Long Day, Busy Week

This past week went by really quickly! I'm not even sure where it all went. It felt busy, though.

So, this week I made a few recipes from different blogs and they were wonderful!

First I made made this Smoky Refried Bean Soup and it was wonderful. The only things I did differently was I left out the green pepper, I didn't have any and I am not thrilled about them cooked. I love them raw, though. And then I substituted a chipotle in adobo for the chili powder, hot sauce and paprika. For the tomatoes called for in the recipe I used the Muir Glen Organic's Fire Roasted Tomatoes. Between those and the chipotle and adobo sauce, it had a great smoky flavor. It also had the perfect amount of spice to it. It was super simple to make, too.

Another thing I made were these Banana Cookies. OH, they were good! They were like banana nut bread in a cookie. YUM! I didn't add the clove to the recipe, and I'm not sure I will in the future.

In my veggie box this week I got 4 heads of wonderful red and green leaf lettuce, a huge bunch of cilantro, 4 smallish onions with green parts, one bunch of bright lights swiss chard, and one bunch of beets with greens. I think that was it. It was all gorgeous and the other night I made an awesome salad that went a little like this:

Wash and dry green and red lettuce, tear into pieces.
Dry roast half a cup of pecan halves until fragrant, toss them onto the lettuce.
Cut 1 1/2 navel oranges into segments and add to the salad.
Squeeze the 2nd half of the left over orange over the salad.
Add a large handful of cilantro very finely chopped to salad over oranges.
Add as much fresh goat cheese, crumbled (the best you can with goat cheese), onto the salad as you like.
Squeeze a lime over, add fresh black pepper.

That was a mighty fine salad. The only thing I lamented not having on hand was a red onion. I would have taken a quarter of it or so, finely chopped it and added that as well.

Today was a TaeKwonDo class and clinic for the oldest. The clinic was board breaking. He broke his first 3 boards ever, and was THRILLED with this, as you can imagine an 8 year old to be! I was so proud of him, he loves this sport and is so into it.
He used hands and elbows to break the first 2, then the 3rd, he decided to do a kick. The board broke into 3 and the 3rd piece flew way over the instructor's head. No one else's board did that, so of course that was a big deal, too.

Unfortunately, due to an accident on the interstate on our way to get there, we didn't have time stop and pick up a new digital camera before this. ARGH. That was very disappointing. We did get a new one afterwards, though, so I'll have new pictures to be posting again soon.

We ended up getting another Canon Powershot, which is what our last one was, and it was a great camera. It suffered an unfortunate fall several months ago, but in the 2 years we'd had it, we never had an issue with it, other than it's lack of indestructibility. ;)
The new one is a much improved 8MP, with a 4x zoom, and it was a very reasonable price. It's amazing how much things change in just two years' time regarding technology.

I have so many things I would like to post about, but I have been so tired by the time I get to sit in front of my computer in the evenings that I only manage to make it maybe halfway through my blog feeds before I just crash. I haven't had much energy for posting!

And now, the RIAA is stealing my sleep (heh), and I have to do that whole coffee demo thing in the morning at what will actually be 9 to my poor brain instead of 10 like it should be!

Also, it's still cold. WTF? It's over a week into March! I'm in Texas! It's supposed to be pushing 80 on a regular basis at this point. I am not ok with this weather thing, and I would like to call for a moratorium on all of this unseasonably cold weather.

I think I may need some sleep!