Teriyaki Kabobs and a New Wall

I am SO homes and gardens today.  A recipe AND a new decorating tip?!?  Wow. 

So, we all know I LOVE to cook...my cooking idol is Ina Garten and if I had my way, I'd cook all day everyday and make millions of dollars from my ingenious recipes.  But, I live in the real world and the work and kid thing means the food I make has to be very quick, easy and mostly toddler friendly.  I try very, very hard to feed Mia the same food JC and I eat every night, for two reasons:

• It's a pain in the ass to cook a separate meal
• I hope it will help her become a "healthy eater"...kids mimic their parents, so if we eat good food, she'll eat good food.  And only have ice cream 3 times a week, instead of 5.

But sometimes you can't always do that.  Sometimes you just need to eat something that's spicy, has a "grown-up" sauce on it or is fish or fish-related.  None of those (in my experience) are very toddler friendly foods.  I'm here to tell you that this is one of those recipes:

Teriyaki Steak Kabobs

•  Chop up a yellow and orange bell pepper (if they're on sale, otherwise use the gross (but cheap) green kind), one yellow onion and a piece of steak. Throw in some button mushrooms and  skewer them on kabob sticks.

• Season with Lawry's salt and black pepper and drench them in Teriyaki marinade.

•  Let them marinate for about 30 minutes in the refrigerator and then put them on a HOT grill.  Make sure the grill is HOT enough that it sears the meat and locks in the flavor.

DELICIOUS? Yes.  Toddler friendly?  No.  At least not for my toddler.  But no worries, we had plenty off side dishes and fruit for her.  She did not go hungry.  Here's the little bugger playing in the yard while the kabobs were grilling...red-face and all.

In other news, I played decorator last weekend and re-did a wall in my kitchen "nook."  I have found that I am very fond of collages so I made a third one in my house.  What can I say, I like em.  Each one is special though, the one in my dining room is filled with pictures that I took in Europe, the other one in my dining room is pictures of JC and I when we were younger, pictures of my brother and I when we were younger, and just fun things that mean something.  This one, is no different.  I made this collage with framed sheet music from the 1920s that I bought at a consignment store in downtown McKinney, Texas.  How awesome is that?  Maybe one day it'll be worth enough to pay for Mia's college education.  Kidding! Kind of.