Recipe of the Week

A tasty and somewhat healthy way to use up excess zuchini---

Chocolate Chip Zuchini Bread
(From Cooking Light)

¾ cup sugar
3 T. vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 cup applesauce
2 cups flour
2 T. cocoa
1 ¼ t. baking soda
1 t. cinnamon
¼ t. salt
1 ½ cups finely shredded zucchini
½ cup semisweet chocolate chips

1- Preheat oven to 350
2- Beat 1st three ingredients. Mix in applesauce.
3- Mix in dry ingredients
4- Mix in zucchini and chocolate chips.
5- Spoon batter into greased loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour until toothpick inserted in the center comes out almost clean.(Bake only 30 to 40 minutes if you use 2 smaller pans)

Dining with a 1 year old

Yogurt

Tortellini

Birthday Cake

Quesadilla with sour cream

Mashed potatoes

Cheerios

Bear Lake

We just spent a lovely weekend with the family at Bear Lake. Playing in the sand, swimming, eating the sand, trying to drink the water-- if there was any giardia in the lake, I'm sure the boys ingested some. We had a great time. I'm not ready for summer to be winding down... sigh..

Cecret Lake

One of our summer traditions is an annual hike to Cecret Lake. Joshua walked almost the whole way, but his favorite part was throwing rocks in the Lake.

Cabin Weekend

Lofty Lake Loop, Uintas (thanks for the suggestion, Christy!)

Dinner

We had Neil's favorite dinner tonight--

Baked Tortellini
(adapted from Everyday Italian)

2 cups marinara sauce
1/2 cup mascarpone cheese
fresh parsley, chopped
fresh basil, chopped
1 lb cheese tortellini
grated mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup parmesan cheese, grated



Preheat oven to 350º. Whisk the sauce, mascarpone cheese, parsley and basil in a large bowl to blend. Cook tortellini in a large pot of boiling salted water until just tender, drain. Add tortellini to the sauce and toss to coat. Transfer the tortellini mixture to prepared baking dish. Top the mixture with the mozzarella and Parmesan. Cover and bake until the sauce bubbles and the cheeses on top melt, about 30 minute.

The harvest has begun

I had my favorite summer meal tonight. Homemade pesto pizza (thanks to Em for the big pile of basil). I made pesto, spread it on pizza crust, topped with fresh mozzerella and tomatoes from my very own backyard garden. Bake at 400 for about 20 minutes-- heaven. Joshua even rejected his plain cheese pizza for "mommy's pesto".

Basil Pesto
1 1/2 cups basil, firmly packed
3 T. pinenuts
1/4 cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic
juice of half a lemon
handful of parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Blend basil, pinenuts and garlic in food processor until chopped. Stream in olive oil. Mix in parm. cheese, lemon juice, salt and pepper.

Favorite summer pictures

The Girls 10 Year Reunion

This was me and "the girls" at Bear Lake. It has been 10 years since we graduated from Utah State-- go aggies! Great to be together again and to see how accurate our predictions were for each other. I'm looking forward to the next trip in 2017!