Cooking on hot summer days

 

Mid-July and it's hot.  I've been doing a lot of cooking these past couple weeks, and that means my kitchen and my central air conditioning have been battling it out to take control.  And this week coming up looks to be even hotter than normal so I will try to do most of my cooking in the mornings.

For this upcoming weekend we have eggnog and vanilla poppy seed muffins on the menu.  For the following weekend, I'm going to take the weekend off.  That will be the last weekend of July, and it's the last weekend before I return to teaching my students on August 1st.  So I'm going to use the weekend to hopefully get a last flurry of work done on some new foods for the menu.

In the photo above you see an item that will be on the menu shortly.  It was a nice one to work on this past week because it's cold.  This is a chilled double dark chocolate brownie with a layer of chocolate mousse on top.  It's great straight from the fridge or at room temperature.  So it was nice thing to be working on since every time I sampled it, it was cold and felt so refreshing to eat while it was so hot outside.  

I sampled it many times for two very important reasons. First, I like to taste things several different times because how delicious seems to us can be influenced by how hungry we are or what else we have just finished eating.  So by tasting something several times, I get a good variety of tasting experiences to really be certain that I like the final result.  Second, I often like to taste something over multiple days to see how it ages.  And this item ages very well.

This item is ready to go on the menu as soon as I have determined how it will be packaged.  This issue is often a tricky thing because finding the right size and right type of packaging for a new menu item is not always easy.  I think I have identified a good way to package this new brownie (I can't package it the same as other brownies because of the top layer of mousse), and it's a packaging design that I think will work for other things as well.  And that's always a plus, when one package can be used for multiple foods on the menu.  So I will order a sample this week and once it comes in, if it does the job, then this new brownie with mousse will be officially added to the menu.

Well, today, I'm working on new sauces and spreads for sandwiches, and also working on macarons.  First, though, I'm going to eat a little ice cream and relax for a bit.

Enjoy the day no matter where you are in this big world.