Just consumed this for lunch not 20 minutes ago.  And here it is for your saliva inducing pleasure at the speed of light.  I wonder what Pavlov would have put on his blog???

This was a really simple treat held together with pesto made from some of the garden basil in the previous post.  There's also sautéed yellow squash and zucchini (with some of the pesto), baby spinach, fresh mozzarella pieces, tomatoes, real balsamic vinegar, and whole grain toast.  (Well, at least it's making me continue to salivate).

I've just been loving zucchini lately.  For a long time I've had a really negative association going on there.  My family used to have this zucchini casserole ALL THE TIME.  It was good, but enough was enough.  We never had zucchini prepared another way!  I'm realizing now that what I liked most about the casserole was, in fact, the zucchini.  It was not the Campbell's Cream of Sodium Soup. 

It's too hot to write anything witty.

I'd normally grill marinated portabellas to make a sandwich like this, but we're having the house painted and the grill's buried behind a sea of ladders.  These are a bit of a summer staple around here.  I marinate the portabella's briefly (20-30 minutes) in a mixture of lots of chopped herbs, minced red onion and garlic, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar.  I'll usually roast a red pepper on the grill to top it off, along with some mozzerella.  I might drizzle some of the marinade on the buns to make it extra yummy.  This time I roasted them in the oven, along with some red bell pepper.  About 25 minutes at 375, until soft and juicy. 

The accompaniment here was a cucumber ribbon salad that was a wonderful summer treat.  Shave ribbons of a cucumber with a vegetable peeler working around the seeds.  Lightly salt the ribbons and put in a colander.  Weigh them down with a zip-lock bag full of water and put in the fridge for about an hour.  This extracts moisture from the cukes and makes them crunchier!  Neat.  Learned this trick from The Best Recipe.

The flavoring for this is also roughly adapted from "The Best Recipe".  Boil a tablespoon of sugar until it dissolves in 1/4 cup of rice wine vinegar.  Let that cool.  Toss the cucumbers and dressing together with some sliced shallots and minced pickled jalepenos.  Summer perfection.

Not much to say about this.  I'm just very pleased at the progress this pot of basil is making this summer.  I've got a bunch of other herbs in a half wine barrel in another part of the garden.  It's been a bit of a struggle getting garden real estate privileges from L for my herbs, but I'm gradually carving out a niche.