Staying Out Of The Heat

 Although we do just about everything possible to keep the house cool and the humans and pups comfortable on these warm summer days, my husband still enjoys baking sometimes, especially when the bananas on the counter-top are going bad.

Hence, banana bread enters our life which means a warm oven for an hour or so which heats up the kitchen.

Once a week of heating up the kitchen then calls for a bit of cooking outdoors, which also gives him an excuse to drink an ice cold beer out on the deck while the grill is going.  Late afternoon and early evening is when the heat really settles in outside, and so grilling is not something he does every day of the week,

 so in order to cut his outdoor time during those heated hours, he grills numerous items which we then refrigerate and re-heat as is needed for our meals.

Turkey burgers, hamburgers and hotdogs will be on our dinner menus this week when temperatures outdoors are roaring hot.

 The garden is nowhere near giving us cucumbers yet, it will be a bit of a wait, so in the meantime I buy just one or two a week.  One nice sized cucumber sliced, a bit of red onion, toss in some yellow and green sliced bell peppers, add a little bit of sesame seed, and then douse it all with Zesty Italian dressing and shake it all up real good in a plastic container and you have a delicious and easy summery salad to go with any one of your grilled meats.

 Ranch beans, or what Dad always referred to as Cowboy beans, also make a great complimentary food with a grilled hotdog or burger.  These are not sweet like baked beans, so you can opt to sweeten them up if you like, but just heated up in a pot works fine for we simple folk.

 With all of the meat he grilled for us, there should be no reason for him to have to stand out in the late afternoon heat again this week.

He'll just have to suffer and drink his next ice cold beer indoors.  

LOL

 I also, since it's summertime which means 'tacos and taco chips' galore, want to share this wonderful brand of salsa.

It's from the Plow and Hearth store, and it's made right here in Virginia by Gunther's Gourmet.

I met one of the owners of Gunther's Gourmet at our local Plow and Hearth store as he was demonstrating cooking with their salsa, and also offering up samples to those of us watching him cook.

I really enjoyed their bean salsa, as well as the Lime Mango Salsa.

It's pricier than grocery store salsa, but certainly does not have that generic salsa taste that so many brands have.

 Here's the link to Gunther's Gourmet where you can click the link to see all of their products offered, which they sell at Plow and Hearth stores.... you can't purchase them online though, so visit a Plow and Hearth store if interested.

 These two guys were born and raised here in Roanoke, VA, so you know they are super nice people.

I met the younger brother, Mike, and we chatted for some time about his great garden at home and also our love of the Boxer breed of dog.  He's as nuts about his boxer as we are about our two maniacs.

So, get your summertime on, either indoors our outdoors, and if the heat of grilling gets to you, well, just do it once a week like we do.