Fresh Peach Summer Salad With Sauteed Vegetables

There is a deep sense of satisfaction that comes from eating produce from one's own garden that fulfills like nothing else. In spite of the excessive heat and convection oven-like environment, which discourages bees, my organic garden is still yielding herbs and cucumbers, a few peppers, peaches (I picked 17 from my 2-year old tree!), and one squash; and several cantaloupes and a couple of golf ball-sized watermelons are lurking under masses of vines. I also pulled about 25 onions last month. I long for tomatoes, but at this point I will have to wait for cooler temperatures for the blossoms to set. Each treasure I find is welcomed with a feeling of wonder and thankfulness!

Here is a salad that I composed recently using ingredients freshly picked from my garden. The lettuce, tomatoes, olives, cheese, and dressing were store-bought. What took this salad over the top in flavor was the addition of a fresh peach and sauteed vegetables. The combination of ingredients still has me salivating just thinking about it - the sweet and juicy bites of peach, the tang of the green olives and Italian dressing, the light crunch of yellow squash, the delicious heat of the peppers, and the cool and mellow tang of Manchego - it was the best salad ever!

Fresh Peach Summer Salad With Sauteed Vegetables
Serves 1 generously

Organic herb and spring lettuce mix - 2 generous handfuls
1/2 cup chopped fresh cucumber
1 chopped fresh peach
4 green olives
6 red cherry tomatoes
1 small onion
1 straight-neck yellow squash
2 small hot red peppers
1/4 cup cubed Manchego cheese
Ken's Light Northern Italian dressing to taste

Place first 5 ingredients in large bowl. Saute onion, squash, and peppers in about 2 teaspoons of olive oil; cool the mixture about 5 minutes, then add it to salad. Top with cheese and dressing, and toss to combine.

The salad honestly does not need much dressing - the vegetables speak magnificently for themselves! To make this memorable meal even more special, I served this to myself in an old glass bowl in which my Mom used to serve her famous Jello salads.

Yard Crashers Update

Here are a few photos for an updated look at our back yard, now that our pool is a whopping two summers old.

We could not be more pleased with our blue gem, especially during this brutal summer of 100-plus temperatures and little or no rain. We added a pebble border on one side, because grass kept getting into the pool when my husband weed-eated, and we changed the original "Creepy-Crawly" pool cleaner for The Pool Cleaner.

The pergola has provided much-needed shade and is becoming a popular bird sanctuary. The wisteria I planted last year still hasn't bloomed, but it is growing bushy and beautiful.

The firepit has not been used a lot, but when our grandkids are here, they love to roast marshmallows for s'mores.

Buddy inspects our crape myrtles, most of which survived the winter; we hope their red and white blooms will eventually fill this mulched area.

Although grass between the flagstones is a great natural look, it is a pain for my husband to weed-eat, and it looks puny during the summer heat, so he is contemplating digging it all up and grouting between the pieces.

We have a great view from our deck and feel lucky to have a bit of privacy, as we are separated from the back neighbors by a right-of-way.

Our patio garden is thriving in spite of the heat.

A flagstone path leads to my vegetable/flower garden on the south side of the house.

Here is the "before" version of my garden.

And here it is today.

I widened and lengthened the garden and have been granted permission by the Surveyor of the Kingdom (hubby) to use all the space I want on this side of the house.

Sadly, even though my garden looks beautiful, it produces lots of vines and little or no vegetables in this oven-like atmosphere.

However, my two year-old peach tree has a dozen or so peaches, so my eternal gardener's optimism remains intact.

The Toffee Bar Search Is Over!

The search is over for the elusive toffee bars of my husband's youth. After trying several excellent recipes and having him say, "These are good but not THE ones", I finally came across his Mom's recipe in a cookbook published by our high school band in the 1960s.

His remembrance of the recipe was that it was topped with chocolate, which is not included in the original recipe. When I asked him if the chocolate topping was a variation, he said it was his contribution to the recipe - lol!

His Mom's recipe is titled "Pecan Crisps" and no chocolate is necessary for these softly crunchy, praline-ish bars. The toffee-like consistency is achieved by adding no leavening and spreading the batter into a large pan. And even though there is a teaspoon of cinnamon, the bars do not taste spicy.

I am so excited to find this recipe and spent the morning thumbing through this and other old cookbooks from my hometown. With all my love of new cookbooks and bookmarking scores of recipes on the internet, my favorites are still from my old, shabby, full-of-memories community cookbooks and those hand-written recipes lovingly shared on recipe cards, notebook paper, or any scrap of paper the writer found convenient.

Pecan Crisps
From my Mother-in-Law

1 cup soft butter
1 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg, separated
2 cups sifted flour
½ teaspoon salt (I left this out because I used salted butter)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup finely chopped pecans

Cream butter and sugar until light. Beat in vanilla and egg yolk. Add sifted dry ingredients and 1/2 cup of the pecans. Mix well. Press into greased 15 X 10 X 1 pan and brush top with slightly beaten egg white. Sprinkle with remaining 1/2 cup pecans. Bake in moderate oven (350) about 25 minutes. While warm, cut into 50 bars and remove at once to rack to cool. (I cut mine into larger bars.)

Dulce de Leche Carrot Cake

My husband loves carrot cake, so for his birthday I made Dulce de Leche Carrot Cake with Dulce de Leche Cream Cheese Frosting from Bakespace.com, and it was a hit! I did make changes, both in the cake and in the buttercream, and those changes are reflected in the recipe below.

Dulce de Leche is a wonderful addition to moist carrot cake, lending its creamy, caramelly sweetness and reducing the sugar usually found in carrot cake recipes. Adding it to the traditional cream cheese frosting took it to another level.

Dulce De Leche Carrot Cake
Adapted from the original recipe at Bakespace.com

1 (14 ounce) can Dulce de leche, 1/4 cup removed
1 cup oil
1/2 cup applesauce
1/2 cup granulated sugar
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 cups bread flour
1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
2-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 cups grated carrots, packed firmly
zest of one orange, finely minced

Dulce de Leche Cream Cheese Buttercream and Filling

1/2 cup salted butter, softened
8 oz cream cheese
1/4 cup Dulce de Leche
3 tablespoons heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 cups powdered sugar
3/4 cup pecans, coarsely chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare two 8-inch cake pans with cooking spray and place circle of parchment paper in bottom of each.

In large bowl using hand whisk, blend dulce de leche, oil, applesauce, sugar, and eggs. Stir in vanilla extract and lemon juice. In smaller bowl, whisk flours, baking powder, soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg. Fold flour mixture into wet ingredients and add carrots and zest, stirring well. Spoon into prepared pans.

Bake until cake springs back when gently pressed, about 25-30 minutes. Cool about 30 minutes before removing from pans to cool on wire rack. Make sure cake is room temperature or chilled before icing.

For buttercream, cream together softened butter, cream cheese, and dulce de leche until smooth and fluffy; add 1 cup powdered sugar and beat until smooth. Add cream and vanilla and mix to incorporate. Add remainder of powdered sugar gradually and beat on medium speed until smooth. Fill and frost cake layers as desired. Sprinkle with ground nuts and touch of cinnamon. Unfrosted cake freezes well.

Guinness Chocolate Birthday Cheesecake

My birthday was extra special this year because our kids and grandkids traveled from Texas to spend a few days with us. My daughter arrived bearing a Guinness Chocolate Cheesecake by Closet Cooking, and it was the best cheesecake EVER! It is hard to describe what Guinness does for chocolate, but it is a bit like the enhancement coffee provides for chocolate - it is marked by a depth of flavor not achieved by mere chocolate. The creaminess factor, combined with the richness of the chocolate, made me smack my lips.


I asked my daughter if she changed anything about the recipe, and she said that she ran out of dark chocolate and had to supplement with milk chocolate, and she used butter and chocolate graham crackers instead of grahams with cocoa. These changes are reflected in the recipe below.


Guinness Chocolate Cheesecake
adapted from the blog of Closet Cooking
8 servings

1 cup chocolate graham cracker crumbs
2 tablespoons butter, melted
2 tablespoons heavy cream
8 oz dark chocolate, chopped
4 oz milk chocolate, chopped
3 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup sour cream
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup Guinness

Preheat oven to 350F. Mix graham cracker crumbs and butter and press into bottom of 9-inch spring-form pan. Melt chocolates in cream in a double boiler; set aside. Beat cream cheese until smooth, then mix in sugar, chocolate, sour cream, eggs, vanilla, and Guinness. Pour mixture into spring-form pans. Bake for 60 minutes. Turn off heat; leave cheesecake in oven with door slightly ajar for 60 minutes. Let cool completely, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

My hubby also provided a beautiful and delicious chocolate cake with chocolate and frosting, complete with a hot pink Happy Birthday. And yes, I had generous portions of both birthday cake and cheesecake. In my world there is no such thing as too much chocolate.

Salsa Pasta

I recently harvested the first Sungold tomatoes and sweet onions from my garden and combined them with Archer Farms Bean, Corn, and Roasted Red Pepper Salsa and fresh spinach for this simple and satisfying pasta dish.

Salsa Pasta
Cooked pasta of your choice
2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
1 small onion or shallot, chopped
1 generous handful fresh baby spinach
1 cup salsa of your choice
5 or 6 green olives
Fresh tomatoes

In small skillet heat olive oil over medium heat and add onion. Saute for about a minute then add spinach. Stir and toss briefly to coat spinach leaves with oil/onion mixture, then add cooked pasta. Toss with tongs, then add salsa and olives. Keep tossing until well mixed. Plate it with fresh tomatoes on top.

Cinnamon Sugar Doughnut Muffins

While searching online for recipes, I found several recipes for donut muffins. I chose one and adapted it and made them for our visiting kids and grand-kids this past weekend, and they could not stop talking about how good they were. And honestly, if I hadn't doubled the recipe, we wouldn't have had enough for the seven of us. The muffins themselves were just perfect - tender texture, not too sweet - and the cinnamon/sugar topping made them really special. I love the addition of nutmeg and used extra in mine. My family was eating these late in the day as well as for breakfast! Seriously, they are that good.

Cinnamon Sugar Doughnut Muffins
24 muffins or 36 mini muffins

Muffins:
3-1/2 cups unbleached flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2/3 cup vegetable oil
1-1/2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
1-1/2 cups milk

Topping:
1 stick salted butter, melted
1 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 12 muffin cups with muffin liners or spray with nonstick cooking spray.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon in large mixing bowl. In small bowl whisk together oil, sugar, eggs and milk. Make well in center of dry ingredients, add liquid ingredients, and stir until just combined. Divide batter equally among prepared muffin cups. Bake until muffin tops are pale golden and springy to touch, 22 to 24 minutes, rotating halfway through baking time. Mini muffins might take less time.

While muffins are baking, combine sugar and cinnamon. Place melted butter in small bowl. When muffins are finished baking, dip tops in melted butter and then into sugar/cinnamon mixture.


I served these with homemade turkey sausage and OJ. This recipe will be a definite repeat at my house.