With all the heat and sun, and too many cherries, my brain is fried. The only real desire I have is for plain old water, and staying focused on just one thing is difficult. I would rather plan than do right now, and a week of testing recipe ideas has yielded nothing to write home about...so, my thoughts of the day, the week, are below.

Random one-line thoughts about food that may or may not be true:

Getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar. The origin of this saying stems back to the days of King Tut, who had a cookie jar full of M&M's and was constantly snacking.

Seized chocolate in the form of bark cannot be saved with more nuts. And reheating with a little water and then spreading on top of a bed of Oreo's did.

Making one-pot meals with everything in your pantry yields the most delicious dishes. Never.

Adding yuzu juice to everything is a winner. Nope.

Saving cherries to make a pie or clafoutis is a great idea. Rarely, if ever, do they last long enough to have enough to make said dish.

Storing your flour in the freezer is a good idea. Flour in my Mom's day went bad in a week or so because it didn't have Calcium propanoate, Sodium benzoate, and Tricalcium phosphate added to it.

A no-seed watermelon is a sterile watermelon.

Organic is not simple. As of March 20, 2023, the rules for USDA organic have been updated, the first major change in 30 years. Fraud has been a continuous issue in organic foods. Without a seal from the USDA or from states that have an organic program (be sure to check the individual state's rules), it might not be what they say it is. It's tricky. Recent reports and consensus indicate that organic is better for your health and definitely better for children.

Chocolate bars are exploding and changing! New flavors - infused, embedded, topped - are everywhere! And the packaging is totally awesome, but the chocolate itself, not so much. And that's the fun part: finding a chocolate to try and see if it meets your expectations.

There is a million, only "one-way" to cut up a watermelon. For that matter, the same goes for making brownies, baking a potato, cooking corn on the cob, and hard-boiling an egg.

Which is why cooking is so much fun: the personalization, the continuous experimentation, to find perfection, which is hopefully never achievable! And there is no wrong or bad way to make something, except for cooking a steak well-done.

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Simple to assemble, changing the protein to whatever you want works. The sardines add not only fish, but add salt and Umami. If you choose something other than sardines, like other tinned seafood, it is also about texture and points of interest amongst the potatoes.

See the One Dish Potatoes and Sun Dried Tomatoes Recipe here!

The same words as above, but with less red chili heat. Instead, the Green is spicier and helps you exfoliate almost immediately. Your mouth tingles, in a good way, and your mouth is jumping.

There is more saltiness and a stronger vinegar effect than the red. This comes through as more pucker and a bit of eye twinging from the salt.

The vinegar does hit the back of the throat with a little punch. Only in the end is there the zest of the yuzu.

I find it spicier and not as hot as the red. This is where your hot taste receptors will need to tell you their own story after tasting these twins of sauce.

Shop now for Hot Yuzu Green Sauce!

This recipe was adapted from Nancy Radke's cookbook, The Seasons of Parmigiano-Reggiano.

See the Sausage and White Bean Stew Recipe here!

It is lavender season almost everywhere, and the bees are busy making food for the queen and honey for us.

We are fans of honey made from flowers and trees, as well as honey from all over the world. We have tasted a lot of honey in our time!

What is truly amazing, at least to me, is that honey from a plant, a flower in this case, can be so different from the same plant, in this case, a flower of a specific species grown in different places in the world. It can be so different.

Yes, the underlying tones are often the same, yet they can also be wildly different. Perhaps that is the definition of wild?

And this is one of my all-time favorite Lavender honeys in the world! There is also a Maritime Lavender honey from the same bees that has a hint of the sea in it, which I truly love, but it is much harder to get.

When you open the jar of this honey, it is warm, creamy, and has a gentle, soft, inviting look. That is how you feel even before you sink your spoon in to savor and taste this elixir!

In the mouth, it is just as you anticipate, and even better. Soft and delicate, the flavors are as you expect and want. Sweet Lavender, subtle, delicious, and just right.

It is how you want your honey to be, but way better!

Shop now for Les Ruchers de Bourgogne Traditional Lavender Honey!

Walnut oil and cider vinegar are a natural pair, and they are taken to new heights by the honey. This honey-apple cider vinegar dressing is particularly good over salads of hearty or bitter Spring greens. Try it on a combination of watercress, mache, arugula, and radicchio with some chunks of caramelized apple and toasted walnuts as a garnish.

See the Honey and Katz Apple Cider Vinaigrette Recipe here!

We test and try ingredients all the time, so our pantry overflows into every available flat space we can find. In other words, the dining room table, the hutch, and the floor can get covered in new foods. Sounds great, but sometimes it's just too much.

As a result, some of our favorite ingredients are pushed aside, literally, to the back burner or even out the door. I don't know how long it has been since I gave away my last bottle of apple cider vinegar to a "chef-in-need."

This means that I need to resupply and bring a bottle of apple cider vinegar home. (We have 18 vinegars in the pantry.) Even though you know every vine is awesome, it's nice to have a refresher, of taste that is.

This Katz Gravenstein Apple Cider Vinegar is a revelation, a vision, a lightning bolt of amazement! Yes, it's just vinegar, but a little sip with just your lips, and you can taste the sweetness, the shape, the roundness of the apple—you can taste the apple!

Wow!
"My daughter needs to take vinegar for her stomach and when I gave her a bottle of this for her Christmas stocking she was blown away by how good it tasted. She told me it had a rich apple flavor with mild vinegar tartness, better than anything she's ever had in the past. She loved it!"
-- Steve

Lovely, fragrant, mellow vinegar!
"A really nice, delicately flavored vinegar. I used it to make cole slaw and it added a lovely apple-y note to it (much more subtle and flavorful than other apple cider vinegars). I also found 1 Tbsp in a glass of water very effective for heartburn (after the cole slaw)."
-- Pam

Shop here for Katz Gravenstein Apple Cider Vinegar!

Ventresca is from the Italian word for belly, "ventre". Ventresca tuna is considered to be the best canned tuna you can find, and this can does not disappoint!

This tuna is soft, supple, delicious, crazy good, gentle, flavorful, and amazing!

Just canned, this tuna is FRESH!

It is a delight to eat and have for a special moment every single day!

Shop now for Lummi Island Wild Ventresca Tuna!

Circa 1956, George F. Waldo developed a new blackberry named Marion after the county in which it was extensively tested. The harvest timing placed it between the Boysen (early) and the Thornless Evergreen (late), two existing varieties of blackberry. The Marion yielded superior fruit, was earlier in fruition than the Evergreen, and with a thicker cane, was easier to train, resulting in the ability to reduce the number of canes, producing more fruit on more branches (and fewer canes).

It was created by taking the native Oregon trailing blackberry, Rubus macropetalus Dougl, and crossing it with Chehalem X Olallie circa 1945. It was then selected in 1948 and tested until released as Marion in 1956.

The result is this: some 58 years later (It takes time to create good, and proving age doesn't have to be bad!), Oregon Growers Marionberry all-natural fruit spread is the bomb!

(With full disclosure, we totally love the Oregon Growers Marionberry Fruit Spread, so our review is biased.)

Take off the top, the lid, if you will, and dig in to gather a full spoonful, and you will enjoy a richness of full-flavored, very-berry taste. We stop short of calling it creamy (not so appealing a word when describing a fruit spread), but it has an enveloping, rich mouthfeel that touches the outer edges of your tongue like a fine Cabernet. You wish all fruit-based jams would be like this.

A whiff after tasting from the jar (or your second spoonful) smells like a very, very blueberry.

The combination of the guilty fruity spread placed atop butter is a very important test, and one I take very seriously. It is perfection as it allows the toast to crunch, the butter to blend, and the fruit to spread with flavor.

If we had to choose, we like it cold; very, very cold. But that's not to say we are not going to be ecstatically happy when we have a peanut butter and Marionberry sandwich! The combination of berry tasty and not too sweet is just the right balance to stand up to peanut butter without dominating in a bite.

Shop now for Marionberry Fruit Spread!

These terrific olives - firm, extra fancy-grade Manzanillas from the south of Spain - are stuffed full of anchovies that come from the Bay of Biscay off Spain's northern coast.

A very popular combination in Spain, anchovy-stuffed olives are harder to track down here, but we wouldn't know what to do without them!

Even if anchovies aren't your cup of tea on pizza or in Caesar salad, you might give these a try...their flavor is subtler here, and paired with the olives, the combination of tastes is ideal.

These Spanish Manzanilla olives are a real treat on a relish tray, or for special hors d'oeuvres, and of course, for those very dry Martinis.

High-quality ingredients and craftsman-like attention to detail in processing and packing. What more could you ask for!

Shop now for Anchovy-Stuffed Spanish Manzanilla Olives!

This warm weather has reminded me about one of my favorite, easy and refreshing drinks in the summer. A jigger or so to a tall glass of water takes the edge off and makes life a little sweeter. And all without being too much.

Heaven in a bottle!

"Just received a bottle of D'Arbo and this stuff totally blew me away. Mixed with a little Pellegrino it makes the most refreshing summer beverage ever, and that's just the first thing I tried with it. I feel as if there are a lifetime of possibilities at hand. Thanks for offering such an incredible import!"
-- Brett

Shop now for D'Arbo Elderflower Syrup!

Open the zip-topped bag and the wonderful smell wafts its way up to you with ease! This a wonderful smoky flavor smell!

This beautifully smoked fleur de sel is a one-of-a-kind salt that was developed in cooperation with a prestigious winery. It is an unusual creation—a fleur de sel cold-smoked with oak chips from seasoned French oak Chardonnay barrels, barrels that spent five to seven years aging wine.

Hand-made from start to finish, the salt crystals are first hand-raked and then naturally cold-smoked in small batches, a method that preserves the mineral content and natural flavor of the salt.

The crystals are smoked to a light toasty brown and have a deep smoke flavor without any bitterness. The moist fleur de sel crystals absorb the natural smoke flavors with subtle tones of both, oak and Chardonnay, and the finished product is a pleasure to use.

Shop now for Chardonnay Oak Smoked Fleur de Sel!

A very red salsa (thanks to tomatoes) that you might anticipate will be super-hot, but it isn't.

You'll look inside the jar and think you see corn kernels and when you take the bait you realize it is indeed corn, and somehow it's the perfect combination of tomato, chili, corn and spices.

At the end of your taste, after the majority of the salsa is gone, your tongue and the inside of your mouth will feel tingly and prickly—but its very pleasant.

After multiple spoonfuls there will be a swell of spicy—quite delicious!

Shop now for Cheeky Chili Salsa!

The La Vecchia Dispensa Berry Vinegar is a melange of wild berry flavors. It is sweet but not cloying, making it good for decorating a lovely platter of roasted potatoes, drizzling over sauteed mushrooms, dolloping onto a fresh slice of mozzarella perched on bruschetta, or for saucing up some herbed grilled chicken or garlicky shrimp.

It's the perfect choice for the uber-cool new cocktail: the balsamic vinegar martini! It's a martini made with the usual suspects (vodka or gin with dry vermouth) plus a sinker of the sweet stuff. Ta-da! Yours is the best minibar in town.

Shop now for La Vecchia Dispensa Balsamico e Frutti di Bosco!

"The best lentils in the world," according to Patricia Wells, Le Puy (pronounced PWEE) lentils, are an attractive dark green color with blue marbling. True Le Puy lentils are grown on the mountain plateau around the French town of Le Puy-en-Velay in the Haute Loire region, which has a unique climate and rich volcanic soil in which the lentils thrive.

Serve these French green lentils either hot or cold as an accompaniment to poultry, fish, meat, and game or add them to soups and casseroles. French Puy lentils are the key accompaniment to regional dishes such as petit sale (salt pork and lentils) and jambonneau (a particular delicatessen-like ham). In France, they are often served cold in salads.

About the AOC Designation: These French green lentils are the first foodstuff of their native country, other than wine or cheese, to be awarded the famous "Appellation d'Origine Controlee" mark of quality and assurance of origin. Le Puy's little green and blue marbled lentils retain their shape on cooking (although not as much of their color) and have a delicious flavor.

Shop now for Green Lentils - A.O.C. Le Puy France!