Posted on August 30, 2009 - by Ashley Jackson

It’s a jungle out there

I’m looking into a new digital camera–not that I don’t like my Kodak EasyShare C315, but it’s never taken great pictures. I have a film SLR camera that I still use when the mood strikes me, so I’m just looking for a fancier point-and-shoot option. I think the Canon PowerShot SD1200 might be a good choice, but I’m still researching.

In the background of this morning’s brunch shot, you can see part of my tomato plants, which are overrunning my balcony. There are unripe tomatoes everywhere out there…

Brunch today was inspired by something I saw in the latest Food & Family magazine. The ‘zine is made by Kraft, so every recipe is a shill for a Kraft product, but there are usually some great recipes in there nonetheless. The one that caught my eye was a salad topped with ranch dressing and roasted potatoes, carrots, and onions. Simple, but it looked good, so I riffed on it a little and came up with this.

I cut up potatoes, onions, and carrots, sprayed them with olive oil, and then, rather than simply roast them and add ranch dressing to the salad, I sprinkled Penzey’s buttermilk ranch dressing base on them and then roasted them. When they were done, I put them on a bed of romaine lettuce, then added some blue cheese and a tomato. And some bread on the side.

My brother said yesterday’s bread-and-coleslaw photo looked like a seashell threw up. What’s this look like, I wonder? I don’t care, this was pretty good–although a little dry since it had no dressing whatsoever. I think next time I’ll probably make some sort of olive oil dressing to go on top.

I snuck some of those awesome lemon crisp cookies throughout the day, but I was ravenous by 3PM. I threw a little round steak on the George Foreman grill, doused it in Penzey’s Chicago Steak seasoning, and got to work on some veggies.

With my steak, I had a small salad with romaine, tomatoes, bacon, co-jack cheese, and that little container of Wildflour’s Honey Mustard dressing. I cut up the remainder of my Pink Lady apple from Friday–it had been chilling in the fridge in some plastic wrap, so it was still good. And I had some broccoli, as well as another tomato or two that didn’t make it into the picture and a bit of dip I made from Fage 0% Greek Yogurt and Penzey’s buttermilk ranch dressing base. It was a very Penzey-y day–I need to make another order from them soon to stock back up on a few things.

Since I had my dinner so early, I nibbled throughout the rest of the day. There was some Seven Layer Salad…

..which looks disgusting, but tastes yummy.

Then there were some cookies…

The one of the bottom is one of the other kind of cookie I got at Trader Joe’s–dark chocolate almond. They are SO good–reminiscent of Famous Amos’s chocolate chip walnut, but much better. It’s going to be a struggle not to eat all of them myself–in fact, I might go ahead and take them to work tomorrow and just leave them in my cabinet until the lemon crisps are gone.

I also had a small bowlful of these:

Trader Joe’s mini milk chocolate peanut butter cups! I love what happens when you put these in your mouth–it’s like they burst open and peanut butter comes out.

I’ve had this hellacious cramp in my right calf for the past two days, hence no running. It’s finally eased, so I’m going to try the whole getting-up-and-running thing tomorrow morning. True, it’s 11:30PM and if I go running in the morning I’m going to have to get up at 4:30AM or 5AM, but I had a nice long nap this afternoon on my couch with my fan and my dog and a puddle of sunshine, so I’ll probably get my lazy bum out of bed and do it. I bought two raw food bars at Trader Joe’s to eat before I run in the mornings, since I think not eating before I run is what makes me naseous sometimes, and I have tomorrow’s bar laid out next to my running clothes. We’ll see what happens…