What’s For Lunch?

First of all, can I just tell you that at this very minute, it is raining outside.

Rain, my friends, rain!  Hallelujah!  We, my garden, people’s crops, everything, needs it right now.

It’s funny though because I was just fixing to head outside with a basket full of laundry to hang on the line and then down came the rain.

I am not complaining!

Anyway…

Back to what’s for lunch at our house.

My sweet, beautiful, oldest daughter, Beth, has started making pasta salad for us and it is delicious.

Would you believe it if I told you I have never fixed pasta salad except from a box and that was years ago?  I actually don’t buy many boxed foods at all anymore.  I figure that most convenience foods are way too expensive and probably not very good for you so I try to make most things from scratch and just eat lots of natural stuff.

Beth’s pasta salad recipe is wonderful and I want to share it with you right after I share a few pictures of lunch at my house yesterday.

These are some of the ingredients she uses.  She did respectfully inform me, however, that she would not use this kind of noodles in her pasta, but it’s what I chose for my photo because they looked good in the jar.

Doesn’t it look yummy?  A few little cherry tomatoes thrown in and ooo la la.  (my two youngest kids don’t typically like tomatoes, so those are just in my imagination)

This is where I had my scrumptious lunch, right here on this scrumptious table. 

My friends, I love my table.  I eat a lot of my breakfast and lunch meals here, work on my Bible study here, and do a lot of my etsy shop and blogging stuff here.  It makes me feel good to be in this room.  Does that make any sense at all?

Now for the recipe…

Beth’s Pasta Salad

Pasta noodles

1 TB vinegar

1/2 cup of  mayonnaise

1/2 cup milk

1 package of Knorr vegetable dip mix (shown above)

Ranch dressing to taste

Salt and pepper to taste

(she also added fresh peas that were given to us from a friend’s garden)

Easy peasy, right?

I know, most of you make pasta salad all of the time, but humor me and act like you are a beginner like me.

Now, I can whip you up a big pot of good old pinto beans that taste like your grandmother’s or fry you up a mess of okra straight from the garden.  But, pasta salad, I  just haven’t done.  And since Beth can do it so well, don’t you think I should just let her continue?

***

Two added notes…(STICK WITH ME, PLEASE)

The rain has now stopped.  Short but sweet!

********Second thing…I have to share with you something that I am so excited about.

My friend Becky over at Buckets of Burlap, is planning to open an online shop very soon. 

She is shopping, photographing and getting everything just perfect for all of us to go shopping with her.

She is carefully selecting items that she knows we will all love.

Let me tell you about her.   She is wonderful, sweet and can decorate a home like nobody’s business.  I am  talking beautiful, classy, unique, time worn, farmhouse decorating going on in her home.  And, what that says to me is that she will be looking for similar items to stock her shop with.  YAY!

Can you tell I am excited?  I’m excited because she means so much to me but also because I’m thinking there is going to be some great stuff to fill our homes with that she finds at those fantastic flea markets in Louisiana and Texas.

Keep an eye out over at her place for her grand opening!

***

Now off to hang my clothes on the line.

Thanks for hanging (no pun intended) with me till the end of this extremely long post.  (my kids think I am so strange sometimes and this probably proves it)

***

I have done some major price reducing in my Etsy Shop to make room for more items that will be going in soon.  I am headed to the Nashville Flea Market this week and can't wait to find some new treasures for us all.  Go take a look around the shop and see if anything suits your fancy.