A cold supper for a hot day

I don't know about you, but we're not even out of June, yet, and the heat is a problem for me. Fortunately, I baked 4 loaves of bread last week, and we still have 2 loaves left. No heating up the kitchen for next few days, I'm afraid.

Cold suppers are it for us, for now.

So, Thursday evening, I got together with my think-tank (my two daughters) and we brainstormed what dinner on the hot evenings should be. One of them suggested ham sandwiches, and the menu morphed from there. Here's Friday's cold supper.

Friday's dinner

• Ham and cheese sandwiches, on whole wheat, spread with mock pesto
• Seasoned, oven-roasted tomatoes topping a bed of lettuce and spinach
• Fresh cherries
• milk, iced tea and ice water to drink (our ice maker is working overtime)

Mock Pesto

Our basil looks pretty great, this year. In cooler summers, I've had straggly-looking stands of basil. Not so, this year! I've been using it to make a mock pesto, to top baked chicken and spread on sandwiches.

I use a couple of large handfuls of fresh basil leaves, garlic powder, salt and pepper, oil and pizza cheese (a blend of mozzarella and provolone), whirred together in the food processor. If I had Parmesan cheese and pine nuts, that would be wonderful. But really, this tastes pretty amazing, with all of the basil. And it's definitely a "more is more" condiment. The more I spread on an item, the more delicious said item is!

An Easy-day Salad

For the salad, I roasted the canned tomatoes in the early morning hours, in our counter-top, toaster oven (to reduce the heat-up of the kitchen). (See this post for instructions on oven-roasting canned tomatoes). When cooled, I cut each tomato half into strips, coated with more oil, dried oregano, a bit of vinegar, salt and garlic powder. Then chilled the whole bowlful for the day. At serving time, I spooned the roasted tomatoes over beds of garden greens. And that was the most cooking I did all day.


In this heat, I can only do so much physical activity. On Friday, I did my gardening as early in the day as I could. I had the day's cherries picked by 9 AM. Then I used some of the rest of my time to set up July's budget, take care of Monday's bill paying in advance and do some menu planning for this week. At that point, I was worn out from the heat. A tall glass of iced tea and a chair on the deck were about all I could take.

How about you? How do you handle summer's warmer days? What are your favorite no-cook dinners?

Life is a bowl of cherries, and a few worms

So, if you're at all squeamish about bugs and stuff in your food, don't read any further!

We have had so much gorgeous and warm weather for June, here. And now the cherries are all ripening about 2 weeks ahead of schedule.

Okay, so here's the buggy part. . . our cherry trees have been infested with currant fly (and yes, our currants are also infested). The cherries are only partially hit by the larvae, so not a total loss. But in not wanting to lose the cherries, I have been pitting and splitting all of them open, picking out larvae, before serving with dinner. I'm sure there are many that I miss, but at least nothing staring back at us, when we take a bite.

Why am I telling you about our buggy fruit? A lot of our homegrown produce gets hit with one sort of pest or another. Lettuce and strawberries get a little bitten by slugs. The kale gets the occasional cabbage worm. And spinach and chard gets hit with leaf miner every year. Usually, I just cut around the ruined part of the veggie. We just don't worry too much about it, and I do what I can, organically, in the garden to minimize infestations. And yes, I have cooked a pot of homegrown broccoli before, only to find a few cabbage worms in the cooking pot at serving time!

I figure that a few bugs have always been present in the food supply. Perfect-looking produce is a modern ideal. Our garden fruits and veggies would never pass inspection at an upscale market. I tell my kids all the time that a slug bite here or there is evidence of how free of chemicals our fruits and veggies really are. And hey, a little extra protein, free of charge, can't be all bad!

So, what's my point here? I know that some of you also have home gardens. And if you do, you've had your share of pest problems in the garden. And I'm willing to bet that you have also just cut away the buggy part, and eaten what's still good. To me, that just seems like the sensible thing to do.