Crazy, tutu- dancin lady and a beautiful evening

Yesterday was quite the baking/cooking day! I started out finishing up my Daring Bakers' challenge (which took quite a while, lots of steps). Then, I made some delicious banana bread with lime coconut glaze from this Cooking Light recipe! (I forgot to take a pic of the finished loaf, maybe tomorrow). The bread was muy delicioso! However, if you're thinking it's a "light" recipe, don't be fooled. It is reasonable in the calorie department if you follow the serving guideline, which is 1/16 of this loaf. I like to eat banana bread for breakfast, so I usually have more along the lines of 1/8 of the loaf. Oh well, better than 1/8 of a loaf that is not "lightened up"!

I made some more of my go-to picnic tuna salad, recipe can be found in this post.

I also made some toasted pita salad (like a panzanella salad, but with toasted pita instead of bread). Again a Cooking Light recipe, and a very good one as usual! I made my own pita chips from some good whole wheat pita pockets with a little drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkling of fleur de sel.

We took the two types of salad and some cantaloupe to the Missouri Botanical Gardens' Whitaker Music Festival. They have free jazz inside the gardens to which you can bring your own picnic, wine, beer, etc. It was the most perfect evening for the event! We have been so incredibly lucky with weather this year. It feels like we're living in San Diego instead of the typical St. Louis Summer inferno!

In addition to good food, great weather, friends, and lovely music, we got entertained by this crazy chica (or chicO?)!! Sorry the video is choppy, but my memory card kept filling up and I would have to stop and delete photos.