Summer Lovin'

This...

...is a perfectly wonderful way to spend half your weekly grocery budget. :-)

Honestly, on Friday when I went grocery shopping I spent about 1/3 of our weekly budget on what you see above, minus the strawberries. I bought the strawberries on Wednesday for $1.50/lb, which if I do say so myself is a pretty good deal. I bought 4 pounds of them. I bought so many blueberries and raspberries because they were on sale for only $1.50/pint for the blueberries and $1.50/6-oz for the raspberries. Also a pretty good deal. So...our freezer is full of berries!

I love summer produce. It's actually affordable. In the winter we eat a lot of broccoli, carrots, potatoes, and...other random veggies, but mostly broccoli and carrots! So I'm lovin' my first whole summer in the South, where fresh produce abounds. You have to remember that I'm from the state where bananas go on sale for $.99/lb. Shannon is reaping the benefits of my love affair with the fruits and veggies in the eating department, but losing me to the cooking process for many hours each week. I'm sure that he's thankful that now school's started I'll have to do more crock pot/easy meals and not so many "elaborate" ones. Maybe next summer I can enjoy trying new "involved" recipes again.


Squash, eggplant, tomatoes and red peppers for ratatouille, sugar snap peas for pasta primavera.


Shannon had never had a fresh, plain raspberry before. He liked them!

Yesterday I made a strawberry tart. I've had the recipe for it for oh, about 5 years, but never had gotten around to making it before. Well, with my 4 lbs of strawberries I decided to go for it. One word: delicious.

On Thursday Shannon and I went to our first class of the semester. It was then that I learned that we have to read a 524-page book and write a 6-page book review over it by September 25th. That's less than 6 weeks away! And to make matters worse for me, it's a history book. Now, I have started (67 pages done by yesterday!), and will admit that it's not that bad, but still...history is just not my thing. So, we'll see if this book is interesting enough for me to actually enjoy learning about the history of Central Asia, or if I suffer through it strictly to get the assignment done. Let's hope it's the former.

Shannon and I have decided that I need some new clothes. So today after church we went shopping. For 4 hours. I bought 3 shirts, 2 of which were the same, just different colors. I must have tried on 50. At least. It is really hard to find affordable, comfortable, appropriate clothes that you actually like and would wear. I thought that maybe since I usually shop in Juniors (yeah, I know, I'm almost 30) I'd try the Misses or Women's departments. And then I remembered why I shop in Juniors: nothing in Misses or Women's fits me. The smalls and size 4's look like you could fit two of me into them. So, back to Juniors it was. I think that after 4 hours, 3 stores, 50ish shirts/dresses, 4 fitting room expeditions, and only 2 keepers, Shannon is finally coming to understand that unless you're made of money, shopping is really not that fun for most of us.