Hello there! I hope your summer is a splendid one. We are quite well. We decided not to travel this year, and honestly, it’s been kind of nice. We’ve enjoyed long lounge sessions on the patio, enjoying the burble of the fountain whilst puzzling, sipping coffee and cool drinks, mostly the bubbly variety, sometimes with alcohol. We’ve also got a spa day planned, some restaurant adventures, and started some maintenance projects: cutting wood, redoing the raised bed borders, and general upkeep and trimming.

Two almond pulp soups! I am always so jazzed when I realize another way to use the bounty from milk-making. The top has chicken and pinto beans, the bottom, roasted bell pepper and tomato, both quite excellent. If you are a frequent flyer here, you will soon experience double vision, as I’ll post about these again, with their recipes!

We had ugly bananas, so I whipped up a delicious little cake with walnut frosting – using both liqueur and the toasted variety on top. It was most delicious! Plus, how cute is our butter dish?

As per usual, we shared our cherries with the birds and squirrels, finding heaps of pits littered on the ground. Also, as usual, there was still plenty for a human pie!

I was in the mood for something different, so I adapted a rhubarb custard pie recipe, and this vision of sweetness it it. It is also an almond pulp recipe, so I’ll be sharing it later. I believe it would work great with stone fruits or blueberries (maybe both!), too, so here’s to versatility.

Two firsts: An Oregon institution, McMenamins are a collection of brewpubs, restaurants, theaters, and boutique hotels located all around the state, often in formerly underused buildings, like former schools, even a reformatory and old folks home . They tend to have pretty wild and fantastical murals, an eccentric staff, and very good food and drink. At the first McMenamins we visited in Portland, the Ringler’s Annex, not too far from Powell’s on Burnside, I had a spinach salad with pickled red onion on it. They used red wine vinegar that was really dark, and I was eating in a dark restaurant, so I honestly didn’t know what I was tasting, at first. Boy, was it delicious, with this great crisp texture, and I have loved it ever since.

No surprise, I have decided that keeping a jar of pickled onion in the fridge is a must do, as it really does complement so many dishes. They’re also ridiculously easy to make: pint jar full of sliced red onion; add 2/3 cup of water and 2/3 cup white or red vinegar that’s been brought to boiling with 2 tablespoons or so of sugar (more or less to your taste); pour over sliced onion; cool and refrigerate. This taco plate is just one way we enjoy them, in which we also used the bottom of the jar of last year’s ultra-fiery cowboy candy, too. I do love a pickle!

I’ve also been buying bags of avocados at Costco, making a giant batch of guacamole and freezing half. I didn’t even know this was possible until recently, so what a pleasant surprise that was! Now to get in the territory of too much information, has anyone else, after hitting fifty (male or female), found that avocados create quite the burp fest? I used to think it was my gallbladder or the the fresh garlic (I’ve only been able to tolerate dried for probably five years, wah!), but I still had problems, so now I (and Greg) eat it in much smaller quantities and early in the day. Aging is so weird.

And now, to my friendliest friend of all friends, my best Buddy, and forever partner in loving, joking, and dreaming ~ GREG! He celebrated his birthday recently, and since it is Greg, of course the cake I made was chocolate. I filled it with a ridiculously good marshmallow frosting, and we ate it up in no time at all.

Hope you are having some fun eating adventures, wherever you may be…