I just won a mini-madeleine pan from a blog giveaway (so exciting; feels like I enter all the time and never win)! I received an email from beso.com about another a different contest they were hosting -- one in which they were looking for your favorite summer recipe. I decided to create a summery recipe around my new madeleine pan ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

There have been numerous posts asking, "What can I cook when it's hot?"

The New York Times has some suggestions.

Granted, a few of them are hardly practical ("Boil a lobster. Serve with lemon or melted butter.") but most of them are really very good ideas, for hot weather or anytime you can't be bothered to make a more elaborate meal.

It's just 3 ingredients in a bowl: good quality vanilla ice cream, sliced fully-ripe local strawberries, a drizzle of good balsamic vinegar. Heaven.
It's also quite pretty when put in a pale green bowl, and gone now.

So it's hot here in the New York metro area. Hot and humid and my little apartment without adequate AC and a strong tendency to heat up and stay heated. The other day I boiled water to poach an egg and it made it unbearably hot. God, I wish I had a grill. And you know, somewhere outdoors to put the grill ( Read more... )

So I have decided that, while delicious, some of the stuff in my normal repertoire are just not great for summer. They heat up the house too much in the preperation and/or are just too hot and heavy for eating. (I live in the National Swamp of DC, where our lungs already hurt from the humidity ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

( with a Quincy 2005 to wash it down )

I found these unusually sized pasta at Giant Eagle, and then had the bright idea to make a pasta salad out of them, with the remaining ingredients also in bigger chunks to match.

( This is how it turned out (clicky clicky) )

The formula for great summer drinks is simple: dilute sweetened acid. The sine qua non of this genre is lemonade -- lemon juice for the acid, sugar or simple syrup for the sweetener, and water. But there are others in the class. Limeade and lemon-limeade are the obvious ones. And here in New England, we've got lime rickeys and raspberry lime ( Read more... )