Summer Gratitude

This season I have been thankful...

For meals with 20 people who share my last name, and fruit of my dad's new massive "Bubba Grill" smoker.

Grilled Cilantro-Lime Shrimp Kebabs

For the grill on my back patio, the lovely woman with which it came, and all the meals and fellowship it has brought to our table.

For far-from-weak mint juleps in frosted glasses, chopsticks with which to stir them, and thoughtful persons who make them possible.

Grilled Chicken, Grilled Zucchini, Caprese Salad, Strawberry Scones

For self-taught grilling lessons and friends who affirm my gifts for culinary creations.

Tomato Watermelon Salad Stacks

I think I am eating out too much. Because I  plated my salad to look pretty yet have few degrees of functionality. To eat this masterpiece, you must in fact slash it up into pieces that end up looking like a normal tossed salad.

Blame my leaning tower of tomato and watermelon on Chis Hastings' tomato salad stacking at Hot and Hot. Or blame Slice's tomato-watermelon fancification. That's where the idea come from.

Still, I did dumb down chefly salad over-orchestration to six simple ingredients. And  mint+tomato+watermelon+feta tastes like an explosion of the fresh sweetness of summer in your mouth.

So try it in towers that can topple, or just cut it all up and toss it together like a normal person. Your call.

Mocha-Chocolate Chip Cookie Icebox Cake

Ina Garten is a brilliant woman. She dreamed up layering chocolate chip cookies with a tiramisu-like mocha cream in a spring form pan.

But in the name of "Barefoot Conetessa How Easy Is That?", her recipe calls for packaged cookies. Dessert blasphemy! I baked Tollhouse ones from scratch.

Actually I baked cookie bars in a jellyroll pan because it was like 9:30 p.m., and I did not want to be scooping dough and cooling cookies for forever. So I ended up with three thick layers of cookie and Kahlua/marscapone wonder instead of the five the recipe calls for. If I did if over again, I'd make thinner cookies so that cookie+cream melds together more seamlessly.

 Icebox desserts: Madoline's solution to serving seasonally appropriate chocolate desserts in the summer since the Strawberry Icebox Dessert wonder of 2010, or actually since Cooking Light's Chocolate- Eclair Icebox Dessert of my teenage years.

Chocolate Cream Pie Squares with Oreo Crust

Let me tell you about the day my life forever changed.

It started with a seething cauldron of sin. Chocolate and cream and such churned into the most decadent creamy cocoa-y yum that has ever gone between Oreos and real whipped whipping cream.

And there was enough of it to feed all the dudes who ate bread and fish that day in that Bible story. Almost. 

But for real, 20 people ate it at the lake on a Saturday, I shipped off slices to my parents' house and my brother's house, and then I divvied up like eight servings when there ended up being a viewing of super-interesting documentary Searching for Sugarman (check it out, fellow documentary-nerdy friends/anyone who likes music) at my house the next night. 

And then I ate a final solitary piece all by my lonesome one night.

My not-so-pretty photos just don't do it justice.

And now dessert-obsessed me is struggling to brainstorm any other confection to make for people because all I can think of is this, the most perfect way to eat chocolate in summertime. Ever.

Every time I try to think of something new, all that comes to mind is the way the rich fudgy chocolate cream is cut by creamy whipped cream and held together by a buttery-chocolate crisp crust. Ohmygoodness.

Arugula-Corn Salad with Feta and Pecans

My friend Amy always tries to claim she had nothing to do with a recipe being amazing because she "just found it online" or "just got it from a friend." What she obviously doesn't understand is that finding an awesome recipe like a corn salad with feta and nuts is feat in and of itself. And she didn't just find it; she made it. And she put pecans in instead of walnuts, and that was brilliant.

In the age of Google and 17 billion food bloggers, no recipe is really original. There's just a bunch of us finding food combos we like, mixing them up and sharing them with people in our real life and internet life. Cultivating recipes in the digital age is still an art best created in community, my friends. 

Anyway, Amy's corn salad has been spreading in-person meme style amongst the original cookout crew that feasted on it last summer.

As for me, I added some green and protein, tweaked a lime vinaigrette recipe (thanks, Google), and poof! had an innovative farmer's market-fresh meal salad to share with yet another friend, for a weeknight dinner on the porch this go-round. 

And then I made it again the next night. Because pre-prepped leftover ingredients rock almost as much as corn corn and feta cheese.

Alabama Tomatoes

When I came across the passage below in The Well and the Mine, a case of writer envy set in. Novelist Gin Phillips is just that talented at conveying imagery in the context of developing scenes and characters in Great Depression-era Carbon Hill, Ala. And so I bring you a tribute to Alabama tomaters in her words with photos from moi.

Albert, the father of the main character, narrates:

Heirloom Tomatoes, Pepper Place Farmer's Market

 My mouth watered at the look of them, insides about to burst through the skin. I plucked one and bit into it like an apple, juice running down my chin...

I pulled another one off and handed it to him, still tasting summer in my mouth, seeds stuck in my shadow of a beard...

Jones Valley Urban Farm Tomatoes in a Tomato Pie-In-Process

 I smiled at them all (his children), chattering and slurping, teeth and tongues and hands and arms covered in tomato innards.

"They're happy vegetables, aren't they, Papa?" asked Tess, chomping great chunks of hers. "Cheerful and excited. Like lemons are pouty and peaches are flirts."

Cherry Tomatoes Growing in Backyard Garden (Thanks to roommates who garden)

Virgie took tiny bites, bending over to hold the tomato away from her dress. But her's was the best, fuller and redder than the others. "Tess thinks they all have personality," she said.

"If she can eat it after she makes friends with it, ain't nothing wrong with it," I said.

We all picked beans until supper time, sticky and sweating, licking our fingers and hands and tasting tomatoes and dirt. When I swung Jack and Tess up the steps on the way in, our hands didn't want to come apart.

-Gin Phillips, The Well and the Mine, pages 52-53

Publix pizza crust with olive oil, garlic, tomatoes, fresh mozzarella and fresh basil

Red, (Off) White and Blue Berry Trifle

Some things just photograph real pretty. Like patriotic (but not overly so) berries on the Fourth of July.

And if you're going to have the real deal in fresh berries, why not go all out and bake a pound cake from scratch and make a pastry cream the same way? Hello, butter, butter, sugar, sugar, eggs, eggs. (I taught my roommate why pound cake in all its butteriness is called pound cake while I was at it.)

 You know the only thing that was missing in the ingredient list at that point in the brainstorming? Liqueur. So I drizzled me some Amaretto on the cake pieces.

This final masterpiece made its debut following dinner on the Fourth. Throw 19 eaters in the mix, and whoosh, it was gone baby gone.

Happy berry season to ya!