Blog Surfing

Cake, Batter and Bowl has  Mediterranean Eggplant Stacks. I know your eggplant is growing right now and you will be looking for interesting eggplant recipes again.

David Lebovitz has a most interesting way to make Mint Chip Ice Cream.

Tracy's Culinary Adventures has a recipe for an interesting Strawberry Rhubarb Cobbler Pie.

Tablespoon has a little Strawberry Love this week. The Grilled Pizzas sound good too. Plus, a recipe for Basil and Havarti Cheese Pinwheels.

Epicurious has a great How-to info on canning that includes recipes, equipment and techniques. Great information! They are also featuring Low-cal recipes that we can indulge in!

If you have even wondered about the difference between baking powder and baking soda, you should check out this info from Serious Eats.

Our Best Bites has a recipes for strawberry-watermelon slushies and ice pops.
There are also an ice cream recipe here using fresh cherries and chocolate.

Pillsbury's Cooking for Two has five new Summer Salads for Two that can be ready in 20 minutes.

Recipezaar has a group of their Favorite Summer Recipes.

Oregon Live is featuring 29 Salad Recipes to Serve for Summer Meals, which includes salad, sandwich and wrap recipes. 

Epicurious has the Ultimate Guide for your 4th of July celebration.

Saveur Magazine has everything you need to Celebrate Summer. They have gathered recipes from many great sources. The Cowboy Steak with Chimichurri Sauce caught my eye. You will find it here. Thanks Alan for the link!

Allrecipes has a newsletter with Summer Desserts plus new recipes.

For those of you that love fresh apricots, this Fresh Apricot Upside-down Cake looks good and delicious. The recipe is from Half Baked.

Joy of Desserts has a vintage recipe for Graham Cracker Cake. If you are interested in vintage recipes, this is the place to find them.

At Judy's Kitchen, I just happened to notice this beautiful prize winning Vanilla Vanilla Bean Roasted Apple Pie that I'm going to put here for safe keeping, because fall will be here soon. With all the fresh peaches right now, her Roasted Peach Butter Spice Cupcakes look like a real winner too! She has lots of other amazing recipes worth checking out!

Summer Supper

I think we are in a rut. Yes, I know that we are in a big rut! That would be a supper big rut! And I don't mean super, I mean supper! Our summer supper is very boring but I like it anyway! Most of our summer suppers start with this...

Yes, Woo hoo...it is a great big old tub'o lettuce... it can take a week for two people to get through one of these containers from Costco! The only thing to do is eat lots of salad! We try to make sure that we have plenty of good things on it!

 This is the dear hubby's salad and

he loves the bread with his!

This is my salad with roasted hazelnuts

 It's this Oregonzola Blue Cheese that makes our salads so good!

And when the Oregonzola is gone, we have this to look forward too!

As you can see, we have lots of salad in our future.

On the positive side, dinner is really easy to make and we can sit down to dinner in about 20 minutes. I can whip up a little dressing with some balsamic vinegar, olive oil, lemon juice, an extra spice or two, and salt and pepper and we are good to go. It will either have chicken or fish on it and in addition to strawberries, we like pears, apples, and numerous veggies too. We enjoy our salad suppers very much, but there is one big problem...

You would get very bored if I blogged about every salad we eat, so it leaves me a little high and dry with limited things to blog about. You say "what about breakfast"  Yes, there's always breakfast, but we eat the same thing for breakfast every morning, too; Coaches oatmeal and a boiled egg. Who hoo!

Oh, and lunch, well, now I'd be boring you for sure! Trust me, it's just as boring! Wheat toast with tuna or peanut butter, veggies and fruit. I told you it was boorrrring!

Well, now you know why I only post about miscellaneous things and baked goods! At least now you know why I bake lots of yummy things and send them away for someone else to enjoy. I need my girlish figure during the pool season, because I spend a lot of time in here...

I hope you can bear with me here, at least through the summer, and I will keep blogging about the things I make that other people eat!

Almond-Raspberry Cake

I found this recipe at CookiePie and thought it sounded fairly easy and I had all of the ingredients, so why not! Actually, I just remembered, when my dear hubby went to wash the raspberries for me, there was some ugly mold on some of them, so, he offered to make an unexpected trip to the store to get some more. He was gone a little longer than I was expecting and, of course, the first two stores (and the closest stores) were out of raspberries, so he finally found some at the third store. So again, thank you, dear hubby!

There is nothing tricky or hard about this recipe. I used a 9-inch spring-form pan. I cut a piece of parchment paper for the bottom of the pan and sprayed everything with Baker's Joy spray. It doesn't have any complicated steps, and it comes together very fast. 

The almond paste makes this a very dense cake, and it looks like it would go well with a cup of coffee or as a dessert after dinner. It would be a great treat to bake and take somewhere because it would travel well. It didn't end up quite as easy as I was expecting, considering the trip to three different stores. Just make sure you check your raspberries before you start!

Key Ingredient is still having technical problems. It won't upload the picture.

I sent this little cake to work with my dear hubby. He called and said it got rave reviews!

Enjoy!

Lightly Salted and Barely Sweet Lemon Almonds

Dry roasted, unsalted almonds are the nut of choice around our house. They are a healthy choice for a between meal snack. A while back I found a recipe for Lemon Almonds and I thought they sounded like a nice change from our regular almonds. I started out making Roasted Almonds with Lemon and Salt, but it morphed into Lightly Salted and Barely Sweet Lemon Almonds. We are both really enjoying them, so I'm passing this recipe on so that you can enjoy them too.

The first thing you need is three cups of raw almonds and enough lemons to get 1-1/4 cups of lemon juice, or enough to cover the almonds completely, around 4-6, depending on the juiciness of your lemons. You cover the almonds with the lemon juice and let them soak for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, drain the almonds, using a strainer, and shake the excess juice off. Next you pour them back onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake them at 325 for 15 minutes. The original recipe called for 350 degrees, but my first batch was too dark on the bottom because of too much liquid and heat.


After 15-20 minutes, remove the nuts from the oven and pour them into a large bowl. Add the olive oil, turbinado sugar and salt, stirring well to mix completely. Pour the almonds back onto the parchment lined cookie sheet and bake for about 10-15 minutes, or until lightly browned. Remove from the oven and let them sit until completely cool. 

After ours had cooled, I decided to put them back in the oven at 275 degrees for 20 minutes, because we like our almonds a little crunchier. The almonds were crunchy on the outside, but the inside was too soft for our taste. Store in an airtight container.


They have a touch of salt to bring out the flavor and a touch of sugar to counter the sour lemon.  We are enjoying them very much!

  

 

The Key Ingredient site is not working correctly so I couldn't upload a picture on the recipe card.

Enjoy!

It's all about the Ewes and Lambs

I could have spent the whole week just watching and listening to the ewes and their lambs! I didn't even mind when they woke me up at the crack of dawn with their bleats and blats!

There was always one ewe that was on guard, checking me out, making sure I didn't get too close!

They didn't hear me coming. I was tip-toeing across the gravel!

Playing following the leader, heading back to the other side of the field.

This ewe saw me coming and sent the distress call to the others.

They all got the message.

They are all hi-tailing it!

They got as far away from me as they possibly could.

Being a city girl, I always wondered how a lamb could find it's mom or vice versa. After hearing all of the blats, cries, unearthly sounds coming out of these sheep and lambs for a week, I could see that sheep don't actually say Baa! They all have a distinctive pitch, sound and cry, and I now understand.

Sheep are amazing creatures!

Random pictures from The Farm

A woodpecker on very top of dead tree

New hazelnut trees

Well established hazelnut grove

Happy Father's Day 
To all the Dads out there! 

A special Happy Father's Day to my dear Dad!

 

I love you very much! 

To my husband, a wonderful Dad to our kids and a great Papa to our grandsons!

I love you very much!

To my son-in-law who is a great Daddy to his two amazing sons! 

I love you!

I love you and am so blessed to have all of you in my life!