Seasonal Sundays (Week 26) Happy Father's Day!

So here it is, another Sunday recipe collection, my usual patchwork of June-ish recipes plus three special features, last-minute pies to make your favorite dad happy-happy-happy and what to make with fresh mangoes while waiting for peaches to ripen plus a Scandinavian menu for Midsummer.

~ Skip Straight to the Good Stuff ~

Welcome to Seasonal Sundays ...

Here's to lovely father's day moments everywhere ...

And here's to solidifying / learning how to celebrate Juneteenth each in our own ways.

One way? Watch the movie "Miss Juneteenth" which sounds like a silly teenybopper thing but instead turned out to be a really lovely film about dreams/self-reliance and mothers/daughters. Watch it for $3 on Amazon or find it free on Kanopy, which is a streaming service through public libraries, just ten a month but they quality is much higher. Much recommended! Good with older kids too, I think ...

ON A PERSONAL NOTE You may (but might not) see Seasonal Sundays next week but then I need to take some time off for family business. New recipes will post plus I have been toying with the idea of a much-abbreviated Seasonal Sundays: how would that suit you? Chime in, please!

About the Photo By Popular Request, a Little Insight into the Top Image: I love photos that tell a story. And at least in my mind's eye, you can see three generations here, a grandfather, a son and three grandsons, the kids getting an early casting lesson. There are no fishing rods in sight, no cane poles but perhaps from the stances, the attention, the water in the background, you see this story too? It's one of my all-time favorite photos. Funny. At least four are of dads / granddads with kids / grands.

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PICK ONE

Pick One is for those of us overwhelmed by life's unending choices. If that resonates, then check out this one recipe and then call it a day. It's one that I think could make the most difference, the one I hope will become a regular in your kitchen, as it is in mine.

• THE RECIPE "Best Ever" New Potatoes & Green Beans
• WHY THIS, WHY NOW This combo is like that one thing you didn't know your life really needs. It'd be great to pull together for Fathers Day, still, but don't let the week pass by without giving it a try.

What's New?!

Wondering about a recipe from the last while? Check Recent Recipes from Kitchen Parade and Recent Vegetable Recipes from A Veggie Venture.

• THE RECIPE Five-Minute Shrimp Cocktail Sauce Just five minutes and six ingredients.
• ANOTHER TAKE Homemade Mayonnaise for BLTs Some times, Homemade Mayonnaise is worth just a little extra effort.

Compliments!

• THE RECIPE Chicken Sybil My favorite Quick Supper, multiple personality chicken.
• WENDY's TAKE "This is such a great recipe! No matter how many times I make it, I'm always amazed at hoe quickly it comes together and with such great flavor. Tonight I used mushrooms, sour cream and marmalade. Just delicious! Thank you for a wonderful recipe!"
• Thanks to Wendy for her kind words! Click through and you'll see that many other cooks share her enthusiasm.

Just Updated!

• THE INFO Ten Tips for Better Burgers Ten easy tips for grilling juicy burgers.
• MY RECIPES Burger Recipes Beef, chicken, turkey and plant-based!

• THE RECIPE Pickled Bell Peppers (Pied Piper Pickles) Quick pickles for the fridge or canned.
• ANOTHER TAKE Cucumber & Pepper Refrigerator Pickles Homemade pickles without the fuss.

Kitchen Parade's Reader June Favorites

• THE RECIPE Mini Blueberry Tarts With a "pop" of fresh blueberry right in the middle.
• THE ORIGINAL Finnish Fruit Tart Finns adore this with blueberries.

• THE RECIPE Minnesota Sloppy Joes Sloppy joes made from scratch in the crockpot.
• ANOTHER TAKE Slow Cooker Vegetarian Lentil Sloppy Joes A little bit spicy, many rave reviews.

• THE RECIPE Easy Ham Salad Use up leftover ham from the freezer.
• ANOTHER TAKE Chicken Salad for Sandwiches Makes up in minutes with pantry ingredients.

A Veggie Venture's Reader June Favorites

• THE RECIPE Simple Arugula Salad So simple, so sumptuous.
• ANOTHER TAKE Arugula with Peaches, Concord Grapes and Feta A simple fall salad.

• THE RECIPE Beet Pesto
• ANOTHER TAKE Raw Beet Sandwiches

• THE RECIPES Beet Smoothies
• ANOTHER TAKE Mango & Beet Smoothies Mad for mangoes!

Last-Minute Pies for Happy Fathers

• THE RECIPE Last-Minute Pantry Pie Just five pantry ingredients. No bake!
• ANOTHER TAKE Blueberry Cheesecake Pie Cheesecake topped with homemade blueberry pie filling. No bake!

• THE RECIPE Fresh Strawberry Pie Fresh glazed berries in a homemade chocolate-cookie crust, a real crowd pleaser.
• ANOTHER TAKE Finnish Strawberry Whipped Cream Cake A real celebration cake.

• THE RECIPE Perfect All-Rhubarb Pie A summer masterpiece.
• ANOTHER TAKE Custard with Rhubarb Sauce Creamy custard topped with sour rhubarb.

A Midsummer Menu

No Midsummer celebration for me this year, unless, that is, I just step outside at sunset to acknowledge the wonder that is the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.

For three years in a row now, my grand ambition for a Midsummer dinner has been speared by real life. So this is the menu of my dreams ...

When to celebrate? Well, the summer solstice is on June 21, that's Tuesday. But to celebrate like a Finn or a Swede or a Dane or a Norwegian or an Estonian, maybe "get in the mood" on Tuesday (maybe with this, my favorite Finnish breakfast, Finn Crisp with Marmalade & Cheese? or a soothing bowl of Finnish Summer Soup (Kesäkeitto)?) and then go Deep Nordic over the weekend.

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~ Beet Pesto ~
~ Smoked Whitefish Spread on Cucumber ~
~ Smoked Salmon Spread ~

~ Finnish Salmon Soup (LohiKeitto) ~
or
~ Smoked Salmon Salad with Quick-Pickled Cucumbers & Roasted Peppers ~
or
~ Salmon with Crispy Crust ~

~ Finnish Summer Potato Salad ~
~ Zucchini Spiral "Noodle" Salad ~
~ Pickled Beet Salad with Fresh Blueberries & Mint ~

~ Finnish Fruit Tart ~
or
~ Finnish Strawberry Whipped Cream Cake ~

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• THE RECIPE Smoked Whitefish Spread on Cucumber Healthy, easy summer appetizer.
• ANOTHER TAKE Smoked Salmon Spread Healthy appetizer, tastes rich and indulgent.

• THE RECIPE Salmon with Crispy Crust Moist, flaky fish topped with a golden bread crumb crust.
• ANOTHER TAKE Salmon with Pesto Zucchini Noodles & Warm Tomatoes Simple-simple summer food.

• THE RECIPE Finnish Summer Potato Salad Just new potatoes and a simple vinaigrette.
• ANOTHER TAKE Mom’s Potato Salad

• THE RECIPE Finnish Fruit Tart For blueberries, lingonberries, sour cherries, rhubarb, raisins, figs and more ...
• THE BITE-SIZE VERSION Mini Blueberry Tarts With a "pop" of fresh blueberry right in the middle.

Mad for Mangoes

Story goes, everybody has a mango story. You too?

At the moment though, it's still some weeks before prime peach time but oh! the mangoes are dripping good. Stock up!

• THE RECIPE Mango Lassi with Mint A real mango celebration!
• ANOTHER TAKE Banana Mango Smoothie A simple after-school snack.

• THE RECIPE Mango Chicken Salad A quick chicken salad in a light yogurt sauce, studded with chunks of fresh mango.
• ANOTHER TAKE Chickpea & Chicken Salad Hearty and delicious with Indian-style spices.

• THE RECIPE Summer Couscous with Mango & Tomato Couscous all dressed up for summer.
• ANOTHER TAKE Israeli Couscous Salad with Yellow Squash & Sun-Dried Tomatoes

Vegetable of the Month: Green Beans!

• THE RECIPE Green Bean Garden Salad A "real" garden salad.
• ANOTHER TAKE Fresh Green Bean Salad with Asian Dressing


• Falling In Love with Green Beans: Favorite Recipes
• A-Z of Vegetables: Green Beans

This Week's Summer Salad

Turns out, I've been turning out one one summer salad after another since the beginning, almost twenty years ago now. No wonder that Favorite Summer Salad Recipes will keep all of us (me included!) inspired all summer long. Here's a sample.

• THE RECIPE Bloody Mary Salad A jello salad with kick.
• ANOTHER TAKE Tomato Soup Vegetable Salad An old-fashioned salad makeover.

This Week's Soup

• THE RECIPE Fruity Gazpacho A starter, entrée or dessert!
• ANOTHER TAKE Cantaloupe-Tomato Gazpacho A slightly fruity vegetable gazpacho.

Lunch at the Kitchen Table

• THE RECIPE Celery & Chickpea Salad
• ANOTHER TAKE Carrot & Chickpea Salad with Tahini-Lemon Dressing

Snack Before Supper

• THE RECIPE Easy Shrimp Bites Four pantry ingredients, a snap to assemble.
• ANOTHER TAKE Bacon-Wrapped Dried Apricots Quick to fix, surprisingly low in calories.

Summer Easy: Less Cookin', More Livin'.

More than a decade ago, I started collecting a certain style of summer dishes that espouse my summer motto, Less Cookin', More Livin'. These are Kitchen Parade's most simple, most fresh, most memorable and most summery recipes, all in one place. I hope you love 'em all! See Easy Summer Recipes!

• THE RECIPE Fish with Herb Butter A Quick Supper, one of my favorite simple meals.
• ANOTHER TAKE Herb-Coated Broiled Fish Fish filets coated in fresh herbs, then broiled. So simple, yet seductive.

Good to Know

• THE COLLECTION DIY Spice Blends & Homemade Seasonings Made to order, mixed to taste.
• AND ANOTHER Easy Egg Recipes A collection of thrifty egg recipes.

Put an Egg on Top aka "How About Eggs for Dinner?"

Why should breakfast get all the eggs?! If eggs for dinner were a club, I'd be president, chief marketing officer, resident evangelist, public advocate and ... hey, wanna join my club? Start here!

• THE RECIPE Homemade Egg McMuffin A family favorite!
• ANOTHER TAKE Gashouse Eggs The old-time comfort food, just an egg and bread fried together, with so many names.


• THE COLLECTION Easy Egg Recipes A collection of thrifty egg recipes.

Something New to You? A Challenge!

It's one thing to know what we like. It's another to get caught in a rut of repetition. Every so often, I may offer a challenge to try something that just might be new. The challenge is yours to accept – or y'know, not – but I hope to pique your palate!

• THE RECIPE Savory Rhubarb Chutney A savory chutney made with rhubarb, onion and dried fruit.
• ANOTHER TAKE Roasted Rhubarb Rhubarb cooked until just soft in the oven.

Meal Prep

• THE RECIPE My Favorite New Way to Roast Beets Just a little bit pickle-y!
• ANOTHER TAKE My Favorite Way to Roast Beets The traditional method for roasting beets.

Summer = Simple Smoothie Season

• THE RECIPE Cantaloupe Smoothie 100% fruit, creamy or frosty.
• ANOTHER TAKE Cold & Creamy Cantaloupe Soup So simple and yet ... somehow so unusual, so comforting.

Mexican Food

• THE RECIPE Quick Jalapeño Pickles No canning required.
• ANOTHER TAKE Spiced Pickled Red Onions A game changer for tacos, salads, eggs and more.

Most Useful Recipes, Just One Per Year

When a blogger loves every single one of her published recipes, how in the world does she pick just one favorite? It's stunning, honestly, how each year one Kitchen Parade recipe stands out from all the others that year for sheer usefulness. So that's why I created this collection of best recipes, just one per year, Best-Ever “Most Useful” Recipes 2002 – Present, just one recipe per year from Kitchen Parade. Here's a sample.

• THE RECIPE Baked Bacon How to cook perfect bacon in the oven.
• ANOTHER TAKE Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing The traditional spinach salad with bacon, hard-cooked eggs, mushrooms.

PS Who's noticed? I'm big on highlighting "usefulness". To mark A Veggie Venture's 15th anniversary in 2020, I took a hard look at the first 365 vegetable recipes from the first year to select just 15 which, all these many years and recipes later, remain ever so useful. You'll want to dig into this collection, 15 Favorite Vegetable Recipes, Still Useful After 15 Years.

Lookin' for Love

We're all proud of our best recipes that family and friends (and the Internet!) just love. But what about the recipes we love but are, ahem, so far under-appreciated? This recipe is just that, it could use a little extra love!

• THE RECIPE My Perfect (Unsweet, Unboozy) Sangria A dry sangria that's fruity and refreshing, not cloyingly sweet and dizzyingly boozy.
• ANOTHER TAKE Thirst-Quenching, Low-Cal, Low-Alcohol Drinks Two for summer, one for winter.

• THE RECIPE Tuna & White Bean Dip
• ANOTHER TAKE Kalamata Tuna Salad Bok Choy Wraps

Soups & Salads Especially for June

In June, regional food differences really begin to appear. Florida and California have been dripping with juicy tomatoes for a couple of months while here in the middle of the country (Missouri, specifically St. Louis), we're still pinching suckers off our tomato plants and restlessly tapping our feet in anticipation. That's why I spent an entire year collecting favorite salads and soups for A Veggie Venture. And what a collection it is! Here's a sample.

• THE RECIPE Nana’s Cucumbers with Sour Cream My grandmother's old-fashioned Eastern European cucumber salad, a summer tradition.
• ANOTHER TAKE Cucumbers in Vinegar Summer Easy at its very easiest.


• JUNE's COLLECTION Seasonal Soup & Salad Recipes for June Tons of ideas!

Feeding a Sugar-Conscious Sweet Tooth

You too? We're cutting back on sweets without demonizing dessert, usually with smaller batches, smaller servings, shareable desserts or fruit desserts in addition to limiting frequency. But some times?

• THE RECIPE Rhubarb Cake Simple and rustic, less sweet to taste rhubarb's wonderful "sour".
• ANOTHER TAKE Rhubarb Muffins Whole grain, less sweet.

• THE RECIPE Strawberry Ice Cream No-cook ice cream with big strawberry flavor and pretty pink color.
• ANOTHER TAKE Strawberry Shortcake Iowa-Style With shortcake biscuits and half & half.

• THE RECIPE Frozen Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie A creamy concoction, with just a hint of peanut butter and a drizzle of chocolate.
• GREAT NO-ROLL CRUST My Favorite Graham Cracker Crust A crisp, sturdy crust, not too sweet, not too buttery.

Trending

My Top 10 Recipes are predictable, hello Should Cooked Pork Be Pink? and (Sloooow) Baked Potatoes (How Long to Bake a Baked Potato). But every week, seasonal recipes catch the internet's attention and start to trend.

• THE THINKING Rethinking Fruit for Weight Watchers Weight Watchers works. But free fruit might not work for everyone.
• MORE INSPIRATION How to Lose Weight with Weight Watchers Tips from Alanna & Kitchen Parade readers.

• THE RECIPE Green Smoothies 14 Tips + 5 Sample Recipes
• ANOTHER TAKE Make-Ahead Smoothies

Something to Read

I've been book-hopping in recent weeks, never really settling into even one book I didn't want to end. But two books were enjoyable, each in their own way.

Readers who liked The Rose Code will appreciate The Diamond Eye. The two books are both set in WWII, both tell little-known stories of women's contributions to the war effort. In the Rose Code, the women are code breakers. In The Diamond Eye, the heroine is a sniper. This is chick-lit: both are also love stories and reveal the difficulties women faced in men's worlds during the 1940s.

I flew through The Island, one of Amazon's picks for Best Books of 2022 So Far. I wouldn't go that far but this was a compelling story if violent. And you may think twice about taking an impromptu sidetrip on vacation ...

• THE BOOKS (affiliate links) The Rose Code & The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn
• THE BOOK (affiliate link) The Island (affiliate link) by Irish author Adrian McKinty


• BOOK CLUB BOOK IDEAS My Reading Group's Book List since 1994!
• NO TIME TO READ? How I Read 4X More This Year Than Last What I gave up, how I read so much, what I read.

Don't Be a Stranger ...

I'd love to hear from you. Comment, send me a quick e-mail via recipes@kitchen-parade.com, dot-dash in Morse code, build a fire for smoke signals, launch a message in a bottle, send a Christmas letter, get the dog to yip, toss me a note wrapped in a rubberband, write a message in the sky, scratch a note in the sand, listen to a seashell, tuck a question into a plastic Easter egg, whatever.

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Kitchen Parade is written by second-generation food columnist Alanna Kellogg and features fresh, seasonal dishes for every-day healthful eating and occasional indulgences. Quick Suppers are Kitchen Parade favorites and feature recipes easy on the budget, the clock, the waistline and the dishwasher. Do you have a favorite recipe that other Kitchen Parade readers might like? Just send me a quick e-mail via recipes@kitchen-parade.com. How to print a Kitchen Parade recipe. Never miss a recipe! If you like this recipe, sign up for a free e-mail subscription. If you like Kitchen Parade, you're sure to like my food blog about vegetable recipes, too, A Veggie Venture. When you make my recipes, I'd love to know your results! Just leave a comment below or better still, on the specific recipe's page.

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