My neighbor just stopped by with a bag of cucumbers straight from his garden. Now there is absolutely nothing better than fresh, homegrown cucumbers that ripened straight on the vine. I love them just cut up with a little salt, or mixed with homegrown tomatoes and dressed with a little vinagrette as a simple summer salad.

But other than that, I’m just not sure what I can make with them and there are more of these delicious veggies sitting on my kitchen counter right now than we can eat in a week. Any thoughts? What are your favorite cucumber recipes? Leave a comment with your suggestions below.

Thanks,

Cucumber Fan Susanne

I went grocery shopping today and found a great buy one get two free deal on watermelons. I couldn’t resist and now have 3 large watermelons sitting on my kitchen counter. We started to eat the first one, and got through about half of it. Now I’m wondering what I’m supposed to do with the rest. Since they hold so much water, I’m sure freezing and then thawing them later on is out of the question. What else could I make with these yummy fruits? Does anyone have a recipe for a watermelon drink? (I think I’ve heard of a water melon cooler or lemonade before). I appreciate any tips or recipes you may have that use watermelon.

Susanne

Thanks to some smart coupon shopping, I was able to get packs of roasted sunflower seeds for 15 cents each and stocked up since we occasionally like to snack on them. Now that they are sitting in my pantry, I’ve been wondering what I can do with them other than just snacking on them plain.

Here are my ideas so far:

• Sprinkle the sunflower seeds on salads for some extra crunch.
• Add them to muffin batter. I think it would go really well with some pumpkin or cranberry muffins.
• Make some trail mix out of sunflower seeds, dried fruit and dry cereal.

I’d appreciate any other ideas and any recipes you may have that include sunflower seeds.

My husband is a southern boy, so there’s always a box of grits lurking in the pantry. I fix them on occasion with eggs or bacon and toast for breakfast. We had some this morning and for some reason it hit me that it might make a good component for lunch or dinner dishes too. I guess it is very similar to Polenta.

The first thing that comes to mind is of course shrimp and grits. I’ve had this savory low-country dish in restaurants before but have never tried to make it myself. Anyone have a good recipe for this?

Of course I’d love to hear any other recipes that include grits you’d like to share. Just enter them as a comment.

I love love love Papa John’s pizza. The texture of their crust is just perfect. I’ve tried just about any pizza crust recipe I could find, but still have not come up with anything that is even close to the same.  I just can’t get it to be as airy and chewy while still keeping that nice crust.

My pizza dough always ends up either being too dense or to crispy and dry. Do you have a pizza crust recipe you’d care to share? I’d love to be able to just whip one of these up at home whenever a bad Papa John’s Pizza craving hits.

I’ve heard of people cooking with Brie cheese, but have never tried it myself.  I love to eat it with some nice crusty French bread and a glass of good wine, so I’m sure I would love anything cooked with this creamy cheese as well. I’m sure it melts beautifully.

Have you cooked with it before? If so, how did you use it? Did you bake the entire wheel of Brie or did you cut it up and use it in your dish. Leave your favorite Brie recipe as a comment below. I’m looking forward to trying it out.

I’ve been trying to think about some new vegetables that I could introduce into my family’s diet. We eat quite a bit of fruits and veggies and it is starting to get hard to come up with something new. One vegetable I’ve been considering giving a try is fennel. I love the way it smells and have had it in a salad at a restaurant before. Unfortunately I have no idea how to prepare it and have thus avoided buying it.

I’m ready cook up this delicious recipe. By the way, is there anything I should look for in picking a good fennel? I’m assuming that I should look for firm leaves and no discolorations.

Do you happen to have a great fennel recipe? It doesn’t have to be a salad, I hear it is also pretty good cooked.

I guess not a lot of people make beef stew in July because my grocery store is running a nice sale on stew meat. I grabbed a few packs, figuring I’d make “something” out of it, but now that I have it sitting in my fridge, I have no idea how to prepare it.

I don’t really want to cook a big pot of stew… not only is it too hot to eat it, it will also heat up my entire kitchen if I slow cook it all day. I guess I could make the stew in the crockpot and then freeze it for a few months.

Any ideas for some summery dishes that include stew meat? Or any recipes for that matter… as always, I appreciate it if you share your favorite stew meat recipe as a comment.

One of my favorite summer dishes is sliced tomatoes with mozzarella and fresh basil leaves. Every few weeks throughout the summer, I’ll grab a bundle of basil at the grocery store to make this yummy simple salad. The problem is that I only end up using a small portion of the basil. I store the rest in the fridge in some moist paper towels, but I don’t really know what else to make with it. I’ll sprinkle some in pasta sauce, but that’s about it. I usually end up throwing the wilting leaves out before I have a chance to make the tomato basil salad again.

Any ideas on what else I can make with fresh basil?

My father-in-law has a few huge blueberry bushes in the backyard, and guess what… It’s blueberry season. His grandkids (including our daughter) love to go down there and eat blueberries until they are about to get sick, but it’s still not even starting to make a dent in this year’s harvest.

We spent last weekend picking quite a few gallon buckets of them and have freezing the berries. We should have more than enough blueberries to last us all year.

I like to sprinkle it on cereal in the morning or make a breakfast smoothie by combining frozen blueberries, half a banana, some low-fat yogurt and a splash of milk or orange juice. Yummy…

How about you? Do you have any good blueberry recipes?