Summer eats

A few summery things I have enjoyed in the past few weeks:

1. Ice cream for dinner on my drive home to Charlottesville from an interview in Silver Spring, MD.  I was far from being the only person stopped at the Moo Thru on a warm summer evening, and like every other time I've stopped, I was not disappointed.  I relaxed my usual "it must have chocolate" requirement and tried blackberry and cake batter.  Blackberry was quite good, but like most cake batter/cheesecake flavors I didn't care for this one too much after the first couple of bites. 

2. The Fourth of July could not have come at a better time this year.  I was out of the office on Monday, so I only had a three day work week, but there seemed to be an inordinate amount of stuff crammed into those three days.  On the Fourth, the weather was more early fall than middle of summer and my friend Christina was in town for a visit.  We prepared a small backyard dinner with some of our favorite summer dishes: veggie patties, corn on the cob, couscous with tomatoes, basil & mozzarella, and a watermelon, mint & feta salad.  

The first time we made the watermelon salad two summers ago, I was highly skeptical of adding anything to one of my favorite summer fruits.  The dish turned out better than I expected then, and even better than I remembered this summer.  I think we got the ratio of watermelon to mint and feta just right.

Dinner in the backyard was followed by fireworks viewing from the top of Montalto and some s'mores brownies.  I think I did an excellent job of toasting the marshmallows, if I do say so myself. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the graham cracker crust on the bottom, which was mostly graham cracker dust.  The chocolate center was proclaimed "neither cake-y nor fudge-y" and overall, maybe this was not the best dish to eat without utensils.  I later discovered (with plates and silverware at my disposal) that 15 seconds in the microwave made all the difference--the insides became warm and moist and the marshmallows went from stiff to gooey.

3. The first of many ways to use zucchini that will be appearing on here in the coming weeks.  Thankfully, zukes are relatively flavorless and can be added to just about anything, like this shrimp scampi recipe.  There's half of a giant one sitting in my fridge as I type this, and another one needing to be picked, plus two smaller ones in the garden!  Next recipe: stir fry.