Warm weather supper

I'm so excited to see Spring has finally sprung! We're really looking forward to fresh fruits and vegetables, instead of hot house produce and frozen veggies. During the winter months, our staple fruits have been oranges, apples and bananas. Now we've been eating loads of fresh watermelon. Peter's actually found some that tastes good. Not to mention that it's berry season.... yay!! It's so easy to eat healthy when everything's so FRESH! I just *love* it!

Tonight, we had our first "official" warm weather supper. I made an old favorite - pasta salad.

The recipe is a blend of a recipe I got from a friend and my own recipe. We absolutely love it, and during the summer, we usually have it every other week. One recipe makes a pretty decent batch, and it's great for quick lunches as well.

Pasta Salad

• 1 package turkey pepperoni, each cut into fourths
• 1/2 red bell pepper, seeded & chopped
• 1 green bell pepper, seeded & chopped
• 1/2 medium red onion, chopped
• 1 small can sliced black olives
• 1 small can mandarin oranges, drained
• 1 box tricolor rotini pasta, cooked
• 1/2 bottle fat free Italian dressing

Mix everything together, cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours before serving.

We had some focaccia bread that was wonderful. I added chopped black olives to the batter, and spread olive oil and sprinkled freshly grated Parmesan over it before baking. We also had oil to dip our bread into. It was soooooo good! For dessert was peach cobbler from peaches that we canned ourselves. Peter even had to take his supervisor a serving while it was still hot. Yep, the wife's trying to earn brownie points. LOL

If you've got a favorite warm weather meal, please leave me a comment and you can even include your recipe if you'd like to. I'd love to see what others are enjoying on those nice summery days.

On another note, I got an update from the CSA (consumer supported agriculture) that we decided to subscribe to this year, and we're supposed to get our first basket of produce on May 14th! Yes!!! I'm SO looking forward to having lots of organic, fresh from the field produce in our kitchen this year. I'll post photos of our basket when we get it.

I'm also hoping to be able to can some vegetable soup this year. We're trying to use up quarts of stuff that we canned the past couple of years so we can have enough jars empty. Don't really want to buy any more jars, so it looks like we're going to be eating from our pantry a lot in the next couple of months. :)

*Smile!*