This is for the Photo Friday weekly photo challenge. This week’s topic is Natural Light.

We use a lot of lettuce and love a good spring mix, so I planted a salad bowl in a terra-cotta pot. One of my gardening goals this year is to integrate beautiful ornamental plants with delicious edible plants so I can extend the time the garden looks good. So for this salad bowl, I added a few violas to the pot along with the lettuce mix. I sprinkled few pinches of seeds in the open area and will sprinkle a few more each week. This is called succession planting – I can harvest it all summer long by continuing to sprinkle in new seed and harvest the leaves when they’re ready.

The parsley wintered over in the pot and I’ve been harvesting a few leaves now and then when I need a tablespoon or two for a recipe. It’s so nice being able to just clip what I need.

Dan and I both love bell peppers. I especially like the beautiful rainbow of colors available, so we buy a “stoplight” package – one each of red, orange and yellow peppers – plus at least one green pepper, almost every week. In the summer, we grow our own. That saves a lot of money! Can’t wait to get the garden going.

I also grow Thai basil in my herb garden. If you have some, use that; otherwise, regular Italian basil is a good substitute.

Thai Red Curry with Shrimp

2 tbsp. peanut oil
1 medium onion, peeled, halved and sliced
2 cups bell peppers, any colors, seeded, halved crosswise and sliced (I used 1/2 each of red, yellow and orange peppers)
1 stalk celery, sliced 1/4-inch thick
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 tbsp. Thai red curry paste (I use Thai Kitchen brand)
2 tbsp. fish sauce
2 tsp. palm sugar or light brown sugar
1 14-oz. can light coconut milk
1/3 cup raisins
1 pound medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
3 tbsp. Thai basil leaves, coarsely chopped (optional)
3 tbsp. cilantro, chopped
3 cups jasmine rice, cooked, for serving
Sriracha hot sauce, optional, for serving

In a large sauté pan, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add onion and sauté a few minutes to soften. Add bell peppers, celery and garlic and stir a few more minutes. Add curry paste and stir until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in fish sauce and sugar, then coconut milk and raisins. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer till slightly thickened, about 2 minutes.

Stir shrimp into curry and simmer till just cooked, about 2 minutes.

Remove pan from the heat and stir in basil, if using, and cilantro.

Serve over jasmine rice. Sprinkle with sriracha, if desired, and garnish with cilantro sprigs.

Makes 4 servings.

While in Istanbul, we had a guided tour of the city and one of the places we saw was the gorgeous mosque, Hagia Sophia. I took this photo through the doorway to a small library off the main space. The Byzantine mosaics and woodwork in Turkey are amazingly beautiful. I brought home a few ceramic pieces I bought in town as a reminder.

This is my entry in this week’s Photo Friday challenge. The topic is Interiors.

Chimichurri sauce is a condiment from Argentina generally used as a steak sauce, but it can be used on all kinds of grilled meats. There are variations that include cilantro or oregano, but I found I didn’t like those flavors as well, so I just use parsley. I also am not fond of the bite of fresh onion and garlic, so I reduced the amount of garlic and soaked it and the onion in the vinegar to remove some of their pungency.

Even though summer is unofficially over, there are lots of good grilling days ahead, so try this with your next cookout.

Chimichurri Sauce for Grilled Steak
Adapted from Cooks Illustrated

1 cup parsley leaves (reserve stems for another use)
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup finely minced red onion
1/4 cup red-wine vinegar
3 medium cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
2 tbsp. water
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes

Add red onion and garlic to red-wine vinegar and let sit for 10 minutes. Place all ingredients in a food processor or blender and process until fairly smooth. Taste and add salt, if needed. Will keep refrigerated for one week.

This is my entry in the weekly Photo Friday challenge. This week’s challenge topic is Luminous.

Our July 2012 Daring Bakers’ Host was Dana McFarland and she challenged us to make homemade crackers! Dana showed us some techniques for making crackers and encouraged to use our creativity to make each cracker our own by using ingredients we love.

The only requirement was to use two different methods to make two types of crackers:

• icebox crackers, where you mix ingredients, shape them into a log, refrigerate to firm up, then slice and bake; or
• rolled crackers, where you combine ingredients in a mixer, then roll out by hand or with pasta rollers. From here, you can cut out shapes with a cookie/biscuit cutter or cut the sheets into cracker shapes after baking.

Dan and I were out of town the first two weeks of July, so I had limited time to get this done. Last week, I tried a cracker recipe I had printed out years ago – Ina Garten’s Parmesan and Thyme Crackers. But I measured the flour wrong and they crumbled. Lesson learned.

Next I decided to try the Seedy Crisps, an Alton Brown recipe. These are so good! Thin and crisp, filled with poppy and sesame seeds, these crunchy little bites go great with cheese. They rolled out very easily and didn’t stick to my granite countertop, which I love. It’s important to cut them while they’re still warm; otherwise, they just break apart.

Seedy Crisps. Recipe by Alton Brown.

The third recipe I made was really easy, too. I just need to remember to take the butter out to soften! Since I don’t bake much, I’m always forgetting about that part. Anyway, these were Rosemary, Cheddar and Walnut Icebox Crackers from “Garde Manger, The Art and Craft of the Cold Kitchen” by the Culinary Institute of America. I used pine nuts nuts instead of walnuts since we like those better.

These are like a cheesy, herby little shortbread. These are one of the icebox types; I still have another log in the fridge to bake off later. Because of the high fat content from the cheese and nuts, these will not last as long as the crisps, but the dough will keep in the fridge for days. Now, it just needs to be sliced and baked so we can enjoy it again.

Rosemary, Cheddar and Pine Nut Crackers

The recipes and tips are all available on the Daring Kitchen website.

This was a really fun challenge, and I look forward to participating in many more!

But everything else is doing well, particularly the Roma tomatoes and jalapeno and pepperoncini peppers. But we have some new babies out there that I’m really excited about. I thought they had died while we were on vacation, but the summer squash are flowering again, and there are a few babies, so soon we will have more of those.

Baby summer squash

We also have three tomatillo plants. We really love these. Tomatillos look like small green tomatoes, hence the name, but they’re actually a relative of the gooseberry plant. They have a mildly tart flavor similar to a less pungent mix of lemon and lime. I have several recipes in mind for these:

• Bobby Flay’s Tomatillo-Avocado Salsa for a fresh dip or sauce
• Rick Bayless’s Roasted Tomatillo Salsa for taco and enchilada sauces; I’m planning to can and freeze this for use later.
• I’ll also freeze some whole for Pork & Tomatillo Posole this winter.

Baby tomatillos

And we have canteloupe again! Last year, we only got two or three fruits out of the vine, but they were juicy and sweet. I can only find one baby right now, but there are a lot of flowers.

Baby canteloupe

I made a really delicious fruity salad with mint and vanilla-fig balsamic vinegar a few years ago, so that may be on the menu.

One evening, my sister Andrea and her husband Forrest made fish tacos with fresh pico de gallo for dinner. I thought a nice fruity sangria would go well with the zesty, spicy flavors of the main dish, so I made that.

Sangria is one of those recipes that can handle endless tweaking. I usually make it with pink (rose) wine, because that’s what I usually drink. For this dinner, I made two types – one with Pinot Grigio and another with a fruity red wine. Choose any fruity wine you like and add other fruits for a more complex flavor.

This photo is from a few years ago. Makes me want to get to slicing some citrus!

Sangria

1 lemon
1 lime
1 orange
1 bottle fruity red or white wine
3 tbsp. brandy or Grand Marnier
2 tbsp. sugar and 2 tbsp. water, or 2 tbsp. honey, or 2 tbsp. agave nectar
1 cup other fruits (optional) such as white grapes or diced peaches for white or rose wine, and cherries, blueberries or red grapes for red wine
6 oz. soda water

Wash, dry and thinly slice the lemon, lime, and orange. Place in a large pitcher and top with optional fruits if desired. Pour in the wine and brandy or Grand Marnier and stir to combine.

Make simple syrup by placing sugar and water in a small microwaveable bowl and heat on high for 30 seconds. Stir till sugar is dissolved and then stir the simple syrup into the mixture in the pitcher. Using simple syrup will ensure that all the sugar is dissolved so you won’t have grainy sangria. Alternatively, you can use 2 tbsp. honey or agave nectar, which dissolve in liquid more easily.

Cover the pitcher and refrigerate overnight. To serve, stir in 6 oz. of soda water (optional). I don’t usually do this, but some people like fizzy drinks