Grilled Chicken with peach salsa

For Wythe's 4th birthday party I served grilled chicken with a peach salsa. This is a great dish for these hot summer days, very refreshing.  The chicken can be grilled ahead of time and served cold. In my previous post I included the recipe for coconut rice, the rice made a fantastic side dish to this chicken.

Grilled Chicken with peach salsa
6 small boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into strips
1 TBSP grapeseed oil
2 TBSP lime juice
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper


Combine all ingredients and let marinate 30 minutes. 


Cook chicken on charcoal grill, set aside.


Peach salsa:
3 peaches, peeled and diced
1/4 cup red onion, diced
1/3 cup sweet pepper (red, orange or yellow), diced
1 small jalapeno pepper, seeds and ribs removed, minced
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
1 TBSP fresh mint leaves, chopped (optional)
1 TBSP fresh lemon-lime basil leaves, chopped (optional)
1 TBSP fresh pineapple sage leaves, chopped (optional)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp brown sugar
1 TBSP lime juice
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper


Combine all ingredients, let sit at least 30 minutes. Can be made up to 1 day ahead of time and kept refrigerated. 
Spoon salsa over grilled chicken and serve. 
Serves 6. 

Coconut Rice Recipe

For Wythe's 4th birthday party one of the dishes I made was coconut rice.  It is amazingly easy to make and made a nice side dish to the chicken with peach salsa. 

Coconut Rice

14 ounce can coconut milk

1-1/2 cups water

2 tsp. sugar

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. pepper

2 cups jasmine rice

parsley, chopped

Combine coconut milk, water, sugar, salt and pepper in pan.

Add rice, bring to a boil. 

Simmer for about 15 minutes till liquid is mostly absorbed. Mixture should be very wet, almost soupy.  Rice can easily burn because of coconut milk, be careful to not overcook. 

Garnish rice with chopped parsley. Serve warm or room temperature. 

Serves 6-8

Note:  You can leave the sugar out of the recipe but I found that the coconut flavor was more pronounced adding the sugar. 

'til next time...

Has it really been four years?

My son is four years old. 

For some reason this sounds so much older than three, it is getting dangerously close to kindergarten age!  Just the thought that he will be old enough for school next year is unbelievable. 

This year his birthday conveniently fell on a Saturday, yet another day over 100 with high humidity...what a summer.

Since it is blistering hot right now I opted for a beach-luau theme for his party. Dinner was grilled chicken strips with peach salsa, coconut rice, fresh fruit and salad. Wine, beer, juice and white wine sangria kept us hydrated.

The children kept cool in the pool...

The birthday cake was a sandcastle.

If it looks familiar it's because you saw this same cake two years ago.  I know, I know...it's pretty lame to be duplicating cakes when the kids is only four years old.  Can I really not come up with more than three ideas for a birthday cake?  In fairness to me, he asked for a sandcastle cake _-after looking at pictures of his 2nd birthday- and most importantly...it went with the theme of the party.

There are approximately 64,000 pictures to document Wythe's 1st birthday.  This is apparently the closest I got to taking a picture of my son with his cake.  This does not bode well for future birthdays. 

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When asked what he wanted for his birthday Wythe would respond "lots of friends to come over, LOTS of presents, cake and decorations."

We were very grateful for the friends that braved the heat to help us celebrate.  And Wythe was grateful for presents.  One of his presents was a bike, I'm not sure who was more excited, Daddy or Wythe?

It was apparently exciting enough to get out of the pool to try it out.  That is saying something.

Later in the party a brief hurricane passed through.  There was extensive damage to the sandcastle cake.

The palm trees were also toppled.

There are not enough adjectives to describe the past four years of our life but we wouldn't trade it for the world!  We love you Wythe Carrington....happy birthday son!

'til next time...

The garden finally produces...

It was that moment when all your work seems to be worth it....the moment when you pick the first vegetables of the season from your garden. 

the first harvest of 2012

There is nothing better than fresh fruits and vegetables for dinner!  This meal included beans and one tomato from our garden, the rest of the food was from the farmers market. 

I love summer meals!

 I got a late start on planting this year because I decided to change the location of the the garden. Our property is mostly shaded, finding enough sunshine for the garden is difficult so we decided to move it closer to the house.  As this location is one of the few spots we actually have grass growing we were reluctant to plow up that lovely green stuff. My husband had the idea of digging up the sod and relocating it to the back yard.  It was a good idea and it was nice to have instant grass in the back yard but it was tedious work. My husband spent many, many hours of quality time with a shovel digging up three strips of grass for my new garden.  We are planning to dig up three more  sections but will probably wait till the weather cools down some. 

laying out new garden location

digging up the sod

deciding where to plant

Wythe helping to lay out the garden

planting seeds

I didn't get a single sour cherry off of our tree this year, the crows mobbed the tree before I could get to it.  Usually, they don't start messing with the cherries till they start to ripen and if I spray the cherries before they are red I can harvest most of them.  But this year, not a single one.  I knew I hated crows, and not only because they walk more than they fly. 

I did get to pick some bramble berries though.  The kids wanted to help but quickly discovered than picking berries isn't near as fun as it looks. After a couple times of becoming completely entangled in thorns they decided they had had enough. 

 

first picking of the wild berries this year

The garden has really taken off now.  Judging by the amount of beans I am getting I will need to start canning soon.

Fingers crossed for a good harvest this year!

boxwood basil

'til next time...

The joy of moving without actually moving...

If you take a vacation but don't go anywhere they call is a "stay-cation" so what to you call it when you move but don't go anywhere? A "stay"?  Instead of "we've moved" would you just say "we've stayed"?

Anyway, that is what we have done.  We packed up our house, moved it out to the garage, drove to Georgia, came home and moved the furniture back in the house.  All the other stuff is still out in the garage.

Seriously.

Yes, we have been home for a few weeks but I still don't have my act together.

Shocking, I know.

I have brought some things back in, essentials like the coffee pot, pots and pans and baking dishes.     My family insists upon eating.....every-single-day. They are very demanding.

When we got home from Georgia our house looked like this.

We really liked how open and big the house felt.  We were tempted to convert to true minimalism and get rid of all our belongings. But after a few days of sitting on the hardwood floors we fell back in love with furniture.

Before we could move stuff back into the house we had a bit of cleaning to do. Everything was coated in dust so we had to wash everything down.  Our dishes had a fine coating of dust too but we have just been cleaning those as we go along. "Pull everything out of kitchen cabinets and pantry, clean all items, clean shelves"  is still on my endless to-do list.  It will probably stay there for awhile.

This is what all the walls looked like.

Ainsley helping to wash walls. She did a good job on the area 36" from the floor.

So, to all the people who have asked "are you excited to be finished with the addition?" the answer is...we are not finished.

Close...but not done.

We have to finish staining the toe molding so that we can install that in the addition. (at some point we will have to quit calling it "the addition")  I still have to move/unpack/find a home for the stuff we hid in the garage. And in order to have the house put back together I have to paint/decorate both kids rooms, paint the dining room (and buy furniture) and paint the living room.

We aren't quite ready to pop open that bottle of champagne....but that day will come!

'til next time...