Trying to stay cool

This hot weather has us all trying to figure out how to eat well without heating up the kitchen. One of my obvious answers is to light up the grill, which we do at least a few times each week. This can also be a challenge due to the amount of thunderstorms we are dealing with recently. One thing we have been doing is when we grill, we grill extra. That gives us extra to have for a couple of days after - so as we are watching the heavy rain, we are still eating deliciously grilled foods! We were away most of last weekend and so didn't have time to do the longer term preserving I often do on Sundays, but here is some things we enjoyed. Click on the bolded recipe titles to get to the full recipe.

Eggplant, scallions, summer squash, parsley- grilled as I have described before. The next night or so I make a large pasta salad and cut up the grilled veggies, add a bit of balsamic vinegar and fresh herbs, a nice olive oil and some sort of cheese - feta or grated pecorino are nice choices. Chopped tomatoes or a squeeze of lemon juice brighten the flavors. Added grilled chicken or fish (all leftover) are also great. This makes for a delicious, nutritious and easy meal for busy families and is as flexible as your imagination and refrigerator.

Tomatoes, garlic scapes, basil - heirloom and cherry tomato season is one of the favorite and shortest seasons. In addition to the tomato salads we have been enjoying, this past week we had pasta with Uncooked Tomato Sauce. There are 2 recipes on this site - both are delicious. We had leftovers, so had another dinner in which I added additional cut up tomatoes and shrimp. Yum!!

Snap Beans, tomatoes, peppers, garlic, basil - made a huge salad, that will be eaten for days!

Cucumbers - made the Narrow Bridge Farm Refrigerator Pickles

Cucumbers, mint - I have been making my breakfast as described in member ideas a couple of weeks ago: yogurt, cucumbers, splash of cider vinegar, salt and pepper - our member suggested dill, but I used parsley and mint instead. Very good!