I'm sure by now you've realized a sad truth - it's been a while since I've blogged. This is, actually, a very good thing, because it means that my job, at Saveur, is fulfilling enough that I don't have extra creative energy (or time) for other projects.

To see what I'm up to, check out the Saveur blogs or take a look at the magazine.

I have a new love in my life. I stumble home from work at 9:30pm with no time to cook, hoping I still have a container of buffalo milk yogurt in the back of the fridge, fall on the couch, and watch Jaques Pépin cook. Everything he makes looks incredibly delicious, and I find myself thinking, "Why didn't I realize how much I want to eat mussels and saffron over pasta? Ooo, those strawberries are exactly what I want - nothing in the world could possibly be as good as they would be."

Of course, half the charm is Jacques himself, talking to me about just how to dunk my baguette into the watery, saffrony sauce, saying adorable things like, "I wouldn't want to put more wine into this, but I will add a little 'château sink'," in that lovely, soft French accent. Yes, I am head-over-heels for a man old enough to be my grandfather. Fortunately, so is The Guy, so we collapse together and plan the dinners we will make someday, when we have time to reacquaint ourselves with our kitchen. I've even started to talk him into getting me the book for my birthday (he thinks he should just get me the dvd set so I can drool over it night after night).

The show has a funny website, here, but it doesn't nearly do justice to the genius that is this particular PBS jewel. So if you can't find time to cook, look up your local PBS schedules and feed on the master and his food.

Given my totally crazy schedule and the hideous heat wave we suffered through a couple weeks ago, it should come as no surprise to anyone that I've been playing around with more no-cook pasta sauces. At first I thought I'd just stick to my regular tomatoes/onions/basil/mozzarella staple (above), but then one day when I went to the Co-op on my way home from work, I couldn't find any mozzarella. I sat in front of the cheese shelves for a few minutes, momentarily stymied. What would I use instead? I scanned the rows of tallegio, parmigiano-reggiano, and morbier, but in the end I wimped out and bought goat-cheese; it would be different, but there would be no surprises. I also bought some picholine olives to add to the mix.

I took everything home and made the sauce as usual, but when I opened the fridge to grab the olives I saw a bag of peaches that looked so good I just had to grab one. After confirming with The Guy that, no, he didn't want any peach in his pasta, I cut half of one into small pieces and added it to the sauce before pouring everything over pasta and crumbling the goat cheese on top.

How was it? It was fantastic! Something about the combination of the peach, the mild goat cheese, and the basil is pure summer.

I also tried another recipe that tastes like summer from the NY Times food section's new column about eating from the Greenmarket. I couldn't really remember exactly what the recipe consisted of, and the recipe was no longer on line, here is what I used:

Note: This recipe is amazing if you have really good, fragrant tomatoes and young, sweet corn, but wasn't nearly as memorable the second time I made it, with slightly "off" ingredients, it lost the wow-factor.

1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved, mixed with olive oil and salt, and roasted in the oven for about 30 mins. 2 large fresh tomatoes (the kind that smell really good), cut into small chunks. 3 ears sweet corn kernels, cut off the cob (yes, raw). A few scallions, sliced lengthwise and finely chopped. A handful of fresh basil, sliced. Fresh mozzarella, cut into cubes.

Toss everything with warm pasta, olive oil, salt and pepper.

When I first met The Guy he didn't eat anything green. No, actually that's not fair of me, he did eat one kind of vegetable: haricot verts. Yes, that's right, the very expensive, very thin cousin of the green beans that most of us eat. He gushed about the wonderful qualities of his haricot verts every time I mentioned the need to add veggies to our meals until, one day, he got a job and started buying his own groceries. Then those little haricot verts started to look, well, a little less appetizing, even at Fairway prices. So we switched to green beans.

It took me almost a full year to get The Guy to try salads. It was like pulling teeth. "Please?" I'd ask, every time I bought a head of lettuce that I knew I couldn't finish before it went bad; "Maybe next time," he'd say. But to my great surprise, when he finally did try salad he loved it (only the way I make it, but that's a good thing). We had the same battle over greens like spinach and Chinese watercress with the same results - once he finally tried it he fell in love. And over time he started to trust me to feed him greens (and sushi and shellfish) that he would like. By the time we'd worked our way up to artichokes he didn't even take any cajoling - he just bit right in.

But then, last week, he balked at a food choice: sandwiches for dinner. With the temperatures in triple digits I didn't feel like turning on the oven or boiling water, so, after a little inspiration from a beautiful picture of a BLT from one of the recent issues of Bon Appétit, I suggested that we try BLTs for dinner. "For dinner?" he asked, with a look on his face that reminded me very suddenly of the look he used to have when I mentioned spinach. I tried to tell him how lovely the sandwich would be. "But we wouldn't have to cook much at all and we can add cheese and have a lovely sandwich with cheese and tomatoes and bacon." "Bacon?" he asked, a new look beginning to dawn on his face, "crunchy, fatty yummy bacon?" I paused a minute to consider if this was, in fact, what I wanted to talk exercise-challenged hubby into, but I had just begun to win the argument and I wasn't going to back down, so we had lovely sandwiches with crunchy, fatty bacon (and good tomatoes, good lettuce, whole-wheat challah and melted raclette).

And did he like it? Of course he did. He loved it. We even had it the next night. And we're going to have it again tomorrow night.

But this doesn't mean I'm going to stop cooking! So for the first installment of the "new" blog entrees, a few notes about what I learned over the past couple weeks about making shortcakes. I tried two of the shortcake recipes from last month's magazines: the Two-Berry Shortcakes from Gourmet (in the picture) and the Peach and Blackberry Shortcakes with Blackberry Cream from Bon Appétit. The two recipes were very different - the first was billed as a "quick" recipe and was by far the faster of the two. The biscuits were easy to make and plop down on to the pan, whereas the biscuits for the second recipe required me to roll out a very sticky dough and cut out rounds. The extra work created a different kind of biscuit, nice and crunchy on the top in a way that reminded me of the top of a very good muffin, but, frankly wasn't so good that I'd do the extra work again. The second recipe also included a very time consuming blackberry cream (blackberries pureed with sugar and pushed through a sieve then whipped with cream) which, again, created a wonderful result, but was a little too much work to think about doing again. Next time maybe I can find some blackberry syrup, liqueur or jelly (or just stick with Gourmet's version and change the fruit).

So much yumminess: Blackberries Brûlée with Marscapone Cream; a "caprese-like salad" of sliced peaches, fresh mozzarella and basil; Grilled Steak and Onions with Rosemary-Balsamic Butter Sauce; Grilled Spicy-Citrus Chicken Thighs with grilled corn; Lobster with Herb Butter; Plum Streusel; Citrus Mint Juleps; Bruschetta with Tomato, Avocado, Basil, and Mint; Almond, Apricot, and Cream Cheese Crostata; and Tangy Avocado-Orange Salad. Wow, so much yum, wow.

There is also a beautiful picnic basket (the "Somerset" willow picnic tote) in Bon Vivant that I am absolutely in love with. And, frankly, it's not that expensive for a gift (only $49); not something bought on a whim, but less than a nice pair of shoes, so I might just have to save for it (can I give myself a midsummer gift?)

We'll have to see how the recipes pan out, but it's very exciting.

So for some reason I get half my magazines a month ahead of time and half weeks later (and some of my subscriptions don't come at all, forcing me to buy them on the newsstand halfway through the month). This leads me to think that the way I've been reviewing the magazines needs to be revamped. From now on I'll comment as they come, or whenever I read them, and I'll just comment about the things that really stand out to me. Hopefully I'll still be able to make a few of the dishes every month and give my feedback.

The main thing I have to say about the July magazines is that if you only buy one issue all year, now's the time to do it. How can you go wrong with magazines dedicated to summer foods? Everything looks delicious! Gourmet is the Produce Issue, with reviews of how restaurants use local produce (or pretend to) and recipes for Two-Berry Shortcake, Roasted-Tomato Tart, Grilled Corn with Herbs, a beautiful terrine (don't think I'm up for making it quite yet) and Zucchini Ginger Cupcakes. Bon Appétit has the BBQ Issue with Chocolate Scones, Avocado Soup with Ancho Cream, Grilled Corn with Queso Fresco, Chili Powder, and Lime, and Peach and Blackberry Shortcakes with Blackberry Cream. Their burgers are a little too complicated, but so pretty. Living is a little heavy on the red white and blue theme, which doesn't do me too much good now, but so much yum: Strawberry-And-Cream Cheesecake, a salad of Tender Lettuce with Pickled Currants (and pate on baguette), Bing cherry mojitos, layers of red currant jello layered with vanilla panna cotta, Blackberry-Mint Julep, and lots of yummy dips. Lots of pretty lanterns too.

So finally, at the very end of June, I gave up my healthy summer eating habits and let myself indulge in a couple of the desserts from Living and Bon Appétit. After flipping through the June issues, I was drawn to two desserts: Bon Appétit's Grilled Brown-Sugar Peaches with White Chocolate and Living's Peach-Raspberry Clafouti.

I started with the Grilled Brown-Sugar Peaches, a quick and easy dessert that was a snap to make after dinner one night. The combination of the white sugar, the cinnamon, and the pistachios was unexpected and interesting, and even though many of the ingredients are inherently sweet, they went very well with the early-summer peach, balancing their slightly tart flavor.

The clafouti was more of a production, with the extra step of poaching the peaches, but the only real difficult part was getting the peaches to break into halves and pitting them. Surprisingly, the harder peaches were easier to work with, because they broke from the pit whole instead of smushing, but it still involved using my thumb as a wedge to get the first half separated and then a nice sharp knife to cut the pit out of the second half. The final dessert wasn't as pretty as the pictures in the magazine, but it was absolutely delicious. It was eggy and infused with vanilla and had the most wonderful texture. The peaches, infused with the vanilla and the flavor of white wine, were fantastic, and I liked the whole thing so much that I ended up eating half of it within a few hours of taking it out of the oven. The poaches peaches on their own would make a great dessert too.

Both recipes are going to get a lot of use in my kitchen and both give me great ways to use all those early summer peaches that aren't quite sweet enough to be enjoyed on their own.

It's not quite the season for tomatoes yet, and there are no fragrant heirloom varieties available at the Greenmarket, but with the weather as warm as it is, I just couldn't wait any longer and went ahead and made no-cook pasta sauce anyway. I used the most summery-looking tomatoes I could find and dressed them up with more garlic and basil than usual and even added some finely mince thyme to make up for the lack of flavor in the tomatoes themselves. A little olive oil and some salt and pepper, and summer had arrived on my dining table.

In past years I haven't been particularly creative with my no-cook pasta sauces; they're always just a mix of tomatoes, aromatics and herbs left to swap juices for a few minutes while the water boils and the pasta cooks. (When I first started making them, four years ago, I followed the directions of a PBS cooking show and let them marinate for hours, but once I found the courage to deviate from these instructions - or maybe just got lazy - I found that they can be made right before dinner, making them simple as well as yummy.) I've never branched into all the summer flavors that could make a good no-cook sauce; in fact, I don't even make pesto. But this summer I'm feeling a little more extravagant. I think that anything that would make a good cold soup would probably also make a good cold pasta sauce, so over the next few weeks I'm hoping to try using strawberries, cantaloupe, mint, and anything else I can get my hands on as a base. It might not always turn out perfect, but I'm excited because no matter what happens it will be fast, it will be easy and, most importantly, it will taste like summer.

Today I spent a good part of my early afternoon in the muggy heat, foraging for overpriced produce at the Greenmarket. Something about Celia Barbour's new column for the NY Times food section, Bringing it Home, had guilted me into thinking that I wasn't spending enough time buying local, seasonal foods. Unfortunately the strawberries I bought were sour, the peaches were hard, and I couldn't find any of the fava beans she raved about (pictured above). So when I got home and got this in my email, I was thoroughly pleased. Hope you enjoy it too.

The other day I woke up with the urge to bake; it may have had something to do with the freelance writing piece I was avoiding, or maybe it was because The Guy was home for the day too and he loves cookies. Whatever it was, I had a strong urge to make chocolate chip cookies. After the wonderful success with Christopher Kimball's fudgy brownies I knew I would have to try his classic chocolate chip cookies. I was thrilled to find that this recipe, like the other one, didn't require an electric mixer or any ingredients I didn't already have (we had some Crisco in the cabinet from a while back; we don't use it often, but it stays good for a very long time, so it's good to have). Kimball's notes about the process of creating these cookies mention wanting cookies that puffed up and stayed moist inside while getting crunchy around the edges, and that's exactly what these did. He also wanted a cookie that wasn't so sweet that it sent you running for a cup of milk. For my taste they were still very sweet and went very well with a cold glass of milk, but then that's what a chocolate chip cookie is supposed to taste like.

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie

1/4 cup Crisco
8 tbsp unsalted butter, softened but still firm
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg white
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups plus 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
10 ounces chocolate chips

1. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Beat the Crisco and butter in a medium bowl with a wooden spoon until pretty smooth but with a few harder pieces (about 1 minute). Add the sugars and stir until well blended. Add the egg, egg white, and vanilla and beat until smooth. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add to the batter and mix together until smooth. Add the chips and fold in.
2. Line a large cookie sheet with parchment paper. For large cookies, place heaping tablespoons of dough on the paper with 1.5 inches between the outer edges of the balls of dough. Shape the dough quickly with your hand so that each spoonful is compact and not too spread out.
3. Bake for about 12 minutes, or until tops are lightly browned. Rotate pan front to back halfway through baking; do not overcook.
4. Slide parchment paper onto wire racks to cool. Repeat as needed with fresh sheets of parchment paper.
(Note: don't overcook, or they'll be hard as rocks.)

Chipotle-Lime Grilled Chicken

1/4 cup fresh lime juice
1/4 cup olive oil
2.5 tbsp chipotle Tabasco
3/4 tsp salt
6 large skinless boneless chicken thighs
2 tsp mild honey

1. Prepare grill for cooking over direct heat with medium-hot charcoal
2. While coals are lighting, stir together lime juice, oil, Tabasco, and salt in a liquid-measuring cup. Put chicken in a large sealable bag and add 1/3 cup marinade (reserve remainder in cup). Seal bag, forcing out excess air, adn marinate chicken at room temperature, about 15 minutes. Stir honey into remaining marinade until dissolved to make sauce.
3. Grill chicken (discarding marindade in bag) on lightly oiled grill rack, covered only if using gas grill, turning chicken over occasionally and moving it to avoid flareups if necessary, until just cooked through, 8 to 10 minutes.
4. Brush both sides of chicken with some of reserved sauce, then continue to grill, turning over once, until lightly borwned, about 1 minute more. Serve chicken drizzled with remaining sauce.

I've been asked a few etiquette questions recently; the other day our friend Andy was out at dinner with The Guy and me and asked, "When you're the third wheel, who are you supposed to sit across from?" First of all, Andy, when you're out with the two of us, you're not the third wheel, you are the guest of honor; we are both there to see you. Second, I looked it up in Emily Post's Etiquette, 16th Ed. (Yes, everyone, I'm a big dork - I do own this book, and what's even worse, I bought it for myself. I pretended it was for research for writing projects, but we all know that was just an excuse.) Emily Post, unfortunately, does not talk about dinner parties of three. She does, however, provide some hints: when seating people, alternate the women and the men. I think this could be safely extrapolated to indicate that a male guest should sit across from the woman when eating with a couple. I think, however, that a female guest should probably also sit across from the woman of the couple; for one thing, girls like to catch up, and for another, as New York magazine reminded us, women get special treatment when out to dinner.

PS - for those ladies who were at Roz's pre-wedding lunch a while back, Marianne was right, the person being toasted does not raise her glass or drink.