Summer food

I have not updated my blog much and did very little cooking in general during the month of July. We are in grilling season now and that means my hubby does the cooking!

Have you ever noticed how in the summer all of the grocery store cookbooks are just not that good or not that interesting?

I am a huge fan of the checkout-line cookbooks and magazines (aka cooklets), I really love to buy these and I rely on them year-round for new meal ideas, but in the summer they all get so lame. You see titles like "Smoothies", and "Grilling". I mean , who cares? I have bought the smoothie cooklets before and they are pretty lame! There are maybe three or four healthy smoothie recipes in the entire book, and the rest are all super sugary ice cream treats like Oreo Mudslide Madness or Key Lime Marshmallow Sugary Concoction. OK, truth be told those sound really good, but I am not realistically going to make this on a regular basis for my kids.

And then the grilling cookbooks - who cares? I am just not into grilling. And do you really need a cookbook for grilling anyway? Don't you just marinate the stuff and grill it? Grilling cookbooks = yawn in my world.

Another cookbook theme I see a lot in the summer is appetizers. I love appetizers just as much as the next person but I am really more interested in solving that daily conundrum of what to make for dinner, like you know, the main course?? Seems like every cookbook you buy has an appetizer section anyway, so it's not like I am not running so short on appetizer recipes that I need an entire cookbook for them.

Even one of my favorite cooking magazines, Everyday Food, does a grilling issue every summer. Normally when I read my Everyday Food magazine I have tons of little folds in the corners and bookmarks noting the recipes I want to try. In the summer issue it is hard to find any pages I want to fold down. And they do a combined July/August issue so there isn't even a new issue to look forward to in August! That's it for the entire summer- that grilling issue is all I'm gonna get from them.

I guess I just have to keep on grilling while I wait for the fall baking and slow cooker recipe cookbooks to be out in September!

In honor of summer - here is a favorite (healthy!) smoothie recipe of mine, courtesy of allrecipes.com.

Mango Banana Smoothie

• 1 banana
• 1/2 cup frozen mango pieces (my favorite frozen mango is the Trader Joe's version)
• 1/3 cup plain yogurt
• 1/2 cup orange/mango juice blend

Combine all ingredients into a blender and blend until nearly smooth. Delicious!!!