Life has conspired to keep me from writing much this week, but given that it’s too hot to do much else today [insert pathetic whine about broken AC here], I’m going to make up for lost time. Just a little bit about what we ate this week:

1. Lunches consisted of a very nice chicken salad — mostly poached chicken, a bit of sliced celery, and some mayonnaise and homemade pesto. I’m really looking forward to my basil plant getting on the ball so I can use my own for a change. I served the salad on a bed of arugula and surrounded it with some nice plum tomatoes, sliced in half lengthwise.

2. Made my first turkey burgers this week. They were good, but I learned that ground turkey by itself is fairly bland and depends largely on what you cook it with for flavor. I added some lightly cooked chopped onion to the burgers, along with a handful of chopped parsley. I cooked them on the grill and served them on buns, layered with arugula, sliced tomatoes, and topped with a very tasty chipotle mayonnaise that I made by mixing a bit of mayo with some finely chopped chipotle in adobo. Yum.

3. A really good potato salad made its way to the table Thursday night to accompany some grilled swordfish. I basically made an uncooked version of my fave puttanesca sauce and mixed it with potatoes. More on this later, as I think I’ll post the recipe.

4. There’s much news from the garden, and I’ll post some pics in a bit.

There. I haven’t actually fallen off the earth, I’ve just been busy. And tired.

I got a huge amount done this weekend, at least cooking-wise.

A new batch of granola was awaiting us this morning for breakfast. This one was pretty simple: dried cranberries, sunflower seeds, just a smidge of cinnamon, sliced almonds, all added to the basic oats/wheat germ brew. I upped the quantity of maple syrup just a tad. It’s delicious.

Having been thwarted by the Cupcake Truck on Friday (they ran out of frosting — frosting, people, the cupcake’s raison d’etre), I vowed to make cupcakes myself this weekend. And so I did. Using a couple of recipes from Cook’s Illustrated, I made a dozen Dark Chocolate Cupcakes and topped them off with Easy Chocolate Buttercream. I hadn’t made buttercream in years — since way before I got my stand mixer — and I will now never buy frosting in a can again. Ever.

Jim made some iced chai tea yesterday and I made up a batch of simple syrup, so last night’s beverage treat was an iced chai — very nice to do at home.

Last but not least, pictured here you can see the nice chicken salad we’re having for lunch this week. I poached 2 lbs of boneless chicken breast in a bit of chicken stock and water, accompanied by a couple of bay leaves. Once cooled and diced, I added three stalks of sliced celery and a bit of mayo and some pesto I had leftover from last week’s pasta pesto salad. The chicken is served on a bed of arugula and accompanied by those lovely, not-from-my-garden-yet tomatoes. It’s quite tasty, if I do say so myself, and there’s a bag of fresh (and on sale!) cherries for dessert.

Tonight I’m making Grilled Chipotle-Lime Chicken Breasts. The recipe is from Cook’s Illustrated, so I’m sure it’ll be tasty and fairly easy to prepare. Will probably accompany that with some Mexican rice and either a plain green salad or some steamed zucchini. Since we need to bolt out of the house pretty quickly on Tuesday night, it’s leftover jambalaya accompanied by a quick salad.

Wednesday night is dinner-in-the-oven night — meatloaf, potatoes, roasted asparagus. Thursday night I’m going to try a lighter version of eggplant parmesan — i.e. without frying the eggplant. Friday is Friday, which means takeout or a quick trip to a restaurant or something I thought up at the last minute.

I took one of the leftover chicken enchiladas mole for lunch today. Let’s see if Cuckoo’s Nest can redeem itself.

We left the house to do some errands late this morning. First we stopped at Home Depot, where we picked up a piece of indoor/outdoor carpet for the inside of the POD. Then we headed back toward home to do the grocery shopping. We were forced off I-95 by weekend beach traffic (what a surprise), and as we wound our way through Branford, Jim remembered that we had talked about getting lobster rolls this weekend.

So we ducked through the center of town and headed down to the river, to a little place that makes what might be the best lobster rolls on the planet. I know, I exaggerate — or do I? It’s called The Lobster Shack, and it’s on the industrial waterfront of the Branford River, in other words, the place where the commercial fishermen in town tie up their boats. There’s a lobster wholesaler there, and last season, or maybe the year before, they were inspired to set up a little take-out trailer in the parking lot. They’ve put some tables out by the docks and they serve the basics: lobster rolls, chowder, clams on the half-shell, hot dogs, and sausage and peppers on a roll. There are soft drinks and bottled water to be had (help yourself from the appropriately marked cooler) and a freezer with ice cream bars in it.

The folks who dish out the food couldn’t be friendlier. The place, for a parking lot, is immaculately clean. The lobster rolls are, in a word, perfect. These are elemental lobster rolls — nothing but warm lobster, butter, and a New England style (split-top) hot dog bun. In the ongoing debate between hot lobster rolls (with butter) and cold ones (with mayonnaise and sometimes a bit of chopped celery and the like), hot wins hands down every time with me, and these are superb. They’re also a decent size, and well worth the $14 they cost. Oh, and bring cash, ’cause they don’t do the plastic.

So we parked the van and strolled up to the order window. They had music on — a bit of Springsteen. I can’t think of anything better for the day. We got lobster rolls and a couple of bottles of water and parked ourselves at a picnic table by the river and watched a clamming boat come in and dock. I love this place.

You know summer’s really here when the Fourth of July rolls around. Although the weather’s been warm and muggy these last couple of weeks, it’s also largely been grey and rainy, so most of us aren’t exactly feeling the season (our AC is broken right now, so we’re feeling it, but not in ways that we’d like).

One of our plans for the weekend is to have dinner at The Cuckoo’s Nest out in Old Saybrook. They pretty consistently win awards for Best Mexican Food, but since Mexican food in these parts is usually mediocre at best, I’m not really holding out hope that it’ll be anything to write home about. Mostly we’re looking at it as an excuse to take the M3 out for a top-down spin along the shoreline. If there are decent nachos and a good margarita at the end of that, I’ll not complain. If it does turn out to be worth writing home about, I’ll do that. Or at least I’ll post something here.

Other than that, we’ll be staying close to home. I’m thinking there will be fresh berries on the menu somewhere, either in the form of shortcake, or perhaps adorning a bowl of homemade ice cream. Oh, and I’m going to do a jambalaya, complete with andouille sausage, chicken, and shrimp. It’s a Cook’s Illustrated recipe, and I will certainly report on that. I’m thinking it’d be nice to have some sauteed greens to go with it, or perhaps (or also) some corn on the cob.

Sometimes thinking about food is almost as good as cooking it.

Last week I made my first batch of homemade granola. I’m not sure what the hell took me so long — it’s not like it’s difficult. But as it happens, the Morning Glory Farm cookbook that Jim picked up on the Vineyard had a great recipe in it. I followed it more or less faithfully the first time, although I cut it in half (and thank goodness I did, because half a recipe made more than plenty for two people for an entire week).

But this week I strayed off the beaten path. Having a recipe for something like this is a good idea because it gives you a sense of what proportions of ingredients you should have, so with that as a base, I developed this recipe. We’ll be enjoying this for breakfast this week.

Apple-Cinnamon Granola

Ingredients

• 5 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
• 2 cups raw sunflower seeds
• 1/2 cup wheat germ (I used Kretschmer’s toasted wheat germ)
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tbs vanilla
• 3/4 cup maple syrup (Please only use 100% maple syrup — ever. On anything.)
• 1/2 cup canola oil
• 1 cup sliced almonds
• 1 cup dried apples, chopped

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

2. Mix all dry ingredients in a large bowl except for the almonds and the dried apples.

3. Add the vanilla to the maple syrup and stir. Add maple syrup/vanilla mixture and canola oil to dry ingredients and mix thoroughly so that the syrup and oil are evenly distributed throughout the mixture. Pour into one or two roasting pans or onto two baking sheets with sides. You’ll need to be able to stir throughout the baking process, but you want the granola to be spread in a reasonably thin layer, so choose your vessels accordingly.

4. Bake for 30 minutes, stirring halfway through. Reduce oven temperature to 250 degrees and continue to bake for another hour or so, until mixture is golden brown. Stir frequently.

5. Add sliced almonds to pan, and stir thoroughly. Continue to bake for another 30 minutes. Remove pan(s) from oven and stir in apples. Cool mixture completely and then store in airtight container.

This granola is wonderful — it’s not too sweet, which I like. You can enjoy this as a cereal with milk poured on top, or you can mix it with yogurt. We’ve been enjoying ours with yogurt and fresh fruit, and of course it makes a nice snack for eating out of hand.

Variations on a theme: The wonderful thing about a basic granola recipe is that you can make whatever kind of granola suits your fancy. Substitute whatever kind of seeds and nuts you like, or add them in addition to what’s here. Just try to keep the proportions the same (you want more oats than anything else). Use whatever kind of nuts and dried fruits you like. Omit the cinnamon. Think of other things to add. Enjoy.

Today’s Dining & Wine section is all about the drink, primarily summer drinks (and it includes the kick-ass graphic I reproduce here).

While we were on vacation, Bryan made mojitos from scratch, using fresh mint and homemade simple syrup. I’d tried restaurant mojitos and mojitos from a mix, but this was the first one I really enjoyed — it was minty and refreshing without being cloyingly sweet. The article has a lot of good tips in it (and a few recipes) for nice things to drink when the weather’s hot, and since we’re without AC for the foreseeable future, I’m probably going to want a bunch of these in my Friday evening repertoire. I especially like the rickey recipe for its simplicity, and am intrigued by the idea of using fresh chilies in summer drinks.

Here’s hoping that the weather does warm up a bit and the sun comes out, because we’ve got several jalapeno plants (and one habanero) that would probably do a bit better if they thought it was actually summer. A few of them may well turn up at cocktail hour later on this season.

Last week’s vacation has led to this week’s inspiration.

Jim bought a copy of the Morning Glory Farm cookbook while we were on the Vineyard, and it provided me with some inspiration for this week’s meal planning. I’m on a campaign to get both of us to eat better more consistently — better breakfasts and lunches more specifically, because our dinners are already well-balanced (and good). So since I had today off, I made the following: homemade granola, a lovely chicken salad with celery, red pepper strips, and walnuts, and the best corn muffins ever (with fresh corn in them — so good).

In the fridge there’s plain yogurt and lots of fresh fruit, so between that and the granola and muffins, breakfasts will be taken care of. I’ve already packed chicken salad (and some cherry tomatoes and baby carrots) for lunch, along with little bags of fresh cherries. We’re off to a pretty good start. I wish I could have a day like this every single week.

A vacation without some memorable food experiences isn’t much of a trip. We have some favorite places we like to visit every year, and this year we expanded our horizons a bit. In no particular order, these are some of the edible moments I loved about this trip:

• The clam chowder at The Net Result in Vineyard Haven.
• The zucchini ravioli at Lattanzi’s Pizzeria in Edgartown.
• The chiles rellenos in Oak Bluffs at Zapotec.
• The fried seafood and clam chowder from The Bite in Menemsha.
• The ribs at Smoke ‘n’ Bones in Oak Bluffs.
• The superb meal we enjoyed at The Oyster Bar Grill on our last night, also in Oak Bluffs.

There’s more to talk about, and I’ll be writing some more on this in the next few days.

One of the good things about vacation is the lack of rules. Food rules vanish in an anarchic haze.

This morning we feasted on banana bread, croissants, muffins, and apple fritters. The coffee was ground from fresh beans. After a morning of reading and chatting, we wandered into Vineyard Haven for some shopping. I bought an amazing bottle of 18-year-old balsamic vinegar imported from Italy.

When we got home we opened a bottle of sparkling wine and enjoyed it with some Boursin cheese and crackers. Tonight we’re heading to Edgartown for some casual Italian food.

I love vacation.