Triple Bean Salad

Summertime is here!  One of my favorite times of the year, where I am looking for new grilling recipes as well as cold side salads to complement them.

I am working on rotating through my storage closet (the former owner's used it as a tanning bed room) and had several cans of beans that I wanted to use up.  I found this recipe on the My Recipes website.  It was a snap to put together and best of all it did not involve heating up the kitchen at all.  I used a red onion instead of the green and I threw some feta cheese on the top.  The kids liked it although they traded one's chickpeas for the other's black beans.  I threw some grilled steak on the tops and had it for lunches during the week.

Triple Bean Salad
Cooking Light

1/2 cup chopped green onions

1/2 cup chopped green bell pepper

1/2 cup chopped red bell pepper

1 (15.5-ounce) can garbanzo beans, drained

1 (15.5-ounce) can kidney beans, drained

1 (15.5-ounce) can black beans, drained and rinsed

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

2 tablespoons olive oil

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1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon salt

Combine first 6 ingredients in a large bowl. Whisk together vinegar, oil, pepper, juice, and salt; pour over bean mixture, stirring to coat. Cover and chill.

Happy 3rd Birthday Christopher!

Happy Birthday Christopher!  You're getting way too big too fast as well.  Three years old already!!

This year Christopher wanted Mater on his cake.  I thought that he would be easier to do than Belle was, but it was pretty humid yesterday.  He was starting to melt before I could get him situated on the cake.  I also didn't measure very well and he was headed for the edge.  Doesn't matter though ... all that matters was the "WOW, look at my Mater cake!  Thank you mommy, you're THE BEST."  He was a little upset that I got a '3' candle rather than put individual candles on his cake.  He wanted 'more fire' on the top!

Happy 6th Birthday Madeleine!

Happy Birthday baby girl!  Hard to believe you are 6 years old!

The birthday cake choice for this year was Princess Belle.  I tried to convince her that one of those cakes where you shove the doll into the top would be PERFECT.  She wouldn't go for it.  Princess Belle it was.  Took a good chunk of my Friday to get it done (there was a bit of freezer time involved in between steps) but it wasn't too bad to do:

Trash Can Potatoes

Our entire yard is a hill, from the street, past the house and down into the woods.  As a result, there is absolutely no flat land that I can turn into a garden, so I have to be creative when it comes to planting my vegetables.

Last year I decided I wanted to try and plant some potatoes.  I bought some fabric like bags from Gardener's Supply.  We planted the seed potatoes, the plants came up, sprouted flowers and the plants died like they were supposed to.  Turned the bags upside down, eager to see all the potatoes we grew and ... nothing.  Sorry, we found one potato.  One.

This year I searched the web and found all sorts or articles and blog posts about growing potatoes in a trash can.  Hmmm.  Seemed easy enough.  I went to Menard's and scoured the trash can aisle for the cheapest one I could find and bought quite a few bags of their 1.25 topsoil.  We bought the seed potatoes from Theisen's. 

David drilled holes in the bottom of each trash can for drainage.  I put one bag of topsoil in each trash can and then spread the seed potatoes out.  One trash can has Yukon Gold and the other has Kennebec:

I covered the potatoes with another bag of topsoil, spread between the two trash cans so they weren't buried so deep.  As they started to grow, I put more top soil in, making sure to leave about 3 inches of the plants exposed:

It has been about two months, and the plants are now over the top of the trash cans.  Both trash cans have been topped off with bags of top soil.  It'll be interesting to see how many, if any, potatoes we get: