Avocado Salsa

You know how you have those go-to recipes for when you are invited for dinner? This is my go-to.

I LOVE this salsa/dip/salad. It's nice and light and tastes awesome and everyone loves it! Plus it has avocado and we know how much I LOVE avocado! Alright enough of me raving...

Here's what you'll need:

 1 can of black beans - drained and rinsed
1 small can of corn (I like to use Mexicorn) - drained
3 green onions, sliced
1/2 red onion, chopped
1-2 tomatoes, diced (I scoop out the insides to make it less soupy)
2 avocados, diced
1 package of Good Seasoning Italian dressing mix
1/4 cup olive oil
1/8 cup white vinegar

Plus some tortilla chips. I like the scoops ones because I think they work the best since this puppy is chunky!

Once you have all the ingredients chopped and sliced and diced, just mix it all together in a medium sized bowl and serve! Easy peazy!

 

Sorry the pictures aren't that good. I was in a rush to get out the door after making it to get to a bbq. I'll try and take better ones next time!

Making "the book"

In my family, my siblings and I all developed a love of cooking. Probably because my mom is just that awesome ;)

Mom was the primary cook growing up and I grew up watching her page through her cookbooks, both the ones she bought and the ones she made over the years by collecting recipes and putting them into binders on manila folders. Some of these recipes were from magazines or newspapers, from friends, and others were family recipes passed down from my grandparents. These recipes were the tried and true recipes. Mom's go-to for company or just a Wednesday night dinner.

A few years ago, my mom surprised my siblings and I with some presents. She had made us each our own recipe book and hand written in the wonderful recipes we grew up with including those passed down from my grandparents. Plus she put pictures of us all in it. It was a very special gift for us all.

Since that day, we have all discussed new recipes and the question that gets asked when we make something is "Is it good enough for the book?" You could say we've become a bit selective! But if it makes the book, then the recipe is awesome.

So if you see me write that it made "the book", you know the recipe is awesome :)

Grilled cheese, how I love thee...

There are few things that I enjoy more than a well made grilled cheese. I mean, really, how can you go wrong with melty cheese and bread and butter?

For the first recipe in this new adventure, I decided to go back to a sandwich I found on Pinterest and have tried before courtesy of A Turtle's Life For Me. It's an updated take on grilled cheese. This one involves mozzarella, avocado, and pepperoni.

Did I mention yet that I also LOVE avocado?!? yeah...that's up there on my list as well.

So here are the supplies for 1 sandwich:

2 slices of whole grain bread
Tablespoon of butter
2 slices of sandwich pepperoni
Half an avocado, sliced
Thin slices of mozzarella to your hearts content

Place a bit of the butter on one slice of bread and place it on the griddle over medium low heat. Place the mozzarella, pepperoni, and avocado on the bread. I like to put the cheese first, then pepperoni, more cheese, then avocado, then, you guessed it, more cheese because it helps everything stick together. I also recommend putting the avocado in the middle of the bread so that the pieces don't fall out during flipping. Next put some more butter on the other slice of bread and place it on top of the sandwich. 

Now is when you need to be patient grasshoppers. If you put the heat up too fast, it'll cook/burn the bread, but won't melt the cheese enough. I like to lower the heat to low and put a lid over the sandwich to help the cheese melt. Cook it a little and then flip the sandwich. Keep cooking and flipping until the bread is cooked to your liking and the cheese is nice and gooey.

How good does this look??

The only thing that would make it better is bacon...yum...bacon...

Fresh start

Recently I was thinking to myself about how many times I have saved a recipe or a tutorial and never actually tried them. How many cookbooks I own that have barely been touched. How many hundreds of pins on Pinterest.com that I haven't thought of since I pinned them. What was the point of all that saving? Sure, there is that little voice inside that says "oh you'll definitely use this someday!", but the more I think about that, I'm pretty sure I was just fooling myself!

Well, until today that is.

I figure it's time to stop all the pinning (although I will definitely still pin some things...that's a hard habit to break!) and the saving and the putting off of projects and meals to some undisclosed time period and instead start doing and living. That's a lot of and's....my English teachers would not be happy.

Anyway, I'm hoping to go through and actually make some of these recipes I keep hearing about. Or these projects I want to try. Whatever my little heart desires. 

Couple of caveats. First, I am by no means a professional cook. I don't think I'm a bad cook, but I'm the kind of person that usually needs a recipe. You will not see me on Master Chef any time in the near or distant future. Second, I am not a professional photographer so please bear with my photos. I'll try and at least use my actual camera for pictures. And third, these are my opinions on the foods so please feel free to agree or disagree. Recommendations are also welcome! 

If anyone reads this, awesome. If not, at least I have a record of what I tried, what worked and what didn't. So let's get this party started :)