Simple Sunday Afternoon

Sunday is my favorite day of the week. Church, quiet afternoons, church again, and then a Netflix movie with my hubby before bed.

The biggest challenge for Sundays, though, is feeding my family a good meal after church with very little prep time.

Both my husband and I teach Sunday School on Sunday mornings - he teaches adults and I teach kindergartners. (I won't ask you which of us has the harder job. Let's just say that his students rarely write on themselves with markers!) And after Sunday School is the worship service, which lasts about an hour and a half at our church - and we love it!

One of my Sunday School students on
her birthday. Isn't she adorable?

But by the time we get home, there are five or six starving people who want food. NOW!

A couple Sundays ago we had beautiful weather, so I fired up the grill to make my favorite quick dinner - Grilled Chicken and Summer Squash.

The grilled chicken is super simple -

Just take boneless chicken breasts cut into serving sizes (face it, some of those chickens must be Amazons....), season with your favorite spices, and grill until done. It takes about twenty minutes if your chicken is cut up and ready to go. I do that as a night-before prep.

Before you put the chicken on the grill, though, slice some zucchini and/or yellow squash, onions and mushrooms. Toss them together in a bowl with olive oil and more seasoning, and start them on the grill about five minutes before putting the chicken on the fire.

I love this pan for doing veggie stir-fries on the grill. It's non-stick, and the holes in the pan allow for the grill's heat to sear those veggies to a golden brown.

Turn the chicken a couple times, and stir the veggies often, and they'll soon be done.

Be sure to check the chicken with a thermometer to make sure it's done! You want it to be at least 165°.

I added some green beans seasoned with butter, salt, pepper and sesame seeds. Delicious! And ready to eat about thirty minutes after we got home from church. :)

After lunch, we often play a game or two. Settlers of Catan is one of our favorites.

The idea of the game is to collect resources in order to build cities and roads, and they add up into points. Those little houses are settlements, and the sticks are roads. My color is blue, so every time a nine, two or twelve is rolled on the dice, I get the resource that corresponds to the number. Nine is rolled quite often, so I should be able to collect a lot of wood, right?

My strategy for that game didn't work. When my son, Benjamin, won the game with his ten points, I still only had the two points everyone gets at the beginning of the game :(

I blame this creature.

This guy isn't part of the game - it's what Benjamin makes with his extra pieces while he's waiting for his turn. But do you see how he's bearing down on my little blue settlement???

Oh well. Someone has to lose the game.

What is your favorite way to spend a Sunday afternoon?

Grilled Summer Squash and Zucchini...

OUR FIRST BABIES!!!!!

We're so excited. I can barely hold back the anticipation!!!!!

GRILLED SQUASH! FRESH!!!! AT LAST!!!!!

And the gecko??? Well, he's just along for the ride, LOL!

But first a word from the wall-building, garden-loving monster:

I love separating out gardens with stone walls....

And then I was inspired to buy more flowers.... and they had a $1/pot SALE GOING!!!! When you live in a short-summer climate, buying plants that are a little bigger isn't a dumb idea because they'll be gone all too soon!  So some of these went here:

And some here:

I've told you guys about the no cooking schedule, right? But that doesn't include not grilling veggies.

I love them. Dave loves them. They are to-die-for so these first four babies are part of our pork chop (Kav, SKIP THIS PART, HONEY!!!!) and veggie feast.

SIMPLE DIRECTIONS:

Cut smallish squash into spears. Ah, the gecko is a CARNIVORE!!!!! 

Drizzle with olive oil.

Sprinkle with your choice of seasonings:

I used pepper, garlic, salt and basil and Parmesan cheese....

Grill until they almost look too grilled.

Oh, my stars, delicious. Wonderful. MARVELOUS!!!!!

And then if you follow up with ice cream for dessert, you can be proud of your excellent veggie dish before the ice cream feast!!!!

Then I had to go get Dave out of the garden:

How cute is he?????

And monster summer squash and zucchini plants:

The perfect time to photograph them, before you start regular daily pickings and they get T-I-R-E-D!!!!

So that's the word from the little farm that grew lots of veggies and a bunch of eggs in upstate:

And my window boxes ended up with some of the flowers, too... Mandy and Paul made these for me a few years ago, the Best Christmas Present Ever....  besides Jesus, that is!!!!

They say for window boxes you need a chiller, thriller and spiller....  Well my thriller must be that Coleus.... the spiller is sweet potato vine.... and the chiller????  The red begonia????  Ach, who knows, I just know that it looks nice this year! I DIDN'T KILL IT!!!!