SIMPLIFY SUMMER

Simplify Summer!

            To quote Mr. Gershwin: ”Summertime and the living is easy…”. We don’t shovel snow, we don’t have to slog in the mud, the black flies are gone, summer shorts with  tee shirts are the uniform of the day and the blue of Maine summer sky on a sunny day never ceases to amaze and inspire me. 

Our garden is doing beautifully with the early start this spring and the produce has come in consistently with abundance of greens, peas, cucumbers and now beans, summer squash, beets and even a few delicious cherry tomatoes and fingerling eggplant.  However, this litany of homegrown fresh produce successes comes with a price and I don’t mean the weeding. Harvesting is an ongoing process that requires persistence and time to get this bounty to the table or in the freezer for winter.

While I admire and relish each crop in succession, to be honest, it takes quite a bit of work and the concept of “living is easy” seems sometime to get lost.  But one can not live on fresh salads and raw vegetables, although there are food fads that aim to do just that.  So, it is with some reluctance that I admit to taking some shortcuts in my kitchen when summer visitors or events require food. Sometimes home-made does not have to be entirely “from scratch” and sometimes even not from my garden.

Recently a niece introduced me to a cornmeal pancake and waffle mix, It originally produced some very fine blueberry pancakes, but a few weeks later morphed in my kitchen in quite something else: zucchini-Parmesan corn friters that went very well with sour cream and bratwurst as the main part of a supper. The mix I used was Red Mill whole grain mix, but other brands are likely to work as well.

                        Zuchini – Parmesan corn fritters.

Mix together a slightly beaten egg with: ½ cup water, ¾ cups cornmeal pancake mix, ½ tsp. baking powder, ½ tsp. onion powder, ½ cup finely shredded Parmesan cheese and ½ tsp salt and a dash of pepper. Fold in 1 ½ cups coarsely shredded zucchini. Heat 1-2 Tblsp. canola oil in a large pan and drop batter by a tablespoon to form slightly flattened fritters. Cook on medium heat about 4 minutes on a side. Drain on a paper towel and serve immediately.

Summer fruit makes a great desert in any form, but sometimes a creamy desert, short of a cheesecake, seems appropriate.  Being rather partial to pies, I recently made my banana cream pie with a summer topping that was as colorful as tasty.

                        Strawberry-banana-cream pie.

Bake a single crust of prepared pie crust in a 10 inch pie plate and allow to cool.  Soften 1 envelope of unflavored gelatin in 3 Tblsp. cold water.  On medium heat cook 1 3oz package of  banana cream pudding with constant stirring in 2 cups of milk to boiling. Stir 3 Tblsp. of the boiling pudding into the softened gelatin to dissolve and add the mixture back to the pudding. Allow pudding to cool about 20 minutes with occasional stirring.  Beat ½ cup whipping cream until soft peaks form, sprinkle with 1 tsp. sugar, continue to beat until stiff peaks form and fold thoroughly into the pudding mixture. Pour about ¼ of the pudding-whipped cream mix in the bottom of the cooled pie. Slice 1 ½ to 2 bananas in thick slices and layer on the pudding. Pour the rest of the pudding on top, making sure that all banana pieces are covered.  Refrigerate for about 4 hours.  Before serving, decorate the top of the pie with halved strawberries alternating with milk chocolate chips. Simply festive and delicious!

“Summertime, when the living is easy….”.  Maybe with a few more shortcuts in the kitchen I may attain that goal of delicious meals with a minimum of energy expenditure.

(I. Winicov Harrington lives in Waldoboro and is the author of “How to Eat Healthy and Well for Less than $5.00 a Day: the Smart-Frugal Food Plan”; website: www.winicov-harrington.com)