What's Cooking This Weekend? Weekend of July 9-10, 2011

Watermelon-Cucumber Refresher

It's the weekend! What's cooking? Are you grilling, cooking out, or staying in? Are you picnicking in the park, or at the beach? We hope that you have delicious things planned for the weekend (and that you're planning on entering our Small Cool Kitchens contest!). Tell us what's cooking this weekend, and take a peek at a few good posts from the past week.

• Small Cool Kitchens is rolling along, but we're afraid that lots of you are going to wait until the last minute to enter. Don't! We won't be able to fit in a flood of last-minute entries, so get 'em in now!

• Yes, this is from last week, but you'll want it this weekend too: 20 super-simple cocktails.

• Do you have any secret recipes?

• Deliciousness: Coconut-peach upside down cake.

• A few of our favorite products for small kitchens.

• Quick pickled roots, a guest post.

• Which herbs and spices do you use the most?

• Malts, fizzes, double-awfuls — what are they?

• Best vegan breakfasts — our readers weigh in.

• Two fast and easy desserts: Ruth Reichl's easiest, fastest pie, and Scottish cranachan with toasted oats.

• What are your favorite picnic snacks?

Happy weekend, and happy cooking!

(Image: Nora Maynard)

Comments (16)

I'm off work today so decided to try ATC's rosemary focaccia recipe (it's a cool day here in the Northwest). I'm on my last rise as I type. Tomorrow it's grilled salmon with Briar Rose Lemon Dill goat cheese melted over the top.

Cooking Alex Guarnaschelli's amazing chicken marsala for mom, dad, and the girls (aka dogs :) ) in my new http://cookware.lecreuset.com/cookware/product_3-1%2F2-QT.-Braiser_10151_-1_20002_10117_10043 in purple!

Also some homemade pizza dough, French onion soup, dog biscuits, and maybe something BBQ... YUM!

Zucchini fritters, potato salad with dill, birthday cake, blueberry coffee cake, homemade pizza with caramelized onions and mushrooms.

Sourdough waffles, Cream Biscuits, homemade marshmallows, Smitten Kitchen's Roasted Peppers with Caper's & Mozzarella, and a lightened up corn chowder from Cooks Illustrated!

Tonight I made a vegan fideua from Vegetarian Times and an awesome grilled zucchini salad with lemon-herb vinaigrette. Tomorrow my dear friend is getting hitched, so the only cooking I'll be doing is shaking some cocktails for friends during the break between the ceremony and the reception. ;)

Going to a Bastille Day party tomorrow, so am making cherry clafoutis and bringing radishes with plugra butter and sea salt. YUM.

Today has been much anticipated in our household. We're making Chicago-style deep dish pizza - totally from scratch. Not only the dough and sauce, but we are also making the mozzarella cheese. Nervous but excited!

Dinner tonight for 14 to celebrate my partner's birthday, accommodating a WIDE RANGE of food allergies. Chicken encrusted in spicy onion (see "A Wee Bit of Cooking" blog, June 17); something not yet determined with red onions and feta in gluten-free flour; a salad of roasted Yukon Golds; six or seven vegetable sides; Coconut Bliss; and Basque tarts!

If I had my druthers, I'd spend the weekend working through that summer cocktail list.

Gazpacho with crab on top, roasted chicken, kale with butter, garlic and pine nuts and roasted beets for dinner (all veggies from the farmers market!!) Stuffed mushrooms, sausages and chard for a leisurely Sunday lunch. And can't forget dessert! Key Lime Pie!

Today I made vegan breakfast sausages. Tomorrow - lentil tacos and Melissa Clark's broccoli salad that is just awesome!

For once, my answer to "What's cooking" is... "Nothing!"

I spent the end of the week eking out good meals from the pantry, counting the days 'til I could get to the store and do A Big Shop. On Monday, I'll do exactly that... but for the weekend, I'm letting go and enjoying cooking nothing.

The closest I'll get to cooking this weekend will be my dinner: I'll toast some bread so it will be crispy when I mash avocado on top.

kale chips, sweet potatoes wedges baked in orange juice, honey and butter, baked salmon on fresh basil, onion, olive oil and splash of white wine, green beans, garden cukes, and I just had some fresh figs from our bush and some gorgonzola and nut thins, drinking some white wine that is sort of fizzy.

I cooked the fish skin side up and it was a big improvement, as the skin lifts off intact, (for the cats), the pan is easy to clean and the basil and onion cooked onto the fish very moistly.

We were away for most of the weekend, but stopped by a fruit stand on the way home--sugar snap peas, green beans, jalapenos, blackberries, etc., etc., etc! Came home and made a lovely spicy stir fry and a blackberry/cherry/blueberry pie. The pie was requested by the intrepid randonneur boyfriend, who cycled 300k on Saturday; when you cycle 180 miles in 20 hours, you get to eat whatever you want, I say. ;)