Well my photo blogging subject began to bore even me. I don’t think anyone was actually interested in what I bought/made/slapped together, so I’ve given up on it.

I’m also pretty sure no one even missed it while I was slacking.

As I see it, there were two big reasons this project failed.

1) I rarely remembered to take a picture before eating and,

2) I was using my cell phone to take the pictures. The food almost never looked appetizing since I’m not a food photographer. Heck, I’m not any type of photographer. So nothing came out looking even remotely good.

You may all thank the heavens, I won’t be subjecting you to any more crappy cell phone pictures of icky looking food. Even if it did taste delicious.

Well, too bad if you don’t care because I’m back with an update anyhow.

July 7

I blew this day bigtime. I completely forgot the take a picture. So sit back, read this through, then close your eyes and picture it yourself. Cheese and spinach ravioli with alfredo sauce, and cheesy garlic bread. Mmmm

July 8

I made 2 dinners this night. Jason was out for the evening, Christian was heading out early so I made dinner at 5. Well I wasn’t hungry at 5 so I didn’t make enough for me. Only for the kids. They had cheese tortellini with alfredo sauce and regular old garlic bread. By the time I was hungry, there was nothing left which was fine. I wasn’t especially excited about basically repeating the last night’s dinner. So I cooked up some more minute steaks, dished out some potato salad, and made a few more pieces of garlic bread.

July 10

Last night was homemade pizza night. My favorite grocery store, Fresh and Easy carries packages of fresh pizza dough. No mixing or kneading required. Not only that, it tastes fantastic. I’ve made several pizza’s and bread sticks out of it. I like to keep a package on hand because it’s so good.

I’m not one to make the same tired pizza over and over. Sure I’ve done the pepperoni, sausage, bbq chicken, and the like. But I don’t like to make the same thing over and over. My recent favorite was the pizza with alfredo sauce (man can you tell we’re fans of alfredo here?) mild italian sausage and mozzarella/asiago cheeses. Holy cow was that a good one.

But last night we went with no sauce. Just olive oil and some garlic seasoning blend. Top that with some provolone cheese and some sopressata salami. That’s it. I did heat up some creamy tomato and basil pasta sauce for Jason’s dipping pleasure. The kicker? Caitlin loved it! The girl who doesn’t love anything I make loved it. Jess did too. Chris missed out because he wasn’t here.

We finally settled on something Caitlin’s been requesting for days.

Almost all of us eat them a different way.

For me: whole grill and spread only

Jason: meat, cheese and bun

Caitlin: meat, cheese and bun

Christian: sauce only

Jessalyn: cheese and spread only

We even had a friend of Caitlin’s here and she had lettuce and spread only.

I drove over there and ordered 6 burgers and 3 orders of fries.

One of these nights I’m going actually cook dinner. Something that’s not completely last second and thrown together. Maybe tonight’s that night. If so, a trip to Fresh and Easy is in order.

My girlfriend Christie made dinner and so I’m not the one that did the cooking. The main dish was tacos de carnitas. That would be shredded pork tacos. After I ate my dinner, I realized I forgot to get a picture of my tacos before eating it all up. So I bring you a picture of the leftover meat in the pan.

The meat was tasty and the only thing I put on my taco besides the carnitas was chopped onion and cilantro.

Anyhow, part of the deal was feeding my brother-in-law dinner. When asked what he wanted, he threw out “Tacos.” And so that’s what we had.

I know it may not be the most appetizing picture, but they were tasty nonetheless.

Tacos are a team effort around here. It’s my job to prepare the meat and any other fillings we’ll be having (which is usually only cheese and sour cream) and it’s Jason’s job to fry them up. Yes, we go the super healthful route by sticking them in hot oil!

Jason didn’t cook these as much as I usually prefer. I like them a bit browner and crispier, but he was pretty wiped out by the time we got around to making dinner. It as already 8:30 at that point, so I’m just grateful he helped out at all.

The 4th of July saw many tasty foods of which I ate a lot. Here’s a small sampling of what I had.

Look! It’s meat! It’s a stick! It’s meat on a stick!

Beef, onions, red bell peppers and green bell peppers cooked in the backyard over a flame. Yum.

Then I had a little of this:

I mean really, what 4th of July BBQ would be complete without the watermelon? Well actually, my husband would tell you every single one of them because for some odd reason, he doesn’t like the stuff. That’s just the weirdest thing to me. Not to mention UnAmerican!

Of course there were chips, veggies and dip, BBQ meatballs, cookies, cupcakes, and the like, but it was also 2 days before the host’s son’s birthday. So there was cake! A gigantic cake decorated with a football theme. When the cake was about to be served, Tyler (the almost b-day boy) was asked which piece he wanted. He pointed to the laces on the football indicating those, and only those. What he got instead was a whole lot more!

No, that’s not a small cake plate he’s holding. That’s a 9″ dinner plate. His grandmother cut out the entire football and slapped it on the plate. Of course he thought he’d have no problem eating the entire football, but after what would have been a smallish piece if served to anyone else, he was over it. His sister gave him crap for it because he talked the talk, but wasn’t able to walk the walk. It was all in good fun though.

A good time was had by most, if not all. The food was good, the company was good and the fireworks were most excellent. We had a fantastic spot for viewing the local high school’s show which lasted for 25 minutes.

I hope you all had a great 4th/Friday.

No dinner pictures for this entry. While I was prepping and packing dinner, I had something like 6 or 7 kids running around under my care. By the time we sat down to eat it, it was pretty much dusk and I couldn’t get a decent shot of the food. So in place of a picture, you get a story.

Last night our family and several others headed out to La Mirada Regional Park to get an early start to our 4th of July celebration. Every year the park, which is across the street from La Mirada High School, puts on a big July 4th party on the 3rd. Around 9:15 p.m. they shoot off fireworks at the high school.

There are a lot of food vendors and we could have opted to buy our dinner there. They had Carl’s Jr., Hot Dog On A Stick, and many other non-chain food booths as well.

Instead of spending a lot of money on sub-par food, I made dinner at home and we took it with is.

Last night’s spread:

“Campin’ Packets, potato salad, chips, cherries, grapes, pineapple, cupcakes and lemon pound cake.

Campin’ packets is one of the foods everyone over the age of 2 agrees on at our house, and it couldn’t be any easier to make.

Diced potatoes, diced carrots, Little Smokies (miniature smoked sausage links), olive oil, your favorite blend of seasonings.

If you’re cooking this in the oven, coat potatoes and carrots with olive oil and seasoning mix, bake in 350 oven until the potatoes and carrots are almost cooked through. Add the little smokies for the last 10-15 minutes of baking and there ya go!

If you’re camping out or cooking on a grill, place all ingredients on a sheet of foil and fold into a packet. Pop on the fire and cook until done.

Of course you can add onions, corn, celery… the list goes on and on. But for my family, I like to keep it simple. The less in there, the more likely they are to eat it.

I can say without a doubt our dinner was better than anything we could have bought there. A good time was had by all too.

Happy Independence Day everyone! Stay Safe. And don’t forget to check back to see what we’re cooking up for the 4th.

Jason, Jess and I left the house at 6 p.m. with a specific task at hand. That task didn’t include eating dinner. By the time we were finished, it was 8 p.m. and we still hadn’t eaten. Rather than stop off somewhere for food, he was hell bent on getting home and making the tacos I had planned. Well I took the ground beef out and they ended up being a casualty of the refrigerator incident. The meat was no more fit to eat than a pile of dirty laundry.

Jess started asking for a burrito, so I cracked open a can of beans. I don’t buy refried beans in a can, I smash my own beans. That sounded utterly disgusting to me so I had a buttered tortilla.

At this point Jess had been begging for ice cream and we didn’t have any in the house. Off to the grocery store I went. As I was on my way to the store I always go to, I remembered a food from my past and HAD to have some. My store doesn’t carry it so I went to another store. I got home and cooked up 2 of these babies.

What is it? A regular old hamburger patty? Oh heck no! It’s a Camp’s Minute Steak. You know, the ones that come complete with a pat of butter on them? You buy them in the frozen foods aisle.  These steaks are the ultimate in my childhood comfort food. Serve up a few of those with mashed potatoes and I’ll be in heaven. In fact I can’t remember the last time I had a minute steak.

Anyhow, last night’s dinner was a buttered tortilla and later 2 minute steaks, no mashed potatoes.

As always, pictures are taken with my cell phone and therefore, not the best quality.

I think I’ve mentioned before that having projects seems to be the only way I can actually do something with this site other than just having pages and pages of Utterz listed.

So, for the month of July, I’ll be taking a dinner related snapshot every night. You might get a picture of the actual food on a plate or in serving dishes. You might get the before shot while I’m prepping a meal. You might get a shot of a sign or something similar if we’re eating out that night.

And that’s exactly what you get for July 1.

On this night, Jason, Jessalyn and I ended up at Chipotle for dinner. It wasn’t until after I’d eaten my burrito that I remembered I was supposed to take a picture of it. Oops.

I had a vegetarian fajita burrito and diet soda. Oh yeah, and a handful of chips. I’m not exactly sure what seasonings they put on their chips but, holy cow! It’s good