Hooks: Summer 2020

My friend Lauren commissioned 3 of my HollyBearies bears.  

 Delphinium (Della)

Iris

Camellia

Books: Summer 2020

I've been reading quite a bit in quarantine! 

My sister had sent me a book called Matched, a YA dystopian romance by Ally Condie.  It sounded like a fun beach read so I grabbed it for my beach day.  I ordered the rest of the trilogy on Paperback Swap and read those too.  Not bad, but the last book was a slow starter.  I liked the ending well enough though.  

I was doing a 10 book challenge on Facebook and looked through my bookshelves for inspiration, and saw Alanna, the First Adventure by Tamora Pierce.  I LOVED these books, the Song of the Lioness series, when I was a kid.  I had the first book, which I had found randomly at a used book sale.  I read it in a day or 2 and tried to find the rest.  No luck at the library. New set would cost over $40 on Amazon.  Luckily for me someone posted them on Paperback Swap soon after and I got them.  Yay! So I plowed through the other 3 in less than a week.  Such a fun series.  I have another set of books (only 2 in that set) by the same author about Alanna's daughter, so that's been put on my to read list.  

Yesterday I started another YA book, Before We Were Free by Julia Alvarez.  It hasn't really grabbed me so far but I'll give it more time before I decide to give up.  

Meal Plan for July 26-Aug 1

Breakfasts: banana granola pancakes, cereal or overnight oats

Lunches/Dinners: 

-kebabs - citrus aleppo marinated chicken & veggies, cooked on the grill

-caprese pasta salad (vegetarian)

-taco zucchini boats 

-venison roast in the crockpot, mashed potatoes, carrots. 

-orange chicken - (marinade of citrus, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, red pepper flakes) and broccoli stir fry over brown rice ramen noodles (used this recipe as a basis)

Another hot week.  Tried to minimize the oven.  Taco zucchini boats were new recipe and they were really good.  Basically just basic taco filling plus black beans and corn.  I meal prepped in advance by making the filling and scooped out the zucchini (don't forget to cook the zucchini you scooped out with the filling!).  Then my husband filled up the zucchini, covered them with cheese and baked it on 350 for 20 minutes.  Came out great. We have leftover filling which is perfect over chips for nachos. 

Meal Plan July 8-15

 Well in true Greek fashion we made entirely too much food for the 4th. So we have been eating leftovers from that all week. But it’s finally run out and it’s a cool and rainy day, so time for some meal prep.

• Fish tacos and calabacitas

• Cheesy Taco Mac - can’t say turkey as I don’t have any so I’m using ground beef. I’ll have to tweak it a bit but it looked so good.

• Rotisserie chicken and mashed potatoes, broccoli

• Chicken stir fry over rice