Summer Pasta Salad

Or, what happens when you clean out the refrigerator.

That's a handful of whole-wheat penne, half a cucumber, some broccoli that was just before getting wimpy and having to be tossed, and a few grape tomatoes from the garden. I sliced the garden-fresh squash and cooked it on the grill pan and tossed the whole thing with some red pepper Italian dressing and some Parmesan.

That was a fast and tasty side for a Saturday lunch of turkey sandwiches. It's about too hot to cook much else.

Watermelon Blueberry Popsicles

Puree 3 cups of chopped seeded watermelon (from a two-pound watermelon). Add a bit of powdered sugar, if you like, and a couple of tablespoons of fresh lime juice, which I left out because I didn't have any limes.

Pop a few blueberries into the popsicle molds before filling with the watermelon mixture. That's it!

I made a version based on Ellie Krieger's recipe in So Easy cookbook, a book I like. Just a little bit. :-)

Star Spangled Cookies

Aren't these fun? Easy, too!


Sugar Cookies:

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 to 1 1/2 cups sugar*
1 egg
2 3/4 cups sifted flour
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking powder
dash salt

* After I scraped the seeds from a vanilla bean for the Watermelon Sweet Tea Granita, I put the vanilla bean in a jar with sugar. It smells so good - sweet and vanilla-y! I used the vanilla sugar for these cookies.

In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Add the egg and beat until fluffy.

Add vanilla, sifted flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix well. Cover and refrigerate. (Dough can be refrigerated for several days.)

When ready to bake cookies, preheat oven to 350°.

Roll dough to 1/4-inch thick. Cut out shapes with cookie cutter. I used a 2 1/2-inch star cookie cutter.

Bake cookies for 9 to 11 minutes, or until cookies are just beginning to brown on the edges.

Cool on pan for a minute or two, then remove to wire racks to finish cooling.

This recipe yielded something like 30 cookies.


I love this part...the cookie glaze:

2 cups confectioners' sugar
1 tablespoon water
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon light corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
scant 1/4 teaspoon butter flavoring (or you can use more vanilla, or a 1/2 teaspoon of almond or lemon extract if you prefer)
red and blue food coloring

Before you start, place a couple of wire racks on top of baking sheets. It will make cleanup easier later; any drips and dribbles from the cookies lands on the baking sheets and not on your counters. (Some concentrated food pastes can stain!)

Put the water in a small bowl and gradually add the confectioners' sugar. Stir until smooth. Beat in the corn syrup and vanilla until icing is smooth and glossy. If icing is too thick, add more corn syrup.

Divide the glaze among three shallow dishes. Pie plates work great.

Tint one container of cookie glaze red, one blue, and leave the last one white.

Dip the cookies in the glaze and shake gently to remove the excess. Place the cookie on a wire rack to harden, which takes several hours.

This amount of cookie glaze covered all the cookies I made just right - I didn't run out and didn't have tons of left over. Just the right amount!


If you make these, I'd love to see your pictures!

Frozen Peanut Butter Pie

8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1 ½ cups confectioner’s sugar
2/3 cup crunchy peanut butter
1 cup milk
8-9 ounces Cool Whip
Chocolate-cookie pie crust
Peanuts
Reese’s peanut butter cups
Chocolate frosting or syrup

Cream together cream cheese, confectioner’s sugar, and peanut butter. Add milk and fold in Cool Whip.

Pour into the pie crust. Garnish with peanuts, peanut butter cups, and chocolate frosting or syrup. Cover and freeze for at least one hour. Keep frozen.
Very sweet and very rich!

Watermelon & Sweet Tea Granita

I bought the copy of Fine Cooking magazine for its cover: a gorgeous photo of strawberry shortcake that was so luscious I could all but smell the strawberries. The recipe for the watermelon granita was lagniappe.

I made it for my book club last week and it was delicious.

1/4 vanilla bean
1 Tbs. good-quality loose black tea, such as English Breakfast (I used a Lipton tea bag)
2/3 cup boiling water
2 Tbs. granulated sugar
3 cups puréed watermelon (from about 4 cups diced, seeded watermelon)
1 Tbs. fresh lemon juice
Kosher salt
Sweetened whipped cream (optional)

Note:
I didn't detect much tea flavor in the finished product. I bet you could use lemonade or other fruit juice in place of the tea, if you don't happen to have any tea on hand.

Split the vanilla bean and scrape out the seeds. Put the vanilla seeds and tea in a small bowl (save the pod for another use). Add the boiling water and steep for 10 minutes. Add the sugar and stir gently to dissolve.

Or just add a bit of vanilla extract to 2/3 cup strong sweet tea.

In a large bowl, combine the watermelon purée, lemon juice, and 1/4 tsp. salt. Strain the tea mixture into the watermelon mixture and stir to combine. Pour into a 9x9-inch metal baking pan, cover with plastic wrap, and freeze. After 1 hour, stir and scrape the mixture with a fork, repeating every 30 to 40 minutes, until the mixture has an icy shard-like consistency, about 3-1/2 hours total.

To serve, scrape the granita into chilled bowls, and top with a dollop of sweetened whipped cream (if using).

nutrition information (per serving):
Calories (kcal): 35; Fat (g): 0; Fat Calories (kcal): 0; Saturated Fat (g): 0; Protein (g): 0; Monounsaturated Fat (g): 0; Carbohydrates (g): 9; Polyunsaturated Fat (g): 0; Sodium (mg): 35; Cholesterol (mg): 0; Fiber (g): 0;

Tomato Tart

It's true love!


Up until I made this tart, I didn't like tomatoes, not even a little bit. Not on a burger or sandwich or salad. Now, though...

For Tomato Tart:

pie pastry
1 garlic bulb
1/2 teaspoon olive oil
1 1/2 cups shredded fontina cheese, divided
handful fresh basil leaves
2 to 3 tomatoes tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

For the pie pastry, make your own if you are so inclined.

The recipe I use is my mom's:


Combine a cup of all purpose flour and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Cut in 1/2 cup shortening (it's not a bad idea to refrigerate the shortening first) and add ice-cold water, one tablespoon at a time. Stir with a fork until the dough forms a ball. Roll out on lightly floured surface.

Or use a refrigerated pie pastry.

Either way, press the dough into the bottom and up the sides of a 9-inch square tart pan (the kind with a removable bottom although you could bake this in a 9-inch round pie pan, too). Bake for about 8 minutes or until lightly golden.

Cut off the top of a bulb of garlic and place it on a square of aluminum foil. Drizzle garlic bulb with olive oil and fold in aluminum foil to seal.

Bake for 35 minutes. Unwrap garlic and let cool. Squeeze the roasted garlic cloves onto the bottom of the baked piecrust. Smear it around and moan about how good it smells.

Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees.

Sprinkle 1/2 cup fontina cheese over the roasted garlic.

Slice the tomatoes and place on folded paper towels. Sprinkle the tomato slices with salt and pepper and let sit for 10 minutes. The tomatoes look so pretty just like that.

Arrange tomato slices over shredded cheese. Sprinkle with remaining 1 cup cheese.

Bake for 45 minutes or until tart is lightly browned.

Eat and enjoy warm or at room temperature. Good stuff!

Baked Potato Salad

If you want something quick and easy that is low calorie, low fat, and low in carbs, this is NOT it.

It is delicious but, you know, it oughta be.

Baked Potato Salad from A La Carte Alley in Cleveland, Miss.

10 oz cream cheese, softened
2 cups sour cream
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 1/2 lbs bacon, cooked and crumbled
1/3 cup green onions, chopped
1/2 cup creamy Italian dressing
dash Worcestershire sauce
1 t pepper
1/2 t salt
1 t garlic powder
6 large baking potatoes, baked, cooled and in peel

Combine cream cheese and sour cream in large bowl, stirring well. Add mayonnaise and next seven ingredients. Stir well. Cube or slice potatoes into 1/2 inch pieces. Stir into cream cheese/mayo mixture. Chill. Keeps well for several days.

Saturday Night Dessert

Here is what we made for dessert on Saturday night. You might have remembered reading about it here. We didn't make the Sock It To Me cake, just the ice cream part. And after sampling just a small, small bit of it on Sunday evening, it can tell you it was great!

Y'all come back now ya hear!

Them's Fighting Words

There is a whole bunch of stuff (mashed potatoes, tomatoes) that most people like that I don't. I know that's weird. I can't help it.

Do you like pimento cheese? If not, please explain to me how this can be. I've met one person in my life who didn't "get" pimento cheese. She grew up in Virginia and told me she'd never heard of it. She was perplexed by it. "Why would anyone mix cheese and mayonnaise together? And eat it?"

There's just not much you do to help a case like that. Bless her heart.

I love pimento and cheese. LOVE IT. In my second book, I wrote a verah verah long chapter on pimento and cheese, including a bunch of different versions of it that were courtesy of the Southern Foodways Alliance. I eneded it with something like "but here's the best recipe for it ever, The End."

Pimento and cheese is distinctly summer. It makes me think of the smell of suntain lotion and the hum of window units and transister radios and the sound of flip flops on pavement and how cool the watermelon rind feels when you grasp it to take a big sweet bite. I love pimento and cheese, both for its taste and for what it evokes, even though summer is not really my favorite time of year.

A few weeks ago, Jeffrey, the child, and I had a picnic at Bear Pen Park in Cleveland. We had turkey wraps, which were fabulous: black pepper turkey, pesto mayonnaise, provolone cheese, and red onion. We had pasta salad that I made but didn't like all that much, chicken salad (which is another post) and we had pimento and cheese.


The child ate goldfish and a pimento and cheese sandwich with the crusts cut off.

I rather preferred the pimento and cheese with saltine crackers.


A warm - but not hot - day, fresh clover underfoot, blue skies overhead, swings, ducks that waddle into the pond for a swim, a picnic table, and PIMENTO AND CHEESE WITH SALTINE CRACKERS. It probably can get some better than that, but not a whole lot.

There isn't really a recipe for the pimento and cheese (I know that's annoying when someone goes on and on about something and then says, but I don't have a recipe for it - but I really DON'T have one). I make mine by grating one package (I guess about 8 ounces) of sharp cheddar. Grating the cheese makes a difference; the texture and taste is better than the packages of pre-shredded cheese. Then I grate some white onion into it. I have no idea how much; maybe a tablespoon or more? Add a medium jar of drained diced pimentos and stir in a spoonful or two of mayonnaise. Season with salt and pepper and refrigerate overnight or for several hours.

***So ends food blogging on this post and so begins the gratuitious posting of photos.***
We love to feed the ducks.

Feeding the ducks is super fun.

Later that same day:



The Kentucky Derby party recap is up at the other blog. Not to miss: pictures of some wicked fine cheese straws.

Coming soon: A Girl and Her Grill, Part Two and Again with the Cheese-Stuffed Hamburgers.