Tossing My Cookies For Greens

Fall has arrived. Of course, living in Southern California, you'd never know it.  August and September are typically the hottest months of the year, or so I've been told. We've been hitting triple digits during the day and at night it barely goes below 80F. I tend to lose all desire to cook when it's hot out and fortunately, I also don't have much of an appetite. A bowl of cold watermelon or a ripe, juicy peach seems to be about all I am in the mood for when mealtimes roll around.

I've had a lot of turmoil in my personal life the last couple of months (which is why I have not posted anything new here in about that long) and as usually happens when I am stressed, things start piling up around the house, including in the pantry. It's always interesting to take inventory once the stress levels start to go down and I am able to take back control of my life. Right now my freezer is filled with pizza (from Pizza Hut), fried chicken (from KFC), and just shy of a dozen doughnuts (they're much cheaper when you buy them by the dozen). I've had an eight-pack of canned black beans and an eight-pack of canned garbanzos from the warehouse store sitting on my counter for several weeks now because I have no room in my pantry or my garage for them. And at this moment, I cannot for the life of me, remember what I thought I would cook that would require so many beans.

So now that fall is here and the kids are back in school and I am consciously living my life again, I have decided September is a good month for reducing my food stores. I am ridding my house of junk food (hence the title, "Tossing My Cookies") and shooting for 31 days of salads ("For Greens").

NOTE: I did not use the word healthy. In doing research for this series, I found too many tantalizing recipes for salads that are loaded down with calories. (Apparently, people in the South have never made a salad that did not involve sour cream in some way and I would be remiss not to include dishes from the region that gave us Paula Deen!) I'll leave it up to you, dear reader, to figure out how to lighten it up if you feel that is necessary.

Happy Tossing!