The post in which I go on and on and on about what’s cookin’… but forget to go on and on about my new love affair with FLAX SEED. (soon to be posted. that is, as soon as I get around to writing it).

The spell of cool weather that we are enjoying, in combination with the late summer / early fall harvest has awakened my inner cook. I have been kicking butt in the kitchen (if I do say so myself).

It all started with our trip to the Poconos for Labor Day Weekend. With the grandparents around to help keep the kiddos happy, and cool breezes coming off the lake where the herons were fishing and the turtles were sunning themselves, I got to spend some time becoming reacquainted with the kitchen. It also just so happened that D and I had just received a do-it-yourself kit for making fresh mozzarella and ricotta.

With mozzarella on hand, and ricotta, I just had to make some lasagna. Of course you have to make some red sauce if you want to have lasagna. I decided to make a meat sauce with ground turkey in it. With fresh basil, just the right note of garlic, some olive oil, fresh ground pepper corns… mmmmm….

I am a total snob when it comes to Italian cooking. My mother happens to be the best Italian cook ever and showed me a few tricks here and there (during the times when we were speaking to each other). So between the cheese making and the red sauce, I managed to produce a lasagna that even the children couldn’t resist. They even ate it the next day for lunch, too! I felt utterly triumphant, and the inner cook in me was awakened; after a long hot summer where the most I wanted to do in the kitchen was make frothy cold drinks in the blender, I was ready to get cooking.

But a meat lasagna alone wasn’t enough. Oh, no. Not once my inner cook started sniffing around. She had to grill eggplant, zucchini, sweet peppers, red onion, and of all things… BEETS. The beets were not included in the veggie lasagna, but the others were very welcome and very delicious. The beets, grilled and lightly salted were a sweet and salty side dish. Alongside the caprese (fresh homemade mozzarella, sliced heirloom tomatoes, and fresh home grown basil drizzled lightly with fine olive oil).

And that all was just one meal.

That all seemed to remind me that when it’s not 99 degrees and utterly sticky-humid-miserable in my kitchen I actually like cooking! It also helps to not have kids hanging off your elbows, whining about how hungry they are.

The whining-starving-miserable period of time that usually thwarts my food prep is caused by a lack of appetizers and by a lack of inspiration in cooking. When I get into a good groove, though, I seem to find ways of holding off the famished little beasts. (I’m speaking of my darling children of course.) One thing that seems to work without spoiling the appetite is to get the vegetable ready first and have them start with that – be it salad, sliced celery, cukes and carrots, or lightly steamed green beans. Even broccoli will get eaten if I put it out first.

This week so far, I’ve served home made pizza (plain on one side, eggplant and goat cheese on one quarter, and turkey sausage on the last quarter of it), gazpacho soup, salsa picante with tomatilloes, hot pepper, and plum tomatoes, and a tray of banana chocolate chip muffins. At breakfast we’ve seen waffles, french toast, and omelettes wrapped into tortillas for breakfast burritoes.

One thing that I find helps to inspire me is that there’s a discount bin at my local food store: when the fruit are banged, or slightly too ripe, or the bananas have bad boo-boos, they get placed in a 25 cents per pound bin. I come around and see what’s there and try to think up a great dish that could use very ripe tomatoes (gazpacho! salsa!) or bananas (muffins! smoothies!) or sort of smooshed peaches (smoothies! peach crumble! cooked peach toppings for pancakes!). That way I feel like I’ve really pulled a fast one. Ha! they thought these fruits and veggies were nearly worthless, but they were really the best treasure in the whole store!

I just hope my energy level continues to be this good as the days grow shorter.  I think soup making may be on the menu, coming to a kitchen near me soon.