What's Cooking for Tomorrow?

There's a lot of work to be done prepping food for tomorrow's shindig! In case you're struggling for ideas, here's what we are planning.

-Fruit salad - cantaloupe, watermelon, grapes, blueberries, and temptation melon.

-Pistachio salad - my very artificial and unhealthy favorite. Essentially this recipe, but I add chopped nuts and cream cheese.

-Fresh Potato Salad. Recipe here. No other potato salad compares, according to Dale.

-Steak! With "10 Clove Garlic Marinade" off of allrecipes.com.  For some reason the site isn't coming up.  I wonder if it's my computer, or it's just overloaded with people searching for 4th of July recipes?

- Fresh bread.  (Best all around white bread recipe I've found. I've made this without fail many, many times.)

- "Bacon-wrapped Jalapeno Thingies" a la Pioneer Woman.  These look dangerous.

- No-Bake Cheesecake Bars by Mark Bitman. This is such a refreshing version of cheesecake, combining ricotta, cream cheese, and a touch of lemon rind with fresh blueberries. I'll throw some raspberries on too, to get the RED in the red, white and blue.

I love the 4th!

4th of July Recap

What a great 4th! I couldn't have planned a better day.  Check out the slide show of parade pics!

The best parts of this year's holiday came from watching my girls, ages 3 and 4.  For the first time, they realized parade candy was something to be fought for.

Watching them watch fireworks was better than watching the fireworks myself.



"It's raining stars!" sounds cliche, unless its coming from a 4 year old.



"Mommy, I'm lighting the fireworks with my wand!" She kept her arm extended the entire show.



I like this picture because it's weird.



Hope you stopped in at the Yakima Fruit Market this weekend for your BBQ staples.  The corn is great right now, we're fully into cherry season, local strawberries are still going strong, and by golly I hope you're craving fruit because the Yakima Fruit Market is earning it's name this month.

This week, we'll be talking about the never-ending salmonella outbreak.  The fruit market gets all of the up to date information - if a recall affects their product they will know (and react) before we do.  So far, so good.

Around the Yakima Fruit Market 6/28/08-7/4/08 - Parade TODAY!

Happy 4th of July!



Today we're heading to the parade, and I want to show you the incredible art painted on the YFM "float":


Go ahead, take a closer look.  Aren't you impressed?  AWESOME JOB Win and Jensen!!!  When you walk through the fruit market, you are walking among artists.  Did you know that? That butterfly's wings actually flap!



Here's the back.



See it today at the Bothell 4th of July Parade!



They were pretty busy tonight when I went in. 

Have a hankerin' for some watermelon?  Can't eat a whole one? 



The entire nursery was blooming.  Huge hanging baskets, and of course a great POW (plant of the week)





Wishing everyone a safe and relaxing 4th of July!