Ballet Food

First up, this week's menu- being shared mostly because last night's dinner was good I MUST talk about it:

Sunday: baked/broiled salmon fillets with dill butter sauce (basically a little ball of butter rolled around in some dill, garlic salt, and parsley, plopped on top of the salmon while it cooks), brown and wild rice, and sauteed carrots, broccoli, and snap peas.
Monday: homemade lasagna, tomato salad, garlic bread
Tuesday: Southwestern chicken quinoa salad (based loosely on this recipe). I cooked some red quinoa and put a little bed of it on each place, then I warmed up some black beans in a saucepan with sauteed diced onion and garlic, and put out bowls of chopped tomato, avocado, sliced grilled chicken, chopped cilantro, and shredded cheddar cheese (I just realized we forgot the blackened corn, oh well, it was still delicious). Each person made their own salad and then we topped it all with a few little stripes of BBQ sauce and/or Ranch. I loved the blogger's suggestion of mixing the BBQ sauce with Greek yogurt, but JP won't touch Greek yogurt with a 10 foot pole, which is exactly how I feel about Ranch dressing, so we mixed our own toppings. We served it all with tortilla chips and guacamole made from the extra avocados from the Costco bag. The kids inhaled it and JP and I fought over the leftover serving. I will make this weekly until I can't stand it anymore.
Wednesday: leftover lasagna, garlic bread
Thursday: chicken stir fry, TJ appetizers (love their shu mai)
Friday: pepperoni and black olive calzones (a much anticipated twist on our usual homemade pizza)
Saturday: work party hosted by my AD! I'm mulling my "festive casual" outfit.
Sunday: Mexican rice (one of my fave recipes from my Grandma) with lots of toppings

Seriously, the BBQ chicken Southwestern quinoa salad of goodness was so tasty I would have picked it tonight over lasagna. And I LOVE my Aunty Lee's lasagna (well, I love any lasagna, but my aunt's recipe is particularly fantastic).

In completely separate news, today was Claire's first dance recital. Or is it still a dance recital if you refuse to dance? I believe the pictures tell it best:

 

In the words of Claire's teacher, "I've never had a little girl be anti-tutu." She tried to bribe Claire with a princess crown, but Claire was onto her and refused the crown as well. Through much cajoling we did get the tutu on, but Claire was not exactly excited about it. Then she fell apart when I tried to leave her presence to go sit in the auditorium. Then it was time for the recital.

Claire did not deign to participate.

 

She occasionally crawled and rolled around on the floor, just to remind us that she was there and NOT on the stage.

 

Until it was time for the princess crown presents!

 

As soon as the performance was over and all the little ballerinas had taken their bows, Claire bounced up, ran over for a hug, and proceeded to leap and twirl about the stage and floor. Of course.

As my dad said tonight on the phone, "Tell Landon hi and good job dancing to Claire. Or maybe not that... maybe just, well, tell her she's our Claire."

She is that.