Fish are jumpin’ … and the cotton is high…
And I don’t feel like cookin’….
Oh wait, that’s not part of the song. But it should be! Who wants to cook on a hot summer day? Not me! So I decided NOT to cook today, but I still felt like I should feed my family, so I compromised: Cold Plates!
This is one of those ideas that’s just so brilliant, I wonder why I didn’t think of it sooner! All one has to do is assemble a variety of cold, fresh foods, make it pretty and put it on the table. Presto, Change-o, Dinner! Simple as that.
I used some cold ham slices (from my super cheap ham of a previous post) as the main portion of the meal and augmented them with some scoops of tuna salad. Then I added in some various fresh fruits and veggies, some cheese for my DH, and some pickles. A dollop of honey mustard served as a dipping sauce for the ham. Usually, bread of some sort is served with a cold plate, but I had none, so I offered crackers on the side.
The nice thing about these cold plates is that I could customize them to our different dietary needs. Here’s my plate with strawberries and unpeeled apples and apricots:
Here’s DH’s plate with cheese and peeled apples instead:
Even our Certain Little Someone had his own cold plate (not that he ate it all! He was mostly interested in the watermelon and sweet potato fries!):
So it was all pretty QUICK, despite my DH’s teasing comments that I wasted too much time making it look pretty! But he was hungry, and he always says things he doesn’t really mean when he’s hungry ;). And besides, it had to be pretty!
And it was EASY, too. Just some slicing is about all the effort that went into it.
Definitely CHEAP, since I just used up some leftover ham and fruits and veggies that were already on hand in the fridge.
And of course, HEALTHY, with all that fresh produce chock-full of vitamins!
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