Comunidad Health Foods

Strawberry. Banana. Oreo. Frozen. Yogurt.

I had you at hello, didn’t I? I couldn’t think of a better way to kick off National Ice Cream Month (okay, maybe strawberry banana oreo ice cream would have been more appropriate….). The idea came to me in a much simpler form, and by came to me, I really mean that I stole it from one of the most endearing local ice cream parlors I’ve ever been to. I hope that doesn’t make me an evil person. I was up in the Pocono Mountains on a vacation with L before my summer class started, and we took a ride over to Coutt’s Blueberry Farm Market, a small gift-and-treats store owned by the same family that owns a nearby blueberry farm. The store boasts adorable keepsakes, a standard but intriguing lunch menu, and – my personal favorite – homemade ice cream and baked goods. They have standard flavors, but their crazier ones are to die for – I’m talking blueberry cheesecake, cinnamon bun, and Buckhorn – an “everything but the kitchen sink” indulgence so named for the local high school’s mascot. The day L and I went, they also had a flavor called Banana-Oreo, and after sampling a few flavors (I had to make sure I chose the right one!), I went with it. I thought of it as a kooky combination, but one that seemed unmistakably natural upon taking the first bite. It was sweet and subdued from the banana, with chunks of oreo intensity scattered throughout to keep you on your toes. That night when we sat down to eat our ice cream for dessert, I knew that I had to try my hand at it. Ban-Oreo ice cream was in Floptimism’s future.

Then, one day later in the summer, I was food shopping at my local Giant. I was on a mission – list in hand, full of fresh produce, milk, and eggs. The cookie aisle was not a stop on this particular day’s train. The Grocery Gods must have known this, for fate intervened and placed a cunning, alluring display of Oreos right next to the milk case…and not just any Oreos, either, but limited-edition, short-time-only, Berry Burst Ice Cream Oreos. I couldn’t help but be drawn to them! I picked them up, turned them over, examined the ingredients, and then stood with them in my hands for several more beats. I didn’t need them. They weren’t on my list. But limited edition Oreos! Still, my sheer iron will turned them away, and I marched out of the store proudly sans cookies.

I also proceeded to think about those darn specialty Oreos incessantly for next few days. Days turned into weeks, and I knew I needed to try them. I looked up reviews online, and finally tracked them down with L. We sampled them and were pleasantly surprised. We’re both relative purists when it comes to Oreos – I personally have only ever strayed as far as double stuffed and golden, but both times have come crawling back to the glory of the original. The others weren’t bad – just not as downright addicting. L has tried a few more varieties, but he too always comes back to the original. Still, they were good! Not original good, but I have no regrets in buying them. The filling is slightly thicker than normal, yet the ratio seems to be spot on between the decadent chocolate and the sweetness of the berry filling, which is reminiscent of a slightly oversugared strawberries-and-cream concoction. As my mom said upon sampling them, you can’t devour a whole sleeve of these guys in the blink of an eye like you can with the originals (maybe this is a blessing in disguise, but the glutton in me regrets this fact) – two or three is plenty satisfying – but they’re good. And we left it at that.

Then, it came time for Ban-Oreo ice cream. I looked up some recipes and considered my options. I decided to use a banana frozen yogurt recipe from Diethood as my starting base, and made changes to fit my vision more closely. I went to make my shopping list, but as I was writing down Oreos, I stopped myself. Why buy a pack of regular Oreos, when I have a nearly full pack of Berry Ice Cream oreos sitting on my kitchen counter? I mean, strawberry-banana is a killer combination! Strawberry-chocolate is, too, and I already know from Coutt’s that Banana-Oreo works fantastically. It had to work!

And that, my friends, is how the Strawberry Ban-Oreo Frozen Yogurt was born. It came together like a charm, a very fast charm, and churned up more beautifully than any other frozen treat I’ve made to date. It looked beautiful, with flecks of pink from the Oreos peppering the otherwise off-white base and chunks of deep chocolate Oreo cookies. It tasted creamy and tangy, not at all too sweet but just enough, and the banana tasted like real bananas, not some artificial banana flavoring. Next time, I would add a great deal more banana liqueur for two purposes – (1) to up the banana flavor just a little bit more, and (2) to help keep the frozen yogurt from freezing up so solidly in the freezer. As it stands, it really needs to thaw for a long time before being scoopable. I’d also consider making it with a combination of yogurt and milk so that it maintained its thick creaminess, but the liquid of the milk would help with this freezing issue. I would also crush a few more Oreos to allow the chocolate flavor to be a bit more pervasive. But really, all of these changes are me being nit-picky, because this recipe is a gem, and I am incredibly proud of how well it turned out. L even commented that it looked like an ice cream you’d buy at a store! I’m taking some in to work tomorrow to celebrate the holiday weekend right (and with it being July 1^st, it only seems appropriate), so I hope my coworkers enjoy it as much as my mom, L and I have been.

One Year Ago: Grilled Herbed Turkey with Maple-Dijon Sauce

Update: This recipe is featured in a post on Around the Plate!

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 The original recipe for this Avocado, Tomato & Feta Quinoa Salad is actually a salsa, and is described as “addicting” and “gone within 20 minutes” of being set out at a party. Although I tweaked it (barely), I have to say that I agree. The ingredient list is modest and the recipe is simple, but the combination is out of this world. The creamy, savory with-a-hint-of-sweet flavors work in such harmony with the freshness of the tomatoes and avocado and the salty edge of the feta. I can picture this being irresistible with chips, vegetable dippers, as a topping for an omelet or chicken, mixed into pasta…I mean, keep on listing possible mix-ins or bases, and I think you’ll be hard-pressed to find one that doesn’t work. It’s just a solid, tasty recipe – and I think you’d find it to be a refreshing addition to your July 4^th menu, if you’re searching for that extra je ne sais quoi of the culinary variety.

 Although I don’t have any specific July 4^th recipes planned for you, I would like to devote the next several entries to dishes that could easily be enjoyed over the holiday weekend. This salsa/quinoa salad is a great start. I also have an enticing container of homemade frozen yogurt firming up in my freezer this very minute (did you know July is National Ice Cream Month? Like I needed an excuse!), some sugar cookies in my archived recipes and my weekend baking plan, and maybe even an indulgent chocolate cake to really top it all off. And, just to redeem all of those desserts, I also have recipes for egg salad (lightened up), bruschetta…there’s no way I’ll be ambitious enough to post all of these by Monday, so maybe I’m just teasing you now, but be sure to check back here for some decidedly delicious, crowd-pleasing fare!


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Join Dine & Dish and Cookin’ Canuck for the California Avocado 4th of July Blast, sponsored by the California Avocado Commission.

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 You’re not currently sitting in front of your computer, inside while the sun shines outside your window. You’re not paying bills, doing laundry, or trying to figure out what’s for dinner. No, right now, you’re sitting on a beachfront patio on a tropical island, sunglasses tinting your beautiful, breezy ocean world a less blinding shade of bright. You have your favorite book on your lap, and just as you start to feel that guttural uneasiness that goes along with the inkling of hunger, you realize that a plate of delicious grilled coconut-marinated chicken is sitting in front of you, with a creamy, indulgent bowl of pineapple-flavored rice pudding on the side. The chicken is perfectly cooked, not at all dry, and topped with lightly grilled bell and jalapeno peppers to add color and kick to the clean chicken palate; the rice pudding is like a dream come true, sweet and satisfying down to the last bite.

Or, you could be attempting to make this magical, tropical, fantasy-inducing meal the way I did, in a tiny kitchen, half-distracted by dirty dishes. You could be struggling to get the chicken to brown, while the milk in the pudding boils up and over the pan, spilling all over your cook top. And you could be looking down at a fairly liquidy, not very thick at all rice pudding and wondering what could have possibly gone wrong. You could be fairly disheartened that your luscious tropical dream dish didn’t turn out the way it existed in your head – that is, until you take the first bite. Upon this first taste, the stain on the stove will melt away, and your slotted spoon and taste buds will filter out the extra liquid in the rice pudding, leaving sweet perfection in its wake. You will forget all about the harried cooking process, and you’ll be back up in that first paragraph once again, convinced you’re dining on the patio of your beach front bungalo.

 The coconut marinade, which was made with a coconut-flavored rum, was not robust – if you want a very strong taste of coconut, I would use a coconut oil or milk in addition to the rum, though I’ve personally been wary of those two ingredients and the dubious health claims they have adopted. Still, the meal is perfect for summer, even if you don’t detect the coconut – and the pudding, if you’re worried about it being heavy, is absolutely irresistible room temperature or even chilled, making it a very welcome side dish, even in the heat. I did adjust the liquid measurements below to take care of some of the excess liquid I had in my dish. The chicken would be delicious with many other sides, sliced over a salad, made into a sandwich, you name it, and I enjoyed the leftover rice for breakfast with some fresh blueberries added. So, if tropical islands aren’t really your thing, you can still enjoy these two recipes – together or on their own – in any number of ways.

 Godiva, Ghiradelli, Lindt, Fererro Rocher – these brands conjure up an haute-couture decadence in my mind in which I can’t resist closing my eyes, as though I really had a morsel of their chocolates melting in my  mouth that very moment. A mental image of a molten chocolate cake with pure white, vanilla ice cream succumbing to the temperature of the warmed, gooey center has virtually the same effect. Give me dark chocolate and my heart goes aflutter; give me white chocolate and the little girl in me, the one who loved anything coated in this blanched “chocolate” – comes alive. I am a chocolate lover, and though I fully admit to never having the luxury of tasting some of the more lavish varieties – the ones that make Lady Godiva herself look like cheap Hannukkah gelt – I can appreciate the more mainstream chocolate indulgences.

Now, with that being said, I have a confession: I will forever be loyal to a trusty bag of m&m’s and a classic bar of plain Hershey’s chocolate. I love how rewarding they both are in their simplicity. There is just something insurmountably enjoyable about possessing a handful of M&M’s or breaking into a segmented bar of Hershey’s – something that even the highest quality of chocolate can’t compete with. So, naturally, when I heard about Hershey’s new aerated chocolate bar, so-called “Air Delight,” I knew I had to try it. The purist within me was skeptical, but ultimately I am a food risk taker, and a new concoction intrigues me beyond belief. I tracked one down last weekend at a local Target, paid the friendly cashier, and marched out, new chocolate treat in-hand. I placed it in my car’s cup holder and rolled my windows down, letting the breeze be my air conditioner on a very warm (most people would call it hot), sunny day. I dropped L off at his house and drove to my sister’s new apartment – I had told her I would take a look and possibly help set up if need be. I arrived after driving for maybe 20 minutes, pulled into a parking spot, closed my windows, and reached down to grab my chocolate…liquid? What? In the 20 minutes of sitting in the car, not even closed up or abandoned, Hershey’s Air Delight had turned into a packet of fluidity. There was not a speck of solid chocolate to be found. My heart sank a little, fearing that in melting it I had ruined the chemistry of the aeration. At least the advertisements were true, I thought as I marched toward my sister, the air bubbles really do make the chocolate dissolve easily…just not, in this case, in my mouth!

I stuck the bar in her freezer, but then had to bring it back home with me. Of course, it melted again, and so into the freezer for a second time it went. Surely I had ruined it – surely all of my efforts in searching for this new candy would turn out to be futile, and I would be left with a regular (albeit still delicious) Hershey bar. Finally, I made a third trip – to L’s house – where we would share it for a post-dinner treat. This time, it melted just sitting in his cool basement, and so it met the refrigerator for a few minutes to firm up. We were convinced we would open the wrapper and find a standard Hershey bar. What we really found, though, was so much different…

 Yes, those are gaping holes – we had on our hands a cratered bar of chocolate, like the moon had been packaged into confectionery form and dyed a light, creamy brown. Still, we broke into it, and were amazed to find that many places still had the small bubbles advertised by the company – apparently this little bar was sturdy enough to withstand the relentless abuse I subjected it to that day! Happily, we each sampled some, and I have to admit, it was very enjoyable. The air bubbles give it a volume uncharacteristic of a typical Hershey Bar. While the thin rectangles are perfect for s’mores and ice cream mix ins, it can be nice to have a little more heft to bite into when you’re eating it on its own. Two thumbs up for that part. Aside from that, the taste of the chocolate is virtually indistinguishable from a standard bar, and so the novelty may wear off to reveal a buy that isn’t worth it in the long run.

The other point I’d like to make is its potential lack of versatility, what I fear is this candy’s biggest pitfall – and really, if you’re just buying it to eat on its own, it’s completely irrelevant. However, being me, and incapable of leaving things alone (I’m working on it, kind of), I broke the bar up into pieces and stirred it into a small bowl of coffee ice cream, thinking it would create a pleasant mocha flavor. What it actually did, however, was harden up the Airy Delight into an almost chalky, flavorless, certainly-not-chocolatey confection, and the bar lost all of its appeal. Being as temperamental as it was earlier to the heat, I should have guessed that the opposite temperature extreme would wreak just as much havoc on this poor, sensitive chocolate bar.

So, with all of that in mind, what’s the verdict?

Well, Hershey’s Air Delight will certainly be a welcome addition to any Hershey’s chocolate-lover’s arsenal of treats – it is creamy and smooth, and doesn’t stray far from the tried-and-true original. Moreover, its added volume helps make even a small serving of chocolate feel satisfactory and filling, making it even better for a diet-conscious chocoholic who wants to enjoy a taste of the real thing without derailing his/her entire day of hard, nutritious work. However, anyone looking for a novel twist on a classic s’more or a mix in for another dessert may want to look elsewhere. This chocolate bar was made to stand alone. Take a page out of a book that I’m still trying to grasp – some things in life are better off enjoyed simply, purely, without pomp. Hershey’s Air Delight is a perfect example of this, so do go out and try it – and enjoy it to its simplest, 100%-unadulterated fullest. Bon Appetit!

For more information: The Official Airy Delight Website

This crustless spinach-tomato quiche is possibly one of the best egg dishes I have ever had, and if you follow my blog at all, you’ll know that I’m no stranger to delicious egg-based meals. I used to think that quiches and frittatas were out of the question in the Floptimism kitchen, because when you’re cooking for one, you either need to make freezable meals or, well, simply cook for one. Because quiches are always presented in these full-sized pie plates, I never really considered the idea of scaling down the recipe to be a single portion. As soon as I did, though, I knew I was in for a real treat!

So, calculator in hand, I decided to modify this recipe to serve 1 person, and gathered my ingredients. Everything was going smoothly until I opened up my can of evaporated milk only to be met with a yellow, chunky, smelly concoction. I still cringe at the thought of that well-past-its-prime can of milk, slopping down my kitchen drain. In a pinch, I used regular milk to replace it, and really didn’t notice any ill effects from it. If you have a can of evaporated milk on hand – one that, unlike mine, has not surpassed its use-by date – I would recommend using it, but otherwise, stick with what you’ve got. It’ll turn out fine either way.

This quiche is slightly sweet, but just enough so as not to overpower the larger savory components at hand. In the end, I really only had two complaints – the slices of tomato looked pretty, but meant that you either had to take a full slice in one bite, or you had to eat this with a knife in hand (boy does that make me sound lazy). Secondly, the instructions to put the cheese on the bottom have me befuddled, for lack of a better word. It really just got melty and soggy, and while it still tasted as delicious as melty cheese is expected to taste, I might prefer it in the middle or on the top (or all three!) to get it a little bit crisper. Granted, I also used feta cheese which is not known for its crispness, but I hope you know what I mean. If you make those two small changes (or if whole tomato slices & soggy cheese is your thing), this dish is a home run.

In the winter, I’m all about one-pot meals: soups, casseroles, stir-fries – I want it comforting, piping hot, and all mixed into one killer dish. As the sunshine returns, however, there’s something about smaller almost tapas-like meals that draw me in and captivate me. I love taking an appetizer and making it a meal, or collecting several “snacky” items into one, calorie-appropriate sitting. I feel lighter, less tied down. Maybe it’s my indecisiveness shining through, the fact that I’m antsy after a winter of hibernation. Whatever the reason, I find so much satisfaction in a dish that at first seems to be accusingly small, but winds up being just right.

This asparagus salad is like that. Sure, it would be wonderful beside chicken, tofu, a poached egg – but serve this on its own, and it’s just as magical. I couldn’t leave things well alone and added some leftover cucumber and green pepper, and it isn’t that these tasted bad, but ultimately I think what makes this dish so spectacular is its simplicity. Next time, I will definitely be leaving it as a purely asparagus salad. My lemon:pesto ratio was a little heavy on the lemon, so I would advise you to be cautious with your lemon and add more to taste in the end if necessary. Overall, though, this is light, citrusy, and absolutely perfect for the breezy, sunny day ahead of us. I don’t know what the weather is like around you, but last night was a thunderstorm here to end all thunderstorms - but sit down with a bowl of this asparagus salad and you’ll forget that rain clouds even exist. Seriously. It’s that refreshing.

Is there such a thing as a Father’s/Mother’s Day Grinch? If so, I may be it. Not that I walk around spurning my parents and stealing their presents – I just don’t get into the hype of showering parents with gifts one day a year. For Mother’s Day this year, I took my mom out to lunch and gave her a hand-made card with a sincere note written in it. Not exactly Grinch behavior, but certainly more stick-it-to-the-man than Hallmark would like. I did wind up picking up the check, but my mom said that the nice part about it was the actual lunch and time spent together. So, it really should come as little surprise that my plan for Father’s Day involves thanking my dad and grandfather with a visit home amidst my summer course studies, a fresh loaf of banana bread (which is still under top-secret-experimentation, but I think you’ll get the killer recipe for it before the year’s out!), and, of course, some sappy cards. It’s just how I roll.

I’m not really sure what I’ll be eating come Sunday evening, since aside from the banana bread and possibly a cole slaw recipe (to use up this heaping head of cabbage I can’t seem to use enough of in my fridge, despite eating some every. single. day), I’m leaving the food up to other family members. However, burgers are usually a safe bet, and I’d imagine the same goes for many readers’ celebrations. So, in honor of Father’s everywhere, I encourage you to make one of these two burgers – they’re not your average burgers, but enormously tasty, and they’re sure to say I love you better than any mass-produced card or obligatory tie could ever hope to.

First up to bat is The Best Black Bean Burger. Ever. At least, the best I’ve made yet. I ate mine drizzled with some hot sauce and stacked on top of a corn tortilla with some lettuce and zucchini and it was just out of this world. The texture was spot on – it wasn’t mushy or falling apart – and the flavor was almost perfection. Throw in a few herbs from your garden (or, if you’re like me, your spice rack) and you’ve got yourself one killer meatless burger.

The next burger recipe is a Turkey & Feta burger accompanied by a cool cucumber-yogurt dressing, reminiscent of if not more or less a dead ringer for a tzatziki. It’s fairly easy to throw together and both times I had it, I enjoyed it over a bed of salad greens rather than between the traditional burger buns. It was the perfect blend of savory and sweet, cool and hot. I added some mushrooms because, why the heck not, really? Overall, I have to say – way to go Pillsbury!

I have traded in yesterday’s shorts and t-shirt for sweatpants and a sweatshirt, and am secretly craving a nice soup for dinner over the tuna burger and coleslaw combo I have on tap instead. Because of this, I can’t find it in my heart to tell you about some no-bake meal that weather of past days encouraged. No, today you get a warm, oven-lovin’, comforting Spinach & Artichoke dip – one, I might add, that will bring you comfort with much less guilt.  Don’t worry, it’s still plenty creamy and cheesy – you see, I make a lot of modifications and talk a lot about “less guilt,” but these recipes never sacrifice the flavor. I will never eat a supersized-but-low-fat brownie that tastes like dirt, but if I can find a purely indulgent yet ultimately sinless version of that chocolate square, I’m going to go with that over the full-fat, full-sugar original. Never compromise your ability to enjoy the food you eat.

The original recipe for this dip came from Healthy Green Kitchen, and I roughly quartered/halved it (hence the “roughly” – bad habit of cooking by a whim), then added some onion, mushrooms, and spinach. Instead of bread (though it took every bone of self control in my body), I dipped raw broccoli florets into it, which was actually an excellent decision in the end. It helped lighten up the meal and offset the richness of the dip, and although I was a little broccoli-ed out by the end of it and certainly full, I didn’t feel totally weighed down by the food I had just eaten. I would recommend this dip to anyone, and think that it would make just as great of an appetizer as it did a main dish for me. Who knows! If this weather keeps up, you might even consider serving it on Father’s Day. I sure wouldn’t mind having a taste of this fantastic dip again…

4 cups loose-packed spinach  1 cup plus 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan, divided

Lately, I have been trying to live more in the moment. I am a horrible multi-tasker, but my stubborn compulsion to be continuously productive has more often than not resulted in attempts to juggle several tasks at once, not reaping the benefits of any individual one. I would watch a movie with my laptop in front of me, not absorbing the blog I was looking through or the storyline on the television screen; I would eat breakfast while going through flashcards, usually retaining the information on the flashcards but certainly not fully appreciating the food being shoveled into my mouth. I just find it difficult when there are so many things that I’d like to do, none of which being particularly thrilling on their own, to settle down, sit still, and appreciate them one at a time. It doesn’t help that I am always finding new websites to explore, new blogs to read, and new recipes to bookmark.

Today I’d like to tell you about one of these new websites that I’ve been exploring, one of the reasons why it has proven to be challenging to allocate individual time for each item on my to-do list rather than have 20 tabs open on my browser at once while eating a snack and catching up on the series Glee (which my roommates have recently turned me on to). Anyway, the website is called erecipe.com, and it’s a database not unlike foodnetwork.com or any other pool of food prep info and recipes. I was recently contacted about it, and decided to check it out, explore, and then share my findings with all of you.

Erecipe seems like a fairly new site. I don’t know much about its origins or things so I can’t confirm any of that, but it’s definitely still in the building phase. It will not generate thousands of hits for any search like you can get on Food Network or even FoodBlogs.com – at least not yet. However, I find the website’s premise to be extremely promising, and think that with a little bit of dedication and collaboration, it can turn into a very informative, interactive website.

The recipes that are on there all look delicious. They are user-submitted, so much like a recipe you would pull from Foodblogs.com or another individual blog, you have the added bonus of a recipe that has been tried out by a “real” person and not some test kitchen or professional chef. For someone who is far from a professional herself, I appreciate this. The format of the recipes is also very conducive to understanding the process, with the ability to post pictures for individual steps, include notes and tips to help make the directions easier to comprehend, and a structured way of listing ingredients that eliminates confusion – that is, I’ve seen ingredients lists that call for “1 can of tomatoes,” which is far too vague when you go to the grocery store and are suddenly faced with 5 different sizes.

In addition to recipes, you can also view and post videos. I watched one on assembling Tiramisu, and found it to be very interesting (and appetizing!). All submissions, by the way, go through a moderator before showing up on the site, which removes the risk of a Wikipedia-for-food scenario in which any random person can post any random thing. You can also go to a discussion board for a more interactive approach to cooking – this allows you to ask questions, find tips, and generally just interact with other people out there.

I did submit a recipe for a delicious egg white scramble, and found the process to be intuitive and quick. The recipe was accepted within 12 hours and now appears on the site. The nutrition information that it provides is decent, though still suffers from the over-generalization of ingredients that most free nutrition analyses do. For example, my recipe calls for breadcrumbs, which I encourage to be homemade from preservative-free whole grain bread, but the analysis will go through assuming it’s the store bought, trans-fat laden, high sodium variety. Unless you’re very fastidious when inputting the ingredients (for example, I could have listed “1 slice whole grain bread” and in the directions indicated they should be pulsed into crumbs), you have to look upon the nutritional information with a critical eye.

Overall, I’m looking forward to keeping an eye on how this website progresses and grows, and will certainly be using it more to submit my own recipes. I’d encourage you to check it out (especially my submission! Or am I just biased?) and give it a go – I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with what you find.

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I officially have my first sunburn of the season, which must mean that it’s summer, right? (Really, it means that I was foolish and went outside to read for an hour despite discovering that I didn’t have any sunscreen in the apartment, but I like the “inevitable summertime” excuse better.) With summer comes corn, and while I haven’t tried any fresh-off-the-cob yet, the time for such things is fast approaching. I thought I would take advantage of these past few beautiful, warm days and share a few corn recipes with you preemptively – and if you’re antsy like I was, frozen kernels are a perfect solution.

Before I get to the recipes, though, I wanted to announce that Floptimism is on Facebook! Sort of, anyway. I’m finding all of this social media business to be a little tricky, but think I’m slowly catching on to Twitter and I can only hope the same goes for Facebook. It’s a somewhat sad little page at the moment, but I’m trying to update it with lots of interesting articles, quick photos & recipes, and things like that. I’m also hoping, once it grows a little bit, to be able to cultivate more interactions with you guys – I’m so interested in what you guys think and experience about the world of food! It’s so not just about what I cook up in the kitchen, so don’t be shy – I’d love to hear from you. Tried one of my recipes? Show me a picture or tell me what you thought! Found a recipe or article that you think I or other people would be interested in? Share it with us! Facebook and Twitter both open up so many doors for communication, and although I’m still testing those doors out and feeling overwhelmed by many of the ins-and-outs of the websites, I’m excited for the possibility.

Now, back to corn! The first recipe is a Corn & Tomato-Basil Polenta, which was overall an outstanding dish. It’s a very satisfying Spring/Summer dish that’s creamy but light, colorful, and smelled wonderful. The corn and tomato topping would make for a tasty salsa on its own, too, so don’t feel limited by the polenta if you’re not a fan or don’t have any on hand.