Grilled Pepper & Corn Salad

Ahh, the joys of corn on the cob.  Juicy yellow kernels of sweet perfection bursting in your mouth as you munch.  The ears are so good, it totally makes up for the butter facial and slightly singed fingertips from trying to put the corn holders into the ends waaaaay before its cool enough to handle.  Grilled corn is divine, the epitome of summer eats.  But sometimes, it's nice to nix the cob and keep your dignity at the dinner table.  That's when a grilled corn salad like this one comes in super handy.

Fresh Tomato Salami Pizza

Pizza pizza.  Call me Little Caesar, cuz I love a good pie.  So surprise, I have yet another one to share with you.  Not too fancy shmancy, but darn good and extra sneaky.  Yes, a sneaky little pizza.  Why, might you ask?  Because of all the veggie goodness hiding inside.  Et tu, Brute?  Yes my friends, always and forever, for vegetables belong on pizza.  Especially zucchini, which is practically sprouting out of my ears at this point.  Remember that veggie box from a few weeks back? Welp, here is another meal inspired by the bounty inside.

Chocolate Chip Oven Pancakes with Mixed Berry Compote

If pancakes have a downside, it is definitely that they ostracize the chef.  So unfair.  The cook spends their time flipping and flap-jacking while the family sits around the table chattering away like happy chipmunks.  Sure, you can hear the conversation but it's a few rounds of batter in the pan before you can join the bunch.  You can attempt valiant effort of making all the pancakes in advance, but this always leaves someone with the sad, droopy pancakes at the bottom of the pile, steamed to death by their doughy counterparts.  This is why oven pancakes are fabulous.  Baked up at once, served at once and eaten all at once.  It's the pancake of lonely chefs.

Grilled Polenta Watermelon Squares with Goat Cheese & Salsa Verde

Have you seen the melon at the market lately?!  I mean woah.  It's enough to make a foodie loose her melon mind.  We've been plowing through our share of this year's crop  with frothy lassis, cold soups and wedges cut as wide as a six year-old's smile.  But when we have a tapas night, I always go to for these little bites.  A little quirky, super tasty and darn cute on a plate, these Grilled Polenta Watermelon squares are a wonderfully refreshing amuse-bouche for a summer evening.

Zucchini Cake with Lemony Cream Cheese Glaze

Apologies are in order for the super sporadic nature of my posts over the past two months.  Between road trips to Chicago, family reunions in Gatlinburg, and last-minute weekends in New Orleans, it's been tricky to find a block of time for typing on a laptop.  The good news is that things have settled back down to our typical level of pleasant hum-drum lunacy, I have a whole smorgasbord of recipes to share.  Today I start with the most recent interruption - my birthday, and it's amazing cake.  If you like carrot cake, zucchini bread or banana muffins, this is the cake is right down your fruit-and-veggie alley.

Farmers Market Breakfast Skillet

Nothing is quite as glorious as a farmer's market in summer.  Fragrant tomatoes, sweet peaches and oodles of zucchini as far as the eye can see...it's practically foodie heaven.  As good fortune and the Midwest would have it, the hubs and I are sitting smack dab in the middle of no fewer than four Saturday markets.  Whichever way we turn, we are practically tripping over honeycomb and bushels of corn.  First world problems, right?  One of our friends even has a share in a local farm and receives a box of their fresh vegetables every week...such a cool thing.  And since she just happened to be out of town this week, she bequeathed this weeks produce to us.  The last time I was that excited about opening a box, it held an engagement ring.

Spicy Pomegranate Salmon

Sometimes there are things in life that just seem to good to be true.  A front row parking space any sporting event, an unexpected register discount at a blowout sale and double yolk eggs are just a few things that set my heart a flutter in ways that I cannot begin to express.  But for Northwestern natives, nothing beats an amazing deal on fresh salmon.  This week our local market is having a preposterously gargantuan sale on Sockeye.  Two days into the week, we've already gone through one pound and are going back for a second.  With so many ways to prepare this delicious fish, I am perfectly content to continue eating it until we have both grown gills.  Grilled, broiled, baked or breaded....any way you fix it, this fish is amazing.  But have you ever tried it in a spicy pomegranate sauce?  Oh, be still my heart.