Category — Random

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Healthy Fruits and Vegetables for our Kids!

If you live in Arizona, Southern California, Las Vegas, or Hawaii: Take the day off from cooking this Sunday, September 9th. Instead of slaving over a hot stove, head on over to your local Whole Foods Market to support “Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools.”

For every pound purchased at its salad and hot food bars, Whole Foods Market will donate $1 towards getting salad bars into our local schools!

Supporting salad bars in schools is a sure-fire way to help combat childhood obesity. Giving kids healthy food to eat is a critical part of slowing the obesity epidemic, and it’s something First Lady Michelle Obama has made a cornerstone of her Let’s Move initiative.  Whole Foods Whole Kids Foundation supports the First Lady with their Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools website.

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Wouldn’t it be lovely to have a Labor Day picnic?

Photo credits: Country Living 1958 Nash Rambler Tailgate Picnic, Mason Jar Salad Picnic, The Full Spread

If only it wasn’t 105 degrees today in the Arizona desert, that is exactly what I would be doing… picnicking in the great outdoors, or at least in my backyard. But since this is my reality, maybe a picnic indoors would fill the void left by the heat. I wonder when we get to do this again? Maybe I should refresh my understanding of the USA federal holidays with this list of federal holidays in 2020 so I can plan another beautiful picnic soon.

Photo Credit

When it cools down in late October and we get our fall temperatures …

This is exactly what I dream of doing! How relaxing, romantic, and delicious does that look?!? The images come from one of my favorite bloggers, the talented, Heather Bullard, who also happens to have a real job as Contributing Editor at Country Living Magazine and is Editor-In-Chief for Souvenir Lifestyle Magazine. These specific photos come from the summer issue of Souvenir, which I subscribe to online. That way I can look at Heather’s gorgeous images over and over again without searching through my mile-high pile of magazines.

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Ten days ago today, was my 3rd Blogiversary and I put up my 1000th post. On that momentous day, I included this picture.

Yesterday, I found this picture of a painting by artist Sarah Ashley Longshore, on Facebook…

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We arrived home on Wednesday night and hit the ground running on Thursday. Dave and I have been singing THAT SONG for the last couple of days now.

I have enough photos and stories from our Alaskan adventures to fill days and days of blog posts – but of course, this IS a cooking/food blog, NOT a travel log – so this will be my last Alaskan entry. A pictorial really, which much to Dave’s dismay, is not necessarily in chronological order – I hope you enjoy it…

The photos above and below were taken in Ketchikan, and they just caught my fancy.

While in port in Ketchikan, Dave and I went on a “Cruise George Inlet and Crab Feast” excursion. I was one of the lucky two chosen to haul up a crab trap.

Here is Dave holding the largest Dungeness crab of the day.

And below is the pile of crab shells our table of four amassed at the feast! There was a competition between tables for the tallest tower.

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photo credit: Erik Roper

So sorry! I was just informed that the last two posts had no photos. Without my knowledge, they were not uploaded while I was WiFi challenged in Alaska.  Please go back to two posts and check out the missing pictures… they are awesome!

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I have very limited minutes of free internet while we are in Juneau… so I give you just a few of my amazing Alaska images. That is Sawyer Glacier behind us in the photo above.

It looks tiny compared to the fabulous Hubbard Glacier. We watched as it calved more than a dozen times. Spectacular!!!

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We’ve seen and done some wonderful things… all prior to boarding the ship for the cruise portion of our trip. The final day and night were spent in at The Hotel Alyeska in Girdwood, surprisingly, one of the few ski resorts in Alaska.

Upon viewing the map of ski trails, I’ve never seen so many black double-diamond runs in one place before!

The best thing I did that last day?

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For the first four days of our Alaskan trip, we have been in Denali National Park and Preserve. We stayed at the lovely Grande Denali Lodge, high on a hilltop over the town. The best day, by far, was when we were taken on the Tundra Wilderness Tour – a 53-mile, 8-hour tour, with a certified driver/naturalist. Our driver was Peter, and he was beyond amazing! Although we were riding on a “remodeled” school bus, it was one of the most enjoyable and informative tour-guided trips I’ve ever done.

Beautiful Denali Mountain looming large in the background, still visible, even beyond my huge hair – frizzed out from the humidity.

And from what not only Peter said, but just about everyone else in Denali told us, it was one of the most perfect, beautiful, and fruitful sighting days seen in many a summer.  Denali Mountain (also known as Mount McKinley – see the story and controversy over that name HERE) is most often shrouded in clouds. It was such a warm (warm for Alaska) and cloudless day, that the mountain was “Out” for what Peter told us was only the sixth day since May.

And although, we came with the expectations of seeing literal herds of caribou and moose, packs of wolves, and flocks of eagles – turns out, that no matter what we’ve all seen in movies, that is not how it “works” in Denali.

So when we not only saw the mountain in all its unclouded glory, but we saw just about every wild animal possible. First a small herd of Dall sheep on the mountainside.  Then two male caribou, with full racks of antlers, on a ridge and a lone bear in the brush, quite far from the bus. Next, up, is a cow moose, also rather far from the bus, but viewable with the zoom lens on my camera. Plus the bus is equipped with a super-zoom video camera that Peter is an expert with and screens throughout the bus for all to see “up-close”.

Best of all, we saw four different sets of mama bears with their cubs – from new spring cubs to 3-year-olds (grizzly cubs stay with their mother for the first 3 years of their lives before heading out on their own) and oh my, are they adorable!

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This is my first photo of Alaska, flying into Anchorage on Alaska Airlines – with glaciers below.

After checking into our hotel, we went exploring and found a huge open-air market. Love these license plate maps.

It was a beautiful 70+ degree day. Don’t know why these people have long pants and sleeves on – we were in shorts and t-shirts!

Kinda wish I would have bought some of these antler buttons.  If I stumble upon them again, I will for sure.

Ulu knives with bone handles. An ulu is an all-purpose knife of the Yupik and Inuit Eskimo. It was traditionally used for everything from skinning and cleaning animals, to cutting food and, if necessary, trimming the blocks of snow and ice used to build an igloo.

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