Happy May! The first week of May already and we get to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. I have put together a great week of delicious Tex Mex foods to help celebrate. We are making a visit to one of my favorite farm stands this week for some fresh produce from the Texas valley, can't wait for that wonderful fresh fruit. I am getting hungry so lets get this meal plan started.

Where The Greatest Cooks On The Planet Gather Welcome to our last Full Plate Thursday for April and that means we feature the Top Ten from last week. Your recipes and post every week surely live up to the reason you are "The Greatest Cooks On The Planet"!I am so excited to be going to my annual Ladies Spiritual Retreat that I have hosted for the past 23 years. It is always a time of renewal getting my Spiritual basket filled, and visiting with old and new friends. I am so glad you are joining us today and can't wait to see what you are sharing.

I keep fresh fruit available for my family all the time and bananas are one of their favorite. I will often times buy more than they will eat so I can have some really ripe bananas to make yummy desserts. This recipe adds some fresh strawberries and some delicious peanut butter frosting to top this fabulous combination. This is one of my favorite bars and it is so moist with wonderful flavors. Be sure and enjoy your bar right away, they won't last long!

We love Chile Relleno's, but they are usually fried. This Chile Relleno Bake give's all the flavor of a great Relleno, without the frying pan. I have added some more vegetables to the filling to give a great combination for this bake. I have used this recipe for breakfast, lunch and dinner and is a proven winner with our family. One of the features of this recipe is that it can be frozen for up to 3 months, we freeze the whole dish or individual servings. This is a great dish to bring a Mexican Fiesta into your home anytime.

I had to put my high top rubber boots on to get to the soggy garden today.I was hoping to gather some fresh greens for our dinner. When I start the meal plan for the next week, the garden is always on the list, then comes the pantry and next the freezer. We have just about used up all the excess in our cold bins from last year so now it is time to start over. We have had so much rain here soon we will be able to fish off the back porch. I am glad you are here today to visit with me while we make these meal plans for next week.

Where The Greatest Cooks On  The Planet Gather Welcome to Full Plate Thursday, I am so excited to see you today.We had some great food here last week and it is so hard to choose the features, sometimes I just want all of them! We have had an incredible amount of rain this spring and things are pretty soggy around the gardens, but we are still able to get out and gather some spring herbs and greens. I really cant wait to see what you have brought to share with us tonight so lets get the party started!

Garden To Table Fresh Asparagus We have had the most beautiful Asparagus from our garden this year and I have had fun making special recipes for the fresh Asparagus. We were having some family come in for the weekend and I thought this might be a great dish to make ahead and that my guest would really enjoy. Just a simple dish with a special blend of flavors, that was a big hit here with our guest.

We are having a busy week here at the cottage, and I am so glad that I have meals planned ahead. We are in the process of putting the kitchen cabinets back in order after a little paint and spring spruce up, I will be so happy to get back to our regular kitchen routine. My neighbor brought me some fresh chickens, so we will be having some chicken on the menu this week and I am glad you are here to share the meal plan  process with me.

Where The Greatest Cooks On The Planet Gather Hope you are having a great week, we are having a very busy week in the cottage. I am so grateful that I am a meal planner with meals in the freezer and ready for my kitchen being "out of order" for a week or so. We are making progress and it is starting to look like new, it is amazing what a simple coat of paint can do.I can wait to see what you are bringing to share tonight so I can dream about new things to cook when my kitchen opens up again! Thank you so much for coming today, your visits are always very special to me!

Do you have favorite salad's that just work with certain meal plans and are  one of your recipe classic's? I have a section in my recipe file for The Best and this is one of the recipes that I have there. Sometimes we would  want a different salad to go with a special meal, especially if we are grilling out.This is a vegetable packed salad with a very different and delicate balance of herbs. Of course we always have those other wonderful salads, but this one is awesome and we don't have to worry about the dairy. It's a great make ahead salad to take to the local picnic and I am so happy to share it with you today.

We love to have a cook out, however the weather does not always cooperate. This has always been my "plan B" recipe for a rained out cook out. This is such a great recipe that sometimes I just make this Bar B Que Chicken rain or shine. The chicken is so tender it will just come right off the bone and the flavor is amazing.Our family and friends always love this recipe and will come back for seconds.

What a week at the cottage we are about to have, the painters will be starting on the kitchen this week.Just having some spring spruce up work done and I am so excited to get this started. Of course we will be planning our meals around this construction so it ought to be fun. We are supposed to have good weather for the project so I will be outdoors and using the outdoor kitchen as much as possible.

Where The Greatest Cooks On The Planet Gather I have been spending a lot of time in the kitchen cooking and cooking trying to get ahead just a little before my kitchen closes for repairs. We are having our kitchen cabinets re painted, new hardware and just a general sprucing up. I always look forward to Thursday and going through all the wonderful food that you share with this special party here at the cottage.Lets get your awesome food on the table so we can get this party started!

When we bake one of our Country Hams we always have some left overs. Sometimes we have the Ham Hock for a nice pot of beans and sometimes we have enough for our Ham Salad. Ham Salad is great served on a lettuce leaf, on a nice cracker for an appetizer or our favorite is a Ham Sandwich on Croissant. This is our favorite family recipe for Ham Salad and comes straight from the recipe card that I recently sent my Granddaughter.

My Aunt Pat used to make this awesome pie and bring it to our family pot lucks, it was so good. Then she passed the recipe to me and I got to bring it for a long time. I think that different versions of this recipe have been around for years, but this is ours and we love it. It is so rich and it is hard to say just which layer of this awesome pie is the best. This is one of those pie's that you may actually have to hide  from everyone until time to serve.

April showers will bring May flowers, so we should be getting lots of flowers in May.  Everything looks so beautiful, lush and green, the garden vegetables are growing and the Asparagus has been awesome.  I am so excited to welcome April and enjoy planning spring meals.  I like to look at meals in the spring that can be cooked outside, but if it rains, we can take it inside.