I had a couple of extra busy weekends with Harmony Board orders. So far this first summer of Harmony Boards has been exactly as expected, slow! But for some reason, the first and second weekends of August exploded.

With that in mind, I may have been a tad overzealous about stone fruit season. First I went to Costco and bought huge clamshells of peaches, red & Rainer cherries, and red plums.

A day or two later I was at Sprouts shopping for purple (a purple soup recipe coming for you soon) and orange cauliflower for Crudités Harmony Boards.

It was then when I saw the extensive variety of stone fruit in season and on sale.  There were pink, red, and black flesh plums, yellow plumcots, Jupiter peaches, nectarines, white peaches, etc.

As my vacation to Canada with Kim drew near, I knew I had more stone fruit on hand than I had orders… oops. I was eating overripe plums for breakfast and snacks. Then it was cherries and peaches for lunch and after-dinner dessert.

While I was finishing up my final orders on the weekend before my flight, I knew I had to do more than snack on the quickly ripening fruit. I invited Connor and my dad over for dinner and made this salad.

* In my next post I’ll show you what I did with the remaining bits and pieces of fruit, cheese, and veggies before I escaped the heat.

Do you remember a few posts back when I shared my excitement over finally being able to grow something, besides herbs, in a garden?

Well, are you ready to see the surprise harvest?

The surprise is that I forgot what I’d planted. I thought it was zucchini and watermelon but turns out it was watermelon, cantaloupe, and English cucumber. This weekend I had another wonderful surprise!

The watermelon was not your run-of-the-mill red-fleshed watermelon, it is yellow!

I had completely forgotten I had planted the super cool yellow instead of the everyday red. I was overjoyed but honestly a little disappointed too.

Disappointed because I’d looked for yellow watermelon in the market when I was creating the Harmony Board for Lisa’s birthday last week but I could not find any. And there it was – in my own backyard the entire time. Doggone it!

When shopping for the board, I may not have found the melon I wanted, but I did find yellow kiwi at Costco. Did you even know there was such a thing? I discovered it a couple of summers ago, but this was the first time I saw it at Costco. The green kiwi is the smaller fuzzy one on the left. The yellow is slightly larger and has no fuzz.

Just as with the watermelon, they taste much like their everyday cousins.

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I hate to admit it, but I’ve never been much of a gardener. I’ve had an herb garden my entire adult life, so I can grow herbs, mostly cooking herbs. And I’ve always had fruit trees, but that’s not gardening.

I’ve tried to grow tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, radishes, peas, pumpkins, eggplant, okra, and even zucchini. I’ve had success with not a single one! Not even zucchini!

Everyone else I know in the gardening gig grows zucchini no problem, every harvest season I see them begging people to take their surplus. I’m so jealous! If that wasn’t bad enough, many of them even put my herb garden to shame.

This year it’s different. I don’t know if it’s the new house, a new garden, new dirt, or new attitude, but I’m a farmer now!

But it turns out I’m not really a farmer because I thought the photo above was a zucchini. I forgot what I’d planted. It’s a cucumber. Not a farmer.

Here is that same cucumber a few days later.

And here is my current harvest of cucumbers. Why is there Ketel One behind the cucumbers? Because my friend, Jen, told me about the new Ketel One Botanicals. I love the idea of them. They are lower in alcohol and calories. Botanical is vodka distilled with real botanicals and infused with natural fruit essences.

I made a delicious cucumber martini with the Cucumber Mint Botanical and my homegrown cucumber.

Back to the garden, I was also successful with cantaloupe and watermelon.

I’ve harvested that lovely perfectly round watermelon above and now I’m waiting for these weird-shaped ones to be ready.

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I’m sure I am not the only one. Honestly, I pray I’m not the only one! I often go though periods of time where I am obsessed with one specific food. I’m not talking about a craving, but rather a true obsession. Watermelon is my current object of complete focus and desire. I can’t get enough of it.

Maybe it’s this never-ending heat and the need to cool down. Perhaps I’m dehydrated and I’m using watermelon to refill and refuel my bodily fluids. Or could it be that watermelon is just so dang satisfying and delicious? Whatever it is, I confess that I’ve eaten two whole seedless watermelons in the last 3 days! I didn’t share them with anyone else, they were consumed by me alone. And I’m not talking about the sweet little baby-size individual watermelons, I’m talking about the 5 to 7-pound medium-size seedless watermelons.

Mostly, I ate them “straight up” but the other evening, I made dinner out of them by throwing together this simple salad, a copy-cat recipe of my favorite summer salad at True Food Kitchen.

At TFK, the salad is served with feta cheese. Earlier this summer I made it with fresh ricotta cheese and it was stellar! Since feta is easier to find and what I had on hand, I used it.

I’m not providing quantities for the recipe, make as little or as much as needed. Feed yourself or feed a crowd.

*Be sure the watermelon is cold and the tomatoes are at room temperature.

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I had an abundance of watermelon to use up at the 4^th of July Pot-Luck Pool Party. The week prior, I had purchased four small seedless watermelons to make these tasty treats. Kim, Peggy, Anne, and I were planning to get together at Kim’s new house for a little housewarming happy hour. At the last minute, plans changed. Without the party on the horizon, I don’t know what I would have done with them all!

I used them up in a non-alcoholic watermelon-strawberry-lemon slushy and in this refreshing watermelon salad.

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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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Watermelon and summer go hand-in-hand. Here’s a fun way to serve it up!

This recipe comes from an image I found on Pinterest. It is important to use full fat, not lite, coconut milk. Lite coconut milk will not whip.

Placing the coconut milk in the refrigerator overnight is also a must. It will cause the cream to separate from the milk. The thick cream is used, and the milk is poured off.

If you’d rather skip the coconut cream altogether, I have another Watermelon “Cake” photo from Pinterest at the end of the post, no recipe is needed for it.

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The table before dinner…

… and during dinner.

We started with Rosé champagne and a toast to the birthday girl.

Peggy’s brother, Mark, made the first toast – and her brother, Vince, said grace.

As we enjoyed our first-course salad – many of the guests toasted sweet Peggy. When Peggy got up to speak… well, there wasn’t a dry eye at the table.

Peggy and her gorgeous kids; clockwise – Peggy, Stevo, Samme, and Natalie.

Quinoa Salad with Baby Greens, Summer Fruit, and Herbs

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Maybe I should feel guilty about putting this up as a “recipe” – but honestly, I don’t.

I saw a photo of this on Pinterest several months ago and finally made it this past Saturday for our Christmas Crafts Class.

The tasty little picks disappeared right before my eyes. So yeah, I’m gonna write it up as a real recipe.

The original Pinterest post I saw used Serrano ham. I used prosciutto, salami, and other thinly sliced cured and smoked meats I had leftover from my Thanksgiving appetizer tray.

Any thinly sliced smoked or cured meat will work. Let’s see – Capocollo, Pancetta, Mortadella, Sopressata, Iberico Ham, Speck, or Calabrese … any and all would all be perfectly lovey.

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Every week for the last couple of months there has been a watermelon in my CSA bounty. I pray last weeks was the last one! I am watermeloned out! Isn’t it time for pumpkins instead? Anyhow, I did the only thing left to do with another huge watermelon… I made cocktails!

My new motto: When in doubt – Make a Cocktail!

I found the inspiration for a watermelon mai tai from Ted Allen on the Food Network website. After tasting his version, I changed the quantities of his original recipe so I could use more watermelon. We ended up liking the end product even more than the original.

If you’re not familiar with St. Germaine Liqueur, it is one of the “big deals” in the cocktail world at the moment. It is not new though, it has been made in Paris since 1884, it’s just the new hot thing. St. Germain is a sweet liqueur made in the artisanal French style from elderberry flowers. Personally, I would not drink it on its own, but it is delicious in this mai tai. If you want to give it a try without buying a big bottle, do as I did, and buy the “airplane” size bottle from a well-stocked liquor store. I found mine at Total Wine.

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