Sweet Cherry Cherry Pie

A few days ago we went on our annual cherry picking expedition with my folks.  I had only planned on getting one bucket but somehow came home with two and a half, which meant we had a lot of cherries.  So this year I thought I'd give cherry pie a go although I had never been a fan of cherry pie to begin with, hence I never baked it.  Most recipes I searched for asked for tart or sour cherries but I had sweet cherries.  And then I came across one, very simple and had to get only a couple ingredients from the store so off I went.  The pie was very easy to make, I cheated and used store bought pie crusts.  And in about an hour, the pie was done.  And my goodness, it was good.  I think it was the sweet cherries that did it for me.  The four of us almost finished the entire pie that night.  I'm sure I'll make this one again before the cherry season is over.  Recipe by Kraft Foods.

Watermelon and Feta Salad

A while back I flipped through a book at Costco titled "Plenty" by Yotam Ottolenghi.  I took a picture of the cover with my cell phone which I recently found again on my phone which made me think, oh yeah, I was going to find this at the library.  So I did and saw many interesting recipes, but one really caught my interest.  It's summer now so the watermelon part of it sounded really good.  It was called Watermelon and Feta, and it's a very simple dish.  Watermelon with feta cheese, basil, red onion, olive oil and black pepper.  I didn't have any basil and the stores were still waiting on their delivery, so Abby and I decided to go down to the creek and pick fresh mint instead.  We also added a drizzle of basalmic vinegar.  It was so "fresh" and made a perfect lunch.  We will be eating this one often. ^_^  

Recipe can be found here.

Grapefruit Sorbet

Another one of those times I am truly glad I have an ice cream maker.  This grapefruit sorbet turned out sooo good, perfect for the summer.  Very refreshing and full of grapefruit goodness.  I kinda cheated and used store-bought grapefruit juice instead of squeezing my own.

So simple, just grapefruit juice and sugar.

4c. grapefruit juice

1c + 2T sugar

Cook 1/2c juice with the sugar until the sugar dissolves.  Add the remaining juice and chill.  Then put into the ice cream maker. 

The sorbet was a little hard to scoop after spending time in the freezer.  I've read adding about 1T alcohol will help with that so I'll try that next time.