keeping up with the food updates

the july phase may just make it into next month!

we may have fallen off the wagon one or two times, or perhaps for about 9 days in the middle of july, but overall i think this journey will continue. that is, at least while the weather is warm and the sun stays up until 10!

one of my girlfriends introduced me to cooking light, and i have been finding a handful of recipes that are worth trying. after making them, i'd say only a few are worth writing down to make again later...but it is fun to learn some more about cooking and how spices and foods work together to make good, and bad, combinations. and it so happens that some of the recipes have similar ingredients, so i can get more than one use out of the spices and herbs we use.

for the recipe below, i substituted the papaya for cantaloupe. the recipe also included black beans, corn, golden raisins, cilantro (again), avocado and a homemade dressing of some things i can't remember combined with lime juice. doing this again, i would take out the serrano peppers it called to add (notice i didn't mention them above) there was way too much punch for my palette.

the meal looks a little mushy, but you get the idea!

month of making food

i may be one of the world's worst bloggers (okay, after jaci since she never posts pics of her kiddo 10,000 miles away from me).

not only is my blogging sporadic, but i never seem to be "ready" with the information i need. take this homemade chicken salad. it had a kick. it had some lime, cilantro and cumin. cumin for sure. and the obvious you see below. 

but that's about all i can remember. oh, and it is one of my favorite new recipes we have tried while striving to spend more time eating at home - at our dining room table we spent so much time saving up for.

cookies!

just posted on my baking blog about the wedding themed sugar cookies from amy's bridal shower this weekend!

4th of july

thought i would post a few quick pics of my sweet niece from the 4th of july. look closely, she has a tiny bow in her hair that she forgot about. not only do bows seemingly get lost in her head of curls, but she tends to take them out when she remembers they are in and then make you put in them in...over and over again...

as a side note, two of my cousins had their little boys in the last two weeks - colin and zack. i can't wait to meet them both soon, and it makes me excited for little niece #2 here in october!

a few from OIB

OIB. ocean isle beach. a tiny little place just inside the border of north carolina - slightly north of myrtle beach. at the end of june the voight clan rented an awesome beach house at OIB to celebrate both my mother and father-in-laws' 60th birthdays. the house was wonderful and had enough room to comfortably fit all nine of us (and each family had their own bathroom/room, which is very important for a successful vacation!). we did a lot of beach walking, porch rocking and, well, eating and drinking. we may or may not have gone through three bags of cool ranch doritos and two bottles of pina colada mix in eight days....

all in all we had a great time - the guys played a couple rounds of golf and the girls got out for dinner and outlet shopping one night (to which we only made it to one store for the entire 2.5 hours we were there). we took turns making dinner each night and had a few dinners out - if you are ever out at OIB, i suggest you skip the "giggling mackeral"...he is only giggling because he fooled you in thinking you would receive fresh, well prepared seafood...however they did happen to carry the brand of wine the voights keep stocked in our house - thanks to a hometown country club (we even served it at our wedding!)

thought i would share just a few of the photos i have gone through so far - so  many to sort through.

how does your garden grow?

opps - this zucchini must have been hiding these last few weeks in all the crazy leaves this plant produces - it is more than a foot long! no. really. stay tuned for some baking posts on how to use a 2lb zucchini..

fu manchu

my husband has what i call "instant karma". i'm not sure i even believe in the whole karma concept - but i know things have great timing when it comes to my husband getting what he deserves.

example - on our way to new york for new years, we arrived to the airport super early with our friends and decided to grab breakfast before going through security. for some reason, the topic came up and i mentioned i had never had problems going through security. i then stated "watch, it will be my luck they will search me now". 

if you are even somewhat aware of the sarcastic, dry banter my husband and i share daily, you can then imagine how my husband started running with jokes. as we later waited in line, he grabbed his bags and walked away saying "i don't want anyone to know i am with you, they'll think im a terrorist too" and "see ya on the plane, i'm not waiting". oh he was just sooooo funny poking jokes.

so after i successfully cleared security without so much of a beep, i look back to see my husband being scanned by an old dirty man (ok, so he wasn't really dirty, but just to embellish the story). just when he thought he was safe, they made him enter the full body x-ray machine (you know, the one that people don't like because everyone sees your naked business). i could hardly contain myself - and if i didn't think i'd cause some sort of security breach, i would've taken a picture.

instant karma.

i tell you this, because, you see...well, i offered to help. but my hair cutting skills clearly weren't enough. he had to cut it on his own.

now, i present to you....the backwards fu manchu. 

instant karma.

perspective

i just got a good dose of godly perspective. and i must admit, i think i needed it.

i just stumbled upon a college friend's blogs (thanks to the wonders of facebook) - she and her husband are expecting their first baby soon and recently bought a new home for their growing family. with her post of their new digs, she talked about her immediate love for their 1930s house (coincidence?) but her desires to quickly fill it with wonderful things and renovate.

i couldn't help but feel called out as i often struggle with finding contentment in the amazing home we have and not wanting more all the time. once one room is complete, i move on to the next. for a while i blamed milo for making me feel that way after he chewed up our new rug so it was no longer "perfect" (i kid), but in reality, i sometimes fail at taking the time to enjoy my blessings instead of trying to make things more "worldly" and perfect.

if you read her post, you'll see what i mean. i am challenged to take back the perspective that what I have is from Him and that i should choose to use my home as an opportunity to give thanks and open my home to loving and serving others. and not be so quick to compare my home to the pottery barn magazine next time the mailman leaves it on my steps...

many great things

it is never a bad thing to say one has many great things to blog about. the one downside i see in this is that it leaves little time to write about them. but i know you are probably busy too. and am sure there are studies out there analyzing the decrease of posts in the blogosphere during the summer months...blah blah blah, snore...

so we just got back from a wonderful family vacation to ocean isle beach (oib as the locals call it), which is north of myrtle beach and technically in the state of north carolina (just in case you wanted a quick geography lesson). i will try and work on some pics this week to upload, along with some awesome summaries and stories that i am sure my in-laws will love being scattered across the internet!

in the meantime, the voights are in day two of their second annual summer phase. if you remember last summer we participated in Jrune, so we are now entering what we hope is a new lifestyle (instead of a short-lived phase). i guess only next summer will tell...

sadly, there is no fancy name for this like last year, this is just more about not being fat. let me know if you think of a good one for that.

okay, so maybe it is more about taking the time to cook meals and reduce our heavy fast-food lifestyle. but name or no name for this attempts, we are working on being intentional about what we are eating and cooking more meals rather than using the excuse of supporting the economy by eating at mcdonalds, taco hut (taco bell and pizza hut combined...it really is a great thing!) penn station and the list keeps going of our weekly consumptions.

i hope to blog with some success updates - and am thinking about changing the name of my baking blog to something a little more universal. after all, if i am going to take the time to slave over a home cooked meal, i might as well take some pics and blog about it, right?

so there, i have confessed our newest phase. i mean lifestyle. last night we even kicked off with a mediterranean chicken pasta with feta, black olives, onions and sun dried tomatoes - but forgot to take any pictures. therefore, you win a picture of our green peppers - from about 2 weeks ago. this little buddy is almost ready for picking now!

moore baby

she's cute. she's sweet. and she is the offspring of one of my best friends. please welcome to the show...ruthie!