Honestly, I can't say I'm all back to being "incredibly organized" me-but I'm trying, really hard.  I don't know about any of you across the country (or those of you who are in a different part of our world wide web family), but between the heat, the new writing assignments, the grandkids and the new writing assignments and (more of this than anything) the bathrooms being torn up-Life is making me very TIRED.

This past week-as if I believed it for even a single minute-bathroom one was supposed to be up and running and gorgeous.  Ha! And Double Ha!  So, not only am I hot and tired-I'm disgusted.

So what did I do, food wise?  Well-forget about baking cookies for the guys' lunches.  I also took this time to realize that it is much cooler to eat on my patio outside than in my kitchen.  I'm not sure about any other married, middle-aged and post-menopausal woman out there, but my husband feels the area we need to cut back expenses in is in the A/C!  Egads, I can't take it.  

We've been eating outside-still hot, but shady and a bit of a warm breeze wafting through.  Thankfully, everyone's in agreement on this.  I have been grilling more than usual and I'm taking to serving cold side dishes.

Some of the ones that seem to be going over well:  Asian cole slaw, Thai pasta salad, lemon-garlic broccoli (we usually eat this hot, but it's great cold!), my spinach salad, potato salad dressed with fat-free Italian dressing (I used the microwave to do the potatoes) and a very nice mushroom, tomato and feta salad with just a bit of raspberry vinaigrette.

The hardest part of the meal is to get everything out of the house and to the patio!  We have no pass through-so I'm adding a lot to my daily power walk here, which is good-we can all use more exercise!

Friday-let's talk about how to serve these cool dishes and cut down on the clean up time afterwards.