Paninis
When the heat wave started last week, my husband suggested chicken paninis.  I thought this was a good idea and I found a delightfully easy recipe on the Williams-Sonoma website for Chicken Panini with Pesto and Mozzarella.
 
A quick trip to the food store was needed to procure boneless chicken breasts, sliced Italian bread, a red pepper for making homemade roasted peppers, arugula and a small ball of fresh mozzarella cheese. I already had pesto in the refrigerator.
 
If you don’t own a panini press, you can still forge ahead and make these sandwiches. You’ll need two pans. A grill or fry pan and, preferable, one a cast iron.  To help compress the sandwiches, one 28-ounce can of tomatoes or two smaller size cans will do. The sandwiches will go in one pan, while the cast iron is placed on top with the cans in the fry pan. The weight of the cast iron and cans will compress the sandwiches similar to the panini press.

​​While our daughter was staying with us, she prepared a very hearty and healthy supper, “The Easiest Healthy Burrito Bake (gluten free)”. This recipe is from the food blogger Rachel Mansfield with a blog of the same name. Ms. Mansfield says her recipes contain “just the good stuff,” meaning few ingredients, little prep work and you don’t need to be an experienced chef to prepare. You’ll find on her website many gluten-free, dairy-free and recipes with no refined sugars. This recipe that my daughter prepared is quite forgiving.

​It has been a few weeks since I posted last. My daughter and her family have returned home to an almost completed kitchen renovation. There is still quite a bit of work to be completed, however, everyone was anxious to get home as baby number two is due to arrive at the beginning of August.
 
My daughter ordered twice from a mail order company that sells “less than pretty” produce. I was a little hesitant for her to try this, however, since the pandemic, she has taken to ordering groceries online. One of the items in her last produce box was a rather large red beet. The beet was stored in a cool, dark place, but need to be cooked. I found on www.epicurious.com a recipe by Melissa Clark (December 2017) for Beets with Dill, Lime and Yogurt. Eureka! I had all the ingredients for the recipe and now had something with which to use the dill that was growing in my garden.