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.

Turnip Fritters

Shredded turnips tossed with pancake ingredients and frittered on the stovetop--a hot weather way to enjoy  a cool season crop

I've been getting a lot of turnips in the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share. Our farmers started this cool weather crop early in the spring to provide variety in the beginning weeks of the season, and their hard work paid off handsomely with some amazing vegetables.

I frittered away last weekend. Literally. I got the idea in my head [during a shower, where all vegetable shredding ideas seem to originate] that I wanted to try grated turnips in my zucchini crepes recipe. I made them for breakfast and served the fritters alongside scrambled eggs. Big hit. I made them again for dinner, combined with fresh corn kernels, to serve under carnitas. Score.

Then I realized I was out of turnips . . . double plus ultra score, using up all the turnips well before the next farm share pick up day!

While it was cooler out I'd experimented with a variety of baked turnip recipes [I'll probably have them up on the blog for the fall turnip season] but I'm throwing this stovetop turnip recipe out now in case you happen to have a turnip or two hanging out in your crisper awaiting inspiration.

When it's warm out--I'm thinking these fritters are the way to go. I like to eat a variety of temperatures and textures [in addition to colors] in the summer, and a warm turnip fritter pairs nicely with some cool plain Greek yogurt. It's a good base for meats, or part of a mixed plate of pickled vegetables and hummus.