weekend of delicious

Delicious part 1:

As promised, grilled eggplant sammiches!

Heated up some whole wheat pitas and the grilled eggplant in foil in the oven…

Combined with my current favorite hummus recipe.

 

Voila! Smoky and heavenly.

I love fresh fruit in the summer. It’s like all I want to eat.

And iced tea is the perfect summer beverage (and it’s yummy with a hint of lime!)

I went to my dad’s for dinner on the 3rd. No pictures, sorry! However, we grilled, because that’s what I do now!

I used Kath's technique of microwaving the vegetables until they’re almost soft and then grilling them to get a nice sear, which worked BEAUTIFULLY (the veggies of choice were taters and red peppers), and then we made this recipe for thai-styled mussels and this recipe for marinated shrimp. Both were FANTASTIC! Grilling seafood is surprisingly easy and tasty!

Now for the 4th. Pretty much every year we go to the neighborhood where my mom grew up and where her sisters still live to celebrate. The man my mom lovingly refers to as the “local pyromaniac” has been totally obsessed with fire/fireworks/blowing stuff up since he was my age. He’s now in his late 60s, but still goes nuts with the illegal fireworks from Pennsylvania, ostensibly to impress his grandchildren. It’s always a lot of fun!

At my family events, we always have ridiculous amounts of food. Here’s about 2/3 of the table (there was more, plus appetizers, plus sangria!)

And my plate:

Hot dog, nice and blistery (I crave a hot dog about a grand total of once a year, so this was perfect), bread salad with heirloom tomatoes (yum!), shrimpies, a mini spinach and beet greens pie (I made them and they were a royal pain and I’m never making them again), Caesar salad, fruit salad, potato salad, baked beans. Delish!

At a certain point early in the day on the 4th we remembered it was my other aunt’s birthday. While my aunt who was hosting ran out for a bakery cake (in front, held by my adorable cousin Kayla), my mom (in back, in the Al Gore tshirt, hahahaha) appropriated the red velvet cake she had already made into a birthday cake. So Joanne got 2 cakes!

This was my mom’s first time making red velvet cake. She’s a great baker, but usually never has time to bake what with the full time high stress job and all. However, she decided that she’d always wanted to make red velvet cake, and what better occasion than America’s birthday!

It was deeeeeeeeeliiiiiiiiiiiiiiish. So moist! She used  this recipe, if anyone wants to try it, with the frosting from this recipe. Beauuuuuuteous!

Today for post-church brunch I appropriated some of the leftover spinach-beet greens filling from the nightmare mini pies (they ended up tasting good, but the dough was like CHEWING GUM! I COULD NOT ROLL IT OUT!), and scrambled it with some mushrooms and eggs.

That was delicious, as were the strawberries on the side. The toast I had made earlier in the week and I tried to revive it but it was too stale. So I pitched most of it and made this:

Oatmeal with banana and dried apricots. Mmm mm mm.