Welcome to our July Meal Plans! We are almost ready for the big 4th of July weekend here at the lake. We have so many fun activities in and around our lake area during this time, including lots of wonderful food at our annual picnic. We will be planning some very traditional foods for our celebration. We are hoping for some rain, our gardens and plants are needing watering everyday now because it is getting so dry and hot here. Some of our garden has stopped producing because of the heat. We are sure hoping for some cooler weather and a little rain.

Welcome to Full Plate Thursday and our Top Ten Party! Every month on the last week, we feature our Top Ten views from the last party.  These are great features that I sure hope you will enjoy. This is a really big week here at the cottage as we prepare for the 4th of July weekend. We always have a really great parade in our little village and lots of friends and family come out to the country to play in the lake and enjoy the celebrations. Come on in to the party, we have some big fans and misters going on the upstairs patio under the shade with lots of ice cold drinks and you guessed it slices of ice cold watermelon.  I am excited to see what you will be sharing with us today and thanks so much for coming to the party! Wishing you and yours a safe and freedom filled 4th of July Celebration!

We love the 4th of July celebrations that we have had here at the cottage through the years. Celebration of freedom, food, and fellowship, coming together with family and friends to enjoy the annual 4th picnic. Through the years we have many favorites that just say the 4th of July at the cottage. Most of these recipes are classic American picnic favorites that have come to be part of our heritage.

  Roasted Heirloom Tomato Bruschetta with Feta is one of our favorite toppings for a great  Bruschetta. The heirloom cherry tomatoes are marinated in a mixture of oil, vinegar and fresh herbs, then roasted in the oven. We add the Feta Cheese and spoon it on the top of a toasted French Bread Slice. This is a very special appetizer and one that is always a big hit with our group here at the cottage. One of the favorites from the garden to the table recipes!

Summer is officially here and the heat has come right along with it. When I make the meal plan this week that is one of the big considerations, we will sure be looking for food preparation that will keep us cool. We have an abundant harvest of garden vegetables right now, and there is nothing like fresh vegetables from the garden in the summer time. We are expecting some very special friends to visit us this weekend, so we will be planning some special meals just for them. 

Welcome to Full Plate Thursday and it is officially summer! Here in Texas we start looking for the shade and a fan this time of the year. That's what we are doing today, Gathered up on the screen porch sipping some sweet tea so come on out and join us, we are saving you a seat. We have some really great features from last weeks party that I sure hope you enjoy. You are very important to us and can't wait to see what you will be sharing with us today.

  This Mustard Seed Pickle Recipe has been in our family for several generations now. Some people call this recipe Bread and Butter Pickles, but my family has always called them Mustard Seed Pickles. They are a little on the sweet side and delicious with sandwiches or as a compliment to most any kind of meat. On the day we made these pickles we were preparing for a Pickle Canning Class that we had been asked to present for one of the church groups in our community. My daughter and husband were great helpers on pickle making day!

What a fun week to make meal plans to honor the great Dad's in our life, it will be a fun weekend. Our cottage is like a canning factory, the garden harvest is abundant and we are canning just about every day. Be sure and watch the blog for new canning recipes that we have been working on. We have lots of wonderful fresh fruits and vegetables to use on our meal plan this week. I am trying to be budget conscious right now, as some products out just priced out of reach. The farmers meat markets are a great source for fresh chickens and other meat products.

  We are so happy to see you here at Full Plate Thursday today. Our party is underway and we can't wait to see what you will be sharing with us today. We have some really great features from last weeks party that I hope you enjoy. Fathers day is coming up on Sunday and we wish all the Fathers a great day to put your feet up and enjoy your day!

  Our Green Chili Burger Charcuterie Board was a great idea for our recent large gathering of friends and family. We were able to place all the burger topping's on the board, it was a great presentation and so easy to top your burger, with anything you liked. You will find the recipe for the Green Chili Burger, another side dish and dessert on this post. We sure enjoyed our time with guest, the Charcuterie Board made it so much easier.

It is so good to be relaxing on the screen porch so I can plan our meal plan for the next week. I love being able to spend this time with you each week and make a budget and family friendly meal plan with all of you. We worked hard here at the cottage last week, we completed some major projects that some family came to help us with, we were so grateful for the help. We are going to enjoy some grilling this week and I think we make be able to start canning some tomatoes. Here comes the garden harvest!

  Welcome to Full Plate Thursday, 592! We are all on the garden patio today, enjoying a nice luncheon in the garden, what a fun way to celebrate our beautiful season. We have saved you a place at the table so come on out and enjoy the party with us. We have some awesome features from last weeks party that I sure hope you enjoy. Thanks so much for coming to the party today and I can't wait to see what you are bringing to share with us!

  It is our first picking of green beans for the season and our first potato dig for the season. We just picked almost a half of a bushel of green beans and dug some potatoes to go with them.  After we clean the potatoes these fresh vegetables are going right into the kitchen and they will be on the table tonight for dinner. Our daughter from Oregon is visiting us right now and she is so sweet to help us out with so many projects, including a little gardening. These green beans and potatoes will be delicious, there is something about just getting it off the vine and out of the ground that brings a whole new taste to the dish.

June is here and we have been having unseasonable high temperatures. Those high temps mean more water for our garden, which we got today and it is so welcome. We have family here visiting and we are so grateful that they have been helping us with some projects here at the cottage. When the temps are high I look to the grill and cool  salads to enjoy with fresh vegetables and fruit. Of course I am making some special meals for the family that placed their order weeks ago. So lets get busy here and put together some great meal plans for next week!

Welcome to Full Plate Thursday and June! Wow this last week has flown by, we have been so busy here at the cottage. Some of our family are visiting and are helping us with a couple of projects, which we sure appreciate the help. This is why you are getting a bonus week with the top ten post that you choose last week with your page views.  I sure hope that all of you had a great Memorial Day weekend and are ready to party with us today. I can't wait to see what you will be sharing with us, we always look forward to your awesome post. Come on in and find a place at the table, we have saved you a seat! Thanks so much for coming to the party today and you come back to see us real soon!

  We have so many berries on our vines and what better place to go with them than a delicious ice box pie. This is such an easy recipe and one that I make over and over all through the summer. The flavor of this pie is a delicious blend of strawberries and blueberries, a cool and refreshing treat. There is just one problem with this pie, it never last very long here at the cottage, so I have learned to just make two, enjoy a slice today and tomorrow!

  These Strawberry & Blueberry Patriot Muffins will be a great addition to any Patriot, Memorial Day, 4th of July, Veterans Day, or just anytime you may feel patriotic. This is a delicious muffin with a very light crumb and juicy berries, with a little sprinkle of colored sugar on top. A quick and easy recipe for breakfast, brunch or just a special afternoon treat!

  We have a great weekend and week coming up, with family coming for the holiday and some will be staying over for the week. I already have some meal request from some of them and I will try my best to fill those meal orders. I know that some of you will be doing the same giving our friends and family some of the favorites for this weekend and season. We will definitely have some seasonal fresh vegetables and fruit on the meal plan. We have been busy canning already, we canned 32 jars of pickles last week, the season is here and we are so excited to enjoy the harvest of our hard work in the garden! 

  Welcome to our Top Ten Features Week at Full Plate Thursday! The last week of the month we feature our Top Ten from the last weeks party with your page views. You have made some great choices with your picks for the top ten! I am sure glad that you can come to the party today and can hardly wait to see what you will be sharing with us. Thanks so much for joining us today we always look forward to you being with us! 

  Texas Rocky Road Cake is the perfect cake for the big family gathering, a summer picnic or a big game day event. This cake is very light with a fudgy frosting, covered with marshmallows and pecans, then topped with a fudge drizzle. If you like a chocolate cake, it doesn't get much better. Keep an extra in the freezer for up to 3 months, for unexpected  guest of course. A family favorite recipe here at the cottage.

  Strawberry Fluffy Cream Dessert is cool,  refreshing, creamy, full of fresh strawberries, everything that our family loves for a simple dessert. I have enjoyed this dessert recipe for a very long time and love to share the recipe with others. This dessert has gone to many a covered dish event and has been a star at many a family dinner. 

I am so excited to make this meal plan with all of you today. I have been looking at recipes, my pantry inventory and what is in the freezer. I have been doing some bulk stocking in the pantry  as some of the staple products are out of stock and other products that we use are starting to be priced out of the market. We are also experiencing some products out of stock completely. Fortunately I have a nice of stock of home canned vegetables. I am headed out to the Farmers Market to see what fresh products they have available for the week. 

  Welcome to Full Plate, it is so good to see you here today. We have some awesome features from last weeks party that I hope you will enjoy. We have had so much fun here at the cottage this week, our daughters brought us a Vegepod for Mothers and Fathers Day. It is so much fun and we will be sharing it with you as we move along with our Vegepod plantings and harvest.  I can't wait to see what you will be bringing to the party today and thanks so much for coming to share your talent with us!

  This Blueberry Corn Casserole is one of the best sides to add to any meal. In our part of the country we just love a great corn casserole to be a part of any meal and this one is just special. The fresh blueberries give this recipe a very special flavor that sets it apart from the regular basic corn casserole. This recipe will be a welcome addition to a Bar-B-Que, picnic, or any covered dish event. The recipe is one of our family favorites and shows up on our table frequently.

It is that time of the year when we look forward to fresh salads with fruit and delicious dressings. Today I am mixing some of my spring greens from our lettuce bucket in the garden with some fresh strawberries. I have made a delicious strawberry dressing that is perfect for this salad and then topped it with crumbled Feta Cheese. This is a great lunch salad or a great side salad for any meal. A perfect garden to table recipe for you to enjoy!

  Oh my goodness, I stopped by the farmers market and we have fresh produce from the valley to include in our meal plan for the week.  We are having some beautiful weather and our garden is growing like crazy! We have been really busy with church and civic activities so it is good to slow down a bit, sit on the screen porch with all of you and plan this meal plan for the week. 

  Welcome to Full Plate Thursday! I am so excited to see you today. Come on in to the party we are on the patio today, just enjoying the beautiful day together. Every Spring and Summer we have a special section on the features for Canning and Preserving and it starts this week for the season!  We have some great features from our party last week and I sure hope you will visit these talented bloggers and tell them hello! I can't wait to see what you will be sharing with us today, I always look forward to seeing you here at the party and thanks so much for coming!

  Instant Pot Sesame Honey Chicken is a great busy day meal. There are those days and we all have them, when we need to prepare a quick meal for the family and this is an amazing recipe for just that. This recipe has so much flavor and it takes just a little bit and it is on the table. This is a delicious dish that I love to serve with rice. I enjoy this go to recipe all year round.

Hello everyone, I sure hope that all of you Moms out there are able to enjoy a great Mothers Day and planning some amazing meal plans just for you! Our daughter that lives near by has told me that she and her sister have a big surprise for me on Mother's Day so I am excited about that. We are having some really good rain and our garden will just love that. I talk to you a lot about the garden and would love for you to enjoy our  Spring Garden Tour 2022 . We have a great meal plan for next week, I can't wait!

Welcome to Full Plate Thursday and Happy Cinco de Mayo! This is so much fun to celebrate Cinco de Mayo with all of you. We have some great features from our

  I love the fresh flavor that lemon gives this delicious Lemon Skillet Chicken With Orzo and Spinach. This is one of those great family meals that is easy to make and goes on the table in a short time. I have even served this for an informal dinner for friends and it was great, everyone loved it. The chicken has a great marinade that gives the entire dish a very special flavor. The Orzo and the Spinach complete the dish making it a true one dish dinner.

  We start planting our spring garden in late January and by this time the end of April the first part of May the vegetables are up and some ready for harvest. I am so happy to take you on a short tour of our garden progress for this year. 

Spring meal plans are here in full swing with great fresh fruits and vegetables. We always have a meal plan centered around Cinco de Mayo which is coming  up this week. I spent a lot of time in the garden earlier today, we have wonderful garden vegetables coming up everywhere and some will be ready for harvest soon.  It is so nice to be able to be out on the screen porch to spend some awesome time with all of you and make a delicious meal plan for next week. 

  Welcome to Full Plate Thursday and our Top Ten Features from last weeks party!  On the last week of the month we always feature our Top Ten Post that you choose from the most views. I always enjoy seeing the post you viewed the most. It is very interesting because often times new trends in food can actually be predicted from your views. Thanks so much for coming to the party today and we sure hope you will enjoy the party!

Tuesday is Mexican food day at the cottage and we have Taco Tuesday often. My Taco Tuesday Soup is one of our favorite recipes, it is so simple to put together and really has a great flavor. Into a soup pot we add ground meat, broth, vegetables, special spices with some cheese, then its ready to go on the table. We just love this soup and it truly is our Taco Tuesday go to soup. I had made it earlier today and decided I would just share it with all of you and hope you enjoy it!

We really enjoy a great Fajita here at the cottage. My husband and I both grew up eating Southwest and Tex-Mex food, so we enjoy those flavors. This is a delicious Chicken Fajita Tex-Mex Skillet recipe with a great marinade that packs all of the awesome flavor. This is a simple recipe with fresh vegetables that complete the Fajita, all in one skillet and it is ready to serve. Bring the skillet right to the table for a delicious informal family meal.

  We enjoyed a great Easter with family and lots of great food. I have been going through some of my favorite spring recipes to make my meal plan for the week.  I always like to check the weather for the week and then head to the recipes.  Looks like we will be having some sunny days and some rainy days for a good overall look at the weather for the week. I took a pantry inventory earlier and I shouldn't have to have much from the market right now, thank goodness, the prices get higher every week. I am enjoying sitting on the screen porch, making my meal plan and sipping my sweet tea.

  Welcome to Full Plate Thursday,585 and a great spring day! Come on in the cottage we are headed to the screen porch, it seems to be raining just a little today, so we will enjoy our food outdoors protected from the rain. I love sitting on the screen porch and enjoying food and fellowship with all of you. We sure had some nice features from last weeks party and hope you will enjoy the post. I am so excited to see what you will be sharing with us for the party today. Thanks so much for coming to the party, I always look forward to seeing you at the party!

  Mixed Berry Breakfast Bake  is a great recipe for any special brunch group, or just a family weekend brunch. We love fresh berries in a breakfast bake it gives such a special fresh taste and look. I love making this recipe for our gang here at the cottage, especially when all of our berry bushes are producing in the spring of the year. This is a very easy recipe to prepare and can be made the day of, no overnight wait. Just garnish with a dollop of Yogurt and serve, it is delicious!

Great to see you here on this very special week-end of Pass-Over and Easter. I had so much fun planning this meal plan which actually is partly posted in last weeks post. We are so blessed to be having family with us this year to celebrate a very special Easter Weekend!

Welcome To Full Plate Thursday Easter Edition! We are so happy to see you today, come on in the back yard the weather is beautiful and we are planning a very special party today. We have featured some very special post from last week and hope you will enjoy each one of these talented bloggers. I can't wait to see what you will be bringing to share with us this week. Thanks so much for sharing with us at the party today and we sure hope you enjoy the party!

I would love this Banana Cream Cake if it had no cream pudding, no frosting and no seasonal fresh fruit garnish, the cake alone is a delicious treat! We love anything banana here at the cottage and this cake is a real treat for us. It is a very versatile recipe that I have a lot of fun with. It is a very easy scratch cake that delivers a very tasty and moist crumb, then with a pudding topping and a buttercream frosting it can't get much better until the garnish goes on, oh my just to think about it makes me hungry. This is a cake that can be served for any occasion from special family meals to covered dish dinners, it is a winner every time!

  The meal plan this week will be a few more days than usual as I am including Easter Weekend in the meal plan. I know that next week will be really busy for all of us, getting ready for our big Easter celebrations, so this will give us all a little more planning time. I love to prepare as much as is possible ahead of time, so if our meal plan is all set that just gives us that little bit of help that we sometimes need. We are expecting a large family gathering for Easter weekend so I am really looking forward to getting this plan ready.

  Welcome to Full Plate Thursday and its April! Oh my goodness we had so many wonderful links last week, I am happy to feature some of them for you today, sure hope you enjoy them. It is so much fun to be able to enjoy some spring meal plans with fresh vegetables and great spring recipes. Passover and Easter are just around the corner and I can see how everyone is starting to plan special meals for the holiday dinners. Thanks so much for coming to the party today, come on in and find your special place at the table, we saved it just for you!

  Sometimes we have a big crowd for Easter Sunday Dinner. It is a great time for us to get together with close friends and family. We like to have a variety of foods that our folks will really enjoy. Some of these recipes have been passed down from generation to generation and are traditional at our dinner. These are some of the favorites that we may be serving our guest for a Easter Sunday Dinner. Presenting a collection of recipes that will give you many suggestions for a successful Easter Dinner, just add a lot of love and some of your favorite folks!

  How exciting to be planning spring meals with lots of fresh vegetables. We have been busy planting in our garden and some of the vegetables are already coming up. We are looking at as many budget saving answers as we can as the prices on most food products keep going up each time we are in the market.  I am using some of my home canned vegetables this week, we will be having fresh ones to cook and can very soon. It's time to start the pickle pots, and I am using mine on the menu this week. All the signs of spring showing up in our meal plans and our kitchens.

Welcome to our Top Ten Week at Full Plate Thursday. On the last party of the month we feature the Top Ten Views from last weeks party. Top Ten is always a lot of fun for me to see who had the most views at in the last weeks party. I sure hope you enjoy this special feature, we have so many talented bloggers that are a part of this community. It is really good to see you here today!

  Our Creamy Parmesan Baked Chicken is a wonderful recipe in so many ways. It is so easy to prepare, the flavor is fantastic, it's on the table in no time. We are serving it with our  Orzo Spinach Salad With Honey Lemon Dressing . This recipe can be served for a family weeknight meal or dress it up for a friends dinner party. 

  I really enjoy the combination of the Orzo pasta with the fresh vegetables in this salad. The Honey Lemon Dressing is a favorite of mine and helps to make this salad very special. I love having a great salad recipe like this as it will be a delicious side dish for just about any family style meal or if you want to add a little chicken it will make a great meal. It takes very little time to prepare this salad and can be prepared the day before. I recently carried this salad to a friends luncheon that she hosted, everyone just loved the salad and I hope you enjoy it as well.

Meal Planning will be so much fun this week, spring has really arrived, we are having some beautiful weather this weekend. We are getting the grill ready, cleaning the patio's and decks, can't wait to get that grill going. We have been super busy here in the gardens, and now will be outdoors more and more which we are so excited about. Meal planning becomes more and more important for families as each week the cost of daily living rises. Every time we go to the super market, and the gas pump the price has gone up, from week to week it is more expensive, making meal planning even more important to make every penny count.