It's been kinda busy around here today

The last time I made a chocolate ganache tart, I had the foresight to make a second pastry crust batch for freezing. That made today's repeat of that recipe a lot easier. All I had to do was make the ganache and pour it into the baked, then cooled crust. Additionally, we're doing pizza for dinner again tonight, so I also made a large batch of pizza dough so that I had enough to also set some aside to freeze. We've had success with a pizza stone on the grill, I'm happy to report.

Today's lunch was fire-grilled steaks, half-bagels from our local bakery (which only offers their enormous bagels on the weekend) and — yum — fire-grilled peaches with brown sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon. The peaches exceeded our expectations; the fuzz develops a crust which is similar to the charred "shell" that develops around a fire-roasted marshmallow. Matt and I ate half a (small) basket of Ontario peaches because of how fantastic they are when grilled.

Christmas came early this year!

When Emma asked how one handles squash blossoms, I thought she was asking for cooking suggestions. When she then stated that she'd bring them over during a visit on Saturday, I was literally speechless with excitement! Much gratitude, then, to the Hungs for sharing some enormous zucchini blossoms from their garden with me!

These were stuffed with a cream chezz, sea salt, black pepper and fresh thyme mixture. They were then battered in a flour, ice-cold water and egg wash and fried in a shallow cast iron skillet, turning each blossom once to fry both sides.

They were unbelievably delicious!

Dairy- and egg-free lemony cupcakes with "cream cheese" icing

I made these for my father's birthday and thought I'd make up another batch today!

The cupcake recipe is an adaptation of the Golden Vanilla Cupcakes recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I went with the oil-based option this time and used tapioca flour in place of corn starch because I didn't have any of the latter in the pantry. I also replaced the vanilla extract in its entirety with lemon extract.

The Vegan Cream Cheese Frosting recipe is from the same book. I omitted the vanilla because I've found the frosting too runny in the past.

They're delicious.