Too Hot

Well, gentle readers, this has been one exciting weekend full of trips to the library to obtain massive quantities of books, reading inventories of medieval Dominican libraries, and working in the yard.  Oh, and it was over 95 degrees here on Saturday and I have no air conditioning.

So, for your viewing pleasure, the petunias in front of my mailbox that went crazy while I was gone:

Unfortunately, the rest of the plants did not fare so well and were pretty much toast by the time I got back.  So, I got some petunias half off to plant in the window boxes:

The  flower bed with huge volunteer viola plants:

Another window box:

I stopped to see "Mr. Little Old Man," as Mother of Ken calls the old guy who sells fruit on the corner near my house.  Among other things, he had one pound bags of shelled peas for $2 that he got from the Amish.  I love peas, so I brought them home, steamed them for a few minutes, and then froze most of them for later.

Fresh peas are delicious--I've got plans to make Ina Garten's Pasta, Pesto, and Peas later this week.

Mr. Little Old Man also had Amish strawberries:

In an attempt to use some of the stuff that has been languishing in my freezer, I made up a new strawberry dessert.  I took a sheet of puff pastry, cut it into four smaller pieces, and scored each piece about one inch around the entire rectangle before baking them.

Then, I used a spatula to press down the center part, leaving the one inch edge to hold my filling.  For the filling, I made some lemon curd (the Fannie Merritt Farmer recipe) to spread inside each sheet of puff pastry and I topped the lemon curd with fresh sliced strawberries.  Some whipped cream would be good, too.

I kept the other three pieces of puff pastry in the refrigerator until I was ready to use them.  Tonight's version of the dessert includes blueberries, too:

This is really good--light, refreshing, and flavorful.  You could make all different variations of this just using the puff pastry base.  I especially liked the addition of the blueberries.