Body

There’s nothing better than a light, refreshing salad during the hot summer months. And in Arizona our hot months are HOT and LONG! So our summer salad vs. winter soup ideas need to be up to the challenge. Here are our family’s favorite summer salad recipes, and they are always crowd pleasers whenever they are shared with friends. As I stated in my One Dish Stove-Top Recipes post, I’m including the original post along with changes I have made for either taste, health, or dietary reasons. Enjoy! Cold or Side Salads ~ some may be great for side dishes and others will make a meal of their own. Crunchy Broccoli Salad with Maple Mustard Dressing Original Recipe: https://www.shelikesfood.com/crunchy-broccoli-salad/?fbclid=IwAR0UUh-Ap4Lt4S6fA9DN8G57SZlk5ZQLaW2prfSgn-l3GUsZThNgFOB6a7A Hands down, this is not only a family favorite but any time I share it with friends, everyone wants the recipe. It is perfect as is, but I do make a few

I have always wanted to have the fresh vegetables from a garden but the work and time involved would prevent me from moving forward. As someone who really does NOT like to get her hands dirty (literally!) and any flowers I’ve ever tried to grow always died quickly, I had resigned myself to gardening not being in my future. Then I saw the Tower Garden—it looked perfect for a beginner like me! A compact, keep-my-hands-dirt-free, aeroponic gardening system. It sounded perfect … until I saw the cost. I knew and agreed with all the research on its cost effectiveness over time, but I still couldn’t bring myself to lay out around $600 for the system. There are great tutorials out there to build your own, but again … time! So it just stayed in the back of my mind and on my Pinterest boards for several years. Then I was at

I’m sure you, just like me, are over this “sheltering in place” and ready for life to return to “normal.” I think we can all acknowledge that we will have a “new normal” following this Pandemic of 2020 … similar to how we did after 9-11. And each of us will need to be making our own decisions on how we will live our future lives in light of this. That’s not what I want to talk about today. Instead, I want to share some thoughts on HOW we live, believe, and think TODAY that will help us come out on the other side using this time to have grown personally and spiritually. I was reading through my Reading Journal (see my post “How I Remember the Good Stuff I Read”) from past May months and came across several excerpts from May 2016 that coincide with life in May 2020.

As I mentioned in my “Organizing My Pinterest Recipes” post, I like to print out recipes I use regularly so I can first of all, locate them; but secondly, so I can personalize the recipes for our health choices. One of my favorite way to cook are using recipes that I can make using primarily with one large dish and combines many of our food groups together. Plus they are usually large quantities so there are frequently leftovers – great for sharing, lunches or a night off from fixing dinner! Growing up in the Midwest, I still have an affinity for casserole or comfort-type dishes. Many of these take me to my happy place, especially when I can make them a bit healthier than you would normally expect. So following are some of my favorites along with my adaptations and suggestions. I will include the original recipe link as well

Since beginning my health journey 5 years ago, I had to make major changes in the food I cooked for myself and for my family. At first, I was disappointed as I am a baker at heart, and I thought I would no longer be able to bake and enjoy all those yummy carb and sugar heavy treats. Instead, I found that there are so many good, healthy replacement recipes out there – and they are not found in my old Betty Crocker cookbooks, but rather mostly through Pinterest! So I began pinning and creating board after board, trying to stay organized. Or let’s face it, board after board for each new diet concept I tried!! But mostly, I was going after dairy-free and refined-sugar free … and if they were gluten-free, that was a bonus. Now one thing with Pinterest or other people’s recipes, as you probably know, there’s

It’s a long one (55 years!) but I will try to condense it to the highlights–actually the majority of it has taken place in the last five years. You will find this post is not going to be your typical “I followed this plan, lost this amount of weight, and I’m so proud of my new body.” Instead, this is simply my journey that is far from over. Maybe you can relate? So to begin at the beginning … as my mom says, “We grew up eating organic before we even knew it was a thing.” My mom maintained a large garden and was regularly canning and freezing fruits and vegetables. But I wasn’t too into fruits and veggies back in those years…my focus was more on those good Midwestern comfort foods. They are still some of my favorites! But we ate very little fast food and soda in our