What to do With Fresh Peaches

This week I am picking up two boxes of peaches from The Peach Truck.  I first started getting a box two years ago, then next year was another box of perfectly ripe peaches.  At that point I realized I needed more than a box so this year I am expanding to a whole box and a half (splitting the second box with one of my sisters).  Fresh produce is, hands down, one of the best parts about summer.

Getting a box (or 1½ boxes) of fresh peaches is always super exciting, perfect peaches are one of my top 5 all-time favorite foods.  But the initial excitement is always followed immediately by "oh my goodness, I need to do something with these peaches before they go bad".  Which puts me in a bit of a panic and then I get to work.  I don't have as many things I do with peaches as with strawberries but I still have a few go-tos to keep our freezer full for months to come.

1) Eat Them
I eat a lot more fresh peaches than I will strawberries.  There is something so easy about pulling out a perfectly ripe peach and eating it in under a minute with the juice running down my arm (best done over the sink).  I will eat multiple a day for the few days they are perfect.  The boys join me in this.

2) Freeze Them
The second easiest thing to do, usually when I need to get these peaches off my counter before they go bad.  First peel them: cut an X in the bottom and then place in boiling water for ~1 minute.  Remove and place in a sink or bowl of ice cold water (if you can).  Then the skins should slip right off.  Slice and freeze on a lined (I like silicone mats) cookie sheet until frozen and then transfer to a freezer bag.

We will use most of these in smoothies but some will be baked into treats (probably peach crisp).

3) Make Peach Sorbet, and then more Peach Sorbet
One of my ABSOLUTE favorite frozen treats.  I will make A LOT of batches of this and freeze into Mason jars.  I think I alone eat every bite that I make and I am not sorry about it.  This is my treat for days when I run.  It is delicious and amazing and worth every bit of the (not extensive) work.

4) Make Peach Ice Cream
Matt and the boys seem to prefer the ice cream to sorbet (which might also be because I am bad at sharing the sorbet) so I will also make a couple batches of this to stick in the freezer.  It's not quite as easy as my strawberry ice cream go-to recipe but it's still delicious with just a little more work.

 

Those are the major ways we use up our peaches but, don't worry, I have a few more recipes if you need ways to use up those peaches (I will likely make some popsicles too!)

What do/would you do if you had a box of fresh peaches?  I am always up for new recipes to try!

What to do with Strawberries

It's strawberry time!  Our favorite local u-pick farm just opened up for picking and I got decent (priced and flavor) berries at Aldi last week. One of my favorite things about summer is the amount of wonderful fresh produce (and by that I mean fruit and corn on the cob) we can get.  There isn't much variety or freshness to our fruit eating in the winter but by summer we are nearly drowning in all kinda of fresh fruits and it is amazing.

I am not only buying strawberries for immediate eating (although I am doing that too), but also to save up a bunch to use in the coming months in a variety of ways.  My strawberry buying always starts with me overloading the cart and then getting home and realizing I have to do something with all these berries.  Strawberries aren't the easiest of the fruits I buy like this (that would be blueberries) but they aren't the hardest either (that's peaches).  A little time, some of which I can do at the backyard picnic table while the boys play, and we get to spread out our strawberry enjoyment a little bit longer.  

Here's what I do with them besides immediately eat and enjoy:

1) Freeze them
One of the easier things to do with strawberries.  I wash many pounds up, hull them, slice the bigger ones into small pieces and freeze dozens of old sour cream containers of them in the deep freeze.  The key is remembering to defrost my deep freeze before starting on strawberries because afterwards there is no hope of it getting done for another 11½ months.  

These frozen strawberries we will use in smoothies, mixed drinks, and a family favorite, strawberry applesauce come fall.  It is crucial to have A LOT of frozen strawberries on hand for that one.

2) Make strawberry ice cream
Strawberry ice cream is one of Matt's favorite flavors and so when I have good, fresh strawberries I make a couple of extra batches for the freezer.  These might last until the end of the summer, depending on how much I make and how many other kinds are competing to get eaten.  It certainly doesn't last all year (we only have so much freezer space) but it is one we stock up on a bit when we have good berries. 

3) Make strawberry popsicles
Likewise, these strawberry popsicles are a family favorite and while they are bursting with freshly picked strawberries they also have sugar but not a ton of sugar and I don't feel bad giving my boys these as dessert (or a snack).  These never make it until the end of the summer, I only have so many molds and lots of popsicles competing for them, but I tend to fill all the molds I have with these when we have fresh berries.

4) Make strawberry jam
Sam has been on a real PB&J kick for months now and he likes the homemade strawberry jam so much that I caught him drinking it a few weeks ago (it is really good).  I buy pectin from the store and follow the directions on the box.  It's nothing fancy but a few batches will last us all winter.  Matt & Luke pretty much only eat peanut butter on Fridays in Lent but they'll use this on toast or waffles/pancakes too.  Super easy way to keep everyone happy.

NOW, if you are looking for other strawberry recipes, I've got you covered, at least mixed drinks and ice cream/popsicle wise.  I also rarely turn down strawberry shortcake although I've never posted a recipe for it!  It is one of the delights of strawberry season!

Desserts:

 Frozen Things:

Mixed Drinks type:

 

That's what I do with the plethora of strawberries that come home with me in the summer.  Do you have any great recipes or ways of using them to share?  I'd love to hear! Happy strawberry season!

Basic Buttery Biscuits

There is an easy reader series that Luke really liked last fall about a dog named Biscuit.  And every single time Luke read one of those books to me I would think about how much I wanted to eat a biscuit.  TO BE CLEAR, not the dog.  I am perfectly fine not touching a dog for the rest of my life (sorry, dog lovers) and that includes in my mouth.  But, I do love a good biscuit.

Then I happened to come across this biscuit recipe and made them once when we were having soup or chili or something.  And I liked them.  I made them again when my parents came over for dinner on Christmas Day.  I made them semi-regularly, mostly to slowly eat by myself.  Then quarantine happened and since March I have ALWAYS had a batch in the freezer, and in the rare occasion I don't have a batch in the freezer it's because I have one in the oven or on the counter cooling off.  

 
Quarantine meant still getting up very early most days because Matt was going into work super early 4 days a week.  On these days I'd workout, take a shower and get around and then still, usually, have at least an hour before the boys would wake up.  I always waited to eat breakfast with them but I would be HUNGRY.  Enter these biscuits.  I started having one almost every morning while reading or working and waiting for them to wake up for breakfast.  (Except for a glorious few days where I had perfectly fresh peaches and I ate one of those instead.  I will trade a perfectly fresh peach for almost any other food item.)

These days I no longer have an hour while waiting for my breakfast.  I still get up early with Matt, work out, shower, and then it's time to get the boys up and out the door.  BUT my biscuit time has transitioned to the start of Sam's nap.  I LOVE those 30ish minutes where I have my hot tea, a biscuit, a sleeping baby, and I just get to read.  It is quite literally my favorite moments of the entire day and is so life giving for me.  

The biscuits are super simple and I think are delicious.  I recently started making a double batch and realized that's perfect because I can't over mix them without ruining my mixer and therefore, they turn out almost perfectly soft and buttery and amazing.  Plus, it's longer before I have to make another batch.  Sam LOVES cutting these out with me and also sneaking way more dough than he should.  

These helped get me through the two months of intense quarantine and are a delightful treat for my reading time.  

Note: I usually make a double batch now, freezing all but what we've eaten immediately in a gallon ziploc bag.  The recipe below is a single batch.  I have a "Artisan" series KitchenAid mixer with a 5 quart bowl (I'd love for someone to buy THAT through my affiliate link! Hah.) and the double batch just perfectly fits in there.

 
Basic Buttery Biscuits
yield: around 15 biscuits

Ingredients
-2 cups all-purpose flour
-1 TB baking powder
-1 tsp salt
-1 tsp sugar
-1 stick (i.e. 8TB or ½ cup) butter, cold and diced
-¾ cup half and half (or ½ cup heavy cream and ¼ cup milk, or ¾ cup heavy cream, depends on what you have on hand and how rich you want these to be!)

Instructions
Mix all dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt, sugar) in the bowl of a stand mixer.  Add the butter, a few chunks at a time.  Mix on low speed until the mixture is like course sand.  Add the heavy cream/milk/half and half and mix just until combined.  Do NOT over mix!

Dump the dough onto a lightly floured surface and gentle roll out to about ½ inch thick.  Cut out circles with a 2-3 inch circle cookie cutter and place on ungreased cookie sheet (I think I usually use my silicone baking mats but they aren't needed.).

Bake for 20-22 minutes, until the tops are just lightly brown.  Let cool and either devour or freeze!  They would keep sealed at room temp for at least a few days as well.

Source: Everyday Reading

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Patriotic Kabobs

Can you believe we are almost at the 4th of July already??  I always think of that holiday as the mid-point in the summer.  Which wasn't true when our summers were Memorial Day - Labor Day (which is still what I think of as summer) but now that Luke will be back in school in mid-August (can we PLEASE push that start date back a couple weeks??  The first two weeks of June are rarely nice but we rush to be out of school then anyways!) so the 4th is about the mid-point of summer now. 

The 4th always feels like peak summer, summer at it's summeriest.  I want to have a cookout, eat burgers and corn on the cob, drink American beer (or maybe not, I don't drink a lot of beer), and sit by the pool and read while the boys play (we haven't tried the inflatable pool with Sam yet this year, I don't expect I'll have a lot of "sitting by the pool and reading" while he's in/around the pool this year!  Maybe if it's just Luke during a naptime.)  Matt and Luke will want a watermelon (there's a reason I've never posted a watermelon recipe here...) and I want all the blueberries (I always want all the blueberries).  It's when strawberry and blueberry season kinda overlap which means we have a good chance of getting good berries of both.  I want lemonade for Luke and sparklers for all.  Matt only ever gets just the 4th off (unless it falls over a weekend) so it's a lot of summering to pack into one day!

I don't want to spend time cleaning or in the kitchen doing massive food prep.  Grilling seems patriotic.  Boiling water for corn too.  And if you are looking for a super easy and not very time consuming dessert to add to your patriotic meal (or just regular meal), I've got one!

This was as simple as washing and hulling the berries.  Making brownies (easily done in advance) and then doing a whole bunch of skewering.  Luke helped me and it didn't take too long (20 minutes?).  I made a couple without marshmallows (because I don't like those either, the list of foods I do not eat is rather long).  A couple without brownies (for those crazy people who don't like chocolate).  Easily customized and they feel festive!

I don't need to type up a recipe, right?  The pictures are pretty self explanatory! Go forth and skewer!

DIY Strawberries & Cream Instant Oatmeal

I've recently learned that I am pretty alone in my dislike of eggs.  I use them for baking but never, and I mean NEVER, eat them for breakfast.  I literally don't know how to make scrambled eggs or an omelet or dippy eggs or any other kind...because I never have.  Also, I don't like them.  My sister with a bunch of a kids said they will go through 6 dozen eggs in two weeks, eating most of those for breakfasts.  Even with all my extra Christmas and Thanksgiving baking I'll go through about 3 dozen in two months. 

Matt likes scrambled eggs...but we never have them at home.  I honestly couldn't tell you if Luke does because I've never seen him express any kind of opinion.  We are very strongly cereal people here, with the special occasion (i.e. lake trips, holidays) cinnamon rolls, coffee cake, donuts, etc.  We either eat cereal or sugary baked goods.  Those are our breakfasts.

But sometimes it's nice to have something warm in the winter and since eggs aren't going to happen and most days aren't "special" enough for cinnamon rolls, we eat oatmeal.  I still like the overnight oats I posted years ago but I don't always remember to get those around the night before.  So having something on hand that we can easily mix up in the morning in super handy.

I've long been fond of the instant oatmeal fruit & cream packets you can buy at the grocery store.  When I was suffering through my worst days of HFM with sores all over my mouth and tongue, they were one of the few things I could eat without pain.  But they aren't the healthiest and I knew we could make something a little cheaper, a little less sugar.  So we did.  Now we have a hot, easy breakfast option.

  
DIY Strawberries & Cream Instant Oatmeal
yield: at least a dozen servings.  It makes a lot.
Ingredients 
-7½ cups quick cooking oats, divided
-1½ cup powdered coffee creamer
-1 cup sugar
-.6 ounces dried strawberries (I have found these at both Aldi and Target)

Directions
1) Put 1½ cup of oats into your blender or food processor and turn into a powder.  Really a powder.  Do not skip this, it will help thicken up your oatmeal.

2) Chop the dried strawberries into smaller pieces.

3) Stir all ingredients together - oats, oat powder, coffee creamer, sugar, and strawberries.  Store in a sealed container.

To make a bowl of oatmeal I heat up ~½ cup of water in the microwave.  Pour about ½ cup of mix into a bowl.  Add the hot water until you reach your desired consistency. 

 

Source: modified from The Creative Princess and Treats with a Twist

Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies

For a long time I made one kind of cookie (other than Christmas).  These chocolate chip cookies which are so easy and so delicious.  I've made dozens of batches in the last 4 or so years, even in, maybe, my favorite use for them: Chipwiches (whhhhhhhy haven't I made these again??)

But sometimes, it's nice to change it up a little bit.  We make these Salted Chocolate Chip cookies, Compost cookies, and now these Coconut Chocolate Chip cookies have been worked into the rotation.  If you've noticed that all of these cookies feature chocolate...well, yes.  We're not crazy over here.  I think I need a little bit (or some days a lot bit) of chocolate every day.  Sometimes that's a piece of dark chocolate (SO GOOD) but most days a cookie of some sort is worked in there too. 

(Part) of the beauty of these is that they can easily be mixed by hand.  I love my stand mixer but sometimes it's also nice to do things by hand.  And there is also a HIGH quantity of chocolate.  Like it's hard to roll the cookies because there sometimes feels like more chocolate than dough in a cookie.  Which bakes up to something wonderful, delightful, and so tasty.  So if you can work through a little bit of a cookie forming problem, these are worth the effort.  Delicious, gooey, and so chocolatey.  That's pretty much what I'm looking for in a cookie!

Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies
yield: about 2 dozen
Ingredients
-½ cup melted coconut oil (or you could sub in melted butter)
-½ cup packed brown sugar
-¼ cup sugar
-2 tsp vanilla

-1 egg
-1 cup old-fashioned oats
-1 cup AP flour
-¼ tsp salt
-1 tsp baking soda
-¾ cup sweetened shredded coconut
-½ cup chocolate chips
-2 oz chopped semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate
-sea or kosher salt for sprinkling

Directions
1) In a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the oil, and sugars and stir vigorously until smooth.  Add the vanilla and egg, stir until combined.
2) In a small, separate bowl, stir together the oats, flour, salt and baking soda.  Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet, just until combined.  Stir in the coconut and chocolates. 
3) Line baking sheets with silicone baking mats or parchment paper.  Roll the dough into balls about 1 inch in diameter, place on baking sheets.  Sprinkle with sea/kosher salt.  Cover loosely with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 15 minutes (or longer).

3) Preheat the oven to 350°.  Bake the cookies for 10-11 minutes.  The middles will look under baked when you pull them out but the edges should just be starting to turn brown.  Do NOT over bake!  Let cool on baking sheets for 3-5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack.

Source: slightly modified from Averie Cooks via Life Made Simple

BBQ Chicken Burgers

Sometimes I write about a recipe after only making it once or twice.  Sometimes it's after making it for years.  This one is definitely the latter.

We made these BBQ chicken burgers for Luke's 1st birthday party (he's now 4) and they are one of our grilling staples in the summer.  It's a mash-up of burgers (easy to grill and eat) and grilled chicken (cheaper and healthier?)?  I've found them to be pretty easy to mix up and then send them out to the grill with Matt.

I keep thinking I should learn to grill.  Matt did teach me one summer.  It feels empowering to know how to do that.  But I don't like handling raw meat and realllllly don't like eating undercooked meat so my tendency would be to burn EVERYTHING just to ensure no pink and nobody really wants to eat things like that.  I've managed to burn bacon every time I've made it (all of twice) and now tell Matt it's his responsibility.  It saves us a lot of wasted bacon.  And probably grill meat too.  Since I do most of our meal prep and grocery shopping and menu planning and most the things that make sure we have food on the table, I don't really feel bad about delegating the actual grilling to Matt.  I get a slight break in the kitchen and we still get delicious food.

Back to these burgers, you can adjust these a little to your level of spicy.  We use store-bought BBQ sauce just to keep things easy, both in the burgers and on top.  We often add cheese, just like when grilling burgers.  They have a wonderful flavor and every single time we have them I'm glad I suffered through touching the raw chicken.  Give these a try if you are looking to change up your grilling menu!

Note: The first time I made these I bought a pound ground chicken at the store which costs as much as a 3lb bag of frozen chicken breasts at Aldi.  Then I wised up and started thawing frozen chicken and grinding them myself in the food processor.  Definitely the cheaper (and barely harder) option.

BBQ Chicken Burgers


yield: 4 burgers (easily multiples for more!)
Ingredients
-1 lb. ground chicken
-¼ cup cornmeal
-2 tsp brown sugar
-1 tsp dry mustard
-½ tsp kosher salt
-½ tsp paprika
-¼ tsp garlic powder
-pinch of cayenne pepper
-2 TB barbecue sauce, plus more for serving

-buns
-sliced cheese
-other burger toppings, as you wish

Directions
-Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix until well combined.  Form into 4 patties and refrigerate until ready to grill.

-(I'm going to assume you have some basic grill knowledge going forward...this is the part I delegate)
Oil the grill grates and place the patties on the grill.  Cook for 3-4 minutes and then flip.  Cook about another 3 minutes.  Top with cheese slices if you wish and continue cooking until the cheese is melted.  Serve!

source: modified from Pink Parsley Catering via Annie's Eats

Grilled Ham & Pineapple Sandwich

Let's just start with the obvious here.  Grilled cheese sandwiches are not real photogenic.  Somehow restaurants can get away with it with their super thick bread and all that but...I don't have that.  I have a standard loaf from Aldi.  And mine don't turn out pretty. 

BUT

That's pretty ok because they do turn out delicious and what is really the most important here?

(I mean, pretty would help if I was posting this to Instagram but...you'll just have to take my word for it that the taste is better than the looks.)

I have very fond taste memories of making this sandwich over a 4th of July weekend many years ago, maybe 2008?  (Side note: today I heard of something referred to as about 20 years ago which my mind automatically thinks "80s" and then they said it was from the late 90s....so.  That makes me feel old.)

I made this many times over that weekend ~9 years ago and then kept meaning to make it again but I rarely had all the ingredients at the same time (namely: whipped cream cheese) so it never happened again until recently.  And it was just as delicious and delightful as I remember it being.

I'm sure we are all familiar with grilled cheese sandwiches and the general method for making them.  This one is a little messier to make than most with needing to spread something on both sides of a piece of bread (I can never do this without getting a butter covered hand) but it washes off easily enough.

I'm not saying you'll only like this if you like pineapple pizza (which I adamantly do) but having affection for fruit warm and with meat does help. (It's not that strange of combination...who hasn't had pineapple on a cooked ham at some point in their life??)

So, if you like ham and you like pineapple and you like grilled cheese, give this a shot.  It's delicious. 

Grilled Ham & Pineapple Sandwich
yield: one sandwich
Ingredients
-2 slices of bread
-5-6 slices of deli meat ham
-whipped cream cheese
-one pineapple ring (fresh if you have it otherwise canned works too!)

Directions
Spread butter on one side of each piece of bread.  Put one, butter side down, in a skillet over medium-high heat.  Top with slices of ham and a pineapple ring.  On the non-buttered side of the other piece of bread spread some whipped cream cheese.  Place, cream cheese side down, on the pineapple.  Cook each side for a few minutes, until a nice golden brown.  Serve!

Source: slightly adapted from AllRecipes

Milk Bar Salted Chocolate Chip Cookies

When we were in New York last year, one of the places I had long marked at stop at was Milk Bar.  I had first heard of them when my brother-in-law got one of their cookbooks from the library many years earlier and showed us the recipe for Compost Cookies.  I forgot about them for a few years until my friend Monica posted the recipe for those same cookies on her blog shortly before our trip.  Milk Bar quickly made our food list (which was mostly bakeries at that point...nothing wrong with that!  We walked constantly so carbs were necessary!). 

When we stopped (and waited in a decent line, just for cookies) Matt and I both tried the heralded Compost Cookie and Luke had a birthday cake cookie (sprinkles are irresistible to kids) and declared them all delicious, as we sat eating them in Central Park.  (We will most definitely be doing this again on our next trip.)  I've since made the Compost Cookies at home (which may have been quicker than waiting in that line) and they were delicious. 

Why am I talking so much about the cookies I didn't make?  I don't know, sometimes I feel like I just sit at the keyboard and ramble type.  But more to the point, I had good memories and associations with other Milk Bar cookies so when this recipe popped up on my Pinterest I thought they sounded good to try.  I'm not going to be one to turn down a good chocolate chip cookie.  And these were good.

A thing I reallllly like about this recipe: you don't need a mixer, it can all be done by hand.  I have a stand mixer, a pretty new one actually that is a beautiful blue.  BUT sometimes it's nice to not have to drag the whole thing out and clean it up afterwards (as if cleaning just a mixing bowl is different from the mixer bowl).  It just seemed quicker and easier to make cookies by hand...instead of using the machine that does most of the work (I don't expect anyone to understand my logic).  So we mixed up these cookies and enjoyed them greatly. 

Even though we didn't eat these in New York they still, slightly, took me back to our trip and made me a little itchy (itchier) to go back.  If you're looking to change up from a standard chocolate chip cookie or just take a break from the mixer, well, here you go.   (And maybe we'll try these on our next trip to Milk Bar, purely for scientific, comparison reasons.)

Milk Bar Salted Chocolate Chip Cookies
yield: about 18-20 cookies
Ingredients
-½ pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted and just warm to the touch
-¾ cup packed brown sugar
-½ cup sugar
-1 egg
-2 tsp vanilla extract
-1¾ cup AP flour
-2 TB nonfat milk powder
-1¼ tsp kosher salt
-½ tsp baking powder
-¼ tsp baking soda
-12 chocolate chips or chunks
-kosher or flaked salt for sprinkling

Directions
1) Preheat the oven to 375°.  Line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.

2) Using a wooden spoon, stir together the sugars in a large mixing bowl then add the melted butter.  Stir vigorously for about a minute or a little longer.  Mix together the egg and vanilla in a measuring cup or small bowl and add to the sugar/butter.  Stir until it gets all glossy, about a minute.

3) Separately mix together the flour, milk powder, salt, baking soda and baking powder then add to the sugar/butter/egg.  Stir just until combined.  Add the chocolate chips/chunks and stir just until evenly distributed.

4) Portion out into balls about the size of golf balls, spacing about 2-3 inches apart on the baking sheets.  Sprinkle with kosher or flaked salt.  Bake for 9-11 minutes, until the edges are golden brown but the centers are still soft.  Let cool on the baking sheets and then transfer to a wire rack.  

 
Source: Foodie Crush