Anyways, none of my friends work on Saturdays so we decided to have a mini "bbq" for the fourth of July! Okay, that's a slight lie, because Katie does work but she got off early and headed on over for some yummy grubbage after a rigorous day of working.
Instead of the cast of ingredients, the cast of cooks, eaters and friends:
In the photo on the left is Rachel (left) and Lauren (right) and Allie is all the way on the right
Silly Alyssa is on the left and Katie's rocking the alien headband on the right
The weather was beautiful on Saturday (as well as Sunday, Monday and well the rest of the week), a little hot though so we spent most of the time in the shade, which is fine with me, I get enough sun working as a lifeguard.
Lauren and I went food shopping and filled our cart with loads of veggies for salad, salsa, chicken and a giant watermelon!
After tanning for a bit we set out to make the mango salsa. The first time I had mango salsa was with Lauren and I haven't stopped talking about it since! My mom had this recipe from our neighbor and said it was outrageous, I was excited to finally have the ingredients to test it out.
It is a chunky salsa. A delicious, tangy, and sweet salsa. The ingredient list isn't anything too abstract for a salsa: mangos, red onion, cilantro, lime juice and salt. We added a few roma tomatoes, if I were going to make this again (HA if... I will be making this again, in the very near future too!) I will add a few more tomatoes, they work in the salsa perfectly.
The longer it sits, the more "juice" develops. We only let ours sit for the recommended 20 minutes, but when I finished the rest today, there was a lot more liquid...yum.
Served with celery, carrots and tortilla chips (scoops for easy pick up)
A perfect appetizer...
Next came dinner, we don't know how to bbq so we cooked the chicken inside on the pan. We made chicken 2 ways: Thai Peanut Chicken and just plain ole' "grilled"
I believe they all liked the Peanut Chicken because it all went! Yay :) It was extra yummy...
The grilled chicken was good too but no comparison!
And an extra large salad! Lettuce, cucumber, bell peppers, carrots, red cabbage and tomatoes!
We toasted some Sandwich Thins, some with cheese, some without, for a mini chicken sandwich if anyone wanted.
My plate of yummy-ness! I had lots more salad and another small piece of chicken!
Look at how much sun there was!
Glare much?
Next round? Watermelon and cuppycakes!!!!
So the watermelon had the most outrageous color I just had to take about 20 pictures before devouring, here are just a few:
Festive cupcakes:
I made "Easy-Mix Yellow Cupcakes" from the cupcakes book cleverly titled: "Cupcakes" and topped them with Magnolia's Buttercream
I made half of the recipe and divided it into thirds. Dyed one-third blue, one-third red and left one-third white. Added them all into 1 12-inch piping bag with a giant star tip and swirled until a pretty point.
I will do a step-by-step of the cupcakes at a later date because they were so delicious.. they totally deserve it! They taste like a sugar cookie but were super airy and tender on the inside with a slight crust on the outside.
Below is the recipe for the Mango-Salsa and stay tuned for some cupcakes (and cookies...shh)!!
With love and cupcakes,CookTeen
Recipe:
Ingredients:
1 3/4 pound mango (I used 2, one large and one medium) chopped
3-4 Roma tomatoes, chopped
4 ounces red onion, sliced very thinly
1/2 cup loosely packed cilantro
1/4 cup lime juice (1 lime didn't create enough lime juice so we used half RealLemon juice)
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
Combine all ingredients in a bowl, cover and let sit for at least 20 minutes. The longer, the more "juice" is created and all the flavors meld.
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