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I have a secret to share. I LOVED our cool, slightly rainy, June weather. I know I always moan about the cold, but a cool 70 degree summer day with no humidity, and the occasional sprinkle, is just fine with me. I am SO not looking forward to the crazy heat and humidity (and potential droughts!) of August. The survive that month I mostly submerge myself in Lake Otsego and do my best to keep the kids cool. This also means I turn on the oven as minimally as possible and employ all of my favorite “stay cool” strategies. The other day I broke out the first item on this list and whipped up a batch of ice cream. It was so refreshing to eat outside after dinner! Rest assured I’ll have plenty of stay cool recipes this summer. But, to get me started, I am tuning up all of my favorite kitchen equipment. I am thinking about giving away one of these items soon. Any requests? Let me know!

1) The ice cream maker is our summer kitchen workhorse. Not only is it perfect for ice cream and frozen yogurt, it is also great for granitas, and wine slushies!

We’ve made some new friends here in suburbia and the other day I wanted to bake them a seasonal treat to thank them for a kind gesture they recently did for us. (More on that good gesture soon, I hope!) This week we were going strawberry picking but I’ve also been able to get local berries at our local green grocer. Needless to say, they are AMAZING! I can’t get enough of the ripe fruit that is glistening red straight to the core. Since I had a quart in hand already I decided to pick up some rhubarb and make our friends a simple season strawberry rhubarb crisp.

It is pretty rare these days that I get time to myself. With two kids and a busy household the four of us are always running to and fro to activities and commitments. However, on rare occasions, I find myself at home with both the kids in bed and a little extra time on my hands. This typically happens when my husband is traveling for work or at the office late into the night. When this happens the first thing I do is make myself a nice meal. It is not about cooking anything fancy or involved, just something easy and nutritious to finish the day off right.

Cooking for one might not be the top priority for most people, but I love it. I usually pull something out of the freezer and serve it over some pasta and fresh vegetables. I also use it as a time to try something new that I don’t know if my husband would enjoy or not. Last month I received some samples of the delicious Bumble Bee SuperFresh™ salmon and was psyched to give it a try.

As part of my ongoing author series, today I am interviewing my friend Jaime of Sophistimom about her new book, Celebrate Every Day: Recipes for Making the Most of Special Moments with Your Children. I love how she approached cooking and family life as a whole, suggesting music, books, and activities that are both beloved and educational for children in each chapter. Not only were her recipes mouthwatering, she reminded me of a lot of the books I enjoyed as a child as well as a few new ones I need to check out for my daughter. Be sure to enter the give away below so you can win your own copy of this amazing book!

My year as a flavor correspondent exploring the food truck trend for Sargento has been a revelation. The food truck trend is clearly gaining traction across the country and the reason it is doing so is because a lot of the food they are serving is so good. I’ve eaten quite a range of food truck cuisine in my local area – crepes, pizza, lobster rolls and, now, meatballs – and the cooks really know what they are doing with their specialty. Also, food trucks are taking on all kinds of different forms. Last month I tracked down the Skinny Pines pizza truck and found it is actually a wood-burning pizza oven towed by a large van. This month I had to pleasure of finally indulging in The Local Meatball food truck only to discover that it is a Fiat pulling a portable meatball stand!

I am psyched to be participating in the Whole Foods Berry Bash this month. It is berry season here in Connecticut and our local Whole Foods is stocking all kinds of organic berries from near and far. This means it is finally the time of year when I can get my hands on all the berries I can stand! It also means I can start making the favorite Strawberry Vanilla Jam recipe from my book. For the berry bash I went to the store and picked up a fresh container of strawberries to make some rich, buttery breakfast muffins.

Father’s Day is right around the corner and it is time to drum up something really awesome for Dad. If the man in your life is anything like my husband he doesn’t want anything expensive or fancy, he just wants a really great family day with some good food thrown in. Here are some of my top picks for Dad this year. I hope you have a delicious one! (p.s. – here are some of my yummy ideas for Father’s Day food!)

A delicious Bloody Mary mix to start the day off right.

When my mother came to visit a couple of weeks ago she brought some lightened up breakfast muffins. She knows I am working on getting the old bod back in shape but also understands I need to indulge in a touch of sweetness now and then. She came up with this recipe when she accidentally picked up a giant container of chocolate Greek yogurt during a hasty grocery shopping trip and needed to use it up.

Spending the year as a flavor correspondent for Sargento has proved to be a delicious endeavor. Not only are my monthly food truck visits filled with new and exciting foods, I now love perusing the mushroom section of the grocery store. There are so many varieties! So many possibilities! For this months mushroom experiment I picked up some Hen of the Woods mushrooms and smokey fontina. (As I was making this dish I realized how much I like pairing mushroom with cheese!) I’ve already made mushroom dishes for lunch and dinner so this time I wanted to see what I could make for breakfast.

Last summer my second trimester craving was milkshakes. If an ice cream could be whipped together with milk and sucked through a straw I was game. You name the flavor, I wanted it! Of course, this summer there is nary a dairy shake in sight. I am halfway to my baby weight loss goal and I am not going to so much as sip an Awful, Awful until I am comfortably back in my skinny jeans. Until then, I am making myself milkshake-like smoothies that totally satisfy all my shake cravings without the unwanted calories.

I get a lot of cookbooks in the mail each season. It is always a treat to admire the work of my fellow authors. Every so often one book really stands out and catches my eye. That is the kind of book that I cook from immediately and ends up on my bookshelf for a few years, maybe longer. This spring one of these cookbooks is Modern Mediterranean: Easy, Flavorful Home Cooking by Melia Marden. Her simple Mediterranean dishes are inspired by her childhood summers spent in Greece and frequently served at The Smile, the restaurant at which she is executive chef. The extraordinary color photographs by Lucy Schaeffer pack a stunning visual punch. I am thrilled that Melia stopped by for an interview today and I am even more excited to be giving away a copy of her book!

Every week I get a whole bunch of cool newsletters from my favorite cooking site. I love reading them to see what everyone is up to and getting their recommendations and ideas for new dishes and crafts. Last week I was perusing the Food52 newsletter and came across their genius recipe for a fresh spring pasta. With a bunch of fresh asparagus in refrigerator I knew it was just the thing to make for a quick weeknight meal.