Leave a comment by Monday morning with a way to reach you, and I'll pick a winner at random. Good luck!

The first pick-able zucchini have arrived in our garden – finally! I try to hold out and pick them when they’re a tender 5 or 6 inches long. Any smaller and my husband calls me impatient. Any larger and I’m treading in my late grandfathers territory, who not only tended a huge vegetable garden in his yard each summer, but let his veggies grow to the most enormous sizes.

As little kids, my sister and I would come to his house for a visit. On the backstairs would be a collection of seriously gargantuan produce worthy of a state fair-worthy: baseball bat sized zucchini, beets the diameter of softballs, green beans as long as knitting needles and as fat as a roll of quarters.  I don’t remember my mom taking any of these specimens home with us, and I don’t actually remember eating any of his harvest either. He would just sit on the back stairs, a cold glass of White Rose iced tea in his hand, and revel in our thrill of seeing vegetables so gigantic. 

But today it’s all about micro greens, petit pois, baby carrots, new potatoes; everything young and tender. My guess is that it’s a generational thing. Maybe with my grandfather’s seven brothers and sisters, they needed each plant to feed as many mouths as possible. But in our house – where it’s just two adults, a new baby and a toddler who exists on complex carbs alone, we luckily can be more frivolous.

This is my absolute favorite way to prepare freshly picked, young zucchini. Don’t let the “carpaccio” part fool you: This is no lame, raw zucchini crudites. The salt and vinaigrette help tenderize the zucchini a bit, keeping it crisp and bright, yet tender all at once. Toasted pine nuts and shaved parm bring the richness to balance it all out. The only trick is getting your zucchini sliced to the right thickness. If you have a mandolin (my favorite kitchen gadget) a 1/8 inch setting works perfect here. A vegetable peeler and a light touch work totally fine in a pinch. -Sarah

Ingredients:

2 or 3 zucchini, no longer than 6 inches

3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

2 tablespoons toasted pine nuts

Shaved parmigiano reggiano

Using a mandolin (or a vegetable peeler) slice zucchinis lengthwise into 1/8 of an inch slices. Place in a large mixing bowl and set aside.

Combine lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper in a small bowl and whisk to emulsify.  Take a taste and adjust the seasoning to your whim. Pour over zucchini slices and carefully toss to coat. Let sit for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, toss pine nuts in a small sautee pan and toast over medium heat until they are golden brown in spots, about 5-7 minutes. 

To serve, pile the zucchini onto a large platter and drizzle any juices that have collected at the bottom of the bowl over the top.  Scatter pine nuts and freshly shaved parm over the zucchini.  Feel free to give the dish one last hit of good quality sea salt and pepper at the end as well.

So this will be the last week of the Lazy Summer series. We’ll build to the final giveaway at the end of the week. In the meantime, here’s a quick reprise craft project to bundle us into the fall: upholstery necklaces. The supplies are cheap enough that you can switch them out for autumnal colors soon enough. But I’m still a sucker for bright, summertasticly happy necklaces that lie light on the skin for these waning warm days.

All that’s required is a sufficient length of upholstery trim from your local fabric or craft store and a clever closure. You could use a big safety pin in a pinch, or a large crimp closure like these. Simply string, check in the mirror to make sure the length is right, and walk out the door, emboldened by the bright hit of color.

She’s right that the power going out was always one of my favorite things. When we grew up, my family would actually have nights where we turned off all the power and pretended we were living back in pioneer days. And one of the craziest parts of that little tradition is that I didn’t think it was strange until I blurted it out at college once. The looks I got definitely told me that not many other families had self-imposed power outages on a regular basis.

I don’t mean to romanticize hardship. But I am tempted to say that the power has become a little too reliable for my liking. I remember that shiver of excitement when the lights would stutter and then go out. We’d be the littlest bit scared, but candles were nearby and we were used to the dark anyway since we grew up in the country. Your eyes would slowly adjust and really, either option was a good one: stay inside and play a board game, or head out the screen door and sit in the immense quiet.

But wait, this little trip down memory lane actually has a purpose. Because in addition to making up songs on the spot and relishing sitting on the deck at night, my mother also creates these Flip-Flop Heart necklaces. A pair of flip-flops joined at the heel so they make a little heart so you can wear a bit of summertime all year long. She’s giving one away to a lucky reader – just leave a comment before Monday night with a way to reach you and I’ll pick a winner at random.



But that was before I tried this one, a wood-fired sauna in a tiny wooden cabin at the edge of a Vermont pond. Carrying water up from the pond to create steam, heating up, then jumping into the pond to cool off. Then doing it all over again, until it was time for Heather’s fancy gin and tonics.

Check. And cheers.

Not only are they super-charming and relentlessly upbeat, they are kickass sewing instructors. And I’m realizing this is a very rare combination of qualities: people who are generous, big-hearted, laugh-until-your-stomach-hurts funny, and scary good at what they do. Heather and Liesl know the best way to do something -- but more importantly, they know how to teach you how to do it. And not just so you can do it with their help, but so you understand well enough to do it on your own (even though it’s way less fun without them).

Plus, the weekend takes place at a quintessential Vermont inn, complete with quilts on the beds, endless lemonade and chocolate chip cookies from the kitchen, a spring-fed pond ringed by blueberry bushes and Adirondack chairs, and a big wooden barn that we turned into a happy little sewing sweatshop.

This year, Heather hauled up her Orla Kiely teepee from New York. And decorated it with a working chandelier, a Denyse Schmidt quilt and sheepskin rug to set the mood for afternoon naps and cocktails (Heather does not have ideas in half measures).

There was also a visit to a neighboring barn stuffed full of amazing costumes and props. A townwide yard sale. Hiking to a secret Vermont lake. And beaucoup de sewing, surrounded by blazing greenery during the day and a chorus of crickets and bullfrogs at night. All in the company of a bunch of funny, creative and sassy women.

Till next year, Blueberry Hill.

You can see some of the projectrs and people right here.

Oh, how I hate the end of summer funk. I usually have a pity party for a day or two. Then I have an ode to summer weekend that includes lots of swimming, margaritas, and BBQ.

But then after that I start my fall preparation ritual. I make oatmeal raisin cookies and start thinking about camping trips (cuz it is too dang hot in TX to camp in the summer), smores, tall brown boots, football, pumpkins, cinnamon, and sippin' hot chocolate. Works like a charm every time.

It made me wonder, what end-of-summer or welcome-to-fall rituals do you have?

image by SFGirlByBay, via Poppytalk Handmade

I probably shouldn’t blurt this out on a blog about the pleasures of summer, but...I like my corn best off the cob (oh no she didn't!). Maybe it’s getting corn between my teeth, maybe it’s the butter that’s never evenly distributed along the cob, I don’t know.  But one of my more vivid culinary memories of summers as a kid was my mom sawing the leftover kernels off the cobs after dinner. I would reach up to the butcher block and grab the big platelets of corn, risking my fingers being hacked off by my mom’s dull cutlery. Corn shrapnel would fling everywhere – and surely I took a kernel or two in the eye – but no matter. It was worth the risk and better than any dessert.

Grill it, boil it, steam it in holy water - if the corn is local and super fresh, it’s going taste delicious. I personally like the toasted, caramelized taste of grilled corn best, so in this summer of laziness, I just make a few extra ears when sparking up the hardwood coals out back. When it’s time to clean up, I simply zip the kernels off the cobs, pop them in the fridge and use over the next couple of days in salads, salsas or pasta dishes like this one below. 

This is one of my favorite summer meals.  It puts my leftover corn kernels to work while also incorporating an all-star ingredient: brown butter.  Just when I thought butter couldn’t get any better, someone came along and browned it. Browning butter gives it a whole new dimension of nutty, salty deliciousness, so even thought this recipe seems like it calls for a ton, for sure don’t skimp! It’s what pulls the smokey sweet corn, the huge handful of fresh fragrant herbs, and the tender wide noodles together in complete lazy summer harmony. -Sarah

Ingredients:

2-3 ears grilled corn-off-the-cob

10 tablespoons of butter

8 ounces pappardelle, or any wide pasta you prefer

1/2 cup roughly chopped fresh herbs (sage, parsley, oregano, thyme, etc.)

kosher salt and pepper to taste

Bring a large stock pot of salted water to a boil.  Add pasta and cook until just al dente. Drain and set aside.

In a large saute pan, melt butter over medium-low heat.  Once the foam subsides, the milk solids in the butter will begin to brown on the bottom of the pan. Being careful not to let the butter burn, shake the pan from time to time, allowing the solids to toast to a deep golden brown. 

Add corn to the pan and saute in the browned butter until heated through, about 3 minutes.  Add pasta, herbs and toss well to combine. 

Take a little bite to check for seasoning and add salt and pepper as needed.  This makes a great side dish for four or main dish for two. Feel free to finish it off with a tiny squeeze of fresh lemon juice for a little added citrus bite!

It was such a good trip. When I got off the plane in Burlington, I almost wept with happiness. For the warm air and seeing my Vermont sister and a long stretch of empty days ahead. We headed for an outdoor restaurant at the edge of the lake and pulled an about-face on our drink order because there was steel drum music playing and people puttering up to the dock in dinghies and all of a sudden, a gin and tonic wasn’t going to cut it. So we swapped our order for two pina coladas and hatched a plan to houseboat around the lake next summer.

And that’s kind of how everything went. Not much planning – just bobbing along the current of each moment, each hour, each afternoon. Should we make homemade ice cream or eat a Klondike bar out of the freezer? Read a magazine or a novel? Swim now or later?

Every decision was easy and the right one. And, really, how often can you say that?

I’m not ready for summer to end. But this end-of-summer melancholy is an old acquaintance. I think it means it’s been good. So let's make the end count.

If these photos look familiar, it's because I lazed out so utterly that I didn't take many photos. So I'm borrowing these from this post last summer. How's that for lazy?

This relates to what I have been eating a lot of lately. Whether on the beach when the happy bell of the ice cream truck rings, or after a barbeque chicken dinner, ice cream features regularly in this summer vacation. And no surprise, really. Ice cream knows no season in my family. Sure, it shines the brightest when eaten on summer porches or while wearing flip-flops. But I grew up in family of ice cream zealots. So much so that my sister packed her ice cream maker to meet us here on the Cape for a few days, where we’ve ice-creamed (notice the invented verb) blackberries, peaches, even Japanese plum wine this week.

When we were little, my parents had a wooden ice cream maker that required rock salt and lots of cranking. So much cranking, in fact, that we didn’t make many batches after the novelty wore off. But Cusinart's Pure Indulgence Ice Cream Maker is a dead-simple affair. And they're giving one to a lucky winner who will be chosen at random after the giveaway closes at midnight PST on Friday. Please include a way to reach you, and good luck! I’ll be back later this week with more tales of the waning lazy summer days.