…here’s a box. Help yourself. Just let me grab one first. I’m feeling a little misty eyed since this is my last blog post here at Homemakers.com.

This blog has been my virtual home for almost 3 years and I am really going to miss it. Recently a lot has changed in my life. I’ve sold my test kitchen business and taken a new job in the corporate world – two changes that have completely altered my daily routine. Likewise, our family has taken on some ambitious home projects (we’re building a pizza oven!) that are taking up a lot of my time and I’m studying and taking courses to write my Culinology exam next spring.

The downside of these new and exciting things becoming part of my life is that I’ve found myself with less time not only for my own blog, but for visiting other blogs and being a contributor to the overall blog community. In short, I’ve felt like only a semi-participant in the blogosphere and that just doesn’t seem fair to my readers and to the fellow bloggers who have been so generous to these pages and to me as I learned how to operate as not just a magazine writer  but also as a blogger.

Besides bloggers such as Charmian from Christie’s Corner, Cheryl from 5 Second Rule and Diva from Beach Eats, this blog would have been short lived without the support and encouragement of Jen Melo, Adrienne Brown and Dayna Boyer, the homemakers.com guruellas who were with me at every step – even when I voiced controversial opinions that riled people up. I thank each of you for being so fantastic!

Although I won’t be here on a regular basis anymore, I do hope to keep in touch on Twitter and Facebook with any readers who’d like to remain connected. And, if you find yourselves with a few minutes to spare now that I’m not posting, I hope you’ll visit my blogroll at the right and check out the fantastic blogs I’ve grown to love. Chances are you’ll see me commenting on those boards, too.

Thanks for reading. You being out there has made me being here at my computer a hell of a lot of fun!

It’s been unseasonably hot here. On the one hand, I love it. We’ve been wearing full-on summer clothes, sipping lemonade and lounging around drinking wine on the patio into the wee hours of the night. It’s fantastic!

That said, I find carbs are the downside of heat wave weather. While you can grill a few lamb chops or a steak in less than 10 minutes in the relative cool of the shady side of the house, boiling pasta, rice and potatoes is just no fun in this kind of weather. So, this week, I’ve started a new trend at our house: bread as a plate.

As you can see by the picture above, I’m using flat breads to cradle a tomato and cucumber salad tossed with pesto and balsamic vinegar. In some ways it’s like a deconstructed bread salad – perfectly delicious and perfectly easy and cool to make.

What hot weather cooking strategies help you make it through heat waves? Do you get up early to boil potatoes, pasta and grains to use later in the day for salad bases or do you just resort to the deli for their ready-made versions?

There are loads of convenience products on the market that promise to make having parties easier, but how many of them really make you look like a rock star? Seriously. There’s a lot of crappy tasting ‘gourmet’ food out there and tons of useless gadgets and gizmos. But for every 5 or 10 of these false promises only one or two really great items exist that can make a self-catered party more stylish and delicious.

For me, perfect items in this category look and taste homemade; they’re such great quality that people may think you made them yourself and even it they know you didn’t, they still think you’re brilliant for knowing about such smart products.

Lesley Stowe’s Raincoast Crisps are a product that falls into this category. Sure I could make them, but why would I when she’s done the hard work for me? Likewise, All the Best Cheese Straws taste as better than many homemade versions I’ve tried. Now I have a new item to add to my party pantry: Tipsy Skewers. Perfect for Caesars, great in martinis and even lovely to serve at stand up parties with charcuterie (try wrapping each skewer in a whisper thin slice of salami – delish!)

Do you have any items that you keep on hand for adding panache to parties and get-togethers?

It doesn’t happen often, but every once in a while I get the urge for a fizzy, sugary drink. Usually, after just a few sips, it’s enough already and I feel guilt about wasting half a can of pop. Knowing this about me, my mom and her main man John bought me a package of these Bottle Tops.

And guess what? Despite the fact they have an infomercial (a fact that always makes me suspicious even though I once ‘starred’ in one myself) they are really great at maintaining the fizz in a partially consumed can of pop for a day or two .

I also like the fact that when you pull one of these little do-dads out of the dishwasher and click it onto your can that your mouth doesn’t touch the rim of a can that’s been handled and exposed to the world’s germs since it left the factory. Am I the only one who finds drinking from pop cans a germaphobic nightmare?

What is it about summer time that makes hard cooked eggs such an essential pantry item? Sliced in salads, chopped and blended with mayo and dill pickles for egg salad or halved and hollowed and then re-stuffed like these curried deviled eggs (which I made on the weekend when friends came over for a bbq). You name it! There are so many reasons I find myself boiling up a saucepan of eggs every week at this time of year.

As I was preparing my retro curried deviled eggs, I realized that I should tell you how to peel eggs easily. It’s so frustrating to worry over an egg and end up with bits of shell under your nails and pitted whites — especially if you want the egg to look good when you’re done.

Here’s the secret: peel them when they are still warm. Seriously, it’s super important not to refrigerate the eggs before you peel them. When chilled, the shells seem superglued onto the whites and they break into a million little bits that are a real challenge to remove.  Moreover, I recommend that you peel the eggs when they are submerged under water. It seems to help the shells to ease right off and none of the little bits cling to your hands.
There you have it. My technique for peeling eggs easily!

What’s your favourite thing to make with hard boiled eggs? Are you like my son who just snacks on them as they are with a little salt and pepper or do you make fantastic sandwich fillings or other concoctions I need to know about?

Barb, my yoga instructor, keeps telling the class to stand with our toes and heels touching — apparently, it makes you feel rooted in the ground and is an essential instruction to follow if you want to master mountain pose. I say ‘apparently’ since I can’t do it. Years of vainly wearing high heels has mishapenen my feet so that I have bunions that prevent my toes from touching when my heels are together. (Truthfully, I feel sad for my classmates who have to see my bare feet; the only saving grace for them is that the lights are usually at a calmingly dim level so perhaps my big ugly bunions are not as noticeable as they are on the beach.)

But, I digress. This post is not about my feet. It’s about the fruit ‘teas’ Barb and her partner Benjamin make. After each class they serve a different fruity infusion to replenish us. After 90 minutes in a 30-degree room spent contorting ourselves into shapes that only pretzels and Cirque du Soleil acrobats normally attempt, we’re a bit parched.

What I love about these drinks is that they prove that you don’t need an expensive juicer to make delicious, fruity drinks; you only need a pot, a burner and some patience. There’s no real recipe for their drinks and when asked how they make these infusions the two Bs are a little vague. But, I came quite close to duplicating Barb’s Masala Prune Tea at home.

Here’s what I did:

I emptied a package of prunes into a Dutch oven and added a cinnamon stick, a piece of star anise, a few cardamom pods and a bit of white pepper to the fruit. Then I topped it up with about 8 cups (2L) of water; brought the mixture to a boil and reduced the temperature to a simmer where I left it for 2 hours or until the fruit broke down to pulp (mash it up a bit if need be). Before serving it, I added honey to taste (about 3 tbsp/45 mL) and strained out the solids. Voila! I had a yummy hot infusion that I could strain into cups.  Refrigerate the leftovers and drink cold or reheat by the cupful..

What hot drinks do you usually make at home?  Are you in the coffee, tea and hot chocolate habit or do you branch out and create other less conventional hot drink preparations?

I can’t understand people who don’t eat salad. I love it. There’s just so many ways to enjoy it. Even if you eat salad every day – or twice a day – it never needs to be boring. All you have to do is swap around the veggies and the dressings to create a new and yummy creation.

That said, I’m not a big fan of creamy dressings. In fact, of the many dressings I’ve posted on this blog, I don’t think a single one has been creamy. Likewise, most bought, shelf-stable dressings leave me unsatisfied. Instead, I like to mix and match oils and vinegars to create fresh, new salad experiences.

My latest discovery is avocado oil – delicately flavoured and light textured, it’s perfect for freshening up your salad repertoire.

Avocado Poppyseed Dressing

½ cup (125 mL) avocado oil
3 tbsp (45 mL) lime juice
2 tsp (10 mL) minced red onion
1 tsp (5 mL) each poppyseeds
½ tsp (2 mL) ground cumin
½ tsp (2 mL) liquid honey
1/4 tsp (1mL) minced fresh garlic
Salt and pepper

Place the oil in a measuring cup and whisk in the lemon juice. Stir in the onion, poppyseeds, honey, garlic and cumin. Add salt and pepper to taste. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Ideal on tomatoes, lettuce and cucumbers. Also very delicious on asparagus, shaved fennel or yellow beans.

What’s adding excitement to your salad bowl these days?

It may seem an unlikely analogy, but mothers and buttermilk have a lot in common. While both can be a little sour, both can also give you a lift and make things better. The only difference being that in the case of mothers, the lift usually results in a better emotional state while in the case of buttermilk the lift takes the form of lighter, fluffier pancakes and biscuits.

My own mother has developed a fondness for old-fashioned buttermilk. Today’s buttermilk is made by adding an acid to low fat milk. The stuff she loves is more like the original that was merely the liquid left behind after churning butter. (That liquid looks like skimmed milk. In the olden days it tasted sour because ripe cream was used to make butter.) My mom drinks buttermilk as part of her daily routine not just because she likes the taste, but because she’s seen an improvement in her Crohn’s disease symptoms since she started.

For me, buttermilk isn’t a drink but an ingredient, so I developed this recipe as a compromise that will make both of us happy this Mother’s Day. This surprisingly yummy drink is one that my mom and I can share. It contains lots of buttermilk (which will make her happy) but the buttermilk is an ingredient among others (and that makes me happy).

Buttermilk Lemonade
(Or, if that sounds too weird for you: Lemony Buttermilk Nog)

1 cup (250 mL) granulated sugar
1/2 cup (125 mL) water
1-1/2 cups (375 mL) lemon juice
1-1/2 cups (375 mL) buttermilk

Combine the sugar and water in a saucepan set over medium-high heat. Cook, stirring, until sugar is completely dissolved. Cool completely. Stir in the lemon juice. Stir in the buttermilk. Chill completely. Serve over ice.

Note: This lemonade just loves vodka and it’s on rather friendly terms with gin as well.

What are you going to eat or drink to commemorate Mother’s Day this weekend?

Last week something fantastic happened to me. It was a busy week and I wasn’t prepared. My son Oliver had been sick all the weekend before so instead of doing my regular pantry stocking on Saturday or Sunday, I headed into the week hoping to live off the various frozen and extra foodstuff that was around. I thought it would be fine. It wasn’t.

By midweek we were out of fresh fruit; Thursday I had nothing to make my lunch with and by Friday night the reserves in the freezer were so low that we ate frozen pizza for dinner (not as a late night snack but for DINNER!). On Saturday morning I looked in the fridge and, perhaps for the first time since it was new, more than half of each shelf and one full crisper were empty. There wasn’t a single yogurt; the spot where the salsa usually sits was vacant and the cheese drawer held nothing but dry, crusty nubs and stubs. It was a grim end to a grim week of unsatisfying dinners and bought lunches that almost broke my heart.

Hardly sounds like an adventure to write about much less celebrate, right? Wrong! Living through a week like this one reminded me why I usually spend an hour or so each weekend in the kitchen right after I put the groceries away. During that time I do busy work like cut the greens off of bunches of carrots. I also wash celery, fennel and peppers and cut them into snacking size pieces and marinade the fresh meats I’ve bought; some of the meats go into the freezer for later in the week and some (like the veal chops above) go into the refrigerator where they stand on guard until I get home from work on a weeknight and need them to be ready to cook. I also often make chicken broth and vinaigrettes then, too. It’s not a lot of work but it ensures that making dinner and lunches during the week will be easy and stress-free.

What about you? Do you do any of your weekly cooking or prep on the weekends or do you wait until you get home and then start each meal from scratch?

I’m a big fan of Japanese foods. In fact, the only Japanese foods I’ve tried that I haven’t liked have been displeasing not because they tasted particularly bad, but because of their texture. I’m not good with things like raw squid, litchi fruit (not Japanese but exactly the texture that squicks me out) and that raw, finely grated yam that looks like loose pizza dough that many sushi masters consider a delicacy.

So, I was surprised when I learned that shirataki tofu noodles (pictured above) are made from a blend of that same yam and tofu because I really liked them.

While I wouldn’t likely use them in place of Italian pasta with tomato sauce, these noodles can add protein or stand in as a gluten-free alternative to regular pasta in many more dishes.

Need some ideas? Try tofu noodles…
• under a stir fry
• in miso, chicken or vegetable broth
• tossed with finely minced green onion or chives and tossed with some sesame oil and sea salt as a side dish
• in place of high carb rice noodles in salad rolls or a green mango salad

Have you tried tofu noodles yet? If so, what did you think? And, more important still, what did you make? I’m sure there must be dozens more great uses for them beyond the paltry list above.