Summer

I think couscous is one of my favorite side dishes. I love all of it's possibilities, especially the flavors it can take on when mixed with the right ingredients.

This truly is a "golden" couscous, not just because golden raisins are part of its ingredients list, but turmeric is used to give this dish its golden color. If you are not familiar with turmeric, it is a powder used extensively in South Asian cuisine.

Grilling the green onions in this recipe also imparts a smoky flavor. This dish went nicely with our grilled chicken and salad for dinner. I think you will enjoy it!

I love kebabs! I don't know why eating food on a stick is so much fun, but it is. The best kebabs I ever had were in Istanbul, the meat sizzled on the outside but was juicy on the inside. Luckily kebabs are easy to make at home even for those like me, without an outdoor grill.

I'm amazed at how versatile kebabs are and how they always manage to stretch whatever I'm cooking. It must have something to do with surface area and spacial relations. When food is served on a stick, it just seems like there is more of it. Two slices of eggplant, two small zucchini and just under two Italian sausages somehow made a huge dinner for two.

When it comes to kebabs, skip the bamboo. The best kind of skewers are metal--I have two sets, flat metal which are particularly good for meat and vegetables and double pronged which are perfect for seafood. With either one you choose, the food won't slip and slide. In my experience food also cooks faster and more evenly on metal skewers than on bamboo. Buy 'em once, use them forever.

Up until last week, the closest I had ever gotten to a cherry orchard was reading Anton Chekhov's masterpiece, The Cherry Orchard. And if you're familiar with that play, you know it doesn't end happily for the family or the cherry trees.

Thankfully, life is much happier in the state of Washington, especially the Leavenworth region, where scores of cherry orchards heavy with fruit line the highways.

A fully fruited cherry tree is gorgeous — the clusters of cherries are dramatically suspended from branches, like firework starbursts.

Despite having eaten over three pounds of cherries in three days while we were in Washington, we're still craving them.

So last night  I made Smashed Cherries, Amaretti and Ricotta, a delightful, no-cook summer dessert from Cheryl Sterman-Rule's new cookbook, Ripe: A Colorful Approach to Fruits and Vegetables. I had tested this recipe for Cheryl last year and have made it numerous times since. No doubt, you will too.

I can, can you? Sure you can! Canning is not hard to do at all, especially if you pick a really easy project like canning fruit. This year I received a box of luscious peaches from Washington state. They were perfectly ripe, but a bit crushed in spots due to poor handling in transit. Instead of canning slices or halves, I used the fruit—some perfect and some not so perfect—to make peach ketchup!

Peach ketchup is a lovely peachy color, but it tastes very much like tomato ketchup. Taste it before you can it, and adjust the spices and sugar to suit yourself. Use really great tasting fruit, it should not be brown or overripe, but if it is soft in spots, that's ok. Use the tangy sweet and sour ketchup just as you would regular tomato ketchup. It’s particularly great on potatoes.

Sweet Preservation ia a great go-to resource for canning and freezing stone fruits, offering how-to-tips, recipes, health information, customizable canning jar labels and more.