New Favorite Salad

So I am about the worst blogger ever!!! I'm sorry I haved posted anything in a long time. Life is just super busy and after being on a computer all day long, the last thing I want to do when I get home is get on the computer at home.

In other news, I made the best salad ever on Saturday. Angi was nice enough to have me over for dinner with her and her husband. She made the best lasagna and you should check out her post about it at www.angiy.blogspot.com. (I still need to learn how to do links on words!) But I asked her want she wanted me to bring, and she suggested a salad, like Olive Garden's house salad. Which is awesome!!! Well I googled Olive Garden's salad and found a recipe, which turns out that I already had it in my computer files!

Here is the recipe that I have (I don't remember where I got it or else I would give them the credit):
Olive Garden Salad

Olive Garden Salad Dressing:
½ c. mayonnaise
1/3 c. white vinegar
1 tsp vegetable oil
2 Tb. corn syrup
2 Tb. Parmesan cheese
2 Tb. Romano cheese
¼ tsp garlic salt – or one clove garlic, minced
½ tsp Italian seasoning
½ tsp parsley flakes
1 Tb. lemon juice

Salad:
1 large head romaine lettuce
slices red onion
black olives
2-4 banana peppers
2 small tomatoes, quartered
½ c. croutons
freshly grated Parmesan cheese

For homemade croutons:
4 slices sandwich bread
1 clove garlic, minced
3 Tb. butter
salt and pepper
dried parsley flakes

Mix all dressing ingredients in a blender until well mixed. If this is a little too tart for your own personal tastes, add a little extra sugar.
Chill one salad bowl in freezer for at least 30 minutes. Put lettuce in bowl. Place on top of lettuce red onions, black olives, banana peppers, tomatoes, and croutons. Add some freshly grated Parmesan cheese if you like, and add plenty of Olive Garden Salad Dressing on top.

For the homemade croutons:
Cut off crusts of sandwich bread, and cut bread into cubes. Melt butter in small saucepan and add minced garlic. Toss sandwich cubes in the butter and spread out in a pan. Sprinkle salt and pepper and parsley flakes to taste. Bake for 15 minutes at 350°, turning half way through baking.

Sorry I don't have any pictures, I forgot to take my camera to Angi's. The best part of the salad was definitely the croutons though. The are so easy and SO good!!

Another One to Add to the List

I love my lists! I make them for everything! But this list I am talking about is my favorite stores!! I have a lot of them...Target, Barnes & Noble, Old Navy, Bath & Body Works, Ulta (thanks Angi!) I have a new one to add to it....the Family Christian Store (Thanks to Angi again!) :-) After going to dinner with Angi and her husband, we went to Best Buy and then the Family Christian Store. I fell in love! I seriously could spend HOURS in there! It was amazing. I got a couple of books and a ring. I really wanted so many more things, but had to control myself to what I got. Haha. There were some pictures that I would love to have for my house that I will one day have. One of the books I got was only $5 because I got their Family Perks Memebership Card. It is called For Women Only by Shaunti Feldhahn.














Here is what Barnes and Noble.com says about it.

Yummy Salsa!

I just finished making salsa for the first time. It is really good but next time I need to step away from the jalapenos. It's a little spicy! OK....a lot spicy!! It is the simplest recipe ever. I took one large green bell pepper, 2 medium white onions, 4 large tomatoes, and 2-3 jalapenos with the seeds removed, and a handful of cilantro. Add salt to taste and anything else that you might think of. Its not really a science, I just taste it at every stage of adding things. When it is the right heat and taste for you, its done!!!

I tried to take pictures but they don't look so good. Maybe next time I post a recipe I will try harder to take good ones!!

The Love of My Life.....

....Well, at least one of the many, THE YANKEES!!!! My dad was born and raised in Bronx, New York, so I became a Yankees fan as well. I am sitting here wathcing a Yankee v. Red Sox game waiting for my other shows to start, and it got me thinking about the game that my brother and sister-in-law got my dad and I tickets to. It was a couple of years ago and it was in the old stadium that they have now demolished after they built the new stadium. That weekend was a fun one. My dad and I flew out just for the weekend. My aunt stil lives on Long Island so we stayed with her and my brother got use four tickets so she and my dad's best friend came with us. It was my first major league baseball game. It was a gorgeous day starting out. We got there early and went one of the Yankee shops at the stadium and we both got jerseys. We went in and got our seats which were awesome by the way, right at the end of the tarp on the first base side and very close to the right fielder, at the time it was Bobby Abreu, who is no longer a Yankee. The only down fall to the game was that there was like a 45 min. to an hour raind delay, but we came back out after the rain stopped and the Yankees beat the Mets!! I forget what the score was, but it was an experience that I won't ever forget and I hope that I get to live again. I would love to see the new stadium.

Here are some pictures from the game!

Movie Night!!

Saturday night I went to dinner and a movie with my friend Heather. We went to Applebee's for dinner and they had Long Island Iced Teas on special so of course I had to get one...they were really good and I hadn't had one in a long time! They also have an awesome salad! It is called the California Shrimp Salad. It is Bib lettuce with avocado, hard boiled eggs, black olives, and an avocado dressing! It was SO good!

After dinner we went to see Eclipse. Yes, I am in love with the Twilight Series! I have read all the books, and seen all the movies and will probably own them all when they come out. Ok so I already own the two that are out now. But this movie was by far the best out of the three! It was so good! We just kept saying how much better this one was than the other two!

After the movie, we went over to a Heather's friend's house and just hung out. I didn't get home til 4AM and that is something I haven't done in a very long time. I realized that I am getting old because it took me about 2 days to recover from it! LOL!

Shopping!!

Angi and I went to one of the two malls we have here in good ol' Fort Wayne. Of course it was the smaller of the two, but it has better stores. And its an outside mall and it was gorgeous on Saturday so it was a good way to start my long weekend. We went to Bath & Body Works first and we got coupons so of course even though I wasn't planning on buying anything I got a bottle of their new signature scent Forever Sunshine and a free Mentha lip gloss!! Angi got a way better deal and to see it check out her blog at http://angiy.blogspot.com. We then went to Ulta so I could get some shampoo and conditioner. I got the best deal ever!!!! I got a liter of both Paul Mitchell Tea Tree Shampoo and Conditioner for $38!! You can't beat that! Tea Tree is the only thing that I feel gets my hair the way I like it. If you don't know, I have curly hair that I have not liked my whole life. I have grown to love it, but I absolutely did not like it when I was younger. So Tea Tree takes me back to a time when I loved washing my hair because it would get all the kinks out and it would feel so clean.

In His hands now....

I have been in a funk lately that I couldn't seem to get out of. I finally figured out how to get out of it. I have decided that there are things that I can't control and I have left it to God. It is in His hands. I know He has a plan for me and I know that He will take care of me. Just wanted to let you know! :-)