A Puppy Pen Day for the Whole Family!

So last weekend, Rachel and I, along with our families, spent the whole Saturday together. It's the first time we've had a "Puppy Pen Date" since we started the blog. We cooked a bit, but mostly we snacked the whole day on lots of healthy, yummy, fresh food.

We started the day by going to the Kootenai County Farmers Market, which was a lot of fun, even for the kids. I had to convince my son that it would be fun, and I promised him that Rachel takes her kids there almost every weekend and that they loved it, too. As soon as we got there, we lined up for face painting, which, after waiting for OUR turn and going through 4 kids faces, took up probably a good hour. But it was well worth it, because for only 5 dollars our kids got their entire faces transformed into vampires, dragons, batman, and flowers. And for a kid, getting your face painted is the coolest thing ever. After that we wandered the market, got some kettle corn, fresh salsa, radishes, and a BEAUTIFUL new cutting board(for those who don't know me, I have an obsession with wooden spoons, and have been dying to get these beautiful wooden cutting boards, and we found one for only twenty dollars)!

After that, we headed back to Rachel's house, packed up a backpack with snacks (Mary's Gone Crackers gluten free crackers, Farmers Market Salsa, fresh fruit,  veggies and hummus, and smoothies), and hopped on our bikes for a bike ride from Rachel's house along the Prairie Trail down to the Centenial Trail, down to the college, and back. I never knew how bike friendly Couer d'Alene is, and it was amazing. We stopped at 2 different parks to let the kids play along the way.
 And then it was home for dinner. We made more salsa, margaritas, and barbequed potatoes and vegis along with steaks. It was the perfect way to spend a Saturday, and the weather cooperated perfectly! I'm hoping for many more days like this throughout the summer.

Rachel:

Yes, last Saturday was a blast! I have vowed to get outside and move more, and Saturday Bike rides are one of my favorite ways to exercise.

My amazing husband did the grilling, and we had potatoes, zucchini and mushrooms on the grill, (done in his grill basket with a little oil and spices).


After dinner we made Strawberry margaritas with fresh strawberries and raspberries (and my new blender!), and they turned out really well! They also made for some fun and colorful photographs for our Puppy Pen Cafe Facebook site.We almost had to get out the puppy pen to contain the kids.

Just kidding...

But they did let us use their tiny little kid-sized chair for this photo op.=)

We had bought salsa from the farmers market (Banditos Salsa, very tasty) and went through it pretty quickly and then we moved onto the the Kirkland salsa (also amazing) from Costco. When we had exhausted our salsa resources, we turned to making our own chunky garlic salsa to have with our g-free tostitos.

8 roma tomatoes
1 white onion, small
1 clump of fresh cillantro
1 tsp of seasalt
2 TBSP Lime Juice
4 (or 10, if you're us) cloves of garlic
12 Anaheim chile, cored

Quarter the tomatoes and scoop out the insides, and then dice everything by hand or put it into a little electric chopper. Add the juice.


We got our cilantro fresh from our garden - the only thing that survived after my kids drowned everything with love (and too much water). My four year old was so proud to be able to go out and snip all of the little cilantro sprigs himself, and he did an amazing job! Now we have no more cilantro and no more garden. I see a post about what we planted to remedy this in the very near future...

Today, Zach and I have discovered veggie burgers. Though we are not typically fans of Soy, these particular burgers were being sampled at Costco, and they were pretty tasty! So he may be grilling again.