What are your plans for the holiday weekend? Are you making anything special?
I just finished putting together some bacon ranch pasta salad with leftover ingredients. Can’t wait to try it tomorrow!
Other than that, we’re just getting BBQ from a local place and keeping it easy.
Looking forward to the fireworks! Luckily our cats sleep right through it. 
Happy 249th Birthday, America!
There will be a very large cake and plenty of ice cream, won’t there?
Happy 4th of July to everyone!
I had my last day of work today and I’m off for a month.
We live in the hills of my small town which is next to the city of LA. We usually walk to a high vantage point and watch the fireworks from the various fire works displays. Definitely going to be having hot dogs for dinner!
bacon ranch pasta salad
tell me more
Hot Dogs and bacon ranch pasta salad!
Reasons indeed to celebrate!
The food police will be after all of us.
We’re going to have tacos, esquites salad, roasted potatoes, and roasted balsamic stone fruit over ice cream! And mostly celebrating that my daughter has moved back home after living/working abroad for the past 8 years! 
Smash
Burgers and pasta salad! It’s very hot and humid here!
We’re having meatloaf, pasta salad, corn on the cob, baked beans, and strawberry shortcake for dessert. Cooked yesterday, so today it’s heat & eat! The temps have been comfortable the past few days, but it’s going to be a hot, humid week ahead … I’m already longing for autumn 
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And it goes without saying, we started off the holiday morning with coffee and red/white/blue donuts.
Everyone enjoy the day, stay safe, and keep on snarking !
We are trying beef tenderloin on the grill to make sliders. Friends did it recently, served with either horseradish sauce or blue cheese dressing and they were so good! 
. Special treat since son1 is here.
Otherwise, it’s bagged salads, pasta salad, and fruit. I made a strawberry cream cheese pie for the first time. again!
Very warm and humid here in MN. Neighbors around here spend $$$ for fireworks, so we watch from our deck! 
Strawberry cream cheese pie ! You’ll have to share the recipe for that. Sounds delish ! 
About 80 degrees here in NoVA right now. Supposed to get up to 87. Then we have another week at 90 degrees. 
I didn’t follow a recipe, just used what we had.
Leftover from this week, some diced onion, black olives, bell pepper, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes. Added some crushed garlic. Tossed in a Locknlock 
with a little salt, pepper, and red wine vinegar.
Fried up a bag of bacon pieces (the kind in the salad aisle, one of my favorite recipe hacks) then drained, cooled, and set aside.
Cooked a box of rotini pasta al dente, cooled and drained.
To the cooled pasta, I added a bunch of Duke’s mayo and sour cream (double whatever you’re imagining) a packet of Hidden Valley ranch, garlic powder, onion powder, smoked paprika, regular paprika, black pepper, red pepper flakes, dried dill, and dried parsley.
Then I added everything else, plus a generous amount of shredded Tillamook sharp cheddar and you MUST let it sit overnight. Add more mayo and sour cream if it dries out.
I’ll add some fresh chopped jalapenos when we have it with dinner tonight, but it’s great as is!
This one is also good with baby peas, some drained Rotel, sweet corn, pretty much anything you have on hand. Fresh broccoli especially, adds a nice crunch!
Oh yes, please share that recipe! 
Here’s the recipe. I thought it was good , not great. It was fun to try, but I think just putting cut- up strawberries on it would be just as tasty. Mr Youbetcha and son1 liked it a lot.
Mine isn’t as pretty as hers pictured. I expected the cream cheese layer to be firmer, so mine was a little messy! Not something I would make again. Plain cheesecake with strawberry topping or strawberries would be more to my liking. ( Granted, that requires baking. )
have been playing around with Bisquick’s impossble pies
I made this 2 days ago it was amazing
I used mostly fresh peaches and cup of strawberries and 1 cup of sugar
Broccoli ? So, it’s healthy, right ? 
Oh, absolutely! Healthier than most salads in fact. I’m actually a fitness and lifestyle expert AND a health researcher, so you can definitely trust me on this.
@lilygilder , thanks for the recipe! Sounds good and fairly easy!
It sounds good and similar to the French style Sara Lee strawberry cheesecake. It’s creamier and less dense than the regular one.
Went to my cousins’ place for awhile. Had some Italian sausage and a beer. Was nice to spend some time with family.
My cat is also not too fazed by the fireworks. There is a LOT going on in my neighborhood right now (just about 11 pm).
youbetcha
those impossible pies are fun to make