Hot days ahead

Here we are in early July with hot and humid days ahead.  It's the kind of weather that's good for staying inside, watching a good movie and eating some good food.

This coming weekend, we have ice cold eggnog on the weekly menu and also vanilla poppy seed muffins which are making their first appearance.  

For the following weekend, savory egg salad (cold, of course, and perfect for our hot weather) and spritz cookies are on the menu.

I'm currently prepping chocolate chip peanut butter cookies and yellow snack cake to be added to the full menu.  Pictures have been taken.  I'm in the middle of updating the recipes in my database.  I'm working on descriptions for the website.

For each item that I add to the full menu, there are several tasks which have to be done in order for me to stay organized and in order for the items to be presented on the menu consistent with the way previous items have been presented.  It's a bit time consuming sometimes, but the end result is always something I'm happy with.  Too bad I don't have an assistant to help out with these tasks.

For the first days of July, I have focused on cooking.  Several batches of yellow cake and cookies have been made, cooked, taste-tested, and discarded (for the squirrels and birds and other native wildlife to eat).  Once I finish the updating of the new items to the website menu, I'll be focusing on a new sandwich and also macarons.  The sandwich will have meats and veggies and a special sauce to be spread on the bread, maybe even a choice of multiple sauces.  For the macarons, I will be starting with one flavor, most likely, and then over time I will add other flavors.  

I've been wanting to add macarons to the menu for quite a while.  Does anyone NOT like this cookie?  At one point, a few years ago, I ordered macarons from multiple places to see how different batches tasted, and to see how they packaged and mailed this cookie without cracking the outer surface.  What I learned is that no matter how carefully a bakery packaged their macarons, there were always some cracked cookies in the packaged received.  I also learned that there are many sub-par macarons being made and mailed all around the world.  Sometimes they had great form and texture but little flavor.  And sometimes it was the opposite.  But a few were very very very good.  Mine won't get put on the menu unless they hit that level.  I've played around with these before, but haven't pursued them in earnest until now.  I'll keep you all updated on how it goes.

Stay cool out there.  And think of cool breezy autumn days to help beat the heat.