weekend review: long fourth of july

I hope you all had a wonderful Fourth of July. My lease here in Richmond ended on the 30th but I knew I needed to stay around at least through the Fourth (and now have been convinced to stay through this coming weekend as well.) I enjoyed relaxing after a June full of travel and packing. Posting here has been slow, but today I offer two (easy!) recipes.

I started my celebration Sunday morning with a lunch with the pup at the park. Byrd Park's concession stand impressed me, offering this hearty chicken sandwich for roughly $5. The sandwich itself was standard but the chips were fresh and quite tasty. Plus, I got to sit and watch families paddleboat. Next I headed back to my friend's house where I am staying for the week. He and his girlfriend were hosting a cookout, which was a great chance to see some friends before I leave.

[California Israeli Cous Cous]

[Grilled peaches]

[The (mostly) complete spread]

[My sandwich creation- grilled chicken, green apple, avocado, lettuce]

The feasting was followed by outdoor activities, then resting, then fireworks over the river. Monday itself was even lazier, spend mostly by the pool and then lounging on a porch watching a lightening storm instead of manmade sparks.

California Isreali Cous Cous
1 cup of cous cous according to the package.
3 small cucumbers (farmers market style) or one grocery store size cucumber, diced
1/2 red onion, diced
1 avocado, diced
1 green onion, diced
1 pint cherry tomatoes, quartered
1 tablespoon cilantro, chopped
olive oil
salt and pepper

Combine first seven, salt and pepper and olive oil to taste.


Grilled Peaches
Slice six barely-ripe peaches into eights.
Thread on skewers soaked in water. Place in baking dish.
Pour about 2 tablespoons olive oil over peaches then crumble 1 tablespoon brown sugar.
Mix to coat.
Grill 3-5 minutes per side until fork pierce easily. Enjoy plain or over ice cream.

recipe: bourbon peach hand pies

[bourbon peach hand pies]

Made just like the recipe says, except with purchased pie crust and instead of fresh peaches I used peaches that I canned last summer in light syrup. Drained them and chopped them, then followed the recipe.

recipe: peach arugula salad

After a trip to the farmers market resulted in arugula and peaches coming home with me, fate (or seasonal recipe choices from the editor) brought me this recipe for Ricotta and Peach Crostini with Pistachios. Apparently I blacked out after reading it because all I remembered was peaches and arugula and total spaced on the ricotta and pistachios. I knew I wanted to make it into a salad to transform it from an appetizer to a meal. So for dinner last night I followed the directions for the dressing (simplest ever), used the recommended amount of arugula and upped the peaches to 3. I also toasted some bread with brie on top. I do wish I had pistachios, the salad needed some crunch and a bit of a savory taste (without just putting more salt in the dressing.) I made a second batch to bring to lunch today and put sunflower seeds on top, but pistachios would be excellent.

peach whiskey smash/sangria

Having continued my peach buying spree, I wanted to come up with a Best Friends Day recipe using the fresh fruit. I had saved a recipe for "Whiskey Peach Smash" from thekitchn but since BFD is more of a marathon than a sprint, I wanted to make the drink less boozy but keep the peach-y whiskey-y goodness. We called it "Short Pump Smash" in honor of the surburban area of Richmond. I would definitely serve this to a group of ladies who lunch in Short Pump. Here is what I came up with.

About 4 peaches cut into cubes. Place in pitcher and cover with sugar (1/4 cup or so.)

Add in some of the sparkling white grape juice and muddle.


Fill pitcher 1/3 way with whiskey, 2/3 with sparkling grape. I used Jim Bean, but any not too expensive whiskey or bourbon should work.

domestic bliss

Saturday I picked up 30 pounds of peaches (for $25!) for my roommate and I to can. We spent about 4 hours in the kitchen yesterday and managed to make 6 quarts of Canned Peaches in light syrup, 8 pints of Peach Barbecue Sauce which will work more as a marinade because we didn't dice the peaches as finely as we should have, and Blackberry Peach Jam which was the most expensive with $10 of blackberries making 2.5 pints of jam. Luckily it is delicious. We canned 2 pints and put the rest in a half pint jar in the fridge to eat now.

We ran out of steam and pint jars (and wanted to save the small amount of peaches left for eating fresh) so didn't make the peach salsa we planned or the peach pie we were supposed to have after dinner. Instead, our other roommate ordered us pizza to thank us for our work preparing the household for the long winter ahead.

Sorry I don't have any pictures to share of the process, it was too hot and busy in the kitchen to be thinking about taking photos!

i'd eat peaches every day

Every summer I'm reminded of how amazing peaches are. I always forget about them when thinking about my favorite fruit- I think of raspberries, watermelon, but always forget the peaches. Thanks to my CSA (shout out to Victory Farms) I was able to get 20 lbs of Henley's Orchard's peaches. The plan was to can them, but instead in the past few days my roommates and I have been devouring the box. Luckily, we've put in an order for 30lbs this week (only $25!)

I've managed to bake the past two nights, last night a peach galette and today a cobbler/crumble. I don't think I had ever, ever made a crust before but not having to pre-bake it I was feeling pretty confident. I had found the recipe before, probably linked by The Kitchn but I can't remember. But I tried to basically follow it, though I accidently used half the butter and had to go back and combine the rest when the dough wouldn't form. I also used vanilla instead of almond flavoring, since I'm not a fan of almond. I maximized the peach coverage, so my sides weren't folded up as pretty.

[Pre-baking.]

[Post-baking.]

[Pre-eating.]

Tonight, my peach cobbler is in the oven! I used this recipe from Orangette, with these adaptions from The Kitchn, except I used a deeper Pyrex baking dish so I could use 10 peaches instead of 5 so that hopefully I can have leftovers for breakfast!