Who doesn’t want to cool off in the hot weather—with a refreshing cup or bowl of shaved ice?

It couldn’t be easier to make this recipe for Jasmine Tea Shaved Ice. For us, the toughest part was moving things around in the freezer to make space for the bowl.

You can make your own salsa with almost any seasonal fruit, including other stone fruits such as nectarines and plumcots, or your favorite berries. The fruit takes the place of the tomato, although you can also add a tomato in season.

Enjoy the result with chips or on meat, poultry, fish, seafood, eggs, tofu and all of the “usuals”—even vanilla or fruit ice cream/frozen yogurt and sorbet. Or, make easy cinnamon tortilla chips to go with it.

FRUIT SALSA RECIPE
This salsa recipe was shared by Melissas.com, using their now-in-season Flavorosa Plumcots.

Ingredients

Preparation
1. In small bowl, combine lime juice and sugar until sugar dissolves, making marinade.
2. In large bowl, combine all other ingredients, adding salt and pepper to taste.
3. Stir marinade into large bowl, blend and chill prior to serving.

Here’s another fruit salsa recipe: Strawberry Kiwi Cucumber Salsa With Easy Cinnamon Tortilla Chips.

What’s The Difference Between A Plumcot & A Pluot?
They’re all hybrids, meant to present the best qualities of both fruits—for the consumer, more sweetness and juiciness; for the seller, easier to grow, harvest, and ship. The names are trademarked by their respective breeders.

 
All three, like their parents, are low in fat and calories, but all that sweetness raises the carb content. The fruits are full of vitamin A and C and high in calcium, fiber, iron, magnesium and potassium.

A stack of round brownies from
Sugardaddy’s. Photo by Melody Lan |
THE NIBBLE.

Here are two of our favorite brownies that are sure to be a hit on Father’s Day:

Today, the E. coli outbreak in Germany is dominating headlines: thousands of Europeans taken ill, hundreds in intensive care units and worse, 35 dead as of this writing—from eating raw bean sprouts.

Most strains of E. coli are benign. According to an article in The New York Times, our produce supply is very safe. Professor Gad Frankel, of Imperial College London, notes that the chance of getting E. coli poisoning from raw vegetables is about the same as winning the lottery. Yet, says Dr. Frankel, some people do win the lottery and some people do get sick from E. coli.

If you cook your food, E. coli isn’t a problem: Heating kills the bacteria, which sit on the surface of the food. That’s why the USDA recommends that hamburgers be cooked to medium. Hamburger and other ground meats are more susceptible to contamination since there are so many internal surfaces that aren’t directly exposed to the heat.

Similarly, cooking vegetables also kills the bacteria. But rinsing them prior to eating them raw does not. Salads, for example, can potentially harbor E. coli.

Don’t use this as an excuse to avoid eating salad. If you are concerned and still want to eat raw vegetables, here’s a tip:

 
There are expensive industrial testing kits, but even for the wealthy, the soap solution is faster.

Yellow and blue corn tortillas, handmade
from hand-ground corn by
HotBreadKitchen.org.

We whipped up homemade tortillas yesterday, inspired by this recipe from Hot Bread Kitchen.

Tortillas, a flatbread, are a staple in Mexico. As Mexican food continues to increase in popularity, more of us are buying them to make burritos, enchiladas and tacos at home.

The oldest-known tortillas date back to approximately 10,000 B.C.E., made of the local staple food, corn.*

Many thousands of years later, in 1519, Hernán Cortés and his Spanish troops arrived in the Aztec empire (modern-day Mexico) and noted that the locals ate “flat corn bread.” The Aztec name for the flatbread is tlaxcalli; the Mexicans used the name tortilla, “little cake.”

*The original varieties of corn, hybridized by the Aztecs, were far more nutritious than today’s corn, which has been bred over the years for yield rather than nutrition.

The original tortilla was made from nixtamalized† maize/corn flour. However, today’s tortillas are commonly made from less nutritious, less flavorful wheat flour. Wheat is easier to work with. While maize/corn tortillas have a heartier texture and flavor, the gluten in wheat flour tortillas enables them to be made larger and thinner without breaking.

†Nixtamalization is a process that prepares the maize/corn, in which the grain is soaked and cooked in an alkaline solution, usually limewater, and hulled.

For better flavor and nutrition, go for the corn tortillas (wheat tortillas also provide more flavor and nutrition). Another benefit of corn tortillas: they can be gluten free, depending on the manufacturer (Mission tortillas are gluten free). Check the package. Some brands add wheat gluten to corn tortillas to tackle the breaking problem.

Yet, nothing beats the flavor from homemade corn tortillas. Today’s commercial soft corn tortillas are made by stirring hot water into instant masa/corn flour, which is to regular masa what instant mashed potatoes are to the real thing, or what bouillon cubes are to homemade chicken stock.

If you want to make the best corn tortillas ever, buy artisan hominy from Anson Mills and make their tortilla recipe. Their hominy is to supermarket hominy as…well, you get the picture.

You won’t believe how good a tortilla can be until you make these. We like to make them on Saturday morning and enjoy them all weekend.