Recently I had some leftover crumbled feta cheese in my refrigerator. I didn’t want it to spoil, so I began looking for recipes in which to use this small amount of cheese. I came across various recipes for watermelon and feta salad. There were recipes that were made with a basil vinaigrette, or contained arugula, cucumbers or tomatoes. I wanted to keep it simple so I went with a basic watermelon salad that had mint. Although my husband and I aren’t big mint lovers, he was willing to give it a try.


I found a recipe by Jacque Pepin, watermelon salad with feta and mint, that was on the Food and Wine website. His recipe called for EVOO, fresh lemon juice, Tabasco, freshly ground pepper, kalamata olives, sweet onion and mint leaves. I had to adapt the recipe due to the quantity of watermelon I had and I didn’t have the onion or olives. The watermelon was already in small chunks. All I had to do was to mix the dressing and chop some mint. In some of the recipes I read, I followed their suggestion of not mixing the feta into the salad, but placed it on topped; then tossed when ready to serve.

​My daughter and her family were here over the weekend. I wanted to prepare a new recipe so that I could share it with you, plus I wanted it to be something easy to do with a 22 month old on hand. I found on the New York Times cooking app, a recipe by Martha Rose Shulman for Lemon and Garlic Chicken with Cherry Tomatoes. This a 30 minute recipe that uses EVOO, fresh lemon juice, garlic, fresh rosemary, boneless chicken breasts, cherry tomatoes, fresh parsley and some Parmesan cheese.
 
I chose this recipe as Whole Foods has on Prime Member special until today, boneless chicken breasts. I also had the fresh herbs needed for this recipe in my garden. I did need to purchase from Delicious Orchards fresh lemons and cherry tomatoes. I didn’t want cherry tomatoes on a vine, so I selected mixed cherry tomatoes. As I use their personal shopping service, I wasn’t quite sure how these tomatoes looked, but I did know they were sold in a container. What I received was tomatoes from Village Farms, greenhouse grown Maverick mix tomatoes; were they delicious! On their own the tomatoes had a nice sweetness.

This past weekend my daughter and her family spent a few days with us. It was my daughter’s birthday, so I decided to make her favorite birthday cake, Gateau de Crepes. This is a cake made of multi layers of crepes with a rich, vanilla pastry cream filling.  The recipe appeared in the New York Times in May 2005 where Amanda Hesser adapted the crepe batter from Joy of Cooking and the pastry cream came from Pierre Herme and Dorie Greenspan’s book Desserts.

​The cake takes two days to prepare. The crepe batter and the pastry cream need to be prepared ahead of time. The crepe batter is a luscious combination of butter (which is browned and makes it tasty nutty), milk, eggs, flour, sugar and a pinch of salt. The pastry cream requires a vanilla bean, milk, egg yolks, sugar, cornstarch, heavy cream, butter and Kirsch (clear cherry brandy). Don’t skip the vanilla bean, it makes a world a difference in the cream. Although I purchased mine at Wegmans awhile ago, you can purchase whole vanilla beans from the websites of King Arthur Flour or Beanilla.