Have you ever noticed that it was Friday and thought to yourself: Oh crud, I haven’t done my Food Friday post for the day … I guess I will just take a picture of my lunch and go with that!

Yeah, me neither.

I have decided that if this salad were at a restaurant, it would have a fancy name.  I would call it “fruit salad” but that would just be misleading.  So name it whatever you like. Maybe if you leave your name for my salad in the comments and I like yours the best I will send you a Starbucks gift card. That sounds like a fun game…let’s do that! On your mark, get set, GO!

** updated to add:  Now voting is closed.  The winning name is thanks to Julie, I love the name “The Great Green Sweet Crunchy Salad” because it describes it perfectly!  Thanks for all of you who voted!!***

Today’s Feature:  Green Salad with a Fancy Name

(green leaf lettuce, red grapes, fuji apples, celery and feta cheese with your choice of dressing)

I think it is possible that I have done this salad before, because I LOVE IT, but  here is to repeating things that are delicious!

It is inspired by California Pizza Kitchen’s BBQ Chop Chicken Salad, and I think it is the perfect salad to ring in summer with.  OH YUM. Who says that a salad at home has to be boring with just a little lettuce and carrots? NAH. So that is my goal this summer. I am craving salads and I am in the mood to make them extravagant.

Food Friday:  BBQ Chop Chicken Salad

Daniel walks into the kitchen holding a big red onion and looks at me with a sly grin.  We both laugh.  Nothing is funny about this red onion, no one else in the room would have laughed with us, but we laugh a giddy laugh.  Just minutes ago this was in the DIRT in our yard. We have always wanted to grow our own vegetables and now it is happening…and that brings a whole lot of smiles in our house.

For some reason my favorite part about our new house and growing vegetables is not just that we have vegetables in our backyard, but it is that our neighbors have vegetables in their back (and front) yards.  Often I get a knock on my door in the afternoon from a generous neighbor sharing their bounty of berries or fruit or herbs or lettuce, and I can’t help but fall in love again with our neighborhood.  It reminds me of what grandmas tell us neighborhoods used to be like.  Everyone helps everyone; everyone shares their bounty.

This week’s Food Friday is because of our awesome neighbor’s John and Genie who shared their bounty of sage.  I had never cooked with sage before and I am not sure that this was the right venue for it, but it tasted better than it would have if I bought that sage from the store cause it was shared with a spirit of generosity and love.

Food Friday: Pan Roasted Chicken and Potatoes with Fresh Sage

Even if you don’t have a yard, bake some cookies, share with a neighbor. It just makes the world feel like it has less thorns in it.

I can’t remember exactly how it came up; I think I was watching Kitchen Nightmares on Hulu  and it happened to be about a sushi restaurant.  All I remember is turning to my husband, giving him my best puppy dog eyes as quietly remarked, “I really want sushi”.

I believe my Daniel to be an amazing sushi chef now, and not only have we found the best sushi fish supplier (go to Catalina Offshore and I promise you: best fish ever),we as a family all love it (yes, even Dayla can down sashimi better than any adult I have ever met), so it is a treat we indulge in every other month or so.  But with pregnancy the sushi dinners and the bottles of wine have been scaled back in our house tremendously.

Mother’s Day came just a couple days after my puppy dog eyes and Daniel remembered my little heart’s desire: a whole dinner of pregnant friendly (non-raw fish) sushi. Yes. Just  another reason why I love this man.

Today’s Feature: Homemade Sushi

Above: shrimp tempura roll with eel sauce.

Below: Spicy California Roll

If you are buying, you can come to our house for sushi dinner or sushi making lessons anytime.

“All around the mulberry bush…..the monkey chased the weasel….”

Right in front of my neighbors house I go down face first onto the concrete, my hands just barely saving my face from having gravel implanted in my forehead.  Of course I first look around to see who saw me before I look to see if I am bleeding.  Yeah, I have priorities.  Minutes later my neighbor comes out of her house and I start to blush, thinking of how she must have seen me go face first into her driveway.  She gracefully doesn’t elude to my mishap and I breathe a sigh of relief.  Instead she comes to tell me her mulberries are ready to pick.

“Mulberries?” I am sure my face showed my doubt and skepticism.  She is pulling my leg, I think to myself. “Have you ever had a mulberry?” she asks politely,  ”Would you like to?”

So we tromp through her house and into her yard, my blushed face slowly fading and my excitement to see her mulberry bush rising.  It is no bush, it is a giant tree 5 feet taller than her house.  It is beautiful.  And it is weighed down with more berries than I have ever seen in my life.  Dayla and I leave her house with a hop in our step as we clutch a ziploc bag full of mulberries.

They are a bit like a blackberry, but not as sweet.   Dayla ate them by the fist full. She has the black mulberry stained face to prove it.

Today’s Feature: Mulberries.  They really do exist.