I realized as I was prepping today's post that unintentionally I ended up doing all of my posts about salad recipes this week. Perhaps it is the waning summer days and the realization that all-too-soon we'll be cooking more soups and stews and less salads.

Next time you cook rice for a stir-fry or other dish, make extra and freeze it. Then you will have rice on hand for recipes, like this one below.

Beyond the rice, dressing and black beans, this recipes changes a little bit each time I make it. I have added corn, cucumber or omitted the celery.

Sunday was a grumpy day for all of us. It poured icy rain all day long. The kids alternately moped around, pestered us (play with me! play with me!-Or-I'm bored! I'm bored!), or fought and bickered about every minute thing possible (She breathed on me! He touched my arm!). We had family visiting for the weekend, and when they sped off on Sunday morning, in a whirlwind, we were left to pick up the pieces of two kids grappling with a healthy case of post-visit, post-spoiling, cabin-fever-induced, flat-out grouchiness.

This summer I made two new resolutions. Resolution #1 is to give up drinking coffee, and Resolution #2 is to embark on meal planning for the week, rather than rely on our fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants approach. I only managed to come around to actually doing Resolution #1 about two weeks ago. I've given up coffee before, of course, in the months leading up to our trying to conceive both kids. This time around, I'm making the switch because I ended up drinking way too much caffeine last semester and, as a result, I think it made me jittery and less patient than I usually am.