Summer Favorites

A few of my favorite things this summer:

When I was scooping watermelon into a dish this morning, I thought: “Is there a better food than watermelon?”  I’m not really talking nutritionally, I just mean the whole package – taste, texture, wholesomeness, and aesthetics. I think it is nature’s dessert food.  I once expressed the sentiment that I could potentially live off of popcorn & watermelon. While that is no longer true, I still love it and it is one of my very favorite things about summer.  The melon above came from an Amish farm near Tellico.

This is the BEST summer breakfast: two scrambled eggs, two slices of bacon, and the aforementioned bowl of watermelon.

My favorite little sous chef.  Milly hangs out in the kitchen with me during my numerous experiments, hoping I will drop some scraps on the floor.

Favorite summer dessert: homemade vanilla ice cream.  This will get its own blog post very soon!

Favorite summer way to relax:  soaking up the sunshine in my fantastic Sam’s chair on the patio with my iPhone playing all of my favorite songs (while I peruse high-quality literature, obviously).

Favorite summer veggies: zucchini & squash, obviously!  These are from Telmo’s garden!

I already said that ice cream was my favorite summer dessert, so I suppose this is my favorite use for ice cream: as a topping for peach cobbler! I have been making a peach cobbler at least once every summer for the past three years. (My first peach cobbler in 2010 was documented in this post: Perfect Summer Dessert.)  The one that I made today was the best ever.  I used the same Paula Deen recipe (so easy!) with one major change: whole milk instead of almond milk. (I have recently converted to whole milk after I read Sally Fallon’s cookbook Nourishing Traditions, as well some literature from Nina Planck & the Weston A. Price Foundation. I don’t drink milk anyway, so I really only use it for recipes.) Anyway, it made a tremendous difference in the flavor and the texture of the cobbler. This year I also used Chilton County peaches that Brent picked up at the Farmer’s Market on Thursday afternoon and I topped the cobbler with my very own fresh homemade ice cream (It turned out SO perfect this time!).

It is heaven.  So wonderful.  More details about the ice cream to come.  It definitely deserves its own post!!!