In honor of the 102 degrees in St. Paul, Minnesota this week and the paltry 93 degrees that we endured in western North Carolina over the last week, I am sharing two cold salad recipes. Trust me that these involve more than iceberg lettuce on chilled plates. (Of course, that would be a reasonable expectation from my kitchen. When I met my husband Jamie, I didn’t know how to make grilled cheese sandwiches, so I am not a culinary genius.) I’ve learned one or two things since then, but I still deplore cooking everyday six o’clock dinners. After all, for nine months of the year I eat in the dining hall at the boarding school where we live. My favorite food is… “cooked by someone else.” Add to the dinnertime chore the delight of summertime heat, and I am delighted to find ways to make the whole task more enjoyable. So here are two new discoveries and both have passed our Test Kitchen, also known as the dinner table, this week. You can find more by Googling “Too Hot to Cook”!
Shrimp Salad combines fresh/frozen shrimp and black beans with summer vegetables like fresh tomatoes and gold and white corn, mixed with honey mustard dressing to serve up dinner. The recipe says 4 – 6 servings, but it served our family of 4 and left several lunches leftover.
Steak Salad is even simpler, using marinated round steak cooked on the grill, corn, bell pepper and tomatoes, mixed with cubes of cheese and creamy Italian salad dressing. Recipe says 4 -6 servings and we had a little meat leftover but all the vegetables were gone.
Incredibly, we served both on beds of butter lettuce and the kids even ate the greens.
Finally, here’s food for thought, last summer St. Anthony Park Lutheran Church in St. Paul sponsored a “Chef School” on Sunday evenings once a month, inviting older youth and adults to come together in the church kitchen where they learned new tricks like Solar Cooking, Sausage Making and Canning. As with any chore, cooking dinner is a lot more fun when you have company!How do we move beyond simply sharing a pew with someone and share our lives?
3 comments:
What a neat idea to have an intergenerational 'Chefs School' for members and even community to get to know each other. There are so many times when people want to learn and do not know where to go and in this case they learned more than just cooking.
Hi Christina,
What I gather from your blog you are quite adept at the relational aspects of ministry. It reminds how important it is to connect with people before you can ever lead them. It also reminds me that living my life as Christian means doing so in all things that I do. Living the life and being relational allows for effective missional work, which falls within my interest. How nice to meet you. Look forward to seeing you in class.
I think it is great when churches offer the community something, like a community garden, tutoring for children, a place for those grieving, boy scouts or AA members to meet. Churches can offer so much to the community by opening it's doors, but also by going outside of it's doors as well. We have a Sunday in early fall where during our church time we go out as a congregation to do a short mission project for a few hours to nursing homes, the mission, shut ins homes etc. it is a great way to be the body of Christ.
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