As much as I crave a return to the routine, we’ve still got some summer fun to pack into this week. We’ll be away from home a lot, so I don’t have many meals to plan. My garden was smaller than I originally planned, but I’ve had a great crop of parsley and basil, and two out of my three tomato plants are heavy producers. I also have a small crop of beets and carrots (probably just enough for a couple of meals). Along with a couple giant Costco containers of blueberries and strawberries, we’ve got plenty of produce.

This week

•  Pasta pesto (still plenty of basil in the garden!)
•  Tomato Scallion Shortcakes with Whipped Goat Cheese (I’ve been dying to make these every since the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook came out, and now I have enough cherry tomatoes in the garden to make them.)
• Cumin Seed Roasted Cauliflower with Yogurt (but with dried cranberries instead of pomegranate)
• Blueberry Pie

Last week

In no particular order, these are the recipes we tried last week and loved:

• Wild Rice Gratin with Kale and Caramelized Onions (from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook): I magically found myself with all the ingredients for this gratin without even planning. I had cooked a huge pot of rice earlier in the week, and had already washed and ribboned the kale when I made a salad on Thursday. The Hub and I agreed this would be a wonderful Thanksgiving side dish.
• Eggplant and Porcini “Meatballs” in Tomato Sauce (from Food and Wine): Definitely a weekend meal, but SO GOOD. Like eggplant parm in a single bite. If you roast the eggplant and make the sauce ahead of time, it’s not quite such a project. I think this would freeze well, too. If you serve this with pasta, you get several more servings out of the meal than just four.
• Indonesian Chicken Salad with Peanut Dressing (from Dinner: A Love Story): I doubled this recipe to feed a crowd of four adults and six kids (with a side of Trader Joe’s potstickers). Half of the ingredients were spread out on a platter with the dressing on the side, so the kids could pick and choose which items they liked, and half were tossed in a bowl with the dressing. Great summer meal after a day at the zoo.
  

Do you have a bounty of fresh summer produce to use up?