Summer.

I just had to take a picture of this farm-fresh summer squash that was being sold at a flea market during the Three Rivers Festival. Bright, colorful, cheery yellow fleshed goodness screaming "buy me, no, buy me"! What a hoot. I love all the farmer's markets and stands around town.

Indian Vegetarian

All I can say is that if I were in fact going to ever fully abstain from eating animal meat, I would probably seek out Indian vegetarian recipes. Bold flavors, warming spices and naan - you had me at hello. Maggie, if you're reading this, this one's for you! what you see before you may includes warmed naan (no folks, I haven't even attempted to make this from scratch, picked up some frozen naan from my local Indian grocery), butternut squash with fenugreek and a dish made of red lentils, dry-cooked, actually. Lentils are a great source of complex carbs as well as protein (I recently found this out) and they taste really good too!

persian anyone?

My best friend from Los Angeles is married to a Persian man and for wither my birthday or Christmas she sent me a Persian cookbook. I have made several recipes from it and have throughly enjoyed the flavors and characteristics known to Persian cooking. Last week, I made this dish (the Persian name escapes me at the moment) - an eggplant, tomato and lamb casserole topped with onions and a dash of paprika. The meat is seasoned with nutmeg and cinnamon and when all is said and done, topped with a little yogurt and some rice, this meal is to die for. Hearty, even for a summery meal.

leftovers

Wish this picture wasn't so "flashy", I'm still getting used to the various flash choices available to me on this digital camera. I truly intended to take a picture of the blueberry-lime cobble with ginger-cornmeal biscuits before biting into it, but completely forgot. Hope you had a pleasant 4th, ours was very low key. In fact, we didn't have "plans" until Thursday evening. We spent most the day watching a movie, going to a garage sale and eating pizza. As the evening drew near, we headed up to Kendallville to have a mini cook-out with Paul's parents and watched the fireworks over Bixler Lake. All in all it was a nice time. As always I offered to bring a dessert and what spells out patriotism more than a blueberry cobbler??? (Pie I suppose, but given the time frame I was not about to go there...). This recipe actually called for lemon zest, but alas there were NO lemons at Wally World the night before the 4th of July. Perhaps all of northwestern Fort Wayne had the same idea I did. :) Maybe not. So instead I used limes and worked out perfectly. All I can say is a little ground ginger goes a long way, faint bursts of ginger in the biscuit topping was a nice touch.