A Taste of Summer

I don't know about you but I am more than wintered out! It's been a long, cold winter that started early and just doesn't want to go away. At the start of this week I decided to make a couple of dishes to give us a taste of summer. It was just the little change we needed!

Lunch Goodies

My husband takes a homemade lunch to the office. Sometimes it is left overs but quite often I make him something different. Lunches tend to be garbage free meaning no paper, no wrappings and anything compostable is brought home. I have a few plastic lunch containers used only for cold foods (more on the plastics issue later). Anything that needs reheating is sent on a regular dinner plate or in a covered glass dish. Monday's lunch was chicken caesar salad (1). I assembled the salad in a lunch kit (2) leaving the dressing separate to prevent the romaine lettuce from becoming soggy. This is a hard plastic lunch kit that came with a small container perfect for dressing or sauce and a fork in the outside compartments. This is a perfect container for salads and wraps but nothing that will be reheated. Despite the fact the container is labeled as being microwave safe, it will only be used for foods that do not need heating.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a 24 mini cup Wilton muffin pan. While I have a 12 mini cup muffin pan, it is used mainly for freezing small amounts of things like roasted garlic. I thought the larger Wilton pan would be perfect for making snack and grandbaby sized muffins. Tuesday I made bran muffins using the new pan. Half of them went to the office for my husband's snack. Tuesday night I made a lovely batch of tuna salad, a summer favourite.

Guacomole

When the winter drags on who can resist the beautiful bright colours of fruits and vegetables to brighten the day? I just love the colours of the fruits and vegetables in guacomole almost as much as I like eating guacomole! I make guacomole using ripe avocados, ripe tomato, onion, lemon and lemon. Aren't they just simply gorgeous?

I simply chop half of the tomato and half of the onion fine. They I cut the avocados in half and remove the pits for growing. I scoop the avocado flesh into a small mixing bowl. I cut the lemon and lime in half and squeeze the juice over the avocado and mash to make a smooth, lightly chunked mixture. Then I stir in the chopped onions and tomatoes. That's it. It's nice and simple yet very tasty and always goes over well.

I usually serve guacomole with round corn tortilla chips (if I'm serving as a snack. However, two ways I really enjoy guacomole is using it as a filling for either soft tortilla shells or leaf lettuce. Both are very tasty appetizers sure to please!