Minnesota Summer

I haven't been doing much cooking or baking at home. Everything to avoid turning on any heat-producing appliance is being done and it is still blazing in my 3rd floor old building apartment. The George Foreman grill has been used to make grilled cheese and grilled PB&J, but that is just about it. I have been making sourdoughs more often at work and have been really becoming familiar with my recipe. Sourdough is officially NOT intimidating. Yessss.....It is the small successes in life :)

So instead of playing and experimenting in my kitchen, I have been doing lots of research, reading, and stockpiling recipes that I want to try when it isn't 103 degrees F outside. Per usual, my Bon Appetit magazine is filled with bookmarks, sticky notes, and folded corners reminding me of the summer cocktails, custards, grilled flatbreads, semifreddos that I want to make...I have never and will never regret my subscription to that magazine...



I have also bookmarked the heck out of a cookbook that I just bought at the St. Peter Food Co-op. It is called Farmstead Chef by John Ivanko and Lisa Kivirist. They have a place in Wisconsin called Inn Serendipity Bed and Breakfast where they grow their own produce, bake their own bread in sun-fueled ovens, among tons of other fantastically awesome self-sustaining and earth-sustainable habits. Marked pages in there include Raspberry Cream Cheese French Toast (everything delicious on one plate...its a must-make for me), Cheese Straws, Winter Squash Rolls, Spicy Kimchee...the list goes on...Overall, I highly recommend this book if you are a seasonal cook or just appreciate reading about sustainable practices. They have lots of little 1-2 page blurbs about different things they do or that you can do like how to be a Victory Garden Grower, what other sustainable farms are doing and how they are doing it. You know. All that awesome inspirational stuff that makes me want to go off the grid and live my own sustainable life where I cook and bake off of the land and sell it at farmer's markets...ahh, that would be the life...

AND!! Today I think I found my new favorite blog. Thevintagemixer.com. Holy toledo, is this woman awesome.  Everything she makes looks fantastic. There are sweets, savories, veg/vegan recipes, seasonal stuff...I spent a long time on her site...and will spend much more time in the kitchen testing out her recipes once my kitchen is less of an oven itself.

In the meantime I am going to do some cooking by merely setting things out on the counter to cook/fry/sizzle/bake/re-heat. Or eat lots of cold salads straight from the fridge...My easy go-to cold pasta dish is a spicy tuna with caper pasta salad that I make. Once I write a recipe with actual measurements I will post it :)

Stay cool, drink lots of water and other cold refreshing beverages.  White wine has been stocked in my fridge for the past week...light, cool, refresing...mmm... A glass with a few frozen blueberries in it while sitting on the deck watching my potted garden grow is quite perfect on most/all days. Post on that to come as well.

Happy 4th of July (tomorrow) and maybe after the heat passes I will be able to write a more coherent post.

-Annie