If you live in Arizona, you try to get out of town over the 4th of July weekend. If you are one of the unlucky few who are stuck here – welcome to the exclusive, yet unhappy, club.

We are in town because we leave for a European river cruise in two weeks.  I know, I have nothing to complain about, except the heat!

Anyhow, I decided to make the best of it and host a Pot-Luck Pool Party. I invite 48 adults and their families. All but 12 of the aforementioned adults (along with two toddlers) are escaping the heat. Those lucky dogs!

That’s okay, the 12 of us are going to endure as we float in the pool, sip on this light and lovely rosé sangria and indulge Tram’s twins, Zak & Zoey, with all sorts of love and attention.

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Steve and Tram are building a new home. Their house recently sold and they have to be out in a month. They love to entertain but haven’t been in the position to do so for months now. The reason? Well, many of us know how difficult it is to keep our homes clean and ready to show at the drop of a hat. Imagine trying to do that with two full-time jobs and 2-year old twins. Talk about stressful!

Saturday night, the overachieving duo hosted an intimate dinner party. Steve was the stellar chef and pitmaster and Tram was the dessert queen.

It’s bittersweet to sell the house you brought your babies home to, so Tram lovingly called the evening The Last Supper. I call it a Housecooling, you know, the opposite of a Housewarming.

I created a new cocktail for the occasion, so in honor of Zak and Zoey’s first home, I’m attaching that moniker to the drink.

I’m already looking forward to the Housewarming Party!

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Kim sent me a video on Instagram from The Food Network. The video showed how to make a Watermelon Tiki Drink. Since Marissa was in town over the weekend for her best friend’s wedding shower, I thought it would be the perfect time to give the cocktail a try.

I’m calling it The Watermelon Crawl Cooler and I call it absolutely adorable and perfect for a summer pool party! I’ve even made a little movie for you. It’s at the end of the post. Oh, and be sure to turn on your volume – the song is awesome!

You’ll need an immersion blender. The one in the video from Kim was fancier than mine. The edge was wavy and sharp and it cut into the watermelon.

Mine doesn’t have that ability, so I just pressed the hand blender hard onto the center of the watermelon to score it.

Next, I used a paring knife to cut around the score…

… and cut out the top of the watermelon.

Oh, and before you do any of that, check to see if your watermelon will stand or roll. If it rolls, slice a little off the bottom so that it will stand and be steady.

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Happy Birthday to one of my dearest and most beautiful friends, Anne!

Anne is not on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or any other sort of social media – I know, right?!?  But she does read this blog daily, so if you’re lucky enough to know Sweet Anne, please feel free to wish her a Happy Birthday in the comment area below.

To celebrate, Peggy and I took Anne to the wonderful Virtù Honest Craft in Old Scottsdale.

Anne and Peggy had the Seared Orata.

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When I entertain, I want everyone to feel special and loved. That means not only taking dietary restrictions and food preferences into consideration but also thinking of those who don’t imbibe. Often people think that individuals “of age” don’t drink because they have been through AA. But there are many reasons your guests may choose not to drink. A guest could be pregnant or trying to become pregnant (fun!) or it may be they’ve given up alcohol for Lent or for a diet. Or they could just be taking a break from it after one of those, “I’ll never drink again!” weekends.

No matter the reason, you want to offer them something more special than water, tea, coffee, Coke, or soda water. You want them to feel like they are part of the party … because … they are!

I created this mocktail for just such an occasion. The best way to make all feel included is to create a full-flavored and well-rounded drink that tastes just as fabulous without alcohol as it does with it.

Not all cocktails can be turned into a mocktail. For instance, a dirty martini doesn’t make the cut. Your non-drinkers would basically be drinking olive juice with a couple of olives on a pick. That’s not going to happen!

This drink makes the cut and then some. I’ve named it after the nickname that Steve and Tram gave to my backyard because the main ingredients, pink grapefruit, and rosemary, come from there. I’m calling the virgin recipe a Spritzer and the alcoholic version a Gin Fizz. Oh, and please don’t be intimidated by the length of the recipe. It is not at all difficult or time-consuming, it’s just my rambling instructions.

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Here is a recipe that I forgot to post from a few weeks ago when Kim generously gifted me with fresh Mission figs.

I have a beautiful fig tree of my own but I adore Mission figs and unfortunately, mine is a Kadota fig tree. So Kim’s figs were a real treat. Thank you, Kim! xoxo

You’ll need only a handful of ingredients for this delicious and quick “anytime of the week” dinner.

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Kim gifted me with fresh Mission figs and sweet little plums. I know, it’s like a darn fruit stand over here!

I ate all the plums straight away and then worked the figs and all those peaches, ripening and being picked each and every day, into our meals.

What follows is one of the quickest and easiest of the bunch.

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I have a peach tree in my backyard and boy do I love it! So much so, that I’ll be using the ripe juicy peaches and other fresh summer fruits in every recipe for the rest of the week. I really have no choice. The season is fast and furious and it’s a “use it or lose it” situation.

The peach tree I have now is a sweet little dwarf tree.

But back when we bought the house in 1999, I planted a full-size peach tree, and was that ever a mistake!

By May 2003, the tree got so big and produced so much fruit that I could not keep up.

The previous three photos were taken at a “Peach Pickin’ Dinner” where I begged my friends to come over and help me pick and eat peaches. We picked enough peaches to cover the entire kitchen island, and those were just the ones that were ripe that night!

By 2005, the tree could not keep up either.

It produced so many peaches that the limbs broke under the weight of the fruit.

A couple of years later, we remodeled the entire backyard, so the damaged and the sad big peach tree was out and the dwarf peach was in.

The dwarf is in the same place and it must be the perfect local for such a tree because it produces like crazy too.

Thankfully, not a kitchen island full of peaches, but a cutting board full every few days of the short season. Much more manageable!

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Happy Memorial Day! I hope you and your loved ones are spending a relaxing and reflective weekend together.

Aw, finally! The day has arrived, I am posting the last recipe from my Friday the 13th Dinner Party. I’m just happy I was able to squeak it in before the first of June! The lucky element in this final recipe is the coconut.

The tradition/superstition is that eating any round fruit on New Year’s brings luck and good fortune. In the Philippines, 13 is considered a lucky number so the custom calls for eating 13 round fruits. Whereas, in Europe and the States, we eat 12, which represents the months in a year. In both cases, their coin-like shape and their sweetness are what bring luck.

This is similar to the earlier mentioned belief that when you eat 12 grapes at midnight of New Year, it will bring you wealth and more luck for the next 12 months of the coming year.

A few pointers before we get to the recipe:

To hull the strawberries, you can use a paring knife, a strawberry huller (similar to little tweezers), or a straw. I’m all about the straw method. It’s quick and fun.

I bought the mold for the ice pops HERE on Amazon.

The sticks tend to float up when the molds are filled. I fixed that by placing the empty box the mold came in on top while the pops were in the freezer. Problem solved.

To store the frozen pops; lay down or stand up in a tight-sealing container with pieces of parchment paper in-between each pop.

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This was the main dessert for the Friday the 13th Dinner Party.

The frosting is what makes this cake special and bananas are the unlucky ingredient.

It’s crazy how many “explanations” there are for the superstition that bananas on boats bring bad luck, illness, and bad fishing. Here are but a few from Snopes.com:

• When top-heavy ships of earlier eras would sink, precious little other than the bananas they’d carried would be found floating on the surface, thereby leaving some to conclude conveyance of the fruit itself had led to these naval mishaps.
• Spiders, snakes, and other poisonous vermin living among bananas carried in the hold would, on long haul trips, expand their horizons by infesting other parts of the ship.
• Because the speediest sailing ships were used to get bananas to their destinations before they could spoil, those attempting to fish from them never caught anything while trolling.
• Fisherman became ill after eating the fruit.
• Other fruits would spoil more quickly when bananas were being shipped along with them, causing folks to deem bananas “bad luck.” (Technically, it wouldn’t have been ill fate that resulted in the spoilage of other foodstuffs, but instead, the ethylene gas emitted by bananas as they ripen.)
• Crew member injured by slipping on discarded banana peels.
• Banana oil rubs off onto the hands of a fisherman, thereby “spooking” the fish.

Makes me wonder if Banana Boat sunscreen was named as an ode to the superstition. Anyhow, this cake was lucky for me because it turned out perfectly. One thing though, I think it tastes better the day after it is baked.

*** Note: The cake was the first of the recipes I made for the party, so don’t mind me, I thought I was being cute and clever when I placed lucky and unlucky “charms” in the photos as I made the cake. 🙂

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