Homemade Summer Fruit Salad with Honey-Lime Dressing

With a heat wave bearing down on the area, heavy foods and any recipes that require standing over a hot stove are intolerable. I got the idea for a yummy honey-lime fruit salad from Pinterest yesterday, and since I had a lot of fruit on hand (including a fresh pineapple)  I decided to make my own version along with homemade cinnamon sugar tortilla crisps. It was just the thing for dessert after a sweltering summer day. And the handful of blueberries came from my backyard--the first ones of the year! This recipe is so simple, light, and refreshing, and it tastes like summer in a bowl.

Jennifer's Summer Fruit Salad with Cinnamon Crisps

Fruit Salad

1/2 fresh pineapple, cut into bite sized chunks.
3 ripe black plums, sliced
2 cups of strawberries, sliced
2 kiwis, cut in small chunks
1 cup of blueberries

Juice of 1 lime
1/2 cup honey

Mix the fruits in a large bowl. Wisk together the lime juice and honey (poppy seeds would be a nice addition as well!) and pour it over the fruit. Stir the fruit gently to coat with the dressing, then cover and sit in refrigerator for 30 minutes to an hour.

Cinnamon Crisps

6 (6inch) flour tortillas
softened butter
1/2 cup sugar/cinnamon mixture

Coat the tortillas with soft butter on both sides, stack, and cut in small triangles (like a pizza). Arrange on a buttered cookie sheet in a single layer, sprinkle the tops generously with cinnamon sugar, and put in a hot oven for 5-10 minutes. Remove when crispy and allow them to cool before eating.

Super simple, and so good! Of course, almost any combination of fruit would be equally delicious, so I recommend using whatever is in season, inexpensive, and at it's peak of flavor in your area.

 Enjoy!

Little Creature Come To Call

The Carolina anole, Anolis carolinensis

This little guy was hanging out by my doorstep last week, soaking up the sun and attempting to attract a girlfriend. Forgive the quality of this next picture; I tried my best to get a good photo of him sticking out his dewlap, but all of them were blurry. I still wanted to share the best one of him "showing his money" as my grandma used to say!

He quickly got tired of having a camera stuck in his face by a crazy human woman. He crept over to the bushes after awhile and disappeared.

Summer Respite

These last three weeks have been wonderful. I thought about it the other day, and realized that I haven't had three weeks off work all at once for about 18 years now! It's been great to spend all this time at home. The surgery wasn't too bad. The first three days or so were rough, but after that it was just a matter of some soreness around the incisions. After the first week, I was able to begin to enjoy my time off. 

I've barely spoken to anyone (besides my husband and pets) for the past three weeks and I have to say--I've loved it! My inner introvert has been delighted with the break from other people. I can be outgoing and engaging at work (when I need to be) but I forget how very draining all that contact with other people can be.

The dogs have been in heaven. Marco has suddenly started talking more and seems happy to have so much out-of-cage time. I've cooked, cleaned, organized long neglected parts of our house (closets and such), and got caught up on a lot of odd and end sort of tasks. 

I've read several new books. The most noteworthy have been by an author from the past that I've just recently discovered, Elizabeth von Arnim. She is perhaps best known for writing The Enchanted April, but I discovered her after reading a recommendation for Elizabeth and her German Garden on the NPR books website. I loved this novel. It's loosely autobiographical, and the author's love of her garden (even with all of her mistakes in it and failures), her wry observations of German society and women's place in it (she was an English woman unhappily married to an older German count, humorously referred to in her books as the "Man of Wrath") and her subtle wit all made me feel like I had looked back into the past and discovered a kindred spirit. Elizabeth and her German Garden is available free at project Gutenberg, along with most of her other books. Here is a link to it if anyone is interested:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1327/1327-h/1327-h.htm

(Project Gutenberg is a great site for poor readers like myself! There are thousands of free books to choose from!)

I'm also reading a new (to me) mystery series. The first book is The Novice's Tale, by Margaret Frazier. I don't normally read mysteries, but I like novels about convent and monastery life (goodness knows why, pagan-leaning atheist that I am) and these books look like fun. I downloaded the first on onto my Nook, and will let you all know how it is.

I still have three days off, and plan to spend them reading, idling around, cooking, drinking wine, and generally goofing off. Real life starts back up on Monday, and I plan to make the best of my last few days of freedom. Summer is in full swing outside, and it's just a wonderful time of year to take a rest and remember what it's like to simply enjoy life. I hope you all are having a similarly nice beginning to the summer!

Crazy Dog Video

While there's not much going on as I heal from surgery, I thought I'd share some pet stuff I've been meaning to post.

Here is a link to a video of my two crazy dogs playing in the back yard. This was about a month ago, before the heat set in, so they were still feeling feisty during the day. What a life!

Afterwards.

It's all over! I had my surgery yesterday. They said it went well; I got to come home late in the afternoon, an hour or two after waking up. I was nauseous and in some pain when I first woke up, but they got it under control pretty fast. I was happy I didn't have to spend the night.

 I'm very grateful for pain pills right now. My abdomin is terribly sore. Getting up and down from a sitting or lying positon is difficult even taking narcotics every four hours along with an 800mg Motrin every eight hours

(Continued next day) What a morning I've had--vomiting, pain, nausea, and a sore throat. Ughhh....uncomfortable sleep, nightmares, all likely side effects of the pain meds and other drugs I've been given. This sucks.

More later. I'm blogging from my tablet, in bed, and will likely be complaining sometimes until the worst is over. The surgeon said having the operation was a wise decsion, not only was my gallbladder full of stones, but it was inflammed and covered in scar tissue. Could have turned into a very serious situation. So I am glad I did it, however much I may complain.

Well, here it is.

Tomorrow's the day: I'll be having surgery to remove my gallbladder. I'm glad it'll be over with soon.

The surgeon, bless his heart, offered to excuse me from work for 3-4 weeks when he found out that I will be getting paid for my time away. Since the surgery will be laparoscopic, that much time off should be more than adequate for complete healing.

The house is clean, the pantry is stocked, and new soft pajamas and slippers have been purchased. After tomorrow I won't have to do a thing but rest and recover. I plan to download some new books onto my Nook, and will probably end up reading a lot for the first few days. This morning I had to go to the hospital for pre-op stuff: blood samples taken, an EKG to make sure my heart was working right, and a chest x-ray to see if my lungs were clear. Apparently all that stuff is necessary prior to being put to sleep.

Other than a few last minute tasks I need to do tonight, I'm pretty well set. I expect I'll be blogging a bit more in the next 3 weeks thanks to a combination of free time and narcotic pain relievers! Stay tuned..

April round up: Scotch eggs, neighborhood mischief, and surgery

The end of April has certainly been eventful around here!

Easter, besides being very late this year, was extremely wet. The trip to the park I had hoped to have was out of the question. I still cooked a big meal, ham and fresh new potatoes, green beans, and strawberries for dessert. And I finally made (and got to taste) Scotch eggs. Somehow I didn't expect them to be as big as they were:

Scotch eggs!

The verdict? I thought they were very tasty. My husband loved them, and finished them off one by one over the next few days. I used a super-mild sausage, and next time will try a spicier one. (I thought they were just a tad bland). They're too much trouble to make very often, and it's really just as well. It's not exactly health food. I only ate one, because I've been having stomach issues for months now and a big chunk of meat and egg like that could really cause me some pain (more about that later).

Easter would have been a fun, cozy day spent at home with good food and movies--except we had and incident in the neighborhood that soured the rest of the afternoon. A sweet lady that lives across the street from us had her house broken into while she was at church Easter morning. Someone kicked open her door, ransacked her house, and stole some valuables. This occurred in broad daylight! If we (or any of the other close neighbors) had happened to look out of a window at the right time, we would have seen it happening. It makes me so angry. The lady is a widow and lives alone, and she's now afraid to stay in her house. She's been staying with one of her adult daughters since it happened, and I don't really blame her. Seeing her house swarming with police cars, and then finding out what had happened, was a real downer on a holiday morning. I surely hope it was only an isolated incident.

Back to the stomach pain I mentioned earlier. In March I had an upper GI endoscopy which revealed a hiatal hernia and acid reflux. I also had an ultrasound of my gallbladder. The ultrasound revealed lots of gallstones and apparently that's responsible for the intense pain I would have from time to time. Both the ultrasound technician and the surgeon noted that I have extreme tenderness on my right side directly under my ribcage. This indicated some inflammation of the gallbladder, due to the stones inside.

So, lucky me. I have to have my gallbladder removed on May 14th. This will be the first surgery of my life, and while I'm not scared, I dread the inconvenience of it all. Not to mention the added medical expenses. But there's one silver lining to the cloud: my work will pay me short-term disability while I'm out, and the surgeon says that even though it will the easier form of the surgery, that he prefers that I stay out of work for 3 to 4 weeks. So I will get a bit of a vacation from work, without having to use up vacation or sick hours.

That's it for April!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to all of my blog friends out there! I hope everyone is enjoying the arrival of spring and all the wonderful things that go along with it.

I'll be cooking a big meal tomorrow, even though it's just the two of us. Hams were on sale at the grocery store this week, so I'm cooking a small one. It's going to have the Coca-Cola/brown sugar glaze I used on the Christmas ham. I'll also be cooking fresh little red new potatoes and green beans purchased at the market yesterday, and there will be deviled eggs, as always. (It's not Easter without deviled eggs). Speaking of eggs....

I'm finally going to attempt to make Scotch Eggs! Are you reading this, John Gray?! I've never had one, and no one around here has ever heard of them, so I had to find a recipe online. I'm quite excited to see how they turn out. Photos and a recipe review will be forthcoming early next week!

To finish off our holiday meal, I picked up some of the first local strawberries and a coconut cake from the bakery down the road. Perfect festive spring desserts!

The best part of Easter, for me, will be spending time with my husband. Our days off don't align very often, and it's going to be nice to spend the holiday hanging out together.

Wishing everyone a joyous day!