It’s been a few days, so I have to catch you up on all of the treats that have been popping up around here with all of summer’s fun produce. In our house, we’ve had an abundance of bananas (thanks to the 1.00 banana bag at the commissary), tomatoes and zucchinis (thanks to farmer’s markets in Western PA). What to do with these lovely fruits and veggies?

1. Mini Banana Whoopie Pies with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Filling

These little beauties were delicious. The recipe came from Culinary in the Desert, a blog I found through Tastespotting. I tweaked the recipe a little bit, using some lower calorie ingredients that I had on hand and adding the cinnamon to the filling. I think it added something different, but didn’t overpower the banana flavor. (My mini-pies came out to about 100 calories a piece – the perfect little snack. Leave me a comment if you want my specifc recipe changes).

2. Bread Salad

Nick and I usually reserve bread salad for our picnics, but I just couldn’t resist using the final few tomatoes this way. My bread salad is always just a little different – I tend to just throw together what I’ve got hanging around the kitchen. In this case, I had a few tomatoes, a day-old wheat baguette, a cucumber and some provolone. I toasted the bread first, then spritzed it with some water to soften it up (so the bread doesn’t absorb all of the dressing and leave the tomatoes dry). I topped it all with a simple balsamic vinegrette, some garlic powder and some parmesan cheese. I was kicking myself for not having fresh basil, but the result was still as tasty as ever!

3. Whole-wheat Zucchini Bread

I got the zucchini bread recipe through Tastespotting as well – on a blog called Foodie with a Family. I changed this recipe, too, using whole wheat and all purpose flour (i didn’t have any bread flour). I doubled the recipe and used half for a large loaf and the other half for 8 mini-loaves. I also subbed cinnamon since I didn’t have nutmeg. The bread is moist and it tastes outstanding when spread with some of the left-over cinnamon cream cheese from the first recipe.

In other news, I went to my first AFIT Spouse’s Cooking Club this week, and took Vegetable Enchiladas (they were a hit, but I forgot to take pictures). I also brought home my new baby, a yellow KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer. I got it on sale at Williams Sonoma for $140! Amazing.

Glad to be up and running again. More ovenlove (and mixerlove) to come!