple hours before! Oh well. I used fresh spices instead of ground because I actually didn't have dried in the house! Whoa... what a concept :) I also added crushed pinapple and it's juice to the marinade instead of skewering pinepple chunks to the kabobs. And lastly, I added vegetables to the skewers (zucchini, bell pepper, and onion) to give it a more healthy flair. Add whatever you'd like to the skewers, it doesn't matter. Just make sure everything is about the same size so they cook at the same time!

Hawaiian Chicken Kabobs

Ingredients

3 T soy sauce
3 T  brown sugar
2 T sherry
1 T sesame oil
1/4 t ground ginger (I used fresh)
1/4 t garlic powder (again, I used fresh)
1/4 c crushed pineapple with it's juice
3 Large boneless chicken breasts
Vegetables (I used zucchini, bell peppers, and onion)
Wooden Skewers

Directions

1. In a bowl, mix soy sauce, sugar, sherry, sesame oil, ginger, pineapple and garlic. Cut chicken breasts into bite-sized pieces and add to marinade. Mix until coated and cover with plastic wrap. Marinate in frig for at least 2 hours.

2. Preheat grill to medium heat and oil to prevent sticking.

3. Thread chicken and vegetables onto skewers. Grill for 15-20 minutes or until chicken is thoroughly cooked.

P.S. I made an extra batch of sauce and cooked it on the stove for a few minutes to blend the flavors and melt the sugar. If you do that, you'll have sauce to baste with while it's cooking and more to dip in!

My first week

Well, the first week of my summer is coming to a close. Boy, did it go by fast! I didn't do a ton of my bucket list but that's ok. Don't need to get it all done the first week! That would be no fun at all! But here's a few things I did accomplish!

1. I got all my plants in the ground, except for the eggplant. Not sure where I'm going to put that yet! But it's looking so nice! I hope I don't lose too much of it. Sometimes hail wipes out my whole garden or they have been known to go into shock or something and die :) Peppers are on the left and I think parsley is on the right?

2. I made a new recipe. I made this recipe for Vanilla Pound Cake from Martha Stewart. It was ok. My mom ended up bringing it to work with strawberries and whipped cream. I thought it was too dense. I probably won't make it again.

3. I read two new books. Might have to revise my book count for the summer. I'm flying through! I read Catching Fire and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, which are part of the Hunger Games Trilogy. They're teen fiction, which is why I flew threw those books. Read them in just a couple of days. I liked Catching Fire but I got bored about 1/4 of the way through Mockingjay. But the movie is coming out this fall and I wanted to read them before seeing it. I think that's a good thing to do!

That's about it. How was your week of summer? If you're in school, are you out yet?

An Official Start!

First off, Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there! We had a great day here. My great aunt and uncle came over for lunch and I made a yummy lunch including my homemade bread that I'm starting to become famous for! Then I proceeded to totally lose at dominoes. I was winning till the last 15 minutes!

My summer officially starts tomorrow. Technically, I've been done with school for a week but I wanted to ease into my summer slowly :) I'm adding a couple more things to our bucket list checklist that people have mentioned and I like.

1. Go to a drive-in movie. I don't think there is one close by but I'll try to get there!
2. Read 13 new books (that's one a week. Shouldn't be too hard. I read two this past week! Though they weren't new. I'd read them before)
3. Attend a baseball game. Sky Sox or Rockies will do.
4. Wade in a creek.
5. Go to a community pool. And take my cousins with me!
6. Go water tubing.

I've also planned out a couple of things that are already on my list. We're going camping for Father's Day and our road trip will be to Wyoming for Cheyenne's Frontier Days in July. Yay!

How's YOUR summer bucket list coming? Anything new and cool that you're planning on doing this summer?