Hello, everybody! I feel like this is the first Saturday in a while that I haven't had a brunch/lunch engagement, and it's a little hard to figure out what to do with all these morning hours. It doesn't help that I woke up extra early today. So far, I've made apple pancakes for breakfast (they demanded a repeat after the other day) and had a thin slice of zucchini cake, just to tide me over until lunch. That's pretty much it. Beany and I had a lie down on the sofa, too; weekends are hard work.

So, I made this zucchini cake for my tomato party yesterday (I think everybody had a nice time sitting out on the patio, and I managed to offload a couple dozen tomatoes), and it's really something special. I had started my search by looking for a chocolate zucchini cake that didn't go crazy with sugar or oil/butter, but then I found this Zucchini Olive Oil Cake and knew I had to try it. Luckily, about half of it was consumed during the get-together, and I was able to send some home with friends, so I'm only 'stuck' with a modest wodge of it now.

That cake is definitely going in my file of 'tried and true' recipes, and I thought I'd share some of the other stand-by recipes I've come across on the internet. These are all things that I've made more than once, and for which I'm not tempted to seek out a 'better' version.

-- Rhonda's Bread Recipe: Makes a great loaf of sandwich or toasting bread. I often sub in a cup of rye flour for the same of white.

-- Heidi's Special Zucchini Bread: A true zucchini bread. I usually cut back on the amount of poppy seeds and nix the cinnamon and curry powder, and I use all purpose flour. I love, love, love the crystalized ginger!

-- Susan's Pumpkin Spice Bread: I use the oil called for in the recipe (she also makes it without) and use an egg instead of the substitute. I've made them several times now with my own pumpkin or butternut puree, and everybody always loves it. Add chocolate chips, and you've got a super-double winner.

-- Laura's Gingerbread Cut Outs: I've made these a few years running, now. I use an egg (instead of a substitute), and I don't use black pepper. It could just be my oven, but I've found they usually only take about six minutes' baking time; any more and they get too dark on the bottom and don't stay as soft. A perfect, spicy gingerbread cookie that isn't too sweet (so stands up to lots of icing!).

-- Caramel Corn: I actually lost the link to the recipe I've used a few times (one of the smaller losses of the MacBook crash), but this is pretty similar. Adding salted peanuts is amazing. It's a good potluck recipe!

-- Rachel's Refrigerator Pickles: I posted my slightly tweaked version a while back, but I figured out that this is where I originally found it. I made some a while back and used slightly less vinegar, which I found is better to my taste buds.

-- Alton Brown's Bread and Butter Pickles: Just a good, solid recipe.

-- The Post Punk Kitchen's Tahini Dressing: I was crazy about this all last summer! According to the notes I made, I added onion powder and a pinch of cumin. Very good!

That's it for now! I hope you get a chance to try some of these.

Hello! You thought I'd forgotten about posting my pickle recipe, right? Not so. Fine, I did forget -- but then I remembered. I'm posting it right now, in the 'continue reading' section. I originally got the recipe from one of the big recipe sites, but I've tweaked it a tiny bit and do things differently than the original instructions indicated.

Last summer was all about kitchen DIY, for me. I baked my own bread, made my own yogurt, turned lots of berries into jam, and just generally wasn't satisfied unless I'd made or grown as much of my meal as possible. In an effort to relaaaax, I'm trying to let go of that urge, so lunches like today's seem special rather than mandatory.

Now that all my rocket/arugula has bolted and been torn out, all the other lettuces that were in the seed mixture have grown in pretty well. So I had a salad made from garden lettuce and added to it some of my pickle chips, a bit of purple bell pepper (which lost its purple when I cooked it, as all the purpliest vegetables do), sliced zucchini, and my first yellow pear tomato (!!!). I had a hearty portion of garden green beans on the side, along with a piece of Irish brown bread (baked yesterday from a mix I brought back in April) with homemade raspberry-rhubarb jam. Oh, and a fake sausage patty, but I had no hand in making that, aside from popping it in the microwave.

I guess, to be fair to my garden, I have to admit that it delivered its first tomato on the exact same date this year as last year. But a cherry tomato doesn't seem as impressive as a 'real' one (which are all very much still green). It was delicious, though -- I'm really glad I chose this yellow pear variety. Two years ago, I tried standard cherry tomatoes and hated their flavour, but these are much more mellow. And they're yellow and pear-shaped, so they can't really get any better than that.