Welcome to Full Plate Thursday and our Top Ten Week! The last party of the month we always feature the Top Ten Views from the last week's party and these are the wonderful Top Ten Views that you choose! Our cottage is all a buzz this week getting ready for the 4th of July celebration this coming weekend and this year it is going to be a big one, because we didn't get to have one last year. We are experiencing very cool temperatures for this time of the year so that will make our celebrations even better. Thanks so much for coming to the party today, we always look forward to seeing you here!

Our Blueberry Banana Ice Box Pie is a delicious ice box pie that is so easy and quick to make. This is one of those pie recipe's that can easily be one of those quick go to recipes that we all love. The combination of the cream cheese layer, banana and then comes the blueberries, topping it off of whipped topping. This is absolutely a double yum recipe!

      We have been adjusting to the heat over here in Germany (they don't do AC). However, the past week has been rainy everyday and even a little chilly in the evenings. So I took the opportunity to make a family favorite, zuppa toscana. She may not be the prettiest in the bunch, but this soup is delicious and budget friendly. Serve it with some nice bread for dipping on the side and enjoy! 

Meal planning for this week of the beginning of the 4th of July celebration is always so much fun! We will be having lots of folks from the city in our little community to enjoy the parade and the country store on July 3 this year. I am making some cakes for the cake walk and bringing some of my canned goods for the country store. Our garden is in full harvest now and we are busy canning and freezing just about every day. We will be planning some traditional foods this week as well as some new recipes, lets get planning!

Welcome to Full Plate Thursday and a beautiful summer day. We have so many wonderful features from our party last week of recipes, table settings, and food related post. We pin all of our features to our features board and feature some of you in our meal plans on Whats For Dinner Next Week. Our features next week will be our Top Ten from all of your page views, you will choose the features next week from your page views, I always look forward to your top ten picks! Thanks so much for coming to the party today, we always look forward to seeing you here!

Our Peanut Butter Firecracker Treats are a special little treat to serve at any celebration, especially if you are having some fireworks. This is a very simple recipe that the kids can help with and have a lot of fun. Peanut Butter and chocolate paired with some crispy noodles, topped with colorful sprinkles, this is a very special treat! These are delicious little treats and one is never enough!

Old Glory Berry Cake is a very special cake recipe that we often times make on special holidays. We have enjoyed this cake on the 4th of July, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and special celebrations for military members in our family.  This cake has even appeared at pot luck dinners and picnic's of course. It is a moist, delicious cake with a great blueberry and strawberry filling under the amazing frosting, it is a very special surprise!

Hello everyone and welcome to summertime, 2021! Remember all that rain we were getting, well we could sure use some more long about now. We have a great week ahead to plan for with lots of great garden vegetables to bring to the table. We have been getting a bumper harvest this year. We have been invited to our Daughter's house for Fathers Day this year, but she let me make the meal plan so I could share with you'al and  because she wants me to cook some of the food. It is nice to be able to make the meal plans that way we all know what to bring and that it is going to be some delicious food for all the great Dad's at the gathering!

  Welcome to Full Plate Thursday, it is so good to see you here today. The sun is shinning today and we are having our party on the patio under the shade trees, a beautiful time of the year to eat outside. We are gearing up for the Fathers Day Activities and lots of great food to honor all the great dads! We have some delicious features today from some very talented bloggers and sure hope you enjoy their recipes and post. Thanks so much for coming today to share with us, we always look forward to your visits!

  We are busy with a bumper harvest this year in our garden. We have had more rain than usual and we are surely enjoying the rewards of it in our harvest. This is the earliest Green Bean harvest I believe we have ever had here in this location. We are so excited to be able to preserve the harvest and have it to eat next winter when the snow is on the ground. Canning has become a lost art in homemaking so as I told my young friend, I am doing my part to try and preserve the art and pass it along to the families who want to make it part of their life and memories.

  We haven't done much cooking the past couple of weeks, because we have been so busy exploring! Things are finally opening up in Deutschland! Memorial Day weekend we enjoyed a fun day at Europa Park, an amusement park in Rust, Germany. Then we got treated to another 4-day weekend, and decided to check out Koblenz! We have been soaking up the amazing culture, history, and nice sunny weather. 

It's meal planning time, sitting on the screen porch this sunny morning getting inspiration from all the nature around us. We are getting daily harvest from our garden now, so that is a definite consideration for my meal plan this week. We have started our canning and preserving here at the cottage so we are more than a little bit busy and having so much fun and lots of really good garden to table meals!

  Welcome to Full Plate Thursday and the Texas Rain! We hope you brought your umbrella today because it is still raining. I am so excited to present our features of recipes, table settings, and food related post from last weeks party, hope you will enjoy them. I am sure looking forward to seeing what you have to share at the party today, we truly have the best cooks that are a part of this community. Thanks so much for coming to the party today come on in out of the rain and find a place at the table!

I had some left over chicken from my Sheet Pan Lemon Herb Chicken and a basket of fresh greens from my garden that led to this delicious recipe. The salad has a base of delicious fresh greens and then we added some garden vegetables and the cold Lemon Herb Chicken. We topped it out with a delicious Feta Dressing that we have fell in love with. This is a great garden to table recipe and can be served for lunch or dinner.

I developed this sheet pan recipe because it rained on my grilling day. I know this chicken is great on the grill because we have grilled it before, however when it rains on your cookout try the recipe in the sheet pan, it is delicious. This recipe has a great taste of lemon and fresh herbs that came straight out of my herb garden. I love to use this chicken in a special salad filled with fresh garden vegetables making this a true garden to table recipe.

Welcome to June at the cottage, we are making great meal plans and harvesting the garden already! I really think this is the earliest we have ever harvested Green Beans from the garden, but we got enough that we canned Green Beans this week. Our meal plan continues to be contingent on the weather, we are having historical rain for this time of the year with cooler temperatures. Come August I am sure we will be wishing we had some of the rain and cooler temperature.

Welcome to Full Plate Thursday and our first party of June! Let the summer games begin and we will start with our annual Canning and Preserving features every week during this special season when we bring the bounty of our gardens and farmers markets to our tables, canning and preserving the goodness of summer. We had a great Memorial Day Weekend here at the cottage and our lake was full of visitors, it was really great to see everyone having so much fun and activity in our life once again. We have some great features from our party last week that we will be pinning to our special features board and hoping you will visit and enjoy! I can't wait to see what you will be sharing with us at the party today, it sure is good to see you here!

We had a great Memorial Day weekend! Things are starting to open again here and we took the opportunity to check out an amusement park! Before we left for our weekend getaway we enjoyed this fun and yummy breakfast!