I found the recipe for this next dish on Food52 and made it for Paul’s “Welcome to the Lake” dinner on Saturday night. It is a delicious and stunningly beautiful dish.

I added and omitted a few ingredients from the original recipe. In the photos, you’ll see 2 zucchini, 2 yellow squash, and 2 eggplants, but that was too much for the baking dish, so in the recipe, I say to use one of each.

Don’t worry, we didn’t let those go to waste. I spread the excess on a sheet pan, seasoned and baked them off for another meal.

We picked up Paul at Montreal-Pierre E Trudeau International Airport at around 10:30 am.

We then drove to Old Montreal, parked, and walked about a mile and a half to Schwartz’s for their famous smoked meat sandwiches.

That sandwich was just as spectacular as I remembered from when I visited in October, 2010.

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I’m still in Quebec at Kim and Paul’s dreamy lake house. I haven’t been posting regularly because, well, I’m on vacation and because I’ve been obsessed with reading a book I found on the shelves here. I finished All The Light We Cannot See yesterday afternoon. My dreams have been filled with it since the day I picked it up and last night was no exception. Many of you have probably already read it since it came out nearly four years ago. I’m usually behind the curve when it comes to books. I highly recommend it if you’re looking for a new read.

Now that I have my nose out of the book and my head out of the clouds, here is the salad recipe I promised you last week. Oh, and there is a mouse update at the bottom of this post.

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photo credit: Cody Howard

If you’re like me, sometimes you look at your smart phone in complete awe. We walk around with a computer in our pockets. No longer do we need a watch, a camera, an encyclopedia, a dictionary, any array of how-to books, a landline, and the list goes on.

And no longer do I tear out pages from magazines in doctors’ offices. Yes, I’m sorry to admit that I was one of those people. Now, I just whip out my phone and snap a photo of that recipe or article I must have.

photo credit: Debby Gooding

The following recipe is inspired from one such photo I took during a recent visit to a doctor’s office. I don’t recall the magazine, probably a celebrity weekly or women’s monthly, since those are the magazines I usually gravitate towards in that situation.

I’m in Quebec Canada with Kim Howard and her dear friend, Debby Gooding, at Deer Lake, which is the Howard Family’s gorgeous Canadian retreat. Click HERE to read more about it in this posts from my last visit in July, 2013. One of my favorite things about this magical place is all the vintage vibes.

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First up, I want to share with you the Harmony Board that I created for the birthday dinner celebration for my dear friend, Lisa, on Tuesday night.

I’m spending my summer working on a business plan, website, social media pages, logo, etc. for Harmony Boards. Kim and I are going to her family home in Canada later this month to escape the heat and to brainstorm and plan the launch party for late summer or early fall.

Of course, I’ll keep you posted once we have the date locked down.

Secondly, while I was going through the photos on my computer looking for some pictures I took back in April, which I needed for my last post, I came across something I’d meant to share, but then forgot all about.

If you remember in THIS POST from May 2nd, which was about my backyard remodel I said,

“In a future post, I’ll share with you all the drama that occurred on granite delivery day. It was quite the thing.”

Do you think July 26 is too late to finally share it? Hopefully not, because here we go.

Photo credit: Lifted from Ronnie’s FB page

On the early evening of Wednesday, April 4, 2018 my friends and former neighbors, Mike and Ronnie Jaap, stopped by to see my backyard remodel. They were considering using the same company I was using and wanted to check out the progress over here. Afterward, we had plans to go out for dinner.

Earlier that day, in the late afternoon, a load of granite had been dropped off on the road on the south side of my house. The pile was in the street on the other side of my double gates. The pile had orange cones on all sides. This is common practice around construction projects and is allowed.

It was about 6:00 pm as Mike, Ronnie, and I were walking on the far north side of the backyard, talking about how happy I was with Garden Plus Landscape & Pools. Suddenly, we heard a loud crash and looked toward that double gate on the other side of the yard to see a huge plume of dust and dirt explode over the gate.

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Photo courtesy of Pinkerton Photography

My cousin and my friend, Michelle Lorts, gave me a tin of Red Rock Lavender Lemon Pepper. Michelle owns Studio Fiore and is the florist who created the stunning flowers for Marissa’s wedding.

Photo credit: Red Rock Ranch & Farms

A few weeks ago, Michelle and a few girlfriends took a day trip to visit the lavender fields at Red Rock Ranch & Farms in Concho, Arizona.

Concho is in the White Mountains, about a 3½ hour drive from Scottsdale.

Photo credit: Red Rock Ranch & Farms

I’ve always thought about going for the Lavender Festival, but never pulled the trigger on it, maybe next year.

I used her gift to make a delicious chicken dish. You can make it too, even if you don’t have a tin of the Red Rock Lavender mix because I’ve included the proportions to make the herb and spice mixture on your own at the bottom of this post.

I also used one of my favorite local olive oils, Queen Creek Olive Mill Meyer Lemon Olive Oil. You may use regular olive oil as a substitute. Of course, you if want to make this recipe using the unique Arizona spice mixture and olive oil, the links are here for you to order those items online. Enjoy!

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Photo courtesy of griffithimaging.com

      Wedding Taco Bar

Fillings:

• CHICKEN
• GROUND BEEF
• SHRIMP
• VEGGIES

Toppings:

• Barrio Café Guacamole
• Creamy Cilantro sauce
• Pickled Red Onions
• Cilantro Chimichurri
• Peggy’s Blender Salsa
• diced tomatoes
• black beans
• sliced radishes
• sliced jalapeño
• sweet pickled jalapeño
• sliced black olives
• salsa roja
• salsa verde
• diced avocado
• sour cream
• queso fresco
• Mexican cheese blend
• Mexican crema
• cotija cheese
• chopped cilantro
• diced white onion
• green onion
• lettuce
• cabbage

Sides:

• Tomatillo Rice
• Refried Black Beans
• Mexican Street Corn
• Corn Tortillas
• Flour Tortillas
• White & Blue Chips

That is the list of 34 items that made up the Wedding Taco Bar.

Photo courtesy of griffithimaging.com

There are very few recipes left to share with you from the wedding, since all the fillings have been posted and several of the sides and topping recipes are here in previous  posts. Click on these links to find them:

Barrio Café Guacamole

Pickled Red Onions

Peggy’s Blender Salsa

Mexican Street Corn

So that only leaves the Creamy Cilantro Sauce, Refried Black Beans, Tomatillo Rice and Cilantro Chimichurri. Since the chimichurri is an easy “dump in the blender and turn on” recipe, we’ll start with it.

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Photo courtesy of griffithimaging.com

The newlyweds!

Photo courtesy of griffithimaging.com

It’s the day many of you have waited for. Today I post several photos of the newlyweds. I also share Chanté’s Signature Cocktail. It is called “The Fox” because Fox is Chanté’s maiden name.

Photo courtesy of griffithimaging.com

Cody knew he wanted a skinny margarita for his signature cocktail from the beginning. Chanté knew she wanted a vodka-based drink but it wasn’t until about 2 weeks before the wedding that she, Kim, and I visited Culinary Dropout and Doughbird to figure out exactly what that drink would consist of.

After trying the “Between You & Me” at Culinary Dropout and “The Local” at Doughbird, we came to the unanimous decision on “The Local.”

I had gone up to the bar at each restaurant and taken a video of the bartenders making the specific cocktails. This made it much easier to recreate for the wedding.

Of course, they were making a single drink. You might think that basic multiplication would get you the exact drink when making 100 servings, but it’s not quite that simple.

There is more than math and science involved, you have to taste and adjust as you multiply. So I took it from one drink to 100 and now back down to 10 servings here for you.

I used Absolut Grapefruit Vodka for the wedding cocktails because the drink is the perfect light pink shade. When I made the cocktail at home for this post, I only had Deep Eddy Grapefruit Vodka. It is already a darker color than the finished wedding cocktail was, so the end drink color is not as pretty. Tastes great, just not that subtle and inviting pretty pink.

Enjoy.

P.S. I saved my favorite photos of the gorgeous couple for the end of this post, so keep scrolling!

Photo courtesy of griffithimaging.com

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Yesterday, I gave you a lay of the land for the wedding weekend in Hualapai Mountain Park. I failed to mention that this all took place over Mother’s Day weekend and that the Hualapai Mountains are just outside Kingman, AZ., in the northwest corner of our beautiful state.

And see those deer in the corner of the map above?

Photo courtesy of griffithimaging.com

Yeah, they are there because the deer are so tame in the park, that they eat out of your hand, walk into kitchens, and pose in wedding photos.

Photo courtesy of griffithimaging.com

As you can see above, that is the handsome groom, Cody, trying to have his wedding photos taken but was interrupted by a curious little deer.  It’s lovely when something spontaneous happens that can create a really beautiful image. In this instance, it’s obvious that the deer didn’t want to be upstaged. Speaking of deer, I too, had a fun encounter with a herd of them… but we’ll get to that tomorrow.

First, I want to tell you about the brilliant and life-saving idea my friend and mother of the groom, Kim Howard, had.

A few weeks before the wedding, Kim realized that we had much more food to bring up than we could ever fit into coolers.

She found the perfect one at Mobile Cooler. I honestly don’t know what we would have done without this thing! As you can see, it can be used for beer kegs, but we just used it as a mobile refrigerator.

The refrigerator in the Rec. 2 kitchen would not have held a tenth of the food we brought up. In fact, this photo shows us toasting after my first full day of cooking and as you can see, items are nearly falling out… this is nothing compared to what was still in the refrigerated trailer at this point.

Here is a photo I sent to Kim on the Wednesday before we left. It is my kitchen island after unpacking the goods I bought at Food City. I also shopped at Costco, Safeway, Fry’s, Trader Joe’s, A.J’s, and Smart & Final. I didn’t begin shopping for perishables until after the trailer arrived, because I didn’t have room in my two refrigerators for it all.

Kim really did save the day. Actually, she saved the weekend!

The trailer was delivered to my driveway on Tuesday evening. I plugged it in and it was chilled to the perfect temperature in less than an hour. I began filling it up on Wednesday morning and we had it filled and ready to hitch up to Kim and Paul’s mid-size SUV on Thursday morning.

Cody enlisted the help of one of his employees, Eloy, to help get everything up to the site, unload it all and then reload and bring it all home on Sunday. Eloy was the first to arrive at my house on Thursday morning. He had his truck and an open flatbed trailer. He filled both to the brim with the majority of my patio furniture, 20 folding chairs, two 60-inch round, two 6-foot folding tables, an 8-foot folding table, card tables, etc. along with quite a bit of goodies from Miscellany Shed. The photo above shows some of the decor/serving items that went back into the shed on the Monday after the wedding.

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These ribs were the hit of my Memorial Day BBQ. Today, I had planned on posting another recipe from Connor’s birthday dinner, but several of the guests asked that I post this recipe first and I love nothing more than pleasing my friends and family. <3

There is only about 15 minutes of hands-on prep time and another 15 or 20 minutes of grilling time, the rest of recipe  is hands-off time in the oven. See, easy!

You can use your favorite barbecue seasoning rub, or use my favorite Food Network rub. I’ve been using it for nearly 10 years. The recipe for that rub is included.

I used purchased BBQ sauce, but of course, if you have a favorite recipe, use that!

Linda’s Easy and Delicious Baby Back Ribs

• 5 to 6 pounds baby back pork ribs
• 3/4 cup barbecue seasoning rub *recipe below
• 2 cups barbecue sauce

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Line the bottoms of two large baking sheets with heavy-duty foil.

Lay ribs out on the baking sheets. Season all over with the rub, using all 3/4 cup. Cover baking sheets tightly with heavy-duty foil.

Roast in oven for 1 hour.

Gently remove top foil and brush ribs with half of the barbecue sauce. Carefully and tightly re-cover with the foil and return to the oven for 30 minutes, ribs will be very tender.

Heat grill to medium-high. Grill ribs, brushing with sauce and turning several times, until slightly charred and glazed, 15 to 20 minutes.

Transfer ribs to a cutting board. Cut into one or two rib portions and serve.

Serves a crowd

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I have brought this salad as a pot-luck dish to many parties over the years and everyone always asks for the recipe. I brought it again last weekend and promised the recipe would be here this week. Promise kept!

I use already toasted and peeled hazelnuts from Trader Joe’s for this recipe.

If you have raw hazelnuts, go to this LINK to learn how to toast and skin them.

I almost never go to all that trouble anymore. Just another reason I am always so grateful for Trader Joe’s! I also used TJ’s quinoa, a mix of red and white.

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