A couple of years ago, some friends and I had a Summer Salad Club. We stretched the bounds of the summer slightly, starting in May and going into the first weeks of September. We'd get together for a potluck dinner every few weeks, each time trying to bring a new salad that included fresh, seasonal ingredients.

I was flipping through a file folder of recipes tonight, looking for a recipe for a brie and tomato pasta sauce that I remember clipping from the newspaper last summer (I never did find it), when I stumbled across a print out that dates back to the early days of the salad club. It is for an Orzo, Arugula, Radicchio and Pine Nut salad and is from cooking.com. It is super garlicky (a feature I particularly love) and has a nice combination of textures and crunch. As we head into the end of summer, some of the delicate salad greens are coming back into the farmers markets, which are perfect for this salad. The recipe is after the jump.

You might notice that the picture above doesn't perfectly match the recipe, but I do think that basil would be a nice addition to this recipe, if you wanted to go that way.

Today is National Ice Cream Soda Day. Celebrate by eating a broccoli quiche!

OK, just kidding. What you have to do is celebrate by having an ice cream soda. Here are recipes for an Old Fashioned Ice Cream Soda and a Coffee Ice Cream Soda over at RecipeZaar. Here's a Strawberry Ice Cream Soda recipe from SouthernFood.about.com. And cooking.com has a recipe for a Cherry Vanilla Ice Cream Soda.

If you'r really into celebrating the day, you can send ice cream soda e-cards and learn about the history of soda fountains.

A well-cut ham should be as symmetrical as an accordion, but carving up the Easter centerpiece isn't always the easiest. task. RecipeTips offers a detailed guide to carving ham, showing how to carve up different cuts of ham ranging from a whole ham to a butt ham, while Jones Dairy Farm also has a list of videos for cutting up the meat. More knife action is available on Cooking.com, which offers an instructional video on both preparing and cutting the meat. Tips recommended by these sites include using a very sharp thin knife and letting the ham cool 10 minutes before cutting so the juice is redistributed.

 

 

If there is one thing that will sell a cookbook it is high quality, full-color photographs of the food. Good cookbooks will sell regardless, especially as word of mouth spreads, but if you flip open a brand new cookbook in the bookstore and your mouth begins to water, chances are excellent that you will be walking out with that book in hand. Unfortunately, while a picture may be worth a thousand words, it doesn’t necessarily indicate a good recipe. Some dishes will photograph well, but are lacking the flavor to make them great. This is a disappointing thing to discover about a new cookbook or recipe, but it will happen, even in great cookbooks. The more perplexing problem is when the photo of the food is unappetizing. The dish may taste fantastic, but the very sight of the finished dish is unappetizing. Creamed chipped beef and chilis are good examples of things that don’t photograph particularly well. The best way for a publisher or a cookbook author to avoid this sort of negative attention is to leave out the photo. A few choice words about how wonderful the recipe is will sell it – even without an illustration.

The photo shown here is of a recipe for S’mores Ice Cream on Cooking.com. While the dessert is simple and probably tastes good, this is a bad photo. Though I believe it is actually the large storage bowl for the ice cream, it resembles a bowl of chunky-looking chocolate soup and it is unappetizing. Scoop some out, put it in a cone – people, including myself, will be far more likely to make it.