На кухне: Summer Recipes

Make them quick, before summer ends! ; )

Lenin Avenue Billboard: Okroshka season is open! 10 kinds!

Okroshka (окрошка) is a cold Russian soup. It's super easy to make and is perfect for hot weather. As you can see in the picture above, the weather isn't really hot here anymore but I still was eager to try making it after finding a simple recipe on Red Star to Lone Star.

 basically salad + kefir + meat/egg

Unlike the holodnik, okroshka was a big hit in our household. I find the taste of kefir a little strange so I daintily spooned up the soup but D had no such inhibitions. He inhaled it. End of story.


The next recipe is also very simple and only requires two ingredients.

Watermelon = aрбуз (Russian) = кавун (Ukrainian)

A friend hooked me up with this fantastic Macedonian food blog, Sitno Seckano. The blog has lots of unique ideas and I like how each recipe is written first in Macedonian, then English. Who knows, maybe Macedonian will be my next language? Anyways, back to the recipe- Orange Watermelon Juice. This was a breeze to whip up and I would make it year-round if I could. Juice in Ukraine tends to be sugar+water+concentrate so it felt much healthier to drink this orange watermelon juice. It's also insanely delicious as a popsicle! Fortunately there's still another month or so before watermelon is out of season. We bought a watermelon at the grocery store today, enticed by the "50% today only!" deal (cost $1), only to cut into it five minutes ago and find it as green inside as it was outside :p

summertime fridge: so healthy and colorful!

One thing I used to make often in Alaska was homemade granola. The recipe has long since been lost, so this was one giant guesstimate that luckily turned out pretty well.

Mix oats, honey, and olive oil. Put on baking tray and bake in oven.

Add nuts and dried fruit. Enjoy over yogurt!

And finally, nothing less than the GREATEST pesto you will ever find on planet Earth!!!

In keeping with the less-time-in-the-kitchen theme, this recipe requires just a couple of spins with a food processor or mixer... and presto, pesto!
Cilantro Pesto Recipe

Do you have any favorite summer recipes? I'd love to hear them!

PS: A daring drama that unfolded 5 stories above the ground while I was preparing dinner. Can you believe he's barefoot with a rope around his waist?!