Fresh Corn & Hatch Chile Sauté

Fresh sweet corn cut right off the cob, sautéed with roasted Hatch chiles, tomatoes, and onion for a simple, fast and flavorful vegetarian or vegan side dish

I'm really not sure why this dish exceeded my expectations. If you start with fresh, local, seasonal ingredients you invariably come up with delicious foods with little effort. One example is this colorful side of freshly sautéed corn kernels spiced up with roasted Hatch chiles.

I was so busy with the social media sharing aspect of #IceCreamWeek [have you entered? the giveaway ends 31 August. One winner takes ALL. Enter here!] that I had very little mental energy for thinking up new and interesting ways to cook the veggies in our farm share.

Eggplant Walnut Dip

Roasted eggplant blended with toasted walnuts and tahini for a savory summer appetizer

After all the recipe testing and re-testing for HashtagIceCreamWeek I needed to eat piles and piles of vegetables. I say needed both because my body craved them and because the vegetables from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share were piling up all over the kitchen!

I decided to tweak a recipe from last summer: Layered Summer Vegetable Appetizer. In that recipe, I'd kinda glossed over the whole eggplant base in favor of the method [to my madness]. Today I want to shine a spotlight on eggplant dip.

Caramel Toffee Apple Parfaits With Cream Cheese Ice Cream (#IceCreamWeek)

Welcome to Day 6, the final day of Ice Cream Week 2014! This year the event is hosted by Kim of Cravings of a Lunatic and Susan of The Girl in the Little Red Kitchen. We have teamed up with 25 amazing bloggers to bring you ice cream treats all week long. I hope you all threw out the scales this week. Better not to look!

I'm happy to have an opportunity to share a parfait with you for #IceCreamWeek. I developed this recipe because while I like the taste of caramel apples, I don't like biting into them. Since my kids were recently in braces I've learned to adapt recipes to suit our needs. This parfait marries a caramel apple with my favorite apple dip (made with cream cheese and toffee bits). I especially like digging into the chunks of caramel-drenched apples and crunchy toffee bits at the bottom of the glass.

When I was a kid, we'd celebrate the last day of school by walking to DQ to get a treat. My favorite was always a Peanut Buster Parfait because I loved those last, ice cream-tinged spoonfuls of fudge and salted Spanish peanuts at the bottom of the glass. Nowadays I cannot finish an entire DQ parfait myself, so I make do at home.

Bonus Kitchen Hack:  you've probably heard the trick of dipping apple slices in lemon juice or salt water to keep the slices from oxidizing and turning brown. I hope to change your habit to using pineapple juice instead. I keep little cans of pineapple juice in my pantry for this purpose. In my experience, apple slices dipped in pineapple juice will keep chilled for up to 3 days without turning. And they taste terrific! Another note--you can easily substitute vanilla ice cream if you don't want to make the cream cheese ice cream.

You will need an immersion blender, an ice cream maker, and a freezer for this recipe.

Caramel Toffee Apple Parfaits with Cream Cheese Ice Cream (makes 8 or more)

2 cups heavy cream

½ cup half & half

½ cup brown sugar

½ cup whipped cream cheese

1 teaspoon vanilla

⅛ teaspoon salt

1 large apple, chopped into bite-sized pieces

6 ounces pineapple juice

1 jar caramel topping (you'll have leftovers, and I'm sure you can find something to do with them)

½ cup toffee bits (I prefer the kind with chocolate, but whatever you can find)

To make the Cream Cheese Ice Cream, combine the cream, half & half, brown sugar, vanilla and salt until smooth. I've used a blender, an immersion blender, and a whisk. I don't like the whisk. Churn in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions, and freeze for an hour until firm. You'll have about a quart of ice cream. In a large bowl or zip top bag, combine the apple chunks and pineapple juice. They can hang out together for a while or just meet briefly before draining.
Your choice.

To assemble the parfaits, spoon a tablespoon of caramel topping into the bottom of a tall glass, add 1 to 2 teaspoons of toffee bits and 1 to 2 tablespoons of apple chunks. Top with a scoop of cream cheese ice cream. Repeat the layers as often as you can to fill up the glass (we use little glasses that hold 2 layers), finishing with caramel, toffee, and apples. 

Be sure to visit all of today's Ice Cream Week Participants:
  Oreo Ice Cream Cake by Cravings of a Lunatic
  Coffee and Donut Sundae by The Girl in the Little Red Kitchen
  Pinot Noir Ice Cream by The Redhead Baker
  Triple Peach Ice Cream by Cookistry
  Root Beer Float by My Catholic Kitchen
  Black Forest Ice Cream Shots by The Life and Loves of Grumpy's Honeybunch
  Ice Cream Sundae with Homemade Hot Fudge by Hezzi-D's Books and Cooks
  Key Lime Pie Milkshake by Love and Confections
  Caramel Toffee Apple Parfaits by Farm Fresh Feasts
  Orange Creamsicle Float by Noshing with the Nolands
  Gluten Free Baked Alaska by Gluten Free Crumbley
  Toasted Almond and Cherry Ice Cream by The Messy Baker
  Gluten Free Toasted Marshmallow Brownie Batter Ice Cream by Cupcakes & Kale Chips
  Coconut Ice Cream Snowballs by Mother Would Know
  No Churn Low Carb Zesty Citrus Ice Cream by Yours and Mine are Ours
  Pina Colada Ice Cream with Dark Chocolate Magic Shell by Quarter Life (Crisis) Cuisine

We would like to thank you all, our readers, for joining in the indulgence this week. 
Ice cream is always best eaten with friends. 
Kim and Susan would like to thank all the participants and sponsors for joining in the fun. 
It takes a village to make this much ice cream! 

Snickerdoodle Cinnamon Ice Cream Sandwiches (#IceCreamWeek)

Welcome to Day 5 of Ice Cream Week 2014! This year the event is hosted by Kim of Cravings of a Lunatic and Susan of The Girl in the Little Red Kitchen. We have teamed up with 25 amazing bloggers to share some amazing ice cream recipes with you. I hope you belong to a gym. We'll all need it by the end of the week!

Wow. The 5th day in a row I've posted a recipe, much less an out-of-my-blogging-comfort-zone ice cream recipe. If you've been making and eating along with our merry band all week, you probably need a new wardrobe. Like me. Except I've gotten serious about ramping up the mileage for the half marathon I'll be walking in 4 weeks, so I say . . . Bring It On!

One of the awesome things about all this walking is the opportunity to let my mind wander and think up recipes. After I got the idea for Cinnamon Chunk Ice Cream [but before I got around to making it], I was walking while pondering what I could do with such a spicy ice cream. I didn't want to overshadow the cinnamon flavor, but I kinda wanted to have another #IceCreamWeek post. BOOM! [An idea, not a bus, hit me.] Use the cinnamon ice cream as the filling for an ice cream sandwich! And what better cookie to use than Snickerdoodles?

See, walking is good for the mind, the body, and the blog.

While I have tasted each recipe I've made so far, I've also given much of the ice cream away. To me, this is the best of both worlds--I get to make and eat a variety of tasty ice cream treats, and I save money not needing a new wardrobe.

These ice cream sandwiches, for example, went straight to my son's marching band camp. I helped out feeding lunches during the camp and realized that band kids are like locusts. A tray of these ice cream cookie sandwiches vanished in under 3 minutes--and that was with the adults politely getting first crack at them!

full size cookie scoop

I made these Snickerdoodle Cinnamon Ice Cream Sandwiches in 2 sizes. I used my standard cookie scoop* for both the cookies and the ice cream which makes a 2-3 bite sandwich (and about 18 sandwiches per batch). Using half a scoop of each (cookie dough and ice cream) makes about 3 dozen bite-sized ice cream sandwiches.

What's missing? The Cinnamon Chunk Ice Cream, of course! Oh, and butter too.

You will need a mixer, an oven, and a freezer for this recipe.

Snickerdoodle Cinnamon Ice Cream Sandwiches

(cookie recipe from Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook)
½ cup (1 stick) butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
¼ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon cream of tartar
1½ cups unbleached all purpose flour
cinnamon sugar for rolling: 3 Tablespoons sugar + 1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 batch Cinnamon Chunk Ice Cream (you'll have a bowlful left over to find a use for)

I like to mix up my cookie dough (and my pizza dough) a day ahead because I don't do kitchen marathons, only USAF (Half) Marathons, so I won't start off asking you to preheat the oven.

In a large bowl (I use my mixer), have a minion cream the butter and sugar while you measure out the dry ingredients (baking soda through flour). Once the minion has added the egg and vanilla and mixed them thoroughly, dump the dry ingredients in mix until well-blended. Chill for several hours or overnight.

When you're ready to bake, preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix up the cinnamon sugar for rolling in a small bowl [bonus points if it's pretty]. Scoop* cookie dough into the amount you prefer (bite sized or large), roll into a ball, toss with cinnamon sugar, and place on an ungreased or parchment-lined cookie sheet. Bake for 9 (small) to 11 (large) minutes, then cool in the pan 2 minutes and remove to a rack to finish cooling.  

When you're ready to assemble the ice cream sandwiches, use the same amount of ice cream as you did cookie dough. Flip one cookie bottom up, add slightly softened ice cream, and press another cookie right side up on top. Return to the freezer to harden (I use a metal tray) before serving. 

I assume these would keep, wrapped, in the freezer a few days, but I have no experience with that!

*My cookie scoop holds ½ ounce by volume (1 Tablespoon).

Be sure to visit all of today's Ice Cream Week Participants:
  Roasted Blueberry Cheesecake Ice Cream by Cravings of a Lunatic
  Blackberry Peach Ice Cream by Scoop Adventures
  Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream Sundaes by The Redhead Baker
  Maple Whisky Ice Cream by Cookistry
  Chocolate Ganache Ice Cream by Life Tastes Good
  Pineapple Coconut Ice Cream by My Catholic Kitchen
  Coffee Chip No Churn Ice Cream by The Life and Loves of Grumpy's Honeybunch
  Caramel Macchiato No Churn Ice Cream by Renee's Kitchen Adventures
  Double Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Sandwiches by Crumb
  Lemon Meringue Pie Ice Cream by Love and Confections
  Snickerdoodle Cinnamon Ice Cream Sandwiches by Farm Fresh Feasts
  Gluten Free Ice Cream Sandwiches by Gluten Free Crumbley
  No Churn S'mores Ice Cream by The Spiffy Cookie
  Cocoa Pebbles Ice Cream Cake by Wishes and Dishes
  Mocha Mint Milkshake by The Gunny Sack
  No Churn Low Carb Peanut Butter Coffee Ice Cream by Yours and Mine are Ours

Cinnamon Chunk Ice Cream (#IceCreamWeek)

Welcome to Day 4 of Ice Cream Week 2014! This year the event is hosted by Kim of Cravings of a Lunatic and Susan of The Girl in the Little Red Kitchen. We have teamed up with 25 amazing bloggers to satisfy all your Ice Cream Cravings.

So far on #IceCreamWeek I've shared How to Make an Ice Cream Pie at Home, Chocolate Beet Milkshakes, and Lazy Leftover Fruit Salad Ice Cream. All of these are pretty easy to throw together. It's time to get real to work. This is a two part recipe. Today I'll share the ice cream, and tomorrow I'll share the Snickerdoodle Ice Cream Sandwiches I made with it.

Lazy Leftover Fruit Salad Ice Cream (#IceCreamWeek)

Welcome to Day 3 of Ice Cream Week 2014! This year the event is hosted by Kim of Cravings of a Lunatic and Susan of The Girl in the Little Red Kitchen. We have teamed up with 25 amazing bloggers to treat you to tons of amazing ice cream recipes. Have you entered into the giveaway?
Ice Cream Week is shaping up to be the best week ever!

Do you ever want a cold sweet creamy dessert, but you don't feel like working too hard for it?

This is where I was, mentally, the first time I made this dessert. I didn't have any eggs or heavy cream on hand and didn't feel like walking a mile down to my local grocery store--nor sending the kids. Nope, like I say in the title, I was just in a lazy mood.

I opened the fridge instead.

In keeping with my desire not to waste food, I started with some fruit salad that was leftover from breakfast. Using only what I had in the fridge/pantry, my daughter and I concocted this treat. When I heard about #IceCreamWeek I decided to make it again, take photos, and write the directions down so you could be lazy too.

This recipe is not a very labor-intensive undertaking, not like making an ice cream pie at home. Shoot, if you don't even want to turn on the stove to toast the nuts--skip it. You'll still get a sweet treat with little effort.

Note: This recipe uses a frozen banana. I don't like to eat bananas that are all spotty, so once they reach that stage I toss them into the freezer (in their skins, the perfect covering). If you don't have any frozen bananas a fresh one would probably work as well. Another Note: This recipe uses an ice cream maker with a pre-chilled bucket--so make room in your freezer for that bucket--it lets you be lazy!

This recipe uses a stove or hot plate, an ice cream maker, and a freezer.

Lazy Leftover Fruit Salad Ice Cream (serves 6 to 8)

½ cup chopped pecans
1 cup milk, or cream, or half and half (2% is what I used)
1 ½ cups vanilla yogurt (full fat)
⅓ cup brown sugar
1 frozen banana, peeled and chopped into small pieces
1 cup chopped up fruit (blueberries and peaches are lovely together)

Preheat a dry skillet over medium high heat. Toast pecans in skillet until fragrant, about 2-3 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside to cool. In a large bowl, whisk together milk, yogurt and brown sugar. Stir in banana pieces. Churn in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions. Mine takes about 15 minutes before it start thickening. Once the ice cream starts thickening, add chopped fruit and toasted pecans to the ice cream maker. Churn 5 more minutes. Serve at once for a soft ice cream, or transfer to a freezer container and freeze for an hour until firm.

Be sure to swing by all of today's Ice Cream Week Participants:

• Roasted Blueberry Milkshake by Cravings of a Lunatic
• Cherry Almond Chocolate Ripple Semifreddo by The Girl in the Little Red Kitchen
• Peach Pit Swirl Ice Cream by Scoop Adventures
• Pumpkin Gelato with Salted Caramel Swirl by The Redhead Baker
• Salted Butter Pecan Brittle Ice Cream by Cookistry
• Lemon Curd Ice Cream by Life Tastes Good
• Pistachio-Cherry No Churn Ice Cream by The Life and Loves of Grumpy’s Honeybunch
• Blueberry Frozen Yogurt by Renee’s Kitchen Adventures
• Raspberry Ripple Buttermilk Gelato by Crumb
• Chocolate Cookies ‘n Cream Milkshake by Love and Confections
• Lazy Leftover Fruit Salad Ice Cream by Farm Fresh Feasts
• Apple Cinnamon Ice Cream by Noshing with the Nolands
• Gluten Free Devil’s Food Ice Cream Cake by Gluten Free Crumbley
• Blueberry-Kiwi Lemonade Shake by The Spiffy Cookie
• Caramel Macchiato Soft Serve Ice Cream by Wishes and Dishes
• Carrot Cake Ice Cream by Mind Over Batter
• Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream by The Gunny Sack
• White Peach Ice Cream with Bourbon Caramel by Quarter Life (Crisis) Cuisine
• No Churn Low Carb Peach Ice Cream from Yours and Mine are Ours

Chocolate Beet Milkshake (#IceCreamWeek)

Welcome to day 2 of Ice Cream Week 2014! This year the event is hosted by Kim of Cravings of a Lunatic and Susan of The Girl in the Little Red Kitchen. We have teamed up with 25 amazing bloggers to bring you ice cream treats all week long. It's an epic week full of frozen treats, beets [wait, what? beets?], and a giveaway!

Go Jacks! Let's get the new school year off to a great start!

Humans crave connection with other humans. Vegetables can forge that connection.

This may seem a strange way to start headnotes on a chocolate beet milkshake recipe, but I'll circle around and it will make sense, I promise. This will be especially true if you're a person who eats seasonally from a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share or one who succumbs to the bright colors of the farmer's market and ends up with way more vegetables than you planned.

A couple of weeks ago I took my son to sled hockey camp. We were fortunate that several Big Names in the sport were in attendance. My son held gold medals from Sochi 2014 and Vancouver 2010 and skated alongside the gracious athletes who earned them. The last morning of camp I met the guest coach. Conversation quickly turned to food, as it always does around me, and he shared memories of the meals he'd eaten while in Sochi and in other international travels. Then I mentioned something about our farm share, and this man said "I'm looking forward to fresh corn".

BOOM! All of a sudden this guy went from, in my eyes, an internationally famous coach (with whom I had little in common) to a fellow seasonal eater. I, too, know the feeling of anticipating the vegetables of the upcoming season. In late winter I crave the fresh greens of Spring, in Summer I crave tomatoes, and in Fall I'm crave sweet potatoes and winter squash [winter is the time of the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve, my freezer, and my pantry].
Local, seasonal vegetables forged a connection.

How to Make an Ice Cream Pie at Home (#IceCreamWeek)

Welcome to Ice Cream Week 2014! This year the event is hosted by Kim of Cravings of a Lunatic and Susan of The Girl in the Little Red Kitchen. We have teamed up with 25 amazing bloggers to bring you ice cream treats and a giveaway all week long. I hope you have as much fun as we are! Break out those stretchy pants and celebrate Ice Cream Week with us.

In my teens I worked at Baskin Robbins. I started out scooping ice cream--making cones, shakes and sundaes. By the time I was in college I was the summer/holiday ice cream cake and pie maker, filling in for the mom who worked full-time during the school year. Having thus established my bona fides, I'd like to share how simple it is to make an ice cream pie at home.

At the ice cream shop I didn't get all Little Red Hen-ish. Instead of raising the cows and planting the wheat, I just assembled the desserts using pre baked cakes, pre churned ice cream, pre made fudge sauce and the like. If you'd like to make your own ice cream, fudge sauce, or pie crust there are recipes from my fellow bloggers below and I'd like to give a special shout out to Beth's Thin Mint Ice Cream, Donalyn's Fresh Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream, and Carla's Homemade Hot Fudge Sauce because they are recipes I've bookmarked to try.

Today I'm not going to show you how to make ice cream--instead, I want to show the techniques I learned while making ice cream pies for a living--and how you can do this in a home kitchen [or at work in a thrift shop--really anywhere with a freezer, a flat surface, and access to clean water will do].

#IceCreamWeek is Coming!

That photo is not a pizza. Nor is it anything involving vegetables. Instead, this is a warning to you. I'd like to announce a radical departure from my usual routine and suggest you consider digging out the stretchy pants. Instead of my typical posting schedule--sharing a vegetable- or fruit-inspired recipe on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I will be sharing 6 recipes [all involving ice cream] over the next week. You could say I've been churning (or no churning--puns totally intended) quite a lot lately.

You know we eat more than just the goodies from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share, right? Even though we are walking distance from Graeter's ice cream, I occasionally make ice cream treats at home. In fact, I've wanted to share How to Make an Ice Cream Pie on this blog practically from the start. With my blog's focus--on how to make the most of the produce from your farm share, garden, or farmer's market--I didn't really see how I could include an ice cream pie.

When Kim announced that she and Susan were hosting HashtagIceCreamWeek I knew I had my opportunity. I had a blast participating in HashtagAppetizerWeek, so why not join in the fun? I'm not completely chucking my local produce focus out the window this week--in fact 3 of the 6 recipes I'll be posting use a fruit or vegetable. The others? Well, it's Ice Cream Week and I believe in going big with the flavor--and fat carries flavor, as does chocolate [I'm just guessing here, roll with me].

Six different recipes is a lot of ice cream to crank out [the puns, they keep coming], so it's a good thing that I am training to walk a half marathon next month and shared some of these recipes with my son's marching band and the gals at work. It's hard to share ice cream and take photos, though, so the pies . . . well . . . I had to keep making them to get a decent photo of a slice. I had to. Really.

On Monday I'll share How to Make an Ice Cream Pie at Home. This concept recipe is one I use often, with whatever flavors we're craving at the moment (Chocolate Mint/Grasshopper Pie, Caramel Fudge Pie, and Sea Salt Caramel Pie are big favorites). On Tuesday I'll nod to the vegetable focus of this blog with a Chocolate Beet Milkshake.

I'm sharing a lazy way to use up leftover fruit salad in Lazy Leftover Fruit Salad Ice Cream on Wednesday. Thursday we're getting spicy with Cinnamon Chunk Ice Cream, and on Friday we're turning that ice cream into Snickerdoodle Ice Cream Sandwiches. We'll round out the #IceCreamWeek recipes with Caramel Toffee Apple Parfaits on Saturday.

In addition to a whole host of bloggers churning out ice cream recipes each day, we've got giveaways, too! Stop in and check it out. I'll return to my regular posting schedule [after a good training walk and a nice long nap] on Monday August 25th with Eggplant Walnut Dip.

This is not ice cream. These are vegetables.

Hatch Chile, Egg & Potato Casserole

Breakfast casserole of eggs spiced with Hatch chiles in a mashed potato crust.

I'll admit years ago I thought all the Hatch Chile Madness was a bunch of hype, but sheer laziness compelled me to try them after we moved here. See, my local grocery store fires up a round roaster in the parking lot each August and sells quarts of freshly roasted Hatch chiles. [Um, if I don't have to do anything more than walk the dog a mile down the road to buy a quart of already roasted chiles . . . why would I expend more energy? Laziness!] Then I found out they taste really good, too.

I must point out that I've not been compensated to rave about these chiles--I bought mine on my own dime because I was curious and lazy. Simon came along for the ride--and because he likes to get a drink halfway through his walks.

Year 1, I used some of the quart of chiles to make a batch of salsa verde along with the tomatillos from our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share, then gave the rest of the quart to our neighbors. Silly me. Year 2, I bought a quart, made my batch of salsa verde, and froze the rest, sticking them into chili here and there. Year 3, I picked up 2 quarts, made lots of batches of salsa verde, and stuck chiles in a whole host of dishes (listed below).
This year, Year 4, I will be buying 3 quarts. When will it stop?

Banana Blender Waffles

Easy banana oatmeal waffles using a blender, a bowl, and a bit of time

Weekend breakfasts should be easy and special, I think. Especially on the days we all wake up cranky and retreat to our separate computers corners pre and post breakfast, it's enough to know that we sat and shared a meal. During the week my spouse nukes his oatmeal and is gone before the kids wake to eat leftovers, sandwiches, toast or cereal. Me? I just drink tea unless I'm lucky enough to get beet greens in the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share. Then I'll make this for brunch.

But on the weekends I like to do a little more. Even if your "weekend" happens on a Tuesday/Wednesday, it's nice to relax and enjoy a less-hurried meal. I'm a fan of waffles for weekend breakfasts for a few reasons. First, waffle batter mixes up easily and improves with a short rest. Second, it's easy to keep waffles warm in the oven while you're making enough for the whole bunch. Third, it's super easy to double the batter, make all the waffles, and freeze some for your kids to eat on weekday mornings.

I've shared a variety of waffles on this blog. I've got waffles using butternut squash, tangerines, zucchini, carrots, and even corn and blueberries. Time for one of my standby, 'always in the kitchen' fruits:  bananas. Ripe bananas freeze beautifully in the packaging nature provides and thaw quickly.

Zucchini Bacon Pizza

Everything's better with bacon? Well, bacon sure makes the August zucchini crop extra tasty on this pizza with fontina cheese, zucchini, and fresh tomato pesto

This summer is not the summer of monster zucchini--not in my garden nor in our farm share.  [It is, however, the summer that I harvested a 42 pound volunteer--meaning I didn't plant that--pumpkin the first week of August! You can see us here on my FB page.] Nope, all of the zucchini and summer squash has been harvested in lovely small tender sizes--perfect for grilling or slicing and using on a pizza. Then again I think everything is perfect for a pizza.

I'm having an interesting summer so far with the produce from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share.  Normally my kids do not readily embrace all of the vegetables, so I shred and tuck them in here and combine there so that I'm serving meals that contain a lot of vegetables but don't have lots of single vegetables dishes, if that makes sense. 

This summer, the kids have realized how tasty a zucchini pancake (or crepe, or fritter) is, so we've been making them often. [Turnip fritters, too--and I've got a beet hanging out in the crisper waiting it's turn to fritter away . . .] They are also eating peppers and onions in their eggs and on pizza. Crazy--is it teenagers, or is it because it's our 9th season eating from the farm share (more than half of their lives, both of them!) and the constant exposure to all the vegetables has worked?

Teriyaki Peppers

Colorful bell peppers coated in a teriyaki-seasoned sauce

Peppers are such a useful garden vegetable.  They can be thrown into meals all day long, from breakfast scrambled eggs to supper spaghetti sauce.   They can be eaten raw as a vehicle to convey dip into the mouth,  or baked as a container for additional filling. They can be frozen [rinse, dry, chop, freeze on a tray like a berry before transferring into a bag/jar] and used in baked dishes year round.

Rarely, though, do peppers shine on their own.  In my continuing quest to add vegetable side dishes to my repertoire I'd like to share these easy Teriyaki Peppers. The sauce can be customized to meat-eating or vegetarian meals, and you can use whatever alliums you want. I used leeks, but I'll make them next with shallots since my garden shallots are abundant.

Tomato Basil Pizza

Slices of fresh ripe tomatoes and fresh basil leaves for an 'in summer only' vegetarian pizza

I learned a trick that has dramatically improved my summer pizzas topped with fresh sliced tomatoes:  just let them hang out for a while. Previous attempts at fresh tomato and basil pizza tended to result in wet tomatoes and dry basil. Not a good combination on a pizza. 

I cracked the fresh herb code [did you know there was a fresh herb code? Now you do] with my Fresh Herb Pizza, so I figured it was time to crack the tomato code.  The Illuminati are not involved. Just time and a bit of salt.

Soy Sesame Marinated Cucumbers

Tangy, sweet and spicy flavors hit your mouth when you bite into these cool and crunchy cukes

I'm on a mission to add more side dishes to my recipe index (the one on the right, with the drop down menus) this summer. While I have included cucumbers in a host of recipes (see the Visual Recipe Index) I didn't have a stand alone cucumber recipe until this one.

I don't grow cucumbers, but in addition to the cukes from our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share I'm fortunate to work with generous gardeners who share their bounty. When I was at work last week I picked up a few beauties--then I needed to find a use for them!

While I was thumbing through The Party Party Party Cookbook put out by the Potomac Curling Club (for my Fritter recipe), I saw a recipe for Jim Macpherson's Cucumber Salad. The flavors looked like something my family would like, so I whipped up a batch. Good! Then I tweaked the recipe a little but (cutting the Tabasco, swapping honey for sugar, and finishing with a garnish of sesame seeds) and decided it was blog-worthy. 

I brought this to a picnic last week. The entree was catered by a BBQ place. These cool, crunchy cucumbers fit in nicely with the usual sides. They were easy to transport--I just brought the marinated cucumbers in a mason jar, dumped it into a bowl, then added the sesame seeds.

Macerated Peach Yogurt Muffins

Sugared peaches and yogurt combined in a sweet muffin for summer flavor any time of year

I love the flavors of summer. Kristi from She Eats asked on her FB page what fresh item I'm most looking forward to this summer, and my answer was tomatoes. That's a no-brainer for me, primarily because my second favorite summer flavor, peaches, can be captured and frozen for later use.

True, my Fresh Tomato Pesto is one easy way to capture the flavor of ripe summer tomatoes, but I can't match that texture and wouldn't use it in a tomato sandwich. I love a good tomato sandwich more than anything else, and now that our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share is providing us with ripe tomatoes I am indulging often.

While I do like to bite into a juicy peach (one not packed with listeria bacteria and shipped 'a fur piece') I'm not married to the texture. I'm happy to have fresh summer peach flavor in whatever form I can put it up. Since we don't have any local peaches this year due to the extreme cold temperatures of late winter, I'm glad I put up the peaches I gleaned from a friend's tree last year.

Most of the peaches were put up using Carla of Chocolate Moosey's Peach Pie Filling recipe, but some I just chopped, mixed with a bit of sugar, and froze.  This method makes it easy to thaw and use in a variety of sweet treats like these muffins. Even though it sounds like medieval torture, macerating just means 'softening by steeping in liquid' so that's the term I used here.

While you have fresh peaches may I offer my Fresh Peaches and Cream Muffins? If you've got macerated peaches, though, and want muffins--do try these. Thanks!

Cantaloupe Prosciutto Pizza

Sweet juicy cantaloupe with salty crispy prosciutto and gooey cheese in a simple summer pizza

My family are not big melon fans. Yes, we like watermelon--and what was looking like a watermelon-shaped zucchini is resolving into a tall pumpkin-shaped squash (I'll throw a photo of my garden up on my FB page)--but honeydew, muskmelon, and bitter melon are not high on the list of 'must eat' summer fruits.

Cantaloupe used to be on this list until I wrapped a piece of prosciutto around a slice from our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share.  Wow.  The combination of dry and salty with the wet and sweet melon? Amazing. Try it, please, if you eat meat.

Last summer with just the 3 of us [while my spouse was on his all expense paid trip to exotic locales] we were having trouble eating whole melons. The composting pigs offered their services at cantaloupe disposal loudly and frequently, but I wanted to try my hand at a cantaloupe pizza. For no particular reason I'd picked up one of those rolled prosciutto and mozzarella logs at Aldi [and then paid for it during check out, no shenanigans implied] and I decided to try slices on a cantaloupe pizza.

I kept this pizza ridiculously simple, with just those two items as toppings, because I was simultaneously canning, as you can see from this kitchen scene above. With that much going on just slicing and dumping the stuff on an olive oil-brushed dough is pretty easy.