Blog Posts by Kim Hamill

Scottsdale Arizona has plenty to offer, I'm sure, but the thing I remember most about Scottsdale is the salad at Cowboy Ciao's. It's rare for a salad to blow me away; I often find myself picking ingredients out and asking for different dressing choices. That was before I met the Ciao's Stetson Chopped. I realized I couldn't wait for my next AZ visit to rendezvous with this salad again and it's been a regular in our home ever since.

DSC_0618

The ingredients/rows in the order I line them up in (but feel free to get crazy and change it up) are: Diced tomatoes, tossed lightly with olive oil and basil Dried sweet corn Shredded asiago cheese, dried currants/cranberries, & toasted pepitas (pumpkin seeds) Chopped Arugula Cooked Israeli couscous (the bigger couscous, served room temp) Chopped lox (optional of course, but I love it and I don't eat lox)

Arrange ingredients in separate rows on a large platter. Lightly dress with Cindy's Kitchen Buttermilk Ranch Dressing (I've yet to find a replacement

My husband is allergic to nagging. It's a condition where he considers my bare minimum of nagging to be his absolute maximum. I could do so much more nagging, he has no idea. So lately, rather than being either overly aggressive (husband, do this) or passive-aggressive (oh, I wish I had someone to help me with this), I start my requests with, "Honey, can you do me a favor?" Which follows by a long silence where I desperately want him to commit before I reveal the favor and he desperately wants to avoid committing. Finally I say, "Can you take the chili out of the fridge, quickly dump it into the trash and directly into the trashroom?" It was a job I'd been afraid to tackle for many, many weeks. The smell, the strangeness growing on top.. oh, this was a big favor. And much to my surprise, he said, "Sure, I can do that." And, he did.

The next day he was dropping me off at work and I was refraining from backseat driver nagging which he is most allergic to. I noticed he often takes