random thoughts – Day 2,258 (Saturday) – prepping

Cowboy caviar. Or Texas salsa.

It was a domestic day at home. After much deliberation and reviewing of recipes and the contents of the pantry, a big bowl of bean and veggie “Cowboy Caviar” (aka “Texas Salsa”) was made for a cookout on Sunday. The other main contender was a fruit salad, but the pantry contained nearly everything needed for the bean and veggie mixture – pinto beans, black beans, canned corn, diced tomatoes, plus chopped grape tomatoes, onion, and vinaigrette dressing. The only missing item was green pepper, so I mixed everything and added the green pepper later. The taste test was a success. I forgot how much I like that salad/salsa/stuff.

There was nothing on hand to make the fruit salad and it might have taken multiple stores to gather the items, depending upon what Aldi had in stock for produce. The Cowboy Caviar  felt like a good decision when I arrived at Aldi to get the green peppers. They had some of the fruit I like, but not enough variety for a decent fruit salad for a party.

In the effort to consume more calcium from food sources, I spent a disappointing amount of time at the dairy case reading labels because online articles about the type of yogurt with the most calcium are very contradictory. One claimed that Greek yogurt (my favorite) has more calcium, another said low-fat regular yogurt had the most. My label reading at Aldi revealed that of the yogurt they carry, the regular yogurt has more calcium per serving than their Greek yogurt so I bought the regular stuff. And also, some cottage cheese which I will try my best to consume, although my track record with it isn’t good. There are some recipes involving eggs and cottage cheese baked with some stuff that sound promising.